Square Enix and Crypto

[Maxilor]

I mean it's still something physical people will have and can enjoy for the rest of their life, they buy it once and then own it. The intention behind dolls and figures and whatever is to collect it. It has personal subjective value.

NFT is sold with the promise of making big money out of it, you don't buy into it cause you like stupid ape pics or something. There is no personal objective value behind owning a NFT. You don't look at it and say, yes this ape i am proud of owning. Same as you don't look at stockmarket shares and think to yourself that this has great artistic value. No you want to have that shit to sell it later for more than you got it for. But fact is the only safe money someone makes out of NFTs is the creator, everyone after this just plays the game of "The last one who holds the ape loses all his money!".

So idk where you graduated but you might want to exercise you brain again cause if it lets you compare physical art to a gambling system then you might wanna check up with your neurons again. Cause next they might let you drink bleach or let you buy into MLMs. And that might be something we both don't really want.

You missed the point of my post.

Square Enix for YEARS has been using various tactics to money grub it's fans and I was pointing out that people only NOW are getting up in arms because NFTs have been involved and how late to the party everyone is.

Also, your daily reminder that the gacha games Square Enix puts out make more money than FFXIV will ever imagine.

But thanks for trying to insult my intelligence at the end there, really earning that 'Best Community 2022 Award'.

Stay classy.

[Brennus]

Honestly I've not spent a lot of time reading about and trying to understand all the nuances and intricacies of crypto-currencies, blockchain, or NFTs. But I do understand what they are and represent, and I do not like reading what the SE president wrote in his latest letter.

Why? Because IMO games should entertain without including overly obvious hooks for profitability, such as excessive commercialization of its various shiny blings and/or services. I'm fine with many things that do exist in current games that require real monies to purchase, such as WoW tokens, costumes, mounts, minions, FFXIV equivalent buys, fantasias, retainer journeys, character and MSQ boosts, etc. I think those are fine because they essentially help players attain certain goals that maybe their skills or available game time will not allow them to get to. In addition they do not affect my own ability to enjoy the game, as they do not compete with me and other players directly in the game.

Introducing NFTs into the game, however, opens up a whole new can of worms. Making the game pay participants to produce content is, again IMO, changing its dynamics drastically. You'll have "players who just want to have fun" and then entrepreneurs who want to make an income "playing" the game. I can already envision sweat farms of hapless "players" strapped to their PCs all over the world slaving away 12-16 hours a day for greedy business entities wishing to benefit from such game payouts, producing all kinds of NFTs that SE would then resell to us the players who just want to have fun.

If that was the goal of game producers, why have they tried to ban gold farmers, and power leveling services, and other types of schemes requiring real money to purchase? I still remember when WoW would threaten to ban accounts that players would sell to one another once they'd leveled their characters to max levels. Some level of real-money products and services, as what the Mogstation has now, is OK - even as many players don't care for them and are against them. Making the game even more focused on hard cash revenue tightly connected to blings and additional services would eventually turn off many current players, myself included.

I hope this will not come to pass. FFXIV is a very nice, popular, and well-loved game, cherished by many of its legacy and new players. I hope it will stay that way, and don't think that NFTs will be beneficial to it staying that way. It will become a different kind of game, and will cater to a different genre of players if that's where SE will take it.

[Caurcas]

Something something bad fur planet...something something final days...something something smoking monkey. Y'all are getting mad at rich people and faux rich people wasting their money on a stupid fad.

[Garruss]

The sooner nft's fade away the better

[Bobby66]

No one anywhere has ever said "I know there are copies of this little cartoony ape sketch all over the internet and that anyone can freely use them for anything they want, but I value having my alphanumeric identifier atop the digital certificate associated with this one at... oh, about the price of a new house."

Those people bought NFTs from you for the same reason I presume you purchased them: to resell to someone else. It is all speculators buying from speculators buying from speculators hyping their speculation in hopes that their nonsense speculative investment appreciates.

