Cash Shop: Stifling development.

[Bluevann]

I could care less if someone chooses to spend their money in the cash shop or not. That's their prerogative. Everything in the shop is just extra, not sure why people think it will doom the game.

I was agreeing with you until the band selling started, because that affects who the houses are going to, and as you know, houses are limited. I do not have RL money to buy bands to sell for millions, and am instead slowly climbing my way towards the 40Ms for a mansion. How do you think it feels to watch a player that joined the game just a week ago upgrade from small to large house within a day? It just happened to me. My newbie friend is buying herself a large, and just day before yesterday she was crying to me of how broke she was. She did it all through real money trading, that SE legalized.

Again, I wouldn't care if that didn't mean less chances for me to get a mansion. And sadly it does. Houses should go to those who work for them in-game, not to those who were luckier with their real-life economic situation.

So again, I hope they either make this stuff untradable/binding clothes upon dye'ing, or give us unlimited houses.

[CHEVY44]

[QUOTE=Bluevann;2644352]I was agreeing with you until the band selling started, because that affects who the houses are going to, and as you know, houses are limited. I do not have RL money to buy bands to sell for millions, and am instead slowly climbing my way towards the 40Ms for a mansion. How do you think it feels to watch a player that joined the game just a week ago upgrade from small to large house within a day? It just happened to me. My newbie friend is buying herself a large, and just day before yesterday she was crying to me of how broke she was. She did it all through real money trading, that SE legalized.


Did you read the dev reply on why you are able to trade the bands? So the system is flawwed and ppl are talking advantage of it, could they have done it differently yes but no one has given a better way. Hey SE how about allowing us to gift the band to our in game husband/wife though mog station and make the bands untradeable. Make it so!

[Tiggy]

Doooom. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

[Bluevann]

Did you read the dev reply on why you are able to trade the bands? So the system is flawwed and ppl are talking advantage of it, could they have done it differently yes but no one has given a better way. Hey SE how about allowing us to gift the band to our in game husband/wife though mog station and make the bands untradeable. Make it so!

I have read all of what SE had to state on the issue. That doesn't change the fact that they have done nothing but ask to "please don't do it". It doesn't work like that, and housing wards are running out of plots at high speed. They need to stop it immediately.

[Ashkendor]

Wait until all the best looking armor is cash shop only, while we get leftover clown suits rags in-game.

Fearmongering, much? Seriously, this is completely unfounded. They haven't gone this route at all (a lot of the best looking items are dungeon drops or gated behind difficult in game content like high level crafting). Statements like this are just meant to upset people and/or make them afraid when you get down to it.

I DON'T WANT ANY OF MY SUB MONEY GOING TO CASH SHOP ITEMS FOR OTHER PLAYERS. SELFISH YES.

Everyone that plays this game does it for one main selfish reason. To enjoy it personally. Nobody plays this game cause a gun is to their heads. WE all want something from it. I want my sub money to go to game content and cash shop money go to development of cash shop items. Some reason I get the impression that if cash shop don't pay for itself our sub money will help it along like a subsidy till it does. There's money we lose for game content.

Er. Somehow I doubt the "cash shop money" and the "subscription" money go into separate accounts or are earmarked for separate things. It all goes to the same place - continued development of the game, period. (There are of course overhead costs like employee salaries, building utilities, etc, but that's not what's being discussed here.) You can't buy a sweet tea from McDonald's and tell them that you don't want that money going toward hamburger patties. It just doesn't work that way. The cash shop isn't a separate entity from the game that can fail all on its own. Whether we like it or not, it's part of the game now. It's pretty safe to say that the only way the cash shop itself would fail would be if the game itself did.

Doooom. DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

Lmao. Yeah. This sums up so many of the posts on the subject really well. :|

Even worse is the fact that every single person opening a new thread on the subject thinks that their thread is new and special and needed so that the whole thing gets more attention. Posting in existing threads is actually more beneficial in that regard as the number of likes and the number of posts in a single thread stack up, whereas duplicate threads are often deleted/closed by forum mods as spam.

[HakuroDK]

How about, instead of looking at the future and speculating that the devs will ask "can we monetize this?" for future content, look at the present at the content they did not monetize. They could have monetized the false moustache item. They didn't. They could have monetized the FFXI-inspired armors. They didn't. They could have monetized the Black/White/Gold/Silver special dyes. They didn't.

