How do you all feel about the Final Fantasy XIV Companion App?

The free version seems cool and helpful enough assuming it works well. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't rock steady straight from the word go though. The fact that there is a premium version kinda sucks. I don't know bottom line of the game obviously, but it seems like they have to make enough money from subs/cash shop/retainers that now it feels like the phone app is going to be paid for not by the game but by itself. Fair I guess but not completely a fan.

That said, I'm basically just subbed to the game because of my mostly empty house right now. I know I'll never do end game pve content because I just don't have friends playing and don't want to find the groups, and after buying a mansion and getting all my crafters to 70 I felt good but also like there was just so much more grind. Good grind, but I just tired out playing alone grinding out crafters and dungeons.

I wonder if the app is going to make the markets just that much harder. I had a good bit of cheap things I would constantly craft and sell and every now and then get in while something was a little bit hotter, but mostly I was very small time building up money slowly over months.

This is the first I'm hearing of this I don't exactly keep up on all the news surrounding FF14 despite just getting back into after a few months away. A companion app sounds good to me though if it's fully featured and it would be cool if it had things like a wiki I could pop open when I have a question about something so I don't have to bother asking the fine folks in the vinco FC. What exactly is the controversy? I could google it but... I don't wanna.

@fatalbanana: I assume that you can pay a fee for a few little bonuses? There is a free fully functional version, the paid one gets you like a retainer, some other inventory space, more of the daily login bonus it sounds like or something. I'm not really keeping up.

Not interested, but I don't see what the issue with it is.

What's so controversial about it? The extra space and extra retainer? What's wrong with that?

Don't remember much about it since it was initially announced or whatever. I remember the paid aspect being gross though.

It's a cool app that sounds very useful, but goddamn this game is expensive to play. If you have the basic subscription (1 char per server) or are paying for 6 months of the standard subscription at a time (8 characters per server) you're paying $12.99/mo. If you have the max number of retainers, that's an extra $14/mo making it $26.99/mo altogether.

Last I heard, the premium app fee was going to be monthly, but I'm not sure if that's old information or what. Either way, and unless this is also old information, the app unlocks the option to buy another retainer. So even if you only have to pay for the app once, that's still $28.99/mo for the sub fee and retainers alone. And that's if you're paying for the cheapest sub options.

Meanwhile, they're still cranking out $25 mounts and $18 costumes, and the latter isn't even account bound. They're tied to one character and SE can't even do you the courtesy of letting you recover them from an NPC if you accidentally delete them from your inventory. Once they're gone, they're gone and you have to rebuy them from the Mogstation. They won't even let you store the cash shop outfits in the armoire. You have to use up your limited inventory space somewhere. This is out of control.

Sure, you don't need the max number of retainers to make gil, but the more you have, the more inventory space you have access to and the more stuff you can post to the market board. You can gain a huge advantage even if you sit aside the making girl aspect. Since you have access to all that space and your retainers can gather mats for you, someone who is paying more just has an infinitely easier time storing and collecting mats they need to craft.

To top it all off, the market board is already a nightmare. Half the mats on most of the servers are insanely overpriced and all people do is undercut each other by 1 gil all fucking day long on the vast majority of items that are worth a shit. Again, you can still make gil. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying someone who has more actual money than you do is going to have a way easier time making gil in game if they know what they're doing.

And all this wouldn't be that bad if they added anything substantial to the game. Don't even get me started on shit like Eureka. We waited how long and their big content update was a map where people sit around all day waiting to kill the same 20 fates over and over again which are all just reskins of other fate/hunt bosses? You'll have to excuse me if I'm not feeling too gracious at the moment.

@babychoochoo: Wait a sec, the additional retainers are an additional subscription? I always thought it was a one-time purchase. Holy shit.

Not saying this as an advocate of all the nickle and dime'ing they're doing, but I'm able to play the game with just the base subscription and two additional retainers (you only get two normally right?) But I'm also Legacy status so it's slightly cheaper I think. Anyway, I haven't spent anything more than the subscription and never felt the need or care to look at all this cash shop garbage. Although it is a bunch of gaudy eye-sore crap, constantly seeing people running around on their ugly mounts and such.

I used to be much more annoyed about the additional retainer cost because Heavensward came around and you pretty much had to get more space just to play the game. Seems they've done a few things to consolidate inventory clutter and finally added that Glamour Dresser thing so I was able to free up a ton of space. I should hopefully be okay on inventory space for the foreseeable future, but I don't really do any crafting stuff anymore.

I do wish they'd make bigger fundamental changes to the game itself though. Been bored with this stupid gear treadmill torture since the first expansion. While its all fine and dandy that they've nailed down this nice 3 month release schedule and development pipeline, the end-game is completely pointless and therefore no reason to stick around to play the game except a day or two with each patch.

This is kinda beyond the scope of the app though lol I blame @babychoochoo

@seikenfreak: I can't help it. I'm harshest on the games I care about the most and I just can't help but run my mouth lol.

@theht:Yup. $2/mo per additional retainer.

Paying for extra inventory space in a subscription MMO is gross. I don't know how many do it, but that's some free to play bullshit that doesn't belong in a game that costs $13 a month to play. Hell, most F2Ps I've played at least let you buy the space permanently so they're actually better than FFXIV, where they make you rent it.

