Quote Originally Posted by ForteNightshade View Post
Just to further highlight your point. The CEO of Capcom once publicly said he feels video games should retail at $150 or more. Which is insane, but consider the retail price of games hasn't risen in over two decades until just recently with the PS5/Xbox Series X. And only by $10. This is a paltry amount when you factor in the staggering increase in cost to gaming development from the early 2000s to today. For reference sake, FFXIV 1.0 cost SE nearly half a billion dollars. FFXV cost even more.. DLC and Micro-transactions exist as the compromise between huge price spikes on retail and subscription fees. Instead of forcing everyone to pay substantially more than they do, they chose an optional solution.

Obviously, some companies have taken advantage of this by creating problems and selling you the solution. FFXIV hasn't done this. All the Cash Shop does is offer cosmetics and some convenience. And when Square Enix tries to overstep, you get the mess that was Marvel Avenges. Which, by the way, cost them hundreds of millions. I don't think they want to try anything like that in FFXIV.
I think we all know SE is not the worst, far from it.