This is just appalling

[Alleo]

I ve seen outfits going for 20-30 dollars on f2p cash shops. black desert for one. tera you can pay big or buy rng boxes. swtor is similar.

Yet games like Black desert online need this money to even continue to exist. Still all the costumes in black desert are really detailed and have way more parts than the new outfit. For the price of around 30 € you get a headpiece, body clothes, shoes and a weapon! You can buy the complete set without the weapon for way less and you can even buy each part of the costume separate too. Yet we, who play female characters and want Aymerics hair have to pay for a whole outfit. So a FtP MMO is way less harsh in their cash shop even though they need it to survive than FF14. And if I remember it right you can buy these things through ingame currency exchange too (not 100% sure about that).

Lets look at a direct competitor: WoW. They have 41 items in the cash shop (the game itself, subscription, 13 pets, 10 mounts, 3 helmets, 3 packets and 9 services) so you can say it has around 26 items in there since the packets are just a combination of some stuff. All pets costs the same and are not bound to account and other than one mount, all are priced the same too. The one that is a bit higher has the feature that you can summon the same mount for other members in your group too for the amount of 20 minutes. The cash shop is there since 2013.

Well it took me some time to get the numbers of stuff in the mog station since its just so much, so numbers may vary: Without any services we have around 250 items in the cash shop. 113 are seasonal items but for someone new those are still kinda forced items since they cant get them ingame in any way. We have 36 costumes, 6 mounts, 16 pets, wedding, 113 seasonal items, 45 housing items, 18 colors, 7 emotes, 6 chocobo equipment and 1 orchestrion roll. Other than the pets the prices are not the same for each category. The cash shop itself seems to be there since 2014 (?).

One can say that all mounts in our cash shop are cheaper than the ones in WoW but the mogry one really gets close to it and most of the other ones in our cash shops are re-skins and character bound. Thus if you have like 3 twinks and wants it on each one you will get a higher price than WoW. Our pets are cheaper too and are also the only ones that have the same price tag.

So really comparing those two games makes our cash shop looks worse. They have way less items than the FF14 one and it even started one year earlier than ours. Even if we take away all the seasonal stuff we will still be over the amount that they have. But we should not take that away since new players will never have the chance to get them ingame so its a 100% cash shop item for them. And in their cash shop you will have one price for a whole category, only one mount differs from the prices of the other mounts since it has an additional feature. So even if they a bit more expensive than our prices they have way less items, everything is for all accounts and the prices dont vary so much in each category.


@Mature: No I will not stop since simply not buying it will not tell them everything. We are customers and have the right to voice our opinion. Just because you like it this way does not mean that others will and telling them to stop because you just can simply ignore a thread is not really that good. Nobody is forcing you to read this thread you know .

[Ama_Hamada]

Is this nonsense still going? God get a grip and move on.

You want it? Open your wallet and PAY FOR IT... Too expensive? DO NOT PAY FOR IT

this stuff is NOT required for you to play the game.

SE keeps overcharging because people with money to throw away can. This hurts those that do want it but can't afford the pricing. In the end they would make more money selling it cheaper for more sales, the high pricing just hurts everyone while giving people negative feelings to the company (will hurt them in the future)

Yet games like Black desert online need this money to even continue to exist. Still all the costumes in black desert are really detailed and have way more parts than the new outfit. For the price of around 30 € you get a headpiece, body clothes, shoes and a weapon! You can buy the complete set without the weapon for way less and you can even buy each part of the costume separate too. Yet we, who play female characters and want Aymerics hair have to pay for a whole outfit. So a FtP MMO is way less harsh in their cash shop even though they need it to survive than FF14. And if I remember it right you can buy these things through ingame currency exchange too (not 100%).

Lets look at a direct competitor: WoW. They have 41 items in the cash shop (the game itself, subcription, 13 pets, 10 mounts, 3 helmets, 3 pakets and 9 services) so you can say it has around 26 items in there since the packets are just a combination of some stuff. All pets costs the same and are not bound to account and other then one mount all are priced the same too. The one that is a bit higher has the feature that you can summon the same mount for other members in your group too for the amount of 20 minutes. Its there since 2013.

