The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Imo the prices don't even matter, it's about the amount of content that is being locked behind an additional payment. Most people complaining about Cash Shop won't buy those items anyway. The WoW prices are more expensive (at least double for many).

I'll state it in the OP.

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Excuse me, but you can't compare shops and just throw away the most important factor of it. I don't care about the size of shop, I care about prices, especially if they are, as you just wrote yourself, at least double for many items.

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

The retainer issue is absurd, and something that doesn't get enough discussion in the community imo.

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It actually does, its just not all in one place

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Mogstation has always been scummy.

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Do explain why the mogstation is "scummy" and yet any other games cash shop isn't. This isn't about defending SE, this is just about people never including their favorite game because they can't be unbiased when making a post. Just about any game on the market no matter the genre has some form of a cash shop, or battle pass, or season pass to get more money.

Does it suck? Yes, very much so. I remember when you bought a game, it was a full game. Now you pay full price for half a game and the rest over installments.

Will it ever go away? Not likely.

The TLDR -- Get over it

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Originally Posted by LittleImp

Mogstation has always been scummy. I think it's getting additional heat now because players have so little relevant content to do in the current state of the game. Seeing high-quality stuff getting added to the cash-shop while we get less and less content in each patch can be frustrating.

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This.

They delayed 5.3 patch, but of course mogstation garbage still has to come in a proper date and time.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Excuse me, but you can't compare shops and just throw away the most important factor of it. I don't care about the size of shop, I care about prices, especially if they are, as you just wrote yourself, at least double for many items.

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The amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead, offering them for free.

Obviously if you were to add up the price of buying whole FFXIV Cash Shop and compare it to the whole WoW Cash Shop, FFXIV's will be way more expensive.

edit: I've added the price in the OP

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

Lol, man people have nothing to do it seems with Covid-19.

So let's get a few things straight about this.

1.) People are "Mad" at the "Cash Shop" because they pay a monthly sub and can't get everything for free.

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Wait, what?

I bought the base game, I bought all expansion and I'm paying monthly like everbody else. I 'already' paid for it, let's be real here.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

Excuse me, but you can't compare shops and just throw away the most important factor of it. I don't care about the size of shop, I care about prices, especially if they are, as you just wrote yourself, at least double for many items.

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So WOW charges double what SE charges and SE is the greedy one. Got it.

The FFXIV shop prices are already about double what feels like a good price for a virtual outfit to me - last I checked, about $18 AUD where $10 "sounds right", though it's still (just) reasonable enough for me to get things occasionally. Double the price again sounds like far too much.

(I'd still like to see them go for a "quantity over individual price" approach though... I know I'd talk myself into buying well more than twice as many items if the price per item was lower. Or perhaps drop items prices slowly over time.)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

(I'd still like to see them go for a "quantity over individual price" approach though... I know I'd talk myself into buying well more than twice as many items if the price per item was lower. Or perhaps drop items prices slowly over time.)

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You could always wait for discounts.

I feel like you(the OP) should just...return to WoW? I never played that game(to the baffling of most WoW 'refugees' that I've said this to), but it's always the same thing, bang on whatever aspect of FFXIV, while putting WoW in good light o_o, why are you here then?

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Originally Posted by SamRF

I've spent almost a whole paragraph talking about WoW token in the Original Post of this tread. You should read it and instead respond to what's stated there.

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Yes, you did, but obviously, we have completely different views on the WoW token. I bought their marketing spill of reducing RMT at the time too, but now looking back, I think that was when the game went downhill and milking their existing play base to the last copper became so obvious as their business model. It is where the WoW cash shop crossed the line to impact game progression. That is absolutely what I don't want to see in this game. If I have the power, I'd rather delete cash shop in WoW, once for all.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I feel like you(the OP) should just...return to WoW? I never played that game(to the baffling of most WoW 'refugees' that I've said this to), but it's always the same thing, bang on whatever aspect of FFXIV, while putting WoW in good light o_o, why are you here then?

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Finally you arrived, hero of the "unsub if you don't like something". Show this plebs that this place is not for disgraceful comparing of 2 products that have same genre and business model.

