is ff11 going to have subscription fee reduced...?Follow

I doubt it.
Even an old game still needs people who needs to be paid to maintain it. :(

Something tells me they love your money more then you. ;)

They should love her as a long-time loyal customer.

If the game dropped to $5.00 / mo and eliminated the "mule" charges, I'd probably subscribe just to use it as a *****-around-while-chatting program. Today the game doesn't really interest me enough to justify the cost, as the current fee is waaaaay too high for what FFXI offers. The last time I returned to the game (this expansion) I lasted about 4 days, and most of that was spent trying to get my wife interested.

It's possible FFXI might benefit from a split subscription model, one cheaper "basic" account and one "premium" that could feature bonus cosmetic items & cooldown boosts to things like abyssea stones that don't really break gameplay. I think we'd see an option like this before we'd see a straight "price slashing", because square places a very high value on the final fantasy brand, to the point that they remake games 10 years later and charge more than the original game, so when they get in the whirlwind of MMO subscriptions, it's that much harder to pull the candy from the baby.

They've already lost 2/3s of their active players, nearly half to 2/3s of their subscriptions depending on a person's viewpoint. At what point does 'massive drop-off' come into play for a reduced sub?

They're not ever going to reduce that fee until the day comes when they have two choices in their mind: Reduce fee to get more people to sign up for FFXI, or shut down the servers. It's a last resort for them. Game devs sometimes forget that their sub fee isn't a right to log into their game world. It's a service fee and that fee needs to adjust depending on the service they are providing. FFXI right now is worth 5 to 8 dollars a month, and 8 is pushing it for lightly updated, 11 year old MMORPGs.


Edited, Aug 14th 2013 11:47am by Voldermolt

XI would have to reach below XIV 1.0's end of life numbers, frankly. Between 20K to 50K accounts or fewer.

Even just including all 16 character slots for our $12.95 a month would be nice.

Hmm I can see your reasoning behind the price but I'd rather leave things the way they are if I had to deal with those types of restrictions to have 16 characters.
Personally I don't need that many characters and if I were crafting on a mule that needed to buy mats that cost more then 100k then I would have to login to my main just to buy something and send it back to myself. (Making the process of making something even longer that it should be.)

Also I forget what I have stored on 3 mules most of the time and occasionally end up buying the same thing again because I can't find it.
A lot of people these days will invest a little more time on their mules to increase invent space and even levelling whm up a bit so they can unlock a runic portal for a mog locker.

There's another thing that's bothering me a bit but finding names for so many characters will give me a headache and take more choices away for other people to use since you can't have Surnames in this game.

They will only reduce the subs when the number of players active is reaching low enough to cause a problem for current players and merging servers is not an option. There is nothing to guarantee an increase in revenue if you lower subscription fees. It's like reducing your price to sell items quicker but you make less money per item so you might get less money if you aren't selling enough.

What reducing in fees will bring is increase in number of new/returning players for a short time but it would also increase the costs for server. So if you cut the price in 1/2, you should be selling at least more than double the amount to make up for the reduction in price. Set the price too low and you will lose money in the long run. Make it too high and it has no effect on increasing population and you just lose money.

FFXI is in a tough spot to do anything about their subscription fees as it has more problem than just the game itself. SE payment page isn't exactly friendly to everyone. They sometimes having people getting rejected for payments and unable to pay. Normally, it's not a problem but it does make it more difficult to gain a lot of new/returning players when you are in a niche market like SE games.

Edited, Aug 16th 2013 11:41am by Oddwaffle

They could copy Sony's idea of an "All Access" pass. Play the one you like for $13 or $15 or play both for $20 or whatever. Most people would probably just pay the $20 because it's such a good deal, but then still actually play only one game unless their preferred game is down. They'd be collecting an "extra" $5-$7 a month, but in most cases they wouldn't actually be providing an extra $5-$7 worth of service.

Edited, Aug 19th 2013 12:41pm by Camiie

Well SE needs to do something. I usually wouldn't be on the FFXI is die-ing bandwagon, but I've been on NA prime time this week and there is next to zero shouts and the shouts that happen are usually for 1 slot only and that for a "3-4 song bard" or something equally ridiculous.

I joined a voidwatch shout and it took us 2 hours after I joined at 8 people to get 12 people... it's terrible. It basically makes the game unplayable.

I mean, the game is fine I guess if you have an active LS and/or just want to solo, but this is bad. They better put in a dual sub deal or XI is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

Edited, Aug 21st 2013 9:00am by Olorinus

The FFXI forums responses:

"Yeah that would be nice, but we can't do it."

The FFXIV responses:

"Guess what? We're implementing it in the next patch!"

Considering I played 1.0 until the end and enjoyed it, I'm not overly worried. That being said, XI will always linger around in my head, I just don't see the point right now.