They are adding more inventory space or ways to free up inventory literally constantly. This doesn't dismiss the retainer issue, but it's not like they go "lol buy retainers" and then never do anything about it.

I don't think I need it but I don't have any problem with it existing.

I don't really care about having more retainers anyway.

Don't agree with the fee on principle but personally I can ignore it just fine (same as I ignore the outrageously over-priced mogstation items and extra retainer fees). I've only ever paid the sub and base game(s) cost and while I do get full I'm pretty sure that's down to my bare-bones item management, I could probably clear up 50 slots if I sorted it all out.

Between 140 inv slots, the ability to stack >99, the chocobo saddlebag, 2 retainers, free company storage and the market board I feel I have plenty of storage to gear everything and keep a bunch of crafting mats, consumables and materia. I've been really wishing they added an option to refuse drops for a while now though, fucking sick of getting full and seeing a single poxy bat wing taking up a slot.

You and I have very different definitions of "constantly." They increased the amount player characters and retainers could hold by a decent amount, gave us the glamour dresser, and the chocobo saddlebags all fairly recently. While all of it thoroughly appreciated, this was after years of the community hounding them to add more space.

And back to my earlier point, no, you absolutely do not need to buy more retainers to have a good time. However, yes, more retainers will give you an undeniable advantage over the competition. All the space they added for free still doesn't amount to much when you consider you still wouldn't be able to even hold one stack of every crafting mat in the game. So, right off the bat, those with more retainers can simply stockpile more than you if they so choose. Second, you can send retainers out to gather mats for you, timed-nodes included btw, allowing you to do other stuff in the meantime. More retainers means more choices in how to spend your time because now you don't have to worry about as much busywork. And lastly, and this is arguably the most important, more retainers means you can sell more things. Each retainer can post up to 20 items on the marketboard. With the default number of retainers, you can post up to a total of 40. With the max number, you're allowed up to 180. With more retainers, you're allowed the freedom to diversify what and how much you want to sell.

The usual counter-argument is "well, gil doesn't really matter" and again, that is for the most part true. However, if your plan is to make a ton of gil for whatever reason, once again, having more retainers makes that so much easier.

If you're on one of the more crowded servers, I would argue buying retainers is a must if your plan is to make gil because there will be much more competition. Otherwise, you're much more dependent on luck to move your inventory.

My point and what this has to do with the app is look at how many ways they find to tack on more fees to the game. And while it is not nearly as bad as some of the more egregious pay-to-win examples out there, paying more still allows you to have a much better experience in spite of the developer's constant "we want to be fair" spiel.

And, again - I'm starting to feel like a broken record, this wouldn't be so bad if they added content that stayed relevant to the game. They put Diadem which died after a month. Then tried to revamp it, failed, and abandoned it. Doing Maps is infinitely more profitable and infinitely less work. Why even keep DIadem around? They hyped up Rival Wings pvp for months, patched it maybe once (though it was more along the lines of a 'hotfix'), abandoned it, and no one plays it anymore. I sat in a queue for two hours to see if it would pop. Spoiler alert: it didn't.

Their "crowning achievement" is Eureka. A grind trying desperately to mimic the MMO grinds of old, but it's not even remotrely as fun as most of those older MMOs. It's shallow, barebones and yet somehow still a hassle at best. If relic gear wasn't tied to it, how many people do you think would realistically be in there? I have an idea - just look at how DIadem is doing.

And people are only bothering with relic gear because they're still using the same old gear treadmill we've had since 2.0 launched with no signs of changing. That and the fact that it's literally the only way to dye that gear. That's another problem by the way. They're so fucking proud of their glamour system and customization, but we couldn't dye the Stormblood job gear for almost an entire a year. And when we finally can, you have to jump through like 10 hours of hoops to upgrade one set of the fifteen or however many jobs there are. And if that wasn't bad enough, even after all these years, there's still a 3-month gap in between getting new tome gear and being able to upgrade it. And raid gear you can only dye if you're the like 20-30% of the playerbase that bothers doing savage. Otherwise, you're shit out of luck when it comes to dyeing raid gear. 24-man gear you literally can't dye at all...until they decide to bring it back it back in a later patch by making it craftable, but making the mats such a pain in the ass to get that most people won't bother. More retainers would probably make that easier I bet.

There's still that mandatory 7-week wait on upgrading tome weapons too because you can only get the required drop from the last fight of each raid tier every week until they remove the restrictions two patches later.

Don't even get me started on dungeons. They're prettier than they were in 2.0, but they're all still linear as shit. They're also so easy that most people speed through them on their first attempt without a single wipe.

So, hey, sorry I'm not taking the news of this app too well. They have no problem finding ways to get more money out of the playerbase, but they sit around twiddling their thumbs when it comes to actual content. I've used to play this game all the time. Stormblood was the first time I haven't had a consistent subscription because I'm tired of their shit. I come back every now and then. I want to like this game. I'm not here just to shit on it.

Man I love Stormblood though, it's weird to see the huge diatribe.

Eureka doesn't look very good though, even if I appreciate it from afar as being an ode to crazy people who played a lot of FFXI.