Microtransactions are here to stay. And they are a good thing.

[Abriael]

Your obviously dodging my response, you wont deny that the marketing department is picking the game apart to find the monitizable aspects.

No. There's nothing to dodge in your response, simply because you don't have an argument. The marketing department has a say on this kind of things in any game ever, whether the contents are paid for or not.

The marketing department would pick through the games content to see what the best items to promote are if the cash shop didn't exist. They wouldn't be doing their job otherwise, look at it this way. What system was recently hyped up for a few months to be a big addition to the game?

That's not how game development works. Things are developed with a purpose and a budget. Content gets greenlighted for its purpose, not for the other way around.

You don't have someone sifting through content and deciding what should be monetized and what shouldn't. Content is made on purpose for monetization. That's the basics of marketing 101.

Yo what's up wedding.

And you're getting the full ceremony at no additional cost. What is paid for is simply accessories that have no influence on the content itself, so yeah. You don't have an argument.

...I showed you that it isn't and provided a link to SE's own financial information for you to look at and evaluate, instead of just spewing generalizations based on nothing but what you think SE is doing with its money. .

Actually you just made a pretty misleading statement based on a misleading reading of the financial data, and expected me to take it as gold.

Last year Square Enix made 155,023 million yen in sales, and put 18,564 million yen in bank, dividends and salary increases (mind you, counting salary increases and equipment out of development expenses is also pretty ignorant. Salaries and equimpment ARE part of development costs). You don't calculate what gets reinvested in development from profit only, but from the whole body of sales. Obviously your 1.36% percentage of reinvestment is so grossly inaccurate and misleading that it isn't even funny.

The fact is pretty simple. The higher the sales, the more will be reinvested in development, and that's the largest percentage of what comes in from sales. A small percentage will be distributed in dividends, and another small percentage will be put in the bank as assets. And mind you, that too goes indirectly to the customer's advantage, as a company's assets represent its stability. Square Enix was able to recover from 1.0 and give us 2.0 because of those assets. Square Enix's financial stability is definitely aligned with the interests of those playing their games in the long run.

Having to pay for literally half the thing or getting a second tier, free, cheap and uncomplete experience just doesn`t feel right. Not when you are paying for it already.

This is a false argument, and you really need to go pick up a dictionary and check what "literally" means. It's obvious that you don't have to pay for half the thing. You don't have to pay for any percentage of the thing. The "thing" is free. What you pay for is accessories, and even if you considered them part of the "thing," they would be a minimal percentage of the whole ceremony, which includes the quest, the venue, the outfits, the rings, and the whole system.

I'll have to respond to posts below here, due to the nonsenical daily post limit.

They have developers who have limited time in their day to create content. They can create content that is just put into the game, for everyone, or they can create content that gets divided away from the rest and charged extra for. Before the cash shop was introduced, 100% of the stuff they made went into the game I subscribed to. Now, a growing percentage is being removed from that work and put in the cash shop. That is not an assumption.

Developer time is part of budgeting, and the number of developers is not finite. Square Enix can hire more people as needed or shift developers from other projects, as they did several times, and they've been constantly hiring in fact.

Even now they're hiring 20 new developers for Final Fantasy XIV only.

Uh... did you just defeat your own argument? So, you're telling me that cash shop revenue is being used to create new game content... but you're also saying there is no way to know whether anything is being made to be put in the game or to be put in the cash shop.

Actually, I'm saying that things that get budgeted for the cash shop are normally designed for that purpose. That's how microtransaction design normally works, since not any random item would be effective for that purpose.

You can say I can't prove cash shop items were ever going to be put into the game. Well, I can never prove that, no, because there is no way to prove something like that. But the stuff that is in the cash shop now had to come from somewhere. Did that come from cash shop revenue, before there was even a cash shop in existence? I somehow don't think so. And if you think all cash shop items are being funded solely through cash shop revenue.... wow. Just, wow.

Meanwhile, can you prove to me that there is any single thing in the main game that was funded by cash shop revenue and not subscription money?

Burden of proof falls on the one making an accusation, which would be you.

Yeah, tell a bride her dress is just an accesory

Which is just another false and misleading argument you're making, since the wedding dress is included in the standard ceremony with no additional cost. Any more falsehood you'd like to share with us, since you're at it?

[Fyrebrand]

You assume that those minions and mount would be included in the game if they weren't in the cash shop. That's a tall assumption to make and that's not how development works. Everything is budgeted.

They have developers who have limited time in their day to create content. They can create content that is just put into the game, for everyone, or they can create content that gets divided away from the rest and charged extra for. Before the cash shop was introduced, 100% of the stuff they made went into the game I subscribed to. Now, a growing percentage is being removed from that work and put in the cash shop. That is not an assumption.

