Feel like I am missing the point of Field History Tracking.

Before going any further, here are the Salesforce Limits from the Salesforce Limits Quick Reference Guide date June 2, 2014:

Edition (Fields per object, Field History Tracking per object)

• Developer (500, 20)
• Unlimited and Performance (800, 20)
• Enterprise (500, 20)
• Professional (100, 20)
• Group (100, 20)
• Contact Manager (25, 20)
• Personal (5, NA)

And here are all the help pages I'm able to find too:

• Tracking Field History
• Tracking Field History for Custom Objects
• Tracking Field History for Standard Objects
• Methods for Archiving Field History
• Disabling Field History Tracking

Reviewing the main "idea" page requesting 20 field limit be increased, one user comments:

If you open a case with support, you can get this increased!

Appears that the common increase stated was only to 50, which is more than double the current amount, but still seems like a small amount if you've got 500-800 fields.

Is this the only solution, and if so, are there any third party products or solutions that are free and exceed these limits?

Seems to me that this limit should at the very least be in total, not per object, since currently, if that was the case I'd have more than enough; meaning on the Enterprise version, with the 200 custom objects with 20 tracking fields per object, that would be 4,000 fields being track, yet I have zero plans to create 200 custom objects; the Unlimited and Performance Editions get 2,000 custom objects with 20 tracking fields per object, that would be 40,000 fields being track.

Seems backwards to me, and unable to see a solution without a hack like having a shadow fields that are concatenations, shadow objects with 20 fields per object, asking for a bump to 50 fields via the support request, or using a third-party/custom solution off platform.

Any suggestions, or an I missing the point of field tracking?