Here, I'll bold what you missed.
These are things they advertised for the past year to get subs, developed in that time by money from subs, and should never have been put behind a paywall to begin with.
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Eternal Bonding is still in the game for free. The only thing that apparently isn't free is a chocobo (and we don't even know that yet for sure) and some dress palette swaps. That is not locking the "best part" of the system behind a paywall by any means.
Unless, of course, you weren't really interested in the Eternal Bond system itself and just wanted the loot.
For a system that focuses on a couple's gameplay and enjoyment, yes I would go as far as to say that a 2-person mount is a pretty big part of the system that has now been cutout for them to make a quick buck. They could've just as easily designed a more unique version of it for the paid versions. It would've made the backlash you see on the forums a lot less. I'm not as naive as to say that it wouldn't exist, but not on this scale. Instead they didn't and now even those that wanted to use the system as it was shown to us way before the cash shop was a pipe dream will have to pay to experience patch content as the development team intended. Cash shop is one thing, watering down content to make the paid version more appealing is a completely different beast.
And I wasn't even planning on using this system anyway, but if this is an actual step they're taking I just want to give them my concerns on the matter before it heads any further into content that we all would enjoy. Enjoy the system by all means, or don't it's entirely to you. But for this system, yes I do consider a two-person mount to be a pretty big part and the Dev team does too. It was the first thing they've shown us about the system afterall.
when they are knowing that a system will create.... trouble (like the personal housing) they tend to keep the info until the last minutes... because like this we can't fight it, it's ingame and they can simply wait people forget it.
they have done it with the cash shop... telling it us only 1 week before it hit us, not letting us react. now they can say, people did buy this and this as reason valid to have this feature ingame. it's bad in soo many way.
ps: strangely they did talk of the eternal bond in the live letter and in the Q/A no sign of this part... *shrugs*