FF has chocobos and lalafells, that's all charm it needs. SWTOR needed something else, which it evidently did not have.
I can also say that SWTOR has lightsabers and jedis and that's all charm it needs, FF XIV needs something else, see?
As for Haven& Hearth and Salem: they have extremely few bugs. What more polish do you need? Oh do you mean that the gameplay does need to look gorgeous too, EVE's certainly doesn't.
Polish isn't just about bugs, it's also about content, gameplay refinements,etc....
And it's obvious that arguing with you is pointless.
With free to play the company is far more motivated to develop that which generates revenue, that is, they put their effort into new cash shop items rather than new content. Sure they will add some new content while a game is booming but as soon as it has a tough quarter, any new work on deep content seems to dry up and you are left with a few events that mostly highlight new items being added to the cash shop.
I am quite satisfied with it being sub based. Fortunately I have enjoyed the last beta, and for me it is worth a sub. The fact that I dont find buy to play (except tsw) or f2p worth playing, for the reasons stated above, Im happy to see this title go the subscription route. I hope it means that they will develop and add content of high quality to retain their subs, rather than go the, to my mind, silly route of cashshop randomness in order to generate monies.
Personally I have never liked f2p and I really dont agree with Smedley and the likes when they claim sub based mmo's are a thing of the past. I think there is room for a few AA titles with subs, that can cater to those of us who have less than stellar views/experience with the f2p market.
Here's one minor, but very clear difference between F2P/B2P and P2P and why I prefer P2P.
Guild Wars 2 (the best game for its pricing model, B2P requires that you pay money to increase inventory space, either on your character or your "bank" across all characters. Everytime you roll a new character and was more bags,.... pay up.
FFXIV. Armory Chest, 25 spaces PER armor slot. In addition to 100+ inventory, +crystals/shards as a separate catagory, +360 Slots on your retainers (180 each) plus an Armoire in the Inn that you can store seasonal events and special armor (I.e. Artifact).
Now, let's compare something else. Content in GW2 is every few weeks. It's fleeting. You get seasonal events and limited time dungeons. Maybe a limited time puzzle. It's meant to be consumed little at a time. Leave for a month, come back whenever you want. This model is very appealing and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I have very few issus with the "cash shop" in GW2.
But what if you're someone who enjoys very "beefy" content that is means to be consumed 3 months at a time. I believe that the only types of companies that can provide this are P2P games. They know, within a general ballpark, what their revenue is each month. They design content for CONTENT sake, they don't design content and cash shop items. I want to pay $12.99 a month and not be a second class citizen. Everyone is on the same boat. Everyone has access to everything. Everyone has the same amount of bag space.
I can see an argument being made for games like Tera/Rift/TSW because they have content you can consume based on going F2P recently. But honestly, do you see yourself playing those games for years? Will the F2P model give you content every 3 months, or will they give you mini patches followed by more cash shop items. That remains to be seen.
As for me, I want predictably paced, solid content, at fixed intervals with AAA polish and quality. FFXIV offers me that.
So is FFXIV really going to be Subscription based? And if so will it have a cash shop? I'm finding it hard to believe. I don't think there's been a new triple A subscription based MMORPG since WoW in 2004.
Yes. No. Okay. You're incorrect; SW:TOR and TERA, for instance, both launched as AAA subscription-based MMORPGs far more recently. I take it you were being sarcastic though.
As I understand it, this game was designed from the endgame back. Just calling it "AAA Fantasy Theme Park" (ie WoW clone) is not why AAA titles have been failing to keep subs. They have been failing because they simply don't have more than 2-3 weeks of content.
And you assume that this game will have more content than those games? Face it, fact is: Players will always consume content far faster than developers can make them, and as from what we've seen, this game's already lacking content when it comes to leveling alts.
You think that by focusing on endgame content the game will lose subs less? Wrong, RIFTs is the prime example, RIFT was endgame focused, it didn't help to stop the sub hermorrhaging at all.
It's also in the delivery of that content. Look at WoW. The content consumption race really took off when WoW lifted attunement. In TBC, players subbed for the long haul. In Wrath, they lifted attunement and content became a runaway train.....as is the gear race. I am not telling you to embrace attunement. But I am saying, the more things we had to do in the line of progression, the longer you lasted in the game. Regardless of how you feel about attunement, it made the game last longer. That's a fact.
Look at it this way. (I use TBC as I didn't do raiding in Vanilla WoW just dungeons)
Getting to 70, there was a lot to do before you could raid. Long quest chains that didn't start until you capped. You also needed gear. OK, Lets get to work on that. What's the 1st step? Dungeons. Can't do heroic yet, you don't have Revered Rep with the factions to buy the key. So run regulars for now. Get blue gear.
Now you are ready to progress to Heroics. Run Heroics for a time. Get your rep to exalted with factins to get epic gear. Also get heroic epic drops from final boss. Kinda slow progression. But finally. you can start raiding. After how many weeks? More than a couple.
Now look at Wrath and Vanilla Rift. Ding 80 (50 in Rift) Do a few dailys work on crafting a bit and be raid ready in 2 days.
Why did Rift last 3 years with <1/4 the population that SWTOR or any previous failed MMO had before it went F2P? How is EVE still going? FFXI? I highly doubt FFXIV will have less subs than any of those any time soon. Rift didnt have EA or SoE or any other publisher over their heads. They didnt have dillusions of knocking out WoW and getting millions of subs. Pretty much exactly what Yoshi has said many times before ... look it up. It wasnt until they had financial trouble from failed *gasp* f2p games like EoN and Defiance that Trion (Rift) announced f2p.<br /> Keep preeching your f2p garbage, to this day MMOs keep releasing p2p and only convert after bombing horribly. SE hasnt done so yet, and youre a fool if you think FFXI wouldnt make more $ as f2p, specially now with all the freeloaders around. Yet they havent. SE, has a thing for quality, immersive RPG games. They may succeed or they may fail (*cough* FF13) but they give it their all, every time. Its no different with MMOs and f2p goes against all of that. They even went as far as remaking this game over just converting to f2p like all the other MMOs out there.
