This is just appalling

There is nothing appalling about it... AT ALL! They set a price, its stuff you don't NEED. Its your choice to buy it or not. That's the end of it. No one is forcing you to buy this stuff and it doesn't give an advantage in progression or gameplay. It's vanity and they want to make money. The prices aren't even that high.

Haven't bought the Fuga set from Mog Station. No need when I can stick to my preferred glamour gear set of Taffeta Shawl, Southern Seas Tanga (a cheaper cash shop item), Pink Cherry Blossom HQ and Emperor's New jewelry.

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Originally Posted by Lycieus

None of this work needs be done if there is no cash shop.

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Actually most of it would have to be done anyway. Things like the server upgrades would have had pretty rigorous cost analysis. Budget approval would be based on expected production so estimates could be done on expenses and resources needed. That is ignoring the fact that SE has many projects apart from FF14 that also factor into its budget model.

Plus none of this changes the fact that many of the items in the cash shop are paid for by the cash shop sales and as such wouldn't be developed without those sales.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

Lets not forget that you can earn all the Wow items by playing the game since you can simply buy the currency through ingame coins. Heck you can even buy playtime through ingame coins..nothing like that is possible in FF14

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While true I think its worth pointing out that system doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can buy Cash shop items and playtime with in game currency but the flipside of that system is you can also buy ingame gold with real world money.

You want one side of the system, your probably going to have to accept the other which means people buying Gil with real world money. Considering some of the best gear at the moment of launch for raids is crafted that gets perilously close to Buy to Win, unless they nerf the gear and screw over crafters.

You don't get to cherry pick parts of payment models you like and leave out the bits you don't. Payment models are designed in the end to ensure revenue is enough to justify the production and continued development of a game or service. There is always some form of revenue stream integrated into it.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

Square Enix is not doing anything differently that other MMO companies aren't.

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We've already explained at great length that yes, SE is doing things differently from other MMO companies.

Blizzard's cash shop is miniscule compared to FFXIV. All items are account-wide, and you can buy Blizzard cash shop credit with in-game gold. Likewise with ESO - all items are account-wide. I don't play it, so I'm not sure if they have a gold-cash shop exchange.

Then you can compare it to f2p MMOs, which one would think would be worse than FFXIV due to the cash shop being their primary source of income, but...

- Blade and Soul - costumes can be mailed between characters, Hongmoon Coins can be purchased with gold so that you don't have to spend any real money in the shop
- WildStar - pretty much everything (costumes, mounts, pets, dyes, etc) is unlocked account-wide, costumes being between $7-10. Everything also has an Omnibit price, which is a currency earned whenever you do something that grants experience (very easy to earn). Heck you can even purchase subscription with in-game currency.
- Rift - everything account-wide, costumes average around $8-9, cash shop credits purchasable with plat, and premium subscription purchasable with plat.
- Guild Wars 2 - everything is account-wide, Gems purchasable with in-game gold. Costumes average ~$8.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Stuffs.

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You can be all classes on 1 char so it not being account-bound is way way different than it would be on WoW. Also, you weren't able to buy battlenet currency with in-game gold until patch 7.2.

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Originally Posted by Aramina

You can be all classes on 1 char so it not being account-bound is way way different than it would be on WoW. Also, you weren't able to buy battlenet currency with in-game gold until patch 7.2.

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Sure, if you want to deal with inventory nightmare and have no interest in playing varied characters. Fact of the matter is this game allows you to create alts. Doesn't matter if you can be everything on one character.

It also doesn't matter how recently Blizzard introduced the ability to purchase cash shop credit - especially in the face of the many other AAA MMOs that have allowed it for quite some time.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

While true I think its worth pointing out that system doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can buy Cash shop items and playtime with in game currency but the flipside of that system is you can also buy ingame gold with real world money.

You want one side of the system, your probably going to have to accept the other which means people buying Gil with real world money. Considering some of the best gear at the moment of launch for raids is crafted that gets perilously close to Buy to Win, unless they nerf the gear and screw over crafters.

