The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

[Melichoir]

With the WoW token system, the gold is already in the economy; To gather that much money as to afford a token, you would have to actively play the market board (either adding new items or relisting items) and the money that is already in the system simply is gathered in one place before being used to purchase the token from a player, who will then use that same gold to purchase more things from that market board.

Adding more gold to the econ doesn't inherently mean anything other than straight inflation, which sucks for newer players as they got a higher price point to deal with without the means to overcome it. Gold additions only matter when gold is tied to in game power. Which it is more so in WoW. So Blizzard being the middle man to facilitate gold trades between a player where the trade value is cash for Gold, its softly assisting in P2W. As a point - If Im a new player, and I can buy those month sub tokens and sell them for 1000 gold a pop (I dunno what its value is so Im just throwing a number out), Im gonna have a much easier time in the game than a guy who doesnt spend cash on that. I can buy gear, bags, etc and have a lot more ease than the guy who doesnt. Doesnt matter if Blizzard is doing it or a Gold Seller, Im getting an advantage over the guy who doesnt spend cash. It's not a straight exchange of course. Blizzard isnt selling me an epic for money thats BIS, but theyre making it easier to have rares and decent gear if I got the money.

That being said, their method will slow down inflation though. But to fix the inflation issue, they need to pull money out of the economy - meaning they need to have players buy things from NPCs, or be taxed in some capacity that is meaningful.

As somebody with additional retainers and an alt: yes.

They aren't character specific, they are account-wide, so if you buy let's say 2 additional retainers, and have 1 main character and 1 alt, it means that you can have access to 8 retainers in amount (2 free and 2 paid for each).

Hmm didnt know this. That means the more alts, the bigger bang for your buck you get for additional retainers so long as you a means to transfer items effectively.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

the more alts, the bigger bang for your buck you get for additional retainers so long as you a means to transfer items effectively.

If your in an FC, put your ALTs in that FC, transfer the items via the Company Chest.
But of course make sure you set Permissions and Ranks so stuff doesn't get stolen