And for the record, games make their money back off box sales usually. Subs go to maintenance and updates as well as profits. FFXIV can run off 1 server in a basement if need be and still be profitable. If they go f2p theyll be pissing off many of their fans who have been happily paid subs since FFXIV and even FFXI. Again, theyre not EA ... they at least try to make it seem like they care specially in the case of ARR. Youre dillusional if you think SE will make this game f2p any time soon after they refused to do so to this day, despite the fact their subs have always been piss poor by todays standards.
It's also in the delivery of that content. Look at WoW. The content consumption race really took off when WoW lifted attunement. In TBC, players subbed for the long haul. In Wrath, they lifted attunement and content became a runaway train.....as is the gear race. I am not telling you to embrace attunement. But I am saying, the more things we had to do in the line of progression, the longer you lasted in the game. Regardless of how you feel about attunement, it made the game last longer. That's a fact.
Look at it this way. (I use TBC as I didn't do raiding in Vanilla WoW just dungeons)
Getting to 70, there was a lot to do before you could raid. Long quest chains that didn't start until you capped. You also needed gear. OK, Lets get to work on that. What's the 1st step? Dungeons. Can't do heroic yet, you don't have Revered Rep with the factions to buy the key. So run regulars for now. Get blue gear.
Now you are ready to progress to Heroics. Run Heroics for a time. Get your rep to exalted with factins to get epic gear. Also get heroic epic drops from final boss. Kinda slow progression. But finally. you can start raiding. After how many weeks? More than a couple.
Now look at Wrath and Vanilla Rift. Ding 80 (50 in Rift) Do a few dailys work on crafting a bit and be raid ready in 2 days.
There is your difference.
Attunement or not, the vast majority of gamers today do not tolerate large amount grinding and barriers to get to the main meat anymore, why did you think WoW was successful in the first place? Because it was casualed, it required less grinding than any other MMORPGs at the time. If MMORPGs today implements the barriers of old MMORPGs, the vast majority of gamers will just look at it, shake their heads then leave, prime example: RIFTs, there was large amount of grinding at launch, it's only after Trion lessened the grind that the subs bleeding slowed down compared to at launch.
As many people here seem to I'm very much looking forward to a sub based game. Not only will this deter a huge amount of the moronic player base from coming into a game and trying to change it's ideas, persona, and general uniqueness but actually enable a decent community.
Let me stop you right there. Can anyone name the biggest, most profitable subscription game out there, and then tell me if it has a great community, and not, instead, a history of some of the worst behavior and biggest trolls ever pulled off in an online game?
Hint: It's WoW.
The idea that subscriptions make a better community is laughable. By far the best communities I've ever been a part of were either B2P or F2P games. There is no proof that sub-based games deter trolling, in fact there's more evidence to the contrary. But go ahead and think what you want, it's not my world that's going to come crashing down when xSephirothX69 kicks you from a group because mommy and daddy let him use their credit card.
not sure how your logic would allow you to believe more trolls will be in a sub based game then a game where all you have to do is download the client and have a valid email.
Im sure you have this evidence to provide all of us correct?
Huh? I already did. It's called World of Warcraft. Never has it been free to play, yet it's known for things like Barrens Chat, that funeral raid, etc. Unless you know of another online game that is as famous for its horrible community.
I never actually said there will be more trolls in sub-based games, just that the evidence there have been so far is pretty compelling.
This has nothing to do with the fact that, even though WoW exists, people STILL BELIEVE P2P's HAVE FEWER TROLLS. The end.
And like someone else said, this game will be B2P eventually, and it won't matter.
As many people here seem to I'm very much looking forward to a sub based game. Not only will this deter a huge amount of the moronic player base from coming into a game and trying to change it's ideas, persona, and general uniqueness but actually enable a decent community.
Let me stop you right there. Can anyone name the biggest, most profitable subscription game out there, and then tell me if it has a great community, and not, instead, a history of some of the worst behavior and biggest trolls ever pulled off in an online game?
Hint: It's WoW.
The idea that subscriptions make a better community is laughable. By far the best communities I've ever been a part of were either B2P or F2P games. There is no proof that sub-based games deter trolling, in fact there's more evidence to the contrary. But go ahead and think what you want, it's not my world that's going to come crashing down when xSephirothX69 kicks you from a group because mommy and daddy let him use their credit card.
not sure how your logic would allow you to believe more trolls will be in a sub based game then a game where all you have to do is download the client and have a valid email.
Im sure you have this evidence to provide all of us correct?
Huh? I already did. It's called World of Warcraft. Never has it been free to play, yet it's known for things like Barrens Chat, that funeral raid, etc. Unless you know of another online game that is as famous for its horrible community.
I never actually said there will be more trolls in sub-based games, just that the evidence there have been so far is pretty compelling.
This has nothing to do with the fact that, even though WoW exists, people STILL BELIEVE P2P's HAVE FEWER TROLLS. The end.
And like someone else said, this game will be B2P eventually, and it won't matter.
If you are allowed to use an old game as anecdotal evidence then so will I, look at FFXI. Guess my crystal ball doesn't agree with yours!
Another thing you yourself admit WOW was one of the "Biggest....games out there" therefore its percentage of trolls WILL be higher than in other games simply because of its size.
My anecdotal evidence at least actually shows some precedence in behavior for the the same company that we are talking about.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
It's also in the delivery of that content. Look at WoW. The content consumption race really took off when WoW lifted attunement. In TBC, players subbed for the long haul. In Wrath, they lifted attunement and content became a runaway train.....as is the gear race. I am not telling you to embrace attunement. But I am saying, the more things we had to do in the line of progression, the longer you lasted in the game. Regardless of how you feel about attunement, it made the game last longer. That's a fact.
Look at it this way. (I use TBC as I didn't do raiding in Vanilla WoW just dungeons)
Getting to 70, there was a lot to do before you could raid. Long quest chains that didn't start until you capped. You also needed gear. OK, Lets get to work on that. What's the 1st step? Dungeons. Can't do heroic yet, you don't have Revered Rep with the factions to buy the key. So run regulars for now. Get blue gear.
