Yoshida did not make this game pay-to-win. The players did. *NOT a cash shop thread*

[Bishop81]

...

I'm sorry. But you don't really get to decide what is and isn't winning nor do the designers of the game.

Remember the players are the ones paying and the only reason they pay is because,

The most important concept in this paper is that it's not just how you sell your product, but what part of your product you sell. A great part of the attraction of virtual worlds is that participants see them as a Grand Meritocracy, as opposed to the real world, which can often seem arbitrary and unfair. As Jane McGonigal points out, there is no unemployment in virtual space. Everyone has opportunities. Absolute care must be taken in the design of your virtual world to maintain this perception -- whether you consider it real or illusion is irrelevant.

Selling the game objectives in your world makes your game unfair and just reminds your customers of the inequities of the world they are trying to escape from. They literally won't buy this. Sell them opportunity, in the form of content, and they will buy up that opportunity with an enthusiasm that will shock you.

- http://gamasutra.com/view/feature/17...on_.php?page=4

If part of a game that the player is interested in becomes "unfair" ... well, you won't keep that player for long.

At this rate, all FFXIV will end up keeping are hardcore raiders who only care about,

help you clear end game content and help you beat certain monsters

who ironically are not that hard up for vanity items that the cash shop is selling. The cash shop is to some extend a self-extinguishing venture as it drives away players that are most interested in the goods it's selling, in the long run.

FFXIV has a wide range of activities and attracts a wide variety of players with different goals and interest. If Yoshida wants to destroy this diversity and be "purely" a raiding game very much like it's main competitor WoW (seriously, there is nothing else to WoW, it's "raid or die" if you don't like PVP), for the sake of short-term gain ... well, this is disappointing - not to mention competitively disadvantageous in the long run; I don't see how going head to head with WoW, fighting on its terms, is a good idea.

[Erudain]

snip turn 2 pass the bomb, turn 1 silence the orb stuff.

You sir, wins the interwebz.

Only thing I would like to add to what you said, is the ammount of wipe mechanics the game has is ridiculous.
It usually punishs everyone for one person mistake, and in the other end it doesn't reward exceptional playskill since you cannot make up for the one who screwed it up.

Someone screws up = wipe.
That also leads to the elitist attitude of not wanting to help.
If you have hard mechanics, but not automatic wipes....you could enable 3, 4, 5 guys to lead a group to victory through amazing playskill even if 2, 3, 4 other guys screwed up and are kissing the floor, those guys would feel great about themselves "look what we just did, awesome!"...and experienced players would be more willing to help.
(note the "amazing" part of the sentence = not a cake walk that "everyone" can clear with 4-5 guys only")

[Bishop81]

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Well, it will certainly increase the number of players willing to help, but the elitist attitude probably isn't going anywhere.

There will still be prima donnas throwing hissy fits about how "noobs" and "bads" are slowing down the raid, when things don't go exactly as they planned.

The only way to fix this is to ensure players only play with "their own kind. ".

[Xystic]

I said WoW Vanilla, and no, never saw content sellers during that time whatsoever, what came after, can't say, wasn't playing so my statement is still true for that time.

We sold countless runs in WoW Vanilla. MC, BWL and ONY40 could be done with 25 players in T2 and 15 customers in any assorted fashion of gear. The margin of error in 40 man raids back in those days were rather large. In AQ40 we could easily carry about 8 players with 32 players in T2-T2.5 with some difficulties at the twin emps and cthun but otherwise most of AQ40 was fairly simple. Naxx was probably the hardest to carry and we only brought 1-2 customers, with very high price tags on those items they wanted. Some other top tier guilds could definitely bring more but ours capped it at 1-2.

The origination of selling runs in WoW started in Vanilla and persists today, however, a lot of runs these days are the bid-split gold runs versus a guild selling items to you.

[Teryaani]

I'm sorry. But you don't really get to decide what is and isn't winning nor do the designers of the game.

Let's be clear here. I'm not deciding anything. That was the producer of the game, the face of the product, explaining how he (and therefore his development team) saw winning. I didn't decide anything, but to make arguing with me easier you'd like that I did, sorry to disappoint you.

The people we're talking about here are the ones who designed how the game reward systems worked. The winning.