This kind of microtransactions are an *entirely positive* element for the health of a MMORPG. When a company makes more revenue, said revenue isn't just put in the bank or hidden under the mattress. It's reinvested in games, and in the case of MMORPGs, mostly in the game that generates it. Which means that the more profit Square Enix makes, the more content for us all to enjoy will be greenlighted and funded.

Those items have most probably been given a budget *because* they were made for microtransactions, not the other way around.

Uh... did you just defeat your own argument? So, you're telling me that cash shop revenue is being used to create new game content... but you're also saying there is no way to know whether anything is being made to be put in the game or to be put in the cash shop.

You can say I can't prove cash shop items were ever going to be put into the game. Well, I can never prove that, no, because there is no way to prove something like that. But the stuff that is in the cash shop now had to come from somewhere. Did that come from cash shop revenue, before there was even a cash shop in existence? I somehow don't think so. And if you think all cash shop items are being funded solely through cash shop revenue.... wow. Just, wow.

Meanwhile, can you prove to me that there is any single thing in the main game that was funded by cash shop revenue and not subscription money?

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

And you're getting the full ceremony at no additional cost. What is paid for is simply accessories that have no influence on the content itself, so yeah. You don't have an argument.

Yeah, tell a bride her dress is just an accesory. And you don`t have any argument that supports how is that all this things are going behind a paywall from a logic perspective. You just remit, dogmatically, to the belief that everything SE does is for the good of the game, and if there has to be a paywall here, then has been decided, is good, and you keep walking...

I love how most cash-shop supporters dont even have standars to ask for a proper cash shop with exclusive items, and are just plain happy seeing content being removed from the game and put behind the wall.

[Spellbinder]

Meanwhile, can you prove to me that there is any single thing in the main game that was funded by cash shop revenue and not subscription money?

I would ask you to prove otherwise. Where is the abundance of proof that revenue from the item shop is not reinvested into the core game?

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

I would ask you to prove otherwise. Where is the abundance of proof that revenue from the item shop is not reinvested into the core game?

There is proof than most of the profit made by the game is not reinvested into the core game, why would the extras be?

[Spellbinder]

There is proof than most of the profit made by the game is not reinvested into the core game, why would the extras be?

Can you elaborate more than saying there is proof?

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Can you elaborate more than saying there is proof?

It has been already answered in this same thread.

While I agree with most of what you are saying, this is a very myopic and flowery opinion of how profits are actually used in business. Profits beyond a certain point are indeed "put in the bank or hidden under the mattress" to meet investor expectations of quarterly and annual earnings and profits. While SE and FFXIV do not have "investors" they do have shareholders and those shareholders are more important to them than any normal consumer (as it is with most if not all traded corporations).

This game, based on its own subscription numbers, generates more income and profit then it needs to sustain itself. The company without the game, however does not. In fact if you look at SE's own consolidated statement of cash flows for its past physical year and you see its cash and cash equivalents actually increased by 14,865 million yen. Meaning that since FFXIV came out SE put roughly 123,354,000 US dollars in the "bank" (as you say they don't) and increased it's cash on hand. While for the same period, according to their statement of income, investment and salaries (for developers and others) were relatively flat. Funny thing is SE actually paid more in dividends to investors for the year than it spent increasing investment in infrastructure and personnel.

So while you are right in many of your points, let's not pretend that the money from this cash shop is going to be used mainly to improve the game. This is nothing but a Machiavellian tale that businesses have nothing but the best intentions with they money consumers give them, when time and time again this is proven to not be the case.

http://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/ir/finance/cf.html

And by the way, this is not an indictment by me of their use of a cash shop. They will use one, and I will continue to play because I enjoy the game. This was simply me showing some understanding as to why several are upset with what they see as double dipping by SE with a P2P and cash shop model.

[Zelth]

END of all Cash shop arguments: I will continue to pay SE for things that look neat (in my case it's mounts) because I like them, I like FFXIV, and I am not poor. You can do this too, or you can keep using the company choco because in the end it's really the same thing, it's just a matter of preference.

Does it look like the sky is falling to you guys?

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Does it look like the sky is falling to you guys?

The only thing that looks like is falling is the average IQ of gamers lately. "imma pay cause hurr durr i has money hurr".

[Zelth]

The only thing that looks like is falling is the average IQ of gamers lately. "imma pay cause hurr durr i has money hurr".

Well perhaps you're just salty because you're poor and the game isn't f2p to cater to your poorness.