Cash shop confirmed

[Yshnal]

what I read here is hilarious.

best part:
"SE doesn't need the money."

IT IS AN ENTERPRISE.
ENTERPRISES GOAL: MAKING MONEY.
THEY WILL MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS THEY CAN POSSIBLY GET.
DEAL WITH IT.

They want it, but they don't need it. What we mean with this is that the game is not in danger and is/was very profitable for them (if we believe what they told us, anyway). Why is that important? Because they changed how things work and devalued our subs just because they want more money, and we're not happy about it.

And yes, they can do it as an enterprise, but we as customers have EVERY right to not accept it and send them our feedback.

As it has been stated, Calamity Salvager.

We aren't talking about the calamity salvager, but about those NPCs that appeared during each event and sold the old event items for a gil fee, even if you didn't take part on them. That has been taken away from the game, period.

The development team is not a single entity. People who design instances are not the same people who design the items and these people are not the same who do animation and these people don't design world content, etc. So while it might add some slight workload for the people who do items, it's not going to be something drastic. You're speaking like you have for a guarantee that they will be doing multiple sets of gear every week for the shop and left with minimal time for the game itself when that's just pure conjecture.

Nope, the development team is not a single entity, but the guys that make minions, the guys that make mounts, the guys that make gear sets, etc. are all the same. They will obviously produce less of those because they'll have to make things for the cash shop too.

Again, pure conjecture. If anything, the new Koenig and Aries recipes coming in 2.4 are a point against you.

So you know that they don't have better looking items on the work that will go to the cash shop. Talk about conjectures...

Logic dictates that the best looking and more desired items will go to the cash shop. Otherwise they won't be sold.

I never saw those threads but then again, I wasn't as active back then so I really can't say anything here on this point.

It was exactly the same situation and counter-arguments that we're having now. And I've yet to see anyone of those that defended SE back them come here and apologize.

(Bolded part)I assumed that after posting the link to their financial records at least 3 times in this thread that people would stop spreading this lie:

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ne...q4earnings.pdf
http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/pdf/ar_2013_01en.pdf

Read what I said above.

And nothing prevents you from getting other vanity items in game but you're not entitled to all the other content they create. It states as much in the User Agreement you agreed to. If you want to look it up:

http://support.na.square-enix.com/ru...2&tag=users_en

Section 4.1

To be honest, we're not entitled to ANYTHING besides being able to access the game until SE wants. That doesn't mean that we can't let them know our discontent with any changes to the game (be it PvE, PvP, services...), nor does it mean that they have out wallets hostage until the end of time. Hint: they don't, so they might want to keep their customers happy or... well, 1.0.

Actually, it's the same concept. Vanity attached to a price. The 3 people I know who got the CD all did so for the minion attached to it and most minion collector perfectionist will have bought the CD because else, their collection would remain incomplete.

Yes, some people buy them for the minion, but they aren't doing it right. The minion is a GIFT, not what you're buying. And, as I said, as it's linked to a physical item it means that they can't go overboard with it either.

Well the thing is that you have no choice to buy the expansion else you're stuck in past content without any means to progress so using the expansion pack in a cash shop argument is stupid on both side of this argument as it's a necessity and it always has been.

You lost the point.

I still can't understand how a cash shop that you're not forced to buy from can be a deal breaker on a game you supposedly enjoy playing.

Because some people enjoy playing with vanity. Different people, different tastes. And they have been able to do that for over 4 years now, so it's understandable that this change has got many of them (us) a bit mad with SE.

[Dwill]

snip

Sorry to disappoint you but I haven't lost anything. My stance is "A company has every right to want money so let's wait to see how it turns out". Yours however is fear mongering and pure conjecture and don't say that I'm making conjecture either as I clearly stated that there is no way to know as of now what will and will not be in there in the future.

By the way, you have yet to explain how they don't need the money. You keep claiming that they don't yet the annual report for the fiscal year of 2013 claims otherwise.

[Vhailor]

By the way, you have yet to explain how they don't need the money. You keep claiming that they don't yet the annual report for the fiscal year of 2013 claims otherwise.

Two things here.

Firstly, given that the expansion is just around the corner, the timing seems odd. If they need cash so badly, certainly implementing this a year later would have made more sense; announcing its presence at a Fan Festival designed to promote Heavensward seems an odd choice. They had to know this announcement was going to get a massive backlash from a significant chunk of the player base. It's going to cost them some expansion sales in the process, whereas an announcement a year from now would not have had that issue.

Secondly, exploiting your new flagship MMO when it's been out for barely a year (in 2.0 form) is not a good long-term plan for improving the company's bottom line. It's akin to raising your company's stock price by laying people off; eventually, you can't do it anymore, and it also has the side effect of limiting your options down the road.

In short, if SE needs cash so badly, then they need to improve their game design. It is the one and only thing that will provide them with sustainable long-term growth. The cash shop won't make up for lackluster development, and if development returns to a AAA level, then the cash shop would be unnecessary in the first place. So your argument here has some serious flaws in it.

