I think it's interesting that people who want to pay a subscription fee today was called the "minority" earlier in the thread. The people that sub WoW clearly makes that untrue. Yes, WoW is successful, even if I don't particularly enjoy that game. People WILL pay for quality. Therefore, I can only conclude that, the payment model depends on the quality of game. If you have a ****** game with cheap thrills for a short journey, F2P is your financial ticket. It's why the acronym F2P brings up that feeling. This misguided idea that "the people" don't want to pay sounds silly. DLC would have ended a long time ago.
When you purchase a season pass for a single player game with some multiplayer functions, they usually ask for a flat fee of around 20-50 dollars. If you purchase the DLC separately, you'd probably spend twice as much. Therefore, it comes down to the company convincing us that it's a worthwhile investment. For an extremely popular game, it's an easy sell. If the devs deliver on quality, the fans are more than willing to invest knowing that they'll get the future updates etc for "free." My point is, that initial all encompassing fee is the consumer's way of telling the devs, "I trust that you'll deliver." It's better to get people to pay for it all upfront, than to release one at a time and have the sales fluctuate negatively in the long run. *Obvious right?* There are people who don't care about MP and won't pay for it. In the end, it's up to the consumer to evaluate his spending and decide if he'll stick around long enough to get his money's worth.
This brings me to the P2P model. Every time you pay that monthly fee, you do it because you are satisfied with the quality you receive. Every month, your payment tells the devs that you want to be there. When a company stops getting that fee from a large percentage of it's subscribers, that tells them, people don't want to be there. *Obvious right?* So, my question is, on what planet is a free to play model a good sign? Good things are almost never free, and free things are almost never good. What's convincing people to passionately defend that business model? Free to play right out of the gate, gives the impression that your content won't be supported by a p2p model. Therefore you must rely on micro-transactions to make money.
What the Free to play advocates have stated clearly, was their uncertainty in FFXIV:ARR succes. *Obvious right?* Therefore, they aren't satisfied with the quality of the FFXIV product and don't feel comfortable paying the fee. I can only conclude *Opinion alert* that they want to experience all the game has to offer, without a financial loss. They aren't willing to take that risk. They bring up all these points about whales, casual buyers, and freeloaders. Is it just me, or don't they already sound like they're probably going to fit into the freeloader demographic?
I can understand that a person wont spend money on something they don't like. Asking for it to be free because you aren't comfortable with it is quite selfish. Trying to convince people who like it that it should be free is silly. "I hear it wasn't a good movie anyway, so I'll just torrent it. Won't waste my money." *Justified!*
Let's be real, OK? Paying to get ahead works in real life. Humans compete, they want to be the best. People have proven over and over, that they're comfortable spending real money for fake virtual items. Free to Play will always go down that road in an MMO, because people always want an advantage or the appearance of prestige. "Pre order at gamestop and get the the exclusive Blah blah blah that makes you blah blah blah. Gamestop power to the players
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Believe whatever you want, but we know that money will increase the quality of the game *Obvious yea?*. It's what we ALL want. To create a cash shop that increases the game quality would have to convince people that they should spend A LOT of money. The easiest way to do that is to give them advantages. Even if the advantages are slight, the person with most money will just buy more slight advantages, making it not so slight anymore. Stop pretending you care about the gaming community and the success of FFXIV. You don't think the game is worth your money. We get it. People want fun, and people want quality. Paying to win is empty (and that's saying something, because how much is is being the best in an MMO worth IRL), and it's exactly where F2P in an MMO ends up.
I started Tera for a month last year, and found out something I didn't know existed. There is an item token of some kind, that people can buy for real money, and sell it to other players for in game money to extend their playtime another month. I have several awful/emotion/hateful experiences with RMT. *@#&^$# Argus and #$*#$&9 Mee Deggi the Punisher and whatever... too many others. Those #$#$ suckers #$#@#.
Anway... That system reminded me of that. At first, I was against it. Then it hit me, the money goes to Square-Enix, and it would ***** over those Gil sellers, but wont wipe them out completely. In some ways, for those people who spend time farming in game money to extend play time, it's Free to play. They are at a disadvantage because they have to sacrifice their earnings while the regular subs don't. Their character development is slowed. That's the only "F2P" model that I MIGHT agree with. Only because I've come to accept that the farmers will always exist. SE should get in that market, if that money is then used to increase FFXIV's quality.
Hmmm. That was longer than I intended.
I don't remember a time when I've used the word "quality" that much either.