2.2 Retainers via Microtransactions

[C-croft]

Convenience has been sold by free to play games for a good while now in order to make money. It's part of the business model. They allow you to log in for free, they often allow you full access to all content in the game for free, but they make their money from things like vanity, quality of life upgrades, or time savers. More inventory slots is a pretty common cash shop item in these games.If SE is going to start selling "convenience" in a cash shop, and they're still going to charge a minimum of $120 (and that's from legacy players, for everyone else it would be more) if you want to be able to even log in whenever you want for one year, it starts to look like a pretty low value overall. Paying a continuous subscription vs. free to play microtransactions is debatable, but continuous subscription and free to play style microtransactions is about as good as it gets for businesses but the worst combination for value for the consumer.

You obviously haven't played ffxi where you could add alts to your account for a dollar a month. Or something like that. Its been many years since I played ffxi. But I do know ffxi is still up and running and has been the best cash cow for them at this point.

[Susanoh]

You obviously haven't played ffxi where you could add alts to your account for a dollar a month. Or something like that. Its been many years since I played ffxi. But I do know ffxi is still up and running and has been the best cash cow for them at this point.

I've played FFXI since before NA PS2 release, but I will agree that FFXI is not completely innocent either.