Monthly fee for 3rd retainer - your thoughts?

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Originally Posted by Alice_89th

But until we know how easy/difficult it is to get chips and how much chips ventures (especially higher level ones) will cost you can't say much about how much of an advantage an extra retainer will be.

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We already know that:

You can obrain the venture chips as rewards from the tresure hunts, beast tribe daily quests and exchange from GC seals:

Ventures x5 = 1,000 Seals

Venture's cost starts at 1 Venture for basic / low level ones, the higher ones so far demonstrated cost 2 Ventures. I'd assume that highest one will cost no more than 5 Ventures.

Either way - having (payed for) additional retainer WILL give players unfair adantage. I have atm almost full 50K of seals on my main account so I can get 250 Ventures and send 6 retainers for several weeks to ventures using just that. In average I gain at least 2 - 3k of seals a day which will give me another 10 to 15 new ventures. This is not counting treasure hunts + tribe quests.

It's an extra $4 a month to have 2 more retainers.

I don't see the problem. The monthly subscription to play this game is cheaper than going to the movies and has more entertainment value.

And if it means FF XIV becomes more profitable, it'll also mean more content.

If they add extra retainers for cash then there should've been another way of keeping extra retainers (weekly/monthly quests and the like).

bah stupid idea i can have 14 more retainers for $3 extra buy having the standed account instead of just a normal account and all that is needed is to get an alt to lvl 18 takes a day or 2 maybe less and done …8 characters per server 40 in total.. lol i would say most already have the standed account... so your paying $2 for a extra retainer that really most already have!!! think of this hmm personal housing when they finally bring that out extra server space $2 ..amazingly they seem to want to charge for stuff such as this yet they sit on there hands with fantasia which is a real money maker for them!!… while I'm not against the cost as such i just think its a stupid way to to bleed unnecessary funds out of the consumer..

This is a very dangerous move. Not only does it set a very bad precedent for the game's future similar to what F2P MMOs do, but it may also unbalance the game.

"But it's just 2$"

For one retainer.. then an extra 2$ for a second...
Then SE decides to charge for extra gardens or for individual player housing...

And suddenly we're paying an extra subscription for the content we're paying the subscription for in the first place.

Personally I have trouble understanding why we should be paying extra. This is not a F2P title. Are we not paying a monthly subscription for the game to have content to start with?
Also I cringe at the idea of having different subscription tiers with these extras, It feels like splitting the game's community into social classes.

I just hope FF XIV doesn't take a wrong turn and end up cutting content and features further only to sell them as extras on top of our subscription as that would surely hinder the game experience for everyone.

Because this is a markets forum I will explain the importance of $2 on additional retainers and the speculation of why $2 is necessary when looking at this from the market angle.

By making things cost money, you deter RMT's.

When you can possibly double the capacity to vendor items, it increases your ability to play in more markets and more effectively. We can see that when you have only 2 vendors, RMT's in general, are forced to group up their acquired goods in to large commodities. Even at a GOOD price, because the commodities are in such huge stacks, the overall price is VERY unappealing.

For example: I need 200 wind shards

RMT's selling : 10,000 at 20 gil each totaling 200,000 gil
Player A: 200 at 30 gil each totaling 6,000 gil

Most players will buy the player's wind shards because they don't need 10,000 wind shards and logically when you only need 200 there is no point in having 9,800 extra shards at a very huge expense that you may never ever use again.

In truth, RMT's utilize the the vendor slots far more than the average player. They need 40 slots filled constantly, while the average player may actually use far far less because unlike them where real money is on the line, we've paid our subs and play at our own leisure and are not expecting that money back while for them they need to make it back and far more. For example, the average player may use 10 slots out of 40 slots while the RMT's use all 40 slots constantly. Now, if you gave them two additional retainers, they just went from 40 slots to 80 slots against your 10 slots.

The average player usually is capable enough to make some gil from the market boards but when you go 10 vs 80 on the market boards, the average player gets demolished. You can clearly see the advantage.