If you chose to roll the dice and buy in to some vapid speculative silliness and you got out with more than you put in, good on you. I am genuinely glad for you. But I don't want that stuff anywhere near my games and "some other person somewhere might value it for reasons that I cannot explain or defend but don't feel I should be questioning" isn't going to move me out of the anti-NFT camp.

That is generally what you do with them though, holding on to them is kinda silly tbh since the value is as you mentioned based around hype more so then genuine interest. Oh I am not trying to sway you one way or another, though I do not get why people call it a scam when if you practice common sense, do not put in more then what your are comfortable with lose and understand the inherit risk associated where does the scam come into play? In the end if a company wants to make profits off people that have more money then sense so be it that is life, and no different from pretty much every other company. In the end all you can do is voice your concerns, and hope it changes something, and if it does not all you can do is vote with your wallet.

I do think choices like this our individual opinion do not matter cause the minority if done right with the proper systems put in place would net some insane returns especially with IP’s that SE holds.

It is not for everyone that is 100% certain I agree with you on that.

You did say "I for one am interested in seeing what they do", though, hence the curiosity. However ->

It does not have to make the game better per-se

That is why everyone is against implementing any kind of NFT's into this game. Thank you very much for proving the point.

Well not everyone, though one can be interested in something does not mean I think it will be good for the game per-se. Still I would like to see what they do with them.

[Thalesnm]

One thing is for sure: NFTs, cryptocurrencies and the like are far from a consensus. Even if you somehow like these things, you have to admit that not everyone likes them, far from it. This is a fact.

So, introducing such things to a beloved game or franchise... it's bound to fail. You'd be going against a very big chunk of your playerbase, from the most dedicated fans to the newest sprout. You could say that the profits in NFTs would compensate the loss in subs and other sources of revenue, but that's extremely unlikely (I'd say it's pretty much impossible).

That is to say... If you want to experiment with NFTs and the like, fine. You'll probably fail, but fine. Just remember to do it somewhere else, far from FFXIV or your other beloved games.

[Bobby66]

One thing is for sure: NFTs, cryptocurrencies and the like are far from a consensus. Even if you somehow like these things, you have to admit that not everyone likes them, far from it. This is a fact.

So, introducing such things to a beloved game or franchise... it's bound to fail. You'd be going against a very big chunk of your playerbase, from the most dedicated fans to the newest sprout. You could say that the profits in NFTs would compensate the loss in subs and other sources of revenue, but that's extremely unlikely (I'd say it's pretty much impossible).

That is to say... If you want to experiment with NFTs and the like, fine. You'll probably fail, but fine. Just remember to do it somewhere else, far from FFXIV or your other beloved games.

Tbh outside of some them doing something like tying playable content behind them I do not see the masses rallying behind the cause to vote with their wallets enough to off set what a small minority would put into the game. I mean wouldn’t the same sense of whales for micro transactions also apply for NFT’s?

[DPZ2]

I love FFXIV, have been playing since 1.0, and FFXI before that. However, like loot boxes NFTs are a hard line in the sand for me. I cannot get behind business practices like this and should SE opt to utilize NFTs I will quit XIV and not purchase another product from them as a company until the practice is ended, period.

Too late. Time to cancel your subscription. They've been testing this for over a year, not with Final Fantasy XIV but with some of their mobile game properties.

[KikiTia]

I agree, I won't watch another corporation drown a beloved video game for money. It remains to be seen the extent of these plans, and if they are introduced in limited ways and as a secondary focus, I think that's fine. The problem comes when it starts to dilute the player experience and trades the quality of the game itself for more store items and microtransactions. FFXIV's continued roaring success is the one thing that kept WoW's chaotic shitstorm from crushing me, I won't be around to watch FFXIV become another laughing stock.

[Chilliwack]

I am going to keep this short and sweet.

I love this game. No game has given me a story like this.

Obviously the parent company does not necessarily represent the views of the developers themselves. I'd like to think Yoshi-P wouldn't support this.

But if FF XIV starts actively using Crypto/NFT, I will not continue to play it.

I've already beaten Endwalker, I don't NEED to stick around for the ending anymore.