Suggestion: Incentive for Paying Players

[Eva]

Dear Final Fantasy XIV Development Team,

With the announcement of the Free Trial coming to an end, a lot of players are up in arms about paying a monthly fee for the game in it's current state.

I combined this news with the news that our additional 200 inventory spaces is only temporary (I am talking of course of the bonus 100 inventory space on our PC and 50 spaces on our 2 retainers) and came up with a great incentive.

Why not let players who sign up to pay for the game during the first 7 days when pay subscriptions begin KEEP THOSE BONUS INVENTORY SPACES.

Personally I would definitely sign up for this and I think a lot of other players would too. The fact that the developers would choose to give us this bonus inventory space then take it away is pretty cruel in the first place. But I feel like a deal like this would be a fair compromise.

To be honest, without some kind of incentive I will probably not be signing up to pay.

Also, superficial incentives do not interest me, such as achievements or "Gobbue Mount". I would want something substantial, something useful in the game to make my character more powerful.

Some other suggestions that I doubt SE would be interested in but would make me sign up:

1) 1,000,000 Gil
2) 100,000 Experience Points to be allocated wherever I choose
3) A super useful item such as:
-Treat Staff II (a free teleport once a day)
-Hermes Shoes (15 minutes of Quickstride once a day)
-Anniversary Ring (Double XP with a bonus XP of up to 15,000 each day)
-Note: letting us have a bonus like this once a day is what makes these items worthwhile.

If you guys want to be awesome and make FFXIV awesome give us an incentive that is awesome. If you guys want to be lame jerks and let FFXIV die, then offer a useless incentive like "Gobbue Mount" or no incentive at all.

Thank you for reading and letting me voice my opinion. Fellow players, please feel free to add your own ideas of what you think would be a good and fair incentive.

[Rentahamster]

The primary incentive is that the players get to actually play the game, first and foremost. I'm still not convinced that there are going to be as many people paying for the game as they hope, not at full price. The concept of gifting players a special item for signing up for the initial payment would be a good incentive, though and should help retention, depending on what the item or bonus is.

I don't think gil or EXP is a good bonus, but special items are.

BTW - this is in the wrong forum. This forum is for feedback regarding the Lodestone website and this forum, not feedback about the game.

[tymora]

As long as the reward is unique and never ever released again, I am good.
- So Mob mounts work out fine for me.

[Lienn]

Well, (No, thanks!)

IMO a game shouldn't need "tricks" to have people willing to pay subscription fee. These tricks might only mislead the community in the wrong direction even more.

If they want to charge people then the game itself should be enough to appeal ppl. It's just like SWTOR...i applied to it's beta before i applied to FFXIV beta...but they didn't rush things....did stuff as they were supposed to and now you see the result...ppl is drolling over the current beta test. The game itself is appealing people and will bring tons od subscribers to them. This is the "right" way of doing stuff.

I agree about bonus rewards when you're doing some extra thing...like buying collector eddition, add-ons, adding promotional codes from other games...stuff that isn't related to the main game. But giving bonus reward to people because they want to trick people into paying subscription fee is just dumb IMO. This would case ppl to just pay 1 month, get the bonus and canel the option until the game gets better or until he sells it...it's not something that will keep people playing (and paying).

[tymora]

This would case ppl to just pay 1 month, get the bonus and canel the option until the game gets better or until he sells it

Easily handled by making only paid months count.
Nothing wrong with Veteran Rewards in my opinion - Rewarding long term customers is always a good move, as long as its vanity items only.

[MicahZerrshia]

How about this.

We PAY to play the game so SE can afford to pay the devs, hire some GMs to control the rmt and bad ppl running around, power the servers, develope new and sorely needed content, and so on and so on. If you are so up in arms about paying such a small amount to help the game get where it needs to be move on. I am tired hearing these whiney players. You got a free year. Yay! Now we have to pay so we can continue to enjoy it AND get fixes and new content, I can totally deal with that. This is the most petty arguement players have right now and its getting old. And asking for 1m gil or 100k exp or something else of that sort is just rediculous and as I said before, petty. Come on. I can see something like statues or trophies something like that but asking for 1m gil is just way out there. Would you rather they just shut down until its fixed and save money on server power, GM payrolls and other day to day costs of powering an mmo?

And read the letter, the bonus inventory space will be replaced by a mog house type system with manniquins or other forms of storage. They are not just taking it away.