Acceptable Cash Shop Items: Suggestions!

[Velo_Vandore]

I hope a cash shop will never exist. If it's ever required for the game to survive and flourish, then I'd say while avoiding pay to win, exp boosts are fine so long as the non-boosted character can still level up in a reasonable manner (like before the shop appeared).

Extra bags / retainers (already added to "cash shop") - similar principle. This is OK except for the fact square-enix now have FAR less pressure on them to keep the number of unique items needed by your average player (that crafts) down to a manageable level with only the standard bags / retainers. If it becomes unreasonable to play the game in a normal way as a crafter without the extra retainers, I hope square Square-Enix will address the issue properly instead of expecting purchases of extra retainers.

Vanity - this is probably an ok choice for cash shops. Players already have the basic equivalent with the collectors edition Behemoth mount, and the wind up dalamud from the soundtrack. It doesn't have a strong negative impact unless you decide to re-use item that could be otherwise obtained in the game. When LOTRO went free to play I was really disappointing to see that vanity items earned by building many reputation points with different factions were now available to any with the cash at the click of a button. This completely trod on the efforts of those players who spent the time building the reputation points. One other important consideration regarding vanity items is that square-enix already stated the resource management (which I understand as RAM limitations on PS3) limits how many unique items can be added per patch. To use these precious resources on cash shop items would, I feel, neglect the paying customer who opts out of cash shop purchases and is stuck with the same gear model over and over.

Fantasia - 100% fine. Completely non-essential and should certainly be considered an "extra" service and factored outside of the standard subscription that we all have to pay.

UI Skins - these should be purely cosmetic and give no other playing advantage to the player. Many would prefer their standard subs not to go towards development of such things, so it would be a good cash shop item.

Furniture - since there are limited furniture slots per room, there's only going to be a set amount that needs to be loaded into system memory and rendered at once, so adding any number of additional furnishings should be no problem in terms of system resource management. I'd say that makes furniture a good candidate for cash shops, again assuming they are unique items to the cash shop. We don't want crafters efforts wasted by chucking their merchandise in the cash shop.