Will no longer purchase optional items in response to statue emote

Is there specific way you have to spend the money or it doesnt matter as long as your balance is low?

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Originally Posted by ryouma17

where is this statue emote everyone is getting their knickers in a twist over? i see nothing on the mogstation and the only thing i can find via google is a joke post on reddit dated 2 years ago

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You don't see it on Mog Station because it's a bonus item that only comes with a physical statue (of a very questionable quality).
Here's the preview for the emote, on Lodestone:

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7478018c14ddee

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Originally Posted by Cinnamonpop

I agree. I was kind of let down by the emote itself, especially since it doesn't seem like it loops like the omega emotes. Tbh despite what other people are saying in this thread, I think what a lot of people don't understand is I HAVE to spend this money. Having a large amount of money (which normally I don't have) is bad on disability. If I don't get rid of this money soon, my funds WILL be cut off, and it could take up to 6 months to get them back, which is beyond my temporary blessing of not having to worry about my finances for the next two months. I was really hoping this statue would be the solution, as I could be knocking out multiple birds with one stone, but seeing them try to minimize what their customer gains, I canceled it immediately. If I could save this money I would, but that's not an option on disability. I have to be rid of it by the end of the month.

Despite my family wanting me to spend this on myself, I might have to just ignore that and buy my friends a bunch of games on steam or something.

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One option could be to get yourself 6 months of subscription among other things. I'm not sure what's the half a year price is for NA, but I imagine it will cover at least $80, probably.

Also as a general question because the way American disability system works is frankly mind boggling to me... can't you keep that money in cash?

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Originally Posted by MAJRIS

Is there specific way you have to spend the money or it doesnt matter as long as your balance is low?

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By technicalities I do have to pay specific things like bills and such, which I have met those requirements, but not to the same extent that I did before, meaning I have much more than usual, plus I have the money from Christmas. To the government, as long as I contribute to the household I'm allowed to do whatever else I wish with the money. The only reason why I'm struggling with the money right now is my family's request, but I think I am just gonna have to give it away in some way. I wish I could say, buy something of worth to technically save the money, but by technicalities I'm not allowed to do that so I won't lol.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

One option could be to get yourself 6 months of subscription among other things. I'm not sure what's the half a year price is for NA, but I imagine it will cover at least $80, probably.

Also as a general question because the way American disability system works is frankly mind boggling to me... can't you keep that money in cash?

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By technicalities I could, but if they found out I would be cut off from my funds and benefits, and probably be charged a fine, if not have legal charges pressed against me, as they wouldn't know how long I'd been exceeding the 2,000$ limit and wouldn't know how much I would actually owe them.

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Originally Posted by Cinnamonpop

By technicalities I could, but if they found out I would be cut off from my funds and benefits, and probably be charged a fine, if not have legal charges pressed against me, as they wouldn't know how long I'd been exceeding the 2,000$ limit and wouldn't know how much I would actually owe them.

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That's... I've no words for just how bad it sounds. :x

Yeah.. at that price I was hoping it was a full figure like the others but its more of a bust with just their upper 1/2. Its very overpriced as is, even for a Meister, and wouldnt recommend it. Considering what we got with Omega's figure and its price, I genuinely think they bumped the price up because of that emote.

I always disliked those figure emotes. In my opinion it divides the playerbase into rich and poor on a level that should not exist. They should sell the figures without any ingame codes, so that just people who REALLY want that merch are going to buy them.

But of course they can sell more figures and get much more cash from people who buy that expensive stuff just because of the emotes. It's a shame for this company to use such methods, in my opinion.

there are some people in this game that i just can't believe play it

we are nobody to tells others if they wish to have alts or not

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Originally Posted by sindriiisgaming

i dont understand this tbh.. like this game activley doesnt want u playing alts so who cares if ur main is the only 1 with it..

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false.
if that was the case the game would offer just 1 character slot....yet we get what? 8? stop it dude....your whiteknighting is lowkey pathetic

Well, opinions aside, the statue has apparently sold out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...o_buy_the_new/
Make of that what you will....

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Well, opinions aside, the statue has apparently sold out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...o_buy_the_new/
Make of that what you will....

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Well, whaling is a thing... There is the 80-20 rule, 80% of sales is from 20% people...
And I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of those statues end up on places like ebay...

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Originally Posted by Halivel

You don't see it on Mog Station because it's a bonus item that only comes with a physical statue (of a very questionable quality).
Here's the preview for the emote, on Lodestone:

https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7478018c14ddee

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Noticed at the end the character doesn't remain at the idle pose for the animation. People who waste $400 on this just to have to keep pressing the emote or set up and macro honestly you get what you paid for. I remember Pre-ordering the Reaper Job Pin and it took them 9 months past the release date to send mine. I almost forgot about it.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

Well, opinions aside, the statue has apparently sold out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...o_buy_the_new/
Make of that what you will....