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

I feel like you(the OP) should just...return to WoW? I never played that game(to the baffling of most WoW 'refugees' that I've said this to), but it's always the same thing, bang on whatever aspect of FFXIV, while putting WoW in good light o_o, why are you here then?

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I will perhaps do that soon (or go to other MMO), but I'd rather not go without giving my criticism and complaints on reasons why I'd be leaving. WoW is being compared to FFXIV because they are seen as the 2 main themepark MMOs right now with the same business model. The games are similar enough to be considered competitors to each other with how (part of) their target market are fairly similar.

I like this game btw and want it to succeed and draw in as many players as it can. Giving feedback and criticism, potentially letting the community as well as SE know what people aren't satisfied with, can help the game reach higher success.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Explain to me then. Why doesn't WoW offer such an expansive Cash Shop as FFXIV? You're telling me blizzard/Activision won't jump at any opportunity to milk their fans?

They don't do it because they don't want to drive players away from their heavily critical playerbase that is know to complain over the slightest issues. It's business.

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Wow's playerbase is far larger than here and they still milk their fans. The other elephant in the room is the aforementioned itself. For every token a player can buy, Blizzard makes more money. They made it look like they were attacking the gold sellers but all they did was become the gold sellers AND make a profit from it.

A woW sub is still $14.99/month when this went into effect. The cost of a token is $20.00. For every token they sell, they are making a profit over the traditional sub price. What also happens is, the person who paid real money to sell it to another player in game will now receive a massive amount of game currency that they otherwise may not have had or worked to acquire. Now multiply that by players who buy said tokens to cover 3 to 6 months of game time. That's INSTANT money in the coffers and vastly more than a simple cost in an extremely short amount if time... like, hours.

The purchasing player gets their time to stay in the game longer and keep buying more tokens.

The selling player spends more to buy tokens but get in game gold AND the ability to now purchase high priced items from the AH that they couldn't afford before and have killer stats (pay to win)

Blizzard...gets the money. All of it.
Every. Single. Drop.

That's greed and they mastered it long ago.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Wow's playerbase is far larger than here and they still milk their fans. The other elephant in the room is the aforementioned itself. For every token a player can buy, Blizzard makes more money. They made it look like they were attacking the gold sellers but all they did was become the gold sellers AND make a profit from it.

A woW sub is still $14.99/month when this went into effect. The cost of a token is $20.00. For every token they sell, they are making a profit over the traditional sub price. What also happens is, the person who paid real money to sell it to another player in game will now receive a massive amount of game currency that they otherwise may not have had or worked to acquire. Now multiply that by players who buy said tokens to cover 3 to 6 months of game time. That's INSTANT money in the coffers and vastly more than a simple cost in an extremely short amount if time... like, hours.

The purchasing player gets their time to stay in the game longer and keep buying more tokens.

The selling player spends more to buy tokens but get in game gold AND the ability to now purchase high priced items from the AH that they couldn't afford before and have killer stats (pay to win)

Blizzard...gets the money. All of it.
Every. Single. Drop.

That's greed and they mastered it long ago.

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I didn't consider the fact that they cost 5$ more than sub, so you have a good point there. Other than that, consider that WoW tokens don't generate more gold in the game (unlike additional retainers may), they move gold from one place to the other. I do hear that it can cause inflation which isn't something you'd want as players so there is that I guess. The main profit for WoW is the fact that they get most money instead of 3th party RMT sites, which I'd personally much prefer.

edit: I've edited in the fact that they cost 5$ more than sub in the original post (thanks for letting me know btw)

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Originally Posted by SamRF

In terms of micro-transactions, ..... I believe I can safely claim that the FFXIV Cash Shop is indeed greedy and unnecessarily expansive.

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Ok...

