You think our Cash shop is bad...take a look at THIS

[Kosmos992k]

Yus, I read that too.

Let me rephrase my question. So far I have thought that retainer fees are part of the cash shop. If they are not... Does it mean that retainer fees aren't used only for the development, but also for the profits?

I'm not sure about that myself. Since retainers are a service fee like the subscription, it's continual, plannable revenue for the game. I would expect that like the primary revenue from game sales and subs, this would be rolled back into the game. But of course SE is like any large company, and they have products that make good money, products that break even and products that don't make a profit. That's the risk they take in this field, so I have to assume that some of the profit from FFXIV helps SE's bottom line as a whole.

On the other hand, FFXIV has been a pretty high profile success for Yoshi, the dev team and SE as a whole, so common sense suggests putting money back into the game to keep that goose laying the golden eggs. Unfortunately, common sense and business seldom mix.

[Savagelf]

worst cash shops tried swtors, and sto these two have worst cash shops

[Malevicton]

If we have to compare our cash shop to a non-sub cash shop to make it look good, then that doesn't make our cash shop look good.

[Mycow8me]

Developement is pretty generalized anyways. Was moving EU considered development...? Now im actually curious how specifically all the cash shop revenue is used towards game "development". Be funny if it was used to "develope" more cash shop items.

I might actually use the cash shop with current pricing if it turned out to be whats funding the hildibrand quest log. Stuff like that is actually more entertaining then trying to save the world on a daily basis.

Maybe transparency is an issue for some people too.

[Felis]

Developement is pretty generalized anyways. Was moving EU considered development...? Now im actually curious how specifically all the cash shop revenue is used towards game "development". Be funny if it was used to "develope" more cash shop items.

There are not really many "pure" cash shop items. The most of them are old seasonal gears.
Our cash shop is more like a 2nd hand shop that sell leftovers from past events ^^

[Nutz]

Apparently there are some rumors circulating about level boosting microtransactions in Destiny that were added but currently unavailable as well.

I don't mind FFXIV's shop selling old seasonal items as those are all just glamour that could have been obtained in game easily by anyone who was subbed at the time. Unique items, especially the dyes that are one time use, are a lot more irksome and to me have no place in a sub model.

The only game I can think of that does a cash shop right is Path of Exile. Free to play and from the cash shop you can purchase additional bank slots (one time purchase), though it's mostly unnecessary unless you like to hoard/ play several characters (shared bank). Everything else is just a cosmetic effect, either alternate skill animations, pets that follow you around doing nothing (minions), wings, halos, and the like.

[Kosmos992k]

Apparently there are some rumors circulating about level boosting microtransactions in Destiny that were added but currently unavailable as well.

I kind of expect that Destiny will progress towards the kinds of microtransactions that support Warframe. Players will buy silver in order to finance their in game purchases of the downloadable content (aka updates) including weapons, armor, new maps, etc.... Bungie might be able to give the maps for free, but I am about 99% sure that new weapons, consumables and gear that arrive with updates will be split between lack luster free stuff and temptingly shiny shop items. Since the Destiny player base is leveling out, new sales of the game have definitely slowed, leaving no revenue source other than microtransactions.

With FFXIV even if new purchases slowed considerably, there is a pretty good solid core of subscribers that provide a revenue stream to finance ongoing development. If they keep the size of the dev team under control and remain conservative with how the load servers, there's no reason to worry about FFXIV going that route. IMHO of course.

[Whiteroom]

Check out Replay Badges over at DCUO.





Destiny... biggest let down I've had in gaming.

[Kosmos992k]

Check out Replay Badges over at DCUO.

"tokens that enable a player to repeatedly access loot in Duos, Alerts and Raids without having to wait for the set reset period." and across all characters on one account? ::blinks::

Am I understanding this right? A player could pay for as many of these as they like (can afford), spam the living crap out of content for the loot, effectively overcoming the RNG to an extent in order to obtain rare gear far faster than otherwise possible? Is that about right? So in FFXIV it would have been like being able to run, and rerun Coil as many times as you like without the lockout preventing you from doing so? We'd have had people in full High Allagan gear inside two days...lol

I take it that DCUO is known as a pay to win game?

[Whiteroom]

"tokens that enable a player to repeatedly access loot in Duos, Alerts and Raids without having to wait for the set reset period." and across all characters on one account? ::blinks::

Am I understanding this right? A player could pay for as many of these as they like (can afford), spam the living crap out of content for the loot, effectively overcoming the RNG to an extent in order to obtain rare gear far faster than otherwise possible? Is that about right? So in FFXIV it would have been like being able to run, and rerun Coil as many times as you like without the lockout preventing you from doing so? We'd have had people in full High Allagan gear inside two days...lol

I take it that DCUO is known as a pay to win game?

Yes. That one item makes our cash shop look great in comparison, doesn't it?

Though the P2W debate has come up over there about them, and the typical fall back is that you still have to actually play the content. So while you can make it sound like its not, you are really, really pushing it.

Thats the game where the player base showed that they left, I think it was, the best chest and head piece out of the loot tables to sell more replays. They claimed they were always there, and it was just RNG, but thousands of runs later and no one having it... then all of a sudden it blew up, hotfix, and those drop like candy...


This is where I see the real danger in cash shops, not ponies and paint.

I was unaware about the Head and Chest piece loot, since I stopped shortly after Origin Crisis, but yea, thats incredibly crap of them.

I do agree, in terms of cash shop items I'd rather have cosmetics (Yes, Sleipnir is a cosmetic. Deal with it nerds.) than whatever DCUO started to do.

Yeah, it was the Traces in Time pieces from Paradox Wave. That was Crisis wasn't it? I can't remember anymore.
I stopped after the first War of Light, that previous thing, along with other similar things left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't keep giving money to developers I had zero respect for. It was one of those things where you log out one day and just never log back in.