Acceptable Cash Shop Items: Suggestions!

[ShinkuTachi]

It more or less depends on the scope of the cash shop.

Server Transfers, Retainers, and Fantasia, or even name changes are fine imo. Anything else (Vanity, Barding, Mounts, Furnishings, and etc.) is completely and utterly unacceptable. These are things that should only be left as "in-game" rewards, drops, purchases via gil, or crafted.

[Skull_Angel]

That it is impossible to do right. Asking if it can be done right is like asking if dumping toxic waste barrels into a stream in the dead of night can be done right.

Please elaborate because you have me curious. We all know adding P2W elements to a cash shop will negatively effect a game's community, but why/how will adding aesthetic options? We already have server transfers that allow you or your friend(s) to play together should you originally be on different servers, but it can also be abused by players with the "scam and dash". We'll soon have Fantasias as well for those players that like to try different things or are never happy with choices they make.

edit; I forgot about the infamous extra retainers you can buy with an additional subscription, I can't really get behind that one.

[Gormogon]

That it is impossible to do right. Asking if it can be done right is like asking if dumping toxic waste barrels into a stream in the dead of night can be done right.

by "being done right" it means we have to place expectations on "corruption" and segregation not having a role.

Currently we have

Retainers. This is an advantage over those that do not purchase retainers. To the degree this advantage is becomes subjective and questionable.

We are getting Fantasia soon

Fantasia does not grant a massive advantage. Personally I think someone literally needs to be insane to buy Fantasia constantly to keep switching between races just to have that small stat advantage when they raid which I really doubt people will do and even if they did the advantage isn't that high.

Yet if a cash shop was introduced what are gonna get denied in return for simply not decided to toss real life money around?

Minions?
Mounts?
Vanity?
Hairstyles?

In which, how is this morally "good" to those that don't have the money or don't want to waste the money for it?

[Ikeda]

Again, no one has really addressed my question, only vehemently stated that "cash shops are evil!". What's the issue if it can be done right?

It's impossible to do right because P2P mmos were never meant to have cash shops. You buy the game, pay a monthly fee, maybe buy a expansion pack every 2 or so years, and earn everything through gameplay. At most they're only designed to have "services" like character recreation (fantasia) and server transfers. It's possible to do a cash shop right in a F2P or B2P game because they're designed from the ground up to have that as the game's primary source of income. Try to add a cash shop to something that's already charging a monthly fee and people rightfully feel ripped off and take their money elsewhere.

The addition of cash shops to P2P mmos has been nothing more than greedy companies trying to see how much crap they can get away with before they go too far and lose their customers, the same way non-mmo game companies are pushing their luck with things like DRM, on-disc dlc, "true ending" dlc, dlc that was obviously stripped out content that was meant to be in the main game, season passes which is basically pre-ordering freaking dlc, and now they're even trying to add cash shops to non-mmos themselves and it's all backfiring on them. EA's been voted the worst company in america 2 years in a row, Microsoft had their original announcement of the Xbox One get practically laughed off stage to the point they had to reverse nearly everything they were planning because of the lack of pre-orders, Capcom is at a point where they will likely go bankrupt within the next 2 or so years, and countless mmos over the past 10 or so years have been shut down or had to go F2P.

[Skull_Angel]

It's impossible to do right because P2P mmos were never meant to have cash shops.

That is a personal opinion; many may share it, many may not, but most will agree that there are elements that will ruin a game's community if added. A company's decision to add something is it's own and cash shops do make a considerable profit and are there fore very appealing; should a company chose to implement one, the best a community could hope to do is to help the company understand what services would be acceptable and which would not. FFXIV's Mog Station is already pushing the boundaries of acceptable services with the inclusion of additional retainers for another subscription, this is not something I personally find acceptable. The inclusion of Fantasias in the Mog Station is something that is almost purely aesthetic and there fore acceptable by my standards and something many others look forward to. When (I say when because it's very likey at this point) the developers chose to expand the Mog Station even more the community needs to let them know what content they would be willing to accept and what is strictly unacceptable and the arguments behind why.

[JatohCynn]

Cashshop games only have an incentive to keep you playing for as long as you need to to part with your money for vanity (hopefully) item X. Once you do that they don't care if you log in untill the next round of items. Take a look at the absolute snail pace of development and class balance that is going into GW2 if you really want to see it in practice.

They also have an incentive to lock everything "desirable" behind pay walls or sell shortcuts to grind/time gate content as the "middle aged gamer with a family and little time but disposable income" is the cash-shop lifeblood.

P2P games have an incentive to keep you always playing because they lose money when you take a break.

Ask yourselves one question. Do you want to play a game that caters to people who pay real money for vanity items or a game that focuses on content that keeps you playing?

[Skull_Angel]

Cashshop games only have an incentive to keep you playing for as long as you need to to part with your money for vanity (hopefully) item X. Once you do that they don't care if you log in untill the next round of items. Take a look at the absolute snail pace of development and class balance that is going into GW2 if you really want to see it in practice.

They also have an incentive to lock everything "desirable" behind pay walls or sell shortcuts to grind/time gate content as the "middle aged gamer with a family and little time but disposable income" is the cash-shop lifeblood.

Not quite correct there, that is the model for a P2W (Pay to Win) type game. Cash shops are a service that allow players to use real money to pay for in-game goods and/or services, nothing more or less; they don't define a payment model, they are simply an additional service.

[JatohCynn]

Pay to win simply means the cash shop gives you a distinct advantage in the game over one who abstains from it's use. They can sell items that are simply of a aesthetic nature and give no statistical advantage. That's not "pay to win". (debatable in games that focus on vanity as the main method of player progression)

Any game that doesn't charge a fee to play will have to sell virtual items to keep the servers and dev staff running.

The only other type of mmo that even exists is the super crappy browser ones that are full of advertisements, and usually also still sell stuff.

[ReiszRie]

That it is impossible to do right. Asking if it can be done right is like asking if dumping toxic waste barrels into a stream in the dead of night can be done right.

you're funny, ever heard of slipper slope fallacy?

[ShinkuTachi]

quote

Exactly. It's just like how the gaming industry was not in dire straits before the advent of DLC.

While it was originally pushed as something to extend the longevity and replay-value of games. It quickly turned into something that companies use to nickle-and-dime customers for things that were once included in games for free, because people chose to accept that.