You would prefer that the vanity items be treated on par with the game items? Fine, a number of people would. But that's not how this game was built. Interestingly enough, the amount of vanity that square adds vs what goes into the vanity shop makes this entire thing look like a molehill that you're seeing as Everest.

Remember the players are the ones paying and the only reason they pay is because,

<theorycraft article snipped>

If part of a game that the player is interested in becomes "unfair" ... well, you won't keep that player for long.

You like citing that article on gaming theory, and it's got some nice platitudes in it, but platitudes don't necessarily translate into bottom line figures.

The consumer has shown willingness to support a cash store and until they stop doing it, they aren't going to change anything. The problem is that the data SE is getting is almost definitely running contrary to your point above. How do I know this? because they're still doing the cash shop. If it was costing them on the bottom line, they would drop or change support for it.

So high minded as that may be, the consumer is reacting differently. The writer is an economist, the one thing I learned from economics is that people behave in a fashion that meets their rational self interest. What I learned from real life is that everything I was taught in economics about rational self interest was wrong.

At this rate, all FFXIV will end up keeping are hardcore raiders who only care about,

who ironically are not that hard up for vanity items that the cash shop is selling. The cash shop is to some extend a self-extinguishing venture as it drives away players that are most interested in the goods it's selling, in the long run.

Time will show best if it's self extinquishing, as you put it. I think you're overestimating consumer dislike of the cash shop.

FFXIV has a wide range of activities and attracts a wide variety of players with different goals and interest. If Yoshida wants to destroy this diversity and be "purely" a raiding game very much like it's main competitor WoW (seriously, there is nothing else to WoW, it's "raid or die" if you don't like PVP), for the sake of short-term gain ... well, this is disappointing - not to mention competitively disadvantageous in the long run; I don't see how going head to head with WoW, fighting on its terms, is a good idea.

Yoshida isn't destroying anything. The content coming out seems pretty evenly balanced to me, including a ton of vanity. Also, going to head to head with WoW? This game has it's own built in market, just like WoW did (Warcraft players). This isn't some winner take all deathmatch. People play both, even having subscriptions for each at the same time.

[NoF2P]

If it was costing them on the bottom line, they would drop or change support for it.

It could cost in lost subs - which is irreversible - but if that starts to hurt then the game could go F2P and get a huge number of new players, among which would be many customers of the shop. An online shop costs very little to operate, and the existing game gives the items value. Such an influx of new players might need more servers, hence the "double dipping". It could be that the whole cash shop thing is just hedging against a steady decline in subs as players reach the endgame and leave faster than new players join.

I agree with what you said about rational self interest. There's a lot of theory in economics that is inconsistent with reality.

[Leep]

Can you even win an MMO? I consider it a an MMO beat when I settle down with a nice classy MMO lady after exploring her <Labyrinth of the Ancients>. You lose if you have to pay to win in this circumstance though.

[Bishop81]

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Pardon the "pro-active" protest. Some of us don't want the game to start it's decline - it just launch last year for heaven sakes. ><

As NoF2P mentioned, the damage could be irreversible.

Player trust isn't something that you can rebuild, throw away, then rebuild again, ad infinitum.

High minded or not, one thing is certain (base on observation) the moment part of the game goes into the cash shop, that part of the game ceases to be a "game" in the traditional sense. Whatever ends up in a cash shop becomes part of a "money game", and as noted by the article I linked, money games are self-extinguishing over time - as, for many, players soon learn the only "real way to win", is to not play.

Yoshida isn't destroying anything. The content coming out seems pretty evenly balanced to me, including a ton of vanity. Also, going to head to head with WoW? This game has it's own built in market, just like WoW did (Warcraft players). This isn't some winner take all deathmatch. People play both, even having subscriptions for each at the same time.

I think you might be overestimating just how much time and money players have at their disposal ...

PS: This discussion has been enlightening. I learned a few things. One being that a game can't just be blanket labelled as P2W or not P2W, rather you must consider it's components. A game can be non-P2W in one area, but P2W in another. So while the whole game will not collapse, the part that ends up in the cash shop will sooner or later both figuratively and literally die, and subs (and player trust) will nevertheless be lost.