You don't get to cherry pick parts of payment models you like and leave out the bits you don't. Payment models are designed in the end to ensure revenue is enough to justify the production and continued development of a game or service. There is always some form of revenue stream integrated into it.

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I haven't played WoW in a long time so point out any mistakes. Real people buy token from cash shop, they then put that token up for sale in game(sort of MBish), and another player buys that in game token and can use it on their account. Basically transferring gil like people who in party finder already sell Mog Station gifts. If no one buys tokens does Blizzard fill the npc with tokens themselves.

Also the whole winning is amusing. We are talking crafted gear is what 1-3 weeks of progression before tomes? Jump potions already skip 1-3 weeks of progression. Both are content that is no more relevant in three+ months anyway.

I get that some people are resistant to others being able to buy gil. So I see notice Accounts receiving permanent ban: 30,502, one week ago Accounts receiving permanent ban: 27,927. They are trying but not winning. They also let all the items these bots create into the market. If I bot wind shards from the MB and I know it is impossible for one person to have over 1 million shards up at all times, hes probably a bot. But my shard total doesn't decrease after they ban them. People are still buying, they might as well control it and benefit. Also RMTs create credit card issues, since supposedly (don't work for a CC company) they use stolen card numbers which create a charge back which can cause issues for the company.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

The rest of us will be enjoying SB and our cool mogstation items that the whiners wont ever have because they're too busy doing what they do best.

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Why even try? Why take away your time to try to change someone opinion about something that they find wrong? I mean there is discussing a point and there is trying to change someones mind because they want it in another way. This thread existing wont hurt your ability to play and enjoy FF14 since you can just ignore the topic (like how we are often told to ignore the "optional" items too).

Oh and dont worry I will have plenty of time to enjoy SB once its out since posting in this forum takes barely any time at all so I can do both. ;) And I already own stuff from the cash shop that I mostly bought when the prices fell down. ;) So you can be against the recent additions and/or prices and still have bought something from it. There is no simple black and white.

(Its interesting that most of the insults from us that are against cash shop and/or its prices; since the topic itself was also about their strange pricing strategy; is some calling others whales or maybe fanboys. But still that does not happen often. Yet I cant count the amount of insults that some posters throw at people that are just annoyed at something and are posting their opinion about it -whiners, children, poor- and more.)

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Originally Posted by Belhi

While true I think its worth pointing out that system doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can buy Cash shop items and playtime with in game currency but the flipside of that system is you can also buy ingame gold with real world money.

You want one side of the system, your probably going to have to accept the other which means people buying Gil with real world money. Considering some of the best gear at the moment of launch for raids is crafted that gets perilously close to Buy to Win, unless they nerf the gear and screw over crafters.

You don't get to cherry pick parts of payment models you like and leave out the bits you don't. Payment models are designed in the end to ensure revenue is enough to justify the production and continued development of a game or service. There is always some form of revenue stream integrated into it.

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And you can already buy ingame gold with real money in this game too. Maybe not in a legal way but its already there. And yes I would accept that side because it would give people that cant just buy all these things with their money the chance to still get them, thus collectors of glamour/mount/pets can get it without having to pay money. Also this would mean that people have to play the game to gather all the gold (yes they could buy it too but then they simply could just buy the goods for real life money anyway).

But like I already wrote it all comes down to what is important for a person. I dont care much about world first/raids so I would not care if someone buys gil with real money to buy their self better gear at the start. IMO you would not even know who got it the legitimate way anyway since you have enough people that are quite rich in FF14 that can just simply buy it from regular earned gil. People are also aready buying clears and stuff for ingame money too. So its already kinda unfair if you dont have much money as a raider since people with lots of gil can already gear fast enough, so it would not make much of a difference imo. Unlike raids and gear I do care about glamour (and I would say that a lot of the players do too) so this change would imo benefit way more people than it would hit some that might buy gil for real life money.