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Wada ResignsFollow

#277 Mar 31 2013 at 9:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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FFXI still got a pretty solid base of players playing the game :P And I doubt that FF14 will be any different, actually I'm pretty convinced that FF14 will do way better than FFXI, and as long they keep a solid 500k subs then the game will do fine in the long run.

Players who leave after a month or two from a P2P MMO wont (In most cases) not contribute with anything of worth if the game went F2P since they couldn't be bother to pay a small sub fee, because if they really thought the game was good enough then they wouldn't mind paying those 12-14$ a month. Cheers
#278 Mar 31 2013 at 9:15 AM Rating: Good
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Why are we still arguing about the F2P vs P2P model in this thread? :P F2P won't happen, if they wanted it, then FFXI would already be F2P :P

What about we leave the dead horse and stops beating on it? :P
#279 Mar 31 2013 at 9:29 AM Rating: Excellent
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abesut wrote:
Why are we still arguing about the F2P vs P2P model in this thread? :P F2P won't happen, if they wanted it, then FFXI would already be F2P :P

What about we leave the dead horse and stops beating on it? :P


This argument comes up about every other week. I suppose it's something to just pass the time with until we get more news.
#280REDACTED, Posted: Mar 31 2013 at 9:29 AM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) That's incorrect. Square Enix would change FFXI to a free-to-play with microtransactions model if they could, this has been said by Wada himself.
#281 Mar 31 2013 at 9:57 AM Rating: Good
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They just can't implement the necessary systems (like an in-game cash shop) due to "PS2 limitations".

I <3 PS3 limitations.
#282 Mar 31 2013 at 10:14 AM Rating: Excellent
After buying the initial game, then yes, Guild Wars 2 is f2p.

On a side note, I am very much not impressed with the new XI expansion. I know that isn't really relevant here, but I needed to vent.
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#283 Mar 31 2013 at 10:24 AM Rating: Decent
Care to explain? I'm guessing it's OK if we go off-topic somewhat since FFXIV is under NDA right now anyway.

I haven't played FFXI since the cap was 75, the Abyssea stuff and all the changes were just a bit too foreign to me so I never hopped back in.
#284 Mar 31 2013 at 10:37 AM Rating: Decent
Thayos wrote:
After buying the initial game, then yes, Guild Wars 2 is f2p.

On a side note, I am very much not impressed with the new XI expansion. I know that isn't really relevant here, but I needed to vent.


Free to play means you pay nothing at all, Guild wars 2 is buy to play. You have to buy the game for $60 (and you have to buy future expansion packs), there is no version of GW2 that you can play unless you put money down.
#285 Mar 31 2013 at 10:52 AM Rating: Good
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preludes wrote:
Free to play means you pay nothing at all, Guild wars 2 is buy to play. You have to buy the game for $60 (and you have to buy future expansion packs), there is no version of GW2 that you can play unless you put money down.
That's a needlessly childish argument. There is no version of any game you can play unless you put money down, whether it be the software, a system to play it on, or an internet connection of some sort. You have to buy a Monopoly board before you can play, but no one is going to argue that it's a Pay to Play game.
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#286 Mar 31 2013 at 10:56 AM Rating: Default
lolgaxe wrote:
You have to buy a Monopoly board before you can play, but no one is going to argue that it's a Pay to Play game.


Yeah, because it's Buy to Play.


Edited, Mar 31st 2013 12:57pm by Killua125
#287 Mar 31 2013 at 10:58 AM Rating: Excellent
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Killua125 wrote:
lolgaxe wrote:
You have to buy a Monopoly board before you can play, but no one is going to argue that it's a Pay to Play game.
Yeah,
I'm glad you agree. I can ignore the bulk of a post to try to make a point, too. I'm probably better at it as well.
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#288 Mar 31 2013 at 11:06 AM Rating: Decent
I was making a joke.

Anyway,

F2P lets you download and play for free.
B2P requires a flat cost before you can play.
P2P requires a subscription of some sort.

Guild Wars wouldn't qualify as F2P because you pay for the game before you can play.

I mean, everything costs money if we're talking about the hardware to play it on, but I think the terminology is specifically referring to the payment models of the game.

Edited, Mar 31st 2013 1:07pm by Killua125
#289 Mar 31 2013 at 11:49 AM Rating: Decent
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That's a needlessly childish argument. There is no version of any game you can play unless you put money down, whether it be the software, a system to play it on, or an internet connection of some sort. You have to buy a Monopoly board before you can play, but no one is going to argue that it's a Pay to Play game.


If I want to play SWTOR I can download it and I can play it and have paid nothing at all. There is no outlay at all, if I don't like it so what I paid nothing anyway.