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There are players that would pay thousands of dollars for a limited edition emote. TBH there are people who will happily spend their life savings to have something others don’t in a virtual game. It is what it is. SE will gain negative PR from ripping off their customers if they keep doing this though.

I dislike the statues going up in price and the quality being…. Okay… at best. That being said I don’t plan on buying on ever but I do think the correct price for something like that would be in the vicinity of $150.00 USD.

I am not very satisfied with the change in the Meister Quality figure's accompanying emote, from account-wide to single-character. This approach feels like a money grab.

SE is a corporation. Literally everything they do is a money grab.

Late, and what I want to say real quick is that I knew the statue would get sold out (after all, that's inevitable with scalpers existing, and well, the fomo people experience is very real unfortunately) but I believe there is nothing truly to lose speaking out and speaking loud about your disapproval, which is what I hoped to do with this thread, and hoped others would as well.

Worst case scenario is nothing changes and we all move on. Best case, should enough people complain and perhaps even express the same sentiment as me of no longer buying anything optional, mayhaps Square Enix will listen on some level. Were the chances of the last part high? No. Might as well have been .1%. But do I think it's worth trying? Yes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. Lots to potentially gain with very little to lose.

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Originally Posted by Heavenchild

But of course they can sell more figures and get much more cash from people who buy that expensive stuff just because of the emotes. It's a shame for this company to use such methods, in my opinion.

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The funny thing is I'm fairly sure they could make a lot more if they just sold it as a single player (or even account-wide) emote on Mog Station for like $15-20 or something.

ffxivcollect isn't exactly the most accurate thing ever on this since it's reported by players themselves, but still somewhat of a represenation:

Some of the Mog Station-only emotions ownship percentage:
Cheer Sticks recolor emotes: 12%
Deride: 13%
Drink Tea: 23%
Pantomime: 18%
Flower Shower: 24%
Wasshoi: 16%
Snap: 27%
Toast: 32%

And it continues for almost every shop-exclusive emote. There're pretty popular.

And then there's figurine emotes:
Zantetsuken: 1,4%
Diamond Dust: 1,9%
Ultima: 2,1%
Omega: 2,7%


And that's a difference in ownship between pretty simple looking emotes and something what a lot of people would be willing to spend on even if they generally do not buy things on shop. I know at least several of my friends who'd buy Shiva emote if it were to be on Mog even for higher price, and who otherwise don't spend even on Fantasias.

So funnily enough, no, I highly doubt they're winning much (if anything) by selling what's essentially a $150+ ($350+ for the "Sundering") emote (since figurines are crap) because a lot of people:
- Cannot justify spending this much on a physical good that doesn't even look the price it costs.
- A good portion of players don't actually live in countries where it can be easily delivered, so even if they wanted to get it - they can't or at the very least it would cost them 2x-3x the price.

There's also the fact that all of their figurines rarely, if ever, receive reprints. Especially Meister line. I only ever remember seeing one restock for Shiva and that's it. Emotes on Mog Station could be sold for eternity and bring money from both old and new players for years.

Sooo... yeah. It's a really weird way to milk players of their cash that doesn't even milk that much out of them on the grand scale of things in terms of potential profit. It's just... I don't know what it is really.
(And the fact it's already sold out is mind-boggling to me ngl. An ounce of self-respect where?)

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Originally Posted by Halivel

There's also the fact that all of their figurines rarely, if ever, receive reprints. Especially Meister line. I only ever remember seeing one restock for Shiva and that's it. Emotes on Mog Station could be sold for eternity and bring money from both old and new players for years.

Sooo... yeah. It's a really weird way to milk players of their cash that doesn't even milk that much out of them on the grand scale of things in terms of potential profit. It's just... I don't know what it is really.
)

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This is just a guess, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if it's someone is trying to justify the figures existing for one reason or another. Though crap in quality, the department making these figures are still people with jobs who would like to see those jobs continue. Despite the quality of the figure, I doubt the quality comes from a lack of skill, but rather a lack of time+pay given by Square to ensure their quality.

Even should reprints never happen, figures and such selling fast, no matter what the reason, is the most direct message you can give to higher ups who only care about money and proving to their investors that they are worth investing in.

The quicker they can sell these figures, the more they can prove to the higher ups that it's worth keeping their jobs, and thus they get to keep their jobs. The emotes really are just there for the sake of proving their figures are worth investing in for people who aren't going to care or question why they're selling.

