FF14 stay Pay-To-Play please! (F2P = No thanks!)

[Junnichi]

I hate all those people trolling that FFXIV ARR should become F2P.
There is no need to switch to F2P now. All those people trolling just don't want to pay for a really good game - that's all.

SquareEnix promised to deliver a P2P game with a subscription base before they released FFXIV 1.0
And as other games demonstrate a subscription model can work for sure if the game meets the expectations of the gamers.
As you can read here SquareEnix' primary target is to regain trust of players and to deliver on past promises. Because of that they will stay with subscriptions for now.

And as you can read there most MMOs move to F2P with Cash Shops or Pay-To-Win because they need to receive the money quickly to pay it back to their investors. They release games in a set amount of time (whatever state the game is then) and hope that they get their money back quickly. Probably because of that there are so many WoW clones which can be created fast. And the fastest way for getting money back is F2P with Cash Shops or something similar.

SquareEnix didn't have any investors for Final Fantasy XIV. They can use their own money and as much time as they want to create a really good game without the need to clone existing games. SquareEnix designed its own game and even a completely new graphics engine especially for FFXIV. SquareEnix has enough money to invest it for that. Else they wouldn't have started a complete overhaul of the game. They are not in any rush to get back the money in a set time. They plan for a long-life game like FFXI has been, too. And for SquareEnix FFXI was the most profitable Final Fantasy ever - even though they had less than 1 mil subscriptions. That's probably the same goal for FFXIV.

But as I've stated already before the primary target for SquareEnix is to regain trust of gamers again - even if they might end up with a loss in FFXIV. SquareEnix watches at the whole FF series - not only FFXIV. And with FFXIV 1.0 they have lost many gamers who followed the FF series over many years. If SquareEnix doesn't regain their trust they will get more trouble than a loss of some money with FFXIV...

I'm sure SquareEnix will stay with the subscription model - at least for a long time. And I'm glad about that. 13 bucks (or only 11 bucks for the starter model) each month are not much money. And the game will be worth it. After all the effort of Yoshida's team I've gained a lot of trust in their work. And I'm really looking forward for the results. All they have to do is a good PR for this game - not only in Japan but in NA and EU, too. And in other regions they could add, too. (eg. China) Then there will be many subscriptions and many players.

[Gokulo]

Oh look, another one.

[Akira_Tenshi]

Seriously!?

[SoapySan]

How much time do people put into their posts? That seems like alot of effort just to make a thread on a forum.

[Endigiont]

I half want to make another one XD

but it'd totally be flame roasted.

[viion]

SquareEnix didn't have any investors for Final Fantasy XIV. They can use their own money

I'd love one of those money trees too. lol They dont have investors directly to a game, there are plenty of investors into SquareEnix as a whole (shareholders mainly).

Also its only your own fault for thinking F2P = Pay To Win, I guess you never saw GW2.

F2P is growing bigger and bigger and is becoming more profitable than pay2play, a lot of very great and polished games are becoming F2P, SE will have a very tough time asking people to pay monthly for an entertainment product that people can get for free else where, its like trying to ask everyone to buy music, there is way to much good legit free music.

But SE always take an approach they want, XI is an example, never once changed price and is still Pay2Play to this day, if they can get away with it in XI then they will in XIV, heck even after XIV's 1.0 failure and very few players they still had it pay to play, so i dont know why everyone is crying.

[Aldora]

F2P is growing bigger and bigger and is becoming more profitable than pay2play, a lot of very great and polished games are becoming F2P, SE will have a very tough time asking people to pay monthly for an entertainment product that people can get for free else where, its like trying to ask everyone to buy music, there is way to much good legit free music.

No offence intended, but can you name at least 5 great/very good and polished MMO(-RPG) games which are F2P?

I see people use "Diablo 3" as a F2P MMO, but you can you only play it with 4 people in 1 game so it can't really count as an F2P MMO(-RPG) game. It was never meant to be a MMO-RPG in-game Cash Shop to start with. Granted, the game has a Real Money Auction house, but it's not really a "Cash Shop" like you see

Same goes for a game like "League of Legends". Yes, it's a great and solid F2P Online game, but it does not compare to a "MMO(-RPG)" in any way. For instance, you can only have a maximum of 10 players in 1 game.

In my personal opinion, F2P can make but also ruin a game. Turning a game into a F2P game which has not been set up as a F2P game, will be more susceptible to failure due to systems which have not been thoroughly researched, designed and "thought out". When items with better stats can only be obtained via Real Money Shops, then it's considered to be Pay 2 Win. This is what a lot of people do not want to see happening to FFXIV. Myself included.

But, again... That's my personal opinion. Nothing more, nothing less...

[Grimwald]

No offence intended, but can you name at least 5 great/very good and polished MMO(-RPG) games which are F2P?

I see people use "Diablo 3" as a F2P MMO, but you can you only play it with 4 people in 1 game so it can't really count as an F2P MMO(-RPG) game. It was never meant to be a MMO-RPG in-game Cash Shop to start with. Granted, the game has a Real Money Auction house, but it's not really a "Cash Shop" like you see

Same goes for a game like "League of Legends". Yes, it's a great and solid F2P Online game, but it does not compare to a "MMO(-RPG)" in any way. For instance, you can only have a maximum of 10 players in 1 game.

In my personal opinion, F2P can make but also ruin a game. Turning a game into a F2P game which has not been set up as a F2P game, will be more susceptible to failure due to systems which have not been thoroughly researched, designed and "thought out". When items with better stats can only be obtained via Real Money Shops, then it's considered to be Pay 2 Win. This is what a lot of people do not want to see happening to FFXIV. Myself included.

But, again... That's my personal opinion. Nothing more, nothing less...

Diablo 3 is not successful, it was considered a major disappointment by the playerbase and almost all the people who bought it at launch aren't playing. Doesn't have anything to do with it being F2P though.

GW2 and the original GW had expansions every year(s) and very little content updates compared to other major MMOs. Worth noting that they probably weren't making huge bank.

[Zumi]

Diablo 3 isn't a mmo, why people keep saying it is I have no idea. Blizzard gave away 2m copies of Diablo 3 to WoW players for signing up for a year of WoW so they gave away a lot of copies of that game and counted it as sales.

Diablo's game design was based on the first 2 games, a dungeon crawler where you run the same levels over and over for a small chance at getting upgraded gear for your character.

Diablo 3 doesn't have content updates that add new levels and stuff, they do have like balance updates and what not but its not like they are adding new levels to play so it make sense a lot of people don't play it anymore, its pretty much akin to a single player game. When you get bored of something you don't keep playing it. People had nostalgia with D2 and the same thing can't be said for D3.

Its not really a bad game but it does get repetitive after awhile. Its good for a playthrough just like any single player game but after that its somewhat boring if you not into dungeon crawlers.

[Andrien]

@Aldora

I don't know if the numbers are updated but it was taken in 2010.
They're pretty old but popular.
source: mmohuts.com


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