If I want to play GW2 I have to pay $60, if I don't like it I wasted $60.

Free to play means free, you can't call something free if you have to pay the creators $60 for it. It's not even 1 charge to play because the whole idea of the game is to continnue to keep buying expansion packs for as long as they support the game, in effect it's $60 + however many expansions they bring out.

It's black and white, it's either free or it's not free.

Honestly, if I had to bet money on it I would say they will add a cash shop during p2p with vanity pets and cosmetics and then go free to play (with optional sub) within the first year and then offer the proper cash shop stuff like XP boosts etc.
#290 Mar 31 2013 at 12:21 PM Rating: Decent
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Killua125 wrote:
abesut wrote:
if they wanted it, then FFXI would already be F2P :P


That's incorrect. Square Enix would change FFXI to a free-to-play with microtransactions model if they could, this has been said by Wada himself.

They just can't implement the necessary systems (like an in-game cash shop) due to "PS2 limitations".


Funny, considering they're offering the ability to buy the Collection items separate from actually buying the content itself. The system is in place, they're just not going to overhaul the game the support a F2P style gameplay.

#291 Mar 31 2013 at 12:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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Regarding the sale of vanity items (which many people seem to accept, now that other games have been doing it for a few years):

An MMORPG is about experiencing a large, persistent world, about being able to create a character and craft items, fight monsters, team up with friends, and become part of a story. We can say that an MMORPG, especially in the case of FFXIV, is about living an adventurer's life in all its variety and splendour.

Given that a large part of living in the world is about wearing and discovering unique equipment, forging armour, and generally just collecting stuff, how can it be said that cosmetic/vanity items are not part of the gameplay? I know that I would rather collect an assortment of sordid gobbie ingredients and have a friend sign a special Goblin Mask for me than to enter my credit card number and buy it for $5. Yet those are the two options that we're now facing -- live the life or swipe the card.

Having even vanity items for sale does impact the game; it may not alter one's numerical values, but it certainly removes a level of variety, it certainly robs the world of recipes, rewards, and extras that could have fleshed it out all the better.

This doesn't apply to XIV (yet), but the fact that a company would ever be so brazen as to try and charge someone both a subscription fee and a "cosmetic fee" shows a certain degree of greed in the company -- and gullibility in the customers -- that they could ever abide such a thing.
#292 Mar 31 2013 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent
KaneKitty wrote:
Regarding the sale of vanity items (which many people seem to accept, now that other games have been doing it for a few years):

An MMORPG is about experiencing a large, persistent world, about being able to create a character and craft items, fight monsters, team up with friends, and become part of a story. We can say that an MMORPG, especially in the case of FFXIV, is about living an adventurer's life in all its variety and splendour.

Given that a large part of living in the world is about wearing and discovering unique equipment, forging armour, and generally just collecting stuff, how can it be said that cosmetic/vanity items are not part of the gameplay? I know that I would rather collect an assortment of sordid gobbie ingredients and have a friend sign a special Goblin Mask for me than to enter my credit card number and buy it for $5. Yet those are the two options that we're now facing -- live the life or swipe the card.

Having even vanity items for sale does impact the game; it may not alter one's numerical values, but it certainly removes a level of variety, it certainly robs the world of recipes, rewards, and extras that could have fleshed it out all the better.

This doesn't apply to XIV (yet), but the fact that a company would ever be so brazen as to try and charge someone both a subscription fee and a "cosmetic fee" shows a certain degree of greed in the company -- and gullibility in the customers -- that they could ever abide such a thing.


Quote:
MASSIVE AMBITIONS
Beyond that, though, comes PS3 MMO FFXIV. It’s not Square Enix’s first such game – it successfully run FFXI on PS2, Xbox 360 and PC over the last six years, but it was outshone by World of Warcraft, the genre’s posterboy.

Yet come next year Square Enix will be having to fight not just Blizzard, but also EA, LucasArts, Atari and others claiming to have the next big MMO.

Wada won’t rock the boat too much, though – the shrewd accountant in him says the business model for FFXIV will be the now-traditional mix of subscriptions and item transactions, plus sales of the game on disc.
“The basic model hasn’t changed.” But he says the firm has learnt lessons.

“In our first MMO we didn’t set up the transaction model that well. We thought that it would be a benefit for users, but that we wouldn’t have to charge. We soon learnt that there are a lot of people who want that kind of model, so we would like to introduce more pay-as-you-use items into the game.”

As the industry gears up for that new wave of MMOs, Wada sees an opportunity: He reckons that when WoW players look to switch, it won’t necessarily be to another Blizzard MMO.