First, it overall doesnt matter how many items are on the cash shop. This would be like saying Costco is Greedier than Target cause Costco sells more items. The size of the store isnt really indicative of greed. But here youre making the distinction that it does matter

Then youre incorrectly comparing the availability of items themselves. Meaning, just because its on mogstation doesnt mean that would be bad. For example, A lot of these items are from previous events (which you point out) or are items you can buy in game (Dyes as an example). Which you should know as you were in that 45 page thread a month back where I had broken down the mogstation listings. You hand wave some of this by stating that WoW doesnt put previous event items on the mogstation cause 'exclusivity'. Now theres a toxic mindset if Ive ever seen one. I guess if people werent part of a previous event they shouldnt have ANY method of getting those items should they want them.
But lets look at minions real quick: If we ignore the 'exclusivity' factor and find out exactly how many only exist for Mogstation, you get 11, not 33.

Minion: Panda Cub
Minion: Doman Magpie
Minion: Wind-up Y'shtola
Minion: Wind-up Yda
Minion: Wind-up Papalymo
Minion: Wind-up Tataru
Minion: Wind-up Urianger
Minion: Wind-up Alisaie
Minion: Wind-up Yuna Account-wide)
Minion: Wind-up Lulu (Account-wide)
Minion: Wind-up Rikku (Account-wide)


This gets even funner cause some of these items are cross promotional items. An example of this is the Fenris - an item that was made for Fanfest, and then sold on the mogstation if anyone wanted it. But I guess we shouldnt take that into account cause "Exclusivity". Lets make sure people who want it cant have it if they didnt get a ticket that year.

This is also the same case that some of the glamour items, as some of them were independently commissioned for other markets and then brought to the Mogstation to allow anyone to purchase them.

Then lets talk about inventory space.... Out the gate, you get the following:

WoW:
Inventory - 5 Slots with a bag size of 32 Items...so 160 Space. You have to craft/buy these bags. Keep in mind 32 is what I could find on a google search, so if theres a larger bag, let me know.
Bank - 28 Starter Slots + 7 Bags (32 items a pop) so....252 Slots.

Total of 412 Items in a standard inventory

FFXIV
Immediate Inventory - 140
Chocobo Saddle bag - 70
Retainers - 175 x 2

Total of 560 items in standard inventory.

Now, there is an obvious caveat to all this. WoW has a better glamour system. I would very much like FFXIV to have a similar system as the current one does eat up inventory space. Now they bandaged this a little bit with the glamour dressing holding an 400 items (I think, I cant remember off the top of my head.) But you still get overflow. But looking directly at inventory space comparisons, currently FFXIV has better raw inventory space than WoW.

As for making more money, more retainers doesnt inherently mean more money. You need things to sell too. More ventures does increase that chance of rare high value items but Id have to see how that translates, cause half the time Im not sending my retainers out for Quick Explore or whatever, Im having them collect mats cause Im lazy, and your retainers arent bringing in 500k items every time. Hell, half the time I get fish.

Then lets consider those extra services, cause why not.

FFXIV's class system allows you to level only one character and get every job. The advantage of this is easier gear management, dungeon access, and increased speed between classes and flexibility in play over xpacs. Leveling isnt extremely arduous once you got a max level class because PotD, HoH, and other levelign opportunites become available. I am not aware if WoW intentionally has similar power leveling structures in its game.

WoW does not have this. Every class is an independent character. So if you want to play a new class, you level a new character from scratch without the benefit of dungeon access, gear, and the like. This is somewhat offset by Heirloom gear if you got it. Youll level faster but youll still need to go through it. Then according you to you, they charge you more for level boosts. Wonder why....Could it be they know that if you want to play another class, youll have to roll again and go through the game again to get it up to speed, so people who want to not deal with that will pay for the jump? You have less flexibility than you do in FFXIV regarding this.


But despite this all, the conclusion is SE is Greedy and Mogstation is bad!

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Originally Posted by SamRF

The amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead, offering them for free.

Obviously if you were to add up the price of buying whole FFXIV Cash Shop and compare it to the whole WoW Cash Shop, FFXIV's will be way more expensive.

edit: I've added the price in the OP

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So you're sitting here trying to convince us that... 34 items for 595$ in Blizzard store is somehow cheaper than 54 items for 460€ (sorry, I can't check NA prices in Mog) in SE store. Erh?

