The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

[yukiiyuki]

I feel like you(the OP) should just...return to WoW? I never played that game(to the baffling of most WoW 'refugees' that I've said this to), but it's always the same thing, bang on whatever aspect of FFXIV, while putting WoW in good light o_o, why are you here then?

Finally you arrived, hero of the "unsub if you don't like something". Show this plebs that this place is not for disgraceful comparing of 2 products that have same genre and business model.

[SamRF]

I feel like you(the OP) should just...return to WoW? I never played that game(to the baffling of most WoW 'refugees' that I've said this to), but it's always the same thing, bang on whatever aspect of FFXIV, while putting WoW in good light o_o, why are you here then?

I will perhaps do that soon (or go to other MMO), but I'd rather not go without giving my criticism and complaints on reasons why I'd be leaving. WoW is being compared to FFXIV because they are seen as the 2 main themepark MMOs right now with the same business model. The games are similar enough to be considered competitors to each other with how (part of) their target market are fairly similar.

I like this game btw and want it to succeed and draw in as many players as it can. Giving feedback and criticism, potentially letting the community as well as SE know what people aren't satisfied with, can help the game reach higher success.

[DBriggs304]

Explain to me then. Why doesn't WoW offer such an expansive Cash Shop as FFXIV? You're telling me blizzard/Activision won't jump at any opportunity to milk their fans?

They don't do it because they don't want to drive players away from their heavily critical playerbase that is know to complain over the slightest issues. It's business.

Wow's playerbase is far larger than here and they still milk their fans. The other elephant in the room is the aforementioned itself. For every token a player can buy, Blizzard makes more money. They made it look like they were attacking the gold sellers but all they did was become the gold sellers AND make a profit from it.

A woW sub is still $14.99/month when this went into effect. The cost of a token is $20.00. For every token they sell, they are making a profit over the traditional sub price. What also happens is, the person who paid real money to sell it to another player in game will now receive a massive amount of game currency that they otherwise may not have had or worked to acquire. Now multiply that by players who buy said tokens to cover 3 to 6 months of game time. That's INSTANT money in the coffers and vastly more than a simple cost in an extremely short amount if time... like, hours.

The purchasing player gets their time to stay in the game longer and keep buying more tokens.

The selling player spends more to buy tokens but get in game gold AND the ability to now purchase high priced items from the AH that they couldn't afford before and have killer stats (pay to win)

Blizzard...gets the money. All of it.
Every. Single. Drop.

That's greed and they mastered it long ago.

[SamRF]

Wow's playerbase is far larger than here and they still milk their fans. The other elephant in the room is the aforementioned itself. For every token a player can buy, Blizzard makes more money. They made it look like they were attacking the gold sellers but all they did was become the gold sellers AND make a profit from it.

A woW sub is still $14.99/month when this went into effect. The cost of a token is $20.00. For every token they sell, they are making a profit over the traditional sub price. What also happens is, the person who paid real money to sell it to another player in game will now receive a massive amount of game currency that they otherwise may not have had or worked to acquire. Now multiply that by players who buy said tokens to cover 3 to 6 months of game time. That's INSTANT money in the coffers and vastly more than a simple cost in an extremely short amount if time... like, hours.

The purchasing player gets their time to stay in the game longer and keep buying more tokens.

The selling player spends more to buy tokens but get in game gold AND the ability to now purchase high priced items from the AH that they couldn't afford before and have killer stats (pay to win)

Blizzard...gets the money. All of it.
Every. Single. Drop.

That's greed and they mastered it long ago.

I didn't consider the fact that they cost 5$ more than sub, so you have a good point there. Other than that, consider that WoW tokens don't generate more gold in the game (unlike additional retainers may), they move gold from one place to the other. I do hear that it can cause inflation which isn't something you'd want as players so there is that I guess. The main profit for WoW is the fact that they get most money instead of 3th party RMT sites, which I'd personally much prefer.

edit: I've edited in the fact that they cost 5$ more than sub in the original post (thanks for letting me know btw)

[Melichoir]

In terms of micro-transactions, ..... I believe I can safely claim that the FFXIV Cash Shop is indeed greedy and unnecessarily expansive.

Ok...

First, it overall doesnt matter how many items are on the cash shop. This would be like saying Costco is Greedier than Target cause Costco sells more items. The size of the store isnt really indicative of greed. But here youre making the distinction that it does matter

Then youre incorrectly comparing the availability of items themselves. Meaning, just because its on mogstation doesnt mean that would be bad. For example, A lot of these items are from previous events (which you point out) or are items you can buy in game (Dyes as an example). Which you should know as you were in that 45 page thread a month back where I had broken down the mogstation listings. You hand wave some of this by stating that WoW doesnt put previous event items on the mogstation cause 'exclusivity'. Now theres a toxic mindset if Ive ever seen one. I guess if people werent part of a previous event they shouldnt have ANY method of getting those items should they want them.
But lets look at minions real quick: If we ignore the 'exclusivity' factor and find out exactly how many only exist for Mogstation, you get 11, not 33.

