PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

[Aeni]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

3 dollars per character makes sense, mew. Character graphics take more memory on servers.

And development costs are higher than they were 8 years ago.

The graphics information is stored on your own computer. Only items and quest flags and all that good stuff is stored in the database. I think what SE is trying to do is squash gil sellers before they become a problem. I think having multiple "handlers" per account made it economically feasible for these people to ply their trade. With the high costs of having multiple characters on each account and forcing these people to purchase multiple accounts instead may drive out all but the biggest fish selling gils online.

[Feba]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

The graphics information is stored on your own computer.

J9 has a quarter of a point. FFXIV has far more complex character creation than FFXI did (not saying much), and that does have setting info. Not the dats.

Still utter failure for suggesting that storing a few numbers relating to character parameters validates any cost. J9, you do realize that that information would have to be sent to every single other player that ever gets near your character, right? Not to mention, I'd imagine the server sends that information to your client as part of the login/zoning process, not to mention every time you swap gear and possibly teleport. The storage, bandwidth, and general cost of the character is practically nothing. It makes more sense to charge by the hour than by the character.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

I doubt that charging $2 more for a mule or a slightly higher subscription fee is going to stop gil sellers. If they find an easy way to make gil, that will be a drop in a bucket.

[Aeni]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

I doubt that charging $2 more for a mule or a slightly higher subscription fee is going to stop gil sellers. If they find an easy way to make gil, that will be a drop in a bucket.

There was a high limit before on the number of Content ID you could create for characters. I believe it was 20 total, but correct me if I'm wrong.

This time around, it's a lower limit + a higher fee per. Now, let's assume it's still 20 going into the final release.

15 x $2 = $30 extra per account.

That's equivalent to the average take in per transaction. Does not factor in time spent acquiring gil, web site operation cost, paying off employees, etc. If you have 100 accounts, that's $3,000 more per month you need to pay. If you have 1000 accounts, that's $30,000 more a month in fees.

These guys make a quick buck, not necessarily good money, just quick money. How successful they are requires luck (stealing accounts, avoiding detection, etc) and how much people are going to pay. If fees levied are a noticeable increase (both in the cost per month as well as the number of accounts now needed) that directly impacts how much they charge per customer.

Seeing something just cost 60-100% more means charging customers that much more and that means the smaller guys aren't gonna survive as well as the bigger guys. This makes it easier on SE to track and detect these kinds of activities if you cut out the small fries and stop diluting their services.

[Malacite]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

Let's just hope SE is more intelligent about gil in general this time around.

Namely, stop using it as a cheap barrier on large quests.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

There was a high limit before on the number of Content ID you could create for characters. I believe it was 20 total, but correct me if I'm wrong.

This time around, it's a lower limit + a higher fee per. Now, let's assume it's still 20 going into the final release.

15 x $2 = $30 extra per account.

That's equivalent to the average take in per transaction. Does not factor in time spent acquiring gil, web site operation cost, paying off employees, etc. If you have 100 accounts, that's $3,000 more per month you need to pay. If you have 1000 accounts, that's $30,000 more a month in fees.

These guys make a quick buck, not necessarily good money, just quick money.

It's been a while since all the articles about the Chinese sweatshops but I believe it's 2 workers per account for 12 hour shifts each and the get paid .75 - $1.00 an hour. So even at $1.00 an hour, that's $24.00 a day. They can pull in $50,000 a month for each account. So that's $720 for labor and significantly less for electric and rent (if they don't own the space and it's highly likely they do) which is divided by the number of workers which is unknown. I would say that $750 is a generous figure per account on a monthly basis to make $50,000 per account. That is not good money to you?

I knew someone that ran a gold operation for WoW way back that made enough to pay off a year and a half of college fees from Yale in a year....and he didn't even do any of the farming himself. Gold farming is quite lucrative, especially in poorer nations.

[Balfree]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

So i've been looking for a new GFX card.

Recommendations?

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

I doubt that charging $2 more for a mule or a slightly higher subscription fee is going to stop gil sellers. If they find an easy way to make gil, that will be a drop in a bucket.

