Quote Originally Posted by Rieze_Xeero View Post
The FFXIV team I knew from rebuilding 1.0 - 2.0 days seems to be gone. They are all for money now. Where is the passion and love for the game and the community? SE becoming too greedy? I hope I am wrong!
The FF14 team would have relatively little say over the monetisation methods the game uses. They are developers, not marketers. There job is to create a product within budget, not sell that product. Yoshi P would be the main one with any type of weight to influence the pricing system since he is a company director now to but even then his control would be limited as he is a director, not a manager.

Coming from an accounting background, I look at this and see some things that seem ok and some that raise concern. The means of monetization is probably the greatest. Not all is bad. Increasing subscription numbers is hard, particularly on a downward trending market like an MMO, and the cost of development for MMOs is high. For games like FF14 that means that if they wish to produce more and meet consumer demands they need to find alternative revenue streams to generate finance to pay for more resources.

In this sense, the base concept of the Cash Shop doesn't bother me. From what we have heard it is effectively designed and budgeted for so that it would pay for itself. As long as it only sells products that don't negatively impact players who don't purchase from the store (so basically only cosmetic) and basic administrative services, the cash shop is actually a boon as it allows the developers to increase their available finances without having to charge a higher sub fee. As long as what is sold is acceptable, this isn't a negative for the game and is actually good for the game. Anything you see in the Cash Shop probably wouldn't be available anyway since the fund wouldn't have been allocated in the budget to develop it.

This is where we come to the current issue with the app. Charging extra for retainers has been a long time thing and questionable since we haven't really had a why explained. Inventory space is premium in FF14 and while the Glamour log and inventory expansions had helped they do and probably will remain an issue for players going forward unless these features are expanded. Still that is a dubious grey area that most have come to live with. At least they have taken an effort to add additional inventory. However the fact that a paid version of the app gives 70 extra slots and increases the ability to generate in game currency rings some alarm bells.

What I think is happening is the SE is looking to find a way to primarily pay for the App's development, which is understandable, and increase general revenue. Yoshi P still wants to expand the development and that means finding more money somewhere. The App has definitely been requested and we always want more and new content. With a game like WoW, where even at its weakest point it probably had over 5 times FF14's sub numbers, the cost of an App is easily absorbed and marketed as a feature. FF14 doesn't have that financial flexibility. However how they are choosing to reimburse the money spent on the app is problematic and leaning into territory SE has claimed it wanted to avoid with FF14.

Personally I don't know how they could fix it. Monetisation isn't really something I am good at. I think I can understand why they are doing it, technically speaking, but the how is concerning as a player. Even if it doesn't dramatically impact me as a player, it sets a trend that is definitely going in the wrong direction.