Dev Tracker - Discussion

Gearswap maintains its own inventory structures that it doesn't wipe on zone, so it is able to equip stuff before your inventory loads.

Same reason businesses have historically wanted to shy away from nickel and diming customers - it creates ill will, tarnishes the brand, etc. The wardrobe feature cost a certain amount to implement and they must've more than recouped it by now. I'm with you in wanting to support SE financially to keep the game afloat and actively developed and maintained. I wish they gave us (many!) more options for that. I just think recurring payment for inventory space is a bad way to do it, that's all.

Ill will from people who are getting a paid subscription product for free lol

Agreed. Its a slippery slope. I personally went from owning wardrobe 3, and 4, and realizing all this is doing is enabling my hoarding activities across all characters. I painstakingly reorganized and decided to cancel those services. I'm now wardrobe (paid) free!

Not targeting anyone in particular (and I want to especially call out that Enochroot is consistently thoughtful and kind and we get along, we just have a different view on this one and that's fine)

I think it's a totally unrealistic concern that there is any significant number of people who are choosing not to pay for FFXI because paid Wardrobes exist. That's just fiction.

By the very nature of the circumstances that make wardrobes useful, we know that their target audience is players who are already pretty into FFXI and have probably played for a long time. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a jam-packed mog safe, locker, satchel, sack, case, and two free wardrobes, AND find that Porter Moogles still aren't enough... they need even more storage. Uh, that's the profile of a player who is your proven audience, and who has stuck around paying for your game for years. Offering a paid optional add-on is not driving these people to cancel their subscriptions, I don't believe that for a second.

And even if you don't just come to the conclusion by reasoning it out, you can get further insight by simply observing SE's actions being consistent with the hypothesis: if SE had started losing a lot of subscription revenue by introducing Wardrobes, we'd know it because they wouldn't still be offering the Wardrobes in the exact same model they have been for years without change.


One thing that does sort of frustrate me:
Why won't they do a combined XI + XIV subscription for a discount versus both? I've heard a TON of XIV players asking about that in the past year or so with the crossovers and XI's increased visibility. And remember when XIV 1.0 launched and they were planning a combo subscription? Never happened, and I know I'd be one of those people who they'd get more money out of if they offered it - I'd mess with XIV a bit if I got a discounted bundle subscription.

But hey, maybe they've run their numbers and they have reasons. Maybe the money they're making from people paying two full priced subscriptions outweighs their projected revenue from offering a bundle subscription. Maybe they're worried about servers being overloaded. Maybe they're just being dumb. Who knows.

Man, I'm never going back to that restaurant. The chef recognized that I'd been a regular there before, welcomed me in and gave me a free burger, fries, and a drink for my past loyalty. No charge, dude just gave me a free meal, sent me on my way, and told me to keep them in mind for next time.

But you see, I have a big problem with that. The free burger had NO BACON on it! And I like bacon! Sometimes when I used to go there, I'd spring for the extra $2 for bacon. But now this freaking clown gives me a free burger and has the GALL to not include free bacon??? WTF, that nickel-and-diming jerkface.

Never going back there again, even though I do like the food and they haven't raised the price of the burger since 2002.

to be fair they tried in the past with things like the satchel security token, the merch, the add on expansions, and iirc noone(on the NA side at least) liked those, except maybe the satchel since it was, like wardrobes, an increase in inventory which was very limited, and even that was mixed since SE could have just upped their login security on their end without the need for a physical token to be bought.

Merch with codes was probably the worst since it was largely overpriced low quality stuff or locked to a JP only event. All of these also cost resources while the wardrobes are just a recurring, generally desired addition that doesnt upset the player balance too much in general play.