Ffxiv monthly sub isn't stretching & response to PCGAMER article

[VerdeLuck]

Gachas are just the new MMOs, most have a f2p track and then a paid track where you buy 10-20 dollars worth of items a month via a monthly pass, and get enough resources you can have basically 1 copy of every character. That's just an evolution of the MMO subscription model.
pay 20 dollars a month to play a game via subscription or pay 20 dollars a month to play a game via a pass that gives you in-game currency, it's the same either way.

the only difference is whales are allowed to drop 2,000 dollars if they want to skip all grinds and get to the endgame instantly. If you're not a whale you don't do that.

[VeyaAkemi]

the only difference is whales are allowed to drop 2,000 dollars if they want to skip all grinds and get to the endgame instantly. If you're not a whale you don't do that.

Oh, you think *getting* the character is the end of the grind? no, no, you are critically misunderstanding how gachas work, first you need to get the character you want, then you need to spend the next 40 hours, split between weeks to months due to energy systems, doing the most braindead grind imaginable, stuff that makes Shared FATE grind seem exciting and thrilling, to get enough materials to level them up and rank up all their skills, then you need to spend... at minimum 80 hours, but depending how hard you want to go for it effectively limitless, hours grinding gear for that character, until you eventually settle for something that's like maybe 70% of the way to ideal, then you go online, be it reddit, Twitter, whatever, and see someone posting the absolute most pristine piece of gear imaginable with the title "First time doing domains, is this any good?".

Realistically, the bulk of gacha currency grind happens almost passively while doing all that other stuff, they get you with *everything else* by intentionally making all the necessary aspects of engaging with the gameplay miserable.

[VerdeLuck]

Oh, you think *getting* the character is the end of the grind? no, no, you are critically misunderstanding how gachas work, first you need to get the character you want, then you need to spend the next 40 hours, split between weeks to months due to energy systems, doing the most braindead grind imaginable, stuff that makes Shared FATE grind seem exciting and thrilling, to get enough materials to level them up and rank up all their skills, then you need to spend... at minimum 80 hours, but depending how hard you want to go for it effectively limitless, hours grinding gear for that character, until you eventually settle for something that's like maybe 70% of the way to ideal, then you go online, be it reddit, Twitter, whatever, and see someone posting the absolute most pristine piece of gear imaginable with the title "First time doing domains, is this any good?".

Realistically, the bulk of gacha currency grind happens almost passively while doing all that other stuff, they get you with *everything else* by intentionally making all the necessary aspects of engaging with the gameplay miserable.

getting the character is the end of the time limited grind yes, everything else can be done as fast or as slow as you want.
time limited weapons are not needed and really just the limited characters matter in terms of getting them right now

the grind whales skip is they can pay 2,000 dollars to get 6 copies of the character and limited weapon to roll over content right now.

[VeyaAkemi]

the grind whales skip is they can pay 2,000 dollars to get 6 copies of the character and limited weapon to roll over content right now.

You are severely misrepresenting how those games work for two core reasons:

1. You cannot endlessly grind gacha currency in those games, there is a limited, carefully measured amount of rolls available from free play within a time frame, there is no world where if you spent 720 hours per month playing where you could get enough currency to bridge that gap, they aren't paying to "skip the grind", they are outright buying the power their characters have, impossible to gain save for some extreme measures, like spending years not rolling for any characters so you can have one single hyper powered character, which, as I am about to explain in the point bellow, the game punishes you for doing due to the multiple character necessity.

2. A sizeable amount of the currency is gained in such trivial manner, from merely engaging with the game's basic systems, that it takes no real grind, in ZZZ you don't even need to play the game to earn your daily drop of currency, you complete all your dailies by briefly clicking a few micromanagement systems, the remainder comes from either log in events, or from... whatever they call it in any given game, I forget what Genshin and HSR calls it, but WuWa(not a Hoyo game but they did copy that damn homework so fair enough) calls it Tower of Adversity, and ZZZ calls it Shiyu Defense, it requires high level, properly geared characters to clear, and it awards a very decent chunk of currency, making properly geared characters much more pressing, not only that, but the way those systems work press you to level and gear up multiple characters, forcing you to engage with the aforementioned dogwater gearing system, and therefor making it much more time-limited than you made it sound, sure Domains will be available for as long as the servers are online... but the currency you could've earned if you had got good drops right away isn't.

Like I said several pages ago, I have played gachas for almost 10 years, and have been through most major titles in the genre, their systems are entirely indefensible, and exist to make the player's life as miserable as they can to push you to swiping that card, it's manipulative to the extreme.

[Raven2014]

the only difference is whales are allowed to drop 2,000 dollars if they want to skip all grinds and get to the endgame instantly. If you're not a whale you don't do that.

And in FF14, you can pay 30$ over two month trying to get your savage BiS. Or you can pay PF around a hundred million to get everything in one week. Or employ RMT service if you want to spend real money.