You think our Cash shop is bad...take a look at THIS

[Kosmos992k]

Yes. That one item makes our cash shop look great in comparison, doesn't it?

Definitely.

Though the P2W debate has come up over there about them, and the typical fall back is that you still have to actually play the content. So while you can make it sound like its not, you are really, really pushing it.

Thats the game where the player base showed that they left, I think it was, the best chest and head piece out of the loot tables to sell more replays. They claimed they were always there, and it was just RNG, but thousands of runs later and no one having it... then all of a sudden it blew up, hotfix, and those drop like candy...

LOL I encountered something like that in another game...

This is where I see the real danger in cash shops, not ponies and paint.

I completely agree with you.

On the subject of cash shops and f2p games, I'd like to make it completely crystal clear, I don't like the f2p model, I am not a huge fan of cash shops in games. If I pay for the game purchase, pay for my monthly sub and even additional service options like retainers, I see no reason why I should have to pony up for additional things in a cash shop. In free to play games, the cash shops and the items in them, along with the in-game currency and economy are consciously designed to hook players into a treadmill grind of microtransactions.

It's like a psychotropic drug addiction in virtual form. The most obvious example I can think of is the completely deplorable Farmville. I had a co-worker so addicted to the game that there is no telling how much they spent on it. I do know that they spend 7-8 hours a day at 'work' playing the game.

However, I can more easily tolerate cash shops that serve up older cosmetic items - which is largely what Mogstation does - so long as the profit goes back into the game; also the items are items that were easily available in-game, but have since been replaced by others, and retired. It's not ideal, but it's tolerable. I don't want to see things appearing in the cash shop before they appear in the game, nor do I want anything sold in the cash shop that can affect my ability to play or complete content.

This story may help you understand why I feel that way.
(Tl;DR; I've seen what happens when free to play, microtransaction games fade, and it's not pretty. )

Anyone who played White Knight Chronicles 1 & 2 on PS3 may remember that beyond the initial purchase, the game was free to play, but you had numerous tickets that you could buy to enhance your in-game XP, gold and gathering/drop rates, as well specific items to enable special gear for your 'knight', guilds, skins and of course a bazillion georama items. Now, White Knight was a good game, it fulfilled the need for a nearly turn based JRPG on the PS3 but also provided online multi-player similar to a true MMORPG. Like JRPGs in general it was quite the grindfest and there was a lot of incentive to purchase the various tickets to boost XP, Guild Rank points and gold.

An entire tier of additional content that was made for the game was cancelled outside of Japan, though no one knows why given that the game sold more or less as many copies outside Japan as it did inside Japan. Inevitably players found out (can't hide from the Internet), got angry and some, of course, left the game. In the end, SCEA/D3/Level 5 decided to kill the game outside Japan using the excuse that there was not enough revenue from the remaining players to justify keeping the game servers open. They were shut down in less than 2 years, leaving the remaining regular players in the lurch, and feeling very bitter towards the publishers (less so to the developer).

Now, you might say, and I would agree, that by making the game microtransaction based and failing to deliver a major tier of content, the publisher effectively created the situation where revenue was insufficient themselves. That's the danger of a game dependent on the variable income of microtransactions. Sooner or later, someone doesn't want to take the risk of investing a bit more money into the game, and the players suffer. Ultimately when the players suffer, so does the game and the revenue. It ends badly.

Subscriptions are by far the most honest way to charge players for a game, and the most dependable income source for the developers/producers, ultimately I believe that does mean a better game that has a longer life, and which serves it's players (customers) in a better way than F2P ever can.