You're counting attires in "full" price, I get, but it's not how it works. When you compare something, you compare same categories. Blizzard doesn't have attires section, good for them (I mean it), but looking at what you provided, if they did have this section - their store would be even more ridiculously expensive than it already is, which is most likely the only reason why they don't have it. Not to mention, how other people said it and I can only believe their info as I dropped WoW after 30 minutes of playing and didn't even open the shop, that Blizzard sells in-game currency, and not for a low price.

I am a consumer. I get spare 20$ (18€) and think "okay, wanna spoil myself and buy something cute in shop". I open Mog Station and can: buy 2 mount for 8.40€ each, or 1 mount for 8.40€ + 2 minions for 3.50€, or 1 mount for 16.80€, or 2 attires for 9€ each, or one attire for 13.50€ + 1 minion for 3.50€. Then I open Blizzard shop: I can buy... 2 minions. Wow, Blizzard certainly wins! (No it doesn't).

SE store could have less items, and lower prices, but Blizzard isn't the prince on white horse here at all, and SE isn't the greedy one among these two to say least, as much as both companies are down for more money.

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Originally Posted by SinisterJoints

It actually does, its just not all in one place



Do explain why the mogstation is "scummy" and yet any other games cash shop isn't. This isn't about defending SE, this is just about people never including their favorite game because they can't be unbiased when making a post. Just about any game on the market no matter the genre has some form of a cash shop, or battle pass, or season pass to get more money.

Does it suck? Yes, very much so. I remember when you bought a game, it was a full game. Now you pay full price for half a game and the rest over installments.

Will it ever go away? Not likely.

The TLDR -- Get over it

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You want me to explain a point I literally never made? lmao. I never drew a comparison to other games in my post.

Cash shops in general are scummy, ergo the cash shop here is also scummy. This one hurts a little more because the game bears a monthly subscription, as opposed to most cash-shops (particularly ones with p2w aspects like retainers) in free-to-play or buy-to-play games.

Telling consumers not to offer criticisms of products and business practices isn't constructive at all. Developers and publishers do listen to backlash over stuff like this. Heck, consumer complaints have lead to countries taking legislative action against certain business practices in the gaming market, not that this issue is one that would warrant it.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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I have several retainers and in my experience, it doesn't make a very big advantage to make gils.

You get more items while gathering in twenty minutes if you are HL with the token gears obtained with custom deliveries.
To craft many items, it doesn't look better. Token gears we get with custom deliveries are more than enough.

Many expensive items are in fact the ones you get with FC ventures (aeronef and submarine) or while running high levels in PotD/HoH or Treasure Map and their hidden dungeons or sometimes Eureka items.

Tribes materials are more interesting than one item every week (if lucky) that needs Ixals items and some hippogrif leather.

If you want to sell a high price it remains on the retainer for ages.

The P2W side of the retainer is really subjective and not conclusive in reality.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

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You make some valid points here.

This isn't an argument against you but rather opinion: overall me and I'm sure many others will still be much more frustrated by simply looking at the sheer size of FFXIV Cash Shop (page upon page) and then comparing it with the WoW store, which might be the equivalent of a single Mog Station page. As I've stated before the amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead (thus "for free").

As for exclusive items, that may be the case for minions but for mounts by far most were never available in game. I'm sure same goes for glamours (non seasonal), of which there are 0 in the WoW Cash Shop.

Further comment on seasonal and limited items (my opinion):

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Originally Posted by SamRF

While I don't mean to be too much of a nag, I do dislike the fact that Seasonals can be bought form the Cash Shop. Part of what would be special and interesting about (seasonal) events is the fact that you can get items which will be unobtainable and exclusive whoever did the event at the time (or when it returns). The fact that these items simply become available in the Cash Shop takes a way a lot of the appeal (and immersion?) to me. It's no longer something you want for exclusivity, but rather just to save money.

