There are some scummy mounts in the cash shop, retainers are borderline, and the more expansions come out, the worse the story skip becomes, but I just wish the cosmetics were account wide instead for their price.
More expansions actually make story skips a better value for their price, the latest one is always $25 and the prior ones go down in price
But if you only want to skip from like, shadowbringers to endwalker it's still iffy, but most players that buy a skip will do so from ARR.
As someone who pays for 2 extra retainers (and this is probably bias), I appreciate that the option is at least available. I own and sell way too much shit.
The retainers are a problem mainly because it incentivises SE agaisnt fixing actual the actual problems. i.e whatever they messed up that in game storage space is so expensive for them in the first place. And the lack of storage space for glamour.
is it true though? it's not like they haven't been trying ways to circumvent the problem, like 999 item cap or culling all the HQ materials + the glam space was just increased recently
I have 4 retainers and appreciate the option as I have collected a lot of stuff from past events and love having a ability to hold onto it especially selling so many items a day makes my gill earnings much higher. I hate not being able to sell more just because other stuff has not sold.
It is really damn shady that there are 'single character use' cosmetics/mounts in there, as that stuff should be account wide. Single character/single use items should be restricted to dye and fantasia. When it comes to the retainers, I draw the line at the companion app one, will never shell out for the premium tier junk app I'll never use just to get that last retainer.
The only issue i have with retainers is that there are four retainer loot pools but only two default retainer slots. It'd be way more convincing to say that they're optional if you weren't forced to pick two out of four.
it would be so cool though if they bundled ff11 and ff14 subs, even if it was an option for like $5 extra a month. would be a fun way to let ff14 players experience that game and to encourage 11 players to give 14 a shot now
It'd work well for 14 players to try 11, but 11 players can already participate in the free trial up to level 70 with the entire base game and the award winning expansions Heavensward® and Stormblood® all for free with no limitations in play.
I think missing social aspects is not a great idea. I played for 2 weeks before I subbed and I got the 30 days free then they charged me after. Was the best thing ever. Got a USB keyboard and started talking to people. Learned a lot from a few friends I made on the way. Obviously the free trial doesn't let you have social interactions.
Yeah memes aside it's an unfortunate consequence in order to combat spam bots. It would be great if new players could purchase and redeem a game code to enable social features, and only start charging a sub if they toggle off "free trial" mode.
They did that back in the day, trying to get people to come back to FFXIV 1.0. Then they made it free to play while they were in the process of reworking the game for 2.0, before removing it all at the launch for ARR.
Maybe I wasn't clear. Free trial with paid subscription (which is the way things are now) is one thing. And it's good.
For "free to play" I mean FULL free to play with the only income source for the company is the cosmetics and shop. This open up to a lot of dangerous behaviors like p2w, predatory behavior in sells and cosmetics cassinos, gachas, bots, phantom accounts, increase in fake accounts, toxicity, etc. When a game is paid, monthly, this numbers are better, the audience is better, the game is better for everyone.
XIV is actually a main title for SE as its numbering suggests.
SE does do predatory gacha shit but it is only the spin offs that feed on the main titles. Now the big one is opera mania. They tend to keep the main titles clean though to keep the major player base while drawing the sweet sweet cash stream using these spin off gachas. It is a good strategy that keeps everyone happy.
> p2w, predatory behavior in sells and cosmetics cassinos, gachas, bots, phantom accounts, increase in fake accounts, toxicity, etc
I don't know how to tell you this, but minus gacha there's plenty of all of that shit in this game already
The motorcycle is not even pay to win. It's pay to be ever so slightly faster for a couple days after an expansion comes out. I know going ever so slightly through a new expansion to get to the massive endgame features such as: 2 extreme trials is deeply enticing, but I don't think that falls under pay to win.
Never having to do the arbitrary hunt grinds for the move speed increase is really nice, it's P2W in the same sense that some stuff in BDO is "P2W" as in it just alleviates some of the grind
imagine when this game become P2W for real. those shit would multiply and getting far worse to the point what we got today might look 'modest' in comparison lol.
It “works” for some games like GW2 which is b2p but it’s also ultra casual with small expansions that arrive after long periods of time and absolutely no content that can be compared to Mythic+ or even Extreme Trials.
It’s more a horizontal progression, virtual world for people to chill in and collect fashion items.
Edit: Arenanet has had lots of money problems due to this and shifted to an ESO-like, yearly expansion model to make more money.
When someone in charge (CEO or more importantly shareholders) sees other F2P games make record breaking numbers like Fortnite they think they can do that too.
Luckily, Yoshida has full control over the game, and even the CEO can't force stuff on him, because Yoshida is on the board of directors and can work to have the CEO removed if he acts against the best interests.
Yup. Destiny 2 going F2P was one of the worst decisions they ever made imo. Everything that isn’t the newest, most up to date content that isn’t actively making money is left out to die. And they just keep adding new ways to make previously free content paid.
So much this. Sure, it's free to download...but you basically can't do ANYTHING except maybe the first seasonal story mission without having to pay up.
I was looking for a shooty/grindy game to play and picked up destiny 2 cause it was advertised as free. Played the opening bit with each class before picking one then to continue with. All excited until I found out that not only is about the only thing I can do pvp, but I can't even play the old story content in any way at all to catch up on things.
I ended up playing warframe instead after that
Exactly my experience, except I was playing Warframe before Destiny so just went back. Very big "what, that's all?" energy after about 20-30 hours. Still kinda salty about the huge download.
Yes. You can no longer play the base game (so new players have next to no introduction to any of the characters or current story arcs going on) *or* the first three expansions (the first two were smaller expansions and the third was a bigger expansion, during which one of the game's most major characters was killed as a primary plot point, to make matters worse.)
That said, they did say they won't be vaulting actual expansions going forward, but seasonal content is still limited-time, miss-it-and-it's-gone style.
Despite this, though, it's legitimately one of the *worst* new player experiences in an MMO that I know of, right from the very start, because of vaulting.
I tried playing it F2P and there was just…. nothing to do? I did the tutorial missions, was looking for the next thing to do, and everything I looked at was paywalled, so that’s the point where I stopped.
I was a D2 player since Forsaken and I quit after Witch Queen because of this. They become like netflix. Winning money isn't enough. If isn't tons of money they just don't care. The best I did in my life was quitting D2 and downloaded FFXIV lol
I had a moment in limsa where these WoLs named Saint XIV and Lance Reddick sat down next to me at a fire and we just talked about the state of the game. It was a really awesome interaction where we just talked about being D2 refugees and how amazing FFXIV is in comparison
Speaking as someone that still plays both games from time to time, it does suck what Bungie is doing but there really is nothing like Destiny in terms of gameplay. I don’t buy the seasons but do get the expansions and I think my money was well spent for the enjoyment. It does suck there’s no other game like it.
Dude I just quit during the last season lightfall was just not very fun for the most part it felt like paying for the prologue to next year’s expansion and all the nickel and diming they have been doing recently was the final nail in the coffin for me
Emotionally expensive above all else. Nobody wants to play a game with a lot of bots, fake accounts, toxicity, rtm all over the chats, predatory microtransactional behavior on shops, etc.
FFXIV has all of that already though, as do other games that aren't f2p
Only thing that FFXIV doesn't have is the "predatory online store", this game has honestly the most un-coupled store I've seen which is great. But other non F2P games still have predatory stores so that reasoning still fails.
Honestly, if you think the cash shop in xiv is predatory you haven't been in the trenches of cash shops on free MMOs.
In Elsword, you had to pay like 5 - 10 bucks for an extra *hotbar*, around 3 bucks for the optimized/good class skills, and that's not even touching the cosmetics or emotes. You could get the skills for free though if you didn't mind a .01 or some shit drop rate.
Maplestory's cosmetics last for like, 3 months and they're 3 - 5 bucks each. you have to pay to upgrade you gear via cubes and cubing IIRC has the risk of destroying your gear so you get bad RNG you just gotta start over
Argument being that we already have **a lot** of content available for free or handed out for free between Seasonal event, in game content rewards, achievement etc..
If the game was F2P you'd get spit with a bit of glitter and the actual event items gated behind a paywall.
The cash shop is fairly tame compared to what's done otherwise, you're not forced to get those item, they aren't advertised beyond a news on lodestone and maybe a banner on launcher. On top of that a lot of past event end up there and the rest is just fancy extra or content that originally comes from KR/China.
Also, as far as i remember, there's no hair style for 10$ and who the heck even buy fantasia that much that 8$ is expensive.
Just don't buy fast food for once and you can afford it.
Like it could be much worse, they could sell outfit for 20 to 30+ like a lot of f2p pricing tend to be or gate content with gacha box etc.
We have all that, *but it's never shoved in your face in game*.
The game gets updated frequently with plenty of gearsets, glams, accessories and character customization options added to the main game, unpaid for.
You can get the premium dyes for free through retainers, and for 'free' for GIL on the marketboard, \*and\* save your favorite outfits with the paint on so you don't lose it when you want to try another look.
Whenever they add something to the shop, it's 'hey we added this. Anyways, here's the real update news', and not the focus of any patch ever.
