Endgame DRG Armor

[Nominous]

I love going through threads like this and do a lodestone search of every person who complains or calls the cash shop a "cancer" and the like. I love seeing how many of these nay sayers have mogstation minions and mounts.

I call it "hypocrit hunting" its fun.

Crazy, right? I've got like, nothing from the Cash Shop, but here I am trying to tell people it isn't all that bad. Then I get called a white knight because I'm reasonable .

[Jynx]

Crazy, right? because I'm reasonable .

Calling stuff you get in a subscription game a "Freebie" is far from a reasonable stance on the topic.

Your defence of anti consumer practices may be questionable but it's not "White knighting" some of it's ground in logic shaky as it may be. Much like the more reasonable arguments against it tend to get people called greedy or people who just hate on everything the "Evil company" does.

Your just as bad as the people your claiming to be attacked by.

[Nominous]

Calling stuff you get in a subscription game a "Freebie" is far from a reasonable stance on the topic.

Your defence of anti consumer practices may be questionable but it's not "White knighting" some of it's ground in logic shaky as it may be. Much like the more reasonable arguments against it tend to get people called greedy or people who just hate on everything the "Evil company" does.

Your just as bad as the people your claiming to be attacked by.

I never claimed to be better, just insinuated that it's a shame that you can't have my opinion on this without being accused and burned at the stake. It'd be nice if people were a little more reasonable than that, but whatever.

And as for 'freebies'. I think it's mostly semantics, but I'll give a shot at explaining this.


I don't consider patches and content to be 'freebies' by any stretch of the imagination. It's something that any MMO needs, and it's fueled by whatever payment model they go with (F2P or B2P or P2P/Sub). Bug fixes, balance changes, and other updates to the system are also things that I do believe our money could, should, and probably does go towards.

That being said, veteran rewards, and event minions/mounts/outfits/furnishings are by no means necessary (veteran rewards is more like a loyalty reward for subsequent months, I'd get why you wouldn't consider that free). Our 15 dollars a month goes towards a lot, but it seriously doesn't go towards everything they do. You have to be reasonable about what you think they do or don't deserve to get paid for, that's what it comes down to. You're fine to think that they don't deserve to get paid for things that go over their budget, that put them in the negative, or otherwise compromised positions. I'd like to think that since they're pretty transparent, and they have shown that they care about the game a great deal, I shouldn't be worried about the Cash Shop getting out of hand. And again, event items are pretty much the antithesis of Cash Shop additions.

Also, I know how bad Cash Shop can truly get, and it's cute that people think this game is awful for charging like, 10 bucks for a full outfit. Try playing a Korean game that forces you to literally spend 10's of thousands of dollars in RNG based items to even end-game. Or 30 bucks for full outfits. Nothing even comes close, so.

[Jynx]

I think it's mostly semantics, but I'll give a shot at explaining this.

It's far from semantics you are using the term incorrectly as it's not "Free" in any stretch of the word.

I think it's mostly semantics, but I'll give a shot at explaining this.

It's far from semantics you are using the term incorrectly as it's not "Free" in any stretch of the word.

As for your entire papragraph about how our 15 bucks a month is not enough to pay them to create additional content it's unknown to both you and me what their operating costs are. I however have the evidence that the game is raking in massive profits (Prior to cash shop nonsense)to back up my point.

You on the other hand have nothing, circumstantial or otherwise to show me that the developers are hard pressed to keep the game in development on my measly 15 dollars a month. I wont bother to make assumptions but it's more than reasonable to assume the only financial issues the developers have are internal and not external. It's not my problem if Yoshida has failed to deliver on the value of long term player retention over a revolving door model (That cash shops perpetuate). Know this.

For all the "love" the developers show for the game every time they make players pay an additional fee is showing less and less faith in the project as a long term investment. "Event items are the antithesis" is absurd as the moment they are out of season they become yet another cash shop addition. That in itself is the Antithesis of your Antithesis statement, if they wanted to continue to vest interest and continue to make the players "Value" continue to grow with the game instead of collapse over time. Every peice of content added to the game and then removed to be placed on the cash shop devalues our subscription. Every. Single. Time.

Every item they move on to the cash shop shows they have more vested interest in getting as much money out of customers as fast as they possibly can instead of having a vested interest in having them subscribed for years to come. Yoshida may have grand plans for the game but it's apparant the higher ups aren't as convinced and Yoshida has done little to nothing to convince them. Otherwise we wouldn't see these cash shop shenanagins.

What it comes down to is that "It's fine that the developers deserve to get paid for all the content they make" They do, they deserve is and they currently get that with just our subscription dollars.

Your assumptions on how much money they make is unfounded and has no logic to follow through, things cost money to make yes. Far less than you seem to imagine. let's make a extremely conservative estimate of the current per month gross revenue based on subscriptions alone.