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Originally Posted by Cinnamonpop

This is just a guess, but to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if it's someone is trying to justify the figures existing for one reason or another. Though crap in quality, the department making these figures are still people with jobs who would like to see those jobs continue. Despite the quality of the figure, I doubt the quality comes from a lack of skill, but rather a lack of time+pay given by Square to ensure their quality.

Even should reprints never happen, figures and such selling fast, no matter what the reason, is the most direct message you can give to higher ups who only care about money and proving to their investors that they are worth investing in.

The quicker they can sell these figures, the more they can prove to the higher ups that it's worth keeping their jobs, and thus they get to keep their jobs. The emotes really are just there for the sake of proving their figures are worth investing in for people who aren't going to care or question why they're selling.

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It's probably the most feasible explanation honestly, but then I also look at their other lines - like Bring Arts or Toy Arts. Those, while still frankly overpriced, look a lot better for a lower price tag.

I have 9S action figurine that costed $55 or something. It's genuinely pretty nice, although I could 100% find things of a better quality on AmiAmi for the same price.

So there's something with Meister line that goes beyond just not having potentially enough time and/or payment to make a better sculpt. Especially when there's $2400 2B (Nier Automata) statue that honestly looks majestic (still ridiculously overpriced, but it's 1/3 scale and very detailed so like... there I could at least somewhat understand the tag, just a tiny bit).

I preordered the day the statue showed up, in the first hour the page went live. My order is now marked as declined for some reason (loads of credit available on my card) and the statue is marked as out of stock. The SE store has long been a complete mess IMHO. No cool statue & emote for me I guess ... unless I want to pay $1k to some scalper...

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Originally Posted by Doki

I preordered the day the statue showed up, in the first hour the page went live. My order is now marked as declined for some reason (loads of credit available on my card) and the statue is marked as out of stock. The SE store has long been a complete mess IMHO. No cool statue & emote for me I guess ... unless I want to pay $1k to some scalper...

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If you are willing to pay 1k for a mediocre emote and a scuffed statue, more power to you eh ?

The Scalpers I do somewhat understand why they do what they do... Not that I think it's a good thing, but without a doubt there will be cases where people bought the statue purely for the emote, they'll take it and then try to sell the statue off to someone without the code.

You guys are always quick to demand exclusivity to go away for PvP ranked rewards, but once it is a statue it doesn't even cross your mind anymore.

There are even minions from 2.x merchandise that aren't on mogstation yet either. Or mounts that never got a promotion campaign in Europe.

Why not demand that after 3-5 years or something they should put the emote in the shop for 30$. SE is a company, they need to make profit. And the longer you defend them, the more greedy they can get - any company will do it like that.

Decline of the "Meister Quality" quality aside, I find the idea of releasing exclusive, limited in-game items to be completely outdated and nonsensical, and the online behavior of showing off the latest overpriced premium mount or statue emote equally baffling. Great, you have money to waste, I don't... so what? Am I supposed to feel envious of something I can't ever get or purchase because I simply wasn't there at the right time with the right amount of money and/or free time?

I've said this in previous threads related to this topic, but outside of 1.0 Legacy achievements, it makes very little sense to keep mounts, minions, titles, emotes and gear exclusive.

As a EU player it's even more frustrating to see collaborations happening in Japan and NA, and 2 years later the only chance we got to receive a Chocorpokkur is some "special 10th anniversary giveaway" where we can only hope to be one of the 2800 winners selected among both EU and NA participants. Thankfully they finally added the pizza emote to the store, but that only happened after enough people requested it in person at the London Fanfest from what I heard :^)

And what is making the most amount of money on the store right now?

https://i.imgur.com/SrYVYLk.png

Wow no way :^)

Either way, like Halivel said I think exclusivity doesn't bring much to the table when you could either sell the emote to a much, much larger consumer base on the store, or like I said in the thread I linked, to make previously exclusive rewards available again through other, equally challenging (or at least time consuming) means, or simply achievement certificates.

To go back to the figurines themselves, I still don't understand why the quality is abysmal compared to the first ones, or even compared to the Nier ones that are sold on the same store by the same company...? Can't they just use the same manufacturer?

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

You guys are always quick to demand exclusivity to go away for PvP ranked rewards, but once it is a statue it doesn't even cross your mind anymore.

There are even minions from 2.x merchandise that aren't on mogstation yet either. Or mounts that never got a promotion campaign in Europe.

