How I wish the pay to play model in gaming was done.

[WantsAFriend]

Have you ever felt that paying for a 30 day timer was frustrating. For example, say that you pay for the 30 days but only end up playing 10 of those days, you just lost two-thirds of the money you payed to play.
What if you could just pay for the hours that you will play? Here's what I mean.
Instead of paying for the timer that tells you what day you will have to pay for your subscription to continue, you buy hours ahead of time. Say you play 10 hour a week, that's about 40-45 hours a month, and you pay the 12-15 dollars for that month but the next month you only play for 30 hours, that's a difference three to five dollars. If you could instead just pay the nine or ten dollars for the 30 hours why wouldn't you? Because you can't, not right now anyway.

[WantsAFriend]

What I would like to see is a way where you can just pay for the hours you actually play. Let's say you could pay a dollar for three hours of play, after two hours the system sends you a message that says "You only have one hour of play remaining, please go to the subscription page to buy more time and it will be add the next time you log in, other wise you will be charged for the same amount of time as the last payed for." You then decide you will need more time to do what you want to for next day or so. Going into the subscription page you find a list of options:
$1 for 3 hours
$3 for 10 hours
$5 for 20 hours
...
$100 for 1000 hours
etc. etc.

[WantsAFriend]

Now I have a few pros and cons for both players and the game company (Square Enix in this case) for this model of payment. Some may sound contradictory but are still valid (I think).
Players:
Pros:
1. Flexibility. Only paying for hours that you will actually play means that you don't feel the need to keep playing to reach your goal within the allotted playing time of the current model.
2. Affordability. I'm not say that the current model is unreasonable but, paying for hours you're not using is like paying for you neighbors electricity bill.
3. More time for other activities. Some of you likely have families and most of you have jobs, these are real world responsibilities that require your time, and some of you might feel that your neglecting them, or maybe you just feel that you're spending too much time on this game and would rather play or do something else for a while.

[WantsAFriend]

Cons:
1. Real time tracking. For some of you this might not be a big deal but for others it might feel like an invasion of privacy, just know that it would only track your remaining time and not personal information which is done already.
2. Instance time limits. Say you want to go into a dungeon but you only have 20-40 minutes left before your time runs out and you don't know if the team you get will be able complete it in time but you want to buy more time then the last time.

Square Enix:
Pros:
1. More players. With the flexibility of this model more gamers are likely to continue buying play time for their game.
Cons
1. Potential costs. This new model might require a dedicated system to track players remaining time and message them when their time is almost up. Now I personally don't think this would be too hard to do as they already track when a person is on so that there friends (and free company) can see when they're on.

[WantsAFriend]

Now if I haven't convinced you that this would be a better way to pay to play please tell me why, or if you have your own pros and cons please add them and tell who they're for, players or Square Enix. (If you like this idea be sure to spread it around however you like I don' care I you claim it for your own, so long as it spreads. Also, just remember that the prices in this are just examples and actual prices would be different. One last thing, I may not be able to reply as my subscription is about to expire and me and my brother plan on taking a break from this for a while. Something that is only advisable at the end of a subscription period in the current model.)

[Kyuuen]

My guess would be that it becomes far too convoluted to set something like this up. As of right now accounts are flagged as Legacy/Non-Legacy, or 9.99/14.99 for 672 - 744 hours a months (pending how many days are in the month).

In essence while this MIGHT help the customer in saving money, it would however screw SE out of money. So I don't see it happening.

[ruinedmirage]

If I remember right, they tried this in version 1.0. It was too complicated and people asked for a simple month-to-month plan, though I can't recall what exactly caused the Crysta plan to be so bugged.

If you truly love the game and the people in it, supporting SE shouldn't be a problem (admittedly, I'm not supporting EVERYTHING they do, *cough microtransactions cough*)

[ruskie]

I think 30 days is the most optimal solution for both. SE know what kind of money they get and can plan it better and the player doesn't pay through the nose for each minute of game time and enjoys it as and when he wants to.

If they added it as an option sure I could see it used by some people but not many. Also how would paying just for N hours mesh with stuff that happens when you don't have a sub... your sub is suspended so you send your retainer on an 18h venture and they don't complete it until you play for 18h... I assume all the timers stop for your character with a suspended sub.