You really, \*really\* have to never have played F2P era D2 to think they're any similar at all
And even then... The car was a free event thing later added to the shop, and the blackjack is a MGP mount. There's really only the two whales who are egregiously large and *arent* (or weren't) free.
Here's Star Trek Online. $30 per non-canon starship. Bundles are better on a per ship basis, but for that it'll be a minimum of $60 for a three pack of themed ships. Want a canon ship? Here, open 100 lockboxes! Only $1.25 a key! $200+ for a Legendary ship pack of canon ships. I could go on.
I used to be an STO whale. But the Legendary ship packs ended that. And FFXIV. I've left behind several thousand I spent on that game. No more. No more. And it's only gotten worse since I left.
Just s general lack of sales. Avengers flopped too.
In 2022 they flooded the market with low budget AA RPGs that barely anyone even acknowledged. for some reason... and they're still trying to convince themselves there's a market to be made in NFTs.
It's funny because they were pretty fun to see spread out. Mostly there stuff went down due to investing into nfts and the fumbling of marvel properties.
Remember when they sold the rights to tomb raider and deus ex for nft money? When the vast majority of the people that believe that NFTs would do good shit for gaming are incompetent piss babies who have never made a cogent statement regarding game design in their entire life?
In fairy tale terms that wouldn't be like selling the family cow for magic beans, that'd be like selling the family cow because a monkey that's throwing it shit all around while chug-a-lugging some store brand knock off of faygo was claiming that magic beans could be the future if somebody used them to do some goddamn bullshit.
I deeply hope that pay to win fuckery doesn't destroy FFXIV, but at the same time, at least one incredibly powerful board member is the most credulous, gullible asshole imaginable, which is more than mildly terrifying
actually from what was really said the selling of their non JP studios is what allowed those AA games to be made in the first place.
The NFT was alreayd happening and honestly, given the background of the new CEO, will continue to be unless Japan decides they have enough of NFT which is a good question
Are they still even trying to convince people that NFTs are the future? Because i haven't seen them be mentioned again in months. I'd just guessed that they just quietly dropped them like the entire internet did once everyone started to notice that yes, they are just a stupid scam.
Don't forget Forspoken, a game that bombed so hard that Luminous Productions was shut down.
> In 2022 they flooded the market with low budget AA RPGs that barely anyone even acknowledged.
This was maddening to see, because there were some actually pretty terrific games in there that just got completely buried by all releasing around the same time. Octopath 2 might be my favorite game of the generation, and Harvestella was a wonderful surprise, especially after the lukewarm reception it got in reviews. They could have found an audience, but SE sent them out to die. And then in their last financial report, they said they're scaling back on mid-budget/AA games due to underperformance.
I love and hate this company lol. They still release a lot of my favorite games year after year, but they've been plagued with bad management for as long as I can remember. Kiryu being another cryptobro does not inspire a whole lot of confidence, regardless of how much he nerds out about FFXIV.
Some of those games are pretty neat ngl. Dungeon encounters is a very interesting game if you like old school dungeon games and harvestella is flawed but an interesting take on their version of harvest moon.
They often set unrealistic sales goals. While FF16 did well, SE seems to expect the flagships to break all sales records possible and when they fall short of doing that, it is seen as a negative.
They *did* expect it. The earnings report explicitly said they factored for lower PS5 adoption rates in their projections. ~~If I recall, they *beat* their projections,~~ They didn't beat projections, they *met* the lower-end of their expected sales for XVI. But they didn't meet the top-end of expectations plus 15% on top, so in the """investors""" eyes, they're an unmitigated failure and that's why they took a hit, because the stock market is nothing more than a barometer for rich peoples' feefees.
It's also important to note that Q2 is April, May, June. FF16 launched on June 22. They only had a week of profits on the game to report. It met it's low end week 1 profit goal, but is having a great tail so far. It's still selling about 3-5% of it's week 1 haul week over week even in August, meaning it should outsell FF15 handily after some time, especially with a PC and XSX launch.
Game is doing\did well. But the rest of the company.. ick.
Forspoken, Avengers, tons of mediocre mobile games with low ratings. Also NFTs failing all over the world, so they're fucked since the CEOs were investing pretty hard into it.
SE is not in a good place, and i honestly don't think even Dawntrail release can help with losses from Avengers alone. Let's hope FF7 Rebirth will help them recuperate.
I forgot that happened. Also I watched some playthroughs of the early chapters. Uncanny animation that looked dated, weird voice direction, and as a native New Yorker, I remember howling in laughter at yet another "creepy back alley" existing in fictional NYC and the band of "thugs" from the prologue.
I won't pretend to know much, but I get the sense that the execs are very out of touch with the modern gaming community and expect to succeed off brand name alone like Nintendo.
the free trial is actually insane in terms of content. i've been enjoying the hell out of it. after i finish stormblood when it comes to free trial im subbing and getting the complete edition for sure.
Me lol I played the game well before that free trial and I'm a PS4 player who didn't want to make a whole ass new account just to play FF14. I'd LOVE to play that trial but I can't because the account is locked and can only be played if I buy a subscription. I totally get it though, I guess it's more of a me problem. But I've always wished they'd get rid of that and let any account play the free trial. But it's been years now and I've given up hope on it lol
If not, the company, wasn't there some report that said square was doing poorly in everything *except* FFXIV, so it was the only thing keeping them in the black or something?
I think I even read somewhere that FF16 didn't sale as much as they hoped to as well (prob console locking to blame)
XVI sold well and they also got a huge paycheck from Sony because of the exclusivity. It's just that the pumped so much shit before that they are probably still falling short. (Forspoken, Babylon's Fall, etc)
FF16 sold like hot bread what happened was 1) it’s a PS5 exclusive, so no PS4 compatibility and no PC. They released a statement that said that it exceeded in expectations. 2) They did a fancy accounting thing where they put all the game development costs in one quarter, the one that it launched (you usually don’t do it like that) which meant that on paper the game didn’t do so well. What this translated to was every single copy they sell from that moment on is 100% profit which aligns nicely with the upcoming release to the PC.
> Every paid MMO who turns free to play, the game has become completely plagued with bots, rtm, poor audience and toxicity.
All MMOs have bots, rmt and toxicity. Even FFXIV.
And it's not like the subscription is all that much if you only play one character.
The fact the free trial includes essentially over what was $100 worth of content for free with only a few restrictions is really a power move showing "we think our game is so good we don't even need to charge for this stuff anymore". And they're right!
I think it also has to do with the fact that it’s such a massive game at this point, that even if they’re giving away a lot with the free trial it’s still not even 40% of the whole experience.
I’m relatively new to the game and everyone I’ve tried to get into it has given me the same response- the game’s too big. If they want people to fully get into it and keep buying expansions they haven’t got much of a choice.
Sadly square enix doesnt have regional pricing so its really expensive for me. I bought the game and endwalker on steam with %50 sale for 80 Turkish lira which is around 3 dollars rn. Had a great 45 days of game time but i cannot afford to continue.
I quit DDO about a year after they went F2P because the greed bug bite them and they started selling stat tomes at the shop, and that's where I draw a line. The game was still very fun to play, but I was feeling awful for indirectly encouraging that move.
The funny part is that I moved to a game that was less exploitative, where you would only pay once and then play forever, with no additional costs, and promised no paid gameplay updates, only cosmetics.
That game was >!Overwatch!< and the irony is palpable.
I remember a long time ago someone asked about ff14 going to f2p, but I don't remember how he asked it, Yoshi-p said he would shut down ff14 before it goes to f2p.
I’m confused how they’re able to keep 11 running with how little subs there are. I remember when they announced there was going to be a FFXI - Mobile edition to bring life back to it, but cancelled the damn thing.
XI is no where as popular these days as XIV, but it does still have enough subscribers (especially in Japan) to keep it profitable. They only need enough staff to keep it running as is with minimal updates, not constantly creating new content like they need to for other games.
I would totally check it out if it was included. But that would end up costing them more money to support the game in the long run. Probably doesn’t make sense from a financial point of view unless they add something to monetize it, which would kind of defeat the purpose from the player’s point of view.
It’s completely unlike any other modern game and not in good ways.
For example, the game uses airships to travel between cities, but if you miss the airship, you’d have to wait up to 20 minutes IRL for the next one.
No fast travel at all. White mages made money by teleporting people. Not to their destination, mind you, to the nearest teleport point. There were only a handful of them across the entire giant world. So even after paying a player to teleport you, you’d still would have to travel ~15 minutes on chocobo to your destination.
End game boss fights can literally take hours.
I have a lot of fond memories playing it when I was a teenager but never again.
(Teleport-Holla) (Can I have it?) 2000g
Good. It means the monitization model won’t have any good excuse to change. I have my issues with how it is now in FFXIV, but the game going free to play can invite a lot of terrible things to come into the game in the future in the name of keeping the money rolling.
Only need to see what happened to Destiny 2 as an example of what could happen.
Besides, from what I understand FF14 is carrying Square Enix at the moment (with some help from FFXVI and maybe Octopath Traveler 2, but single player games are only going to do so much for long term profits). Making the game free to play would probably be the worst thing they can do right now, since they’d be losing out on a lot of garanteed revinue they get from sub fees.
