Thread: Opt-in Pay Tier Structure until 2.0 (different than the 'half pay' or 'free to play')

As evidenced by threads like http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Then-Charge-12, a lot of people aren't happy with the idea of paying full cost for FFXIV right now. (I'm not one of them; I would have given my money a while back, even though the game might not be 'worth it' for me right now, I'm in full support of the great work Yoshida is doing, and I wouldn't mind paying in support of that)

Some people are crying that going away from free-to-play will kill the player base. This is somewhat inevitable, but blocking people from seeing the changes now really would hurt the game in the long term, I think. (more so than forcing people to pay, not allowing people to drop in after patches and see how things are moving will hurt things)

But going to half-pay isn't going to bring that much income, either.

I have a somewhat different perspective on this. Rather than "full pay" or "half pay" have "opt in pay." Let it remain free for everyone (perhaps with limited hours per week), and then let people who want to pay either half or full do so of their own volition. Paying would allow unlimited access, while everyone else essentially gets a "demo"

Alternatively (and perhaps better), allow free play up to level ___ and after that, require a monthly fee. This is essentially what a number of MMOs do to hook players. (I believe Aion does this, for instance)

Originally Posted by Zuellni

What if SE adopted a free to play all content up to rank 25? That way, all the meat and stuff will be for subscribers only while non-subscribers get to experience everything up to getting the Chocobo mount as well as a few dungeons, all the first class quests, etc.

The end result would be thus:

• People who want to keep an eye on changes (1.2, 1.21, 1.22) can hop in whenever they like just to see how things have changed. This is what I was doing up until 1.18 launched - I'd jump in after every patch to see what it was like, play for a few hours, and eventually stop playing again. These people would have limited access to the game, since they aren't paying, but it would still allow them to keep track of the game or just to socialize a small amount.
• People who want to pay half pay half, and get rid of the access limitation
• People who want to pay full do so, with the only difference being how much they're paying. So people like me who can afford to support the devs and want to... can.

I think this way of handling payments would have the minimal impact on the player base. It would let people keep an eye on the game without paying, or those who do pay can choose how much they want to pay (effectively making the full pay option a donation to SE) It would also allow the naysayers to see that yes, Yoshi-P has things under control (and is listening) and the game is getting better and better!

After all, if it hadn't been for this long free-to-play period, I wouldn't have been keeping track of FFXIV's progress. I would have quit about a month after XIV came out and lost interest. Instead, since it's been free, I've been checking in with the patches and seeing progress. And I'm really happy with the state of things - I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.

It's going to be very difficult to relaunch at 2.0 because of the sheer volume of negative reviews that came out at launch. EVERY chance to get more people to see the improvements will help!