Inventory space

[Zojha]

It's kind of hilarious, listening to folks whine about how they MUST have this or that glamour, and how unfair it is that SE makes them pay real money for it.

You know what's even more hilarious? Double standards.

Consider expansions. What are expansions? Basically cash shop bundles with several exclusive features. Heavensward owners have a HUGE advantage over non Heavensward owners in all just about every regard - they gain more gil, more power, more overall content. But somehow, everyone is okay with that. If you were to put every expansion feature into the cash shop as singular items instead of a bundle however, say, putting the level cap raise and job skills up for 1 dollar, then each new zone at a few cents and the MSQ for another dollar, a primal battle at a few cent (imagine it all summing up to the same end price), it would be pay to win and evil. Why? Double standard.

[Zafrei]

You know what's even more hilarious? Double standards.

Consider expansions. What are expansions? Basically cash shop bundles with several exclusive features. Heavensward owners have a HUGE advantage over non Heavensward owners in all just about every regard - they gain more gil, more power, more overall content. But somehow, everyone is okay with that. If you were to put every expansion feature into the cash shop as singular items instead of a bundle however, say, putting the level cap raise and job skills up for 1 dollar, then each new zone at a few cents and the MSQ for another dollar, a primal battle at a few cent (imagine it all summing up to the same end price), it would be pay to win and evil. Why? Double standard.

One is considered a game, the other is considered nickle and diming xD

Having said that, I'm okay with the principle of a cash shop - I've bought from mog station - but when it becomes the primary source of income (*cough*eso*cough*) then developer resources focus on it as a priority and stuff that would otherwise be packaged in a game, gets shut behind the store. Then of course come the lockboxes. FFXIV has the right balance though exactly as it is now from a consumer point of view, in my opinion.

[LineageRazor]

You know what's even more hilarious? Double standards.

Consider expansions.

Apples and oranges. No sensible person believes we should get all the stuff we get in an expansion for free ("free" in this case meaning for no more than our subscription fees). All that work requires a LOT of extra development effort, far beyond what our subscription pays for, and the one-time purchasing fee for the expansion does a lot to defray that cost. By the same token, I'd guess the percentage of players who would prefer not to ever see new expansions is very, very low. The vast majority of players want to see the new content that an expansion provides, whereas only a very niche market exists for mogstation glamour items.

Arguing that cash shop vs expansions is a double standard is akin to arguing that cash shop vs subscription fees are a double standard. After all, a player who pays subscription fees has a HUGE gameplay advantage over a player who does not. That's pay-to-win, right?

It is true, however, that this game handles expansions (at least the first one) badly. What you say is true: A player that doesn't buy the expansion might as well not play. They can't level beyond 60, and there are NO current endgame activities that they can participate in. FFXI handled that much better: even when they added expansions to raise the level cap, they added methods for players without those expansions to keep leveling, and even deliberately placed some endgame activities in older zones (Voidwatch, for example) - endgame activities with meaningful rewards. In FFXI, buying an expansion was a choice (albeit a choice that the vast majority of players chose); in this game, it is all but a requirement to continue enjoying the game.

[Kosmos992k]

What you say is true: A player that doesn't buy the expansion might as well not play. They can't level beyond 60, and there are NO current endgame activities that they can participate in.

No one can level beyond 60. The things that are locked behind HW are primarily the HW zones, MSQ and anything that takes place in those new zones. Saying that there are no current endgame activities would have more sting if the completion rates for Alexander and the 3.X MSQ were higher. But they are not. There is in fact plenty to do in the ARR elements of the game, especially for players with restricted play time, or a play style that advances progress at a far lower speed than the end-game community.

I don't actually think that buying the expansion for HW was required to continue enjoying the game, though it is certainly required to play any of the new jobs, obtain job actions beyond lvl 50, enjoy the HW MSQ, participate in current end-game, fly and of course access the latest beast tribe dailies. All of those things are attractive options, but are by no means a requirement to enjoy the rest of the game.