Well it took me some time to get the numbers of stuff in the mog station since its just so much, so numbers may vary: Without any services we have around 250 items in the cash shop. 113 are saisonal items but for someone new those are still kinda forced items since they cant get them ingame in any way. We have 36 costumes, 6 mounts, 16 pets, wedding, 113 saisonal items, 45 housing items, 18 colors, 7 emotes, 6 chocobo equipment and 1 orchestrion roll. Other than the pets the prices are not the same for each category. The cash shop itself seems to be there since 2014 (?).

One can say that all mounts in our cash shop are cheaper than the ones in WoW but the mogry one really gets close to it and most of the other ones in our cash shops are re-skins and character bound. Thus if you have like 3 twinks and wants it on each one you will get a higher price than WoW. Our pets are cheaper too and are also the only ones that have the same price tag.

So really comparing those two games really makes our cash shop looks really worse. They have way less items than the mog one (and well our customes are nearly as much as they have as a whole) and it even started one year earlier than ours. Even if we take away all the saisonal stuff we will still be over the amount that they have. But we should not take that away since new players will never have the chance to get them ingame so its a 100% cash shop item for them.


@Mature: No I will not stop since simply not buying it will not tell them everything. We are customers and have the right to voice our opinion. Just because you like it this way does not mean that others will and telling them to stop because you just can simply ignore a thread is not really that good. Nobody is forcing you to read this thread you know .

You forgot the biggest mog shop abuse, bloating inventory and selling us inventory rental for double our sub.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I love this "SE is a business" argument. Just because you are a business does not make it right to sell everything for whatever price you want. And I do believe that people would be way more happier if those things would have been ingame or less expensive.

Well, duh.

I don't mean to sound rude, but of course people would prefer it being in-game or less expensive. That doesn't benefit Square Enix though. They aren't setting these prices on the fly, but likely using market research to determine what garners the highest profit. Would it be nice if outfits were reduced to $5? Absolutely. However... SE now needs to sell four times the amount just to accumulate the same profit they have now. Hence why they don't.

And about WoW. Maybe we should start comparing how many items they have and how many FF14 has. I am quite sure that FF14 will win.

Only because a large portion of FFXIV's Cash Shop consists of old event items no longer obtainable. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in WoW, event items are a one time deal. Either you get them or they're gone.

It's baffling how even F2P MMOs don't go that crazy high with their cash shop items,

Blade & Soul outfits sell for $15
Black Desert sales their outfits for a whopping $41; slightly cheaper if you only purchase piecs ($29, I believe)

Keep in mind, both games have several times the amount of outfits on their respective cash shops. FFXIV has only three that were never intended for release outside Korea and China. Are they overpriced? I feel so. But let's not compare them to F2P games.

[JunseiKei]

Yet games like Black desert online need this money to even continue to exist. Still all the costumes in black desert are really detailed and have way more parts than the new outfit. For the price of around 30 € you get a headpiece, body clothes, shoes and a weapon! You can buy the complete set without the weapon for way less and you can even buy each part of the costume separate too. Yet we, who play female characters and want Aymerics hair have to pay for a whole outfit. So a FtP MMO is way less harsh in their cash shop even though they need it to survive than FF14. And if I remember it right you can buy these things through ingame currency exchange too (not 100% sure about that).

Ugh. $50 for an outfit if you want the whole thing and do not want underwear that will bleed through it obnoxiously. Tied to one character only that cannot be changed. In a game that actively incentivizes you to have multiple characters. To gain effects that are very pay to win (maid outfit being one of the biggest offenders). Being able to buy separate pieces is nice, but you're pretty much required to charge a minimum of $10 worth of pearls, increasing in increments of only $10 and items set at odd prices that often lead you to overcharging. Sitting on the market board is obnoxious- that's pretty much the only thing you'll be doing for hours, as almost any kind of cash shop item is almost immediately bought and you cannot pre-order them.

Pick your poison. Neither of them are desirable.

As for Aymeric's hair, I'll chalk it up to the Empress of the Mogstation deciding that selling the hair alone, despite being usable on females too, would not be profitable if it were a stand-alone item. No idea what additional coding it would need, or funding, that would lead to that decision. I have no experience coding nor do I know how SE sets up their items.

