Billing...

[Kiroh]

Change the billing for XIV, please! Before the game gets to the point where we have to worry about paying for it. Even if the game became great by tomorrow, the billing sucks so hard that a lot of people wouldn't even want to play. I have never seen a more ridiculous, convoluted billing system in my life.

Charge us the exact amount, none of this Crysta nonsense. Charge us directly, why do you even need a 3rd party involved? I honestly didn't think it was possible, but SE has found a billing system with even WORSE customer support than FFXI.

[XyonicS]

What Kiroh said, the current system is so messed up, I am in Australia and we can't even use Crysta so why have that system in place if everyone can't use it.
Please go to the a system like FFXI has with direct pay that is easy to set up and use.

[Adan]

same, i pay through my friend's credit card, if i had to pay it directly.... i mostly wouldnt. it was a pain to get it to work.

[Phenidate]

I would like to bring this topic up again as this a critically important part of any business, doubly so for an MMO.

Having had issues in the past with never before heard of 3rd parties when it comes to paying for things, I would greatly appreciate it if SE moved to a reputable, WELL KNOWN company to handle payments.

And no, not Paypal.

Surely a company like SE can work something out with SOMEONE the community has heard of. Visa? Amex? Amazon? I'm fairly sure they offer online billing services to companies, and I'm certain Amazon does.

Further, I would also like to point out that the biggest issue I have getting friends or guild mates from other games to try FFXIV is the billing system.

The moment they run into this crysta business, or the company which handles credit card billing, their interest turns sour.

Pile onto this the fact that they are limited to a single character slot, and additional fees are levied monthly for adding more? I've gotten maybe three people to get past setting up an account and actually log into a server. And this is from a pool of friends and a fairly large gaming clan.

[Frebaut]

Agreed the pay system for SE products are extremly a pain in the ass. To play this game you need what like 3 seperate accounts for it. Ya its a pain.

[Zenaku]

If i remember right the JP get a way to pay them straight up like FFXI. Which in ffxi they had other way to pay them beside using credit card. I seem everyone beside JP get the end of the stick again. So yes i wish we get better payment

@phenidate: Sadly if you more then one Character you have to pay the 3$ which = 15.99 so about 1$ and 99 cent more then any mmo out there. If they give you 2-3slot for free they wont make the $ they would have made.

Really the only point having other Slots Characters is for RP and other reasons but not enough to really say oh ok they really do need other free slot.

[Phenidate]

If and when it goes back to a pay to play monthly fee, I would greatly appreciate a more streamlined approach.

We have what, 3 or 4 sites now?

We have SE's site, which has its own community account. This one is unrelated to FFXIV in any way.
There is the FFXIV account site, where I can set up billing. There account I have here is at least used on the lodestone site.

We have the Lodestone site, which doesn't let me get to the billing, but has all the information I need to get started or
keep up to date on the game. I can log in with my game account.

And then we have finalfantasyfxiv dot com, which used to be the teaser site and is now some useless publicity page that doesn't link to anything important other than the SE community site useless to anything about FFXIV.

That last website right there should BE what the Lodestone is PLUS the account management site. When I type in the games name I should go to an actual, useful website. It should get me to billing, to the 'lodestone' and the official community sites.

I don't want to have several sites book marked so I can check up on game updates, manage my account, and take care of billing.

@phenidate: Sadly if you more then one Character you have to pay the 3$ which = 15.99 so about 1$ and 99 cent more then any mmo out there. If they give you 2-3slot for free they wont make the $ they would have made.

Really the only point having other Slots Characters is for RP and other reasons but not enough to really say oh ok they really do need other free slot.

Square-Enix is the ONLY company that does this. There is no real justification beyond "because". If they can make a profit on the, what, 12.99 a month? They should be fine if I can make two or three characters. There is no additional strain on their servers to do so, I am not playing them simultaneously.

It could be there are several servers we want characters on.

Maybe we just want a the option of having two different races for change of pace.

We could look at it based on the current stat system. Considering the dev team has everything set up so we don't have to spend all day to accomplish anything, the point respec system seems to fly against all of their reason. Have a character set up to do physical stat classes, and another in magical stats would be a reasonable justification for atleast two character slots.

