Is our sub fee not enought

[Riardon]

This is a premium monthly sub based with a premium cash shop mmorpg. And no your monthly sub is not enough from a business perspective. It's bad business when you sell something at lowest possible profit. As a business you have to go for the maximum profit it is possible. And seeing how many people buying things from the shop and keep asking for more then SE is doing fine business. People have money and are willing to spend. You don't have to buy anything from the shop. We the players created the DLC golden era. Don't forget that.

[ApolloGenX]

Why do people keep arguing over if something is "forced"?

This is a game, nothing is forced.

I think the idea is that if you want the "full experience" something might be "required".

That is a sticking point for some people about cash shops, myself included. If the purchase price of software, plus subscription does not include the "full experience", then what does it include... and will that change over time as more is added to the cash shop, reducing the relative value of purchase+sub?

If that is the case, should we expect a reduction in software price and/or sub?

One of the reasons I like a sub game is that it is a fixed cost entertainment model. If I need to go to a variable price to get the same level of entertainment I expected for fixed price, then that means the game is competing with a lot of other variable priced entertainment methods... including simply renting/going to movies, dining out, drinks, etc. (not to mention games with cash shops that do not have subs)

[xbahax92]

You all are arguing about being forced to buy or not to buy. But Im more worried what will come next. Im really annoyed that they consider to put the Umbrella mount into cash shop instead of Goldsaucer (as example). Yes we did get the chair for 750k MGP. And then again we have skins and Fenrir for 1m MGP. Yet we would still profit having more rewards to exchange for. Would make atleast a bit sense to do all those Challenge Logs again and grind MGP.

I dont understand why they dont give both options to either buy or get it ingame. Those who do not want to spend time on grinding or farming, can buy it from the CS. Allow us to grind/farm who do not want to spend more money as we already do on subs, expansion...

[ApolloGenX]

..and can we at least agree that many of these glamours, pets, mounts, and "non-essentials" will be useful and fun MUCH longer than in game gear with stats?

In many cases, this is the only content that actually has enduring value/usefulness.

[Lexia]

Well SE does like their money and knows their customer base will pay up. I believe either yoshi-p or SE directly said that XIV would never be f2p and they were shut down XIV if couldn't make money off the sub model.

[Emerald_Swords]

Best $7 spent

[Reinha]

I would like to point out that since the beginning of ARR the game has never been all-inclusive. There are game play items you didn't get by buying just the base game. Example:



Now, is the CE a good deal for what you get? Yes. Do CE bundles get made a lot less frequently than Mog Station exclusives? Yes. Are the CE items account bound? Yes. I'm not arguing against any of that and they are actually fair points. Making frequent and expensive single character products can seem like substandard service in a subscription game and I understand that people are disappointed. The fact still remains that there were always items that you had to pay extra for. (Unless you count FFXIV Online pre-ARR which I don't know much about, but probably best not to delve into the business model of a game that was putting the company in debt.) Mog Station is just a way to buy those extras outside of major content releases, and it also includes the option to upgrade to CE for anyone who didn't do so when it first released.

I think that instead of arguing against the mere existence of paid exclusives (which have existed since the start of ARR) it would be more productive to argue the exact issues that bother people the most. Like pricing, single character vs account bound, frequency of Mog Station releases, lack of recolor versions of the same items in game or the general lack of cosmetic additions in game. Pin-pointing the problem is something SE could realistically make an effort to adapt to, if people are vocal enough.

[Skivvy]

CE versions and additional promotional items (minions with OST, Plushies, fan fest, etc) are a marketing deal. I can see the similarities in your comment above, but that really is a completely different beast compared to a cash shop.

I do think it could be beneficial, like you said, to focus on the specific issues as there is no way the cash shop is going away.

[Gardthorne]

I think you'll all be fine without your dumb play dead emotes. At least this forces annoying lalafells to pay for this garbage.

[Vyrerus]

My main beef with the Cash Grab is that these emotes/dresses/things are not account wide. At the bare minimum, any item that goes into the cash shop should be account wide, because if we're going to be made to pay for "extra" content, then it had better be in our hands 24/7 after that, otherwise why pay for it? Especially at such high prices.

My other beef with the Cash Grab is that there is nothing "extra" about this content. It takes time for them to develop, which means that they spend less time developing the rest of the game for regular subscribers. In other words, the quality of the game goes down, as does the value of a subscription. Every item they add to the Cash Grab is an item that could have gone towards giving me incentive to continually renew my subscription. At the rate that they are doubling down on the cash shop though, particularly with something so base as emotes, they will eventually drive away subscribers, especially if they keep on with cash shop exclusives.