Keep past content out of Cash Shop

[HakuroDK]

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I absolutely agree with you that, if there were gameplay bonuses in the cash shop, I would be done. Plain and simple.

I just find it to be an overexaggeration that "all the cool looking items" will be behind a paywall. There is one item. Just one item. That looks cool right now. That's the Sleipnir mount. That's it. Will that change with time? Sure. I just find this cash shop to be a good way to drop all of the old event gear no one cares about anymore and to add gear that may severely break lore if an event were added for it. Cloud's Buster Sword would be a very good example of this. If that were added to the game as an event, there are probably a lot of people who would cheer, but there would also be an equal amount of people, like myself, who would rage at the lack of sense it makes. I never even liked the Lightning Strikes event because it acts as a justification to validate Square-Enix's worst decision ever, but I still supported it for the gear. If that gear was added to the cash shop, I will never have to be directly reminded that Final Fantasy XIII was once a thing ever again.

Just seeing this development team, I have my doubts that this cash shop will turn into a cash shop like ArcheAge, Everquest 2, or especially Farmville. I have a strong feeling it will be for old event gear, cross-promotional gear, a couple of small things like minions, one or two really cool things like the Sleipnir mount, stockpiles of fantasia, maybe even some Aesthetician unlocks, and that's it. I seriously doubt we'll start to see FFXIV-native glamours as an exclusive in the cash shop other than, like, maybe select Eternal Bonding things or something. I think this cash shop is less of a "Let's see how much money we can extract from our players" and more of a "We have all these cool item ideas and no real cool way to implement them all without taking up a ton of time developing events. We also need more members of our development team and a means of which to pay them... aha! Cash Shop! Implement all of those item ideas AND fund more employees to help get content out quicker! Win-win!"

The whole thing seems like Square-Enix installing a vending machine in their game than it is taking a comically high-powered money-sucking vacuum to the playerbase. For it to be the latter, it would have to have pay-to-win items that give players a gameplay edge over others. But then, we may have to agree to disagree.