Do you think FFXIV wil ever go free to play?

[Zumi]

Do you think it will ever be an option for SE to go free to play with FF14 and open up a microtransaction store.

Say if they don't get the subscriber numbers they want when 2.0 is out, think it would ever happen? At first I thought SE wasn't into the whole microtranaction thing then I saw FFXIII-2 with buying all the outfits, weapons, and extra boss fights which end up costing almost as much as the game.

[Alhanelem]

SE doesn't appear to have much interest in the model, and with good reason. Unless the microtransaction store is 100% cosmetic, pay-to-win is usually a big turn-off and taints the integrity of the game. In MapleStory, you have people spending literally hundreds of dollars on "miracle cubes" that reset and re-roll the "potentials" AKA (augments ala FFXI), trying to get the most perfect ones. e.g. 3x "+30% damage to bosses on every peice of gear you can wear. Winning becomes not about having a good strategy, but about how much money the people in your party spent padding their gear. It just worsens the difference between the haves and have-nots in an MMO.

If they put in a microtransaction store I will quit.

[KiriA500]

SE doesn't appear to have much interest in the model, and with good reason. Unless the microtransaction store is 100% cosmetic, pay-to-win is usually a big turn-off and taints the integrity of the game. In MapleStory, you have people spending literally hundreds of dollars on "miracle cubes" that reset and re-roll the "potentials" AKA augments ala fFXI), trying to get the most perfect ones. e.g. 3x "+30% damage to bosses on every pice of gear you can wear. Winning becaomse not about having a good strategy, but about how much money the people in your party spent padding their gear. It just worsens the difference between the haves and have-nots in an MMO.

If they put in a microtransaction store I will quit.

I second this. Pay2win is one of the worst things to happen to gaming.

[Nakiamiie]

If they put in a microtransaction store I will quit.

That sums up my opinion on the subject as well.

[Preypacer]

SE doesn't appear to have much interest in the model, and with good reason. Unless the microtransaction store is 100% cosmetic, pay-to-win is usually a big turn-off and taints the integrity of the game. In MapleStory, you have people spending literally hundreds of dollars on "miracle cubes" that reset and re-roll the "potentials" AKA (augments ala FFXI), trying to get the most perfect ones. e.g. 3x "+30% damage to bosses on every peice of gear you can wear. Winning becomes not about having a good strategy, but about how much money the people in your party spent padding their gear. It just worsens the difference between the haves and have-nots in an MMO.

If they put in a microtransaction store I will quit.

Here's the funny thing about that though. While selling "pay to win" items in the cash shop is the most controversial aspect of a cash shop, it's really not the discussion people should be having, in my opinion. I think people are focusing on the wrong thing.

While there are cash shop MMOs that are clear offenders of the "buying power" thing, those high-price, low-turnaround items are not the "bread and butter" items. Neither are the "fluff", "aesthetic" items.

It's the consumables. Things that continuously need to be re-stocked as you go through them. XP potions. MP and HP potions or charms. Also things like temporary inventory expansion, or faster travel options. It comes back to convenience, which people will gladly pay for. I'm sure we've all seen post after post after article after interview that discusses how people with less time would rather spend money to progress more quickly than have it take longer because they have limited time to play, etc. Cash Shops "cash in" on that (no pun intended).

And the best part is, when it comes to consumables, the developer controls both ends of the chain - the supply and the demand. They can tweak the xp rate, how much HP a player loses, how fast they burn through MP, etc. at their end, thus controlling the demand. Then they control the supply by creating or "running sales" on HP, XP or MP items to alleviate the inconvenience they deliberately designed into the game.

So it's not the one-shot "high ticket" sales that concern me so much. It's that on-going and ever-present element of trying to get me to continuously buy consumables of different types.

One of the biggest con-jobs I've ever seen in that area (and people fall for it amazingly enough) is NCSoft in Lineage 2's so-called "truly free" setup. They have "limited time only" and "while supplies last" type sales in their cash shop. The classic grab at impulsive buyers and those who "don't want to miss out on a good deal" that we've seen in retail for years - again, playing on human psychology and behavior. The difference is, with retail there really is a finite quantity of a given item. The materials and resources for those products can't be conjured up out of thin air. Virtual items can. They're 0s and 1s. NC could fill every player's inventory with 1000 of every item if they wanted. So, when I see them pushing "limited time only!" or "limited supply!" sales, I really can not help but laugh.