Some argue that $2 is not going to deter RMT's. I hear,"If I can afford $2, RMT's definitely can afford $2." Its true they have a lot of money but it's also true that they own MANY MANY times more accounts then we do. To stay competitive against players they also need just as many vendor slots. This means they need to upgrade EVERY single one of their accounts they own that play the Market Boards. They aren't simply paying $2-4 for one account monthly, like you and I. They are paying it across all accounts that require it across all servers. Imagine when that account also gets banned. Its an additional cost! That starts building up at $2-4 a month. Not to mention, because more players can now post up more things, it can be speculated that the price of all things will drop.

In order for the RMT's to stay competitive, they need to get those extra 2 retainers to make it 80 vs 80 but just like I mentioned before, the price of things will mostly like drop because players can now put up many many more items to sell. So even at 80 vs 80, it can be speculated that RMT's will make just about the same amount of gil now at $4 additional cost. That means, you can expect RMT's, who try to utilize the 2 additional retainers to have much higher prices on their goods, gil selling of course. While those RMT's who don't have the additional retainers for the additional cost, they have to face 80 vs 40 on the market boards which puts them at a 100% disadvantage and they will end up selling their gil for higher prices as well because they have to work much harder to acquire gil.

The $2 per retainer puts the RMT's at a disadvantage at multiple angles.

-Pay the $4 just to make the same amount of gil and stay competitive but have higher priced goods (Gil Selling price)
-Don't pay the $4 and try to compete against players who now have 40 vs 80 or 40 vs 60 advantage just to try to make the same amount of gil which will be much harder.

So, from a market-side speculation, $2 benefits the community to a crazy degree especially when we look at how much it impacts RMT's.

I feel bad with this move from SE, not sure I might quit this game if there will be anymore extra payment in the future.
Yea, no one care, just sayin'.

I think it's a bad move. Not only does it mean they're charging for something that very much affects gameplay (especially for people like me who like crafting and NEED that extra space), but it might encourage this kind of crap in the future. :mad:

Oh well, I was still on a test run of this game anyways, and if I get too annoyed I'll just go play something else. There are always other MMOs.

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Originally Posted by Xystic

*RMT stuff*

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No. This has nothing to do with RMT nor it will detter them in any way - if anything it will actually make their life even more easiser. RMT are using all characters on one SE account - up to 40 with up to 80 retainers so this "argument" of yours is pretty weak and offering them ANOTHER 80 retainers for the same SE account for bare $4 per month (which they'll make in like 5 minutes anyway) is so much better than them spending three or four times more than than on another standard account. So - again - this is not possible to justify using the "RMT Excuse".

There is no denying that charging for key non-vanity stuff in game is BAD precedence in sub-based MMOs and will lead only to other bad deccissions like this I'm affraid :(

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Originally Posted by HEC

No. This has nothing to do with RMT nor it will detter them in any way - if anything it will actually make their life even more easiser. RMT are using all characters on one SE account - up to 40 with up to 80 retainers so this "argument" of yours is pretty weak and offering them ANOTHER 80 retainers for the same SE account for bare $4 per month (which they'll make in like 5 minutes anyway) is so much better than them spending three or four times more than than on another standard account. So - again - this is not possible to justify using the "RMT Excuse".

There is no denying that charging for key non-vanity stuff in game is BAD precedence in sub-based MMOs and will lead only to other bad deccissions like this I'm affraid :(

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People believe that RMT's use all their characters on one account, which is false. A smart person doing something illegal is not going to pool all their gil or have all their activity under one account. Its too easily noticeable and when that account gets banned its a huge loss to the RMT's. You lose not only gil but all your commodity goods which is YOUR SOURCE OF GIL. RMT's do not max out characters to hold or play markets. They only max an account when they plan to use it to spam you cause they know its going to get flagged and banned.

It seems logical that someone would easily max out one account for "X" dollars to optimize it but that is only true when you aren't doing illegal activities. The last thing you want to do when your doing illegal transactions is to have it funnel or be all in one place, in this case, one account, because when you have that one account banned, you face larger losses then keeping it between multiple accounts.

So lets not be to hasty on this idea that $2 does nothing to deter RMT's.