The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

[Melichoir]

You're right, WoW's characters are their own character with their own class and you have to level them all separately; Just as you have to level jobs individually in FFXIV.

While you award easier leveling to XIV through PotD and HoH (Which frankly are mind numbing ways to level), you conveniently leave out the fact that there is no hard-locked main story for WoW characters to play through, they are able to level their new characters as they wish; through questing or through dungeons; They also get their own possible 412 slots of inventory (giving one main and one alt character a combined inventory of 824) while my XIV character retains her hardlocked 560 inventory slots.

I didnt mention having alts for storage for a specific reason, but if we want to do go this route... A sub for wow is $15, a single character sub on FFXIV is 13. If you do the $15 one, you get 8 per world. This ends up distorting the whole inventory argument because now its about managing alts and the like. You got to mail things to your alts in WoW for them to have access. Now while you can do this directly, if youre gonna talk about using alts and the like for extra inventory, then all you need is a friend to hold stuff as the go between instead of a mailbox. Little bit more effort, but doesnt stop you from abusing a full account.

Of course an easier method than this, if you got the gil and been at this a while, is to own an FC and transfer items via the FC vault. Though I do wonder if you were to purchase additional retainers, does that retainer limit increase across all alts?

Speaking of WoW, yes this was a common thing everyone did because rather than crafting high end bags, it was easier to create a bank alt and just mail them everything. Which tends to lead me to think that WoW itself has issues with inventory size. But as I said, this has been an MMO thing since the beginning.

And you have an odd way of rationalizing the differences of new character from new jobs. In both WoW and XIV, you don't have access to the same dungeons as you do on your higher level, they become available as you reach the level to do them; only the difference with WoW is that there is no 30 step quest to open the dungeon, you simply have access to X dungeon when you hit X level (main character or not). You also have access to all of your mounts, and normally the heirloom mount that is accessible from level 1; And while you did mention the heirlooms briefly, you failed to mention that heirloom gear levels with you so you do not need to continually purchase new gear along with increasing all xp gains. Blizzard has also continually retuned xp required to level, and is further streamlining the leveling process for Shadowlands.

I have leveled several characters in WoW and several jobs in xiv, and from a 1:1 comparison between time spent and grind needed, WoW has a much smoother leveling experience than a secondary job in XIV.

I came from WoW initially, and leveled a few alts on both horde and alliance side. So Im familiar with WoWs leveling models.

Now, unless theyve made changes, Heirloom gear is not free. In fact, it was quite expensive to get. Of course Gold buying, inflation, and other factors may have made this obsolete, but then youre looking at buying power with money. But I digress. Conversely, I can get mostly ilvl 120 gear with 2000 poetics at lvl 50, which is easy to get if you have that level 80. That gear will currently last you to 60, where you can replace it with 270. Now if I plan on leveling every class at the very same time, yeah Heirloom works out better, but that method of leveling is fairly unorthodox.

The crux of your point though is that compared to FFXIV which has an MSQ that you have to pass through once on the first play through, WoW doesnt, so it is 'easier'. In that regards, yeah, youre right. You dont have to read a single quest in WoW. You can smash that quest accept, kill boars, and go collect rewards til your an appropriate level, then sit in SW or Org, and just queue for dungeons and never have to see anything else in the game til your up to current xpac. Now for your first play through, Im not 100% sure why you would do this, and most people I remember who get into WoW actually read the quests and play the world content. If you want to argue Choice Vs Design, then maybe FFXIV isnt for you as the FF series has always revolved around a strong linear central story, where WoW it is irrelevant if you exist or not. You arent the hero in WoW, just a hero. You can skip Northrend completely and go to MoP and everything plays out the same. I wouldnt call this method of interacting with the game as a positive personally. When I play an MMO, I want a good story, and the advantage or disadvantage wow suffers from is you can easily out level the content you are interested in. You can sit there and read it and get no exp, or skip past it. But this point is more a thing of personal tastes. Point though is the MSQ itself has its trouble spot which is being addressed as we speak. So beyond that, the MSQ isnt treated as a detriment to most players (with exception to 2.1-2.55) on their first play through. It is a feature. It may have flaws, but this is a personal choice of what you want to sacrifice for it.

When it comes to levling your primary first time through, FFXIVs msq is more efficient. Itll take you everywhere, give you story, and level you appropriately. WoW youre left to kind of pick and choose, over level, and stories get left behind unless you want to complete that quest chain even if it doesnt give you exp. Two different approaches to the initial experience. For Alts, Unless you have stashed cash for Heirloom, you gotta grind and deal with equipment problems which are more difficult to overcome in WoW. If you got that heirloom, strap it on, lvl to necessary dungeon level, sit in org, have queues. Its not much different than PotD in that regards, but at least things like PotD was semi designed for the purpose of leveling alts.

[Halivel]

Though I do wonder if you were to purchase additional retainers, does that retainer limit increase across all alts?

As somebody with additional retainers and an alt: yes.

