Stop asking for a playtime cap; you don't know what you're doing

[Waaltar]

Square already done this -> FFVII remake episode 1 on EGS costs 70USD/80Euro.

Games are mostly cheaper now. I know many people will intuitively reject this, but intuition is often wrong.

The Legend of Zelda cost $50 in 1986. Adjusting for inflation, that would be about $126 today. While other things have become more expensive, games are a rare bright spot in the economy as they have become relatively less expensive, largely because of digital distribution. And this is even while they have become more elaborate than ever before.

So about that FF7 remake being $70. It was originally released in 1997 when it cost $50. $70 in 2021 is only $40 in 1997.

[Divinemights]

Just matter of time situation accelerate into a timed server reboot because chip shortage is unlikely going to be gone with US-China trade war and rise of omitron.

[Arundel]

Games are mostly cheaper now. I know many people will intuitively reject this, but intuition is often wrong.

The Legend of Zelda cost $50 in 1986. Adjusting for inflation, that would be about $126 today. While other things have become more expensive, games are a rare bright spot in the economy as they have become relatively less expensive, largely because of digital distribution. And this is even while they have become more elaborate than ever before.

So about that FF7 remake being $70. It was originally released in 1997 when it cost $50. $70 in 2021 is only $40 in 1997.

70USD only for episode (part) 1, not the full game. They don't know how many parts they will released.

[ryouma17]

1.0 had a play time cap. theres a reason it was a failure

[ForteNightshade]

70USD only for episode 1, not the full game.

FFVII: Remake is a full game though. In fact, it's on par or even longer than comparably big budget titles like The Last of Us and Ghost of Tsushima.

[MsQi]

because 90% of this game population are white knights so square is never held accountable for their crap management skills, is easier to try and shift the blame to wow players, covid or the mosquito that bit
yoshi-p ass last week

I'm not denying the problems related to covid. The chip shortage and and travel restrictions are real problems they have to deal with. But those are not the cause of the problem.

[Lunalepsy]

You need to realize something: FFXIV is currently the industry leader. Everyone is looking at this game to see what it does so they can mimic it. So what's going to happen if they cap playtime and people don't unsub in droves? Every single MMO will now have this bullet in their gun for every server overload ever. Can't buy new servers for a while? Cap playtime. Don't want to spend the money? Cap playtime. ISP bandwidth a problem? Cap playtime.

And no, a "reasonable" cap like 12 hours won't help, because once they get away with that, the number creeps downward. Today its 12, tomorrow its 10. Soon its revolutionary when someone caps your playtime at 5 hours instead of the industry standard 3.

I feel like I'm standing here at the moment when players said en masse "hey, I'd pay real money to get an advantage" and loot boxes were born. This is also an overwhelming negative for the entire MMO industry. Don't give them an easy way out to spend less money and give you less for the same sub. You can't buy servers today. You will be able to soon. Don't ask for a permanent nerf to your experience in response to a temporary problem.

Sooner or later they'll have to do something.

[oakguy5000]

I don't see what other options they have. if the hardware is not available then something must give. they should not have sold so many digital copies but that ship has already sailed. I used to play for an hour or two every night and I have not been able to log on since early access. I have a job I can't sit in queue for 5 hours.

[Viirin]

A cap would do virtually nothing to help with queues at peak playtimes anyway. Virtually everyone is going to be trying to login for the same 8 hour period.

[HyoMinPark]

Sooner or later they'll have to do something.

You’re right. They will. It just shouldn’t be “Okay, Timmy. It’s Johnny’s turn to play with the toy now, so hand it over”.

A cap would do virtually nothing to help with queues at peak playtimes anyway. Virtually everyone is going to be trying to login for the same 8 hour period.

Also this. They’re called peak times for a reason.

EDIT because I actually met my daily post limit for the first time in forever:

Simply cap the amount of primetime people can play instead of any other sort of cap.

For now, the people who can't log in are in effect subsidizing the people who can log in.

That’s not a solution either, and would just screw over people who have jobs or school during the day and can’t log in to play until the prime time hours. They already have limited playtime as it is—there’s zero reason to throw a cap on them as well.