Woops! I bought the wrong item. (Too bad.)

[Silverbane]

Adding a return/refund system isn't going to suddenly cause FFXIV the player base to dry and profits to disappear.

You're being absurd; that's not the issue, it's a strawman of your own making.

This issue is: is there a decent ROI on the developer resources spent?
That is, is the subscriber base and/or revenue likely to increase as a result of adding this feature? And if so, is that increase likely to be larger than if the resources had been used to implement something else?

I seriously doubt this is the case: the presence or absence of this feature seems unlikely to affect many people's decision to subscribe or to continue their subscription, or to in any other way spend time or money on the game. Spending the same resources to add more high heeled shoes (such as for fem Vieras) likely has a higher ROI.

[Jojoya]

You're being absurd; that's not the issue, it's a strawman of your own making.

This issue is: is there a decent ROI on the developer resources spent?
That is, is the subscriber base and/or revenue likely to increase as a result of adding this feature? And if so, is that increase likely to be larger than if the resources had been used to implement something else?

I seriously doubt this is the case: the presence or absence of this feature seems unlikely to affect many people's decision to subscribe or to continue their subscription, or to in any other way spend time or money on the game. Spending the same resources to add more high heeled shoes (such as for fem Vieras) likely has a higher ROI.

You're the one who started it with the random "emulating less popular games seems like bad business strategy".

There's a lot of stuff developers do that are unlikely to affect subscription decisions and yet get done anyways. Were players going to quit if they didn't add Adventurer Plates? No. Was the game suddenly going to attract a lot of new players who didn't want to play in the past solely because Adventurer Plates didn't exist? No. Yet SE did it anyway.

Sometimes the best investments are the goodwill gestures done in response to customer requests, like adding in refund systems. Happy customers tend to be loyal customers who bring in more customers. Customers beset with all sorts of small inconveniences are less likely to refer others they know to a product and many times are all too happy to move on when a "best next thing" shows up.

We don't know how much it would cost SE to implement a refund system tied to the tomestone vendors nor how many GM tickets/complaints they get related to the lack. It's probably better not to presume it's not a good investment when there are other games that have decided it was a good investment. In the end, it's SE's decision to make, not ours.