Stop with the pay to win advanages for retainers, suggestions on fixes

[polyphonica]

A win is not required for something to be pay-to-win. You're using a sketchy definition of pay-to-win. It has been defined many times what Pay-to-Win means within this thread. If you don't agree with the definition, you are simply arguing semantics.

The whole thing was arguing semantics from the start. Even if they dropped all market-related features from retainers, you could just create more characters. Even if they removed any market advantage of creating more characters, you could just create more accounts. Even if they remove any conceivable advantage that money could present directly, any game that is time-locked will still advantage people with more money, because time is money. Worst case, someone with money can just pay someone to put in the time ("power leveling services"), or can pay other players to help them clear content ("buying clears"). There is no conceivable way to remove the advantage money brings, no matter what. Life itself is "pay-to-win."

So this thread is entirely about the semantics and minutia of how blatant/obvious/easy the opportunities to spend money are, people's feelings that Square Enix is wrongfully pressuring them into spending more money when they believe that everything should be included in a single price for a subscription game, and general dissatisfaction with the "value-for-money" of their FFXIV subscription as their interest in the game wanes for a variety of reasons. There will be no resolution to these issues here; the only reason the thread exists is because people hope the Dev Team notices negative feedback and re-evaluates their decisions, whether or not that is likely to actually happen. That's why there's no interest or desire to arrive at understanding or compromise -- just keeping the thread bumped serves the purpose just fine. (And I guess this is my own contribution to that end...)