Cash shop confirmed

[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.

[Ladon]

I debated if I was just going to put this here and risk it being lost in this massive thread, but I don't really see a point in making another thread just for my point of view.

Here is my stance on the issue:

I am very against the existence of a cash shop in FF14. It isn't about the money (epeen alert, I am a working adult pulling 6 figures), it is about integrity and trust.

Well what does integrity and trust mean?

Some of you might not be aware, but ARR was basically created under an informal contract with the players of 1.0 and other fans. Yoshida and company where very transparent with their plans when they took the game over. They basically went into agreement with the 1.0 players that they will continue to collect monthly fees in order to make a better game. They even outlined what they were planning and what the players were to expect of of 2.0. There were three very important features of this agreement:

1) FF14:ARR would continue to be subscription based.
2) Subscriptions would be put toward point version improvements that included both fixes/improvements to the games as well as minor content patches.
3) Major expansions would cost a one time fee but would feature far more content than the point releases.

Yoshida and team have, up until now greatly honored their side of the bargain and as a result players in general have been very happy and SE has seen great financial success with ARR. However most of the sucess has come from how Yoshida and team have actually handled the project. They have been very open and honest, have treated community with great respect and have also treated the game they have made with respect.

Now we have this announcement of a cash shop. To me this is a huge breach in the contract Yoshida had made with the players and fans. This is telling me that Square-Enix corporate and marketing have noticed they have a success on their hands, and now Yoshida is getting pressure to increase those margins. That is very concerning as now the integrity of Yoshida's future decisions are in question. What's going to be put in the cash shop that should have just been put in the game? Are decisions about the game going to start moving toward what is best for the corporate bottom line rather than what will make the game a better game? It's a very unfortunate situation for a team that has built so much integrity up until now.

So that is my concern more than anything. That this game is going to start being optimized for the benefit of Square-Enix rather than for the benefit of the players.

[Lux_Rayna]

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.

Ignoring the argument about whether or not a cash shop hurts a game's integrity, what you are suggesting is not how businesses measure performance. I think this is where your confusion comes in. Businesses are not in the business (lol) of maintaining status quo. Its quite the opposite. Businesses are about growth of revenues, sales, and profits over a significant period of time. "Growth" is the name of the game...not status quo.

A sub model fails to do the above for obvious reasons. The only source of growth in a sub model comes from either (1) net subscriber growth (players gained - players lost), and (2) increased subscription rates. Competition and a saturated market prevents SE from raising subscriptions without crippling their userbase. We can both agree that is not an option. This leaves only one real option, which is to gain new players significantly faster than you lose them, and to do so at a greater rate every year going forward. That's a tall order, especially when you realize that it costs money to acquire each and every new player.

This creates a problem. The only way to grow players at a faster rate is to throw more money at gaining players. When you factor in competition, new releases, etc etc., your ROI goes south rather quickly. This is normally where games go on life support and maintain a status quo, *if* a company feels it is worth it to do so. It doesn't cost *that* much (relatively speaking) to run an MMO. Its just there's an opportunity cost associated with keeping a game alive, as that money could be spent on a game that will actually generate a lot of growth/revenue. Every company's decision on this is different, but in SE's case they kept FFXI up and running with a few changes. I'm guessing FFXIV had a lot to do with that decision.

Long story short, a strictly sub-model does not meet the growth standards necessary to justify SE throwing a lot of $$ at the game. Whether or not you agree with having those kind of growth standards in the first place is another discussion entirely.

[Lux_Rayna]

snip

It takes a good amount of time to get a clear picture about whether or not a model is going to work. You need 3 quarters at a minimum, which is essentially a year. For example, I run a business and it typically takes about 3 months, or one quarter, for today's efforts to turn into revenue. In order to analyze 3 months' worth of effort, I'd have to analyze the results 6 months later. For 6 months worth of effort, I'd have to analyze it 9 months later.

My point is this is not something they could look at and decide right away. They'd have to wait a while and see how performance measured up to standards.

They're not entitled (look! I can use it too) to more money from me just because they can't do their job.

Cash shop is optional, so I'm not sure why you use the word "entitled" there. You are free to purchase optional items as you see fit. SE isn't demanding more money out of you.

[Sho86]

Hm?



These...don't look ripped out to me..and didn't when I went to the CS.

(Inb4 someone tries to argue against it by predicting the future.)

