Cash shop confirmed

[whoopeeragon]

Oh come on, I'm sure you know darn well what the difference is there and are just trying to find something to argue about.

You are already paying a flat monthly sub to access and play the game. You would be paying that sub fee regardless, vet reward or no. The rewards are provided at certain intervals as a "thank you" for your continued support. You are not charged extra for them. You are getting them as a bonus freebie.

It is not the same thing as paying a sub, plus having to pay extra for items (vanity or otherwise) that your on-going sub already *has* gone toward producing.

I'm neutral on the implementation of the cash shop, but you need to read carefully and not go into such a rage. Some items Tupsi stated are NOT part of the vet rewards. They are extra stuff, by purchasing related merchandise such as soundtracks and artbooks, or in the latest example, the fanfest stream. Or obtained by upgrading your edition of the game.

Tupsi makes a point that SE has already been doing this for a long time, ever since FFXI, FFXIV 1.0 in terms of MMOs. We have been always been forking over cash for additional items that are NOT paid by our subscription. Why are people arguing and so dead-set against this particular form of payments when it's essentially been done for a very long time now?

I quote you Preypacer, on this:

It is not the same thing as paying a sub, plus having to pay extra for items (vanity or otherwise) that your on-going sub already *has* gone toward producing.

But that has already happened. We've paid extra for wind-up Dalamud, wind-up Bahamut, Asuran Armguards, Onion Helm, Hermes Sandals amongst others. So I really don't see why everyone is flying into such a rage over this issue, when people were actually excited about the exact same thing SE has done before, except re-skinned.

[Giantbane]

I think the weirdest thing about this is people are pissed at a Business wanting to make money. Here's a popular argument:

"I should be able to obtain everything in game, I pay a sub fee."

Answer This: Where the hell is my Wind Up Bahamut? My Veteran Reward Minions and Mounts and Barding without needing to sub for a year (over $100 paid) and instead obtainable via quest? My Mog Cap? My Coeurl Mount? My Wind Up Dalamud? Where are these in-game without "using real money"?

The funny thig is? Someone will argue against that despite using that exact argument to argue against the cash shop.

What they're actually complaining about is that the business is indirectly raising the price of the product that's being sold. We're already paying something like $150 a year, in addition to the initial purchase of the game, is a price increase for vanity content reasonable?

The problem with a cash shop in a P2P MMO is that you don't know if they're creating special/unique items specifically for the cash shop (selling additional content) or whether they're taking content they would have added to the normal game and instead sticking it in the cash shop (same content, higher price). If it were in some way clear to tell that cash shop content was definitely "add on" items, then it's not that big a deal. But their initial offering goes against this. The premium mount that's being introduced is Slepnir, and as has been pointed out earlier, this already existed in the game for the most part. The model already exists, its use as a mount for a humanoid shaped NPC already exists, so it can't be very much work to "add" this into the game. They're, for the most part, taking in game content and slapping a new additional price tag on it.

The other problem with Slepnir is that the item is sourced directly from the existing FFXIV universe we are experiencing and is not a tangential add on. If this was a Red VIII mount or a (god forbid) cloud's bike mount, that wouldn't be such a bid deal to me. Those items exist in a separate universe and strike me more as add on content, so if it's given an add on price, then that seems more reasonable. But with integrated ties to the FFXIV universe, Slepnir feels more like this should be part of the main game and should covered by the subscription fee.

Which leads me to believe they're going to be taking items that would have been included with the sub fee and now making them cost an extra fee. The result is an indirect price increase on the content that would have otherwise been included in our sub fee.

Now I'm not going to quit over this, but when I evaluate whether or not I want to renew from month to month, the cash shop will definitely go under "cons"

[Krr]

Remember all those times people kept rebuying copies of the game or related mechandise to get exclusive in-game goodies? Hmm, it's almost as if you already had to pay real cash for some cosmetics you couldn't get anywhere else, and that this was a standard part of the game's business model.

[Negotiator]

i bought collector's edition 1.0. I was excited back then for some kind of something, i no longer care about. That was a year ago and never paid anything more than a sub since launch.

edit*
The more I think about it, it was the 1.0 CE when 1.0 launched.

[Double]

F2P model not looking so bad now..

Even if it is just vanity items, Almost every MMO developer says the same story and playerbase watches every second, every patch a new item reaches the market that gives hidden power that utterly destroys the meta inside-out which causes rifts through the community like none has ever seen.

Then it's GG NO RE for the games life.

[Fizzie]

I wasn't too bothered about this news as I expect this kind of crap from companies. But now that I think about it, why should we be expected to pay for things that were available in game before? We already pay monthly. Just give us a vendor in-game instead.

[Tupsi]

Just give us a vendor in-game instead.

The minions and mount listed were never available in game before. The past event items were thrown onto NPC for convenience to allow people who didn't play 1.0 to obtain many of them. Each year they throw in new items into events, this is why. Very few if at all any MMO hands out every event item each year if it's ran more than a year, for example I will NOT be getting RO event items from 2005 in 2014, it's thrown onto the cash shop because it's no longer in rotation. Each event that repeats and isn't unique quest wise the NPC sells the items, for example the swimsuits. If you end up tossing your item, the calamity salvager will resell you your panties no problems if you've completed the quest.

[Tayolynn]

Although I'm not liking this idea of having a cash shop, but I kinda expected that this would happen eventually, so I'm not too shocked at this decision. Although with this introduction, some people may be peeved about this because this may be a leeway to future exploitation. Some vanity things may be minor now, and there may be a good amount of people that would say "to hell with that, I'm not forking more than my sub fee for that stuff." But SE may already forecast that maybe 20%, 30% of those opposing people will cave in to buying things here and there when they see a bunch of people running around in cash shop vanity. But hey, more money for SE. Let's just hope that it's put to good use. (coughcough personalhousing cough ridiculousdifficultyforcraftedvanitygearandfurniture cough)

And like what other's have forecasted, SE may escalate to selling things that are super uber cool, like capes, character effects, WINGS (which I would be sad because I'd love to have wings) and more cooler looking mounts and eventually, items that will be seen as play to win.

Other charges would deem understandable. Fantasia potions to change your race and possibly a feature to change your name. The future expansion will probably have a price on that as well. Which brings me to cash shop vanity items that I'm not that too surprised at, just as long as they keep it to a minimum and not have the same amount or close to the amount of vanity things as a F2P game would have.

[Fizzie]

Wasn't the cash shop meant to go live today? o.O