More and more microtransactions

[kikix12]

To get the "full" FFXIV experience, one only needs to play the game. There is no "extra" cost for any quest or dungeon instance. Your subscription pays for all of that.

No. Full experience means full experience, as in being able to do all the same things as everyone else, in the same way. If you can do something once a week but another person can pay to do it twice, then you are not getting the full experience.

Retainers are part of the full experience because they have a very practical and important functionality. Even aside from crafting, they allow significant storage space, ventures, the feeling of "owning" them and probably also the spawning of them in housing (dunno whether this applies above the original two or not, but I think it does).

Similarly glamour, and that includes mounts, are part of full experience. Collectibles are a thing, you know. If you cannot complete your collection without paying, you're not going to get the full experience. If you cannot make the look you want, while someone else can, you're not getting the full experience. GLAMOUR IS PART OF THE GAME.

What would not interfere with "full" is things like increased experience items, cost reductions on teleportations and similar things that affect the time something not daily/weekly/monthly limited is done. If done within reason.


Now, one can discuss whether it's fine to offer optional glamour in the item mall. My stance is that...no. It's not. Either the sub or the optional item mall. I can understand only time-savers, like the jump potions or experience boosts. Alternatively options to redo mistakes on players errors, like restoring a deleted character or discarded item. Things that affect the game but are not part of it. Of course, all kinds of merchandise are fair game, so they can sell however many figurines, plushies, shirts and what they have as they want, it's fair game. So long as there is no bundled in-game feature in them...but there often is...for the highest-cost items to boot.


Square Enix always had a shady business model, but very good games from gameplay perspectives. And it's a real shame, because them having good games means they can continue doing the crap they do and they'll still get income instead of going down-under like any shoddy company should. But hey...people literally ask for stuff to throw money at...so what are the chances of that changing?! Keh.

[Aylis]

No. Full experience means full experience, as in being able to do all the same things as everyone else.

Retainers are part of the full experience because they have a very practical and important functionality. Even aside from crafting

Yeeeeeeep.

When I said originally "the full experience" I look at it as can you do the bare basics the game has to offer completely unhindered by micro-transactions and paying more a month to accomplish these things. I didn't look at things like glamor, mounts or minions originally. Even if they're part of the game, those are subjective to the individual person, but they do wrap up into things as I'll explain in a bit. The basics of the game being.

Story and leveling and questing
End game activities such as dungeons and raids
Crafting and gathering
Auction house use
Playing multiple classes.

Story and leveling and questing: Can you take full advantage of it unhindered? Yes.
End game activities, dungeons and raids: Can you take full advantage of it unhindered? Yes.
Crafting and gathering: Can you take full advantage of it unhindered? No, not without needing extra retainers
Auction House use: Can you take full advantage of it unhindered? No, not without needing extra retainers due to increased selling capacities. Not to mention the extra ventures.
Playing multiple classes: Can you take full advantage of it unhindered? No, not without needing extra retainers.

On the subject of minions, mounts and glamor being subjective to the person. That was once the case. However once they started adding in things like Lord of Vermillion and Fashion Report to the basics of what the game has to offer. I'm expecting mounts to be a thing later too in this category. Now minions and glamor have taken a different turn to being something more then just cosmetics. Now there's a push now too there to use cash shop for minions, glamor and dyes as well as needing to rent out more retainers to hold this all.

*Edit*

I forgot to include housing in this, another in game basic function which offers key things like gardening, workshop, exploratory missions etc. Another thing that basically forces players into omni-crafting. In terms to afford one, maintain one, decorate one and use them to their fullest. Which loops back to what I said about needing all those retainers for storage and selling to play the auction house game, Just for the sake of peace of mind so as to not worry about being screwed over by other players. The game itself does enough of a good job with this for housing. Keep logging in and keep paying that sub or else auto-reclamation does its thing and all you worked for is gone.

[Kaliesto]

I agree with you Hestzhyen, I've been a long time fan of Square Enix Games but I'm not a blind fanboy. Lately their business culture has really started to be exposed over the many long years, they just kept it hidden very well until lately. There is a reason they don't want outsiders looking into their business because they know something reeks of Malboro Breath. To me this is more than their just their Final Fantasy series, but what they have been doing lately to their long buried games and other games they don't give two bolts about.

