Microtransactions are here to stay. And they are a good thing.

[XgungraveX]

vanity and cosmetic i couldn't care less.

[Tsukotaku]

The overblown and hyperbolic rage some expressed over microtransactions is honestly ridiculous, so it's time to explain a few simple concepts for those unable to look beyond the usual knee-jerk reaction. I'm perfectly aware that this won't make many happy, but the concepts below need to be expressed.

1) Microtransactions are becoming an industry standard for every kind of game, including pay to play MMORPGs. As a matter of fact they're nothing new for P2P MMOs.

There are only three pay to play MMOs that can be considered successful at the moment (WoW, EVE Online and FFXIV) and all three have microtransactions.

2) Pay to play developers compensate the fact that they require a monthly fee by keeping microtransactions limited to a very limited percentage of the content provided with no additional purchase. IE: the game is 100% fully featured and customers gain access to extensive updates without spending a dime over your monthly fee. This is, also, industry standard.

3) This kind of microtransactions are an *entirely positive* element for the health of a MMORPG. When a company makes more revenue, said revenue isn't just put in the bank or hidden under the mattress. It's reinvested in games, and in the case of MMORPGs, mostly in the game that generates it. Which means that the more profit Square Enix makes, the more content for us all to enjoy will be greenlighted and funded.

Companies dedicate investment to what generates them the most revenue, so the more revenue FFXIV gets, the more content and bells and whistles it'll get, and the longer it'll be supported.

Microtransactions of this kind simply give a chance to those who have more disposable income to fund feature and content for the game that *everyone* will enjoy, without depriving anyone of anything essential to the enjoyment of the game.

IE: everyone gets something out of it, not just those that can or are willing to pay for a mount or a minion.

4) The funniest thing is that some people are raging so much over some accessories to the wedding ceremony which are in no way essential to it, that they aren't even noticing that we're getting the most fully featured and extensive wedding ceremony in the history of the genre, with no additional purchase required. No other game has something of this scope for weddings. That's absolutely hilarious.

This is exactly an example of what mentioned at point 3. This kind of feature requires quite a lot of resources to be implemented, and it has quite limited influence in the success of the game and in the revenue it'll bring to Square Enix in itself. The ability to attach some absolutely optional microtransactions to it is probably what got such a work/resources intensive feature greenlighted to begin with.

Ultimately. The more Square Enix makes, the more stuff *everyone* who plays the game gets. You don't want to pay for a mount? That's great. You don't have to, and you have plenty mounts available to you. What's even better is that those who pay for that mount do you a favor as well.

All of your arguments will be invalid by the moment they'll put items or services that will radically influence the life of the players on a pratical degree. As long as Square Enix limits itself to minions, mounts and other cosmetic stuff (For the right price), like they did so far since this the cash-shop was open, for me is fine. Still, all of this will unfortunately change soon or later it seems (As recently demostrated by the "Enternal Bond") because SE became greedy with the years like many other companies around the world publishing MMOs (NCsoft, Trion Worlds, Tencent, ecc...). Milking IPs nowdays is wrong and profitable only on short-terms, which is not something indicated to this type of games.

Most importantly... by the twelve woods this is P2P!!!

Hope to be belied by their future choices.

[HeroSamson]

I'm now having second thoughts on letting it continue because double dipping is frankly unacceptable.

If you aren't spending money on the cash shop, then you aren't double dipping and should not even argue about it.

If people want to use money to buy things from the cash shop, who are you to tell them how they can spend their money?

So how can you have a problem with it, when you aren't doing it? Now if you are and you stopped then you have zero reason to hate it, because you did it yourself.

I don't care about the cash shop, if people want to buy a mount or minion or whatever digital fake item on the shop for game that's up to them, I wont get mad and throw a forum fit and say its not fair.

[Rufalus]

This kind of feature requires quite a lot of resources to be implemented, and it has quite limited influence in the success of the game and in the revenue it'll bring to Square Enix in itself. The ability to attach some absolutely optional microtransactions to it is probably what got such a work/resources intensive feature greenlighted to begin with.

This is the best argument I've seen for this feature. Without the optional premium tier eternal bond, it's possible they would not have been able to justify putting any resources/time into it, and thus the feature would not exist at all, even the free entry tier.

[Jynx]

Well perhaps you're just salty because you're poor and the game isn't f2p to cater to your poorness.

You hit the nail on the head there Zelth my friend. Only poor people opose the cash shop because they can't afford the shinies, they are so poor it's amazing they can even pay the subscription fee let alone the incoming level boost pack!™

[Zelth]

You hit the nail on the head there Zelth my friend. Only poor people opose the cash shop because they can't afford the shinies, they are so poor it's amazing they can even pay the subscription fee let alone the incoming level boost pack!™

I even made a flow chart!

[Waliel]

vanity and cosmetic i couldn't care less.

This. There is nothing right now that indicates otherwise.

[Windklinge]

its funny. it started the same in lotro back then when they decided to add cashshop. the same forumthreads. the same "doomsayers" the same "pay to win defenders" argued with each other. the end result? about 2 years later pay2win has taken over. and nearly all normal gamers left that game. yes even buying a TIME BASED advantage is still p2w. but its useless to argue with whales.

take this for a very good point on why current games like these suck big time :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwI0u9L4R8U

for all honest gamers out there : enjoy ff14 aslong as you can now. the path has been set. the moneygreed will win at the end. it always wins because it works. saw that happen on 5 mmos in the last decade that i played.

[BillyBones]

Microtransactions are fine. But if you remove ultimate pay and not add paypal, making a large amount of players not able to use the cash shop, its not a very smart move.

[SgtPepperUK]

its funny. it started the same in lotro back then when they decided to add cashshop. the same forumthreads. the same "doomsayers" the same "pay to win defenders" argued with each other. the end result? about 2 years later pay2win has taken over. and nearly all normal gamers left that game. yes even buying a TIME BASED advantage is still p2w. but its useless to argue with whales.

To be fair, there were items that sailed close to pay2win from day 1 of the LOTRO store. And Yoshi-P != Kate Paiz (the otherwise useless producer for LOTRO who only cared about the bottom line).