This is just appalling

[Belhi]

They could do it without offering the gems to gil conversion. This would just make the cashshop one gigantic gil sink where its either gil or Irl money. This of course runs the risk of the devs making more and more expensive cashshop gear in order to make people play longer and farm gil, but tbh, people are already farming their butt off for loads of gil.

The whole reason the GW2 system is financially viable is because they include gold selling into the model. Your saying 'bring the system, just make no money out of it'. Why even bother with such a system?

I recall during one of the recent Live Letters, EU Fanfest perhaps, that people really wanted an Umbrella Mount and a Krile outfit set. Yoshi P has said they had no plans to make any such thing, but if people demanded it, it would be made but would be pricey as it takes away from development of other things. The crowd cheered loudly and pretty much expressed their want to have it. You can't be mad at SE when the playerbase actively keeps saying "Yes, yes make more! Make it expensive! I don't care, we'll buy it!", vote with your wallet, but since the prices are still as high as they are, then /CLEARLY/ the community is accepting the prices, whether or not they're happy spending the money isn't important, the fact is that they DID.

No. He said the Umbrella mount is already being developed and the Krile outfit was held off because the 'Empress of the Mogstation' wasn't convinced that the sales would sufficiently make up for the cost of producing the outfit for work for all races. He literally said that cash shop items have to be at least expected to pay for their own creation or they don't get developed.

While "speak with your wallet" is indeed a good course of action, it's good for people to let the company know they would be willing to spend if the prices were lower.

That is quite fair and a valid point. However I don't think the demonization of the cash shop it gets is warranted. 'These prices are too high' is valid. 'This is offensive/appalling/shouldn't be in a sub based game' aren't really unless you taking some kind of objective ethical stance. In most cases people making the second argument just seem to want the item without having to actually pay for it.

I would probably buy several items I haven't if they were at a lower price. Cash shop stuff is out of my budget. I don't begrudge those with the money though.

I thought this relevant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEYGhks8CRk

It really isn't. SE give sub payers what they pay for. Sub payers aren't paying for the development of Cash shop items. Now if what we got in Patch cycles was falling short but the Cash shop was thriving then there would be a problem.

DLC are only a ripe off if the original product is not value for money.

Proof that the Mogstation/Sub has not been a cash funnel into other SE resources is on the people who defend. Not on the people who argue against it. You say it is ok Because it goes into the game or doesn't cover current development. Is their any proof 100% of my sub goes into the game? Any proof that 100% of my cash shop purchase (ie 1) went back into the game. Infrastructure improvements are not a sign. They literally (yes literally) might not have had any choice but to upgrade or face catastrophic sub loss.

Also F2P games come up a lot, also WoW comes up as well. Other games that gouge (Expansion cost = A couple Outfits = gouging) have other in game ways to earn cash shop items. Stop the complaints and create an in game system to earn the items. In other games this also greatly lowered RMT systems.

Basic financial structuring?

Look we know how cash shop items are approved for development because we have been told. That indicates a accounting system where the cash shop's expenses and revenue are calculated independently of FF14's expenses and revenue. While they come from a single game they are two revenue streams and a funded separately.

Now profits from these venture would be potentially funnelled off into other projects, uses in R&D, used to cover general executive and administration costs and passed on to shareholders. Most definitely 100% of your sub goes into the game because if it did that SE would be a charity, not a publicly traded company.

However the total revenues and profits generated by FF14 and its cash shop give a future value to the operation. Thus when FF14 is allocated a budget or when Yoshi P asks the executive to invest in upgrades, that revenue and profit dictates wether it is worth doing from a financial point of view. The higher the revenue/profit, the stronger the argument for budget size and investment into the game. They don't just come up with budgets or make decisions on investments like the server upgrades willy-nilly. There would be long cost analysis reports weighting the costs vs the potential impact on revenue and the need of the upgrades.

Those revenues are calculated by the subs + additional revenue streams the game brings such as the cash shop. So no. 100% of those don't go back into the game but that is because no business puts 100% back into something unless it is not for profit. However it does dictate the size of the budget that FF14 will receive.

That is how successful businesses work. That is basic financial planning.

Only one game I know offers a way to earn cash shop items without some form of currency for cash system attached and that is Wildstar and frankly I don't exactly look at Wildstar as a pillar of success. It barely got a mention on the last NCsoft earnings report. It very surprising that the game hasn't been sunsetted yet.

[Lycieus]

It really isn't. SE give sub payers what they pay for. Sub payers aren't paying for the development of Cash shop items. Now if what we got in Patch cycles was falling short but the Cash shop was thriving then there would be a problem.

DLC are only a ripe off if the original product is not value for money.

Where do you suppose the finances and resources necessary to create a cash shop came from in the first place? The artists and developers creating these items and the systems to support them had to be members of the XIV team or had to be trained to work with existing systems. This cost time and money that could have otherwise gone into producing an equivalent number of items in the game.

[Belhi]

Where do you suppose the finances and resources necessary to create a cash shop came from in the first place? The artists and developers creating these items and the systems to support them had to be members of the XIV team or had to be trained to work with existing systems. This cost time and money that could have otherwise gone into producing an equivalent number of items in the game.

BUT IT WOULDN'T BECAUSE THE INVESTMENT WAS MADE WITH THE ASSUMPTION THAT IT WOULD TURN A PROFIT.

