SE Needs to Market FFXIV/Offer 10 Day Free Trials

[Balraw]

Well as someone who got this game last week from Amazon for £5.00 I can honestly say I have got my monies worth That is not meant as a flame (though I can see how some would see it as such.) While the game is far from the unplayable mess I expected having read all the bile that has been floating around the various forums it is not yet ready for any sort of relaunch or promotion in my humble newbie opinion (and I say that with the proviso that I know I still have loads to learn about this game).

I would say that there is a spark of fun somewhere in the background that makes me want to continue to play it and it is for that reason that I am sticking around for the immediate future but (and yes there is always a but) the acid test for me would be if SE were to reinstate subscriptions I would have to be honest and say I wouldn't stay. Though having said that I would certainly keep an eye on the game more than I would have prior to playing it with a view to taking it into consideration when one of my current subscriptions runs out.

So to sum up it has a spark of a good game lurking in the back ground but its not quite ready yet

[VeranRamaden]

They released this amazing commercial in Japan, but we never saw it here. Why is that?

http://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/#/media/cm

When I asked my local Gamestop if they were going to have a midnight release for FFXIV, I could tell they were trying not to laugh. There just wasn't enough demand.



Pretty much. Would you recommend this game to any of your friends while it's in this state? I know most of mine would leave and never come back.

Need to get it in shape before thinking of marketing it.

When it's good, then start playing the above commercial everywhere.

No, no and god no. I'm sorry but I am not a fan of commercials like that to sell a game. You need to do some
Starcraft 2 type trailer that is like a movie to get people interested. Because let's face it, video games will eventually
be on par with a movie - just a lot more interactive and a lot more fun.

Here is my reference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_E83GfWM-A

Now who wouldn't want to play that game?
ESPECIALLY if a person had played the first one.
FF's are pretty much cinematic, why not exploit that for commercials?
Don't make no dern sense.

[Cutriss]

One thing that has always baffled me about Square Enix is their lack of ongoing advertising for their MMOs. It seems that after running a few ads during the launch, Square Enix just gives up on trying to market their games. They did this with FFXI and they're doing it again with FFXIV. How is a player base supposed to grow if the only people who know about a game are the ones who bought it at launch?

I'm relatively certain SE didn't run ads at all for XI. I'm pretty sure those ads were run by Sony. A lot of SE's airtime advertising in the US these days is actually done by the publisher and not by SE themselves. Examples: 360 version of FFXIII, FF: Crystal Bearers, DQIX. I don't know if Sony paid for the non-360 FFXIII ads or not but I'm guessing SE actually forked out for those.

[Wolfie]

Do I really need to point out the myriad of fishing bots that used to be set up in FFXI for the sole purpose of catching and auctioning off/vendoring moat carp? It's just 1 example of many that could be done en masse without hampering much of anything really. I'm sure if you think outside the box you can find something similar bots can accomplish in this game. Considering the quick (especially by comparison to FFXI) respawn of mobs, killing everything on the map isn't as much of a deterrent as you might think either.

It may not occur as often in games that use copper/silver/gold increments either. But if you look even there you can find work arounds. Taking an example from WoW, picking peacebloom, an item any lvl 1 herbalist could get could net 20 gold a stack when they added the inscription profession to the game. And last I played, they still sold fast and for about 2 gold a stack. I was rolling around on a lvl 19 character with more gold than my other toon had at 50. Of course it goes without saying no one cares about RMT in WoW because gold flows like water and has no value. I don't know why people buy it, but to each his own.

You write off "lowbie stuff" as worthless because performing it manually with a single toon on an account you paid for isn't getting your money's worth out of the game. To a cheater who's abusing the living hell out of free trials, things take on a different light. It becomes worth the money to setup the machines, because bots don't need a fantastically expensive lag free machine to operate. Let's also remember that most RMT operations are in countries where a dollar or euro goes much farther. And adding more exponentially increases the amount of in game currency you net. They pay for themselves, and I'm sure IGE has made millions off them. I'm willing to bet that any MMO offering a free trial has some facet that RMT abuse.