Now you are ready to progress to Heroics. Run Heroics for a time. Get your rep to exalted with factins to get epic gear. Also get heroic epic drops from final boss. Kinda slow progression. But finally. you can start raiding. After how many weeks? More than a couple.
Now look at Wrath and Vanilla Rift. Ding 80 (50 in Rift) Do a few dailys work on crafting a bit and be raid ready in 2 days.
There is your difference.
Attunement or not, the vast majority of gamers today do not tolerate large amount grinding and barriers to get to the main meat anymore, why did you think WoW was successful in the first place? Because it was casualed, it required less grinding than any other MMORPGs at the time. If MMORPGs today implements the barriers of old MMORPGs, the vast majority of gamers will just look at it, shake their heads then leave, prime example: RIFTs, there was large amount of grinding at launch, it's only after Trion lessened the grind that the subs bleeding slowed down compared to at launch.
There is a balance that has been lost.
Like it or not, a choice has to be made. Slow down and go back to grinding out content and have games you play for years. Or keep up with this fast paced high burnout, high rotation through the latest F2P/B2P MMO that gets old in a month. Can't have it all.
What does the company have to do with the community? You're not even presenting the same argument.
Look, I don't care if the community ends up being the best community ever, but the fact that people think payment method either encourages or deters trolls and bad behavior is bizarre to me, and statistically inaccurate. It's game mechanics that ultimately cause players to act out. P2P example: WoW. F2P example: League of Legends. P2P gone F2P examples: TERA, SWTOR.
All examples of terrible communities, regardless of payment. I think I'm wasting my breath here.
Like it or not, a choice has to be made. Slow down and go back to grinding out content and have games you play for years. Or keep up with this fast paced high burnout, high rotation through the latest F2P/B2P MMO that gets old in a month. Can't have it all.
There're no balance anymore, nowaday there're simply too many games to play and many of them provide quick burst of fun: Dota 2, LoL,TF2, COD, BF, War thunder,etc...., it's rare to see people sticking to one game anymore. Most would log in, see the amount of grinding required to get to the fun bit or to get the reward, shake their heads then log off then go to the game that provide quick fun. There's a reason instant gratification is almost universal in today's games.
This "grinding to get to the fun/reward" is also the reason why P2P MMORPGs are dying and F2P are thriving, most people nowaday play MMORPGs very casually and when they find it takes too long and/or too much to get anything done in MMORPGs to get their money worth, they just unsubscribe, with F2P or B2P they're free to quit and return whenever they want.
Here is what I see happening and I say this only because games are making so much more money with F2P and B2P games, other then WoW and they are unique on to them selves.
FF14 over the next few months. Stabilize a game can take 2-6 months. Server and class balance, MMO hoppers all that junk that makes the start of a MMO a lot of work. So you dont want to grow to fast or you lose quality of service. Also the huge spike in players before servers level off and you mostly have the fans that want to stay and play. FF14 will make the sale of the box and 15 bucks a month off them no matter what so what start F2P? Also the spike sales before the MMO hoppers leave, thats a lot of cash. Why go F2P to start as there will be lots of sales at the start.
6-12 months later things are balanced and server population has settled in and the fans are paying for their game and playing end game. Time to move to F2P with a model much like SoE has. You can play level 1-max level and F2P works great and you dont see anything negative in your game play till you are max level and playing with the max level community. To be able to use the best items and get the best skills and spells you need to pay monthly.
That means the fans who have been paying all this time wont want to play F2P as thats a step down in service, so that money is locked in. New players get to get hooked on the game and when they have a huge time investment they most likely will P2P so they can join the top level community. Chuck people a bone for their subs like SWToR and SoE does. Some game coins for keeping their sub and everyone is happy and FF14 gets to grow and keep people paying and also grow the business with F2P. Its gona happen. I would bet my first born on it!!!!!
Don't really know why people bother here with f2p... You should be on SE forums, MMORPG.com wont help you much. There is one petition going on some time from Beta forums for SE to make game F2P with premium options, but I don't think it will help... http://www.petitiononline.com/13035953/petition.html
Here is what I see happening and I say this only because games are making so much more money with F2P and B2P games, other then WoW and they are unique on to them selves.
FF14 over the next few months. Stabilize a game can take 2-6 months. Server and class balance, MMO hoppers all that junk that makes the start of a MMO a lot of work. So you dont want to grow to fast or you lose quality of service. Also the huge spike in players before servers level off and you mostly have the fans that want to stay and play. FF14 will make the sale of the box and 15 bucks a month off them no matter what so what start F2P? Also the spike sales before the MMO hoppers leave, thats a lot of cash. Why go F2P to start as there will be lots of sales at the start.
6-12 months later things are balanced and server population has settled in and the fans are paying for their game and playing end game. Time to move to F2P with a model much like SoE has. You can play level 1-max level and F2P works great and you dont see anything negative in your game play till you are max level and playing with the max level community. To be able to use the best items and get the best skills and spells you need to pay monthly.
That means the fans who have been paying all this time wont want to play F2P as thats a step down in service, so that money is locked in. New players get to get hooked on the game and when they have a huge time investment they most likely will P2P so they can join the top level community. Chuck people a bone for their subs like SWToR and SoE does. Some game coins for keeping their sub and everyone is happy and FF14 gets to grow and keep people paying and also grow the business with F2P. Its gona happen. I would bet my first born on it!!!!!
Won't happen. SE's isn't that company. No other game company has allowed players to play for FREE for an entire year while they fixed the game. They absorbed the cost. Time and time again, they said this is a numbered series in the FF universe and they cannot let it go free to play. Out of pride they might keep it afloat as P2P for a few years. BTW - this is a worse case scenario.
In terms of what I think will happen? My guess is that his game will settle to around 500-750k paying subscribers within one year. This includes PS3 players, NA, Europe and Japan. I think Japan will probably have around 400k players and the remaining will be NA/EU.
Some of you might not know this fact, but YoshiP said that from the time he took over FFXIV to the time, the servers went down in August of 2012 for version 1.0, the subscriber base TRIPLED! This is significant for two reasons, (1) the game was P2P when the servers went down; and (2) the game was getting better and better where people felt it justified the subscription price.