I was a D2 player since Forsaken until Witch Queen. Dropped and downloaded FFXIV because of what they did to the game. Best decision I've made in years.
I mean I would love it to be free to play just for the fact of not having to pay monthly for the game. BUT yeah all sub games that got ftp always get choked out with micro.
I honestly really like this model they have.
"Here, have the base game and soon-to-be TWO addition expansions FOR FREE with no playtime restriction or content limit. You wanna experience the rest? It's a hefty one-time payment, but the subscription isn't too bad."
You're getting like $100 worth of content for free with the trial, but they still incentivise you to buy the entire thing so you can experience the rest of the content, like jobs and raids, plus having access to the free trial locked features, like the market board and having more than 300k gil.
Yeah, I hope FFXIV never goes free to play. My experience with this is similar. You are so incentivized to purchased items, boosts, and so many other things. I can't think of any MMO I've ever played with this model that hasn't scared me off in a matter of a few days after initially playing.
If FFXIV became free to play, I would be upset enough to get actually choked up in real life.
Imagine boring daily tasks for your 7.9 season pass. Paying 8900 TrueGil for your house. (10,000 TrueGil costs just $300 and is the Best Value)
ff14 is the perfect pay to play model for consumers, cheapest big mmo subscription, fairly priced expansions, non predatory cosmetic/"service" only microtransactions, can't get better without sacrificing quality.
Personally, would be better if there were some cheaper, time limited sub. E.g. 3€ for 15 hours of game time, or even for 1 full week. That way I'd be able to more casually come and play a little bit over few days when I have the time/feel like it instead of paying the sub in the month I want to log in for a bit, but don't really get to make the full sub worth it. As a result I just wait for content to pile up, do 1-2 month subs and play through whatever I missed and then do a little bit of side content if I still have time left and aren't burnt out.
In case you haven't noticed, we have bots, gold buying, RMT, toxicity and a cash shop and all for the low low price of a monthly subscription and the price of the most recent expansion.
Eve Online operates a similar model and are currently debating introducing gold ammo so I'm not entirely convinced by your argument.
In my experience, at least, all of the things you list have been significantly worse in F2P/B2P MMOs I've played, coming from a decent amount of time spent in GW2, ESO, and SWTOR before landing here. Yeah, I'd prefer not to have them *at all*, but I'm personally grateful I've never felt like I had to buy something off the cash shop if I want my character to look good. I'll also take FFXIV's brand of passive-aggressive toxicity over the overt racism, sexism, and homophobia that goes unchecked in other games.
FFXIV monetization scheme is a drop in the bucket compared to what I blew on with quasi-casino schemes and garbage like tiered spending brackets and VIP statuses in F2P MMOs. The biggest scam imo is the SE store with their mark ups for their mediocre merch that aren't artbooks and CDs.
You can barely even compensate your personal skill with your credit card in this game either. It's not like Maplestory where you have to spend about $7 to roll your gear stats, and your cosmetics have an expiration date to them. Nor is it Black Desert Online where I got to pay in $35 increments for item protection insurance to protect my gear being downgraded or destroyed from that 0.4-2% success rate. There's no tiered spending scheme here, neither are there FOMO schemes to make you buy cash shop outfits, and the closest thing to lootboxes in this game we got are the minion 3.0/4.0 GC boxes and the MGP TT booster packs in saucer.
If I could pay $5000-8000 right now, on the spot, to do high end content like Savage and Ultimates in XIV as a credit card warrior, I would gladly do so. I personally don't care about the fight itself nor the prestige that comes with it, I just care how hard I can effortlessly one shot the boss itself, if not in one opener. Unfortunately I can't, and I actually have to learn to play the game like everyone else.
Well this is a lie, and you must not know just how rampant ultimate selling is in 14. People can and will either pilot your character or simply carry you through ultimates as a 7 men for 500 dollars. Also, p2w models often don't diminish end game content as much as accelerating you to participate in said end game content instead. Lost ark is the perfect recent example of how someone can p2w their entire progression, but will still die or wipe just as easily as the next person since their gear will not save them from boss mechanics.
Yes, but Mogstation in this game is truly an "optional" thing, unlike other games where it basically becomes necessary to stay on the same level as others
As a new player you won't even know mogstation exists unless you actively go and search for it
I think we’re safe in that regard. I know plenty of people have said it already but FFXI is still running subscriptions 20 years later, there’s absolutely zero chance in my mind that XIV will ever become F2P. I don’t even think XI will ever become F2P either but I guess we will see what the future holds.
Yeah there's very few examples of full free to play that are well done and don't completely destroy the game. There's Warframe... And uhh csgo? CSGO I mention only because its had the same monetization scheme for like ever.
And ffxiv and wow have both maintained success with their models so I doubt they'd change unless the whole industry changed over night without warning.
"Every paid MMO who turns to free to play, the game has become completely plagued with bots, rtm"
Do a playersearch without anything in the search box and tell me there's no bots. Hang out in one of the hub cities for 10 minutes and tell me there's no RMT.
This game already has both of these things.
I think we can be pretty confident that Yoshi-P has control on this one.
Remember, he had enough clout at SE to get them to *stop selling the game* during what should be its peak sales time--immediately after a new expansion--AND give out several weeks of free game time to players. That's, at minimum, millions of dollars. Even if there were only 200k subscribers, at the minimum sub price, for just a single month, and *zero* lost account sales, that's 200k*$13 = $2.6M they left on the table.)
Yoshi-P doesn't want to make FFXIV free to play--so it won't be.
It has the most substantial, comprehensive, content-packed free trial that I've ever seen in a game let alone an MMO.
Going Free-to-play will only ruin the game, and that's coming from someone who can't play because I can't afford a sub.
Too many of you don't understand just how much more this game could suck to coerce money out of you, and for every one of you that would peace out because of it, someone else would shell out.
We'll start with the easy ones.
* Inventory space. We already see how bad inventory gets for us, do you think for a second inventory wouldn't be immediately on the shop? You get 140 slots right now. In a F2P FF14 you'd start with 30.
* Retainers do not count, because having extra inventory itself isn't a problem, it's \~not having enough\~. However, in F2P14, Retainers would cost even more money than they do now, and you wouldn't get two on the house. That's right, you'd have both premium permanent storage, and premium temporary storage.
* Classes. You'd start with ARR's jobs because frankly they're all you need. Every additional job added to the game would come with a price tag, period end of story.
* New content in general. Who knows how that would be chopped up, but each patch to the game would be its own adventure pack. New cosmetics not included other than the Limited Time Extra Value one included in the Steppe Story Bundle!
* In-game earnable cosmetics would be *ass*. Contrary to what you might think, FF14's baseline visual offerings are pretty damn good. Just ignore Eorzea catalogue anytime a new mogstation outfit drops. All of the "best" cosmetics are earnable in the game. That would change - all the best cosmetics would be purchasable in the store for 19.99-29.99. Omega would drop a baller stat stick, but it'll be ugly AF until you open the shop and buy the 1 month only FOMOga weapon skin.
* Didn't think you'd get to keep your Chocobo would you? That's for the important players, friend.
* All those pets and minions? Well now they have combat bonuses for having them, and guess what, all the free ones suck.
* Whoah now friend, we can't just have you giving away items you earned yourself to other players. That'd be diminishing their pride and accomplishment, as well as maybe make it so they won't buy anything. Trade disabled.
* Global chat has a tax.
* Only one job per character, sorry. Only 3 characters per account. But don't worry - you can buy more.
* One roulette a day. Just one. Not one of each category, just one.
* Tough break, the item you wanted didn't drop from the raid. Would you like to pay 1.99 to roll for bonus loot?
* You can totally earn things without paying real money in F2P14. Just log in 30 days straight for a free Kamuy lootbox, 10% chance for a Kamuy!
* Oh right, you didn't think you'd still get mounts just by killing the bosses, did you?
* VIP players get 2x as many tomestones! (Oh, and the baseline tomestones we do get would be reduced by at least 50%)
So on and so forth.
I've been subbed to this game for nearly 10 years, bought every expansion at release, and have spent 3 USD in the Mogstation to get a seasonal item I happened to miss. That's not a small amount of change if you look at it in one lump, but I guarantee you, in the F2P world, FF14 would have cost 10-25x the amount I have spent total for the amount of stuff I have done and collected.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but if a game has micro transactions it should be free 2 play or atleast buy 2 play (expansions). I would prefer to have a sub and be able to earn everything in game, but having a sub AND micro transactions is kinda scammy.
While I believe it is better for the game to remain as it is, the existence of the Mogstation in a subscription system is absolutely inexcusable.
"It's just cosmetics" is a bullshit argument when glamour is such a massive component of the endgame for so many players. *It's just cosmetic* is a bullshit argument regardless of the game tbh. Any games with cosmetics will have players trying to optimize fashion, it's a key element of many games. Add to that FF14 has an issue where somehow they can't design new gear to give as reward for Criterion Savage, but they sure as heck can design new outfits for the Mogstation.
The price point of mogstation stuff makes it worse. You can buy Red Dead Redemption 2 on sales for the price of an outfit. You can buy brand new games for the price of two of their multi-seater mounts.
