Stop with the pay to win advanages for retainers, suggestions on fixes

[Reynhart]

Wtf do you think "app currency means"? and the fact there is no direct explanation how get them? please.. think for once... i know it is hard...
nuts are the log in bonus, not the COINS.

I don't know, my mother uses a puzzle app where you gain currencies by doing more puzzles...

In FFXI Grandmaster, you gain currencies by killing NMs...

In Terra Battle, you gain coins from quests...

[Vstarstruck]

I'm omnicrafter before doing any PVE. I'm clearly P2W.

No you are not, want to know how someone that makes posts where crafting is the main and pretty much only thing:

An apology first, most of what you asked for is tied up in emotion from me. As such, it is a bit long.

For me, most of my enjoyment from this game is from crafting and selling stuff. I can’t tell you the last time I even ran a dungeon. My goal isn’t to clear savage or ultimate, it’s crafting and making some money from that.

People with more retainers have more access to retainer goods than someone without them. At the start of SB, Manzasiri Hair and Halgsi Mane were needed for many items and were not well stocked since they were monster drops. Crafting anything using those was very expensive and only possible in very limited quantities. As an example, to make just 1 of each item that used them, you would need about 350 of each. That quantity was simply unavailable, you couldn’t buy it with all the money. Someone could get like 5-7 of them from their retainers per hour. A person with 8 retainers could get like 20-28 of each per hour versus 5-7 of each per hour with 2 retainers. If your only goal is to make items and sell them, having the ability to make and sell things quicker is a huge advantage, you beat the undercutting rush and saturation that comes later. People with more retainers can sell more items since they have more slots open to sell things. If you craft a lot, it’s very easy to fill 2 retainers and then you are stuck until something sells.

An enhanced ability to undercut all day, every day is an advantage from the Moogle coins. When new crafted gear is released in a patch, it is a race to the bottom. If someone has the app and wants to spend the money, they can control a segment of the marketboard and make it significantly harder to compete. Yes, selling stuff on the marketplace can be a competition of sorts. Yes, people can do this now, but it is a bit limited. This cannot be controlled by anyone and everyone during the day when many people are at work or school or whatever. That changes with the app. We now have 100% access to 100% of the marketboard 100% of the time. But only if we pay SE extra.

If I can’t sell the things I make, Or I have to sell at a significant loss, my enjoyment, my winning per se, is damaged. If I cannot do what I enjoy, I would probably have to leave the game at that point because my enjoyment has been put out of my reach unless I do the same as the people with the app. They get more materials than I do from their retainers and they can manipulate market prices much more than I can. They have won on the ability to make and sell things that I may want to participate in.


I’m sure you or others or many people will find some semantic or nuance or whatever to pick me apart with. Go for it.

End of the day, this has the ability to affect me in ways that I don’t want. It may not affect you at all, and that’s ok.

This is how. I know it is rare to find people that only care about crafting, and so far I only know of Istaru, myself, maybe Tridus, and ..:

I am getting sick of SE putting a price tag ontop of things you're already paying for. I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to have the mogstation by any means and I'm glad if that money can be funneled back into the game in order to increase its quality. However, over time I'm beginning to see more and more items added directly to the mogstation with no way to earn it in-game. The prices keep increasing by ridiculous amounts (seriously, $12 USD for that stupid mega flare? What?) and all the while, I'm not seeing any drastic improvements to the game that I wouldn't have expected them to do by default in the first place. Where are the better graphics? Where are the quality of life changes? Why can I still not search FC's in a list to decide which I want to apply for? Why can I not choose a minimum price before aetheryte tickets are consumed? Why do I not have enough space for all of my gear despite already paying for additional retainers? Why can't I put mogstation items in the armoire? Why was the glamour dresser this convoluted system rather than a SIMPLE and easy to use system that we had been asking for? Why do textures still look like shit? Why can I only pick between FOUR preset face options for my character? Why can't I change the eye color of my character at the aesthetician despite them saying initially before it was released that we'd be able to? And why can Aura change their limbal ring color if eye color is too "far fetched" to be changed (contacts though?)? Why is Eureka so damn buggy?

And now, you're telling me that on top of all of this.... On top of paying for the base game, expansions, monthly sub and overpriced mogstation items... they want to add in microtransactions for a mobile app that will give those who pay the monthly fee to use it an advantage over those who dont? I'm getting so fed up with this. I LOVE crafting. I LOVE "market board PVP". You already have to pay extra every MONTH for additional retainers if you really want to be relevant in that and now there's this...?? Ugh.

Did I mention that they also have symphonies and an overpriced themed Eorzea Cafe which makes them a lot of money?

I have so much respect for the development team. Seriously, if you look into the history of this MMO it is by far the most fascinating history of any MMO to date. What they did was miraculous and I have nothing but respect for them and I think they deserve to make money off this game but come on. This is reaching EA levels of gross. Does SE really want to have the kind of backlash that EA has been subjected to lately???? They are spending too much time and money on these cash grabs than they are on the game itself and I'm getting really disheartened. At this point it's beginning to feel like a F2P...but it's not. :/

When the mogstation was first released, I was a bit angry. But I understood that this game had initially cost the company a lot of money and strife so I accepted it. And it's just the way the world works today, so fair enough. But now? Square, I'd rather pay $20 a month to have access to everything than to keep this cashgrab bullshit going on.

