Quote Originally Posted by Zysets View Post
Oh yeah, I'm well aware of that. By reasonable, I was thinking of no more than a few dollars. Besides XIV, which I only started playing recently, and Phantasy Star Universe back in the day, I really didn't play many pay to play games, so I'm definitely aware on how a cash shop really works.

I'd be willing to pay 3-5 dollars for the set, just costs me the chance to miss out on a good burger or something that week
That's because you're ignoring the difference between reasonable and cheap. Taking something that should be ten cents and charging five dollars for it is a five thousand percent markup. If that five dollar burger you compared it to were suddenly offered for two hundred and fifty dollars instead, that would be the equivalent of what you're calling "reasonable" when it's offered by a game company. Too many people ignore whether things are ridiculously overpriced or not so long as the price still falls into a range they can afford.


Quote Originally Posted by Zysets View Post
If anything, a 3-5 dollar price tag would be pretty cheap compared to what some other games out there charge for cosmetic items.
That's because most games that have cash shops are F2P. The way F2P games work is to use purchases of minor little cosmetic items to fund the development of all the major game systems which are given away for free to entice people into playing. You should assume that 99.9% of the money you pay for a cosmetic item in such games has nothing to do with the item you're ostensibly buying, but is simply the way that you pay for the whole game that you're playing.

In this case, that logic doesn't apply, because we're already paying for the game directly. The software purchases and subscription fees are paying for the game, and yet now, the cash shop is asking people to pay for the entire game all over again, by using the sort of F2P markups that are used to do just that.