In other games there are very often Cash Shop items offered for a limited time, because they know people like the exclusivity of having an item that is no longer available.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

This isn't an argument against you but rather opinion: overall me and I'm sure many others will still be much more frustrated by simply looking at the sheer size of FFXIV Cash Shop (page upon page) and then comparing it with the WoW store, which might be the equivalent of a single Mog Station page.

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The primary hang up youre getting is youre saying "Bigger is Badder". Just cause SE sells more items on that store doesnt mean its inherently more greedy, and then to take into account that theyre offering us the player the ability to get items we may not have had the chance to get from previous events. Theyre giving us options, which WoW doesnt. Exclusivity be damned IMO. One of my favorite glamour pieces is from the halloween event a year or two ago. If I missed it, but I wanted it, I could get it from mog station. If we had WoW's model, tough luck/so sad/sucks to suck. That is crap IMO, and some WoW players have said as much, as if youve been on the WoW forums, the argument for Blizz to sell items from previous events crops up from time to time.

You also seem to end up shooting your own argument in the foot here? Excluding anything mog station specific - when you say the following:

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Originally Posted by SamRF

As I've stated before the amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead.

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A vast majority of actual tangible items in the mogstation are from previous in game events. They gave us the items for free at first, and gave a method to acquire those items down the line as they gave us new items for the following year. WoW is giving you holiday items at holidays...then thats it. How is that a better system? All WoW's system ultimately does is promote the idea for people to stay subscribed just so they can get holiday event items. Atleast with SE, if I decide not be subbed, I can get the item at some later time.

As for mounts - Most of the mounts on the mogstation are reskins (Magitek Armors), 'commissions' (Nehzu or Fenris), or pre-existing models (Sleipnir). There are only..8ish (?) mounts that are unique in both design and availability.

Carbuncle - Red/Yellow
Whale Mount
Spriggan
Carpet
Red Hare (I think someone mentioned this is a reskin, but double check that)
Fat Moogle
Bennu

Now you can say this is arguably bad, but I think its prudent to take into context how this factors out. For a big point, what mounts are we being offered in game at the same time? Phoenix, Kirin, Omega Mount, Korperger (green mossball), Tortoise, etc etc. There are a ton of mounts you can get in game that are easily higher quality than the ones I listed. WoW has, or had if theyve changed it, a problem where a vast sum of their mounts are simply just a reskin. Now this isnt to say FFXIV doesnt have a lot of reskinned mounts (EX mounts) but that they offer a ton of pretty well put together and varied mounts, and provide mounts to us for free on events (Witch Mount, Santa Bear, 4 Seater car), or even some uniqueness to the mounts such as those EX mounts while palette swaps do play the boss music which is nice.

That is a subjective thing in sense of personal preference, but I think here when you start comparing 1:1, its not so cut and dry.

The hurdle to your position to convince people like me is to show me that somehow SE is fleecing us and diverting attention from the game to the mogstation. I dont see evidence of this, as the overall quality of the game is pretty good, and most of whats on the mogstation I have 0 interest in as I have better things in game already.

The bennu is a reskin of the zu mount, obtainable in game.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

As a whole, this viewpoint is really odd to me. Not just talking about with XIV or even just MMOs. But baaaack in my day (yes, I'm older), I remember a time where games didn't come with DLC or microtransactions. The industry has obviously changed, and they've learned that they can get away with charging people extra for additional content that they leave out of their games. On the company's side, that makes perfect sense to me. Charge your customers what you can get away with, make that money. But what does confuse me a bit is how strongly some consumers will actually defend having microtransactions in games as if they're a wonderful thing.

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Back in my day, going back even further, I remember the first online world I was a member of cost $2/hour on compuserve. Two. Dollars. An. Hour. Roundabouts 1996 or so, even before Everquest came out.

Due to the sheer number of chargebacks the company was getting from little kids who asked for mommy's credit card, got on the World (Dreamscape), and racked up $300 in one month, the company was forced to change to a flat fee of $20 a month.

(I was one of those kids.)

FTR i'm fine with the cash shop and its wares (even bought a few) but the question remains of would the game change beyond a visual level without these items.

