Cash shops: Whats wrong with you?

[Noshpan]

cash shop (a ftp thing)

Actually, before EverQuest II went free to play (with THE WORST free to play plan on the face of the plan, thanks Sony Online Entertainment), they had a cash shop long before it went free to play. Sure, the goods offered were cosmetic (furniture for your home, vanity gear) or were services that didn't affect game play (character re-customization that went beyond barber shop, character name changes, I think server transfers).

So, just putting that out there, it never was "just a free to play" thing.

[Ikeda]

snip

Correction: It was just a F2P thing. Then when a few F2P games ended up making a decent profit a few foolish greedy P2P companies thought "Hmm there's stupid people out there with far too much disposable income that will happily throw more money at these "free" games than we're charging for access to our P2P games. Maybe we can push our luck and try to get the best of both worlds " and then all but one of them quickly found out that IT IS NOT OK and the single company that did survive already had so many subscriptions that it could withstand the loss it had and still stay profitable.

[ReiszRie]

Because paying extra in an mmo where you already pay a sub price is just a bundle of fun isnt it? you do realize they could just add all the item people are asking to be in the cash shop in game right?
Not that it matters much because those people are a vocal minority in a vocal minority so i doubt we will ever see a cash shop and if we do im moving to archeage and black desert

You do know that perhaps, just perhaps, items that might make it to the cash shops just aren't part of the content development plans at all? meaning, it never was to be released "for free" and if it wasn't in the cash shop, then you simply don't get it at all.

We already have a cash shop, it is called Mog Station

[HakuroDK]

snip

Well that last sentence was kinda jaded, don't you think? Roetip: If you want to educate someone, sprinkling some tact in there is usually the best way to do it. Otherwise, all it ends up looking like is a bunch of angry man-children/woman-children/othergender-children (don't want to assume anything from anyone) just yelling at and insulting people for not being born with the knowledge that you possess. I might as well say "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 1,000,000. You already know what it is, otherwise you're an idiot."

But I'll make things easy. To help you understand why I don't understand the cash shop idea, I'll take the effort to interpret what I got out of this into my own words and let you read them, then you can feel free to point out any inaccuracies I made. Everything I think you're saying is in quotation marks, my opinions on that are not.

"This game should never get a cash shop because everyone already pays to play the game."

This, to me, doesn't correlate. Especially since Yoshida went on record during a recent conference (which is available on the Lodestone whenever you wish to view it) by saying that one does not need to be exclusively Subscription-based or Cash Shop-based and should make a system that best caters to the kind of game you're making. Using this logic, a subscription model does not guarantee exclusivity and does not ensure that a Cash Shop will never happen. Therefore, just because one exists, does not mean the other can't.

"With a cash shop implemented, people will feel cheated."

I know there are a few that would. I just wonder how cheated they would feel when they look at the cash shop and there is nothing on there that they would want to buy or, if it was offered for free, that they would ever use it. I just feel people freak out at the mere mention of "Cash Shop" and don't take a minute to stop and think about the specifics of it. Like, at all. I think this is less of an issue with a Cash Shop in FFXIV than it is with everyone's severe dislike of the EA-style Cash Shop where every little thing seems to cost a buck-fifty. Which I agree is absolutely terrible, but I also acknowledge that Square-Enix is not affiliated with EA whatsoever, and the only games I have seen out of Square-Enix that have that kind of microtransaction model are mobile games which all follow that same business model regardless.

"A Cash Shop will encourage Square-Enix to exploit Cash Shop users."

I'm going to assume that, by this, you mean stuff like Cash Shop advertisements and sales on things. I agree that that might be a bit of a danger and should be averted. But since the very concept of a Cash Shop is all one big hypothetical at this point and might not ever actually happen, I think it's safe to say that we could use our voices to ensure that, in the case of a Cash Shop, that advertisements for such things would be kept to a bare minimum. Enough to let folks know that stuff exists, but not enough to be annoying. Maybe with a toggle option or something. I dunno.

"If people can't afford to or refuse to buy Cash Shop items, then I (HakuroDK) believe they're SOL."

Well... it'd be a cash shop. Not Booker's Lost and Found. I don't want to be an asshole by stating the obvious, but the point of a shop is using currency to purchase items. If you don't have the money to purchase items or you refuse to spend money to purchase items, then that's not really anyone else's problem. I mean, unless you advocate shoplifting or something, which I hope you aren't.

This is why I can't understand. Not a single point made here is all that clear and just seems to be based entirely on circumstantial conjecture.

[Malamasala]

Now I'm normally one who gets obsessed with vanity-related stuff, but with this... is how someone looks such a barrier to RP?

Not a barrier, but it may be their goal of the game. I personally play only for the vanity. You can charge me 10 dollars per dungeon entry, and I'd just say "Well, I won't go into dungeons then. Don't care." Other people here would surely drive their fist through the screen and break their FF14 discs in pieces over such a cash and grab of dungeon players.