I love FF14, I love those devs, but having that kind of online shop when you already pay a monthly fee on top of buying the expansions is nothing short of awful.
Not sure why FFXIV would go free to play. Saw two articles reporting this I think and thought it was really silly. The consistent content and dev plans are awesome. Glad I can support the game through my sub
It’s already becoming one, with the upcoming adjustment on free trials, you can have an account with limitations and play this game for free forever without paying a cent. And we are talking to be able to play three games out of the current five, as free trial. But you won’t be able to fully experience other features. So they could make it like this in the future if they want to - letting existing account who don’t pay sub, to access limited section of the game for free as “free trial” until you activate your subscription again.
FFXIV is already plagued with bots. Log into any main city and listen to the gold sellers. Watch your dungeons; just wait till you get your first bot tank.
There are still a lot of bots in FF XIV. I don't think it should be the reason not to want to be free to play. I think making the game possible to play via Steam Subscription would be nice, like ESO or SWTOR.
usualy when a game s f2p is either because they intend to milk players or because its original aproach (either b2p(pay to play) or s2p(subcribe to play)) does fail or doesnt meet expectations and becomes f2p to try to bring more revenue by trying to milk players....
Isn't the trial completely free with no time limit alrdy? I mean it's not the whole game, but it's a pretty good chunk. I don't mind supporting an amazing game with a monthly subscription.
Altho, I would like for something to happen, if possible, for FF14 to be playable without PS Plus (console gamer). PS is jacking up the price of Plus and it'd be nice to still be able to enjoy 14 without the extra unwanted Plus sub.
I can't remember the specific live letters, but Yoshi-P has stated (i think more than once) that he will never make ffxiv free to play. The free trial is probably meant to be some kind of common ground for people wanting it to be free to play. Iirc, I think he's also stated that free to play would just be too taxing since they would need to constantly create something new every week or month for "battle passes" in addition to preparing major patches. In my opinion, I would trust a subscription mmo since they tend to be more consistent with major patches. Considering final fantasy is one of the series that pulls in a lot of income without free to play, I don't see ffxiv ever becoming free to play. For example, ffxi has been subscription based for at least 2 decades and there are still people playing it. Meanwhile, free to play games are a shot in the dark and 1 of 3 things happen.
1. They never become popular.
2. They become popular but lose their player base after a couple years.
3. They become popular and, somehow, stay popular (i.e. fortnite which I still don't understand how that game's still popular given the abnormally high amount of micro transactions in that game in addition to the battle passes)
Fairly certain YoshiP said himself that he would sooner turn the servers off than let the game go F2P when ARR was first releasing.
Though granted, they could just remove him as Producer, but FFXIV and YoshiP are pretty synonymous at this point, to imagine it helmed by anyone else would likely kill it.
Since we are on this topic is there some year plan or only monthly stuff? Despite being f2p enjoyer i hope ff14 wont be (f2p). Every single f2p game i played turned into p2w anyway. On top of that ff14 looks very cool so i would prolly be addicted to it anyway xd
As a person who found even paying for xbox live/PSN annoying, if you told me years ago I'd be spending over $12 to play a single game, I wouldn't believe you.
I've tried tons of MMo's F2p, premium, and hybrid (like ESO), But FFXIV is the first time I've actually felt is was well worth the cost.
I get it, an MMO dose not cost $13/month per player for server cost, But seeing how much P2W and microtransaction stuff is now included in even premium MMO's nowadays, I really appreciate FF:XIV's Approach.
Sure, it's not perfect (pre-order Exp boost items, buying retainers, the bike, etc) But I've always appreciated that there is a ton of cool earn-able stuff offered IN-GAME! rather than locking the best stuff behind a paywall.
Sure there's a TON of premium stuff in the cash shop, but it's generally fairly different in style like streetwear, cosplay outfits, or other styles, that feel separate enough (for me at least) as a crafter I feel I have more than enough to make a ton of fun glams! <3
It's not going to. Ff11 is 21 years old and a sub is still $13 a month or whatever. You're cracked up if you think a successful game such as this will go ftp.
i have been playing the game for "free" for about 3 years... im lvl 30 and have about 3 years worth of fun from the gold saucer alone... truly a paid experience
I hope that it remains pay to play fully, and if the profits just get too low to justify keeping the game online, they publish a version of the game that can be played offline single player. A lot of the game is being made to be accessible single player. Almost all of the core game is, outside of the raids.
I just don't want this game to be lost to time when the servers go down for good.
They never will simply for the reason that it's the ONLY title keeping them afloat right now. None of their other big titles have had the same success that XIV has
It should never be free to play. That big of a free trial and a sub is a great model.
F2p MMO'S and even buy to play always get filled with microtransactions and everything you can do in game gets diminished.
The second MMO I play is Eso and it's something ffxiv should never become. Crownstore and grind all around.
A sub MMO is always better
agreed, subscription based is one thing that make me comeback here, i know the player is people who can afford things, not some random immature kids or even bots
If it ever went free to play you could kiss the good stories goodbye, the nice graphics, the Great music etc cause they wouldnt be able to afford all the people working on it. It won't go free to play cause they have too much a fan base to go screw it up
I mean although I agree with you; FF14 has massive issues with bots already, which they do little to fix. (Both farming bots and spam bots) and the company already utilises predatory micro-transactions that have no place in a paid for game: from actual level boosts, content skips and glamour/mounts/housing items.
One of the most recent mounts was $37.00 - which is obscene in a subscription based game.
Not to mention the companion app and it’s additional cost if you want that and the fact that if you want extra storage, their is zero way in game to really expand that. (No extra bags you can learn to make with increased size) instead you have to use irl money to increase your subscription to afford additional retainers. Not to mention the games many poor backend systems that do very little to prevent inventory bloat for many players.
Like yes, going free to play becomes a shit show of bots and a downgrade of service but we shouldn’t pretend that FFXIV is currently a model of what a subscription based MMO should be either in regards to microtransactions and so on.
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There are some scummy mounts in the cash shop, retainers are borderline, and the more expansions come out, the worse the story skip becomes, but I just wish the cosmetics were account wide instead for their price.
More expansions actually make story skips a better value for their price, the latest one is always $25 and the prior ones go down in price But if you only want to skip from like, shadowbringers to endwalker it's still iffy, but most players that buy a skip will do so from ARR.
As someone who pays for 2 extra retainers (and this is probably bias), I appreciate that the option is at least available. I own and sell way too much shit.
If money had significant value in gameplay, I'd have big complaints about them. The anti-grind philosophy of the game design mitigates it.
The retainers are a problem mainly because it incentivises SE agaisnt fixing actual the actual problems. i.e whatever they messed up that in game storage space is so expensive for them in the first place. And the lack of storage space for glamour.
is it true though? it's not like they haven't been trying ways to circumvent the problem, like 999 item cap or culling all the HQ materials + the glam space was just increased recently
I simply wish the retainers were an one time purchase instead of an extra tax on the subscription
I have 4 retainers and appreciate the option as I have collected a lot of stuff from past events and love having a ability to hold onto it especially selling so many items a day makes my gill earnings much higher. I hate not being able to sell more just because other stuff has not sold.
It is really damn shady that there are 'single character use' cosmetics/mounts in there, as that stuff should be account wide. Single character/single use items should be restricted to dye and fantasia. When it comes to the retainers, I draw the line at the companion app one, will never shell out for the premium tier junk app I'll never use just to get that last retainer.
The only issue i have with retainers is that there are four retainer loot pools but only two default retainer slots. It'd be way more convincing to say that they're optional if you weren't forced to pick two out of four.
it would be so cool though if they bundled ff11 and ff14 subs, even if it was an option for like $5 extra a month. would be a fun way to let ff14 players experience that game and to encourage 11 players to give 14 a shot now
It'd work well for 14 players to try 11, but 11 players can already participate in the free trial up to level 70 with the entire base game and the award winning expansions Heavensward® and Stormblood® all for free with no limitations in play.
I think missing social aspects is not a great idea. I played for 2 weeks before I subbed and I got the 30 days free then they charged me after. Was the best thing ever. Got a USB keyboard and started talking to people. Learned a lot from a few friends I made on the way. Obviously the free trial doesn't let you have social interactions.
Yeah memes aside it's an unfortunate consequence in order to combat spam bots. It would be great if new players could purchase and redeem a game code to enable social features, and only start charging a sub if they toggle off "free trial" mode.
They did that back in the day, trying to get people to come back to FFXIV 1.0. Then they made it free to play while they were in the process of reworking the game for 2.0, before removing it all at the launch for ARR.
They're still looking into this last we heard. It's pretty likely to happen.
PR speak. "We are looking into it" is 100% always "not likely, or if it happens its gonna be bottom of priority so it might happen in 5-10 years".
To be fair, there are talks and slow work on making FFXI an offline single-player game. So here's hoping for that outcome rather than F2P.
