Quote Originally Posted by Folsom View Post
The cash shop does not bother me any more than it did when it was released. Our sub fee does not pay for everything, as added things require added work. I have no delusions about them giving us literally every penny we pay for back in content; they're a business, afterall. But the "we already pay a subscription!" statement only goes so far. That subscription only pays for so much. If the cash shop is allowing them to provide extra content through transactions, that's fine with me. Perhaps people would be happier if they raised the subscription fee to compensate instead?
The problem with assuming that cash shop = funds more content of the game is that...

We don't really know how SE allocates any of the money it gets from FFXIV. It could be that 100% of the cash shop money goes back to the game, or it could be that none of it does. They could put 100% of the cash shop money back into the game but compensate by taking more of the sub fee money for other projects. The argument that cash shop is good because more money for the game isn't necessarily a good argument because we are just customers without the right info.

IF they truly need more funds to be able to create new content in the game, I would personally be more ok with sub fee increase over a cash shop. Alternatively as there seems to be many people that just want to straight up support SE, maybe they could add an option to add more money on top of your sub fee just to support them/the game. I don't have a lot of income at the moment, but if I was given the option of cash shops vs. optionally upping my own sub fee to support more content going directly to the game for ALL players, I would up my sub fee to keep out that cash shop. Maybe I'm crazy though. :P