No one logged in today because of Lost Ark

[Driavna]

...

I find funny how some posters quickly forget a lot of shady stuff SE pull with FFXIV.

- Cash shop in a monthly sub with payed expansions.

- Rented retainer space. (Only MMO I know that do this).

- You have to pay if you want to change certain details from your character. Some olders MMO allowed this for free, like SWG.

- MSQ skip, class boost and retainer boost. (According to some posters here this is already P2W. Or at least if others games do it... hehehe)

- Instead of bringing back cosmetics from old seasons to be earned in-game they are throw at the cash shop. You member when games like Rift/WoW allow you to earn pass items with seasonal currency? I member!

- FOMO with pre-order bonusses and early access.

- Is the subscription for FFXIV APP still a thing?

- Want to keep your house? Stay sub every other month even if you don't feel like playing. Does not matter if their intention never was this situation, right now is a thing.

Sure, FFXIV still has one of the best monetization but is still bad, the whole idea of a sub game with payed subscription is that no additional monetization should be require. Probably will be worst if not because Yoshida and FFXIV team has fight against SE worst impulses.

Right now for most MMO's is a "pick your poison" situation.

[LittleImp]

- Is the subscription for FFXIV APP still a thing?

Oh you just reminded me of possibly the most insane monetization thing SE has attempted.

You have to pay premium currency per transaction to use their remote market-board app, despite requiring an active subscription.

[VirusOnline]

Oh you just reminded me of possibly the most insane monetization thing SE has attempted.

You have to pay premium currency per transaction to use their remote market-board app, despite requiring an active subscription.

Well, to be fair, being able to remotely manipulate the market without even have to be log in on a character would be big oof.
The bots will have won and the players that are big on buyouts and big upsells will have dominated.
Same thing with retainer.
It'd become a mentally damaging thing at the end of the day for the casual crafter trying to sell stuffs. A la housing.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I find funny how some posters quickly forget a lot of shady stuff SE pull with FFXIV.

- Cash shop in a monthly sub with payed expansions.

- Rented retainer space. (Only MMO I know that do this).

- You have to pay if you want to change certain details from your character. Some olders MMO allowed this for free, like SWG.

- MSQ skip, class boost and retainer boost. (According to some posters here this is already P2W. Or at least if others games do it... hehehe)

- Instead of bringing back cosmetics from old seasons to be earned in-game they are throw at the cash shop. You member when games like Rift/WoW allow you to earn pass items with seasonal currency? I member!

- FOMO with pre-order bonusses and early access.

- Is the subscription for FFXIV APP still a thing?

- Want to keep your house? Stay sub every other month even if you don't feel like playing. Does not matter if their intention never was this situation, right now is a thing.

Sure, FFXIV still has one of the best monetization but is still bad, the whole idea of a sub game with payed subscription is that no additional monetization should be require. Probably will be worst if not because Yoshida and FFXIV team has fight against SE worst impulses.

Right now for most MMO's is a "pick your poison" situation.

For me personally, I dont disagree with your stance at all. I love Final Fantasy XIV but being required to buy the game, and a monthly sub, and buy expansion, AND pay for extra cosmetics. Not okay.

At least Lost Ark does have a truly free to play option.

[Momo_Kozuki]

3000 words limit

- While I disagree with how some cash shop items works (like previous years' seasonal event items), I find cash shop in FF14 is pretty lenient: no lootbox, no ad that slams onto your face in-game. There are some small boosts like motorbike mount gives you one-star speed increase which is helpful for map exploration, or some outfit with exp bonus up to lv30. But they are pretty much irrelevant toward end-game.



- Rented retainers and slots is a bit scummy practice, yeah, but not a super necessary thing unless you want to maximize gil income for... whatever reason you feel you need gil for. I guess raider would want a lot of gil to pentameld every class they have? Or house buying from black market? Regarding of retailer slots, unless you have a habit of hoarding every single item, you won't need more than 2 retainers, even if you have every single weapon relics. Some other MMORPG I knows give you very limited space to store items, then sell inventory slots that you have to buy on every character, then personal warehouse slots, then account-wide warehouse slots then skill preset slots tabs, then whatever slots the publisher can think of. I really would love to buy glam slot/plates if this game ever offers (I doubt so, though), but it seems to fall into the technical issues, which no one can do about it.