If and when they include PVP, there is the possibility of having PVE and PVP servers. I certainly would like a character on both kinds of servers for when feel I want to go kill and be killed, or just cooperate.

Eventually, you're going to get to a point where your classes are leveled to high for you to play with a friend who has just started on the server (not to cap per say, but high enough, it would be unfeasible). It'd be great to have the option to roll an alt and help them catch up without incurring an obnoxious fee, and have that alt ready should you need to do so with another friend.

This last option would be particularly helpful when FFXIV becomes popular again and people start to join up. All of us are at risk of hitting this point during our free to play period, unless you plan to play a DoH or DoL with their DoW.

[Chardrizard]

i find this issue to be irrating as well.. current billing system rejects every single of my credit card because this 3rd party bullshit doesnt have service at my region and doesnt accept crysta, i had to ask my friend to help me for payment with their credit card..

do i really have to go through all this just to play this game? there is not much problem now since its still free, but i can see a hell lot of trouble in the future when SE decided to charge me..

Customer Service basically tells me gtfo there is nothing we can do to help you when i ask if i can change my country origin to the one that provides crysta, cmon.. i just want to pay for your game.. SE's customer service got to be one of the worst.

/endrant

[Zenaku]

If and when it goes back to a pay to play monthly fee, I would greatly appreciate a more streamlined approach.

We have what, 3 or 4 sites now?

We have SE's site, which has its own community account. This one is unrelated to FFXIV in any way.
There is the FFXIV account site, where I can set up billing. There account I have here is at least used on the lodestone site.

We have the Lodestone site, which doesn't let me get to the billing, but has all the information I need to get started or
keep up to date on the game. I can log in with my game account.

And then we have finalfantasyfxiv dot com, which used to be the teaser site and is now some useless publicity page that doesn't link to anything important other than the SE community site useless to anything about FFXIV.

That last website right there should BE what the Lodestone is PLUS the account management site. When I type in the games name I should go to an actual, useful website. It should get me to billing, to the 'lodestone' and the official community sites.

I don't want to have several sites book marked so I can check up on game updates, manage my account, and take care of billing.



Square-Enix is the ONLY company that does this. There is no real justification beyond "because". If they can make a profit on the, what, 12.99 a month? They should be fine if I can make two or three characters. There is no additional strain on their servers to do so, I am not playing them simultaneously.

It could be there are several servers we want characters on.

Maybe we just want a the option of having two different races for change of pace.

We could look at it based on the current stat system. Considering the dev team has everything set up so we don't have to spend all day to accomplish anything, the point respec system seems to fly against all of their reason. Have a character set up to do physical stat classes, and another in magical stats would be a reasonable justification for atleast two character slots.

If and when they include PVP, there is the possibility of having PVE and PVP servers. I certainly would like a character on both kinds of servers for when feel I want to go kill and be killed, or just cooperate.

Eventually, you're going to get to a point where your classes are leveled to high for you to play with a friend who has just started on the server (not to cap per say, but high enough, it would be unfeasible). It'd be great to have the option to roll an alt and help them catch up without incurring an obnoxious fee, and have that alt ready should you need to do so with another friend.

This last option would be particularly helpful when FFXIV becomes popular again and people start to join up. All of us are at risk of hitting this point during our free to play period, unless you plan to play a DoH or DoL with their DoW.

SE would never Add open pvp they would add the same PVP from ffxi. They would never make PVP worlds only that for sure so no need to worry about that. There really no point beside you want to be other race the level up with a friend thing they could easy add so you level down to your friend level there fix your problem. Really 12.99$ for 1 char does it all it pretty dam good to me.

But i could see the need for the very few who do want other slot. maybe they could make it so your 2# slot is 1$ and everything else would be 3 that would not be so bad.

[Mikita]

If i remember right the JP get a way to pay them straight up like FFXI. Which in ffxi they had other way to pay them beside using credit card. I seem everyone beside JP get the end of the stick again. So yes i wish we get better payment

Um. My account is Japanese, but we have the same Crysta system that needs to go through a credit card.