I remember a survey done 2 years ago, at its lowest point, FFXIV had 40k members playing. Now triple that and you had 120k. Are you guys really arguing that this game can't get 500k+ subscribers after the MASSIVE changes that have gone into the game. If FFXIV 1.0 could get 120k+ members when NO ONE wanted to play it, then I think this bodes well for FFXIV 2.0.
Some of you might not be aware, but the box set collector's edition of FFXIV has SOLD OUT. Some of you might not know that FFXIV, the digital download version is currently No. 1 on Amazon's PC Role playing games and digital role playing games.
This website has had FFXIV with the most "hits" than any other game the last 2 months and that's ALL BECAUSE of word of mouth. I don't know how long this game will last, but i'm very confident it will not go free to play for years, if ever. You're going to have a lot of people playing this and it will never feel empty.
There's a reason I havn't played GW2 for 5 months... it's called FFXIV Beta.
Edit: BTW, GW2 can have 2 million players and FFXIV 500k, it doesn't mean GW2 is more successful or profitable. If the average player in GW2 spend $3 at the cash shop, that's less than a payscriber for FFXIV. GW2 can have 10 million players, if they'r not buying things from the cash shop, GW2 isn't making any money.
I think it's hilarious how much discussion this whole "F2P vs P2P" thread has, when Yoshi P said it will never ever ever be free to play, in a massive blog post that everyone can read, it has his reasoning up for all to see.
Trying to create content fast enough to keep players from dropping subscription is a losing battle, especially with how expensive game development is these days. The key is rather to provide the means for players to entertain each other. For all its faults, this is something that was clearly a priority in Eve. Both in pvp and in the economy, the game strives to make content out of player interaction. It is both a wonderful and awful example of this...Despite player interaction being central to it, the game still is an incredibly lonely affair...Or maybe that's just the impression given from floating through space.
This player interaction is something that f2p struggles greatly with...The business model doesn't seem particularly concerned with keeping players for months. Rather, their true nature can be seen by looking at the Chinese F2P games, where vast numbers of servers are constantly created. This ensures that each server is small enough that all the players have a realistic shot at becoming the "best" on the server, a chance that they can magnify if they just put in a little money...
I was quite fond of DDO...pity the game didn't want to let the players play. If ever there was a game that showcased the stupidity of separate servers/raid timers, it was that one. With the addition of the epics, there was so much fun endgame content, but it doesn't matter how fun a dungeon is...If you can't say "Hey, I have some time before class, I would like to do ---" and run a dungeon, and instead have to coordinate with your guild to run the dungeon the same time every 3 days likes it's routine work, then there's something seriously wrong with your game.
Guild Wars, having a similar hub + instance system to DDO(only much bigger), managed to make a game in which you could conceivably play with every other player in the game. It also had its issues, but I respect them tremendously for that. And even now, FF14 is insisting on multiple servers(okay, so FF14 is a bit different since it isn't instanced...?)
The sad reality is that a lot of supposed MMOs play like single-player games until the endgame, at which point they do the DDO thing of artificially restricting how much you can play and with whom. Contrast this with the FPSes and RTSes, where you can play as much as you want, whenever you want, against anybody you want. Counterstrike, TF, LoL, etc. Games that aren't afraid to be...fun. You remember that thing, fun?
Good on GW1(haven't played 2) also for building such wonderful PvP(Random Arenas? No way of grinding or buying power? Hall of Heroes? Alliance battles? All these things were incredibly fun(though an RA-HoH would've been nice)). I'm not saying that pvp is the only way to use player interaction to give an MMO staying power, but it's certainly the easiest.
So, is FF14(or any MMO other than That One) worth a subscription fee? Well, for the months I was playing them regularly, I would've had no problem paying 20$ a month for LoL or TF2. After skipping FF11 out of disgust(SNES:3 original FF game worlds, PS1:4 original FF game worlds(tactics), PS2: 2 original FF game worlds and...FF11.), and FF14 out of a mix of residual disgust, lack of time, indifference to MMOs, and finally reports of it being the first genuinely bad Final Fantasy(and one of a very small handful of bad Square/Enix games), I'm in a spot right now where I intend to buy and subscribe to the game indefinitely regardless of any other factors.
I hate Square for a lot of things, but I don't want to see them go belly-up. For example, I hate them for the amount of money they poured into creating and marketing FF7(Please, go look up the FF7 development/marketing budget yourself.) , causing..oh, how did Yahtzee put it..."the blind insistence on empty spectacle, above all else, to make AAA development all the more elitist and prohibitively expensive." This applies to a lesser extent to the following Final Fantasies as well. I hate them for then somehow making these games feel smaller with each iteration. FFX springs to mind here...without a worldmap, the game felt tiny. FFXIII's abandonment of that mainstay of RPGs, the town, as well as a lack of any meaningful back story for any of the characters except the two "sisters"(the subtle ambiguity of the "sisters" relationship by contrast is one of my favorite parts of the game. Games are normally so clumsy at dealing with it, either straight up pandering at one extreme or mocking at the other with no room in between. Maybe this, like Indoctrination, was completely unintentional, but as with ME3, I don't really care if they meant to or not. It's an interesting point to an otherwise dull and lifeless game.)
But I don't want to watch Square die, or at least stop releasing internationally, because the world has gone hyper-cynical. For over a decade, people have trolled and trolled their games, half-seriously subjecting any game carrying the FF label to harsher criticism than it deserves. Suddenly, FF8 and FFX are considered bad because...? Well, because everyone knows they're bad, I guess? And FFX-2 becomes that awful game we don't talk about, with a ratio of 6 minutes of awesome to 30 hours of terrible because...well, that's the internet's consensus, right? I would cite reviews and metacritic scores, except as we all know, metacritic scores are meaningless(when it's a game you don't like.) Games judged more harshly because of the company that produced it or the franchise that it's attached to...I swear, if Square had released Demon's Souls, it too would've been dismissed by the greater masses. And Dark Souls would've been shot down as Square just trying to make more money with a sequel. And no, it's not hypocritical to say as much when I'm more likely to buy a game just because it's been made by them. I like the products that a company produces, I continue to buy from them. FF13 was disappointing, but still a net positive.
