Is our sub fee not enought

[Zojha]

Besides, first and foremost SQE is a business and a businesses sole goal is to make money.

Indeed - And for a business, it would be stupid not to work on creating a problem if they can sell the solution to it.

Like selling mines, minesweeping services and prostheses. Works great!

[ApolloGenX]

I'm not a huge fan of cash shops in general, but I don't think it's fair to say that releases and subs give us so much more than they used to. If I think about the amount of content that was released in the EQ : Shadows of Luclin expansion (Or Kunark/Velious/Planes of Power).. the sheer number of quests/zones/raids./abilities.. new classes.... alternate advancement,etc... this expansion/sub content isn't even in the same realm.


With that said, production quality (voice overs etc.) are nicer. It is a story on rails, not a sandbox environment- so it is a different type of experience. However, I would say that for the volume of content and the length of play-ability and relevance of content- not even close to older games. I won't even get into the sheer volume of items/gear and recipes. I will say that for EQ expansions, every expansion I bought a thick book that had information on the expansion and it was always a LOT... and you paid for content that would be fun and last a long time, not become obsolete within a year. Just my opinion. Oh, and there were in game GMs that would help you.... that is a really great service that subscriptions paid for that I don't really see here.

[Jandor]

Please let me know what these superior options are, I'm interested to know.

Well, a few I saw or contributed in the potion thread.

Give the story skip potion with the expansion
Give both potions with the expansion
Boost XP gain from the story and introduce an option to teleport straight back to the quest giver upon completion
Allow new characters/players to choose whether to start at 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0
Unlock the first HW quest at 50 and the first SB one at 60 so players leveled past that can choose to skip any remaining story-line from the previous segment
More radically, they could streamline the MSQ and try to rework the quest system so all 3 main story-lines can run in parallel
Various combinations of the above

(also, SE please add a sidequest where the scions sneak a housing district style mini-aetheryte into the waking sands.)

Besides, first and foremost SQE is a business and a businesses sole goal is to make money. It's not to cater to every whim of ever player. That's impossible.

'SE is a business and their sole goal is to make money' seems to me to be the sort of statement that should realistically increase skepticism towards the cash shop.

[Kosmos992k]

While I understand you want to just pay everything up front; not everyone cares about the extra items in the shop, so it would potentially cause a drop in subs if people saw their subscription fee go up for the sake of items they weren't even interested in to begin with.

Maybe they could introduce a premium subscription option for those who are interested in getting those additional items tied in without feeling nickel and dimed.

Accepting for the moment that the MogStation aka Cash Shop is a real and permanent thing (which let's face it, it is)... I would not mind a season pass deal for all MogStation content in a calendar year that we can pay up front - so long as it was available across all characters on my account. If they went with a two tier version of a pass for the account or a pass for a character, I would be OK with that too. Of course this all depends on the cost. There's no freaking way I am paying more than the digital CE cost ($59.99) for a year's worth of DLC, account wide or otherwise), and there would need to be a way to catch up on prior year content if you join later.

However, the main thing for me is that the actual costs of items is too high. It's completely outrageous given the single character limitation. I would still consider some of the content expensive even if it were across my entire account, but the value would be there to justify the cost. Right now, the value is so limited in scope it's really hard to justify spending so much on something as small as an emote or outfit. So a two tier pricing structure of Account wide vs Single character would be far superior to the current system - IMHO.

However a Season Pass for non-consumable items from the MogSation such as mounts, minions, emotes and outfits/accessories, which was account wide would be an option I would be very keen to explore. It does very much depend on the cost however. I don't honestly think that SE could charge more than the cost of the game (new) for a year of items on MogStation, perhaps the Digital CE price at most given we have seen some fairly premium outfits appearing on Mogstation. A Season pass for DLC should never cost more than the game itself - unless of course you're adopting a F2P model - which Yoshi has repeatedly indicated he will not do.

Two tier pricing (of all non consumable items) for account wide vs single character - yes please.
Season pass for a year at the MogStation (for all non-consumable Mogstation exclusive items) with two pricing tiers - yes please.
Catch up 'pass' to catch up prior years items at MogStation (for all non_consumable Mogstation exclusive items), again two tiers - yes please.