Why not demand that after 3-5 years or something they should put the emote in the shop for 30$. SE is a company, they need to make profit. And the longer you defend them, the more greedy they can get - any company will do it like that.

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Definitely they could drop the exclusivity on things... I'd be fine if they were a timed exclusive, but things being just completely unobtainable is stupid.

If they didn't tie the emote to it no one would be buying the statue. No one.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

WoW has essentially account wide everything. SE, figure it out.

Semi-recently is appeared WoW has looked a bit more hungrily at FFXIV, like when they announced warbands which gets very close to our job system. While I still prefer FFXIV, I don't like it sitting on its laurels. Things like beastmaster, FFXIV, make me think they are. Given we see active examples from multiple other MMOs that have figured out pet jobs, multiple options, and even abilities that mean something. Druids with substantial effort to provide them a proper experience. But if it's unique we get limited.

I shouldn't be too carried away, we still have $100 digital expansions for diablo lol, but just something I feel that is shifting.l (not 180'd yet).

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account wide glam, no glam dresser in sight, once you get it, its unlocked on all your characters. But hoping we get a cosmetic journal like WoW has, from Yoshi P is like still asking Blizzard for player housing, it'll never happen.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

You guys are always quick to demand exclusivity to go away for PvP ranked rewards, but once it is a statue it doesn't even cross your mind anymore.

There are even minions from 2.x merchandise that aren't on mogstation yet either. Or mounts that never got a promotion campaign in Europe.

Why not demand that after 3-5 years or something they should put the emote in the shop for 30$. SE is a company, they need to make profit. And the longer you defend them, the more greedy they can get - any company will do it like that.

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I find the idea of "once gone - forever gone" idiotic for years, which also led to me leaving a whole lot of online projects where FOMO is a second bread.

And if with physical goods I can at least somewhat understand the appeal (and I still find it stupid, mind me) - they'yre tangible and you might touch them and be even able to resell them at some point; with digital items the way some folks are bent on them staying exclusive forever is beyond my understanding.

They're not real, and once the servers go down those pixels will be gone forever anyway. You won't be able to materialize them for the purpose of showing them off or reselling, so... what's the point? A meek joy from the fact that you owned an item that you couldn't even touch, but at least it was only "owned" by what, you and 200 other people? Hilarious, but to each their own I guess.


So yeah, rewards like this 100% should be implemented through other means at some point after their release.

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Originally Posted by RaideDuku

That is...a fair and reasonable response...a oddity in these forums. It still boggles the mind that someone would $400 for an emote of all things, I suppose a quick look at ebay would shatter that delusion of mine (EIGHT GRAND FOR AN OMEGA CODE!?). Well. I'm glad you were able to cancel it and get your money back, and apologize if I came across as harsh. Hopefully you've learned an important lesson. You can enjoy a game. You can even be thankful for it. You can feel those things for the individuals that worked on that game. At the end of the day, however, a corporation (for most games in the Triple-A space) made that game. No corporation is worth your love.

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Having played many mmos and mobile games, it's not a surprising thing at all for people to spend this much. It's a normal thing, even. Many of my friends who play mobage easily toss hundreds/thousands a month on mobile games like Genshin, Granblue Fantasy, Honkai, etc. In many F2P MMOs like Elsword, the whole culture/endgame was around obtaining and showing off loot box costume collections and people whaled so much for them. This continues into modern F2P MMOs such as Lost Ark, where they take every opportunity available to them to make you feel like trash if you don't spend money. So yeah, it's not surprising to me that people would spend thousands on an effect or emote. Most of these people aren't rich either, they just choose to do that with their disposable income. I'm not saying that it's right at all, but it's a common mindset. This is why I was never that bothered by FF14's monetization. It's nothing in the sea of trash around it. People who complain have probably never seen how bad the spending is in other MMOs.

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Originally Posted by shiraneko

Having played many mmos and mobile games, it's not a surprising thing at all for people to spend this much. It's a normal thing, even. Many of my friends who play mobage easily toss hundreds/thousands a month on mobile games like Genshin, Granblue Fantasy, Honkai, etc. In many F2P MMOs like Elsword, the whole culture/endgame was around obtaining and showing off loot box costume collections and people whaled so much for them. This continues into modern F2P MMOs such as Lost Ark, where they take every opportunity available to them to make you feel like trash if you don't spend money.

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And is this the future/present you want this game to have? At least the free games have a (flimsy) excuse why they bleed their playerbase dry. Either remove the subscription or stop pulling F2P nonsense, SE. Pick a lane and say on it! Eh, it doesn't matter at this point though, there are plenty willing to throw money at cosmetics so what incentive does CBU3 have in making content when they can reuse meshes and slap a new texture over it for 20 dollars!