So yeah..I'm an adult now, I make a decent living, and I don't really spend money on anything. FF14's success is important to a company that has provided me with a lot of good memories; I'm somewhat wary of MMOs, but I feel enough customer loyalty to give this a shot. What's 250$ a year? But as to whether I would recommend to anyone else to subscribe to a game if it were made by a company that I didn't know anything about? It goes back to how well implemented player interaction is. If it's a glorified single-player game, give it a pass. If divided servers/raid timers make it difficult to find people to play the content with, give it a pass. If there's no content that actually encourages meaningful player interaction(pvp, gimmicky raids, mini-games, cooperative crafting, poetry contests?, etc.), give it a pass.
But if a game is such that you can log-in, at any time, and jump into a fun group activity...pvp, texas hold-em, dynamic world events, whatever...and that repeating these things remains fun(like LoL, CS, and TF2 can keep entertaining people for years), then 20$ a month seems fine to me.
Well that was longer than I thought it would be...
This is the same circumstances that TOR was under. All the players will swear up and down that this one will be different and in 6 months it will go B2P. We all know it is a fantasy land to make a themepark that can hold interest for months on end and charge a sub. People will lie to themselves and talk about how great it is going to be as a sub, but it will go B2P or it will disappear in a few months.
I wonder if Square will survive this...
You are taking circumstances that surrounded TOR and transposing them onto FF14 where they mey not be the same.
EA/BW spend a fortune on a gimmick. They founded the entire premise of their MMORPG on a solo player feature. Almost the full entirety of the game's overly expensive content was experienced in a week. How is a game like that supposed to command a subscription?
As I understand it, this game was designed from the endgame back. Just calling it "AAA Fantasy Theme Park" (ie WoW clone) is not why AAA titles have been failing to keep subs. They have been failing because they simply don't have more than 2-3 weeks of content.
I would say the circumstances are worse for FFXIV since the first one had to be changed to B2P and eventually taken offline and scraped because of how bad it was. The game has a very bad rep and people in this community do not forget things like that. I hope P2P works out but i honestly doubt it.
I think it's hilarious how much discussion this whole "F2P vs P2P" thread has, when Yoshi P said it will never ever ever be free to play, in a massive blog post that everyone can read, it has his reasoning up for all to see.
If they get the numbers to support teh game via Sub's, this will probably remain true. If they do not, the choice would be closing the game down or attempting a F2P model.
Personally, I will be Subbing this game.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone www.spankybus.com -3d Artist & Compositor -Writer -Professional Amature
I think it's hilarious how much discussion this whole "F2P vs P2P" thread has, when Yoshi P said it will never ever ever be free to play, in a massive blog post that everyone can read, it has his reasoning up for all to see.
If they get the numbers to support teh game via Sub's, this will probably remain true. If they do not, the choice would be closing the game down or attempting a F2P model.
Personally, I will be Subbing this game.
Never is a long time, FFXI is still sub based after almost 9 years.
Past experience tells me that FFXIV will follow suit, and be subscription based for its entire life span.
Here is what I see happening and I say this only because games are making so much more money with F2P and B2P games, other then WoW and they are unique on to them selves.
FF14 over the next few months. Stabilize a game can take 2-6 months. Server and class balance, MMO hoppers all that junk that makes the start of a MMO a lot of work. So you dont want to grow to fast or you lose quality of service. Also the huge spike in players before servers level off and you mostly have the fans that want to stay and play. FF14 will make the sale of the box and 15 bucks a month off them no matter what so what start F2P? Also the spike sales before the MMO hoppers leave, thats a lot of cash. Why go F2P to start as there will be lots of sales at the start.
6-12 months later things are balanced and server population has settled in and the fans are paying for their game and playing end game. Time to move to F2P with a model much like SoE has. You can play level 1-max level and F2P works great and you dont see anything negative in your game play till you are max level and playing with the max level community. To be able to use the best items and get the best skills and spells you need to pay monthly.
That means the fans who have been paying all this time wont want to play F2P as thats a step down in service, so that money is locked in. New players get to get hooked on the game and when they have a huge time investment they most likely will P2P so they can join the top level community. Chuck people a bone for their subs like SWToR and SoE does. Some game coins for keeping their sub and everyone is happy and FF14 gets to grow and keep people paying and also grow the business with F2P. Its gona happen. I would bet my first born on it!!!!!
Won't happen. SE's isn't that company. No other game company has allowed players to play for FREE for an entire year while they fixed the game. They absorbed the cost. Time and time again, they said this is a numbered series in the FF universe and they cannot let it go free to play. Out of pride they might keep it afloat as P2P for a few years. BTW - this is a worse case scenario.
In terms of what I think will happen? My guess is that his game will settle to around 500-750k paying subscribers within one year. This includes PS3 players, NA, Europe and Japan. I think Japan will probably have around 400k players and the remaining will be NA/EU.
Some of you might not know this fact, but YoshiP said that from the time he took over FFXIV to the time, the servers went down in August of 2012 for version 1.0, the subscriber base TRIPLED! This is significant for two reasons, (1) the game was P2P when the servers went down; and (2) the game was getting better and better where people felt it justified the subscription price.
I remember a survey done 2 years ago, at its lowest point, FFXIV had 40k members playing. Now triple that and you had 120k. Are you guys really arguing that this game can't get 500k+ subscribers after the MASSIVE changes that have gone into the game. If FFXIV 1.0 could get 120k+ members when NO ONE wanted to play it, then I think this bodes well for FFXIV 2.0.
Some of you might not be aware, but the box set collector's edition of FFXIV has SOLD OUT. Some of you might not know that FFXIV, the digital download version is currently No. 1 on Amazon's PC Role playing games and digital role playing games.
This website has had FFXIV with the most "hits" than any other game the last 2 months and that's ALL BECAUSE of word of mouth. I don't know how long this game will last, but i'm very confident it will not go free to play for years, if ever. You're going to have a lot of people playing this and it will never feel empty.
There's a reason I havn't played GW2 for 5 months... it's called FFXIV Beta.
