Mog Station is overpriced.

[LillithCale]

It bothers me that they could not afford to get these EU servers with the ~ $126 million in annual subscription revenue they were already receiving. Personally, I'd rather they remove the 12.99 subscription option to generate more revenue, than lock items in game behind a cash shop.

Unfortunately that's not the fault of the FFXIV but rather SE as a company. FFXIV 1.0 was a failure and though they had great succes with 2.0 there were still many times in which YoshiP would cite "not enough resources' as a reason why they couldn't provide something which is -usually- developer talk for not enough funding. There was even an interview where he spoke about needing to hire on more battle content developers because they were so short staffed. Now, one would think they should just be able to take from with SE itself, but SE is, unfortunately, notorious for taking people off of one succesful project and dumping them onto another project they hope to bring succes to (Rumor speculation in this case is FFXV but there has been NO OFFICIAL confirmation of staff or funds from FFXIV being reallocated to FFXV)

It's frustrating, because through various sources, things you can read in interviews with YoshiP and even googling for information involving SEs earnings and the like, it should be clear that this game does not need a cash shop, yet the proceducer himself up and said when it was created that it was being done so to fund other projects they wanted to do for FFXIV, with the EU servers being the first ones names. Yes, SE as a company should be providing the FFXIV staff with the funding to do this, but, for whatever reason, shielded behind doors we can not see through and conversations we know nothing of, it's clear that this is not happening but why it's not happening is what we don't know.

The Cash Shop is, whether one likes or not, a feature that YoshiP felt the game needed for him to provide certain aspects to community that they wanted. Yes, it sucks but that is the reality of the situation.

Thankfully, at Fanfest 2016 in Vegas, it was said that Stormblood has triple the budget of Heavensward (Source: Me, I was there), so hopefully that means the unqiue cash shop only items we've been seeing (such as Selpnir and the Mog mount, I don't count regional exlusives as unique cash shop content because those aren't done by complete choice on the FFXIV Developers side, those are part of a contract negoation to allow the game to run in closed markets), will start to die down and it'll go back to mostly one off items and seasonal items of days past.

I think it would bother players knowing SE wasn't willing to shell out enough money to provide European servers without cash shop profits, doesn't almost every FotM MMORPG launch with NA and EU servers?

If cash shop profits are going back into the game with things other than expansion inventory which should have been done with Heavesnward's launch, then it's fine as long as they don't ramp up the amount cash shop exclusive items. I'm expecting to see huge things with Stormblood with its reportedly massive budget according to these forums. NPC clothing and events are expected at this point, but exclusive clothing that weren't regional exclusives, events or NPC clothing is a no-go for me personally and one unique cash shop mount every (or every other) patch isn't too bad as long as they aren't priced higher than Sleipnir for no good reason.

Two quick things I want to touch on here, since my reply above does cover some of this but:

Inventory Expansion could not be done at Heavensward because of the PS3. It's been said many many times the PS3 was a huge huge factor in expanding the inventories. Stormblood will be dropping the PS3 which will allow the FFXIV team to upgrade their infastructure as needed in order to expand inventories.

I'm guessing, and apologies if I am wrong, that the mount you are talking about is the Moogle Mount. Now, I do not disagree that the price is OUTRAGEOUS. However, it has been stated that the reasons for the price tag is because it is a flying, two seater mount that is account wide.

[Colorful]

Inventory Expansion could not be done at Heavensward because of the PS3. It's been said many many times the PS3 was a huge huge factor in expanding the inventories. Stormblood will be dropping the PS3 which will allow the FFXIV team to upgrade their infastructure as needed in order to expand inventories.

I'm guessing, and apologies if I am wrong, that the mount you are talking about is the Moogle Mount. Now, I do not disagree that the price is OUTRAGEOUS. However, it has been stated that the reasons for the price tag is because it is a flying, two seater mount that is account wide.

Doesn't the PS3 work around inventory limitations by splitting the inventory into separate pages? In the case that even then it was limited, fair enough, but I don't see a reason to not give us an extra retainer while they sold a few extra. It's clear they knew we wanted more inventory space, but they opted to sell it in the form of retainers instead. I'm glad we're finally getting the expansion though, I do hope it's a substantial increase but I figure we'll learn more during the JP or EU Fanfests.

As for the mount, yep, it's the moogle mount. Have staff members ever stated the reason the price increase was due to it being a two seater mount? I don't see flying warranting an increase in price as that's also going to be applied to Sleipnir, and the price reasoning could because it's an entirely new model. Either way, a two seater mount isn't more than a slight bump into animation work but the price is significantly higher, as you said, it's "outrageous" to charge half the price of an AAA game for a mount. As for future two seater mounts, I'd like the option to purchase a single seater version if that's the excuse they'll roll with, I already have two 2 seater chocobo mounts and they're used maybe once every 2-3 months. :s

Oh well, as long as they don't slap on +30% EXP gain on future NPC clothing and use that as an excuse to charge more... It's clear they don't plan on changing their payment model anytime soon, better to ask for them to be more reasonable when it comes to future items, at least there's a chance they'll listen.