Stop Making Should-Be Achievement Gear.."Optional Gear"

[Atlaworks]

Dude, OP, this is your second allcaps topic in like an hour.

Maybe you should encapsulate these thoughts a bit first. And cut down on the ellipses a little.

[JCharms]

You do realize that you don't HAVE to purchase OPTIONAL items, right? So who cares if others do? How does that concern you at all?

I am not totally anti cash shop like some others around here are, I think its fine for old event stuff and dyes for newer players to purchase, but that's a very weak argument that does not address the OP's concerns..
It would be fine to say this if those items were available in game now via achievements as well, so you had the choice of grind or buy, or if they do it like most other MMO's do and make them not bound so they could be put up on the MB and people could buy them with gil, but to put exclusive, and to some, desirable gear as cash shop only is bound to cause grievance in a subscription based game.

[Bacent]

And remember that the optional items people can purchase go to upgrading the servers among other things they work on behind the scenes. The only thing that I want, in which I have a limited time to get is Tidus' Zanarkand Abes by purchasing a stream, bleh. (Is it so wrong to want that outfit for when we swim, so I can make my provoke macro AH HA HA HA HA HA HA)

[Derio]

IMO the cash shop is the reason they were able to double the budget for Stormblood compared to the budget of Heavensward. So IMO the cash shop is perfectly fine. I can buy what I want and I dont have to buy what I dont want. Either way its supporting the game.

And I highly doubt my sub alone is enough to support the game.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That's .001% too much imo

The one thing that I've ever wanted would cost me 30$, more expensive than the game and more expensive than a full game on Steam.

To be fair, 90% of the cash shop is reskins or event items that people already had the opportunity to acquire. the other 10% is exclusive items, 50% of which is npc gear that had to be retooled to fit all of the races.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

To be fair, 90% of the cash shop is reskins or event items that people already had the opportunity to acquire. the other 10% is exclusive items, 50% of which is npc gear that had to be retooled to fit all of the races.

This is an important distinction. While some insist things in the shop should be available in game, what they often fail to realize is that it wouldn't have existed at all (for player use) if it wasn't in the shop. Retooling npc gear to fit all player races take time and resources. To recoup the investment of time and resources (and to hopefully make a small profit to boot) those items are put in the store. If there wasn't going to be a cash shop, those items would never exist for player use. Anything in the cash shop is either extra work beyond the budget of a given xpac, or made available after an event that used to award them changed.

If they couldn't put those items in the shop SE wouldnt bother investing the time and money to make them at all. So its a choice of available in the shop or not available anywhere ever.

Now that's not to say SE doesn't cheat here and there by putting old event items up that already exist and function, or recolored armor sets that already drop in game, but generally speaking, much of whats in the shop wouldn't have been made in the first place if they couldnt sell it.

[Owl_Hawk]

On the issue of cost to make these items...thats why we need to pay more for them

I totally understand your point and the effort needed to make these items...but isnt that the point of items? You are paying a sub for content of all sorts...if people have to grind these out...they will continue to sub as they need TIME to get these things ontop of the other things such as relics or whatever. I am just saying they are making enough money as it is...and will CONTINUE to make money if people are re-subbing that next month in order to get a certain item they really like....Almeric is part of Heavensward...so are the Knights of the Round...it just seems wrong that they would put this behind a cash barrier instead of making an event or achievement out of it like they did for FF13 Lightning...and ya..if you miss a limited time only item...put it on sale for those who joined game late...Cash for that is acceptable..but not new content...that is just allowing them to rip us off...we are paying them for new stuff not paying them to make stuff which we need to then pay more for ontop of our sub..this is wrong on their part...and I hope many support this thread in order to grab their attention. Or else the next thing is...Pay for raids...Pay for Optional Dungeons...Pay for Blitzball...It won't stop

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I totally understand your point and the effort needed to make these items...but isnt that the point of items? You are paying a sub for content of all sorts...if people have to grind these out...they will continue to sub as they need TIME to get these things ontop of the other things such as relics or whatever. I am just saying they are making enough money as it is...and will CONTINUE to make money if people are re-subbing that next month in order to get a certain item they really like....Almeric is part of Heavensward...so are the Knights of the Round...it just seems wrong that they would put this behind a cash barrier instead of making an event or achievement out of it like they did for FF13 Lightning...and ya..if you miss a limited time only item...put it on sale for those who joined game late...Cash for that is acceptable..but not new content...that is just allowing them to rip us off...we are paying them for new stuff not paying them to make stuff which we need to then pay more for ontop of our sub..this is wrong on their part...and I hope many support this thread in order to grab their attention. Or else the next thing is...Pay for raids...Pay for Optional Dungeons...Pay for Blitzball...It won't stop

Our subs pay for only so much. Server hosting and maintenance, employee salaries, expansion development, voice actor salaries, model artists, music writers, music performers, and the list goes on. That stuff in the Mogstation? That's EXTRA. That's stuff that costs SE above and beyond our subs which is why it would never be made in the first place if it couldn't be sold in the Mogstation. Also keep in mind that SE is a business. They aren't looking to "break even" they are looking to make a profit. If a business is not profitable investors pull out. Profit is necessary to the survival of a business. Just look what happened to a game like City of Heroes. It was profitable... but not profitable enough to stop NC Soft from shutting it down and investing those resources elsewhere.

And not for nothing, who are you to say "they are making enough money"? You don't know anything about the finances and costs of things relating to the development of this MMO. Don't make assumptions about something when you have little to no information regarding the details.

The Aymeric outfit would never have been available AT ALL if it couldn't be sold. I don't know how many ways to say that. It took time and resources to make it wearable by the various player races and yes selling a few will recoup that investment and anything beyond that is profit... but so what? SE making more from our game just proves to SE and to investors that FFXIV is a valuable property and worth maintaining and continuing to invest in for development. No one is getting ripped off. You aren't losing something because it was put in the shop, because if it wasn't in the shop it wouldn't be available at all.

Unless you have experience running an MMO, you likely have no idea what the MONTHLY expenses for maintaining our servers are. I can tell you this from personal experience... hosting a small game server (maybe 200-400 players) for development project costs us over 1,200$ a month. This isn't top tier service, but its also not trying to rely on cloud servers (which might work for bootleg private servers but won't for any real project). FFXIV monthly costs are probably hundreds of times that.

Now my project is microscopic compared to an MMO like FFXIV. The amount of players they have to be able to accommodate, the amount of employees they have to pay to keep things maintained, the scope is staggering in comparison. And that's just monthly maintenance costs. Development costs are a whole other ball of wax. As I said before, unless you have experience in MMO development of a scope similar to FFXIV or WOW, you almost certainly don't have any idea of the costs involved.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Cash for that is acceptable..but not new content...that is just allowing them to rip us off...we are paying them for new stuff not paying them to make stuff which we need to then pay more for ontop of our sub..this is wrong on their part...and I hope many support this thread in order to grab their attention. Or else the next thing is...Pay for raids...Pay for Optional Dungeons...Pay for Blitzball...It won't stop

Except here you are going from small items that dont take away from the game to hey, if you want to raid, you owe us money. This is where these arguments fall apart, because they go from 5 to 10000 instantly, when people disagree with them. Oh, you think its ok to have npc outfits be in the cash shop? well i bet you wont feel that way when they put raids and dungeons in there! That makes no sense...

[Emstidor]

We already pay extra for raids and dungeon content, they're called Heavensward and Stormblood.