For the most part. Yes they would, people can live without Scion minions, Carbuncle mounts or Fairy Queen dresses, but then there are the few that do change the experience, namely the additional retainers, which does mean that there is something of tangible value that you can buy there, there are also borderline cases like the Fantaisas, server transfers and renaming.

Also regarding WoW's unrerunable exclusives. FFXIV does has those, but as bonus to merchandiser like art books and plush toys, and those are on a timed basis. Make of that what you will.

I think the "greediest" thing about the cash shop in ff14 is how little is actually put into ff14 itself. The Dev team are very stretched on resources lately and have a fairly small budget for this game while the mogstation money is being funneled into other projects like the ff7 remake.

If I choose to pay for extra vanity items, I'd prefer it to be a sign of support for that game and the developers who make it.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I think the "greediest" thing about the cash shop in ff14 is how little is actually put into ff14 itself. The Dev team are very stretched on resources lately and have a fairly small budget for this game while the mogstation money is being funneled into other projects like the ff7 remake.

If I choose to pay for extra vanity items, I'd prefer it to be a sign of support for that game and the developers who make it.

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My understanding was that it is the opposite - the FFXIV team gets to keep the majority of the cash shop money, but it's the regular subscriptions that are sucked into the mega budget by the SE overlords to fund other development.

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Originally Posted by Derio

The only gripe I have is with the retainers. And dont get me started on the mobile app.

Inventory space is the biggest issue. I dont care if they sell optional mounts and glamour on the mogstation, but I shouldnt have to pay for inventory space.

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You don't have to pay for inventory space.

How about you just throw some !@#$ away.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

My understanding was that it is the opposite - the FFXIV team gets to keep the majority of the cash shop money, but it's the regular subscriptions that are sucked into the mega budget by the SE overlords to fund other development.

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This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

edit: some seem to misundestand what I'm saying here. I never doubted the fact that SE uses FFXIV money to fund other projects (I've said this in several posts before and have even defended SE for doing this in another thread). It's the distinction that I'm talking about (Cash Shop goes to game while Sub money goes to other projects).

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Wow's playerbase is far larger than here and they still milk their fans. The other elephant in the room is the aforementioned itself. For every token a player can buy, Blizzard makes more money. They made it look like they were attacking the gold sellers but all they did was become the gold sellers AND make a profit from it.

A woW sub is still $14.99/month when this went into effect. The cost of a token is $20.00. For every token they sell, they are making a profit over the traditional sub price. What also happens is, the person who paid real money to sell it to another player in game will now receive a massive amount of game currency that they otherwise may not have had or worked to acquire. Now multiply that by players who buy said tokens to cover 3 to 6 months of game time. That's INSTANT money in the coffers and vastly more than a simple cost in an extremely short amount if time... like, hours.

The purchasing player gets their time to stay in the game longer and keep buying more tokens.

The selling player spends more to buy tokens but get in game gold AND the ability to now purchase high priced items from the AH that they couldn't afford before and have killer stats (pay to win)

Blizzard...gets the money. All of it.
Every. Single. Drop.

That's greed and they mastered it long ago.

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The real evil here, imagine, you can buy your game time with the gold you have and gold buyers will buy gold directly from the company and not some shady gold sellers. In our game we dont support those devilish actions and directly use our fellow friend Sjfksdf Jhdsjds for getting some gils. Its not like they couldn't do same thing as Blizz and support their project with money people giving for gold, instead of shoving dozens of new clothes that you can't obtain in game as years go by.
Dont forget folks, wow bad, ff xiv good.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

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Why? Money any company makes from 1 service is going to be used to fund all projects a company has. They don't generally segregate funds other than via budget.

WoW funded most blizzard titles. All the cash shop stuff from over watch funds wow. Etc.

Reality will always be that any earnings from any SE teams get sucked into the SE pot and go towards many a project. And this may come as a shock to some but it even goes into that fat check the directors cut themselves. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's essentially how businesses operate and how the world works. Not to mention that that is exactly how ff14 got ARR in the first place.