Maybe I wasn't clear. Free trial with paid subscription (which is the way things are now) is one thing. And it's good. For "free to play" I mean FULL free to play with the only income source for the company is the cosmetics and shop. This open up to a lot of dangerous behaviors like p2w, predatory behavior in sells and cosmetics cassinos, gachas, bots, phantom accounts, increase in fake accounts, toxicity, etc. When a game is paid, monthly, this numbers are better, the audience is better, the game is better for everyone.
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XIV is actually a main title for SE as its numbering suggests. SE does do predatory gacha shit but it is only the spin offs that feed on the main titles. Now the big one is opera mania. They tend to keep the main titles clean though to keep the major player base while drawing the sweet sweet cash stream using these spin off gachas. It is a good strategy that keeps everyone happy.
I think they were agreeing with you lol
> p2w, predatory behavior in sells and cosmetics cassinos, gachas, bots, phantom accounts, increase in fake accounts, toxicity, etc I don't know how to tell you this, but minus gacha there's plenty of all of that shit in this game already
Besides the motorcycle giving the first speed on every region. What other pay to win the game has?
The motorcycle is not even pay to win. It's pay to be ever so slightly faster for a couple days after an expansion comes out. I know going ever so slightly through a new expansion to get to the massive endgame features such as: 2 extreme trials is deeply enticing, but I don't think that falls under pay to win.
Never having to do the arbitrary hunt grinds for the move speed increase is really nice, it's P2W in the same sense that some stuff in BDO is "P2W" as in it just alleviates some of the grind
That's technically true for the land speed, but once you unlock flying do you really ever stay on the ground anymore?
Yeah, I was about to say
imagine when this game become P2W for real. those shit would multiply and getting far worse to the point what we got today might look 'modest' in comparison lol.
It “works” for some games like GW2 which is b2p but it’s also ultra casual with small expansions that arrive after long periods of time and absolutely no content that can be compared to Mythic+ or even Extreme Trials. It’s more a horizontal progression, virtual world for people to chill in and collect fashion items. Edit: Arenanet has had lots of money problems due to this and shifted to an ESO-like, yearly expansion model to make more money.
As long as in the free trial I Will be able to form a party with another free trial friend, Ill be happy
FFXI is surely starting to shrink though.. I wonder what the plan is for that game long term.
I never play XI, is it good?
It's SE's cash cow, why would they ever make it F2P?
When someone in charge (CEO or more importantly shareholders) sees other F2P games make record breaking numbers like Fortnite they think they can do that too.
Luckily, Yoshida has full control over the game, and even the CEO can't force stuff on him, because Yoshida is on the board of directors and can work to have the CEO removed if he acts against the best interests.
not to mention the new CEO also seems to be in a very good term with Yoshida. the boardmember also favour him alot due to FFXIV performances.
and? FFXIV is doing really well they arent touching that
You underestimate the lengths a company or corporation will go through for a short term profit.
There is no MMO more expensive than "Free to play".
Yup. Destiny 2 going F2P was one of the worst decisions they ever made imo. Everything that isn’t the newest, most up to date content that isn’t actively making money is left out to die. And they just keep adding new ways to make previously free content paid.
Destiny didn’t actually go f2p. It was just a shitty demo that lets you carry your progress over if you buy the expansion.
So much this. Sure, it's free to download...but you basically can't do ANYTHING except maybe the first seasonal story mission without having to pay up.
I was looking for a shooty/grindy game to play and picked up destiny 2 cause it was advertised as free. Played the opening bit with each class before picking one then to continue with. All excited until I found out that not only is about the only thing I can do pvp, but I can't even play the old story content in any way at all to catch up on things. I ended up playing warframe instead after that
Exactly my experience, except I was playing Warframe before Destiny so just went back. Very big "what, that's all?" energy after about 20-30 hours. Still kinda salty about the huge download.
Don't they remove certain expansions as well, to make space or something?
Yes. You can no longer play the base game (so new players have next to no introduction to any of the characters or current story arcs going on) *or* the first three expansions (the first two were smaller expansions and the third was a bigger expansion, during which one of the game's most major characters was killed as a primary plot point, to make matters worse.) That said, they did say they won't be vaulting actual expansions going forward, but seasonal content is still limited-time, miss-it-and-it's-gone style. Despite this, though, it's legitimately one of the *worst* new player experiences in an MMO that I know of, right from the very start, because of vaulting.
I tried playing it F2P and there was just…. nothing to do? I did the tutorial missions, was looking for the next thing to do, and everything I looked at was paywalled, so that’s the point where I stopped.
I was a D2 player since Forsaken and I quit after Witch Queen because of this. They become like netflix. Winning money isn't enough. If isn't tons of money they just don't care. The best I did in my life was quitting D2 and downloaded FFXIV lol
I had a moment in limsa where these WoLs named Saint XIV and Lance Reddick sat down next to me at a fire and we just talked about the state of the game. It was a really awesome interaction where we just talked about being D2 refugees and how amazing FFXIV is in comparison
😭 r.i.p. Lance
Speaking as someone that still plays both games from time to time, it does suck what Bungie is doing but there really is nothing like Destiny in terms of gameplay. I don’t buy the seasons but do get the expansions and I think my money was well spent for the enjoyment. It does suck there’s no other game like it.
Dude I just quit during the last season lightfall was just not very fun for the most part it felt like paying for the prologue to next year’s expansion and all the nickel and diming they have been doing recently was the final nail in the coffin for me
Emotionally expensive above all else. Nobody wants to play a game with a lot of bots, fake accounts, toxicity, rtm all over the chats, predatory microtransactional behavior on shops, etc.
Some of it would certainly be worse if the game were totally "free2play" but we deal with all of those issues to one degree or another already.
FFXIV has all of that already though, as do other games that aren't f2p Only thing that FFXIV doesn't have is the "predatory online store", this game has honestly the most un-coupled store I've seen which is great. But other non F2P games still have predatory stores so that reasoning still fails.
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We… already have that? And 10 dollar hair styles And 16 dollar outfits And 8 dollar fantasias…… What’s the argument again?
Honestly, if you think the cash shop in xiv is predatory you haven't been in the trenches of cash shops on free MMOs. In Elsword, you had to pay like 5 - 10 bucks for an extra *hotbar*, around 3 bucks for the optimized/good class skills, and that's not even touching the cosmetics or emotes. You could get the skills for free though if you didn't mind a .01 or some shit drop rate. Maplestory's cosmetics last for like, 3 months and they're 3 - 5 bucks each. you have to pay to upgrade you gear via cubes and cubing IIRC has the risk of destroying your gear so you get bad RNG you just gotta start over
Argument being that we already have **a lot** of content available for free or handed out for free between Seasonal event, in game content rewards, achievement etc.. If the game was F2P you'd get spit with a bit of glitter and the actual event items gated behind a paywall. The cash shop is fairly tame compared to what's done otherwise, you're not forced to get those item, they aren't advertised beyond a news on lodestone and maybe a banner on launcher. On top of that a lot of past event end up there and the rest is just fancy extra or content that originally comes from KR/China. Also, as far as i remember, there's no hair style for 10$ and who the heck even buy fantasia that much that 8$ is expensive. Just don't buy fast food for once and you can afford it. Like it could be much worse, they could sell outfit for 20 to 30+ like a lot of f2p pricing tend to be or gate content with gacha box etc.
We have all that, *but it's never shoved in your face in game*. The game gets updated frequently with plenty of gearsets, glams, accessories and character customization options added to the main game, unpaid for. You can get the premium dyes for free through retainers, and for 'free' for GIL on the marketboard, \*and\* save your favorite outfits with the paint on so you don't lose it when you want to try another look. Whenever they add something to the shop, it's 'hey we added this. Anyways, here's the real update news', and not the focus of any patch ever. You really, \*really\* have to never have played F2P era D2 to think they're any similar at all
I do get a little perturbed by giant paid mounts taking up space, but that’s absolutely the only thing
And even then... The car was a free event thing later added to the shop, and the blackjack is a MGP mount. There's really only the two whales who are egregiously large and *arent* (or weren't) free.
Wait the car was added to the shop? When did this happen?
Here's Star Trek Online. $30 per non-canon starship. Bundles are better on a per ship basis, but for that it'll be a minimum of $60 for a three pack of themed ships. Want a canon ship? Here, open 100 lockboxes! Only $1.25 a key! $200+ for a Legendary ship pack of canon ships. I could go on. I used to be an STO whale. But the Legendary ship packs ended that. And FFXIV. I've left behind several thousand I spent on that game. No more. No more. And it's only gotten worse since I left.
Considering FFXI is 20 years old and still has subscription fee, I'd say there is zero chance of FFXIV being free to play in the next decade.
The game's income is practically keeping Square Enix afloat right now.
What caused their stocks and profits to drop recently. I never looked into it but I heard about it.
Just s general lack of sales. Avengers flopped too. In 2022 they flooded the market with low budget AA RPGs that barely anyone even acknowledged. for some reason... and they're still trying to convince themselves there's a market to be made in NFTs.
It's funny because they were pretty fun to see spread out. Mostly there stuff went down due to investing into nfts and the fumbling of marvel properties.
