Thread: 2.2 Retainers via Microtransactions

Originally Posted by lackofwords

I guess people don't really care that an NPC is playing a bit of the game for you, regardless if buy extra retainers or not.
But are more hung up on the fact that additional retainers cost extra on top of the basic monthly fee.

People are hung up on the fact that if paid retainers also have access to Ventures that those that choose to buy those retainers will have an advantage over those that don't, regardless how small it is.

Originally Posted by Sheer

Half of it is the issue where they haven't been accounting for inflation over the past ten years or so. People paying $15 per month back in, say, 2004, was much nicer than people paying $15 per month nearly a decade later. I'm waiting for P2P MMOs to switch to something like $17.99 a month or $20 and remove all microtransactions, but the problem with that is it's incredibly risky to assume people would rather pay an extra $5 a month to play your game than have to deal with benign microtransactions. If I was developing an MMO that was costing millions if not tens of millions of dollars, I would want to choose as safe of a pricing model as possible.

You have to take into consideration that bandwidth costs and storage costs are a LOT cheaper than they were 10 years ago too. It's all relative really. If anything, the extra money is covering the extra cost that game development runs these days.

Originally Posted by Dhex

stuff

You know just as much about the Ventures system as we do. We have no idea how fast the tokens in game accumulate or anything. So yes, anyone that has more RL money and is willing to dump it on more retainers innately has an advantage over those that can't. This is exactly what P2W is.

Originally Posted by MattAn24

And apparently the Fantasia Potion being an optional service is totally okay? Guess what, that's a microtransaction.

It's also an item that doesn't give anyone an advantage in game. If the paid retainers come with the ability to undertake Ventures, they do.

Originally Posted by MattAn24

The key word here is you can send your retainers to go and gather items for you. None of you bitter folk bothered to consider that RMTers could very easily abuse that system and completely destroy the Market Board economy? No. No you didn't. There's a REASON extra retainers cost extra. The system would get abused hard if they were all simply free.

If it's cost effective for the RMTs to drop an extra $1 a month to do this, what's to stop them from doing it anyway? From my understanding a lot of them use stolen CCs anyway.

Originally Posted by Orophin

You know just as much about the Ventures system as we do. We have no idea how fast the tokens in game accumulate or anything. So yes, anyone that has more RL money and is willing to dump it on more retainers innately has an advantage over those that can't. This is exactly what P2W is.

I know what I've observed. I don't see anything pay to win about having additional Retainers; they aren't going to beat Binding Coil of Bahamut for you, or farm Tomes for you. It at most allows you to farm a few items in an hour with less effort - in a market where things have essentially no value. In a game where everyone can level and gear a crafting/gathering class themselves.

Paying to win at what precisely?

Edit:
P2W in regards to Retainers and Ventures, "I WIN I WIN I HAVE MORE INVENTORY THAN YOU! CAN YOU FEEL THE WEIGHT OF MY EXTRA INVENTORY SLOTS PLEBIAN!? I CAN GET 99 APKALLU EGGS AND OTHER USELESS JUNK IN A FEW HOURS WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING AND YOU CAN'T AND I ONLY PAID AN EXTRA 15$ FEE MWAHAHAHA SUCH SUPERIORITY. WEEP AND QUIT THE GAME!" - Orophin's Nightmare (Yes you have nightmares in Caps.)

Edit again: I'd much rather pay to view and access my two Retainer's inventory in the field than pay to have access a bajillion Retainers at a bell I need stand next to talk to and can't walk away from while I manage my items.

Buying extra retainers with real money was planned since 3rd beta of old XIV. The planned price was 1$ each month for each additional retainer. It only never came because of the problems XIV had after first launch. But I always wished that I can buy a third retainer.
http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?foru...07785645538689
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g...s/post/3867586

At least, we don't need to buy extra character slots for 3$ each month anymore.

Originally Posted by Tharian

I hate to say this, but Micro-Transactions have existed in this game ever since the 2.0 release in the form of World Transfers. So complaining now that they are introducing additional services to their Micro-Transaction Service is kind of silly. If you were really upset about Micro-transactions being in this game, you should have started complaining when World Transfers were introduced to this game.

Since 1.0 to be exact. Each character slot have cost 3$ extra. Someone with 2 characters could have do 8 leves more each day than someone with only 1 character. 3$ extra for the double content.

I, for one, welcome my extended inventory overlords.

As said before, it was planned for a long time, and as well pointed by Dhex, it seems like tokens have a good chance of being acquired at the same rate for every person, no matter how many retainers you have, which would make things even more fair.

And even if it isn't, retainers bringing 7 Apkallu Eggs per real-time hour won't break the game. More storage isn't P2W. What's "winning" in a MMO? Getting "a thing" first to point on other's people noses? How is an extra retainer going to destroy the balance of that? What the hell are those individuals posting here thinking? This thread is a new level of bad.

Sometimes I wish we could use a flamethrower on forum databases.

Originally Posted by Skyhound

Okay since people don't realize the potential problem with something like this and no one wants to explain it clearly:

The issue is NOT the fact that you can buy more retainers. The issues is what these retainers may be able to do. If they can go on Ventures, then it's 100% P2W no matter how miniscule the advantage is and only benefits RMT.

I have 4 retainers already on the same server, connected with the LS storage. You don't need to buy extra retainers to abuse the ventures (which nobody know what it do exactly) if you can have already 16 retainers without extra costs (if your LS leader allow it to bring 7 twinks into the LS).

And beside this. I think each retainer need to be leveled separat. And if they have the same level speed like the Chocobos, then nobody would level up more than 1 or 2 retainers in short time.