Unreal. Is there a single person on this board that doesn't resort to strawman fallacies?

There are no bots that do low level herbalism in WOW because:

1. There is a limited supply of peaceblooms and silverleaf to go around.
2. Lowbie inventory space is limited.
3. It's more profitable to purchase (or steal) a fully paid account, level your character to 85, and farm high tier ores, herbs, and even vendor trash.
4. Peaceblooms are expensive BECAUSE nobody specifically targets them. If people started botting these, they'd dip in price dramatically.

If botting using trial accounts was ever profitable, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EXPLOITED ALREADY. The fact that IT LITERALLY HASN'T HAPPENED means that it's NOT PROFITABLE, EVEN IF YOU ARE PAYING NOTHING FOR YOUR ACCOUNT. It's not worth the time and computer hardware investment.

Furthermore, denomination of copper/silver/gold has nothing to do with why lowbie bots don't exist. It's the fact that, regardless of denominations, rewards at lower levels are almost always minuscule compared to mid and high levels. I hope you're not seriously suggesting that if FFXI and FFXIV had free trials, that people would set up bots to receive 100-900 gil rewards from repeatable quests or leves, when they could receive 100x times that amount by getting a full account and doing mid-high level repeatables.

[Nikita]

Unreal. Is there a single person on this board that doesn't resort to strawman fallacies?

There are no bots that do low level herbalism in WOW because:

1. There is a limited supply of peaceblooms and silverleaf to go around.
2. Lowbie inventory space is limited.
3. It's more profitable to purchase (or steal) a fully paid account, level your character to 85, and farm high tier ores, herbs, and even vendor trash.
4. Peaceblooms are expensive BECAUSE nobody specifically targets them. If people started botting these, they'd dip in price dramatically.

If botting using trial accounts was ever profitable, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EXPLOITED ALREADY. The fact that IT LITERALLY HASN'T HAPPENED means that it's NOT PROFITABLE, EVEN IF YOU ARE PAYING NOTHING FOR YOUR ACCOUNT. It's not worth the time and computer hardware investment.

Furthermore, denomination of copper/silver/gold has nothing to do with why lowbie bots don't exist. It's the fact that, regardless of denominations, rewards at lower levels are almost always minuscule compared to mid and high levels. I hope you're not seriously suggesting that if FFXI and FFXIV had free trials, that people would set up bots to receive 100-900 gil rewards from repeatable quests or leves, when they could receive 100x times that amount by getting a full account and doing mid-high level repeatables.

Exactly! xD I still don't see the argument against trial accounts (other than they need to improve the game first). As mentioned, they could restrict the chat functions for the trial accounts. Another thing that most other MMOs do with trial accounts is restrict the use of auction house (market wards) and restrict being able to trade with other players.

Look at how media distribution is evolving, you get to preview almost everything now, from video games (demos) to music (youtube, 30 second clips on iTunes, etc.). I haven't seen any commercials for FFXIV, besides the Japanese ones, but the adds I see online aren't even gameplay, only clips from the opening trailer. People wan't to see what they are paying for before they buy something, and if they go off reviews of FFXIV, I don't see them coming over.

If Square wants to get the word about FFXIV out there in the open, it wouldn't hurt to do some 7-10 day free trials. All they would need to do is limit the chat and trade functionality. There are quests and vendors that have the gear people could use, there is no need for a free trial to use the market wards (some would argue that would only further turn them away from FFXIV! lol), so I don't see why not add them when the game improves.

[AngryNixon]

This is the correct answer. If people try the game when it's in a bad shape, it's going to leave them with a sour taste and they'll never come back. First impressions are the most important thing.

Yup. Exactly this and the thing you quoted from Wynn. They should definitely offer a free trial, a year from now.