I think here and now would be the most ideal place to state my feelings on the Cash Shop and my analysis.

Since its implementation, I have bought roughly $70 worth of items from the Cash Shop. This includes a wide arrange of items, from the Aymeric hairstyle you can see on my character's portrait, to equipment like the Ironworks Engineer set, to minions like the Wind-Up Yda and emotes like Megaflare and Play Dead. This also does not include limited edition items that were available from the Amazon Campaigns. It's important to note that I have used the Mog Station and am not opposed to it.

I am glad that the Mog Station provides options for newer players to gain equipment and emotes that were available from past seasonal events. Ideally, I think that these should be available from their respective events each year, but that players could choose to buy them from the Mog Station if they would prefer not to wait for each event to resurface. Unfortunately, right now the only option is the Cash Shop. Still, I am thankful that the prices for these items are cheap by comparison to the rest of the site's fees. The emotes generally go for $2 and the full sets of seasonal equipment are usually $5. Singular items like the Blackflame Lord's Yukata are $3. I would prefer if these purchases were account-wide, but even though they are not, I think these are good prices. (Except Housing items. $5 for a Christmas poster is way too spendy compared to how few people will see it, and I can't imagine they sell many of these things.) If you really want one of these items, the Shop provides a way to obtain them even if you missed out on the events.

The problems begin with regards to items that are available exclusively from purchase on the Mog Station. It's hard to pinpoint an average cost for purchased goods that belong to this category because there are so many different examples. The one constant I can think of is that minions are always $5. Beyond that, equipment can range anywhere from $3 to $18. As it began, the most expensive pieces of equipment were sets like Minfilia's Antecedent Attire, or Lightning's Guardian Corps set. These were and are still $15, and the reason for these being priced in this way is likely because the sets include the equipment as well as a special hairstyle player characters can switch to. (It's worth noting that the FFXIII costumes and hairstyles were originally given from a limited time sidequest) The other basic Scion sets are set at $8 price points.

And then the cash shop received the Far Eastern Garb sets first released in the East. The price of these is $18, which was the most expensive we had seen yet. I have heard several arguments for why these are priced so much higher despite not having any hairstyles attached. Firstly, this equipment has an Experience Point buff when worn in conjunction with other pieces of the same set. All of the other Far Eastern items function in this way, as do the Fuga and Nezha sets. Aside from the Fuga items, the sets also give various bonuses to stats like Vitality and Strength, but players wearing these items will still be at a disadvantage stat-wise compared to other items the same ilevel when it becomes necessary to party with other players in dungeons. It can be said that the main functions of these pieces of equipment are:

1. Aesthetic
2. Experience Boost
3. Low Level gear with reasonable stats (until level 10)

But I think the majority of players are honestly going to be getting these items for their looks. Still, the fact that these items were originally exclusive to China and Korea sound to be the primary reason these items are a higher price point, and the experience point bonus is something of a bonus made available as a "thanks for buying this" sort of thing. Unfortunately, at this point this is all just assumption because it's hard to get word from Square-Enix regarding these items. Clothing-wise, I think it's important to note that the most expensive items are pieces of equipment are:

A) Equipment Sets with Experience Points Boosts
B) Equipment Sets sold with an additional Hairstyle

The Megaflare emote was also recently released. At $12, it is listed as a persistent emote but does not actually have a persistent action, so I think they should relabel it into the General tab. For $5 more it's functionally no different from the Power-Up emote, just a different kind of "flashy."

I don't want to talk too much on the Far Eastern sets as a whole without input from SE, but regarding the majority of the Cash Shop at large, I think the biggest problem I have with it is that the items they offer are not account wide. With the exception of the mounts that are $24 and over, the items you buy are delegated to a single character. Consensus from Square-Enix makes it sound like this is due to server-side issues preventing them from putting too many assets towards distribution of items. This is also the reason why physical items are now only being given to single characters instead of being account-wide.

So, why is this happening? Is there anything that can be done?

I don't know how the commission behind the Far Eastern sets works. Despite making these items as limited time exclusives for the Eastern servers, they were still developed in-house by the company. The artists who sculpted the items themselves need to be paid as well, but wouldn't they just receive a regular monthly salary from Square-Enix? Specifically, I doubt they're receiving $1 for each Doman Barding sold. The vast majority of the Cash Shop is going straight to Square-Enix, where they are free to choose how the funds are used. This is going to be used towards a wide variety of things, from FFXIV as a whole, to the employees, to other games. But I think that we, as players of FFXIV, would definitely like to see these funds re-allocated back into FFXIV in some shape. And I think that the best way would be to fund ways to make the servers more stable so that more items can be given account-wide without the company having to stress over limitations.

Call it 1.0 spaghetti code, call it being frugal, call it whatever. But the game itself really needs Square-Enix to address the growing situation with the servers and their account-wide item issues. I would like them to address this and the playerbase as soon as they can to try and alleviate some of our strain. Just a little more feedback from them would be much appreciated. I think a lot of people would be much more understanding of the prices if the company could be less reticent and explain what they're actually doing with the money. Are they required to do so? No, not at all, but it would absolutely be seen as a gesture of appreciation, which is something the western playerbase needs. The announcement of the iOS/Android Application has lots of people asking, "just what are you using our money for, if not to help the game?" If they can't do anything to help the servers with its account-wide issues, that's something we should still be made aware of.