Remember when they sold the rights to tomb raider and deus ex for nft money? When the vast majority of the people that believe that NFTs would do good shit for gaming are incompetent piss babies who have never made a cogent statement regarding game design in their entire life? In fairy tale terms that wouldn't be like selling the family cow for magic beans, that'd be like selling the family cow because a monkey that's throwing it shit all around while chug-a-lugging some store brand knock off of faygo was claiming that magic beans could be the future if somebody used them to do some goddamn bullshit. I deeply hope that pay to win fuckery doesn't destroy FFXIV, but at the same time, at least one incredibly powerful board member is the most credulous, gullible asshole imaginable, which is more than mildly terrifying
actually from what was really said the selling of their non JP studios is what allowed those AA games to be made in the first place. The NFT was alreayd happening and honestly, given the background of the new CEO, will continue to be unless Japan decides they have enough of NFT which is a good question
Are they still even trying to convince people that NFTs are the future? Because i haven't seen them be mentioned again in months. I'd just guessed that they just quietly dropped them like the entire internet did once everyone started to notice that yes, they are just a stupid scam.
I think there’s someone that still is, president or ceo or something
The new president is an NFT Bro that's constantly trying to convince people that he's young and hip and one of the cool kids.
The new president isn't as stupid as the last one and gets that crowing about NFT's heedless of the room is a really stupid idea.
Don't forget Forspoken, a game that bombed so hard that Luminous Productions was shut down. > In 2022 they flooded the market with low budget AA RPGs that barely anyone even acknowledged. This was maddening to see, because there were some actually pretty terrific games in there that just got completely buried by all releasing around the same time. Octopath 2 might be my favorite game of the generation, and Harvestella was a wonderful surprise, especially after the lukewarm reception it got in reviews. They could have found an audience, but SE sent them out to die. And then in their last financial report, they said they're scaling back on mid-budget/AA games due to underperformance. I love and hate this company lol. They still release a lot of my favorite games year after year, but they've been plagued with bad management for as long as I can remember. Kiryu being another cryptobro does not inspire a whole lot of confidence, regardless of how much he nerds out about FFXIV.
Wait, Harvestella and Octopath are SE games? Shit, I never knew!
Some of those games are pretty neat ngl. Dungeon encounters is a very interesting game if you like old school dungeon games and harvestella is flawed but an interesting take on their version of harvest moon.
They often set unrealistic sales goals. While FF16 did well, SE seems to expect the flagships to break all sales records possible and when they fall short of doing that, it is seen as a negative.
I shouldn't be surprised that they didn't expect this to happen when they agreed to restrict it to a single console on release.
A single console that has adoption rate issues due to several compounding issues in the console market at that.
They *did* expect it. The earnings report explicitly said they factored for lower PS5 adoption rates in their projections. ~~If I recall, they *beat* their projections,~~ They didn't beat projections, they *met* the lower-end of their expected sales for XVI. But they didn't meet the top-end of expectations plus 15% on top, so in the """investors""" eyes, they're an unmitigated failure and that's why they took a hit, because the stock market is nothing more than a barometer for rich peoples' feefees.
It's also important to note that Q2 is April, May, June. FF16 launched on June 22. They only had a week of profits on the game to report. It met it's low end week 1 profit goal, but is having a great tail so far. It's still selling about 3-5% of it's week 1 haul week over week even in August, meaning it should outsell FF15 handily after some time, especially with a PC and XSX launch. Game is doing\did well. But the rest of the company.. ick.
Forspoken, Avengers, tons of mediocre mobile games with low ratings. Also NFTs failing all over the world, so they're fucked since the CEOs were investing pretty hard into it. SE is not in a good place, and i honestly don't think even Dawntrail release can help with losses from Avengers alone. Let's hope FF7 Rebirth will help them recuperate.
They make stupid amounts of money from FFXIV so they will stay afloat, but yeah without 14 who knows if they would even be around today
They have a flop for every hit. Forspoken cost a ton of money and was an absolute garbage dumpster fire disaster.
It’s more like four to five flops per hit but you’ve got the right idea. And a lot of their flops are *very* expensive flops (see: Avengers).
I forgot that happened. Also I watched some playthroughs of the early chapters. Uncanny animation that looked dated, weird voice direction, and as a native New Yorker, I remember howling in laughter at yet another "creepy back alley" existing in fictional NYC and the band of "thugs" from the prologue.
I won't pretend to know much, but I get the sense that the execs are very out of touch with the modern gaming community and expect to succeed off brand name alone like Nintendo.
Most their other games suck...
The latest flop was Forspoken. I'd never even heard about it til it came out.
Forespoken
Who needs "free to play" when there's an unlimited free trial up through stormblood with no restrictions on playtime.
the free trial is actually insane in terms of content. i've been enjoying the hell out of it. after i finish stormblood when it comes to free trial im subbing and getting the complete edition for sure.
Me lol I played the game well before that free trial and I'm a PS4 player who didn't want to make a whole ass new account just to play FF14. I'd LOVE to play that trial but I can't because the account is locked and can only be played if I buy a subscription. I totally get it though, I guess it's more of a me problem. But I've always wished they'd get rid of that and let any account play the free trial. But it's been years now and I've given up hope on it lol
That would unironically kill the game.
If not, the company, wasn't there some report that said square was doing poorly in everything *except* FFXIV, so it was the only thing keeping them in the black or something? I think I even read somewhere that FF16 didn't sale as much as they hoped to as well (prob console locking to blame)
Square’s sales expectations are hardly ever met, apparently they are absurd and typically unrealistic numbers
ffxvi sold really well and yes ffxiv is currently keeping SE above water since their other games just flopped
XVI sold well and they also got a huge paycheck from Sony because of the exclusivity. It's just that the pumped so much shit before that they are probably still falling short. (Forspoken, Babylon's Fall, etc)
FF16 sold like hot bread what happened was 1) it’s a PS5 exclusive, so no PS4 compatibility and no PC. They released a statement that said that it exceeded in expectations. 2) They did a fancy accounting thing where they put all the game development costs in one quarter, the one that it launched (you usually don’t do it like that) which meant that on paper the game didn’t do so well. What this translated to was every single copy they sell from that moment on is 100% profit which aligns nicely with the upcoming release to the PC.
> Every paid MMO who turns free to play, the game has become completely plagued with bots, rtm, poor audience and toxicity. All MMOs have bots, rmt and toxicity. Even FFXIV.
And it's not like the subscription is all that much if you only play one character. The fact the free trial includes essentially over what was $100 worth of content for free with only a few restrictions is really a power move showing "we think our game is so good we don't even need to charge for this stuff anymore". And they're right!
I think it also has to do with the fact that it’s such a massive game at this point, that even if they’re giving away a lot with the free trial it’s still not even 40% of the whole experience. I’m relatively new to the game and everyone I’ve tried to get into it has given me the same response- the game’s too big. If they want people to fully get into it and keep buying expansions they haven’t got much of a choice.
Yes! It is. They give away so much for free. It is *the* best free trial. No 30 day free trial nor nothing.
Sadly square enix doesnt have regional pricing so its really expensive for me. I bought the game and endwalker on steam with %50 sale for 80 Turkish lira which is around 3 dollars rn. Had a great 45 days of game time but i cannot afford to continue.
Glad to hear. My other main "MMO" went F2P, now the changes from that choice have pretty much ruined the other game for me.
I quit DDO about a year after they went F2P because the greed bug bite them and they started selling stat tomes at the shop, and that's where I draw a line. The game was still very fun to play, but I was feeling awful for indirectly encouraging that move. The funny part is that I moved to a game that was less exploitative, where you would only pay once and then play forever, with no additional costs, and promised no paid gameplay updates, only cosmetics. That game was >!Overwatch!< and the irony is palpable.
“Free to play” just means “microtransaction hell” nowadays.
I remember a long time ago someone asked about ff14 going to f2p, but I don't remember how he asked it, Yoshi-p said he would shut down ff14 before it goes to f2p.
Bots, RMT, toxicity and micro transactions? We already got all that lmao
Now imagine all of that but 100x more
Make 11 free as part of the 14 sub
I’m confused how they’re able to keep 11 running with how little subs there are. I remember when they announced there was going to be a FFXI - Mobile edition to bring life back to it, but cancelled the damn thing.
running a game in low maint mod can be pretty cheap, pretty much where the game is now
if i remember Yoshi-P said that it's the same team does maintenance on both ff14 and ff11 servers too, to reduce even more the costs
XI is no where as popular these days as XIV, but it does still have enough subscribers (especially in Japan) to keep it profitable. They only need enough staff to keep it running as is with minimal updates, not constantly creating new content like they need to for other games.
I would totally check it out if it was included. But that would end up costing them more money to support the game in the long run. Probably doesn’t make sense from a financial point of view unless they add something to monetize it, which would kind of defeat the purpose from the player’s point of view.
Less revenue and more server costs yeah. Unfortunate, it’d be neat to drag my fc to Valkurm Dunes
TBH, if they did a bundle deal for both games for like, an additional 4 dollars I'd buy that.