[Alleo]

@Bourne_Endeavor

And I dont work at SE so I dont really care if it benefits them less if they would decrease the prices. Also I am quite sure that they are earning quite enough, especially on services like retainers or fantasia. Also lets not forget that the creation of a digital good is a one time fee. They dont pay money to duplicate the first creation, they simply but it in there and I just cant believe that you need thousands of Euros to create a reskin of an existing mount or to put something that NPCs once wore in there for all races. There quite some people in this very thread that said that they would buy it if it was cheaper so it seems that they will loose some money thanks to their pricing policy. I dont have a way to see their selling statistics or know how many more would have bought it but I get the feeling that they will shoot themselves in their foot if they go on with this pricing. I just dont see any reasons to argue for a company as a customer and not against their pricing. Its not like I am against any DLC or something like that but for me SE feels greedier with each cash shop item.

Even if I would take away all the seasonal items FF14 would still win with more items. (I will not look it up again, counting that stuff took way to much time already, dont want to put in more) It also might be that its a one time deal in WoW (which I dont know since I dont play this game) so one could say that its nice from SE to put those items in the cash shop but lets not forget that all this stuff was once in the game in the following event next year. Yet if someone starts now and wants some of these decorations or clothes they will have to pay cash for it. So for them its 250 items! If they keep this up will we have like double the amount of the items in here in 2 years. Would be quite discouraging for a new player imo.

In the end I would be way more okay with this if it was seasonal events only and maybe the stuff from other versions and if they were priced better. Instead of wanting that price for one halloween chair they could have bundled it with four. Instead of making things destructible if you put them away, go away with that. Thats something I could be behind.

[JunseiKei]

They dont pay money to duplicate the first creation, they simply but it in there and I just cant believe that you need thousands of Euros to create a reskin of an existing mount or to put something that NPCs once wore in there for all races.

Uh, it's a process and not nearly as simple as you make it sound. From what I understand is that many NPCs that are like Aymeric, are special and do not always conform to skeletons set for player characters or other NPCs. If you simply copy and paste the mesh onto the player model without editing, I could almost guarantee you that you'd have a broken mess.

[Silver-Strider]

Compared to Elder Scrolls Online, this is nothing.
There are $100 Houses and $50 mounts in their cash store and the sad thing is people actually buy them.

[Naunet]

Blade & Soul outfits sell for $15
Black Desert sales their outfits for a whopping $41; slightly cheaper if you only purchase piecs ($29, I believe)

Honestly outliers. Several MMOs have been mentioned in this thread that price their account-wide outfits at $7-9.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

Of course you don't, however Square Enix certainly does. And frankly, they are the only one who matters because they set the price. Businesses do not settle on "good enough" in a capitalist market. The fact they can easily reproduce the product only makes it a more profitable endeavour, which, at the end of the day, is all Square Enix cares about: profit. "Quite a few people" isn't a strong enough sample source. If it were, Savage wouldn't ever been nerfed to Creator levels because Reddit overwhelmingly adored Midas. Online forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase of any game. Even if we assumed every post in this thread were unique and every single one of us purchased this outfit because it were listed at $5. That is a measly $1,235. Sleipnir alone made nearly one million when the last estimation had been done.

What determines pricing on micro-transactions and DLC is what the average person is willing to spend. Considering the Far Eastern outfit became the highest ranked item on the Mogstation within a day of its release, that tells them enough people are willing to pay $18 for it. The only way they would lower the price now is if that trend did not continue: i.e. less people purchased newer outfits at that same price.

I am not arguing for Square Enix, I simply arguing from a business perspective. Put simply, companies will charge whatever they can reasonably get away with. No amount of complaining on the forums will change that, especially because it's unlikely Yoshida or the dev team mandating Mogstation prices. All that will influence Square Enix's decision is sales. If you deem it too expensive, don't buy it. If enough people agree, the price may be lowered.

[JunseiKei]

I am not arguing for Square Enix, I simply arguing from a business perspective. Put simply, companies will charge whatever they can reasonably get away with. No amount of complaining on the forums will change that, especially because it's unlikely Yoshida or the dev team mandating Mogstation prices. All that will influence Square Enix's decision is sales. If you deem it too expensive, don't buy it. If enough people agree, the price may be lowered.

(Day 2 of Frankfurt Cleeng Live Letter, 38:38)

From how it was phrased in another question in Live Letter and other instances, Yoshida is not involved in the Mogstation at all.