Edit: BTW, GW2 can have 2 million players and FFXIV 500k, it doesn't mean GW2 is more successful or profitable. If the average player in GW2 spend $3 at the cash shop, that's less than a payscriber for FFXIV. GW2 can have 10 million players, if they'r not buying things from the cash shop, GW2 isn't making any money.
See ya in 8-13 months to see who eats their words. I would put money down on it going my way. The market is in the middle of a quantum shift. It will be change or die. Unless you hold a very unique corner of the market. FF is not that game as awesome as it is.
Comments
With free to play the company is far more motivated to develop that which generates revenue, that is, they put their effort into new cash shop items rather than new content. Sure they will add some new content while a game is booming but as soon as it has a tough quarter, any new work on deep content seems to dry up and you are left with a few events that mostly highlight new items being added to the cash shop.
In F2P, content is the first casualty.
All die, so die well.
I am quite satisfied with it being sub based. Fortunately I have enjoyed the last beta, and for me it is worth a sub. The fact that I dont find buy to play (except tsw) or f2p worth playing, for the reasons stated above, Im happy to see this title go the subscription route. I hope it means that they will develop and add content of high quality to retain their subs, rather than go the, to my mind, silly route of cashshop randomness in order to generate monies.
Personally I have never liked f2p and I really dont agree with Smedley and the likes when they claim sub based mmo's are a thing of the past. I think there is room for a few AA titles with subs, that can cater to those of us who have less than stellar views/experience with the f2p market.
Here's one minor, but very clear difference between F2P/B2P and P2P and why I prefer P2P.
Guild Wars 2 (the best game for its pricing model, B2P requires that you pay money to increase inventory space, either on your character or your "bank" across all characters. Everytime you roll a new character and was more bags,.... pay up.
FFXIV. Armory Chest, 25 spaces PER armor slot. In addition to 100+ inventory, +crystals/shards as a separate catagory, +360 Slots on your retainers (180 each) plus an Armoire in the Inn that you can store seasonal events and special armor (I.e. Artifact).
Now, let's compare something else. Content in GW2 is every few weeks. It's fleeting. You get seasonal events and limited time dungeons. Maybe a limited time puzzle. It's meant to be consumed little at a time. Leave for a month, come back whenever you want. This model is very appealing and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I have very few issus with the "cash shop" in GW2.
But what if you're someone who enjoys very "beefy" content that is means to be consumed 3 months at a time. I believe that the only types of companies that can provide this are P2P games. They know, within a general ballpark, what their revenue is each month. They design content for CONTENT sake, they don't design content and cash shop items. I want to pay $12.99 a month and not be a second class citizen. Everyone is on the same boat. Everyone has access to everything. Everyone has the same amount of bag space.
I can see an argument being made for games like Tera/Rift/TSW because they have content you can consume based on going F2P recently. But honestly, do you see yourself playing those games for years? Will the F2P model give you content every 3 months, or will they give you mini patches followed by more cash shop items. That remains to be seen.
As for me, I want predictably paced, solid content, at fixed intervals with AAA polish and quality. FFXIV offers me that.
Yes. No. Okay. You're incorrect; SW:TOR and TERA, for instance, both launched as AAA subscription-based MMORPGs far more recently. I take it you were being sarcastic though.
It's also in the delivery of that content. Look at WoW. The content consumption race really took off when WoW lifted attunement. In TBC, players subbed for the long haul. In Wrath, they lifted attunement and content became a runaway train.....as is the gear race.
I am not telling you to embrace attunement. But I am saying, the more things we had to do in the line of progression, the longer you lasted in the game. Regardless of how you feel about attunement, it made the game last longer. That's a fact.
Look at it this way. (I use TBC as I didn't do raiding in Vanilla WoW just dungeons)
Getting to 70, there was a lot to do before you could raid. Long quest chains that didn't start until you capped. You also needed gear. OK, Lets get to work on that. What's the 1st step? Dungeons. Can't do heroic yet, you don't have Revered Rep with the factions to buy the key. So run regulars for now. Get blue gear.
Now you are ready to progress to Heroics. Run Heroics for a time. Get your rep to exalted with factins to get epic gear. Also get heroic epic drops from final boss. Kinda slow progression. But finally. you can start raiding. After how many weeks? More than a couple.
Now look at Wrath and Vanilla Rift. Ding 80 (50 in Rift) Do a few dailys work on crafting a bit and be raid ready in 2 days.
There is your difference.
Keep preeching your f2p garbage, to this day MMOs keep releasing p2p and only convert after bombing horribly. SE hasnt done so yet, and youre a fool if you think FFXI wouldnt make more $ as f2p, specially now with all the freeloaders around. Yet they havent. SE, has a thing for quality, immersive RPG games. They may succeed or they may fail (*cough* FF13) but they give it their all, every time. Its no different with MMOs and f2p goes against all of that. They even went as far as remaking this game over just converting to f2p like all the other MMOs out there.
And for the record, games make their money back off box sales usually. Subs go to maintenance and updates as well as profits. FFXIV can run off 1 server in a basement if need be and still be profitable. If they go f2p theyll be pissing off many of their fans who have been happily paid subs since FFXIV and even FFXI. Again, theyre not EA ... they at least try to make it seem like they care specially in the case of ARR. Youre dillusional if you think SE will make this game f2p any time soon after they refused to do so to this day, despite the fact their subs have always been piss poor by todays standards.
Huh? I already did. It's called World of Warcraft. Never has it been free to play, yet it's known for things like Barrens Chat, that funeral raid, etc. Unless you know of another online game that is as famous for its horrible community.
I never actually said there will be more trolls in sub-based games, just that the evidence there have been so far is pretty compelling.
This has nothing to do with the fact that, even though WoW exists, people STILL BELIEVE P2P's HAVE FEWER TROLLS. The end.
And like someone else said, this game will be B2P eventually, and it won't matter.
If you are allowed to use an old game as anecdotal evidence then so will I, look at FFXI. Guess my crystal ball doesn't agree with yours!
Another thing you yourself admit WOW was one of the "Biggest....games out there" therefore its percentage of trolls WILL be higher than in other games simply because of its size.
