starting to lose interest in this game sadly

[Felis]

i get that they wanted to make more money but i would rather pay a higher amount for a sub fairly with everyone else rather then all the rich kids getting the best stuff i know its cosmetic stuff but still

You can buy 1 or 2 retainers if you want to pay a higher sub.

[BloodPact]

I said what I meant exactly the way I said it. Does the cash-shop yukata help you advance to endgame? No? Then it doesn't help with advancement.

Advancement can mean a lot of things, like the collection of glamours for the creation of different attires for your classes/jobs. If you meant endgame progression... obviously not.

[Kuwagami]

There are people whose "endgame" is glamours, or minion collections, or mount collections. Coming here to say "what you like is not that important, it's fine" is nothing but, again, selfish.

I won't go into minion/mount collectors because they're also screwed by real life items (collector editions for mounts, and for minions there are the plushes, the OSTs (some not even obtainable anymore) and such). Not to mention 1.0 goobue.


But for glamour ? I get it that you may want beautiful glamour and such, but no "glamour end game" player worth a damn would EVER buy from the cash shop. What's the point of having a generic looking glamour everybody else have ? What is the point of looking exactly similar to everyone else because it is "the thing of the moment" that noone will have 2 month in the future ?

"Real" glamour people don't use the cash shop. Those who complain about it are wannabe "I'm so fabulous" generic people who are pissed that they have to spend extra $$ to still be generic people with extra generic fluff.

Did you know that the prices to keep a server running isn't that much? This counts the same for game servers. Let's say there are 200k active monthly paying players atm. They all pay 15 bucks (not considering legacy) and we just think of the earnings they make with just the sub: 200000*15= 3000000. Means they'll make 3mil already with just 200k active subscribers. Servers costs total might be like 1%-3% of that. Meaning they made 97% in that month. Now lets take off the labor costs and say they earn 3000-4000 each, cause that sounds reasonable if you work in a large scale development team. I don't know how big the team is, but let's say 15 people. That's another 15% that goes off. Meaning they still made 82%. An update won't cost a lot, so I'll leave that out. That still means they have a profit of 2.46mil. Just that one month with paying for a 30 day subscription if there are 200k playing. Though. A few weeks back it was established that the current active accounts is more than double of 200k. Now if every one of the 200k people have one extra retainer they've made another 200k.

In the end the cash shop is just a extra money grab that the game doesn't even need.

If you really think most of the money FFxiv makes (which is way lower than what you seem to think.) goes back to FFxiv, I have some dire news for you. That's not how companies work. I wouldn't be surprised if 80-90% of the profit made from FFxiv was going straight into FFxv and FFvii remake development.

[Kona_Nightwind]

You should stop playing.

[DPZ2]

Now lets take off the labor costs and say they earn 3000-4000 each, cause that sounds reasonable if you work in a large scale development team.

Why do folks think only the developers at a company deserve payment? What about the marketing folks: artists, financiers, accounting? What about server maintenance crews: network and system administrators?

Add to that the fact that $48,000 per year in labor costs per developer is an extremely low-ball figure that would likely result in your development team abandoning ship for the Next Big Thing pretty quickly.

You failed to incorporate other costs such as office rental, transportation and shipping costs, payments to Sony for PSN access, payments to the IP service providers, payments to keep up with debt incurred before a single sale was ever made, not to mention the shareholders.

Game companies are in business to Make Money, nothing more. If their product Pleases the Public, so much the better.

[karateorangutang]

Why do folks think only the developers at a company deserve payment? What about the marketing folks: artists, financiers, accounting? What about server maintenance crews: network and system administrators?

Add to that the fact that $48,000 per year in labor costs per developer is an extremely low-ball figure that would likely result in your development team abandoning ship for the Next Big Thing pretty quickly.

You failed to incorporate other costs such as office rental, transportation and shipping costs, payments to Sony for PSN access, payments to the IP service providers, payments to keep up with debt incurred before a single sale was ever made, not to mention the shareholders.

Game companies are in business to Make Money, nothing more. If their product Pleases the Public, so much the better.

This guy gets it.

[Kaurie]

While I think it is a silly reason to quit, I agree that the cash shop feels pretty lame in a sub game. I'm not sure if WoW now has a cash shop too (or if they always did, I never saw one when I played many years ago). Honestly, I feel the cash shop is on the same level as Tera in terms of what you get, and Tera is F2P and uses the cash shop to make money.

Being charged for extra retainers is also pretty dumb, and can be considered a necessity to progress by some (crafters mostly as far as I am aware). I don't craft, nor do I have an extra retainer, but I've seen many complaints.

Personally, I want the boots that come with the wedding package, and am getting to the point that I'll fork over $10 USD just to get the boots - which imo is pretty lame.

[Kaurie]

This guy gets it.

Sort of, he listed a handful of other people that need wages too and brought up some other expenses. It doesn't mean they aren't making loads off of our subs already, and that they don't really need the cash shop purchases. They are a cash grab, because yes they are in the business of making money.

They company, in business of making money, will charge as much as they can to make money. The consumers, in the business of saving money, will try to limit how much they can charge us. Consumers do this through consumer feedback (like this thread) and consumer demand. Rolling over and saying they want to make money, so here take it, is very poor consumer behavior and not at all how a capitalist economy works.

[Andevom]

Both things serve a purpose. What you actually meant to say is that for you the yukata does not have a purpose, which is, like I said, selfish.

I mean, I think it's more selfish to say "Well, *my* definition of progression involves getting the stuff you're charging me for in the cash shop. You should change it 'cause that's not fair to me."

By and large, I don't think the community shares that definition. If getting every cosmetic object in the game is your definition of "advancement", and you think having to pay for some of that is unfair, then yeah, this probably isn't your game.

[Rufalus]

In the end the cash shop is just a extra money grab that the game doesn't even need.

So they should only try to earn enough to cover their expenses and nothing more?
I think some of the stuff in the cash shop just wouldn't exist if there wasn't a cash shop. In particular they would not have been able to justify putting resources into making the eternal bond system if it wasn't generating money, so it's not like planned content is cut out of the game to be sold separately, but rather additional content is created due to the additional funds it brings.