-Meet Blade and Soul. You want to change your default hair style and its color? Plz cough up some currencies that you rarely earn in the game, or buy Ncoin for a service that apply full-body appearance change. Oh, they make sure you have buy excessive Ncoin to use the service, of course.


-While boosters in FF14 feels P2W, I don't feel they are. But I think this is debated to death for many times already, so I refrain commenting.


-Yeah, these are FF14's own FOMO which I really hate. You will not only miss the cosmetic, but also the quest in your completed quest log. You will never know what is the event story last year was, unless you youtube it.


- I feel this is a common practice of pretty much every game that offers pre-order bonus, not only MMORPG.


- It is still there if you want an extra retainer and more chocobo saddles. Other than that, it is so badly implemented that I don't know what to do with it, free or premium sub, lol.


- I have a house and yeah, I hate the idea of losing my house. At the same time, I want to lose it so I don't feel having to pay sub during content drought to keep my house.


So yeah, FF14 box and sub model still have its own shady predatory tricks. Even so, it is the sub model that keeps the game healthy and stay away from the common freenium predatory tricks that Korean MMORPG offers. If I have to pick my own poison, I would certainly pick the less painful one in long-term, instead of picking the poison that will cause gambling addiction and burn all your money chasing RNG.

[Driavna]

...

I don't disagree with you. At least FFXIV cash shop don't have another currency so you never has to spend more than you want. Stuff is not remove once added so no FOMO there. The game has a lot of mounts, pets, emotes and gear. Also never minded if someone purchase stuff from it (in any game really), if you like/make you happy and can afford it why not?

The argument of: "it's worst there", has never sit well with me, but that's me. I understand everyone has their own line for monetization.

I'll give it a good try, I did have my eyes on this game quite awhile ago. I have played BDO to endgame, but I never played much after. Pay to win is just kind of annoying in general, and pretty much ruins games. With all the nonsensical grind, and this "bad luck protection". .

How you upgrade stuff in Korean MMO's has been like that since their model was just monthly sub (well, stuff used to just explode if you fail an upgrade). Compare to other Korean games LA is not that bad, but any system that two players put the same effort but get different results will never be good, even if in theory I can do some mental gymnastic and convince myself with "Well, is like a drop from a dungeon. Sometimes you get it first time, others you need to grind for months".

[DPZ2]

I find funny how some posters quickly forget a lot of shady stuff SE pull with FFXIV.

"Shady" in your opinion perhaps, but above board, well documented and optional in the opinion of others.

Every MMORPG I've played in the last 15 years charges for expansions, even the ones that don't require a paid subscription. Rift, GW2, SW:TOR, WoW, FFXIV ... it's how they cover the production costs. Every single one of those I've listed has a cash shop, and subscriptions are available even for Free-to-Play MMORPGs (they give all sorts of bonuses if you do subscribe).

This is also the only MMO I know that provides over 500 inventory slots without charging a dime of in-game/out-of-game currency. You don't even have to craft/buy bags. Oh yeah - that jumps to over 900 inventory slots when you count the slots of the Glamour dresser.

You had to go back to Star Wars: Galaxies to find a game that doesn't charge for character changes? A game that has not been online for the last decade?

WoW charges for name changes, faction changes and race changes. Not much different from a Fantasia, although I believe the $25.00 price Blizzard charges for a single race change is only a wee bit less expensive than the group-purchase of 3 Fantasia.

Are other MMORPG games offering class boosts? Yes. Particularly the ones that have more than six years of content. I don't consider that P2W if they do. XP boosts and useful gear sets? Yeah, those are P2W

- FOMO with pre-order bonusses and early access.

Why is this even here? Show me a subscription-based MMORPG with an expansion coming that doesn't have these. Go ahead, I'll wait.

- Is the subscription for FFXIV APP still a thing?

Yes. You can run the FFXIV App without it. A lot of us do ...

... the whole idea of a sub game with payed subscription is that no additional monetization should be require.

World of Warcraft is still a paid subscription. Cash shop with level boosts. Heck, it even has a way to buy in-game currency. The idea isn't foreign, it's become well established over the last 15 years.