Retainers, confirmed, you have to pay for them.

[ChoedanKal]

Well, their justification for the price is completely absurd. The price difference between a 1 character per server sub and the 8 character one is $4-5, so basically the same as the price for 2 retainers per month.
I don't see how 2 retainers for one character take up the same amount of storage space as 8 chars with 100 inventory + 13 x 25 armoury + 2 x 175 retainer slots PER character. It's such a blatant money grab, and it has no place in a P2P MMO.

[Amberion]

I'm against buying things with real money for my in-game character. It takes away what could have been good content. They should have made it an epic quest.

For me it's also like if they where to lock a character to only be able to have 2 jobs. You have to pay to be able to have more on 1 character.

That's just a convenience after all since you can just create another character if you want to play other jobs and don't want to pay.

[Jekyll]

I don't feel that there is enough information about ventures out in order to make a fair assessment on this. Subscription cost comparison isn't valid as not everyone pays the same price (take legacy costs, for example).

[Yshnal]

Well, their justification for the price is completely absurd. The price difference between a 1 character per server sub and the 8 character one is $4-5, so basically the same as the price for 2 retainers per month.
I don't see how 2 retainers for one character take up the same amount of storage space as 8 chars with 100 inventory + 13 x 25 armoury + 2 x 175 retainer slots PER character. It's such a blatant money grab, and it has no place in a P2P MMO.

And still, some people defend them by saying that we must pay that because of the extra resources. SE is not a charity, so if they were fine with the subs alone until now, they don't have any need to charge that for something so tiny in comparison as two extra retainers.

Honestly, I really hope that Yoshi & Co. seriously reconsider this. They're going to lose a lot of people's faith and potentially get some serious damage to the game's reputation from word of mouth, and just for what? A quick cash? I don't mean any offense to them, but I don't understand their reasoning behind this, really :/

[Starlord]

May I ask, What are the Japanese saying about this?

[Erepio]

This soured me so much that I'll consider moving over to one of the new MMO releases (won't name which to avoid potential flame) unless this changes.

pls pls tell u gonna to ESO where the already said the gonna have a cash shop that will sell "fun stuff and servises" or Wildstar where u can sell/buy monthly sub for ingame currency and said they are interested in microtransaction

[Nenin]

This isnt news to me. Although I didnt play the original FFXIV past the first 60 days, I'm pretty sure the additional retainers were monthly charges then also.

My opinion is that $2 doesnt even buy you a bottle of coke, and certainly not a starbucks coffee, so whats it to me if they charge that? :P

$2 for what, 10kb of data?

I'd be shocked if it cost them more than $0.002 to store that much.

[Gextiv]

May I ask, What are the Japanese saying about this?

I used Google translate and got weird thread titles like "Shit" and "Gold saucer."

I don't think they care.

[Kaisha]

$2 for what, 10kb of data?

I'd be shocked if it cost them more than $0.002 to store that much.

Retainers were going to be $1 in legacy XIV also, so I don't even get where they justify $2 in ARR for a much less broken game, with a much higher subscription base, outside of business reasons.

[Nenin]

Retainers were going to be $1 in legacy XIV also, so I don't even get where they justify $2 in ARR for a much less broken game, with a much higher subscription base, outside of business reasons.

Maybe they see a steady decline in subscriptions and they are trying to milk everything they can before going F2P?

inb4 $15 fantasia potions