Cash Shop: Stifling development.

[kyuven]

Cash shops do not stifle development. They aid development. Sure there will always be people dedicated to producing content for the cash shop, but the money from that ostensibly goes towards paying for the development of other content.
New content is expensive, moreso than you'd believe.
There's this one huge fallacy with development TEAMS players seem to be under. They seem to think that if a company is doing one thing, then they aren't doing another. There's an assumption that the people developing items for the cash shop are people that could be working on something else.
Well...that's only marginally true. Testers and marketers are really the only ones that overlap. The people running the store most likely have that as their sole job in the company. People designing things for the store either have that as their sole job, or are working on variants of things already in the game.
Let's take a look at what actually IS in the store:
Eternal Bond: Probably the more controversial since the bells and whistles versions cost money. They've been working on this for a long time, and the basic concept itself is absolutely free. Paying for it just gets you extra doodads, much like a Collector's Edition of a game...of which this game has had TWO, by the way. The way it's implemented is exactly what i'm talking about. Everything in the system is available for free within the game with the exception of aesthetic gear, which are all variants on things that already exist.
Sleipnir Mount: It's a mount that costs money. It's also the top seller in the cash shop. Yeah. Offers no advantages other than looking cool.
Minions: They're freakin MINIONS. They've had "premium" minions for the longest time (remember they've been pre-order bonuses and CE bonuses in the past) and whoever's designing these things probably wishes they got to design more.
Dyes: A variant of something already in the game, again. It's pretty much tradition at this point for cash shops to sell special dyes. There shouldn't have been any surprise at these.
Seasonal Outfits: Admittedly this one was a little disappointing to me, as there were a couple holidays i missed that have things i want and now i gotta pay for em...but oh well. They were already in the game for free, and everyone had a chance to get them for free. Now, they cost money. It's actually a good business decision, even if people are unhappy. Makes me appreciate the items i got, though.

None of these would take exceptionally more time to create than anything else. Sure there will be some larger scale marketing things coming out (Triple Triad WILL be monetized. It's a card game. That's what card games are for.) but most of this just seems to be things for the art and animation teams to occupy themselves with between working on the massive, interesting updates we've been getting.

[Felis]

Seasonal Outfits: Admittedly this one was a little disappointing to me, as there were a couple holidays i missed that have things i want and now i gotta pay for em...but oh well. They were already in the game for free, and everyone had a chance to get them for free. Now, they cost money. It's actually a good business decision, even if people are unhappy. Makes me appreciate the items i got, though.

At least you can still buy the old santa set for some thousand gil in the MB.

[silentwindfr]

Cash shops do not stifle development. They aid development. Sure there will always be people dedicated to producing content for the cash shop, but the money from that ostensibly goes towards paying for the development of other content.
New content is expensive, moreso than you'd believe.

ok this part did make me laughs a lot, i did prove in other thread that it was flawed as argument, since they did get tons of cash per month from the subscription. if the cash shop was needed for do other content we will have pass in free to play for age.
it's naive to believe that cash shop money will be used on FF14 only. since the release of FF14 a good part of the game they did release was fund with our subs, don't be idiot and ignore this. even with counting half of the subs is used for the dev, the maintenance and stuff like this they still finish with more of a few million. a game is expensive true... but mmorpg content are not that expensive. or the genre will have die age ago.

same your comment look like the one of a free to play player that ok with this, since the game rely only on the cash shop for get money. where it fail it's the fact that we are in subs game, and the subs of 2.000.000 people is far more enough for be good. just like this, yoshida did said in the past that only 500.000 people was enough for make of FF14 a succes.then what it is with 4 times this number?

most of the pro cash shop player have a narrow vision of the situation and seems to forget the past. some say the people against the cash shop are paranoid or such... however we do have precedence of game that did switch from p2p to f2p after the release of the cash shop.

finally i want to add something, i'm not against the cash shop in general, i'm against it into a subs game... why this? because each month i already support game with my subs! i'm ok to support a company or a game that evolve a lot... but there... i feel from the last patch that the cash shop is only there for grabs more cash! than really add content or help the game! i'm not the only one waiting the live letter of the 21, because people await an answer, people deserve to know what will be the futur of the game... and like said countless time before to see where will be the line that the cash shop will not cross... since the eternal bonding was a mess, a horrible way to do stuff!

ps: if i was me, i will have fired a few of the marketing team for them poor jobs and them decision to do stuff like this. because it's not the dev team nor yoshida decision, but the SE marketing team.