I have no skin in this cash shop thing. I don't really see the issue, it's all mostly optional so nobody -needs- it. As for prices it's like everything else in life, if it's not worth the price, don't buy it. We're constantly walking away from items we could use but don't need irl, this is no different.
At the same time I can appreciate the right of people to complain about SE's cash shop decision. Ultimately they can decide what benefits their business most, listening to these complaints or maintaining the status quo.

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Originally Posted by Goji1639

All shops are greedy by design.

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No they aren't. I go to my local butcher and I don't see an intense desire for wealth, just a passion for high quality meat.

greed·y
/ˈɡrēdē/

adjective
having or showing an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth or power.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

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It's straight from Yoshi P. Cash shop funded the EU data center (they used to have to cross the Atlantic to play in Montreal) and later on the upgrade to the NA data center and its move to California.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...from-EU-Stream

The XIV division remits all its profits to SE, who then handles their HR, payroll, facilities costs, etc, because they are a mega corp and that is how mega corps handle that kind of thing.

I used to work for a timber company. The division I supported as an IT analyst was in charge of collecting hunting leases from various parcels of land which were otherwise just growing trees. A team of ten people usually collected $20 million of revenue for the company. Did they split that 20 mil amongst themselves? Absolutely not. They got paid well, but not 2 mil a year well. Not even the director made that much - try maybe 10% of that. The value that they brought to the company was used to fund other operations, including my department, IT, which was considered an internal cost center since we didn't make any revenue for the organization.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Why? Money any company makes from 1 service is going to be used to fund all projects a company has. They don't generally segregate funds other than via budget.

WoW funded most blizzard titles. All the cash shop stuff from over watch funds wow. Etc.

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I don't doubt that money FFXIV makes will go to other projects (as it should, only makes sense). It's the distinction that Sub money mainly goes to other projects while Cash Shop mainly goes into supporting the game. This makes no sense, why make such distinction between revenue streams? Sounds like a way too convenient way of promoting Cash Shop sales. Even if it does make sense in some way I'm not aware of and it's actually true, we have no way of knowing it for sure so all it does for me is make SE look like cheap Cash Shop promoters while also taking away their credibility.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

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If you look back and consider SE's financial situation back when A Realm Reborn first launched versus how it is now, you'll see why they leech so heavily from this game. FFXIV 2.0 legitimately was their biggest source of income in the gaming department for a long time after several botched and severely financially draining choices made across the board. There was a point when the original 2013 Tomb Raider reboot was considered a financial failure after selling 3.4 million copies because of the severe financial bloat SE was encouraging in all it's gaming projects. For some comparison, 3.4 million copies back in 2013 was insane for a single player game and while I can't find any articles right now to verify the number, I do remember that when this news broke back then there were ideas being tossed around that their desired sales target was something only games like Call of Duty were reaching at the time. It took them a year to make back all the money they spent making that game, and it wasn't the only game of theirs to underperform their expectations either. It was just the one they were the most vocal about and that the gaming community latched onto the hardest.

They've gotten 'better' about budget bloat since then (minus FFXV but that monster was never going to make back nearly 10 years of wasted development) but FFXIV remains their main cookie jar as of right now in part due to those past mistakes. They're never going to give it up, nor really should they. What they should do is take a little less money from the pot so Yoshi-P doesn't end up in situations where he's begging for server upgrades like the last time, but that's a discussion for another day.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Wait, what?

I bought the base game, I bought all expansion and I'm paying monthly like everbody else. I 'already' paid for it, let's be real here.

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Right, no. Just like any other MMO you pay for the content given within the expansions and patches/updates that follow. Also monthly sub is paying for servers/maintenance/future expansions/content/paying employees, etc. So no, you did not "Pay" for everything in the mogstation. That's just your self entitlement speaking.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Explain to me then. Why doesn't WoW offer such an expansive Cash Shop as FFXIV? You're telling me blizzard/Activision won't jump at any opportunity to milk their fans?

They don't do it because they don't want to drive players away from their heavily critical playerbase that is know to complain over the slightest issues. It's business.

