Anecdotal evidense =/= truth.
Just like in f2p games cash shop buyers of purely aesthetics items are a minority of players.
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Welp, after seeing so much of this thing ingame, all I can say is I can't wait for when it goes on sale.
Looking at the minion/mount aggregate site that is Minion Menagerie, your percentages for CS mounts are as follow:
White devil: 2.5%
Red Baron: 1.7%
Slepnir: 11.6%
Bennu: 4%
The moogle mount isn't on their site quite yet, so I can't pull those numbers. Slepnir has been out quite a bit longer than the others and has already gone through a sale period which may explain why the percentage is higher. Overall though, looks like only a pretty small percentage of players buy the mounts. Will be interesting to see numbers on the moogle.
Recolor version of mounts that are available in-game doesn't look attractive to me and im a mounts collector, I have brought both the slepnir and moogle mount at full price the first day both of them came out.
The other mounts are just recolor versions I will just wait on them.
We can kinda judge that already based on who has the Ceremony Chocobo. It has appeal for being a two-seater that doesn't require any "commitment", real or otherwise.
EDIT: more to the point, as long as SE is making more money over this mount than they are losing it from people unsubscribing over it (or issues pertaining to it), the cash shop is here to stay, even if I personally dislike it.
I wouldn't say the Ceremony chocobo is a fair comparison to the moogle as it is linked to weddings which is a big to-do for some people. Plus you do get fancy outfits and a warp ring, so you're not talking only a mount here.
But for what it's worth, Ceremony Chocobo is at 12%.
I realize the the cash shop is here to stay. It doesn't mean that we can't keep our fingers crossed that they will change how they release items for it. My posting of numbers was more to dispute the quips about "forums users being a drop in the hat" and that we have some skewed idea about how many people are really buying.
There is a plethora of reasons why someone may not buy a mount, so I'm not claiming that everyone without them shares the thinking in this thread, but the numbers do show that the ones who do purchase are definitely the minority at this point.
Overpriced
My assumption is more that the majority if players are neutral about it's existence rather than strongly being in favor of/in opposition of. They'll buy something if it is appealing to them, but don't buy everything. SE's slightly high (IMO) pricing model also edges out those players who are on the fence who might otherwise buy (if they do a fat Mog sale it'll be interesting to see the numbers then).
I still don't remain convinced that the majority of players can be assed about the forums, though. This is obviously difficult to prove even with the data you've given, since we don't know how many people just haven't bought the mounts because they think they're ugly or too expensive vs being anti-cash shop.