PSN and FFXIV: why pay twice?

[Bebekurenai]

As it is right now, there are issues with PSN. They are experiencing "difficulties". Not for the first time and surely not for the last time. And with it, no chance of playing FFXIV right now.
Now, I understand we pay PSN a fee for their online services such as streaming, voice chat, uploading on social media and other minor features. And apparently we will pay more next year. Great.
PSN, just like XBox live, has been DDOS's a few times, and hackers brought the service down for days, rendering us unable to connect to FFXIV.

My main complaints are:
Why do we have to pay an extra fee to PSN only to use our own internet connection and play FFXIV? Why can't we play when clearly our connection is running but not PSN? Why are we not getting a discount on our subscription of FFXIV?

I can understand that I can't stream or upload anything, or even chat with my PSN friends when the service is down, that is logical, but come on! Can't use my own internet to play FFXIV because it's linked to PSN and has to go trough their server?

What kind of lame deal have you given us SE?

[Brightshadow]

Because Sony owns the machine. They aren't gonna let SE get their subscription while people avoid theirs. Same thing will happen if the game comes out for xbone

[Yamimarik]

My main complaints are:
Why do we have to pay an extra fee to PSN only to use our own internet connection and play FFXIV? Why can't we play when clearly our connection is running but not PSN? Why are we not getting a discount on our subscription of FFXIV?

This right here is false, for almost a year now I haven't had my PSN+ sub and I've played FFXIV just fine. You do not need a PSN+ sub at all to be able to play FFXIV. The issues with PSN atm effects FFXIV only b/c PSN is required to log in, in order to verify you have the product license to play the game. This is SOLELY a Sony issue, unfortunately this has nothing to do w/ SE or FFXIV, and FFXIV and people that play on PS4 (and 3) just have to suffer PSN outages and HOPE it gets resolved quickly.

[Caitlinzulu]

We are not paying for access to PSN, at least i'm not. Do you mean PSN plus? That is not required to play.

The only reason we need psn active is for the version check when we start the game. It doesnt use the psn servers beyond that, could you imagine the lag it would create?

[cammi]

This right here is false, for almost a year now I haven't had my PSN+ sub and I've played FFXIV just fine. You do not need a PSN+ sub at all to be able to play FFXIV. The issues with PSN atm effects FFXIV only b/c PSN is required to log in, in order to verify you have the product license to play the game. This is SOLELY a Sony issue, unfortunately this has nothing to do w/ SE or FFXIV, and FFXIV and people that play on PS4 (and 3) just have to suffer PSN outages and HOPE it gets resolved quickly.

I can say this guy is correct. With FFXIV you do not need PS Plus to play online. If you're playing FFXIV then plus isn't needed to go online for it. You can just go online, and matter of fact long as you never log out when PSN goes down you won't be kicked offline. I know this for a fact as I'm never kicked off when PSN goes down when I'm on XIV. And since I never turn my game off I'm never offline

[Caitlinzulu]

This right here is false, for almost a year now I haven't had my PSN+ sub and I've played FFXIV just fine. You do not need a PSN+ sub at all to be able to play FFXIV. The issues with PSN atm effects FFXIV only b/c PSN is required to log in, in order to verify you have the product license to play the game. This is SOLELY a Sony issue, unfortunately this has nothing to do w/ SE or FFXIV, and FFXIV and people that play on PS4 (and 3) just have to suffer PSN outages and HOPE it gets resolved quickly.

I dont think it is used for account check, at least not the SE account check. Since at boot time your SE account is unknown. Its only when you actually log in that the client knows which account to use and by that time you are on all SE servers.

[Bixillarla]

You don't need PSN Plus to play FFXIV because it is a sub based game and you log into SE servers. Other online games you do need PS + but not this one.

[Yamimarik]

I dont think it is used for account check, at least not the SE account check. Since at boot time your SE account is unknown. Its only when you actually log in that the client knows which account to use and by that time you are on all SE servers.

You are right, it doesn't check anything about your FFXIV/SE account at all. The PSN just checks to see if you have the license to play the game. That's it, meaning (Do you own this game?) It's like that with any PSN-PS4/3 games that requires the PSN initially to just play a game. It's basically so you can boot up the log in client through PSN because that's how our PS4/3's connect to the internet is through the PSN.

[Caitlinzulu]

I can say this guy is correct. With FFXIV you do not need PS Plus to play online. If you're playing FFXIV then plus isn't needed to go online for it. You can just go online, and matter of fact long as you never log out when PSN goes down you won't be kicked offline. I know this for a fact as I'm never kicked off when PSN goes down when I'm on XIV. And since I never turn my game off I'm never offline

Thats not entirely true, if you get a DC due to a local network fault and get kicked back to the lobby server where you can select your character, DON'T try to log back in before you are shure you connection is up and running again or you are kicked further back to the first boot screen, and since PSN could be down the version check will not succeed leaving you unable to log back in.

[SenorPatty]

This right here is false, for almost a year now I haven't had my PSN+ sub and I've played FFXIV just fine. You do not need a PSN+ sub at all to be able to play FFXIV. The issues with PSN atm effects FFXIV only b/c PSN is required to log in, in order to verify you have the product license to play the game. This is SOLELY a Sony issue, unfortunately this has nothing to do w/ SE or FFXIV, and FFXIV and people that play on PS4 (and 3) just have to suffer PSN outages and HOPE it gets resolved quickly.

Just want to confirmed what he said with some added stuff: was subbed for a year with ps plus. At the time my ps sub ended, only weird thing that happened was that i dced. I had to restart the ps4 but i was able to resume playing as normal, without the ps plus sub