Just how CHEAP your Sub really is.

[Ri_ri]

What if I told you, there're other places on the world, where you can buy around 20 meals with $15?... And these places aren't even considered poor countries. It's easy to earn that much ofcourse, but it still make you think hard about your investment, especially when ARR isn't that good (yet?)

And Im pretty sure these ppl will not spent $60 on games that last for 6 hours, in fact they would pirate those, unless it's on the new consoles that can't be hacked yet, or have multiplayer like CoD/BF4. And furthermore they can always resell those games to buy another.

Pretty much described my place.
Most people here, for entertainment, go for walks, visit friends or parents... things like movies, live music, fast food, gaming, is so expensive that in my city we only have one theater and one McDonald's.

But yeah, between those things, I'd rather play FFXIV.

[Lisotte]

No cash shop. In any game with a cash shop, if you don't buy from the cash shop you're going to look far less amazing than the dude spending hundreds on the cash shop. In a game like FFXIV that has a flat monthly fee (pretty rare these days; even sub MMOs are often getting cash shops), you pay a monthly sub, a flat rate for 100% of the content in a game.

Don't forget that F2P games are still after your $15 a month; they just nickel and dime you instead of paying it up front. Or else have someone else pay a ridiculous amount to cover for you not paying.

[Zaels]

I always prefer MMOs with a sub over F2P with a cash shop. Nothing turns me off of an MMO faster than hearing it has a cash shop full of p2w.

Agreed. I think the sub is worth knowing that the devs don't condone or support pay2win.

[DanteMog]

Sub = Paying even when you're not playing, yes $15 a month is low (not $15 a month here in Aus but ok) but paying monthly means playing 24/7 to get monies worth etc...

Free to Play = Free to play, anytime i want to login i can play, no money exchanged etc, yes if i need or want to purchase stuff its generally more expensive but its occasional and its not a long term lock in thing.

I prefer F2P even if i need to pay more for certain items because i can play when it suits me not when it suits the game company..

I'm not saying all $60 games are a waste of money, but the amount of games being released with more than 12 hours of content is getting smaller and smaller. Fallout? Skyrim? Go for it, those are totally worth your money. I even dropped $200 the other week JUST to play the new pokemon, again, worth it. Because I play the sh*t out of it.

But the fact remains that a subscription fee is one of the CHEAPEST forms of entertainment.

If you go to the movies and get a drink you're gonna be spending somewhere around $20 for about an hour and a half of entertainment. You could literally login and play for 2 hours the entire month and be getting a better bang for your buck.

I'm not gonna resub FFXIV because its not worth it, the game has so many issues and isn't what i'd call long term fun for me, its more grind, horrible delays, story line is gated by dungeons requiring that Duty finder mess, the list goes on..

I'm not too poor to sub (i just dropped $60 bucks in Rifts cash shop) its that the game isn't worth the money in my opinion..

[Jynx]

While I agree the subscription model is the way to go if you want to give players bang for their buck and commit to a heavy content game.

It's just a shame that as of this moment this game really lacks in depth and content that many other subscriptions games offer. Of course all is in due time but they really do have alot to prove to us before anyone can say that FFXIV is worth subscribing to more than the other Subscription based MMO's out there. Many systems like Housing (lol pvp) Crystal Tower and other things in the pipes are what could have made the game a home run out the gate but obviously time-line restrictions have prevented this.

It's just unnerving how quickly they are resorting the the scary "We can't do this because of the game engine" that we found out killed 1.0 because nothing new could be done with the game engine. Personally how hard they work on the DX11 and PS4 ports will show me what kind of game this will be for me. I think that's more than enough "Grace" to let them settle into the new dev cycle quash bugs and exploits and start to flesh out a game that currently has very meager content.

They might go the way I want with more deep, slower paced, yet rewarding content or continue to pump out McMMO happy meal dungeons, whatever they do they need to be able to maintain interest in the players and as of right now it seems the ease of reaching endgame has taken it's toll on the community, especially with the lack of incentives to play as a community leaving us with servers full of exclusionists and lone wolfs.

[TohruHonda]

I've had cigarette smokers tell me they can't afford to play sub based games. LOL, right.

[KimimiAvesta]

The problem OP is that you're comparing paying a sub for FFXIV to everything except the one that counts - other P2P MMOs. It's easy to say "But it's only just come out, that's not fair!" - but they're asking for the same sort of money, so it's only natural that people will weigh up their options and see better value from the game that's got more quests/classes/mounts/whatever.

To bring up "that" game - I've just got 10 days unrestricted free play time on my old WoW account just for clicking a box on my account page and much as someone who's paid up for FFXIV until March 2014 wouldn't like to admit it, I'm having a better time there than here (and don't even get me started on the responsiveness...).

I'm sure I'll get some sort of "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out" responses but that's not my point - I've put my money where my mouth is with FFXIV *twice*. I've got the 1.0 and ARR LEs, I'm a Legacy character and as soon as subs opened I paid for the longest option available. I want this game to do well, but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't have flaws that need fixing or that a lot of the "new" ("Please look forward to it") incoming ideas aren't either pinched from other MMOs or things that were announced for 1.0 at some point.

[LordSideKicks]

I got B2P/F2P players who spend hundreds in a few months . "We are too poor for subs."

[Jynx]

B2P and F2P games pretty much rely on the "Power gamer" to keep their games afloat, the hope that out of the hundreds of thousands a few of them are wealthy (Lazy and stupid enough) to pay for the rest of the players.

[TG_Martini]

Bought my 6-month sub! MOAR FFXIV!