Minion: Panda Cub
Minion: Doman Magpie
Minion: Wind-up Y'shtola
Minion: Wind-up Yda
Minion: Wind-up Papalymo
Minion: Wind-up Tataru
Minion: Wind-up Urianger
Minion: Wind-up Alisaie
Minion: Wind-up Yuna Account-wide)
Minion: Wind-up Lulu (Account-wide)
Minion: Wind-up Rikku (Account-wide)


This gets even funner cause some of these items are cross promotional items. An example of this is the Fenris - an item that was made for Fanfest, and then sold on the mogstation if anyone wanted it. But I guess we shouldnt take that into account cause "Exclusivity". Lets make sure people who want it cant have it if they didnt get a ticket that year.

This is also the same case that some of the glamour items, as some of them were independently commissioned for other markets and then brought to the Mogstation to allow anyone to purchase them.

Then lets talk about inventory space.... Out the gate, you get the following:

WoW:
Inventory - 5 Slots with a bag size of 32 Items...so 160 Space. You have to craft/buy these bags. Keep in mind 32 is what I could find on a google search, so if theres a larger bag, let me know.
Bank - 28 Starter Slots + 7 Bags (32 items a pop) so....252 Slots.

Total of 412 Items in a standard inventory

FFXIV
Immediate Inventory - 140
Chocobo Saddle bag - 70
Retainers - 175 x 2

Total of 560 items in standard inventory.

Now, there is an obvious caveat to all this. WoW has a better glamour system. I would very much like FFXIV to have a similar system as the current one does eat up inventory space. Now they bandaged this a little bit with the glamour dressing holding an 400 items (I think, I cant remember off the top of my head.) But you still get overflow. But looking directly at inventory space comparisons, currently FFXIV has better raw inventory space than WoW.

As for making more money, more retainers doesnt inherently mean more money. You need things to sell too. More ventures does increase that chance of rare high value items but Id have to see how that translates, cause half the time Im not sending my retainers out for Quick Explore or whatever, Im having them collect mats cause Im lazy, and your retainers arent bringing in 500k items every time. Hell, half the time I get fish.

Then lets consider those extra services, cause why not.

FFXIV's class system allows you to level only one character and get every job. The advantage of this is easier gear management, dungeon access, and increased speed between classes and flexibility in play over xpacs. Leveling isnt extremely arduous once you got a max level class because PotD, HoH, and other levelign opportunites become available. I am not aware if WoW intentionally has similar power leveling structures in its game.

WoW does not have this. Every class is an independent character. So if you want to play a new class, you level a new character from scratch without the benefit of dungeon access, gear, and the like. This is somewhat offset by Heirloom gear if you got it. Youll level faster but youll still need to go through it. Then according you to you, they charge you more for level boosts. Wonder why....Could it be they know that if you want to play another class, youll have to roll again and go through the game again to get it up to speed, so people who want to not deal with that will pay for the jump? You have less flexibility than you do in FFXIV regarding this.


But despite this all, the conclusion is SE is Greedy and Mogstation is bad!

[Halivel]

The amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead, offering them for free.

Obviously if you were to add up the price of buying whole FFXIV Cash Shop and compare it to the whole WoW Cash Shop, FFXIV's will be way more expensive.

edit: I've added the price in the OP

So you're sitting here trying to convince us that... 34 items for 595$ in Blizzard store is somehow cheaper than 54 items for 460€ (sorry, I can't check NA prices in Mog) in SE store. Erh?

You're counting attires in "full" price, I get, but it's not how it works. When you compare something, you compare same categories. Blizzard doesn't have attires section, good for them (I mean it), but looking at what you provided, if they did have this section - their store would be even more ridiculously expensive than it already is, which is most likely the only reason why they don't have it. Not to mention, how other people said it and I can only believe their info as I dropped WoW after 30 minutes of playing and didn't even open the shop, that Blizzard sells in-game currency, and not for a low price.

I am a consumer. I get spare 20$ (18€) and think "okay, wanna spoil myself and buy something cute in shop". I open Mog Station and can: buy 2 mount for 8.40€ each, or 1 mount for 8.40€ + 2 minions for 3.50€, or 1 mount for 16.80€, or 2 attires for 9€ each, or one attire for 13.50€ + 1 minion for 3.50€. Then I open Blizzard shop: I can buy... 2 minions. Wow, Blizzard certainly wins! (No it doesn't).

SE store could have less items, and lower prices, but Blizzard isn't the prince on white horse here at all, and SE isn't the greedy one among these two to say least, as much as both companies are down for more money.

[LittleImp]

It actually does, its just not all in one place



Do explain why the mogstation is "scummy" and yet any other games cash shop isn't. This isn't about defending SE, this is just about people never including their favorite game because they can't be unbiased when making a post. Just about any game on the market no matter the genre has some form of a cash shop, or battle pass, or season pass to get more money.

Does it suck? Yes, very much so. I remember when you bought a game, it was a full game. Now you pay full price for half a game and the rest over installments.

Will it ever go away? Not likely.

The TLDR -- Get over it

You want me to explain a point I literally never made? lmao. I never drew a comparison to other games in my post.