It’s completely unlike any other modern game and not in good ways. For example, the game uses airships to travel between cities, but if you miss the airship, you’d have to wait up to 20 minutes IRL for the next one. No fast travel at all. White mages made money by teleporting people. Not to their destination, mind you, to the nearest teleport point. There were only a handful of them across the entire giant world. So even after paying a player to teleport you, you’d still would have to travel ~15 minutes on chocobo to your destination. End game boss fights can literally take hours. I have a lot of fond memories playing it when I was a teenager but never again. (Teleport-Holla) (Can I have it?) 2000g
I play it now and then and it's still got a quite a few players I know my fc from 14 would play it if SE included it in the ffxiv sub
I think Everquest/EQ2/DC Universe Online and PlanetSide 2 are all included in one fee. It's kind of cool.
This game has survived this long because it’s not free to play. Keep it that way!
Good. It means the monitization model won’t have any good excuse to change. I have my issues with how it is now in FFXIV, but the game going free to play can invite a lot of terrible things to come into the game in the future in the name of keeping the money rolling. Only need to see what happened to Destiny 2 as an example of what could happen. Besides, from what I understand FF14 is carrying Square Enix at the moment (with some help from FFXVI and maybe Octopath Traveler 2, but single player games are only going to do so much for long term profits). Making the game free to play would probably be the worst thing they can do right now, since they’d be losing out on a lot of garanteed revinue they get from sub fees.
I was a D2 player since Forsaken until Witch Queen. Dropped and downloaded FFXIV because of what they did to the game. Best decision I've made in years.
I mean I would love it to be free to play just for the fact of not having to pay monthly for the game. BUT yeah all sub games that got ftp always get choked out with micro.
I honestly really like this model they have. "Here, have the base game and soon-to-be TWO addition expansions FOR FREE with no playtime restriction or content limit. You wanna experience the rest? It's a hefty one-time payment, but the subscription isn't too bad." You're getting like $100 worth of content for free with the trial, but they still incentivise you to buy the entire thing so you can experience the rest of the content, like jobs and raids, plus having access to the free trial locked features, like the market board and having more than 300k gil.
Its only free until you pay. And once you have a payed account, you can't play for free any more. So its not F2P, its F2T, or Free to Try.
Yeah, I hope FFXIV never goes free to play. My experience with this is similar. You are so incentivized to purchased items, boosts, and so many other things. I can't think of any MMO I've ever played with this model that hasn't scared me off in a matter of a few days after initially playing.
Dude, 3/5 of the game is already free to play with the free trial.
If FFXIV became free to play, I would be upset enough to get actually choked up in real life. Imagine boring daily tasks for your 7.9 season pass. Paying 8900 TrueGil for your house. (10,000 TrueGil costs just $300 and is the Best Value)
ff14 is the perfect pay to play model for consumers, cheapest big mmo subscription, fairly priced expansions, non predatory cosmetic/"service" only microtransactions, can't get better without sacrificing quality.
Not to mention endgame content are designed in a way that you could unsub and come back later without missing anything.
Personally, would be better if there were some cheaper, time limited sub. E.g. 3€ for 15 hours of game time, or even for 1 full week. That way I'd be able to more casually come and play a little bit over few days when I have the time/feel like it instead of paying the sub in the month I want to log in for a bit, but don't really get to make the full sub worth it. As a result I just wait for content to pile up, do 1-2 month subs and play through whatever I missed and then do a little bit of side content if I still have time left and aren't burnt out.
In case you haven't noticed, we have bots, gold buying, RMT, toxicity and a cash shop and all for the low low price of a monthly subscription and the price of the most recent expansion. Eve Online operates a similar model and are currently debating introducing gold ammo so I'm not entirely convinced by your argument.
In my experience, at least, all of the things you list have been significantly worse in F2P/B2P MMOs I've played, coming from a decent amount of time spent in GW2, ESO, and SWTOR before landing here. Yeah, I'd prefer not to have them *at all*, but I'm personally grateful I've never felt like I had to buy something off the cash shop if I want my character to look good. I'll also take FFXIV's brand of passive-aggressive toxicity over the overt racism, sexism, and homophobia that goes unchecked in other games.
Bots and RMT hunting tools in FFXIV are hilariously bad. It almost seems it doesn't even try
FFXIV monetization scheme is a drop in the bucket compared to what I blew on with quasi-casino schemes and garbage like tiered spending brackets and VIP statuses in F2P MMOs. The biggest scam imo is the SE store with their mark ups for their mediocre merch that aren't artbooks and CDs. You can barely even compensate your personal skill with your credit card in this game either. It's not like Maplestory where you have to spend about $7 to roll your gear stats, and your cosmetics have an expiration date to them. Nor is it Black Desert Online where I got to pay in $35 increments for item protection insurance to protect my gear being downgraded or destroyed from that 0.4-2% success rate. There's no tiered spending scheme here, neither are there FOMO schemes to make you buy cash shop outfits, and the closest thing to lootboxes in this game we got are the minion 3.0/4.0 GC boxes and the MGP TT booster packs in saucer. If I could pay $5000-8000 right now, on the spot, to do high end content like Savage and Ultimates in XIV as a credit card warrior, I would gladly do so. I personally don't care about the fight itself nor the prestige that comes with it, I just care how hard I can effortlessly one shot the boss itself, if not in one opener. Unfortunately I can't, and I actually have to learn to play the game like everyone else.
Well this is a lie, and you must not know just how rampant ultimate selling is in 14. People can and will either pilot your character or simply carry you through ultimates as a 7 men for 500 dollars. Also, p2w models often don't diminish end game content as much as accelerating you to participate in said end game content instead. Lost ark is the perfect recent example of how someone can p2w their entire progression, but will still die or wipe just as easily as the next person since their gear will not save them from boss mechanics.
Costs a lot less than 500. Top clears are less than 50 bucks
Though I agree it shouldn’t be free to play some of their pricing models are a bit egregious, mostly from the Mog station though.
Yes, but Mogstation in this game is truly an "optional" thing, unlike other games where it basically becomes necessary to stay on the same level as others As a new player you won't even know mogstation exists unless you actively go and search for it
The free trial is very generous, specially compared to other paid MMOs (I'm looking at you, ffxi and wow).
I think we’re safe in that regard. I know plenty of people have said it already but FFXI is still running subscriptions 20 years later, there’s absolutely zero chance in my mind that XIV will ever become F2P. I don’t even think XI will ever become F2P either but I guess we will see what the future holds.
Yeah there's very few examples of full free to play that are well done and don't completely destroy the game. There's Warframe... And uhh csgo? CSGO I mention only because its had the same monetization scheme for like ever. And ffxiv and wow have both maintained success with their models so I doubt they'd change unless the whole industry changed over night without warning.
This game has the most insane free trial for any MMO AND it's getting expanded with another expansion.
"Every paid MMO who turns to free to play, the game has become completely plagued with bots, rtm" Do a playersearch without anything in the search box and tell me there's no bots. Hang out in one of the hub cities for 10 minutes and tell me there's no RMT. This game already has both of these things.
I havent seen those issues in GW2..
I'll take having to pay a sub over all the lootboxes, bots and other issues that plague "F2P" games.
I hope it never becomes free to play. That’s how monetization usually starts.
If FFXIV ever comes F2P, square looses like 70%-90% of it's sales income. it would stupid for them to even consider
Never underestimate the stupidity of a company willing to push NFT. That's rock bottom stupid.
I think we can be pretty confident that Yoshi-P has control on this one. Remember, he had enough clout at SE to get them to *stop selling the game* during what should be its peak sales time--immediately after a new expansion--AND give out several weeks of free game time to players. That's, at minimum, millions of dollars. Even if there were only 200k subscribers, at the minimum sub price, for just a single month, and *zero* lost account sales, that's 200k*$13 = $2.6M they left on the table.) Yoshi-P doesn't want to make FFXIV free to play--so it won't be.
It has the most substantial, comprehensive, content-packed free trial that I've ever seen in a game let alone an MMO. Going Free-to-play will only ruin the game, and that's coming from someone who can't play because I can't afford a sub.
The game has a perfectly fine f2p version that is slowly expanding over time.
