Ffxiv monthly sub isn't stretching & response to PCGAMER article

[Raven2014]

simple answer is : one a (mostly) solo game and clearly is a cash grab (to me gacha aren't games, a game is all about gameplay/gamedesign first then monetized, gachas are everything about getting money first then thinking about gameplay/gamedesign) while the other isn't (debatable with how ff14 focus more and more on solo than being a MMO since shadowbringers).

I have one word for you: prejudice.

And don't get me wrong, I carried exactly the same thought as you do up until 2-3 months ago, until I took a leap of faith with modern Gacha games and saw for myself that most of my (or your) prejudice were wrong. First, there are 4 type of gacha player: F2P, Lower Spender, Dolphin and Whale. I had talked to a lot of people who have been F2P players for years and they did and have pretty much everything in the game. The low spender tier (5$-20$) will put you exactly where are regular sub for FF14 is, that's where I am and I'm plenty happy.

Ask yourself this:

how long does it take you to BiS ONE job in FF14?

how long does it take you to farm for ONE ex-mount if you're not lucky?

how long does it take you to farm for your favorite 24man glamour set?

Taking off the negative prejudice from the word F2P/Gacha and objectively, you see the time table is the same. You don't have to spend money to "get things" in most F2P/Gacha games. The difference is gacha game give you the option of forking out the money if you want it now instead of having the samething after 1-2 months of playing. Which btw, you can also do in FF14 if you willing to fork out the money to buy loot/run/carry.


In fact, now that I think about it, I feel like gacha game actually have a leg up on it:

FF14: you pay to get access to the grind, but you still have to do all the grind yourself

F2P: the grind is free if you want to put in the shift, or you pay to skip/short the grind.

second , i can say without taking any risk that ZZZ (and any mihoyo "games") bring more cash in trimester than all SE released games in a year.

That's not what make the difference. The difference is it's clearly the money in these games were re-invested to keep the momentum going. Whether the money earn from FF14 is used to invest in other fail and outperformed projects.

[Hallarem]

I hear whale noises.

[BabyYoda]

I would spend 12$ on any Gatcha game and I will get my money worth.

even if FFXIV got to F2P it will be failure, there is nothing in the game that hooks you or give you a purpose to be better.

[Voidmage]

I hear whale noises.

It is more the sound of someone who actually tried other things and saw that the diabolical f2p games are not as evil as they are painted.

On the broader topic of Gatcha:
Honestly it is so extremely easy to get the characters you want in for example Genshin or Honkai Star Rail that you don’t even NEED to spend money.
The normal player is either not spending anything or maybe 5/month to play more comfortably, a third of FF14.
I personally find the fantasia stuff, old event rewards in the cash shop or the blizzard stuff far more scummy tbh because FF14 has actually a normal and planned income.

Genshin gave a 5.0 with lots of qol, a new gimmick for the new region and a bombastic 5.1 story that actually blows DT completely away.

No one asks for Gatcha in FF14 and I also understand that they can’t have the same patch pacing but it would be great if they took inspiration in the story, sidequest or event aspect because right now there are games that just completely leave FF14 behind in those aspects and I see no shame in getting inspiration there. Be it Genshin, Fate or Blizzard.

[BabyYoda]

Sometimes I feel like I'm just repeating myself over here:

1. The fact that the team from FFXVI ported FFXIV Quest system directly as is, speaks volumes of how outdated their line of thought is.

2. FFXIV structure is so rigid, that even though DT launched a couple of months ago, it feels like it has been out for years.

3. Every new feature/system introduced in the game is a make or break situation, there's no feedback we can give that will translate into those systems because we can't preview anything. When things come, they're pretty much final and even when they rework something it takes a million of years to do so.

If we could've play a snippet from Island Sanctuary, Chocobo Racing, LoV, they would realize that these stuff would not fly early on, before they overcommit to dead stuff.