Forcing anyone to pay money to enjoy their part of the game, is a big no-no. It should be free to do dungeons, free to level, free to vanity, free to chat, etc. With the restriction of a subscription fee, of course.

Hence why you can only sell things you can grind. To allow people to say "Hell no to those prices, I'll go farm my own item". At the same time allowing people to say "To hell with this grind, I'm buying my item so I can move on."

Options = Everyone is a winner.

I actually told TERA how to become the next big title on the market, which did include a lot of options to cater to all their customers. But they just told me they know which customers they want, and every different customer from that was undesired and should just leave. Which they did, and TERA failed and went F2P. Today most of my suggestions have been implemented, which is pretty funny.

[ReiszRie]

Not a barrier, but it may be their goal of the game. I personally play only for the vanity. You can charge me 10 dollars per dungeon entry, and I'd just say "Well, I won't go into dungeons then. Don't care." Other people here would surely drive their fist through the screen and break their FF14 discs in pieces over such a cash and grab of dungeon players.

Forcing anyone to pay money to enjoy their part of the game, is a big no-no. It should be free to do dungeons, free to level, free to vanity, free to chat, etc. With the restriction of a subscription fee, of course.

Hence why you can only sell things you can grind. To allow people to say "Hell no to those prices, I'll go farm my own item". At the same time allowing people to say "To hell with this grind, I'm buying my item so I can move on."

Options = Everyone is a winner.

I actually told TERA how to become the next big title on the market, which did include a lot of options to cater to all their customers. But they just told me they know which customers they want, and every different customer from that was undesired and should just leave. Which they did, and TERA failed and went F2P. Today most of my suggestions have been implemented, which is pretty funny.

The issue with such train of thought is that

1. the player does not take into account what the game is and isn't, is the game a vanity dress up game? is the game a dungeon raid game? you force your way into changing a game into what it wasn't designed to be in the first place

2. the first point leads us to the second point, if the game was designed to be a dungeon raid game, vanity isn't and wouldn't be their primary focus when it comes to content. What I've seen here is that players who are against cash shops often have the misconception that whatever that is offered in the cash-shops are originally meant to be given free. This point might have some credence but chances are, it isn't, for P2P games, making cash shops the primary revenue source isn't paramount, hence there isn't a significant desire to profit heavily from a cash shop and risk negative reaction. So, whatever were to be offered in the cash shops are developed and made possible only with the intention of using the revenue source from cash shops to justify the investment.

this is a win win situation.

no content ever comes "free" all content are developed via the allocation of limited resources, and it isn't "fair" to have players who couldn't care less about significant vanity gear content to be indirectly "paying" for them, hence a cash shop to offer vanity for those who wants them and remove the burden of cost from those who doesn't

another way of implementation would be to limit certain vanity gear to purchase only for a period of time (e.g 3-6 months) and will be made available to all in the next major content patch.

people are against the name of "cash shop" not the concept of it, the fact that you get unique minions available only via the purchase of the CE and OST already proves that people have no issues with unique vanity items that are "purchase only" and not available in-game.

[Rakashu]

EDIT:All this thread has taught me is the reason why monster hunter frontier is japan only, the west doesn't deserve it, we just take something good and screw it up, trying to learn japanese has never been so worth it

Projection much?

[Alavastre]

It's pretty simple.

There are people that can't afford this game.

There are people that can afford this game and not much else.

Then there are people than can afford this game plus a lot more.

By your logic, SE will only tap into the people that will only spend 13 dollars a month on their game. Having a small shop gives them a higher potential profit. They can tap into those people who have extra cash and love the game. It's pretty silly in a business to cap your profits. And most of the time, the cash shop people are a different team than the in game people. As so long as they're not taking my sub and not putting effort into upgrading the game, I'm fine with a cash shop. If it's a vehicle to get more FFXIV, who wouldn't want it? Even if the people paying for it are the more well off, the money generated would go right back into the game. Minus some overhead and profit for SE.

TLDR: Cash shops are fine if implemented properly.

[Gormogon]

This game has a subscription instead of asking for "cash shops" you should be asking for a player focused poll content that gets added per patch or major patch.

Collaboration FATE glamour focus priority
Minion priority
Barding priority
Retainer exclusive glamour gear

So on and so on.

[DoubleT]

this whole thread is dumb an so is the other ones about the same topic. nowhere at anytime has SE ever even hinted at putting a full item cash shop into this game EVER. Buying an item to change your race is not P2W. the reason they charge money for it, is cuz if they gave it out for free for as much as anyone wanted, everyone would abuse it an change races several times a day or as much as they were allowed to. Buying more retainers for storage space/lottery chances at sellable items is not P2W. News Flash they charged extra money for mules in XI too. this games subs are not even close to dwindling enough to go F2P, many servers are still locked down from character creation everyday. Finally if they wanted to test a cash shop out on a game, XI's subs are way lower than ours I'm sure they would think to try it there first, or even Dragon Quest X... o wait all 3 SE MMO's still follow subscription based plans you say? hmmmm i wonder what payment model they prefer...