It wouldn't really even need that change for gear condition. After all, the items already storable there have a condition, too, and we simply have to repair them to 100% before putting them away. (It's why there's a repair NPC standing right by each Inn.) They could let us store a lot more in the armoire, and still require 100% condition and reset spiritbond just as they do with the stuff there already.

Agreed, now we just need them to do it.

[Zojha]

Apples and oranges.

Both fruit! Both food. Both having certain nutrients whose tables you should certainly compare if you want to optimize your diet.

It is very clearly a double standard if people consider selling a bundle okay, but offering each piece of the bundle separately an outrage, because the features offered are identical in both cases - the only possible point of complaint can be the pricing. That's not debatable, that's plain fact. And it's a fun fact, as you could actually save money in the latter case by not buying the pieces you like, thus making it the far more consumer friendly option - in fact, if you look at most bundles, people would prefer to be able to buy the items in a bundle separately, because they dislike large parts of the bundle and pay for something they'd rather not have. Case in point: NPC haircuts and outfits in the mog store. Same naturally goes for expansions - someone might not like crafting, so not having to pay for it anyway as part of the bundle would be beneficial the them.

What I am pointing out is that people keep saying it's bad when cash can buy you ingame benefits, when in fact, that is a common and very much accepted practice. Every expansion does exactly that and therefore, it logically cannot be bad if it happens outside of expansions as well. Except people are not logical nor coherent and therefore apply the double standard that in some cases, buying ingame benefits for money is okay, whereas in other cases it is not. Why? Because.

Therefore, the argument that the cash shop is fine because it doesn't provide ingame benefits logically argues that expansions are bad and need to either be free or abolished entirely. That's just logical deduction. If that's not what you want to say, you need to provide a different argument to justify why the cash shop is okay. And if that's what you do want to say, well...your opinion, can't argue with that, can only disagree.

[Zafrei]

Both fruit! Both food. Both having certain nutrients whose tables you should certainly compare if you want to optimize your diet.

It is very clearly a double standard if people consider selling a bundle okay, but offering each piece of the bundle separately an outrage, because the features offered are identical in both cases - the only possible point of complaint can be the pricing. That's not debatable, that's plain fact. And it's a fun fact, as you could actually save money in the latter case by not buying the pieces you like, thus making it the far more consumer friendly option - in fact, if you look at most bundles, people would prefer to be able to buy the items in a bundle separately, because they dislike large parts of the bundle and pay for something they'd rather not have. Case in point: NPC haircuts and outfits in the mog store. Same naturally goes for expansions - someone might not like crafting, so not having to pay for it anyway as part of the bundle would be beneficial the them.

What I am pointing out is that people keep saying it's bad when cash can buy you ingame benefits, when in fact, that is a common and very much accepted practice. Every expansion does exactly that and therefore, it logically cannot be bad if it happens outside of expansions as well. Except people are not logical nor coherent and therefore apply the double standard that in some cases, buying ingame benefits for money is okay, whereas in other cases it is not. Why? Because.

Therefore, the argument that the cash shop is fine because it doesn't provide ingame benefits logically argues that expansions are bad and need to either be free or abolished entirely. That's just logical deduction. If that's not what you want to say, you need to provide a different argument to justify why the cash shop is okay. And if that's what you do want to say, well...your opinion, can't argue with that, can only disagree.

I'll just repost this here

One is considered a game, the other is considered nickle and diming xD

Having said that, I'm okay with the principle of a cash shop - I've bought from mog station - but when it becomes the primary source of income (*cough*eso*cough*) then developer resources focus on it as a priority and stuff that would otherwise be packaged in a game, gets shut behind the store. Then of course come the lockboxes. FFXIV has the right balance though exactly as it is now from a consumer point of view, in my opinion.

The fact that one is considered a "game" in its own right (or as close to it as possible) cannot and should not be understated. Then of course there's the question of where development resources should go - game content, or store? There's a clear difference if we're not splitting hairs.