They can create a wonderful game if they really wanted to do so, I'm not blaming the Developers on this but who is running the show above them because they don't understand gaming, all they care about is their bottom line (Fun or not) and unfortunately this has been a inconvenient but accepted truth today for almost any gaming studio or corporation. Though I would be disappointed if they have a few developers in their ranks that were not doing the right thing.

[MilanFrozen]

I already don't like the fact that in a sub based game I have to pay for many of the better looking items. If there was a way to earn them in game I'd be totally fine with it or if they were seasonal and you could only pay if you missed them but I abhor how some items you can only get from the damn store.

[Astral145]

This and several other reasons is why I already dropped sub. Im done with FFXIV and SE altogether. I think I'll go play Ni No Kuni 2 which btw looks like a lot of fun. I absolutely love Level 5 games... my all time fave was White Knight Chronicles 2 online.... I really miss that game.... any who FFXIV is pretty much going F2P soon enough. I might as well pack my bags now and jump ship before the storm hits.

[KisaiTenshi]

Am I the only one who abandoned f2p games to pay for a sub because sub games didn't have microtransactions? And now sub games are being flooded with microtransactions, more so this game has long surpassed WoW in terms of microtransactions.

I quit playing F2P games (other than The Simpsons Tapped Out, which I've spent less than $50 in the last 5 years on, it's what I play on transit) almost entirely because those stupid games cost upwards of 100$/mo to stay ahead of the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) race. But it needs to be said that while many of the indie games need a source of revenue (it costs them $100 just to have the game on an app store, so that can cost them $1000/yr just to put out a free game) the large gaming companies can recoup that revenue from an actual subscription. Ad revenue basically hit the pavement like a watermelon last year, thanks to google effectively showing it's hand that it puts paying ads on garbage and earns money from doing so, so many advertisers have been dropping "algorithm" based advertising in favor of direct sponsorship (eg where the ad is baked into the content in some shape.)

So ask yourselves, would you willingly pay for this app once? Would you be willing to use this app for free if you had to sit through a 15 second Pepsi commercial each time you return from AFK?

Micropayments have been the other side of this coin. Some micropayments make sense when they are tied directly into a resource consumed. Hence a subscription to a game makes sense in lieu of nickel-and-dime payments for things like staying at the inn, or phoenix down, or being revived at an aetheryte (all things that many other P2W MMORPG games do.) Other games make you pay for dying clothes, changing your appearance, even having any options to your appearance (eg cash shop outfits, never available in the game in any form.)

Which is why some of the mog shop stuff is worrying. If we keep buying stuff from the cash shop, they will keep taking more out of the game and put it in the shop like they have with DLC for their single player games. Some of this is outright madness.

[MrSmiley]

We get more and more added to mg shop yet holidays don't give us any gear anymore... huh.

[Derio]

I hope they are investing the money into the next expansion, because lets be honest here. HW>SB

[Nitblade]

My Beef is that they still try to call those MICRO-transactions

MICRO
adjective
1. extremely small.
2. minute in scope or capability.
noun, plural micros.
5. anything extremely small in scope or capability.

When the great Majority of items are more costly then 1 month of sub they lost the right to call them that, now just use the right term

MACRO-
1. a combining form meaning “large,” “long,” “great,” “excessive,” used in the formation of compound words, contrasting with micro-: macrocosm; macrofossil; macrograph; macroscopic.

[Alucard135]

It's really frustrating when a P2P game can't offer a lot more than F2P games. You have all these "Macro"transactions, have to monthly pay for additional stuff, game's infested with bots, and the app premium BS (don't get me started on how botters will abuse the app).
What's really more frustrating is when a B2P game like GW2 offers almost the same things without these Macrotransactions. You have additional stuff for a one time payment, new content every now and then, a wardrobe log system, multi dye for a single piece (Once you obtain a dye, you have it permanently. You don't need to buy it over and over again to use it). So why can't we get more than that if we're paying a monthly sub?? Oh, I totally forgot that the answer is "PS3 limitations".

Imagine what would happen if FFXIV switched to F2P model...