The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

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.