Let's say that the game has 400k active accounts

Based on this number alone at 15 bucks a month not counting legacy accounts as I've lowballed the subscriber base allready.

That's a gross profit of 6 million dollars a month on subscriptions alone, if your not operating at a profit after that I'm not sure what your spending your money on, Servers only cost so much I'm sure the costs roll around 3-4 million in operating costs and some more on. The game still makes solid cash without cash shop transaction.

[Nominous]

It's far from semantics you are using the term incorrectly as it's not "Free" in any stretch of the word.

I'm using semantics correctly, because clearly you think that free has a different meaning and implication in this context than I do. There's nothing technically free in the world, everything has a cost associated. But we consider things free based on the context. If you're at Costco and you're offered free samples can that be considered free if you need a paid membership to get in? This is semantics. I relate the word free to things that aren't necessary, that we're given for no express reason, without an explicit associated 1:1 cost that can be clearly seen. Our 15 dollars can't be associated at any ratio to anything in the game. You can't say like... 10 dollars goes towards raids, and 1 dollar goes towards dungeons, etc etc. The best you can do is paint broad strokes- things that any membership would essentially help cover costs of. QoL, maintenance, repairs, additions/expansions, and general upkeep. Anything outside of that still costs money- money I don't particularly relate my 15 dollars to. If it's given to me without any expected compensation, I consider it free.

You on the other hand have nothing, circumstantial or otherwise to show me that the developers are hard pressed to keep the game in development on my measly 15 dollars a month.

I don't think you need circumstantial evidence to realize that their repeated response to a lot of problems is that they don't have the manpower to do it. Which means they aren't being given the funding to do what they'd like to do all the time. It could be PR spin, which I'd believe, but something tells me that they'd be a bit less apprehensive about adding (new) things to the store if that were true.

For all the "love" the developers show for the game every time they make players pay an additional fee is showing less and less faith in the project as a long term investment.

It wouldn't be the developers. It'd be the investors, and upper management at SE. As I've said before, I've worked at quite a few places that have outlined their sales goals, and entire stores have had their jobs on the line because of this, among other ridiculous things like not pushing extra sales of unnecessary things. It sucks, but at the end of the day, it's their job. They have to make sure QoL is the best for us, and show the people funding them that they can push extra sales. I have sympathy for that honestly, because they do their best, even though I'd imagine everyone does nothing but yell at them (including the fanbase).

"Event items are the antithesis" is absurd as the moment they are out of season they become yet another cash shop addition. That in itself is the Antithesis of your Antithesis statement,

Except for the fact that you have the choice to get it for free first. Sometimes you have to pay for not jumping on opportunities when they show up. I mean, their obvious mindset beforehand was to just never bring back events or event items, even before Cash Shop was implemented. And I'm sorry, but I'd much rather them work on new events than them continue to rotate old ones just because players miss out. Players will always miss out.

Yoshida may have grand plans for the game but it's apparant the higher ups aren't as convinced and Yoshida has done little to nothing to convince them. Otherwise we wouldn't see these cash shop shenanagins.

Yoshi can only do so much to encourage them. It's a 50/50 thing. You can beg someone all you want, but if 0 people support something nobody will care what you say. That's obviously an exaggeration because there's a lot of subscribers and support, but it doesn't all fall upon him and his development team. And really, even though it falls more on a developer to make a good alluring product, it's also up to the fanbase to show how much people want this kind of game. It's the same reason why some companies, or developers go to crowdfunding. Communities want a specific thing, and developers really can't do that under corporate structure, because they're told, based on market research, what they should be doing.

Ultimately though, it's just the state of the gaming industry. DLC started out as a pretty neat idea, but as with everything, it got out of control really quickly. There's almost no game that doesn't do it anymore, and I'm sure it's a big question mark for investors when a game doesn't follow suite. Sucks, but it's honestly just the way it is. It's a strong arm kind of tactic, but there feels to never really be an alternative. While I don't tend to buy much DLC, I understand it's importance, and how (occasionally) it can be done right, and be a major boon to a company with garbage budget.

[Jynx]

Except for the fact that you have the choice to get it for free first. Sometimes you have to pay for not jumping on opportunities when they show up. I mean, their obvious mindset beforehand was to just never bring back events or event items.

What are you on about? Before cash shop they brought items back via NPC's to give the previous years rewards. That was the precedent that was set, and that they veered away from once they decided they could make a cash grab with them instead.

[Nominous]

What are you on about? Before cash shop they brought items back via NPC's to give the previous years rewards. That was the precedent that was set, and that they veered away from once they decided they could make a cash grab with them instead.

That was only if you completed that event beforehand. I know this because I tried going back to get items I didn't do the event for (this was in 2.0 before the Cash Shop), and I was only able to get items for events I'd already done, no matter where I went.

Perhaps you're mistaken, but that's probably the least important thing to have taken from all I said, lol.