This is just appalling

[Neophyte]

That is literally incentivizing them to develop expansions...
And that is literally incentivizing them to develop content updates. Mechanics... Systems... Animations... Items... All content.

SE orders them to develop expansions and they pay for it. With their own money.
It's not your money anymore, nor do you have a contract with them about what it has to be used for.
And it's up to SE to make sure that enough people buy the expansion and buy playtime to make their money back and as much extra money as they think they need to do whatever they want. Therefore they pay for content (updates).

If it's not enough content for you, it's up to you to quit. But has ammount of free content really changed?

Our subs fund content.
That's how money works.
They don't throw the bank notes into an incinerator once the sub ticks over.

You pay your sub to play the game. From the point they have your money and you can connect to the server and play the content for your paid days, you're even.
They don't own you anything beside making you able to connect to servers and play whatever content they want to give you.
You don't have to decide about (now) their money. And they don't have to decide about your playtime anymore (unless User Agreements you agreed to allow that).

[Rieze_Xeero]

To be honest I am a little bit disappointed on this. I remember when Yoshida and he's team are rebuilding the game and they promised that they will listen to the player base (hence the forums) and they are doing it out of passion and love for the brand. Right now, for some reason I am not seeing that same drive they had before. Every new patch, I feel I'm missing something but I really can't explain it hahaha. When the game got bigger, they become greedy somehow. My response to this cash shop items is I won't buy it if I don't need it. You really cannot get everything in an MMO anyway it's just that I'm missing something from SE, the passion they had from 1.0 to 2.0. I hope Stormblood will be great. I will keep supporting this game and SB please be good.

Note: I understand the OP and I too feel the outfits are overpriced. Welcome to the new age of gaming (I miss the old days were there are no DLCs or PreOrders) sigh~

[Roda]

SE orders them to develop expansions and they pay for it. With their own money.
It's not your money anymore, nor do you have a contract with them about what it has to be used for.
And it's up to SE to make sure that enough people buy the expansion and buy playtime to make their money back and as much extra money as they think they need to do whatever they want. Therefore they pay for content (updates).

If it's not enough content for you, it's up to you to quit. But has ammount of free content really changed?

No because there's no free content that is relevant to me I pay for everything I access with my sub and box purchase. The subscription and account still has a value after the purchase has been made it's not a free game.

You pay your sub to play the game. From the point they have your money and you can connect to the server and play the content for your paid days, you're even.
They don't own you anything beside making you able to connect to servers and play whatever content they want to give you.
You don't have to decide about (now) their money. And they don't have to decide about your playtime anymore (unless User Agreements you agreed to allow that).

Also we're talking about potential money here, the value of a subscriber is different from that of a store's customer. It's why this game isn't buy to play.
They expect my continued support, and hey guess what, that's my money still. Any with the moving of new skins out from events and content updates, and into large out of game purchases, I am now guaranteed to cancel my sub until major patches because now I have even less to do in the game, less to work on, and thus the value of that subscribed month is worth less while still costing ever more. Therefore, SE will be getting less of "my" money.