Cash shop confirmed

[Ladon]

I am not trying to rationalize anything in saying that the game will be more popular. It is already popular given that there are threads and threads and pages and pages of topics like this on this site. Back in the FF11 days, I had Killing Ifrit for all my news and the only multi-page threads i saw there were people calling out other players for linkshell drama.

I am saying from the get-go of 2.0 the goal was to make a more visible, popular FFMMO.

Yes and that is exactly what I addressed. What logic is there behind that concept that tacking on a cash shop is going to make the game more popular?

You might have an argument if say they planned to open the cash shop then lower the monthly subscription cost a few bucks as a result therefore lowering the entry cost of playing the game, therefore possibly attracting more players.

Except they are not doing that. So this idea that they are going to attract more players by inciting them to spend even more money than before is completely absurd.

This is a little bit naive. Casual gamers with day jobs who have larger chunks of spare income would almost certainly prefer spending a few extra bucks for quick reward than putting even a dozen hours into the game. After all, many people play MMOs to interact with friends and goof around - to them, it is quite likely that "barriers" to content requiring hours invested into the title are an annoyance, rather than good design. World of Warcraft became the mega-hit that it is by appealing to this crowd; SE is attempting to emulate its success.

If their actual goal was to attract more casual players, you know what they would actually do? Put in a vendor in the game that gives these items out at no additional cost.

This entire line of thinking is dumb. They aren't trying to attract more players with a cash shop. They are trying to make more money off of you, the current player. That is the only goal of the cash shop, and you are a fool if you actually accept it.

Well here's the reality: the subscription model is no longer effective due to a saturated market. A game will not generate the revenue it needs to on a sub-only model in this day and age. It just won't happen unless its extraordinarily superior to everything else. The fact of the matter is that cash shops generate more revenue. People like going to the store and buying things that other ppl can't. Its human nature, and one major reason we still have shopping malls. Since my interest is in the game, I am in favor of whatever will keep the game both enjoyable and alive.

The benefit of cash shops are that: (a) more content can be released (b) more revenue has a positive impact on the game (c) more diversity/customization. These are all wins to me.

I'd really like to understand your claim that the sub-only model can't support the game due to saturation. Again this makes little sense.

1) Costs of maintaining a service go down, not up. At worse they will remain the same. The infrastructure is already in place and they are able to re-use a whole lot of assets. Subscription fees cover maintenance and continual development. Yoshi-P even provided a very good breakdown of this when he explained why FF14 was to be a subscription based game to being with.

2) They are charging for expansions, therefore the cost of development is covered by expansions initial sales revenue. This is where most of the major content is going to come from and where most of the costs will be.

Bottom line is they don't need cash shop revenue to maintain the status quo or to provide new content. Subscription fees and expansion revenue cover this without needing to hurt the integrity of the game.