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

And is this the future/present you want this game to have? At least the free games have a (flimsy) excuse why they bleed their playerbase dry. Either remove the subscription or stop pulling F2P nonsense, SE. Pick a lane and say on it! Eh, it doesn't matter at this point though, there are plenty willing to throw money at cosmetics so what incentive does CBU3 have in making content when they can reuse meshes and slap a new texture over it for 20 dollars!

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I'm not saying what SE does is right. I'm just saying it's the least egregious of them by far. I can see the gradual worsening of the cash shop over time, with more items and mounts, and them becoming more expensive. However, for the time being it's still by far not a problem that other "F2P" mmos have, and that's by virtue of it being one of the last remaining sub-based mmos. There are no sub-based games or B2P games like GW2 anymore because it's simply not as profitable as F2P games. The following is completely speculation as I'm not a game dev, but $15/month has been unchanged for WoW and FF14 since the 2000s (2013 for xiv). imo, with the how crazy the costs are for game development now, as well as inflation, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that $15/month might not be enough to sustain development. So it's not completely evil to me that they use the cash shop to cover some of the costs, especially since the cash shop in FF14 isn't that egregious.

it's crazy how ignorant you people are when it literally got confirmed on reddit it's going to loop

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Originally Posted by shiraneko

I'm not saying what SE does is right. I'm just saying it's the least egregious of them by far. I can see the gradual worsening of the cash shop over time, with more items and mounts, and them becoming more expensive. However, for the time being it's still by far not a problem that other "F2P" mmos have, and that's by virtue of it being one of the last remaining sub-based mmos. There are no sub-based games or B2P games like GW2 anymore because it's simply not as profitable as F2P games. The following is completely speculation as I'm not a game dev, but $15/month has been unchanged for WoW and FF14 since the 2000s (2013 for xiv). imo, with the how crazy the costs are for game development now, as well as inflation, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that $15/month might not be enough to sustain development. So it's not completely evil to me that they use the cash shop to cover some of the costs, especially since the cash shop in FF14 isn't that egregious.

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So you admit that it's not right and then proceed to justify why it's okay? All I can say is
*honk*
*honk*
I get it, we can't go back but don't be shocked when people are upset that it's "not right".

I personally don't like that the cash shop is expanding, but I can see the argument for it given that the sub price hasn't changed amid rising development costs and inflation. I think it's better than increasing the sub price for everyone. I know people can't talk anymore without being snarky clowns, but being able to converse with other people whose perspectives are different from yours is a good skill to have lmao

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Originally Posted by shiraneko

I personally don't like that the cash shop is expanding, but I can see the perspective for it given that the sub price hasn't changed amid rising development costs and inflation. I think it's better than increasing the sub price for everyone. I know people can't talk anymore without being snarky clowns, but being able to converse with other people whose perspectives are different from yours is a good skill to have lmao

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Wow, going by that logic Occupation Wallstreet was just a bunch of bullies harassing some old men, lmao. Humanizing corporations will only lead to tears and oligarchies.

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Originally Posted by MahthildisMMORPG

account wide glam, no glam dresser in sight, once you get it, its unlocked on all your characters. But hoping we get a cosmetic journal like WoW has, from Yoshi P is like still asking Blizzard for player housing, it'll never happen.

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They actually mentioned player housing during their new leaf era (windows purchasing bliz / them saying they are going to try to be better), but low on priority. But yeah the account wide glam is pretty cool, plus it organizes the gear better / add-ons can help.

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Originally Posted by fantasiaaddict

it's crazy how ignorant you people are when it literally got confirmed on reddit it's going to loop

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Source for this? I thought it got datamined that it doesnt loop.

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Originally Posted by Halivel

That's... I've no words for just how bad it sounds. :x

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It can also lose someone their housing, if they're in specially marked apartments or condos for it, and it can get a person thrown off their health care benefits.

Financial assistance for disabled folks in the USA is an absolute shit show. It is incredibly difficult to get approved to be on in the first place. The wait times are staggering. Most people who DO get on it had to go through multiple appeals, usually with a lawyer. And as Cinnamonpop noted, it's specifically set up so that you cannot put aside savings.

They'll also ask neighbors and family members if you seem to be presenting as married. I know people on disability who cannot get married because their partner's income would be counted against them, thus losing them not only the money but their healthcare coverage, they have to be careful not to seem too committed to their partner even without the legal bonds.

It's nauseating.

To return to topic: digital bonuses should apply account wide. It's ridiculous that they changed it to single character. SquareEnix really should reverse this policy.