Cash shop and the situation with the game.

[Rose-Wild]

I find it extremly funny/sad that when the Minfilia outfit was announced to be on the cash shop all the response from the comunity has only been a concern about the game only getting female exclusive gear.

Ofcourse SE being a company that wants to make $$$ saw the oportunity to now add even more stuff to the cash shop (Yda, Urianger, Papalymo, Thancred, Y'shtola) that just could have been in game rewards (Like Hildi's outfit for example) or even Veteran rewards.

SE already made this greedy move with Odin's mount taking it away from the game when it could have been a good reward from Odin's trial, instead they added it to the cash shop and that made that trial pretty much irrelevant.

I know people will argue me that all the money they get helps them keep the game going and they could use it to make the game better but the reality is it isn't doing any of that. It's been 2 years and we still are with the same excuses, always server or game limitations for everything. Like the system that saves all the glamours you have obtained instead of taking so much space (Guild Wars 2, DCUO and now WoW will have it too) or the issue with not having enough plots for everyone to be able to have a house. The staff seems to be the same since release, so for example when in 3.1 they wanted to make new kinds of content they had to do 1 less dungeon, no Hildi quest, no new primal.

Now after 5 months without new content everyone should be really concerned about this kind of stuff. If anything we should be getting all that as an apology for delaying the content so much.

It's seems SE doesn't want to invest anything in this game and this is like an indie MMO atm. The problem is SE clearly isn't a indie company.

Now another concern of mine is the fact that now the devs seem to be surprised at how low the savage clear rates are. We must be playing different games because i don't know how they expected people to jump from 0 to 100. All the content of the game outside of savage is really easy and most players are never asked to improve their game.

[Riardon]

As it was proven the cash shop did not hurt the game. Many people are happy with it and keep buying cosmetic things from there. We did not have a mass exodus of players because of the cash shop. Also note that all games have cash shops be it free to play or not it does not matter. As long as the items are cosmetic people have no problem with it. The people complaining in the forums about it are a minority. We like it or not this is the truth. Let's bring up other more serious matters of the game like content, future patches, class and content balance etc.

[Rose-Wild]

It did hurt the game and it din't add anything to it that wouldn't have been there. If the cash shop wasn't there the Odin mount would have been a drop from the fight just like the primal pony mounts. Minions could have been in moogle delivery quest or some sidequests like they usually do, hell even main story rewards. Dyes same, they should have been from retainers too.

That kind of thing makes the game better.

Many people also play horrible games for mobile that are filled with micro transaction bs. Doesn't mean it's right. I'm sorry that the small minority is the smart one.

[Belhi]

Well for the scion stuff, they had already said that Minfilia was the first of a number of NPC 'cosplay' sets they were doing on the cash shop and the other scion getups were datamined quite a while back.

I do agree that it seems FF14 could do to be better resourced though its worth noting it was the creation of the Cash Shop which funded the EU datacenters so its not like all of the earnings weren't put back into the game. I don't think the resource issue and the Cash Shop are neccesarily tied together. Cash shops are an issue when they have things developed when the main game is lacking. This doesn't seem to be the case however. FF14 really isn't lacking in goodies as part of its patch cycle in both content and rewards/glamours. There is a question of balance but that's a different issue again. I don't know if Id say the patches have gotten any bigger but they certainly don't seem to be getting smaller.

Also you shouldn't assume that stuff made for the Cash shop would be in the game anyway. Most cash shops stuff is almost certainly developed specifically for the cash shop and as a result the resources allocated to its creation are factored into the returns from the cash shop sales.

There is some concern on how long this patch took. If it becomes the norm it will become an issue for me but if we see the patches to their roughly 3 month cycle, the 5 month gap we have now is something I can overlook.

[Rose-Wild]

Oh so you are telling me the the Scion outfits had to be developed for the cash shop? And Odin's mount? All that stuff was already in the game.
The EU datacenter should have been there from the start. It's like the most normal thing, even free to play cash grab games have datacenters in EU.
It's not something we should be proud of.

[Zojha]

Most cash shops stuff is almost certainly developed specifically for the cash shop and as a result the resources allocated to its creation are factored into the returns from the cash shop sales.

Uhm...the vast majority of items in there are seasonal event items that were attainable in one season but not the next. So...I'm not sure about that statement.

[Riardon]

It did hurt the game and it din't add anything to it that wouldn't have been there. If the cash shop wasn't there the Odin mount would have been a drop from the fight just like the primal pony mounts. Minions could have been in moogle delivery quest or some sidequests like they usually do, hell even main story rewards. Dyes same, they should have been from retainers too.

That kind of thing makes the game better.

Many people also play horrible games for movile that are filled with micro transaction bs. Doesn't mean it's right. I'm sorry that the small minority is the smart one.

Trying to prove that your thesis is the right one by implying all the community are the "bad" ones while you belong to the group of the "enlightened high intelligent elite gamer group" or whatever you think you belong to, is certainly not the way to go.

[Felis]

The EU datacenter should have been there from the start. It's like the most normal thing, even free to play cash grab games have datacenters in EU.
It's not something we should be proud of.

The previous game (1.0) did a Titanic move and it was not sure if they can win back enough players with the rebuild to finance more than 2 datacenters (Montreal and Tokyo). The servers at launch crashed because they expected less players.

[Pomelo]

Well nothing in the cash shop is really game/balance breaking...

I regularly buy fantasia, never bought dyes or event items, purchase Sleipnir to fund the data centres and will probably buy Minfillia outfit and haircut just to have it.

[Rose-Wild]

Trying to prove that your thesis is the right one and you belong to the group of the enlightened high intelligent elite gamer group by implying all the rest of the community are the "bad" ones or whatever is certainly not the way to go.

I'm giving you facts. You just say it's all fine. You don't even have an argument. Doesn't take a genius to notice the stuff i'm talking about.

@Pomelo
Following that logic you could remove everything non gameplay related from the game and add it to the cash shop. The thing is this isn't a free to play game, and for many MANY people glamour is a HUGE part of the game. So it does break the balance and motivation for them.

@Felis
It still doesn't change the fact that even smaller games have it and i wouldn't call Titanic move to a game filled of copy pasted areas.
Anyway i remember that since i'm here since release and i had to deal with the server issues myself too and also had to pay a vpn for ages to be able to play with a decent ping because the servers were located in a different continent and SE wouldn't tell you that but instead we had servers with an EU tag when they are in NA.