I feel like there is no R&D team within FFXIV, they took their salaries for another patch to NFT project

[seolhyun]

DT is almost feeling like a second 1.0. they played it safe too long and its getting bad.

[Saidosha]

Trading MMO addictions for Gacha addictions is not a good thing, and the normalization of the latter through stuff like Hoyoverse games has worried me tremendously as a gamer. Every time someone says, "Just save for a while and you can eventually get a character!" to a F2Per is actually saying, "You must endure a lesser game play experience to get what you eventually want!" Moreover, just getting a character once is rarely enough to make them usable, let alone optimal. Overall, mobile games tend to take the daily grinds of MMOs and exacerbate them to the point that missing days as a free player is never a positive. People who complain about XIV prioritizing the cash shop also need to realize that's exactly what mobile games do from the start. Locking convenience features behind a sub or "battle passes" is also the epitome of scummy.

Anyway, MMOs have problems and XIV isn't immune. There will never be consensus on what should or shouldn't be done, but interpreting here, reddit, twitter, or whatever as a significant representation of the community is and will always be a fool's errand. The amount of /angry/ people I still see here month after month, year after year, reflects both the implied problem with addiction that goes on and the inability to process that this game, or maybe even the genre at large, isn't for them. And I totally understand that feeling of "close, but not enough..." when you see something and think a little tweak would do the trick. But there has to be a point where after it doesn't happen, you just step away. Either the devs will scramble and figure something out or SE decides it's maintenance mode/plug pulling time. Welcome to games as a service, a model destined to bring misery to all.

[Hallarem]

I keep hearing whale noises. Normalizing pay to win is never the solution.

It's not even pay to win, it's "Pay for a chance to win" while potentially blowing up a lot of cash.

Which is gambling, which is infinitely worse. They are using their budget right, seems they have good writers too? But let's not kid ourselves where that money comes from.
It's the abusing of people's addiction of wanting to be powerful and laud that power over others, and the devs are giving the pathway towards that with money. You don't have to do it, but you are incentivized into doing it, that is why the system exists and that is how the game is DEVELOPED.

So sure, the games might have better story, better mechanics, hell it might be better over all? But let's not kid ourselves that monetizing-wise they are as evil as games come. Preying on the weaker minded individuals in gamers or to people with a tendence for gambling.

[VeyaAkemi]

Trading MMO addictions for Gacha addictions is not a good thing, and the normalization of the latter through stuff like Hoyoverse games has worried me tremendously as a gamer. Every time someone says, "Just save for a while and you can eventually get a character!" to a F2Per is actually saying, "You must endure a lesser game play experience to get what you eventually want!" Moreover, just getting a character once is rarely enough to make them usable, let alone optimal. Overall, mobile games tend to take the daily grinds of MMOs and exacerbate them to the point that missing days as a free player is never a positive. People who complain about XIV prioritizing the cash shop also need to realize that's exactly what mobile games do from the start. Locking convenience features behind a sub or "battle passes" is also the epitome of scummy.

Adding to this, those games often have an associated gear grind to them, a huge element of Hoyo games gameplay is Relic(or whatever they call in that specific game, I believe they are discs in ZZZ?) grind, it's a miserable process with zero definitive safety nets, the closest being "molders" that reduce the RNG but do not guarantee anything, gearing in those games is an absolutely miserable experience, and it has caused me to quit HSR twice, after I decided to give it another go, and I will take 8 weeks of Savage raiding over that absolute garbage any day, month, or year.

I played gacha games for the better part of a decade, starting with Dokkan Battle back in 2015, before hard quitting all gachas I still played a couple months ago, I have been through every major title in the genre, it's garbage, and I will take any stable MMO over any of that hell again.

[Mecia]

I feel like the MSQ and its single dungeon per patch have a chokehold on XIVs update schedule. But why is PvP taking so long when its not tied to those systems?

I hear whale noises.

Speak your truth king.