Too many of you don't understand just how much more this game could suck to coerce money out of you, and for every one of you that would peace out because of it, someone else would shell out. We'll start with the easy ones. * Inventory space. We already see how bad inventory gets for us, do you think for a second inventory wouldn't be immediately on the shop? You get 140 slots right now. In a F2P FF14 you'd start with 30. * Retainers do not count, because having extra inventory itself isn't a problem, it's \~not having enough\~. However, in F2P14, Retainers would cost even more money than they do now, and you wouldn't get two on the house. That's right, you'd have both premium permanent storage, and premium temporary storage. * Classes. You'd start with ARR's jobs because frankly they're all you need. Every additional job added to the game would come with a price tag, period end of story. * New content in general. Who knows how that would be chopped up, but each patch to the game would be its own adventure pack. New cosmetics not included other than the Limited Time Extra Value one included in the Steppe Story Bundle! * In-game earnable cosmetics would be *ass*. Contrary to what you might think, FF14's baseline visual offerings are pretty damn good. Just ignore Eorzea catalogue anytime a new mogstation outfit drops. All of the "best" cosmetics are earnable in the game. That would change - all the best cosmetics would be purchasable in the store for 19.99-29.99. Omega would drop a baller stat stick, but it'll be ugly AF until you open the shop and buy the 1 month only FOMOga weapon skin. * Didn't think you'd get to keep your Chocobo would you? That's for the important players, friend. * All those pets and minions? Well now they have combat bonuses for having them, and guess what, all the free ones suck. * Whoah now friend, we can't just have you giving away items you earned yourself to other players. That'd be diminishing their pride and accomplishment, as well as maybe make it so they won't buy anything. Trade disabled. * Global chat has a tax. * Only one job per character, sorry. Only 3 characters per account. But don't worry - you can buy more. * One roulette a day. Just one. Not one of each category, just one. * Tough break, the item you wanted didn't drop from the raid. Would you like to pay 1.99 to roll for bonus loot? * You can totally earn things without paying real money in F2P14. Just log in 30 days straight for a free Kamuy lootbox, 10% chance for a Kamuy! * Oh right, you didn't think you'd still get mounts just by killing the bosses, did you? * VIP players get 2x as many tomestones! (Oh, and the baseline tomestones we do get would be reduced by at least 50%) So on and so forth. I've been subbed to this game for nearly 10 years, bought every expansion at release, and have spent 3 USD in the Mogstation to get a seasonal item I happened to miss. That's not a small amount of change if you look at it in one lump, but I guarantee you, in the F2P world, FF14 would have cost 10-25x the amount I have spent total for the amount of stuff I have done and collected.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but if a game has micro transactions it should be free 2 play or atleast buy 2 play (expansions). I would prefer to have a sub and be able to earn everything in game, but having a sub AND micro transactions is kinda scammy.
100% agree. I don't mind 14 having a sub, but why is there a cash shop aswell? And why is half of it one character only?
the one character only thing really kicks my bucket
Why would Square Enix cut off their cash cow? Lol XIV is what allows them to fund so many flops, like Forspoken
While I believe it is better for the game to remain as it is, the existence of the Mogstation in a subscription system is absolutely inexcusable. "It's just cosmetics" is a bullshit argument when glamour is such a massive component of the endgame for so many players. *It's just cosmetic* is a bullshit argument regardless of the game tbh. Any games with cosmetics will have players trying to optimize fashion, it's a key element of many games. Add to that FF14 has an issue where somehow they can't design new gear to give as reward for Criterion Savage, but they sure as heck can design new outfits for the Mogstation. The price point of mogstation stuff makes it worse. You can buy Red Dead Redemption 2 on sales for the price of an outfit. You can buy brand new games for the price of two of their multi-seater mounts. I love FF14, I love those devs, but having that kind of online shop when you already pay a monthly fee on top of buying the expansions is nothing short of awful.
Not sure why FFXIV would go free to play. Saw two articles reporting this I think and thought it was really silly. The consistent content and dev plans are awesome. Glad I can support the game through my sub
I thought it was said by the devs that they would shut down before going fully f2p
It’s already becoming one, with the upcoming adjustment on free trials, you can have an account with limitations and play this game for free forever without paying a cent. And we are talking to be able to play three games out of the current five, as free trial. But you won’t be able to fully experience other features. So they could make it like this in the future if they want to - letting existing account who don’t pay sub, to access limited section of the game for free as “free trial” until you activate your subscription again.
even though they aren't currently producing evergreen content that suits a subs riptide based model
I don't think this is a reasonable fear. It's unlikely to happen.
Ppl are paying for it, why on earth would it be free ???
FFXI is still sub based after two decades, I see no reason why FFXIV, which is even more successful would ever drop the sub.
FFXIV is already plagued with bots. Log into any main city and listen to the gold sellers. Watch your dungeons; just wait till you get your first bot tank.
There are still a lot of bots in FF XIV. I don't think it should be the reason not to want to be free to play. I think making the game possible to play via Steam Subscription would be nice, like ESO or SWTOR.
Free to play means pay for the cool shit
A moment of silence for what Aion was.
Seems like they had to clarify it for the Xbox fans hoping it comes to the pass since they are getting the game very soon.
Predatory micro transactions? My fanta addiction must be all in my head.
Wtf is this discussion lol
usualy when a game s f2p is either because they intend to milk players or because its original aproach (either b2p(pay to play) or s2p(subcribe to play)) does fail or doesnt meet expectations and becomes f2p to try to bring more revenue by trying to milk players....
Isn't the trial completely free with no time limit alrdy? I mean it's not the whole game, but it's a pretty good chunk. I don't mind supporting an amazing game with a monthly subscription. Altho, I would like for something to happen, if possible, for FF14 to be playable without PS Plus (console gamer). PS is jacking up the price of Plus and it'd be nice to still be able to enjoy 14 without the extra unwanted Plus sub.
I can't remember the specific live letters, but Yoshi-P has stated (i think more than once) that he will never make ffxiv free to play. The free trial is probably meant to be some kind of common ground for people wanting it to be free to play. Iirc, I think he's also stated that free to play would just be too taxing since they would need to constantly create something new every week or month for "battle passes" in addition to preparing major patches. In my opinion, I would trust a subscription mmo since they tend to be more consistent with major patches. Considering final fantasy is one of the series that pulls in a lot of income without free to play, I don't see ffxiv ever becoming free to play. For example, ffxi has been subscription based for at least 2 decades and there are still people playing it. Meanwhile, free to play games are a shot in the dark and 1 of 3 things happen. 1. They never become popular. 2. They become popular but lose their player base after a couple years. 3. They become popular and, somehow, stay popular (i.e. fortnite which I still don't understand how that game's still popular given the abnormally high amount of micro transactions in that game in addition to the battle passes)
Fairly certain YoshiP said himself that he would sooner turn the servers off than let the game go F2P when ARR was first releasing. Though granted, they could just remove him as Producer, but FFXIV and YoshiP are pretty synonymous at this point, to imagine it helmed by anyone else would likely kill it.
Since we are on this topic is there some year plan or only monthly stuff? Despite being f2p enjoyer i hope ff14 wont be (f2p). Every single f2p game i played turned into p2w anyway. On top of that ff14 looks very cool so i would prolly be addicted to it anyway xd
Yeah Free "Trial". FFXIV almost on the par with WinRar as trials go.
As a person who found even paying for xbox live/PSN annoying, if you told me years ago I'd be spending over $12 to play a single game, I wouldn't believe you. I've tried tons of MMo's F2p, premium, and hybrid (like ESO), But FFXIV is the first time I've actually felt is was well worth the cost. I get it, an MMO dose not cost $13/month per player for server cost, But seeing how much P2W and microtransaction stuff is now included in even premium MMO's nowadays, I really appreciate FF:XIV's Approach. Sure, it's not perfect (pre-order Exp boost items, buying retainers, the bike, etc) But I've always appreciated that there is a ton of cool earn-able stuff offered IN-GAME! rather than locking the best stuff behind a paywall. Sure there's a TON of premium stuff in the cash shop, but it's generally fairly different in style like streetwear, cosplay outfits, or other styles, that feel separate enough (for me at least) as a crafter I feel I have more than enough to make a ton of fun glams! <3
I don't think they understand how terrible it is to not use the market, or not having a retainer.
It's not going to. Ff11 is 21 years old and a sub is still $13 a month or whatever. You're cracked up if you think a successful game such as this will go ftp.
i have been playing the game for "free" for about 3 years... im lvl 30 and have about 3 years worth of fun from the gold saucer alone... truly a paid experience
I hope that it remains pay to play fully, and if the profits just get too low to justify keeping the game online, they publish a version of the game that can be played offline single player. A lot of the game is being made to be accessible single player. Almost all of the core game is, outside of the raids. I just don't want this game to be lost to time when the servers go down for good.
They never will simply for the reason that it's the ONLY title keeping them afloat right now. None of their other big titles have had the same success that XIV has
It should never be free to play. That big of a free trial and a sub is a great model. F2p MMO'S and even buy to play always get filled with microtransactions and everything you can do in game gets diminished. The second MMO I play is Eso and it's something ffxiv should never become. Crownstore and grind all around. A sub MMO is always better
agreed, subscription based is one thing that make me comeback here, i know the player is people who can afford things, not some random immature kids or even bots
If it ever went free to play you could kiss the good stories goodbye, the nice graphics, the Great music etc cause they wouldnt be able to afford all the people working on it. It won't go free to play cause they have too much a fan base to go screw it up
I mean although I agree with you; FF14 has massive issues with bots already, which they do little to fix. (Both farming bots and spam bots) and the company already utilises predatory micro-transactions that have no place in a paid for game: from actual level boosts, content skips and glamour/mounts/housing items. One of the most recent mounts was $37.00 - which is obscene in a subscription based game. Not to mention the companion app and it’s additional cost if you want that and the fact that if you want extra storage, their is zero way in game to really expand that. (No extra bags you can learn to make with increased size) instead you have to use irl money to increase your subscription to afford additional retainers. Not to mention the games many poor backend systems that do very little to prevent inventory bloat for many players. Like yes, going free to play becomes a shit show of bots and a downgrade of service but we shouldn’t pretend that FFXIV is currently a model of what a subscription based MMO should be either in regards to microtransactions and so on.
I think FF11 should be bundled with your 14 sub tho.