[Codek]

Firstly, given that the expansion is just around the corner, the timing seems odd. If they need cash so badly, certainly implementing this a year later would have made more sense; announcing its presence at a Fan Festival designed to promote Heavensward seems an odd choice. They had to know this announcement was going to get a massive backlash from a significant chunk of the player base. It's going to cost them some expansion sales in the process, whereas an announcement a year from now would not have had that issue.

They were probably forced to push this out before the expansion as they have it in mind with some of the new features coming down the road (here's looking at you Gold Sauce and Air Ships...).
At least now they have 6+ months to convince everyone to cover their eyes and ears before the expansion is released.

[Vhailor]

They were probably forced to push this out before the expansion as they have it in mind with some of the new features coming down the road (here's looking at you Gold Sauce and Air Ships...).
At least now they have 6+ months to convince everyone to cover their eyes and ears before the expansion is released.

This could very well be the case - a good point, sir.

[Dwill]

snip

Actually, the timing is perfect for now because people that do not like it can vent their discontent for the time being and when new actual information comes out on the expansion, people will be all over it. I seriously doubt that people will quit en masse just over this. People threaten to quit all the time over the pettiest things in MMO, it's nothing new to the genre.


They aren't actually exploiting it. Exploiting it would be putting items and stuff needed to actually play the game to its fullest in there, which is obviously not the case with this vanity stuff. The only thing they are doing is providing an optional service for people that are willing to pay for it.

The game design so far, while it has its flaws, has been easily competing against the best MMO out there and with other key features in the future coming out AND the expansion, the game will keep on growing just fine.

I hope they add some unique items to the cash shop and then I hope to see the community ridicule any person seen with these unique items so that buying anything from it becomes a negative stigma in the community.

Easiest way to make this stuff go away after it is implemented is not use it or encourage its use.

Yes, harassing and ridiculing people who don't share the same point of view as you is such an awesome way to raise a point in a mature and adult-like manner

[Yshnal]

Sorry to disappoint you but I haven't lost anything. My stance is "A company has every right to want money so let's wait to see how it turns out". Yours however is fear mongering and pure conjecture and don't say that I'm making conjecture either as I clearly stated that there is no way to know as of now what will and will not be in there in the future.

By the way, you have yet to explain how they don't need the money. You keep claiming that they don't yet the annual report for the fiscal year of 2013 claims otherwise.

Yes, you lost the point of what I was saying. I was talking there about how a whole expansion is way more valuable than a single digital item and how their respectives prices don't match each other, while you were talking about the necessity of paying any of them. Two completely different things. But if it makes you happier, well, considering their prices and the respective resources that each one requires to get made, if there's the "necessity" of paying for an expansion at their usual price, considering that they have to get back their investment and make some profit, then the price of a minion in the cash shop (which would be what, a 0.00001% of an expac?) is just crazy and unneeded. So I guess that that gives me the reason too...

And regarding the annual report of 2013, I suggest that you look it better.

[Dwill]

snip

Except that nowhere did I state that the cost of development to price being sold ratio between a minion and an expansion were even remotely close to similar. In fact, I even stated in another post that this type of item is extremely profitable. My point was that it was irrelevant to bring expansion in this debate because they have always been sold due to the sheer amount of works that goes into them.

And by the way, do tell me how my conclusion of that report is wrong. An argument using numbers supported by facts, not mere suppositions based on a whim after you skimmed through it or saying that I just need to look at it because you disagree with me.

[Yshnal]

And by the way, do tell me how my conclusion of that report is wrong. An argument using numbers supported by facts, not mere suppositions based on a whim after you skimmed through it or saying that I just need to look at it because you disagree with me.

Mmm... Okay. I'm not going to argue over that as I don't want to lose my time proving and explaining to the least detail something that I didn't even bring up (and that I'm sure that you'll still tell me to look once again, after that). So you win, I don't care. However...

Should it really matter to us if SE as a whole needs more money? No, bear with me before you click "reply". This game, as in ARR, is financially successful and everyone knows it. It's even funding other parts of the company, so the money seems to be flowing. If SE is having problems with other projects they should try to get/save money by other means, maybe waiting until they get back more money before they open up more projects, or maybe making better games (and ports) or improving them. That way maybe people will invest more in the company, as seen in how a lot of us invested in ARR after they had the balls to do what not many others did before: redoing the game to improve it.

Now you can argue that they are not a charity, and blahblahblah, but I think that it's clear as water that ARR worked because many people (including myself) got attracted by the good faith of the company (something that was hard to see nowadays) and the quality of the "new" product. If they now try to change any of these, they're just shooting themselves in the foot. The aren't just alienating or directly losing many of ARR's customers, but also potential sales for other of their products that people might have gotten simply to support them, as it was happening until now. In other words, I see that as a financial suicide for them to take the "EA/ActiVision Route", specially if they "really" needed the money so hard.

TL;DR: ARR was successful "as is" and it seems that it was able to rescue the company from the hole that it was in. There was no need to change the status quo with a chance of alienating a big chunk of your playerbase and scaring away other potential customers with something as controversial as a cash shop, instead of just keep doing what they have been doing since 1.x's disaster. Haste makes waste.