I'm actually wondering if gil would be as big of a bottleneck this time. A lot of the design seems to suggest self-sufficiency, weapon-building and this time there will probably be more instancing. Some of the design I've seems to be gunning for Monster Hunter, actually.

If that's the case, RMTs aren't going to be able to do as much damage. If I can skew many quests down to where I can solo them, that cuts out some of the gil burden of group play as well.

I'm sure there will be some pathetic bastards that still want buy gil and RMT will find a way to sell it, but I have my doubts they'll be able to game the system as easily this time. If the system is designed like I expect it they'll more than likely have to resort more disruptive and obvious behaviors, if at all..

[Aeni]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

It's been a while since all the articles about the Chinese sweatshops but I believe it's 2 workers per account for 12 hour shifts each and the get paid .75 - $1.00 an hour. So even at $1.00 an hour, that's $24.00 a day. They can pull in $50,000 a month for each account. So that's $720 for labor and significantly less for electric and rent (if they don't own the space and it's highly likely they do) which is divided by the number of workers which is unknown. I would say that $750 is a generous figure per account on a monthly basis to make $50,000 per account. That is not good money to you?

I knew someone that ran a gold operation for WoW way back that made enough to pay off a year and a half of college fees from Yale in a year....and he didn't even do any of the farming himself. Gold farming is quite lucrative, especially in poorer nations.

A lot of that figure is highly inflated. Think about it ... if the operation is illegal, do you think they keep an actual record of all that they do? If they get raided by the police (it's still a very real possibility in communist china ... they can get taken down for circumventing state run firewall, for example and the fact that foreigners seem to be in collaboration with these people will make them even more suspicious) they need to make sure they don't have any records of anything they've done.

That being said, no one is stupid to be using the same account and trawling a lot with it. You have to use it, make your buck, dump it. Move on to the next. This is how you should do it and how the pros have done it for a while. Only amateurs would keep a main account and store their entire sum in it. Ask any underworld criminals (i.e., Mafia) and they'll tell you the same thing. It's basically money laundering in digital form.

Also remember this was all at the height of their operations. When SE cracked down on them, there were a lot of revenue lost (billions of gils), as well as the small timers being impacted a lot more than bigger companies (IGE for one managed to survive) This was also back before people were sloppy about personal security and back before they had things like an authenticator. With better security, smarter players and a better game design, these guys will have a more difficult time running their operations and thus will commit even more heinous and illegal activities in order to turn a profit. The expense of the account only serves to add an additional hindrance for these guys.

I'd be happy to go indepth with this topic as I've had numerous run-ins with these guys and have managed to help Blizzard with a ring of them in one instance where a rash of account thefts occurred on the server I was on. I had several friends that got their account taken from them and it isn't hard to do. One good example of this: If any of you had registered with Ars Technica at anytime around 2 to 8 years ago, if you're still using that email for other things, you might have been compromised. Their old datacenter contractor got compromised and 50,000 (or possibly even more, no one knows) emails were stolen as well as password information and personal information. This happens a lot (look at AT&T/Apple and their bungle with the iPad recently)



---------- Post added at 12:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 AM ----------

So i've been looking for a new GFX card.

Recommendations?

I posted about this in reply to another.

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/ffx...tml#post888224

[WishMaster3K]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

All I see in this thread is massive amounts of butthurt. Here I was thinking people on the internet could be mature about something.

---------- Post added at 07:04 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:54 AM ----------

So i've been looking for a new GFX card.

Recommendations?

Tom's Hardware. Best Graphics Cards for the Money. January 2010.

I personally have this monster that comes in at 10.5" long, and I love the crap out of it.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

All I see in this thread is massive amounts of butthurt. Here I was thinking people on the internet could be mature about something.

I don't know what's "butthurt" about being disappointed with a poor release plan. All this will do is divide the community at the start.

How many times did this happen?

Oh no, here comes the JP PC crowd
Oh no, here comes the American PC gamers
Oh no, here comes the American PS2 noobs
Oh no, here comes the EU PC noobs
Oh no, here comes the 360 noobs.

At least the JPs won't get to act like this game is their turf from Day One, but I can expect those with their dicks in the quad cores to start some shit anyway and then give the PS3 gamers a taste of it later.

