Marriage

[kyuven]

That is not free, they have to pay for it. Also all my friends that would have interest in MMOs already play xiv, since day 1 so none of us got jack.

let's turn this around, then: what would be the incentive to recruit a friend if you could get a 2-person mount for free?

[Jinglybell]

let's turn this around, then: what would be the incentive to recruit a friend if you could get a 2-person mount for free?

Because the mount would be different. If they had put slepnir there for example, instead of the 2 seater choco they probably would have had just as many doing the recruitment campaign.

[kyuven]

Because the mount would be different. If they had put slepnir there for example, instead of the 2 seater choco they probably would have had just as many doing the recruitment campaign.

Being a two seater is pretty much all that makes the recruit-a-friend mount unique. It's just a larger chocobo with a white tail otherwise.
If you diminish an incentive, you lose that incentive. So their options are to keep the 2 seaters locked behind varying forms of paywall to keep them unique, or completely change the incentive. Guess which option is more favorable for the developers in terms of time and effort?

[Sylve]

Because the mount would be different. If they had put slepnir there for example, instead of the 2 seater choco they probably would have had just as many doing the recruitment campaign.

When WoW does RaF, people just buy the basic game (its less than 10 dollars these days) RaF with that account, pay the sub to get the reward then deactivate the account.
All up its about 25 dollars to get for a single person, plus a little time investment.
I imagine there are people who did exactly that here in XIV, and that very few RaFs legitimately recruited a brand new player to the game.

Or they could put the mount up in the store for 15 dollars or whatever they charge for mounts and be done with it.

I've always felt that my sub paid for new Story and new Raids, along with the gear that comes from those. Given that a lot of the Sub fee goes to Server maintenance, Not as much as you think goes to profit. The cash shop allows SE to make random things between patches, but also allows us players to go the extra mile to support the game. XIV is one of few games with a cash shop that also pushes out large content patches fairly regularly.
WoW patches are 6+ months apart, and contain less than what we've gotten in patches despite being Sub+Cash Shop.

[Jinglybell]

snip

I dont mind the cash shop. I only mind when they put stuff in that has no alternative earn-able in game. Like for example there's tons of 1 seating mounts, minions, glamour so I dont care too much when they put it in the cash shop. I didnt even mind the retainers, since everyone can get their two free ones which are exactly the same. But if they did something like say put the flying mounts cash only there might be a problem. Get what I mean? Also they made it seem like the chocobo was going to be a freebie, so it was misleading (There was no cash shop when he was talking about weddings now he just sprung it on us). Having said that I haven't seen any official English notes about it yet, so im waiting to see.

[Mogi]

I dont mind the cash shop. I only mind when they put stuff in that has no alternative earn-able in game. Like for example there's tons of 1 seating mounts, minions, glamour so I dont care too much when they put it in the cash shop. I didnt even mind the retainers, since everyone can get their two free ones which are exactly the same. But if they did something like say put the flying mounts cash only there might be a problem. Get what I mean? Also they made it seem like the chocobo was going to be a freebie, so it was misleading (There was no cash shop when he was talking about weddings now he just sprung it on us). Having said that I haven't seen any official English notes about it yet, so im waiting to see.

Yes but Yoshi all so told ppl regular housing be a lot more cheap then fc housing so he dose not always stick to what he says

[polyphonica]

Yes but Yoshi all so told ppl regular housing be a lot more cheap then fc housing so he dose not always stick to what he says

People sort of interpreted the translation of this comment the way they assumed it would work. It was in reference to the prices of housing at the time before the progressive price cuts and massive (purposefully-introduced) gil inflation. It didn't mean that the prices would therefore forever be separate from company housing and significantly cheaper than the now-current-prices. But that's the problem with making any sort of vague statement before the content is released and things are set in stone; people make lots of assumptions about what you mean, and then the details come out and it wasn't what they imagined or how they interpreted what was said. And even apologizing for causing the confusion means people continue to hold it above your head like "see, he lied once! He could lie again!" And then if he doesn't give details before it's set in stone, and they reveal it just before release when they're sure, people blame them for "misleading people" by not telling them sooner, even though they may not have been a position to say for sure yet either. Tough job...