I don’t care about the Final Fantasy series. It’s an important franchise, sure, but not one that speaks to me in any way. With Final Fantasy XIV about to launch there’s something of a build up, but all descriptions make the title appear as dull as dishwater to me.
… but then there is the payment model. It’s a confusing mishmash of subscription fees, weirdly named currency called Crysta, enforced payment amounts, third party financial providers and security tokens. There’s also a cap on how much Crysta an account can have – probably to avoid currency exchange risks. Plus a cost of $3 per character. For the most basic player – one character only – the 999 Crysta plus 300 Crysta (let’s say $12.99) works out cheaper than a typical $15 a month MMO, but only just. Plus there is no flexibility to that – you add another character and you are paying about $1 more a month than the standard sub fee.
A non-standard payment model for MMOs is a great idea – some do it very well – but some sort of weird layered payment approach with extra fees, conditions and requiring currency calculations is the worst way to go about it. Collecting money is important, but all FFXIV’s payment model does is confuse through its unnecessary complexity. Honestly, keep it simple, be it sub-fee or free-to-play or some sort of hybrid.
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