“WoW is a tough competitor – they are very good. But whether you are talking about EverQuest, Ultima or Lineage there has never been a company that has continuously had the successful number one and two MMOs,” he says.


http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/wada-s-vision
#293 Mar 31 2013 at 1:45 PM Rating: Excellent
I think that B2P designation is a little bit of a stretch. It's either P2P or it's F2P, and Guild Wars 2 is certainly not P2P. It has a cash shop, and there are no monthly fees.

I think a game can be both B2P and F2P, or B2P and P2P. They're apples and oranges, really. When people debate the merits of F2P vs. P2P, they're talking about how the game will make money over time -- with either monthly fees or some kind of cash shop -- not whether they need to pay one time to buy the game.

And regarding FFXI, here's a short list of what's wrong with it, based on my limited experience (partially due to boredom):

- There is no journey to the new areas; you warp there from Jeuno.
- The new city is huge, but its design is kind of bland, and there is a surprising lack of NPCs for what is supposed to be a booming metropolis.
- The two areas right outside the city are total maze layouts... think v 1.0 Black Shroud.
- The "campaign" event of this expansion are these battles called Reives, but they're impossible to do solo, and even small groups have trouble... they happen in very small areas, and if you back up even just a few steps, you get a five-second countdown (and it's a FAST countdown, so more like three seconds) before you're ejected from the fight with a 10-minute cooldown before rejoining. This makes it impossible for mages to cast or rest MP from out of harm's way... these things are almost unplayable as blm.
- These reives don't show up on the map... so to find one, you've got to just run around this big, mazey area and hope to find one with enough other people there so that you can actually do it.

Although having new zones/new city is nice, it just seems like there is very little to do compared to the launches of previous expansions. I'm hoping that SE is getting ready to patch in some new content relatively soon, because I was really looking forward to using Seekers as a chance to get back into FFXI.

EDIT: On the bright side, my lack of interest in the FFXI expansion motivated me to play GW2 yesterday, in which I hit level 77. Almost to cap, ha.


Edited, Mar 31st 2013 12:47pm by Thayos
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#294 Mar 31 2013 at 1:53 PM Rating: Default
Looking at the city right now. I immediately noticed exactly what you said about the few NPCs... it looks very barren for its size.

I guess the biggest part of this expansion is supposed to be the new jobs, but I hear from people who have already capped them that they are very underwhelming.
#295 Mar 31 2013 at 3:26 PM Rating: Good
So far Geo is like playing BRD/BLM only instead of playing a harp or a horn, I'm ringing a bell.
#296 Mar 31 2013 at 3:47 PM Rating: Good
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FilthMcNasty wrote:
DamienSScott wrote:
The problem is.. other than League of Legends no F2P game pumps out content anywhere near as fast as WoW. Pretty much every small F2P game is a cash grab with little content and a pay to win attitude. With as little as these companies comparatively spent on game development they probably make great profit. However you never see any content updates, or if you do it's after 3-5 years. I played a blatant WoW-clone called Fiesta off and on for 3+ years and they never released anything new other than cash shop garbage. Guild Wars 2 has been out for 6+ months and still hasn't released any new content either. This is a game where you could get to max level in a week or less with no end game content. F2P looks nice on paper but it just doesn't work that way.


When did WoW go F2P? The comparison doesn't make sense because WoW charges more than 10 million people a subscription fee. With that kind of income it's easy to see how they are able to manufacture so much content. That does lead me to the point that Blizzard switched their development model to be able to introduce content faster. Rather than having huge raids with tons of bosses, they instead broke them into smaller sized instances and shortened the window of the releases for each progressive raid. Essentially you end up getting the same amount of content, but it's not all front loaded and doesn't lead to the quick burnout that it used to.

6 months is not a long time to be without a content update. I don't play GW2, but I know that they have introduced (what seems like to me anyway) a lot in the way of tweaks, adjustments and improvements. IIRC they just released something days ago. I have no idea what it is or what it entails, but I wouldn't expect a newly released game to even mention an expansion for at least that long.

The model works when it's implemented properly. The game you mentioned with max level in a week and no end game content doesn't sound like it would have been successful anyway; lets not attribute flaws that are obviously unrelated to the business model.


My apologies, I had assumed that anyone reading this thread would know that WoW was a subscription based game. I shall try to be sure to flesh out any and all of my ideas lest they arbitrarily be used against my main point. I won't debate WoW's business model and you are most likely correct in your assumptions about it I may not like the game, but their model works, and I like it. When I did play it was nice to have new content always coming out even after I bought a huge expansion. It has probably changed in the last couple years but if i recall they released plenty of new content in Vanilla and even part way through WotLK.