Oh sure, some wil eventually learn their gaming rigs don't mean shit when it comes to knowledge and skill in-game, but its that fact they always have to re-learn this that no one really wants to deal with.

[Mhurron]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

How many times did this happen?

Oh no, here comes the JP PC crowd
Oh no, here comes the American PC gamers
Oh no, here comes the American PS2 noobs
Oh no, here comes the EU PC noobs
Oh no, here comes the 360 noobs.

And it will happen again in XIV and again in what ever the next one is. This group of people is always going to consider themselves superior to that group of people and so on and so on.

You still aren't going to get a party with Japanese players, a non-trivial number of them will and do think they are better gamers then you.
You still are going to have players from other parts of the world worshiping the ground Japanese players walk on.
You are still going to have PC players looking down on console players because PC players are 'real gamers'.
Console players will consider themselves superior to PC players because their platform is safer.
European players are still going to bitch about update times.
NA players are still going to bitch about update times.
SE will be accused of stacking the game in favor of Japanese players.

[Ziero]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

All I see in this thread is massive amounts of butthurt. Here I was thinking people on the internet could be mature about something.

Mature about what? Having it revealed SE is basically screwing over a large portion of their potential player base while charging out the ass for things other MMOs offer for free? There's a lot of bad that has come with the good in this news, and it's stuff that really shouldn't have happened. SE has been saying for a long time that every version of the game will be released at the same time, now with all of barely three months until the game launches, we're told a large portion of the playerbase is either going to have to sit on their thumbs for a half a year or pony up and upgrade PCs many of us were hoping to not have to upgrade. That's a major kick in the balls and a very good reason to be "butthurt".

And I doubt Sony was the ones pushing the game back, this game was supposed to help move systems, so the further back it gets the less potent the PS3 launch is. Most people who really want the game will now just end up spending money to upgrade their coms rather then pay for a new PS3 to play this.

You still aren't going to get a party with Japanese players, a non-trivial number of them will and do think they are better gamers then you.
You still are going to have players from other parts of the world worshiping the ground Japanese players walk on.
You are still going to have PC players looking down on console players because PC players are 'real gamers'.
Console players will consider themselves superior to PC players because their platform is safer.
European players are still going to bitch about update times.
NA players are still going to bitch about update times.
SE will be accused of stacking the game in favor of Japanese players.

Actually the age of "JPOnry" has more or less died, there's still some who won't party with NAs, but the universal idea that "they're better then us" has more or less been thrown to the wayside seeing as most new information and accomplishments come from NA players first. And the only ones worshipping JP players are more or less weeaboos who worship anything from JP land, so their opinions don't really count.

But during each phase of the game's launch, there was a "backlash" of sorts to those who were new players. Over time it stopped mattering who played on what, but every time new people came to the game, there was an unwarranted angst against them. It's just a feeling of "new meat" trying to screw with "old hat" ways.

And again, this wouldn't be as big of an issue if SE hadn't spent the past year+ constantly declaring how the game will see a world wide, universal (meaning systems AND regions) release date. If they said from the start there would be a six freaking month difference between the launches, it wouldn't have come as such a shock to people now.

[Solymir]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

Interesting stuff.

On the monetary cost of extra characters, I don't think the exchange rate was shown in that article. Or they used a character that meant $ but I was unfamiliar with..? I saw the sign for Pound and the one for Euro I believe.

I do like the fact you get one "mule" with subscription. I just hope there is only one Auction House/Shop system. Having 4 different ones in XI was annoying. Early on it was beneficial to have 2 mules, one in each of the starter cities other than your character's home. When it got to jeuno a 3rd mule became a decent choice, to have one for each AH system. Then more and more people got to end game levels and left the starter cities, making the starter city mules almost pointless except for storage.

[Laynton]

Re: PC Version in September. PS3 Delayed. Pre-order + Pricing Info

I hope they come out with a fixed monthly rate in US currency other wise every month is going to be different amount....and with as much as the US dollar has gone up and down that could get real exspensive....especially with it costing at least $15~ a month now plus the $3.50~ per extra char thats going to add up fast.

So definately looks like I will have to deside btwn FFII and FFIV....unless I win the lottery