There are entire seminars, power-point presentations and such designed to educate developers/publishers on how to set up cash shops and microtransactions, and how to cash-in on well-known aspects of human psychology and behavior. It's really rather offensive to me to know so much effort is going into exploiting such things to get people to spend more money, without getting anything more content-wise for it. It's all for convenience, social-standing and competiton.

The entire goal is to find ways to monetize the players as much as possible, without being overt about it. This is why many developers shy away from anything that's "pay to win". For one because it's a major turn-off to many people and for another because they don't have to rely on those things to make their money.

This is why, while I will occasionally check out a Cash Shop MMO just to see what it's like, etc.. I will never give them my business. The moment I start feeling that "wall" hit, where progress slows down and things become harder to come by, that's when I stop playing. I do not like the idea that designers somewhere are spending their time trying to find new and sneaky ways to monetize me every minute I'm logged in, without me realizing it.

I much prefer to know designers are creating content that's interesting and engaging enough to keep me wanting to log in week after week, and continue paying my sub fee month after month because they're delivering content I find worth subscribing for.

I will deal with a lot of what SE does in terms of running and maintaining this game. As soon as they implement a Cash Shop (in terms of in-game items for real money, including via a "cash shop point" system, which is really just a buffer that further obfuscates how Cash Shops are set up), I'm gone without a second thought.

[Viritess]

I'm thankfull their disintrested. I had kept an eye on TSW, but their pricing plan its a huge turn off for me, Box price + Sub + shop... please don't be the future...

Also Real money for items that disappear in 1, 7 or 30 days can burn in everlasting damnation impaled on a jagged iron stake bottom first! Where the heck did i put my pitchfork and torch!

[Cendres]

I'm thankfull their disintrested. I had kept an eye on TSW, but their pricing plan its a huge turn off for me, Box price + Sub + shop... please don't be the future...

Also Real money for items that disappear in 1, 7 or 30 days can burn in everlasting damnation impaled on a jagged iron stake bottom first! Where the heck did i put my pitchfork and torch!

The future is here, this is no longer a question if MMOs will go F2P or not, most of them already are. Pay to play models are now in the minority and getting even more rare. Freemium doesn't have to be all bad or go along with old cash shop models. If an MMO has the right model it can be both a successful game and have a way to charge players that suit them and does give one player advantage over another.

However FFXIV already has a good model in place and they don't need a cash shop because their point of entry is already small. I might even go even smaller for just one character on one server, but that is a smart move and why I don't think we'll see a cash shop or other types of freemium in this game. Also making a P2P MMO into a F2P one with a cash shop requires more resources then you would think and if they were going F2P they would have already done so with 2.0. BUt then again stranger things have happened.

SWTOR should have been F2P from the beginning that model would have gone well with that game and how it is structured, too bad Bioware had to push too far and not realize this.

[Nopax]

The F2P model is the future, even giant budget games such as Battlefield 3 are incorporating micro transactions and realizing the $60 retail tag hurts the game's popularity. One can make a case that shrinking the player base with that $60 entry fee (the initial purchase) hurts the game and makes it less profitable (solely on PC) than the F2P model would. This is why bigger budget games are going F2P and I think will continue to. Someday I'd imagine even consoles will catch up.

DOTA2, LoL, Blacklight: Retribution, World of Tanks all do f2p relatively well. Games that used to be pay to win such as Age of Empires Online are changing their ways to conform to the successful LoL model. There are also countless MMOs that do F2P, some very well and some not as well - although I can't really comment on which.

But FFXIV could very well go F2P, the odds of it staying P2P until it's shut down are slim to none. That said assuming 2.0 is decent the game will likely be one of the last P2P MMOs still running.

[NationOfZealots]

Isn't FFXI still based on subs? Your answers there... I'm more worried about the 2.0 client, letter says there will be a download but also a retail version, surely we won't be paying for this game again...

[Felis]

Isn't FFXI still based on subs? Your answers there... I'm more worried about the 2.0 client, letter says there will be a download but also a retail version, surely we won't be paying for this game again...

You only need to pay again if you want another account.