Pay to Play Subscription - Cast your votes!

[Reverser]

The biggest problem here is that the game is simply not ready for primetime.

CASE IN POINT:

• After yesterday's patch, I hopped on and got ready to do a Darkhold run.
  
• Showed up with full PT, tried to enter instance. Upon entry, was given the old (40000)4 error. My char was now stuck inside Darkhold, unplayable. For the 3rd time since starting to FFXIV, the patch corrupted my game data.
  
• Attempted to uninstall with a "Catastropic Failure" prohibiting that.
  
• Manually deleted the FFXIV / My Games directories.
  
• Tried to reinstall - seemed OK
  
• After complete reinstall, redownload of patch data, the updater failed at the last moment with 20564 (another indication of a corrupted patch attempt).
  
• Tried to uninstall. Uninstall failed again.
  
• This time, I could not reinstall or uninstall, I was stuck, with no recourse or path to take to try to get the game working again.

Because I am an IT person, I manually searched the registry, deleted all the keys referrencing FFXIV, and successfully reinstalled. The average user, however, cannot be expected to this.

Fundamental features like an updater MUST work before expecting average users to pay money for a game. Therefore, they can try to take people's money, but I predict FAILURE 2.0 instead of FFXIV 2.0.

[unnameduser]

nope. I've already done this little dance with this game... There is no way i will pay for a game while it is still in development stages.

[Holland]

I will gladly pay.

[Grim_Lion]

Not a chance will I be paying for this game. Yet. I simply dont trust them any more and Iam sick of spending my money (3.5k PC, 80$ C.E.) on their development. Iam not an investor. The only saving grace is that Battlefield 3 has really caught my eye, Ive played alot of the beta and now at least have a game that I can use this beast of a PC for. Diablo 3 will also be nice. But its a shame that I had to pay what I did for a PC and go through this mess with S.E. and FFxiv...... NO I think I will sit on the side lines for this one and see how it all plays out.

I will come back when the next free trial is live and give it one more chance.

I also dont trust that this v2.0 is going to be any better.... Well, I will take that back, cause it would be almost impossible to make it worse. But I just dont buy the hype and the idea that all that which is in the letters can be completed in a years time.

[Kopuno]

I will most likely stick around and gladly pay a sub fee. People tend to forget how much money it cost to do what SE is doing, and as others have said, they could have just shut off the servers all together and just rebuilt it then. SE owes you nothing, I played Alpha and bought the collectors edition, and yet even though I have yet to hit 50, I feel I have earned my 70$ worth. Hell, in this day and age 70$ doesn't get you anything. Sure you can go out to Red Lobster or Olive Garden and have a great meal, but again, that's one night of food. Not a years worth.

The amount of money SE has lost, put into this game is massive. Granted SE is a huge company with well funded funds, they are not limitless. If your hurt about 13 dollars a month, you shouldn't be playing MMO's anyways. Theres plenty of F2P's out there that are half of what FFXIV is at this moment.

[Zumi]

Here is why I don't support paying right now. FFXIV still is very unfinished and lacks a lot of features paid mmos should have. I should not have to pay for what really is a beta to help their development. In a paid subscription based game the content should be there already.

Stuff that FFXIV currently lacks or has problems with
*No, AH and mail delivery system.
*No, group search / LFG tool / dungeon finder system
*Laggy UI and battle system
*Lack of Linkshell UI, can't see where members are job levels ect, what level they are, no different ranks/titles, ability to invite/remove manage members.
*overall lack of endgame content once you hit level cap, very few dungeons / bosses.

Almost all this stuff is being addressed by 2.0 but I shouldn't be paying for it when its unfinished.

So that is why I would wait for 2.0 to play FFXIV again hopefully it will be worthy of paying for at that point.

[EmeraldHill]

When will the "basic changes" be done?

"At the current pace, we hope to have all basic system features
completed by February 2012."



When will the new servers be up?

"We expect these tasks to be complete by the third quarter of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013."



When will they start charging players?

"Late November to Early December – Monthly subscription fees begin (PC)"

[Fleur]

I am not sure yet. On one hand, 2.0 looks AMAZING! <3 But . . . that is a long way off. I would pay full subscription price for 2.0 or even almost-2.0 in a heartbeat, but this game has so much work to be done to get there. I would be more amenable to a reduced subscription cost, maybe starting at $5 and then halfway through the "transformation" up it to $10, then charge the full amount when 2.0 is ready.

1.18 and 1.19 have brought a lot of great stuff to the game, but there are so many things that "we are still adjusting/need to add/are looking into/will be fixed later" that are minor on their own but that really pile up and irritate me. It would be nice to stick around and watch Eorzea change, though I am not sure it is worth that much to me.

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

Haven't done a tally on the individuals themselves, but the poll appears to be a 2:1 stay:drop ratio. So a third of the forum community will drop. And I guess they wouldn't be able to post?

Which means the dissatisfaction threads might reduce... But the "I quit" thread might surface for each person unsubscribing instead. And if such were to happen, t'would be potentially constructive for SE to provide a survey when unsubscribing so that a player may indicate the reasons why they're unsubbing, through a list of checkboxes, radio buttons on scales of 1 to 5, and a free form response so that SE can review.

Unless the objective of the "I quit" thread is not to inform SE, but to make a scene with forum community and possibly get others to quit too.

I forget where I was going with this. Ah! I'll pay $13/mo for that. Heck, gimme two more retainers, I'll pay $15.

[Tinydog]

best bet is to just wait until 2.0 comes out and give it a go.