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They already do. That's why WoW is still going. Also Blizzard is a bigger company with a lot more net worth compared to SE.

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Originally Posted by Catwho

I used to work for a timber company. The division I supported as an IT analyst was in charge of collecting hunting leases from various parcels of land which were otherwise just growing trees. A team of ten people usually collected $20 million of revenue for the company. Did they split that 20 mil amongst themselves? Absolutely not. They got paid well, but not 2 mil a year well. Not even the director made that much - try maybe 10% of that. The value that they brought to the company was used to fund other operations, including my department, IT, which was considered an internal cost center since we didn't make any revenue for the organization.

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Originally Posted by Enla

If you look back and consider SE's financial situation back when A Realm Reborn first launched versus how it is now, you'll see why they leech so heavily from this game. FFXIV 2.0 legitimately was their biggest source of income in the gaming department for a long time after several botched and severely financially draining choices made across the board. There was a point when the original 2013 Tomb Raider reboot was considered a financial failure after selling 3.4 million copies because of the severe financial bloat SE was encouraging in all it's gaming projects. For some comparison, 3.4 million copies back in 2013 was insane for a single player game and while I can't find any articles right now to verify the number, I do remember that when this news broke back then there were ideas being tossed around that their desired sales target was something only games like Call of Duty were reaching at the time. It took them a year to make back all the money they spent making that game, and it wasn't the only game of theirs to underperform their expectations either. It was just the one they were the most vocal about and that the gaming community latched onto the hardest.

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Interesting stories and I've genuinely enjoyed reading them, but you seem to have misunderstood what I meant in that post. I never doubted the fact that SE uses FFXIV money to fund other projects (I've even defended this practice in another thread), all I'm skeptical about is the the distinction that Cash Shop money goes to the game while sub money goes to other projects. This to me sounds like a way too convenient PR message, to the point it sounds disingenuous.

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Originally Posted by SamRF

Interesting stories and I've genuinely enjoyed reading them, but you seem to have misunderstood what I meant in that post. I never doubted the fact that SE uses FFXIV money to fund other projects (I've even defended this practice in another thread), all I'm skeptical about is the the distinction that Cash Shop money goes to the game while sub money goes to other projects. This to me sounds like a way too convenient PR message, to the point it sounds disingenuous.

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And nothing anyone says will change your mind. You've already determined that its just them being scummy.

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Originally Posted by yukiiyuki

The real evil here, imagine, you can buy your game time with the gold you have and gold buyers will buy gold directly from the company and not some shady gold sellers. In our game we dont support those devilish actions and directly use our fellow friend Sjfksdf Jhdsjds for getting some gils. Its not like they couldn't do same thing as Blizz and support their project with money people giving for gold, instead of shoving dozens of new clothes that you can't obtain in game as years go by.
Dont forget folks, wow bad, ff xiv good.

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Or, you could just not buy gold at all and earn it the way you're supposed which negates the issue entirely. And yet, they are still making more money with that model regardless.

And yes, "WoW bad" for that scheme. Now that IS a slimy move. One of many they have done to screw over their playerbase. You need only look to what has been going on at Blizzard the last year and a half to see that they are all about the money. Period.

In that respect, yes, "ff xiv good" cause I dont get the same money hungry and nefarious vibes to purposely get their customers here.

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Originally Posted by Edax

No they aren't. I go to my local butcher and I don't see an intense desire for wealth, just a passion for high quality meat.

greed·y
/ˈɡrēdē/

adjective
having or showing an intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth or power.

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The desire for wealth is there, and whether or not it's suitably "intense" is just speculative. Nobody opens a shop without a legitimate desire for wealth; greed is the cornerstone of capitalism.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Or, you could just not buy gold at all and earn it the way you're supposed which negates the issue entirely. And yet, they are still making more money with that model regardless.

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What fairy world you're living in? We have gold sellers here, it exists because people use it. The people who earning gold the way they suppose — bying subs for that gold, and filthy casuals who dont want to grind — help them to get that sub with them bying gold from blizz, everyone is happy, even the company that can buy new car for Bobby Kotick.