Terrible User Experience for Returning Players

[OmNommy]

I just recently bought a new computer and wanted to download FFXIV to it. Turns out this is not a simple process... It's really impossible to find it through any official website and you have to really google for the download page.

From a security point of view this is not an ideal spot to be in. First of all you have to trust the link of a random guy in the internet to be an official one. None of the offcial links seem to have a valid host certificate and the download doesn't provide any checksums.

After all this fun, you have to log in to another portal - once again without https - because of 'suspicious behaviour'. Having jumped through all these hoops I really wanted to share the 'fun' experience in the form of feedback. The process for giving feedback is in my opinion a barrier for people to easily express their opinions/suggestions to make the game better. If I want to give feedback, I really don't want to go through yet another registration process.

[BorisDaBlade]

You didn't just google Square Enix Store?

Found how to buy and download the game pretty easy from there.

[OmNommy]

This is feedback for the situation when you already do own a digital copy of the game. You are right that the official sites are rife with links for buying the game which is great for new players, but not so much for returning players.

[MaloraYuki]

My games loaded in and patched from the trial version when I had to reinstall. So if you use that download it will work since it does ask for account information it will instantly pick up the fact that you already own the games (as long as you aren't using a new account too)

[Atoli]

A bit of a hop around, yes. Terrible? I think thats a bit of a strong word.

Considering it's in SE's best interest to actually get us to play the game, I think "terrible" is pretty adequate.
I had to reinstall at some point because I got a new PC, and after searching around for quite a while I just gave up and downloaded from an inofficial source because the official one was pretty much impossible to find.
Nearly all online games have a big "PLAY NOW" button at the top of the page that will take you directly to the download page with several options on how/where to download.
FFXIV is like "Nope, we don't want any of that sweet player money, first you have to prove yourself by finding a way to actually play the game because we ain't gonna provide one easily!".
How does that make ANY sense to you?

[Atoli]

I dont harass players, create new threads on the forums, quote them in a completely fresh thread, and then proceed to mock them either, so clearly we have differing views on things.

Lol, at least I don't drag my personal little sensibilities into unrelated threads..^^

[OmNommy]

My games loaded in and patched from the trial version when I had to reinstall. So if you use that download it will work since it does ask for account information it will instantly pick up the fact that you already own the games (as long as you aren't using a new account too)

This is what I tried at first, but at least for me it didn't allow to download the trial version for an existing account. Of course I could have created a throw away account, but that sounds less than optimal to me.

[OmNommy]

Considering it's in SE's best interest to actually get us to play the game, I think "terrible" is pretty adequate.
I had to reinstall at some point because I got a new PC, and after searching around for quite a while I just gave up and downloaded from an inofficial source because the official one was pretty much impossible to find.
Nearly all online games have a big "PLAY NOW" button at the top of the page that will take you directly to the download page with several options on how/where to download.
FFXIV is like "Nope, we don't want any of that sweet player money, first you have to prove yourself by finding a way to actually play the game because we ain't gonna provide one easily!".
How does that make ANY sense to you?

This is exactly how I feel too. For example you can download the battle.net launcher in less than a minute from Blizzard's site even if it is your first time visiting the site. No need to traverse an obsene amount of clicks and links.

[Orlen]

I went theough something similar in technical difficulties as a 'new player'- through the squareenix store!
It turned out the provided downlad link was of a version that had a bug that did not prompt a patch update (Mac version March2016)- instead of replacing their store-bought link with the proper version. I had to run through hoops to get customer service to provide me one.
To my knowledge this was NEVER fixed and the same patch-bug version is still the official download. My complaint did nothing to change this.

[MaloraYuki]

Hmm strange the trial thing worked for me and I didn't have to use a throw away account O_O maybe they changed it from the last time I did it.