Btw: They stated they put them on NPCs to allow people who didn't play 1.x to get the items - Most of the event items you see came from 1.0 and were only offered once a year, meaning one year it was yukatas the other it was swimsuits.

Your that far behind in the convo eh? No event NPCs.

[Vhailor]

Long story short, a strictly sub-model does not meet the growth standards necessary to justify SE throwing a lot of $$ at the game. Whether or not you agree with having those kind of growth standards in the first place is another discussion entirely.

What "growth standards" would you argue are necessary?

Clearly subscription-model MMOs fall under the category of cash cows. Their success is viewed through the prism of customer retention and longevity, not growth. As you yourself stated, maintenance of an MMO is relatively cheap; FFXIV likely makes enough in one or two months of subscriptions to pay for an entire expansion's development (and this is a conservative estimate). The expansion, of course, not needing an extensive marketing campaign and having a fairly predictable number of purchases, will pay for itself almost immediately upon release. The only uncertainty from SE's perspective is whether an expansion will contribute to enough retention to justify the investment.

I'm not certain how you're linking a decision with these obvious factors to a cash shop.

[Roris]

So, why not openly discuss the addition of a cash shop back since the 1.0 days when the 2.0 information was just starting to get released? Why mislead people in interviews stating how cash shops are bad and how the P2P model is better because devs aren't forced to decide which items go into the game and which ones go into the cash shop?

I mean they themselves said they didn't expect the success ARR had on release, they themselves expected moderate to maybe even low sales. That's why all those server errors happened, because they weren't prepared for the traffic, even though they could have easily made a better estimate of how many people would be playing by both looking at the preorder numbers up to a month or two before the final beta, and by how many people had active subscriptions before they were temporarily suspended on September 2012.

You say all this takes time to measure and decide, but it's all just one big contradiction. If modern MMOs can't sustain themselves without cash shops, why not simply launch with one? If the game is successful enough with 2.5 million "adventurers" then why add a cash shop then? It's all about making money I know, business and all, but the transparency that characterized Yoshida should have come into play here. Yes yes, they don't owe anyone any explanation of what they do as a business, but Yoshida did get most of his goodwill and positive image by being transparent and open about 1.0's development, only to seemingly forget about it after 2.0's launch, and yes I know there are people above him the ultimately decide all this even though he was promoted to Corporate Executive, but still.

[Vhailor]

So, why not openly discuss the addition of a cash shop back since the 1.0 days when the 2.0 information was just starting to get released? Why mislead people in interviews stating how cash shops are bad and how the P2P model is better because devs aren't forced to decide which items go into the game and which ones go into the cash shop?

Well based on a lot of their recent decisions, i.e. the cash shop, the atrocious ports of older FF titles to the PC in an attempt to make a few bucks, and the sellout to Microsoft over Tomb Raider 2, I'd say that SE is aiming to emulate EA. At least, I can't think of any other viable explanation.

[Lux_Rayna]

What "growth standards" would you argue are necessary?

FFXIV has to grow revenues/sales/profits at a reliable rate YoY. For a sub-based model, this can only be measured through box sales, subscriber-base, and retention rates. Box sales are obviously the least important after initial release. You are right in that the raw revenue of subs is probably enough to cover an expansion. But we have to consider a cpl of things:

How much did it cost to get those subs? Whats the net profit? How much of that profit can be reinvested and how? We also have to consider how many subs we lost over the specified period of time. Finally we need to make sure that the money reinvested will not only improve customer retention (as you said), but also pull in more subscribers (to make up for lost ones).

A cash shop alleviates the pressure on an expansion to do well. Its cheap content to produce, and generates revenue w/o having to find new subscribers.

[Errors]

Eh, as a former 11 player, 1.0 player, 2.0 player and frankly just pure gamer. I as long as only vanity related items are sold in the cash shop I don't care. No given in game advantage for cash. It's how I've enjoy games while people rage on about about possible "ethics" of game companies. If a game gets to the point I can't find entertainment out of it I leave it behind.

If I don't want something in the cash shop I just won't buy it. If I want to pay $400 for a mount that does nothing but look "pretty" so be it. I went to fan fest, got a plush that gives me a minion. I didn't go to fanfest and buy merch to just get minions. My primary goal was achieved to meet fellow players to have a good time and hear about new content.

This thread shows very passionate opinions on both sides. Thanks for the good read folks.