Cash shop confirmed

[Shadray]

Wow this has started to get strange with all the food stuff I want to have a go.

I view it a little differently, the subscription isn't paying for the meat or the beans, it's for the seat at the table.

Until recently every seat came with a free meal of meat and beans, now for whatever reason they have decided to remove the beans but don't worry you can pay extra for them, XD

Makes me wonder if the next move is to replace the meat with soya and offer real meat at a premium.

[Miya_Carbuncle]

Wow this has started to get strange with all the food stuff I want to have a go.

I view it a little differently, the subscription isn't paying for the meat or the beans, it's for the seat at the table.

Until recently every seat came with a free meal of meat and beans, now for whatever reason they have decided to remove the beans but don't worry you can pay extra for them, XD

Makes me wonder if the next move is to replace the meat with soya and offer real meat at a premium.

What are you talking about? Nothing is being removed. :l Some vanity will be available via the CS, others in-game. They aren't being taken away.

[Teirshin]

What are you talking about? Nothing is being removed. :l Some vanity will be available via the CS, others in-game. They aren't being taken away.

There's no way to know whats being "taken away", but its pretty obvious some things are.

We have no way to know what items would have been put in game as part of our sub, and those that will now be made simply for the cash shop to make a buck.

With the ROI so much higher on cash shop items, there's far, FAR less incentive to make new content to support cool new items in game.

Why pay a team of 20 for weeks to design a dungeon with a cool drop when you can pay just a couple people for a couple weeks to design a mount, put it up for sale at $20 and make $10-20 million in no time?

SE is trying too hard to be WoW... and failing.

[Noxifer]

What are you talking about? Nothing is being removed. :l Some vanity will be available via the CS, others in-game. They aren't being taken away.

Well, that's true. For now, they're only decreasing the amount of beans on your table with a small amount. But most other restaurants that have gone this way have gradually decreased the amount of beans on the table until there's only one or two beans left, and those are rather tiny and wrinkly and certainly don't look as appetizing as the ones you have to pay extra for.


Another thought struck me, though. People seem very fond of comparing to other MMOs with cash shops (whether or not those games are F2P or not). The thing is, I've seen in the MMOs that I've looked at (read: tried playing) that A) you get a certain amount of cash shop currency with your subscription and/or B) there's a way of acquiring cash shop currency in game -- through quests or achievements, usually. While this is usually nowhere near enough to buy what you want when you want, it does offer options for those who either don't have extra money to spend or who are against spending it to slowly accumulate enough to buy things. If something along those lines were to be offered in FFXIV, I have to admit I'd be less against a cash shop than I am today.


And for those of you saying that the pricing is very reasonable (possibly compared to prices in other games, which IMO shouldn't have any bearings on this game), please consider this: While the economy in the States (for example) might be fairly similar from one state to another, the European userbase is another matter entirely. There are countries here where the price of the subscription is just the price of a nice dinner per month, but then there are countries where it'd be the price of five or six nice dinners per month. It's not only a matter of "spending some pocket money" on that hat. It might just as well be "do I drive my car those 13km to work this week or do I buy that hat and walk to work?".
I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say here, tbh. Probably that what's reasonable and not is very much dependent on the average prices of things where you live, and that it's kinda rude to say, "I think these prices are reasonable, so that means they are."

And... there's this:

How is it in any sense reasonable that NINE (9) single items, for one character, should be more expensive than a full-size game? O.o

(posted in the "correction of prices for cash shop items" thread)

[Kyoraki]

What are you talking about? Nothing is being removed. :l Some vanity will be available via the CS, others in-game. They aren't being taken away.

It is. The vanity kit will have been produced anyway, whether it be through crafting or dungeons. the difference now is the always present question of whether it'll be locked behind a second paywall. We are being robbed of content because daddy Sqaure Enix will never change, and will always try to screw over their most faithful eventually.