The thing with a cash shop is that the game developers tread on a very fine line. Their investors would want them to put a lot of items up on the cash shop so that the revenue funnels into their pockets. Conversely, if too many items are put up, they lose subscribers. They have to put up just enough so the investors don't pull out, but not so much as to cause subs to be lost.

Right now, putting up old holiday gear is a good incentive for people to login and get all of the current holiday stuff with the knowledge that it'll all be on the cash shop next year. The Eternal Bonding premium packages were good as the whole process of an eternal bonding is supposed to have this permanence. No one would pay $20/$40 for a service unless they intended for the results of the service to last for at least a few years. But they did not monetize all Eternal Bondings. There is still a standard package which gets you the bonding without having to pay a cent beyond your sub. You don't get a two-person chocobo, customization options for the eternal bonding, or the "special gifts" that the premium services get, but it could have been gated content.

Now many people will say "That's not good enough" or "You're being an apologist". And maybe you're right. But honestly? There is not a single thing I have seen on the cash shop that gives any player an unfair gameplay advantage as it pertains to anything besides aesthetics. There is only one thing in the entirety of the game that I can think of that gives players any kind of a genuine advantage that can be attained by giving extra money to SE beyond one's subscription, and that is extra retainers. They double retainer inventory space and allow for the use of double the number of ventures. But that isn't tied to, and in fact predates, the cash shop. The two-person chocobo is as much as an advantage as a "/mount /wait 3 /follow <t>" macro, so that doesn't even count.

The only way I will join the anti-cash shop side is if an item is released that either A.) Causes content to be gated, or B.) Grants an unfair advantage in the fields of gameplay, which pertains exclusively to combat, crafting, and gathering. If SE releases a bunch of chests in-game that can only be unlocked with a key from the cash shop? I'll go anti-cash shop. If SE releases any kind of content that absolutely cannot be touched without a special cash shop item (such as a key to the door to a dungeon/trial), I'll go anti-cash shop. If SE releases a special tomestone that can be used to purchase any item with comparable stats to any endgame item, I'll go anti-cash shop.

But until then, this whole cash shop topic is nothing but toxic people on both sides. On the one side, you have people who feel that paying for a subscription means everything released should be acquired, and the very notion of a cash shop wants them to burn SE's offices to the ground in a furious rage. Whether that's true or not, I honestly can't tell because how toxic people are in that camp might as well have that opinion with the kind of attitude they have towards it.

The other side are filled with people perfectly content with spending money on extraneous things and take on an elitist attitude of calling people from the other camp entitled or whiny. The level of toxicity on this side is about the same, and it is very disappointing that I have to align myself with people who are toxic due to sharing a common belief.


tl;dr: They will monetize enough to please investors, but not so much as to discourage the majority of the playerbase. No one side should fool themselves into thinking they're the majority as the majority doesn't actually give a crap either way.

[Jynx]

B.) Grants an unfair advantage in the fields of gameplay, which pertains exclusively to combat, crafting, and gathering.

You can buy armbands sell them and get bis items for crafting and gathering. I'd call that unfair.

[HakuroDK]

You can buy armbands sell them and get bis items for crafting and gathering. I'd call that unfair.

Which, as the developers have said, is not an intended function that, if it continues, will be shut down. It was an oversight on a feature, and that armband was intended to be given to one's partner in much the same way as an engagement ring is given from one person to another.

Also, with that, I refer to buying bis items directly with cash.

[ChibiChan_Hyperion]

Which, as the developers have said, is not an intended function that, if it continues, will be shut down. It was an oversight on a feature, and that armband was intended to be given to one's partner in much the same way as an engagement ring is given from one person to another.

Also, with that, I refer to buying bis items directly with cash.

Did they mention anything about the dyes? I only saw mention of the bracelets.

[Tupsi]

Did they mention anything about the dyes? I only saw mention of the bracelets.

The dyes are no different than what people have been doing since obtaining them through Retainer ventures, which you can also buy extra retainers on mog station and have them go out to get it = essentially the same with the only difference is the RNG nature of actually getting it.