My anecdotal evidence at least actually shows some precedence in behavior for the the same company that we are talking about.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
There is a balance that has been lost.
Like it or not, a choice has to be made. Slow down and go back to grinding out content and have games you play for years. Or keep up with this fast paced high burnout, high rotation through the latest F2P/B2P MMO that gets old in a month. Can't have it all.
What does the company have to do with the community? You're not even presenting the same argument.
Look, I don't care if the community ends up being the best community ever, but the fact that people think payment method either encourages or deters trolls and bad behavior is bizarre to me, and statistically inaccurate. It's game mechanics that ultimately cause players to act out. P2P example: WoW. F2P example: League of Legends. P2P gone F2P examples: TERA, SWTOR.
All examples of terrible communities, regardless of payment. I think I'm wasting my breath here.
There're no balance anymore, nowaday there're simply too many games to play and many of them provide quick burst of fun: Dota 2, LoL,TF2, COD, BF, War thunder,etc...., it's rare to see people sticking to one game anymore. Most would log in, see the amount of grinding required to get to the fun bit or to get the reward, shake their heads then log off then go to the game that provide quick fun. There's a reason instant gratification is almost universal in today's games.
This "grinding to get to the fun/reward" is also the reason why P2P MMORPGs are dying and F2P are thriving, most people nowaday play MMORPGs very casually and when they find it takes too long and/or too much to get anything done in MMORPGs to get their money worth, they just unsubscribe, with F2P or B2P they're free to quit and return whenever they want.
Here is what I see happening and I say this only because games are making so much more money with F2P and B2P games, other then WoW and they are unique on to them selves.
FF14 over the next few months. Stabilize a game can take 2-6 months. Server and class balance, MMO hoppers all that junk that makes the start of a MMO a lot of work. So you dont want to grow to fast or you lose quality of service. Also the huge spike in players before servers level off and you mostly have the fans that want to stay and play. FF14 will make the sale of the box and 15 bucks a month off them no matter what so what start F2P? Also the spike sales before the MMO hoppers leave, thats a lot of cash. Why go F2P to start as there will be lots of sales at the start.
6-12 months later things are balanced and server population has settled in and the fans are paying for their game and playing end game. Time to move to F2P with a model much like SoE has. You can play level 1-max level and F2P works great and you dont see anything negative in your game play till you are max level and playing with the max level community. To be able to use the best items and get the best skills and spells you need to pay monthly.
That means the fans who have been paying all this time wont want to play F2P as thats a step down in service, so that money is locked in. New players get to get hooked on the game and when they have a huge time investment they most likely will P2P so they can join the top level community. Chuck people a bone for their subs like SWToR and SoE does. Some game coins for keeping their sub and everyone is happy and FF14 gets to grow and keep people paying and also grow the business with F2P. Its gona happen. I would bet my first born on it!!!!!
Don't really know why people bother here with f2p... You should be on SE forums, MMORPG.com wont help you much. There is one petition going on some time from Beta forums for SE to make game F2P with premium options, but I don't think it will help...
http://www.petitiononline.com/13035953/petition.html
Edit: Thank me later...
Won't happen. SE's isn't that company. No other game company has allowed players to play for FREE for an entire year while they fixed the game. They absorbed the cost. Time and time again, they said this is a numbered series in the FF universe and they cannot let it go free to play. Out of pride they might keep it afloat as P2P for a few years. BTW - this is a worse case scenario.
In terms of what I think will happen? My guess is that his game will settle to around 500-750k paying subscribers within one year. This includes PS3 players, NA, Europe and Japan. I think Japan will probably have around 400k players and the remaining will be NA/EU.
Some of you might not know this fact, but YoshiP said that from the time he took over FFXIV to the time, the servers went down in August of 2012 for version 1.0, the subscriber base TRIPLED! This is significant for two reasons, (1) the game was P2P when the servers went down; and (2) the game was getting better and better where people felt it justified the subscription price.
I remember a survey done 2 years ago, at its lowest point, FFXIV had 40k members playing. Now triple that and you had 120k. Are you guys really arguing that this game can't get 500k+ subscribers after the MASSIVE changes that have gone into the game. If FFXIV 1.0 could get 120k+ members when NO ONE wanted to play it, then I think this bodes well for FFXIV 2.0.
Some of you might not be aware, but the box set collector's edition of FFXIV has SOLD OUT. Some of you might not know that FFXIV, the digital download version is currently No. 1 on Amazon's PC Role playing games and digital role playing games.
This website has had FFXIV with the most "hits" than any other game the last 2 months and that's ALL BECAUSE of word of mouth. I don't know how long this game will last, but i'm very confident it will not go free to play for years, if ever. You're going to have a lot of people playing this and it will never feel empty.
There's a reason I havn't played GW2 for 5 months... it's called FFXIV Beta.
Edit: BTW, GW2 can have 2 million players and FFXIV 500k, it doesn't mean GW2 is more successful or profitable. If the average player in GW2 spend $3 at the cash shop, that's less than a payscriber for FFXIV. GW2 can have 10 million players, if they'r not buying things from the cash shop, GW2 isn't making any money.
I think it's hilarious how much discussion this whole "F2P vs P2P" thread has, when Yoshi P said it will never ever ever be free to play, in a massive blog post that everyone can read, it has his reasoning up for all to see.
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/mmorpg/yoshi-p-defends-ffxiv-subscription/
/thread
Trying to create content fast enough to keep players from dropping subscription is a losing battle, especially with how expensive game development is these days. The key is rather to provide the means for players to entertain each other. For all its faults, this is something that was clearly a priority in Eve. Both in pvp and in the economy, the game strives to make content out of player interaction. It is both a wonderful and awful example of this...Despite player interaction being central to it, the game still is an incredibly lonely affair...Or maybe that's just the impression given from floating through space.
This player interaction is something that f2p struggles greatly with...The business model doesn't seem particularly concerned with keeping players for months. Rather, their true nature can be seen by looking at the Chinese F2P games, where vast numbers of servers are constantly created. This ensures that each server is small enough that all the players have a realistic shot at becoming the "best" on the server, a chance that they can magnify if they just put in a little money...