They aren't character specific, they are account-wide, so if you buy let's say 2 additional retainers, and have 1 main character and 1 alt, it means that you can have access to 8 retainers in amount (2 free and 2 paid for each).

[Melichoir]

With the WoW token system, the gold is already in the economy; To gather that much money as to afford a token, you would have to actively play the market board (either adding new items or relisting items) and the money that is already in the system simply is gathered in one place before being used to purchase the token from a player, who will then use that same gold to purchase more things from that market board.

Adding more gold to the econ doesn't inherently mean anything other than straight inflation, which sucks for newer players as they got a higher price point to deal with without the means to overcome it. Gold additions only matter when gold is tied to in game power. Which it is more so in WoW. So Blizzard being the middle man to facilitate gold trades between a player where the trade value is cash for Gold, its softly assisting in P2W. As a point - If Im a new player, and I can buy those month sub tokens and sell them for 1000 gold a pop (I dunno what its value is so Im just throwing a number out), Im gonna have a much easier time in the game than a guy who doesnt spend cash on that. I can buy gear, bags, etc and have a lot more ease than the guy who doesnt. Doesnt matter if Blizzard is doing it or a Gold Seller, Im getting an advantage over the guy who doesnt spend cash. It's not a straight exchange of course. Blizzard isnt selling me an epic for money thats BIS, but theyre making it easier to have rares and decent gear if I got the money.

That being said, their method will slow down inflation though. But to fix the inflation issue, they need to pull money out of the economy - meaning they need to have players buy things from NPCs, or be taxed in some capacity that is meaningful.

As somebody with additional retainers and an alt: yes.

They aren't character specific, they are account-wide, so if you buy let's say 2 additional retainers, and have 1 main character and 1 alt, it means that you can have access to 8 retainers in amount (2 free and 2 paid for each).

Hmm didnt know this. That means the more alts, the bigger bang for your buck you get for additional retainers so long as you a means to transfer items effectively.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

The bennu is a reskin of the zu mount, obtainable in game.

[Morningstar1337]

FTR i'm fine with the cash shop and its wares (even bought a few) but the question remains of would the game change beyond a visual level without these items.

For the most part. Yes they would, people can live without Scion minions, Carbuncle mounts or Fairy Queen dresses, but then there are the few that do change the experience, namely the additional retainers, which does mean that there is something of tangible value that you can buy there, there are also borderline cases like the Fantaisas, server transfers and renaming.

Also regarding WoW's unrerunable exclusives. FFXIV does has those, but as bonus to merchandiser like art books and plush toys, and those are on a timed basis. Make of that what you will.

[Liam_Harper]

I think the "greediest" thing about the cash shop in ff14 is how little is actually put into ff14 itself. The Dev team are very stretched on resources lately and have a fairly small budget for this game while the mogstation money is being funneled into other projects like the ff7 remake.

If I choose to pay for extra vanity items, I'd prefer it to be a sign of support for that game and the developers who make it.

[Catwho]

I think the "greediest" thing about the cash shop in ff14 is how little is actually put into ff14 itself. The Dev team are very stretched on resources lately and have a fairly small budget for this game while the mogstation money is being funneled into other projects like the ff7 remake.

If I choose to pay for extra vanity items, I'd prefer it to be a sign of support for that game and the developers who make it.

My understanding was that it is the opposite - the FFXIV team gets to keep the majority of the cash shop money, but it's the regular subscriptions that are sucked into the mega budget by the SE overlords to fund other development.

[SamRF]

My understanding was that it is the opposite - the FFXIV team gets to keep the majority of the cash shop money, but it's the regular subscriptions that are sucked into the mega budget by the SE overlords to fund other development.

This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

edit: some seem to misundestand what I'm saying here. I never doubted the fact that SE uses FFXIV money to fund other projects (I've said this in several posts before and have even defended SE for doing this in another thread). It's the distinction that I'm talking about (Cash Shop goes to game while Sub money goes to other projects).

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

This just sounds way too convenient.. pay to have access, but to actually support the game you need to pay for additional items.. right.

In the unlikely event that this is actually true, they're much better off never saying this. It's imo terrible PR and makes SE look very scummy (and disingenuous).

Why? Money any company makes from 1 service is going to be used to fund all projects a company has. They don't generally segregate funds other than via budget.

WoW funded most blizzard titles. All the cash shop stuff from over watch funds wow. Etc.

[SamRF]

Why? Money any company makes from 1 service is going to be used to fund all projects a company has. They don't generally segregate funds other than via budget.

WoW funded most blizzard titles. All the cash shop stuff from over watch funds wow. Etc.

I don't doubt that money FFXIV makes will go to other projects (as it should, only makes sense). It's the distinction that Sub money mainly goes to other projects while Cash Shop mainly goes into supporting the game. This makes no sense, why make such distinction between revenue streams? Sounds like a way too convenient way of promoting Cash Shop sales. Even if it does make sense in some way I'm not aware of and it's actually true, we have no way of knowing it for sure so all it does for me is make SE look like cheap Cash Shop promoters while also taking away their credibility.