Cash shops in general are scummy, ergo the cash shop here is also scummy. This one hurts a little more because the game bears a monthly subscription, as opposed to most cash-shops (particularly ones with p2w aspects like retainers) in free-to-play or buy-to-play games.

Telling consumers not to offer criticisms of products and business practices isn't constructive at all. Developers and publishers do listen to backlash over stuff like this. Heck, consumer complaints have lead to countries taking legislative action against certain business practices in the gaming market, not that this issue is one that would warrant it.

[Eldevern]

...

I have several retainers and in my experience, it doesn't make a very big advantage to make gils.

You get more items while gathering in twenty minutes if you are HL with the token gears obtained with custom deliveries.
To craft many items, it doesn't look better. Token gears we get with custom deliveries are more than enough.

Many expensive items are in fact the ones you get with FC ventures (aeronef and submarine) or while running high levels in PotD/HoH or Treasure Map and their hidden dungeons or sometimes Eureka items.

Tribes materials are more interesting than one item every week (if lucky) that needs Ixals items and some hippogrif leather.

If you want to sell a high price it remains on the retainer for ages.

The P2W side of the retainer is really subjective and not conclusive in reality.

[SamRF]

---

You make some valid points here.

This isn't an argument against you but rather opinion: overall me and I'm sure many others will still be much more frustrated by simply looking at the sheer size of FFXIV Cash Shop (page upon page) and then comparing it with the WoW store, which might be the equivalent of a single Mog Station page. As I've stated before the amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead (thus "for free").

As for exclusive items, that may be the case for minions but for mounts by far most were never available in game. I'm sure same goes for glamours (non seasonal), of which there are 0 in the WoW Cash Shop.

Further comment on seasonal and limited items (my opinion):

While I don't mean to be too much of a nag, I do dislike the fact that Seasonals can be bought form the Cash Shop. Part of what would be special and interesting about (seasonal) events is the fact that you can get items which will be unobtainable and exclusive whoever did the event at the time (or when it returns). The fact that these items simply become available in the Cash Shop takes a way a lot of the appeal (and immersion?) to me. It's no longer something you want for exclusivity, but rather just to save money.

In other games there are very often Cash Shop items offered for a limited time, because they know people like the exclusivity of having an item that is no longer available.

[Melichoir]

This isn't an argument against you but rather opinion: overall me and I'm sure many others will still be much more frustrated by simply looking at the sheer size of FFXIV Cash Shop (page upon page) and then comparing it with the WoW store, which might be the equivalent of a single Mog Station page.

The primary hang up youre getting is youre saying "Bigger is Badder". Just cause SE sells more items on that store doesnt mean its inherently more greedy, and then to take into account that theyre offering us the player the ability to get items we may not have had the chance to get from previous events. Theyre giving us options, which WoW doesnt. Exclusivity be damned IMO. One of my favorite glamour pieces is from the halloween event a year or two ago. If I missed it, but I wanted it, I could get it from mog station. If we had WoW's model, tough luck/so sad/sucks to suck. That is crap IMO, and some WoW players have said as much, as if youve been on the WoW forums, the argument for Blizz to sell items from previous events crops up from time to time.

You also seem to end up shooting your own argument in the foot here? Excluding anything mog station specific - when you say the following:

As I've stated before the amount matters more because WoW may have decided to offer many of potential Cash Shop items ingame instead.

A vast majority of actual tangible items in the mogstation are from previous in game events. They gave us the items for free at first, and gave a method to acquire those items down the line as they gave us new items for the following year. WoW is giving you holiday items at holidays...then thats it. How is that a better system? All WoW's system ultimately does is promote the idea for people to stay subscribed just so they can get holiday event items. Atleast with SE, if I decide not be subbed, I can get the item at some later time.

As for mounts - Most of the mounts on the mogstation are reskins (Magitek Armors), 'commissions' (Nehzu or Fenris), or pre-existing models (Sleipnir). There are only..8ish (?) mounts that are unique in both design and availability.

Carbuncle - Red/Yellow
Whale Mount
Spriggan
Carpet
Red Hare (I think someone mentioned this is a reskin, but double check that)
Fat Moogle
Bennu

Now you can say this is arguably bad, but I think its prudent to take into context how this factors out. For a big point, what mounts are we being offered in game at the same time? Phoenix, Kirin, Omega Mount, Korperger (green mossball), Tortoise, etc etc. There are a ton of mounts you can get in game that are easily higher quality than the ones I listed. WoW has, or had if theyve changed it, a problem where a vast sum of their mounts are simply just a reskin. Now this isnt to say FFXIV doesnt have a lot of reskinned mounts (EX mounts) but that they offer a ton of pretty well put together and varied mounts, and provide mounts to us for free on events (Witch Mount, Santa Bear, 4 Seater car), or even some uniqueness to the mounts such as those EX mounts while palette swaps do play the boss music which is nice.

That is a subjective thing in sense of personal preference, but I think here when you start comparing 1:1, its not so cut and dry.

The hurdle to your position to convince people like me is to show me that somehow SE is fleecing us and diverting attention from the game to the mogstation. I dont see evidence of this, as the overall quality of the game is pretty good, and most of whats on the mogstation I have 0 interest in as I have better things in game already.