I was quite fond of DDO...pity the game didn't want to let the players play. If ever there was a game that showcased the stupidity of separate servers/raid timers, it was that one. With the addition of the epics, there was so much fun endgame content, but it doesn't matter how fun a dungeon is...If you can't say "Hey, I have some time before class, I would like to do ---" and run a dungeon, and instead have to coordinate with your guild to run the dungeon the same time every 3 days likes it's routine work, then there's something seriously wrong with your game.
Guild Wars, having a similar hub + instance system to DDO(only much bigger), managed to make a game in which you could conceivably play with every other player in the game. It also had its issues, but I respect them tremendously for that. And even now, FF14 is insisting on multiple servers(okay, so FF14 is a bit different since it isn't instanced...?)
The sad reality is that a lot of supposed MMOs play like single-player games until the endgame, at which point they do the DDO thing of artificially restricting how much you can play and with whom. Contrast this with the FPSes and RTSes, where you can play as much as you want, whenever you want, against anybody you want. Counterstrike, TF, LoL, etc. Games that aren't afraid to be...fun. You remember that thing, fun?
Good on GW1(haven't played 2) also for building such wonderful PvP(Random Arenas? No way of grinding or buying power? Hall of Heroes? Alliance battles? All these things were incredibly fun(though an RA-HoH would've been nice)). I'm not saying that pvp is the only way to use player interaction to give an MMO staying power, but it's certainly the easiest.
So, is FF14(or any MMO other than That One) worth a subscription fee? Well, for the months I was playing them regularly, I would've had no problem paying 20$ a month for LoL or TF2. After skipping FF11 out of disgust(SNES:3 original FF game worlds, PS1:4 original FF game worlds(tactics), PS2: 2 original FF game worlds and...FF11.), and FF14 out of a mix of residual disgust, lack of time, indifference to MMOs, and finally reports of it being the first genuinely bad Final Fantasy(and one of a very small handful of bad Square/Enix games), I'm in a spot right now where I intend to buy and subscribe to the game indefinitely regardless of any other factors.
I hate Square for a lot of things, but I don't want to see them go belly-up. For example, I hate them for the amount of money they poured into creating and marketing FF7(Please, go look up the FF7 development/marketing budget yourself.) , causing..oh, how did Yahtzee put it..."the blind insistence on empty spectacle, above all else, to make AAA development all the more elitist and prohibitively expensive." This applies to a lesser extent to the following Final Fantasies as well. I hate them for then somehow making these games feel smaller with each iteration. FFX springs to mind here...without a worldmap, the game felt tiny. FFXIII's abandonment of that mainstay of RPGs, the town, as well as a lack of any meaningful back story for any of the characters except the two "sisters"(the subtle ambiguity of the "sisters" relationship by contrast is one of my favorite parts of the game. Games are normally so clumsy at dealing with it, either straight up pandering at one extreme or mocking at the other with no room in between. Maybe this, like Indoctrination, was completely unintentional, but as with ME3, I don't really care if they meant to or not. It's an interesting point to an otherwise dull and lifeless game.)
But I don't want to watch Square die, or at least stop releasing internationally, because the world has gone hyper-cynical. For over a decade, people have trolled and trolled their games, half-seriously subjecting any game carrying the FF label to harsher criticism than it deserves. Suddenly, FF8 and FFX are considered bad because...? Well, because everyone knows they're bad, I guess? And FFX-2 becomes that awful game we don't talk about, with a ratio of 6 minutes of awesome to 30 hours of terrible because...well, that's the internet's consensus, right? I would cite reviews and metacritic scores, except as we all know, metacritic scores are meaningless(when it's a game you don't like.) Games judged more harshly because of the company that produced it or the franchise that it's attached to...I swear, if Square had released Demon's Souls, it too would've been dismissed by the greater masses. And Dark Souls would've been shot down as Square just trying to make more money with a sequel. And no, it's not hypocritical to say as much when I'm more likely to buy a game just because it's been made by them. I like the products that a company produces, I continue to buy from them. FF13 was disappointing, but still a net positive.
So yeah..I'm an adult now, I make a decent living, and I don't really spend money on anything. FF14's success is important to a company that has provided me with a lot of good memories; I'm somewhat wary of MMOs, but I feel enough customer loyalty to give this a shot. What's 250$ a year? But as to whether I would recommend to anyone else to subscribe to a game if it were made by a company that I didn't know anything about? It goes back to how well implemented player interaction is. If it's a glorified single-player game, give it a pass. If divided servers/raid timers make it difficult to find people to play the content with, give it a pass. If there's no content that actually encourages meaningful player interaction(pvp, gimmicky raids, mini-games, cooperative crafting, poetry contests?, etc.), give it a pass.
But if a game is such that you can log-in, at any time, and jump into a fun group activity...pvp, texas hold-em, dynamic world events, whatever...and that repeating these things remains fun(like LoL, CS, and TF2 can keep entertaining people for years), then 20$ a month seems fine to me.
Well that was longer than I thought it would be...
tl;dr: If it's fun, go go subscription!
I agree, I'd rather play a game where everyone pays their fair share to keep it running.
I would say the circumstances are worse for FFXIV since the first one had to be changed to B2P and eventually taken offline and scraped because of how bad it was. The game has a very bad rep and people in this community do not forget things like that. I hope P2P works out but i honestly doubt it.
Never is a very long time.
If they get the numbers to support teh game via Sub's, this will probably remain true. If they do not, the choice would be closing the game down or attempting a F2P model.
Personally, I will be Subbing this game.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
Never is a long time, FFXI is still sub based after almost 9 years.
Past experience tells me that FFXIV will follow suit, and be subscription based for its entire life span.
See ya in 8-13 months to see who eats their words. I would put money down on it going my way. The market is in the middle of a quantum shift. It will be change or die. Unless you hold a very unique corner of the market. FF is not that game as awesome as it is.
There are 928390121 themepark, PvE centric MMORPGs.
There are 2 succesful, subscription based MMOs;
- one of them is a themepark MMORPG,
- and the other is a sci-fi, PvP centric, full sandbox...
Good luck trying to run another succesful, sub-based, themepark MMORPG.