What are you paying a subscription for?

[TaleraRistain]

Happy with the game, happy with the pace..one of my friends is pushing me to break anxiety to try to TANK one of the Pandaemonium runs. Still chewing that one over.

Do it! Tanking them is a blast.

[Titor]

I pay cause I'm a housing hostage. I have a large house, so if I ever take a break, I have pretty much 0 chance of ever getting it back. I'm hardcore burned out on the game right now and would love to take an extended break, but housing says no. I'm only logging in a few times a month to keep my house and stuff.

[Iscah]

I pay cause I'm a housing hostage. I have a large house, so if I ever take a break, I have pretty much 0 chance of ever getting it back.

30 days on, 44 days off. You're not required to maintain your subscription full time, just often enough to keep on top of the 45-day timer.

[Avoidy]

Just a genuine question to all the players out there.

You are paying ~$112 per patch (Almost triple that if you have max retainers).

For the price of a full AAA title, is the content that XIV offers you in a single patch worth its subscription cost?

Personally i would say no, its not.
I have the maximum retainers addition, and it costs me ~$350 per patch to say subscribed to XIV, that is the cost of 4 full priced AAA new release games, for what is around a month, maybe two, worth of content.
After realizing this, i can't in good faith keep throwing money at a product that isn't receiving enough attention by its developers, player numbers between major patches fluctuate to the point where the game becomes basically unplayable in places like Materia.

So what do you spend your $112+ on per patch cycle?


EDIT: Seems i was wrong here, patches are 4 months, just feels like 8.
So i guess thats still $220/patch which is still pretty bad for the content that is released.

There's a niche group I enjoy spending time with occasionally and this game is how we do that. I'd say it's 50/50 between the community I've met while playing it, and my house. If either went away, I'd just unsub on the spot.
There's also the vague hope that the future variant/alliance raid content will be enjoyable. I don't play many games or do much expensive stuff for entertainment, so the 15 a month isn't a big deal to me from a financial perspective. But from a principle standpoint it's huge how they basically do nothing for 4 months and ask for a subscription out of it. Idk, I'm hella mixed on it.

[Hazama999]

Rent money.

[Nitelancer]

I don’t know.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

House, practice RP'ing with friend & gposing mostly, and dailies. I've also got a casual static I'm committing to about 5 hours a week.

If I have no static & house, I was considering on just creating an FT account with my friend to continue RP'ing and/or join my friend's CWLS with it to continue chatting with my in-game circle while doing that.

Then again, I'm not that kind of player who can easily slide to another game & there isn't any other game I'm interested in currently, so the sub fee isn't much of a big deal. At least for now.

[Carin-Eri]

I guess my view will reflect the fact that I've only been playing FFXIV since late December 2021, but there is still enough to maintain my interest and enthusiasm (including replaying the MSQ on a alt character) that I don't generally give paying the subscription a second thought.

Whilst others may disagree, I'll also note that - regardless of the often-mentioned opinions pertaining to a decline in the quality of the game - playing a game committed to a subscription model has felt like a vast improvement after playing a F2P game which was heavily reliant on selling gambleboxes and stupidly-expensive bundles with prices in the triple-figure range, at the cost of everything else.

[Striker44]

I guess my view will reflect the fact that I've only been playing FFXIV since late December 2021, but there is still enough to maintain my interest and enthusiasm (including replaying the MSQ on a alt character) that I don't generally give paying the subscription a second thought.

Don't worry, I've been playing on-and-off since 2015 and as my main MMO for the past 2-3 years or so, and there's still a laundry list of things I'm either in the middle of or still looking forward to doing. The top three things that I sub to this game for are the story, the music, and the veritable mountain of side content, all three of which I'm thoroughly enjoying.

[Jamini]

I enjoy the game. I'll keep my sub up until I don't. Not really complex.