I might also point out that FF14's total revenue from subs at best is probably around 5% of SEs total revenue. Its hardly like FF14 funds everything else.

Seriously.. The money to pay for the staff to make these items would not have been allocated to make those items because such investments were made outside the budget allocated to FF14. They just wouldn't have been made. Likely if money is allocated to production of these items it involved the hiring of additional 3d model artists, which considering the growing size of the FF14 team, is likely. They would have hired more staff to accommodate the need for creation of items for the Cash shop.

So no, the money wouldn't have gone into making more in game items. We get what we pay for. They likely would have just hired less artists as the budget paying for staff for modelling would be less.

Say otherwise is just saying 'SE should cut into their profits to give us more stuff without any actual returns'. People like to call SE greedy over the Cash shop but the attitude that they should give more without any returns is just as greedy unless they are claiming that we aren't getting our value for money with in game content and models for their sub. Ask yourself this: Would you still be paying your sub and playing this game if the Cash shop and the items in it didn't exist? If the answer is yes (and if your subbed you would think the answer was yes) then you should have no issue with the cash shop because it is not effecting your purchase at all. You are getting what you paid for and they are dealing with you fairly.

[Lycieus]

The money to pay for the staff to make these items would not have been allocated to make those items because such investments were made outside the budget allocated to FF14. They just wouldn't have been made.

So I've had cash shop defenders tell me that I have no idea how the funds for these were allocated. This is why my original post included a statement about resources, and the fact that people making assets for the cash shop would need to be trained on XIV systems, requiring time etc. This is not refutable.

The point regarding money on the other hand... is a double-edged sword. You can't claim that the investments were within the xiv budget and not outside of it, just as I can't claim the opposite. You don't know if they would have been financed otherwise.

[Belhi]

So I've had cash shop defenders tell me that I have no idea how the funds for these were allocated. This is why my original post included a statement about resources, and the fact that people making assets for the cash shop would need to be trained on XIV systems, requiring time etc. This is not refutable.

The point regarding money on the other hand... is a double-edged sword. You can't claim that the investments were within the xiv budget and not outside of it, just as I can't claim the opposite. You don't know if they would have been financed otherwise.

Yes I can because I understand how accounting works (its what I am trained at) and since corporations tend to try and keep accounting standards uniform (due to regulation and reporting across countries) the hints given give a pretty strong hints on how SE structures in revenue streams.

Even then IF, and this is a big IF, they did have the cash shop times created from FF14's budget then that budget would have been allocated taking into consideration earnings from the cash shop meaning that without the cash shops earnings FF14's budget would have been reduced as the cost of developing cash shop items would have increased the amount of funds allocated to the game.

Simply put your sub isn't paying for those items. If your not buying them off the cash shop you haven't paid for them.

[Lycieus]

Yes I can because I understand how accounting works (its what I am trained at)

Awesome. I'm trained in software development.

Even then IF, and this is a big IF, they did have the cash shop times created from FF14's budget then that budget would have been allocated taking into consideration earnings from the cash shop meaning that without the cash shops earnings FF14's budget would have been reduced as the cost of developing cash shop items would have increased the amount of funds allocated to the game.

Simply put your sub isn't paying for those items. If your not buying them off the cash shop you haven't paid for them.

Nothing you've said demonstrates that. Why would Square carve out an entirely separate budget for cash shop items, especially since they are using members of the FFXIV dev team to create those assets in the first place?

[Belhi]

Awesome. I'm trained in software development.

Nothing you've said demonstrates that. Why would Square carve out an entirely separate budget for cash shop items, especially since they are using members of the FFXIV dev team to create those assets in the first place?

Because it makes it easier to track revenue streams vs expenses in the book keeping. Yoshi P has outright said that cash shop items have to forecast to make enough money to pay for their own development or they don't get developed and he doesn't make that call. That means the resources used to pay for the creation of those items is paid for by those items. Project management would tie into this since allocation of man hours needed for development of projects would be used to calculate how much staff will be needed to produce the desired products. That is what scheduling is. The additional hours needed to produce the cash shop items would be factored into that when hiring and maintaining staff on the project. The expenses, calculated probably in man hours, would then be allocated to their projects and their respective budgets.

Now that isn't 100% for sure how they would do it but considering what we know of how they greenlight cash shop projects, that is the model that would make sense. Just throwing everything into the FF14 budget expenses would make cost analysis and profit and loss reports for cash shop items very difficult and it would be hard to calculate the profit they provided. That information is essential in business planning and in some cases legally required under accounting standards so accurate reports can be produced for regulators and shareholders.

When you have a cash shop, you suddenly have a conflict of interest. For every item made, person hired, or unit of time spent on development, there will always be some bean counter that's asking "can we allocate this to the cash shop?" thus removing content from the game that we payed for through subscription.

The only things that should be in the cash shop are administrative things (race change, name change, etc), and things you can acquire in game (old event items). That at least encourages the devs to make cool event items, in hopes of selling them when the event is over.

There is no Bean counter saying that because it would make their job a lot harder. Bean counters like clearly stated expense and revenue paired off so things can be tracked much easier. Particularly when tax comes into the picture. Combined with what we know about their forecasting and green lighting of development of cash shop items we know its outright untrue. You wouldn't be getting any of the non-seasonal items in game without the cash shop because they never would have been developed in the first place.