(Now that I think of this, it may be possible there is a crafter focused player here on the forums who wants this app released for the full market control power, ofc they will not say it. I do know someone with the capability on discord anyway, just debating not to due to moral grounds. Does she do it to show SE it is a problem? or does not because she eels exploiting people is wrong? both routes have good moral standing for the end means, since these forums is ignored anyway by SE, showing them may be the only way to show it is a problem.)

I bet you are like most saying you are an "omnicrafter" just because you got all craft to 70, that doesn't show anything. second, just because you are able to omicraft (spending tons of red scripts or having 3 chrs) does not show how much you use your crafts and how much time you spend crafting.

I don't know, my mother uses a puzzle app where you gain currencies by doing more puzzles...

k? you made a post with no point. They told you how you gain currencies, the kupo NUT with log in bonuses, since it was stated the way it was, COINS are ONLY IRL money buyable.

If this is not the case, this is a big failure on their part in knowing how to communicate.

[Friske]

Let me ask you this question. Lets pretend either of us is a omni crafter, who makes more money than the other. Then we also say the omni crafter has less inventory space and retainers than the person who is not, who make more gil? If you think making gil is pay to win, go for it, but it's not. It doesn't effect your pve battles or pvp. This game is highly based on pve. Where does gil get involved into that? You need to explain that in a very constructive way and explain in details how it's giving you wins in pve. 1 2 3 go!

What if PVE or PVP aren’t your focus in this game? Then what?

Absolutely agree with you. It's ok to have a preference in the sort of content you as an individual enjoy. And just as there's people who prioritise PvE and extract their enjoyment out of reaching the highest dps possible, there's also people who love piecing together perfect glamours, housing decorations, and focus more on crafting and building up their cash stack. It becomes a problem however, when people insist that 1 element trumps another in blatant disregard to what other people might prefer.
This is magnified even further with Yoshida flat out saying that he considers this game a themepark MMO with the intention of appealing to a vast variety of people. This is why there's gameplay elements that span from PvE to PvP, to gathering and crafting, to the personalisation of your appearance, the list goes on.

There's been a common trend that the importance of PvE content is set on a higher pedestal in comparison to other gameplay elements, which I suspect is why people don't seem to understand how extra inventory slots or extra retainers impact the game. But if they'd just consider how the game is enjoyed from many different perspectives, then maybe they'd be able to recognise how important it is to protect other areas of the game from the clutch of 'irl monetary advantage' shenanigans.

[illgot]

5 dollars a month is well worth the price only for a more streamlined UI where you can accept ventures and send off retainers with one click.

I wish SE could redesign the in game interface but I have doubts that will ever happen.

The retainer, inventory and ability to buy and sell are a bonus but are not going to change a lot for me.

[Odstarva]

We are all players who love this game, I don't understand why some of you feel the need to defend a corporation that never did anything for you.

Make no mistake, the people responsible for introducing these money mechanics aren't your friends.

By defending these ideas on the principle that "I love this game, it can do no wrong" or "I don't see the issue because it doesn't affect me personally" or even "it benefits a minority of which I am a part of" won't make the game more popular, or thrive and survive longer - that's up to all of us. And a great portion of us has issues with these pay-wall schemes.
Can you not understand that?

[aesteval]

5 dollars a month is well worth the price only for a more streamlined UI where you can accept ventures and send off retainers with one click.

We don't know for certain that is a feature. The premium features are currently ambiguous.

[Ceallach]

We are all players who love this game, I don't understand why some of you feel the need to defend a corporation that never did anything for you.

Make no mistake, the people responsible for introducing these money mechanics aren't your friends.

By defending these ideas on the principle that "I love this game, it can do no wrong" or "I don't see the issue because it doesn't affect me personally" or even "it benefits a minority of which I am a part of" won't make the game more popular, or thrive and survive longer - that's up to all of us. And a great portion of us has issues with these pay-wall schemes.
Can you not understand that?

I mean, I tend to either defend or stand against things based on moral absolutes, but sure, I guess...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

We are all players who love this game, I don't understand why some of you feel the need to defend a corporation that never did anything for you.

Make no mistake, the people responsible for introducing these money mechanics aren't your friends.

By defending these ideas on the principle that "I love this game, it can do no wrong" or "I don't see the issue because it doesn't affect me personally" or even "it benefits a minority of which I am a part of" won't make the game more popular, or thrive and survive longer - that's up to all of us. And a great portion of us has issues with these pay-wall schemes.
Can you not understand that?

To be fair, I would say the overwhelming majority dislike the companion app. Where opinions differ is what qualifies as "Pay to Win". Some argue, while admittedly scummy, nothing yet reaches that status. Others point to Moogle Coins are the proverbial back breaking moment and yet other group claims even retainers themselves are Pay to Win. It's a matter of where your definition lies.

[Ceallach]

Do you even craft? It's not that exactly easy to sell high ticket items.

My post comes from experience as a crafter in this game for 4 years now. I was doing endgame crafting within 1 month of me starting the game. Selling items can be a pain, and only the most competitive succeed.

People push others out of markets all the time, either due to cheap goods or so much stock that you can't possibly compete.

Having more gil and more retainers have a huge impact on these aspects.

I've been wanting to get into crafting for a long time, but I find myself thinking I shouldn't.

[illgot]

We don't know for certain that is a feature. The premium features are currently ambiguous.

oh, skimming through this thread made it seem like it was already stated a more streamlined UI was available for the app.

lets hope it's not clicking 10 times just to accept and resend your retainer.