If that was something SE would explore, then I would suggest one more option;

Owner's Pass - a one time fee, granting the account access to all MogStation items (not optional services) as long as the player's subscription is active. This one would probably be an expensive option, but honestly I could easily see some players taking it in order to do away with the drip feed of transactions that annoy them. I would certainly consider it as well.

Because you didn't reply with anything relevant to the conversation.

Which conversation? I had a reply to a point you had posted, so I made it. Whether you believe it to be relevant isn't really an issue, I thought it was.

I agreed with you that the price is too high on the emotes (twice).

Great, we agree on something.

I was explaining how there's nothing wrong with or "pay to win" about selling cosmetics in the cash shop and having a subscription, and that we are not entitled to every asset created for the game just because we pay a sub.

And I was countering that point. When ARR was delivered there was no cash shop we were literally entitled to everything because we pay our subscription fee. We started out with an all inclusive game/resort. Now a degree of premium content has been re-directed to the MogStation for additional charge. People can argue about whether or not the content would exist without the MogStation, to be honest I don't know whether any of us can ever know that answer. I'm not saying anything about it being pay to win (because it's not pay to win), I am simply saying that when I and many others began our customer relationship with SE, the game was an all-inclusive deal. Somewhere along the line things changed, but SE said it was nothing to worry about.

But, now we see expensive outfits, mounts and emotes on the MogStation, not just Fantasia, renaming service, world transfer or extra retainers. Worse than that, things that IMHO should be account wide, aare single character only - despite their price. That Chinese dress - for example - costs more than 2 months full subscription and yet is only available to a single character on your account. My goodness you could repurchase ARR and HW on PC at times for less than that outfit costs for a single character on Mogstation.

[Stormrider]

Some people have mentioned that WoW has a cash shop. I asked a guy at work that plays WoW and he said to me hes happy to buy stuff off the cash shop. He said ha has only paid for one month of game time over the last couple of years. They have a system you can pay for months with gold for a sub token. He was complaining that they were almost 90k in gold now that other blizzard games use the token.

So cash shop but super free monthly sub. I like the sound of that. I would settle for the idea of tokens for gil and just being cash shop items.

[Medicine]

Some people have mentioned that WoW has a cash shop. I asked a guy at work that plays WoW and he said to me hes happy to buy stuff off the cash shop. He said ha has only paid for one month of game time over the last couple of years. They have a system you can pay for months with gold for a sub token. He was complaining that they were almost 90k in gold now that other blizzard games use the token.

So cash shop but super free monthly sub. I like the sound of that. I would settle for the idea of tokens for gil and just being cash shop items.

That will never happen and it shouldn't ever happen.
What works for one game wouldn't necessarily work for the other, WoW can afford to do that because in that game gold is laughably easy to obtain and amass a fortune of, FFXIV on the other hand... you can only really get a lot of gil from actively crafting or gathering and gil is just much harder overall to obtain compared to WoW's gold.A FFXIV token would ruin the economy much more then it is now and I imagine gil spammers will be a lot more attractive to some people.

[Vespar]

I have zero issue with the mog station. The developers put in a lot of time to make extra things, and it helps keep the game going and pay developer wages, development costs, server infrastructure,etc. Profit for the company also helps drive new and better games. So really, I'm okay with it.

The only thing I am not okay with, is region-locked items such as the chinese/korean exclusive items not being available through some means. Be that cash shop or content in game. I realize these items may have been created by another company, but they should still try to provide us access to them in some way. Either way, I'm not that salty over it, its not something I'd lose sleep over.

[Reynhart]

Their assumption of paying for everything comes directly from the fact that P2P games were always that way.

Considering WoW has a cashshop since around the same time as ARR was released, and FFXI made you pay for any additional character back in 2002, maybe it's time to stop grieving.

[Skivvy]

Considering WoW has a cashshop since around the same time as ARR was released, and FFXI made you pay for any additional character back in 2002, maybe it's time to stop grieving.

WoW has been around since 2004 and only added a cash shop near the end of 2013. XI allowed you access to all content/items/etc* on your character. Making you pay for additional character slots would be on par with standard account services, e.g world transfer, name changes, etc. It is nice we get those included automatically these days.


*Once again, excluding fan fest, CE/promotional items, expansion packs, etc.

[Lexia]

With the way XI worked I don't think many had multiple characters for playing and was mainly just for extra storage which not possible in XIV unless want to jump though hoops to do it.