GW2 did indeed have a rather beefy patch recently, but as a player that struggles to hold interest in the game I didn't really see any changes. Well I did notice at some point they lowered the cost of those stupidly overpriced skill books but that's pretty much it. Also, the game that I mentioned was GW2. it has no end game content and it is very easy to level up. You hit 80 and all you have left to do is farm for a set of armor and a legendary weapon. These may in fact be the game's flaws and not the F2P model's fault, but this model does not lend itself to correcting said flaws as quickly and easily as P2P can. Plus with the whole massive influx at launch and then massive exodus a few months later this probably makes developers wonder what the point would be in rushing out more content.

To flip in some of the F2P mentality, MMO companies are going to have to start thinking like WoW when it comes to releasing content if they have any hopes to keep people playing. In this age that causes everyone to be all about the "OMG CAN I HAS NAO FRE FRE FRE!" those customers are going to need that constant trickle of new stuff to do and rightly so. I don't think that a F2P MMO in this day and age will be prepared to supply that I.V. drip like a P2P could. I think FFXIV is on the right track to at least be competent in the new market with the way they handled 1.0 updates and patches. 6 months to 2 years may have been an acceptable time to wait for an expansion in the past, but today (as the F2Pers love to say), people expect more. I would be pretty mad if I was a serious PvE GW2 player and was told I would have to wait a year or more for another expansion I had to pay for to get end game content.
#297 Mar 31 2013 at 4:34 PM Rating: Good
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Killua125 wrote:
Looking at the city right now. I immediately noticed exactly what you said about the few NPCs... it looks very barren for its size.

I guess the biggest part of this expansion is supposed to be the new jobs, but I hear from people who have already capped them that they are very underwhelming.


If I burned BLU from 30-99 it would be pretty damn underwhelming as well.
#298 Mar 31 2013 at 10:37 PM Rating: Default
regarding the f2p and p2p... not to sound mean or anything but i don't really think SE cares that much about what the legacy members think because they need more players for the game to succeed, for now i think they look at legacy members as "insurance" because you still played and payed for the game but they obviously still need more people to pay and play the game which is why they are redesigning everything so if they do get the audience they want then i highly doubt that they will care about your opinions anymore and it will just be the majority. Thats just the way i see it and i know legacy members are gonna be pretty upset since they just feel as though its their game to defend
#299 Mar 31 2013 at 11:25 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thats just the way i see it and i know legacy members are gonna be pretty upset since they just feel as though its their game to defend


I don't think most Legacy members would feel offended or slighted by the game going F2P. Keep in mind, FFXIV v1.x was free for a very long time... there weren't any subscription fees until after a trio of very large patches that revamped several systems, added content and really raised the quality of the game to be something worth paying for. At that point, FFXIV was a game actually worth its monthly fee. Those who chose to play during v1.x were also given the unique, end-of-the-world storyline that will never be repeated... we basically got an exclusive Final Fantasy game that no one else will ever know.

If the game does go F2P someday, then yeah, a lot of people will be really upset, but not because SE owes us anything. We're all grown ups, and we choose to spend our money however we want to. We were never asked to pay until the game was up to par.
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#300 Apr 01 2013 at 2:57 AM Rating: Decent
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ThadCastle wrote:
regarding the f2p and p2p... not to sound mean or anything but i don't really think SE cares that much about what the legacy members think because they need more players for the game to succeed, for now i think they look at legacy members as "insurance" because you still played and payed for the game but they obviously still need more people to pay and play the game which is why they are redesigning everything so if they do get the audience they want then i highly doubt that they will care about your opinions anymore and it will just be the majority. Thats just the way i see it and i know legacy members are gonna be pretty upset since they just feel as though its their game to defend


So you just mentioned the topic at hand, then digressed into... I don't know. Not to sound sarcastic or anything, but you are very very mean, and I don't appreciate it. Only meanies forget things. The redesigning was a collaboration between the players who stuck around, and Yoshi studying what works in terms of popular MMOs. It was always his call. You have an interesting perspective. Just because it'll make you happy, I'll let you know how thoroughly upset I am by your statements, even though I don't know what I'm defending.

You're better off not being legacy, it's a burden only a few can bear. Smiley: jester

Ah well, spring break's over, off to complete Monday.
#301 Apr 01 2013 at 9:06 AM Rating: Good
In this whole P2P vs F2P argument I completely forgot I was Legacy. Smiley: laugh I was totally prepared to pay $15 a month, in fact.

Legacy vs non Legacy has no bearing on my preference. SE gets $18 a month for my FFXI account already. I've paid that fee month in and month out because it's the cheapest entertainment value I can get outside of piracy.
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