How SE should make more money!

[Corfish]

As long as it's vanity only, I'm totally for it. That's usually what I spent a majority of my money on in F2P MMOs. I love vanity/collectible systems too much

Even if it is only Vanity, no. I bought the game, I'm paying the sub, I shouldn't have to spend more for special costumes. They should be obtainable in game, like most other pieces of gear. I'm okay with the occasional promotional item for real merchandise, but it should stop there.

[Felis]

I'm more for an online merchandise shop in europe

[L-D-Omlette]

Its called time and gil management. The Retainers go out and do stuff on their own and bring back items on their own. These items can be rare and give the player more gill allowing them to spend time doing other things like leveling up classes giving them better Cross Class skills allowing them to beat T9. Its a round about way, but these extra 2 retainers DO help in T9. They effect the entire game. And if you can't get 8k seals per day, then I am not going to tell you :P

I'm still not seeing how this equals P2W. Everyone will get the necessary cross class skills eventually, and there is no gil threshold that determines when you get those skills. Even if I assume that another player gains a time advantage by using four retainers instead of two, that has no impact on my ability to clear T9. There is no prize for doing it before someone else.

[Welsper59]

I'm sitting on over 12mil gil right now and have the extra 2 retainers. While I'm a Legacy player, I did start anew on Leviathan, so this is all from scratch. I can guarantee you that the extra 2 retainers have little to do with my gil acquisition. In fact, I can guarantee you that because of those extra 2 retainers, I've spent more time gearing them up (they're 50 from a while ago though) and gathering ventures coins or seals for coins than was probably worthwhile from any reasonable "P2W" system. The reason I still do it? It's fun to gamble with Quick Adventures, which being lv50 means next to nothing for.

Having the extra potential for selective goods I might need (like crystals) or an extremely low chance for decent/fun equipment is nice (I have SCH, DRG, and WHM mog weapon from QA, none of which I can use yet) but none of this really impacted what I'd do normally otherwise. I don't really use the extra retainers to sell stuff, at least not to the extent that I couldn't have done the same with my default ones (e.g. retainer 1: selling 12 items, retainer 2: selling 14 items, retainer 3: selling 5 items, retainer 4: selling 5 items, total of 36 items (less than 2 retainers worth)). They're honestly not as impacting as people might think they are. Yeah, they can provide you a low but steady income, but you're still spending venture coins and waiting for them to return to keep that up. I didn't get as much gil as I have now simply waiting for the game to give me it.

My point is that the extra 2 retainers provide little benefit to be even remotely considered a Pay 2 Win option. The amount of goods that I could get simply from the retainers, combined with an equivalent of time that a venture coin is worth, pales in comparison to what I'd get just doing what I normally do in a fraction of the time.

[Bloodclaw]

I'm sitting on over 12mil gil right now and have the extra 2 retainers. While I'm a Legacy player, I did start anew on Leviathan, so this is all from scratch. I can guarantee you that the extra 2 retainers have little to do with my gil acquisition. In fact, I can guarantee you that because of those extra 2 retainers, I've spent more time gearing them up (they're 50 from a while ago though) and gathering ventures coins or seals for coins than was probably worthwhile from any reasonable "P2W" system. The reason I still do it? It's fun to gamble with Quick Adventures, which being lv50 means next to nothing for.

Not the subject at hand really.

[Welsper59]

Not the subject at hand really.

You really should take out the P2W comments then from your original post. You're basically using extra retainers as a supportive argument to your idea that the game is moving to a P2W model. I do understand that you're saying you don't want that and that you're trying to provide non-advantage related idea for options, but that's something separate from the retainers bit. The replies about that, mines included, are shooting down your thought that retainers are P2W goods. They give an advantage, but I'd hardly consider it a "win" advantage, much less a worthwhile one (for that purpose). If, however, you're not using the extra retainers as a supportive argument, then why mention it? It's pushing a separate agenda and really weakens what you have to say as a whole.

[Niwashi]

I have a suggestion; Sell Glamour items. A ton of level 1 nice looking items. Unique looking items at that, not just dyable versions of existing items, while that would also be nice.

Absolutely NOT. Going even further into a micro-transaction model is the absolute worst thing they could do. This is a subscription based game. Everything should be paid for by the subscriptions. That's their point. If they aren't high enough to cover costs (though I rather doubt that's the case), then the subscriptions themselves need to be raised until they do.

We should never have to buy stuff individually on a piecemeal basis in a subscription based game. Whether those extras are cosmetic, conveniences, or battle advantages is completely irrelevant to the issue, because those are all part of the game we're already paying for. (And cosmetics are P2W for everyone whose version of "winning" is getting the best looking equipment. It's as valid a playstyle as measuring "winning" by the amount of gil you have, or by the stats on your equipment.)

[Amberion]

(And cosmetics are P2W for everyone whose version of "winning" is getting the best looking equipment. It's as valid a playstyle as measuring "winning" by the amount of gil you have, or by the stats on your equipment.)

^^- This so much. It's kind of sad that today, people only see MMORPG as fighting is everything in it.

[Ikeda]

How about no and uh freaking NO. Cash shops have NO business being in a P2P mmo. Don't care if you think they "can" make more money. I'll guarantee you they'll lose more money in lost subscriptions over a double dipping cash shop than they'd ever make from the stupid thing. Adding any sort of cash shop vanity or otherwise will accomplish nothing but speed up how quickly the game has to dumb down to F2P due to lack of subscriptions. They're already giving us more vanity items with every event and major update than I've seen any other P2P mmo even attempt to give.

[Kayo]

IF! SE reeeeeally needs the money then id personally prefer they just merge and use the freed up servers for a couple COMPLETELY ISOLATED f2p servers. You can copy/transfer characters to them but its a one way street. Open the cash shop for those free servers, have some way for p2p servers to get them in game (if through gold, so be it). Everyone wins. I dont know about anyone else, but what some dude(ette) does/buys/pays2win in another server is no problem to me... may as well be another game theyre playing.

Why developers go full f2p or hybrid sometimes is beyond me... they could keep both sides happy like this.