How SE should make more money!

[Welsper59]

I'm sitting on over 12mil gil right now and have the extra 2 retainers. While I'm a Legacy player, I did start anew on Leviathan, so this is all from scratch. I can guarantee you that the extra 2 retainers have little to do with my gil acquisition. In fact, I can guarantee you that because of those extra 2 retainers, I've spent more time gearing them up (they're 50 from a while ago though) and gathering ventures coins or seals for coins than was probably worthwhile from any reasonable "P2W" system. The reason I still do it? It's fun to gamble with Quick Adventures, which being lv50 means next to nothing for.

Having the extra potential for selective goods I might need (like crystals) or an extremely low chance for decent/fun equipment is nice (I have SCH, DRG, and WHM mog weapon from QA, none of which I can use yet) but none of this really impacted what I'd do normally otherwise. I don't really use the extra retainers to sell stuff, at least not to the extent that I couldn't have done the same with my default ones (e.g. retainer 1: selling 12 items, retainer 2: selling 14 items, retainer 3: selling 5 items, retainer 4: selling 5 items, total of 36 items (less than 2 retainers worth)). They're honestly not as impacting as people might think they are. Yeah, they can provide you a low but steady income, but you're still spending venture coins and waiting for them to return to keep that up. I didn't get as much gil as I have now simply waiting for the game to give me it.

My point is that the extra 2 retainers provide little benefit to be even remotely considered a Pay 2 Win option. The amount of goods that I could get simply from the retainers, combined with an equivalent of time that a venture coin is worth, pales in comparison to what I'd get just doing what I normally do in a fraction of the time.

[Bloodclaw]

I'm sitting on over 12mil gil right now and have the extra 2 retainers. While I'm a Legacy player, I did start anew on Leviathan, so this is all from scratch. I can guarantee you that the extra 2 retainers have little to do with my gil acquisition. In fact, I can guarantee you that because of those extra 2 retainers, I've spent more time gearing them up (they're 50 from a while ago though) and gathering ventures coins or seals for coins than was probably worthwhile from any reasonable "P2W" system. The reason I still do it? It's fun to gamble with Quick Adventures, which being lv50 means next to nothing for.

Not the subject at hand really.

[Moheeheeko]

You don't see how us as a fan and consumer might be groomed into thinking P2W is okay while thinking its not P2W? Fine then.

Except there is NOTHING pay to win about 2 more retainers, not in the slightest.

[Welsper59]

Not the subject at hand really.

You really should take out the P2W comments then from your original post. You're basically using extra retainers as a supportive argument to your idea that the game is moving to a P2W model. I do understand that you're saying you don't want that and that you're trying to provide non-advantage related idea for options, but that's something separate from the retainers bit. The replies about that, mines included, are shooting down your thought that retainers are P2W goods. They give an advantage, but I'd hardly consider it a "win" advantage, much less a worthwhile one (for that purpose). If, however, you're not using the extra retainers as a supportive argument, then why mention it? It's pushing a separate agenda and really weakens what you have to say as a whole.

[Niwashi]

I have a suggestion; Sell Glamour items. A ton of level 1 nice looking items. Unique looking items at that, not just dyable versions of existing items, while that would also be nice.

Absolutely NOT. Going even further into a micro-transaction model is the absolute worst thing they could do. This is a subscription based game. Everything should be paid for by the subscriptions. That's their point. If they aren't high enough to cover costs (though I rather doubt that's the case), then the subscriptions themselves need to be raised until they do.

We should never have to buy stuff individually on a piecemeal basis in a subscription based game. Whether those extras are cosmetic, conveniences, or battle advantages is completely irrelevant to the issue, because those are all part of the game we're already paying for. (And cosmetics are P2W for everyone whose version of "winning" is getting the best looking equipment. It's as valid a playstyle as measuring "winning" by the amount of gil you have, or by the stats on your equipment.)

[Amberion]

(And cosmetics are P2W for everyone whose version of "winning" is getting the best looking equipment. It's as valid a playstyle as measuring "winning" by the amount of gil you have, or by the stats on your equipment.)

^^- This so much. It's kind of sad that today, people only see MMORPG as fighting is everything in it.

[Ikeda]

How about no and uh freaking NO. Cash shops have NO business being in a P2P mmo. Don't care if you think they "can" make more money. I'll guarantee you they'll lose more money in lost subscriptions over a double dipping cash shop than they'd ever make from the stupid thing. Adding any sort of cash shop vanity or otherwise will accomplish nothing but speed up how quickly the game has to dumb down to F2P due to lack of subscriptions. They're already giving us more vanity items with every event and major update than I've seen any other P2P mmo even attempt to give.

[Kayo]

IF! SE reeeeeally needs the money then id personally prefer they just merge and use the freed up servers for a couple COMPLETELY ISOLATED f2p servers. You can copy/transfer characters to them but its a one way street. Open the cash shop for those free servers, have some way for p2p servers to get them in game (if through gold, so be it). Everyone wins. I dont know about anyone else, but what some dude(ette) does/buys/pays2win in another server is no problem to me... may as well be another game theyre playing.

Why developers go full f2p or hybrid sometimes is beyond me... they could keep both sides happy like this.

[Yumi_umi]

They screwed up during the start of 2.2 when they allowed retainers to solo ex primals and T9.
Getting ex parts was one thing but getting a drop from T9 when no one has even cleared it ( back then ) was a pretty dumb move on SE's part.
That then resulted in ppl selling it for millions ( smart ppl ).
Ppl then bought it and that lucky player got a few millions for what, a couple of gil if you convert seals into gil ratio.
Luck like that was bogus and made no sense at all.
So if ppl had 4 retainers that'd = to 2 more chances in recieving that fragment drop.
Other than that there's really no P2W atm.

[Rose_Vilehart]

I dont see any P2W yet.........then again i just came here from gw2 and that has a cash shop and i still dont consider that p2w (mostly because the gear grind to ascended is a month at most) so maybe i just have a bad eye for these things......