The FFXIV Cash Shop is greedy

[Catwho]

The botters are more than just an occasional annoyance, as they hack their way through the game en masse.

They also break the game sometimes. I couldn't get into Amdapor Keep to run it as a solo instance the other day, then I remembered that this happened before when there were thousands of bots clogging up the instance because it's a really fast and lazy way to level a bunch of black mages (which is what most bots are because they are so simple to program.)

I mean, I wanted to go into it because it was a fast and lazy way to finish the light farm part of my anima dagger, but for any new players who genuinely needed that dungeon for story completion purposes, it would suck to not be able to get into the instance due to the RMT clogging it up.

I can't blame RMT for doing what they do via automated means - it's indoor work with no heavy lifting, and if I was a young adult in China or wherever and my choices were working the family farm in my home village or going to the city and playing video games all day, I'd probably choose the latter as well. But I absolutely do blame the US or EU folks who buy that gold because it's "no big deal" because they're the one that makes the market exist in the first place.

It's so darn easy to make money in this game.

[Edax]

Nobody opens a shop without a legitimate desire for wealth; greed is the cornerstone of capitalism.

If they had no desire for wealth they wouldn't attempt to profit from the shop. Greed is always part of why they do it, even if it's not the only part.

You don't have to attempt profit to open a shop. A shop can profit with or without greed. Like I said, all you need is passion to open a shop.

[frostmagemari]

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!

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.

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.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Another thread calling SE Greedy for making "Optional" items in a Cash Store.

[frostmagemari]

Another thread calling SE Greedy for making "Optional" items in a Cash Store.

The issue many people end up having with the cash shop is (A) Almost none of the items are account-wide which actively discourages characters on other server or promotes repeatedly buying the same item, (B) even though it's not main dev time being put into the mogshop, SQEX is spending resources on this and we've been told that Mogshop sales are the only sales that get put back into the game beyond the initial sales, finally my personal issue (C) You have the mogshop selling consumable items like dye, which promotes repeated purchases.

If B is still the case, then the mogshop will only get worse, as it needs to keep expanding for the game to continue to grow; along with the fact that this year SQEX decided to not give the easter event a mount, but conveniently released an Easter themed mount on the shop, so it's very easy to conflate that the mogshop will actively prevent the in-game acquisition of items as time goes on.

Has it been stated that purchases using this system are directly reinvested into WoW?

In regards to MogStation, I think its been mentioned a few times YoshiP has said this is the case. Im not 100% sure but it wouldnt surprise me if it were as mogstation is FFXIV specific, and SE has it's own online store. As for WoW's reinvestment, I know that some of the money they got from WoW overall was reinvested outside of the franchise on other projects a few years back. I am not aware if this has changed.

This being said, yes Im fine with money being reinvested. But it doesnt skip the issue of the initial reason why "Buying G is bad for the game." The core aspect of that argument was that Gold had a tangible effect on in game power level and ease. So if you had tons of gold, your chance at 'winning' was substantially better. And blizzard does have a track record of softly endorsing 'P2W' model on their own platforms, though to be fair it also blew up in their face (D3 Shop), but instead of gold, it was just the items themselves.

Actually, it does deal with the reason as to why gold sellers are bad for the game. In any game, WoW, XIV, etc.. the people who farmed gold and sold it did not do so with the intent of putting the currency back into the games economy through regular play (bots or players continually farm sections of the game and sell the items to vendors in order to get freshly introduced gold rather than deal with a fickle market). They would continually add additional gold into the system that would not have normally been gathered by normal play.. so when they do sell that gold for whatever sum, they immediately inject tens of thousands of gold into the economy.

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.

Now, is the system perfect? No. It never can be. It is as close to a solution as you are going to reasonably get in a game however.

[MsQi]

Another thread calling SE Greedy for making "Optional" items in a Cash Store.

What isn't optional?

[Xatsh]

It is greedy to have an "optional shop" selling shop unique items in a p2p mmo. There is literally no other way to say it. Instead of adding them items to the game in events free of cost, they sell them for additional profits instead.

[Bsrking5]

Didn't WoW remove items from their shop not too long ago? I don't know, but I see a video about it I vaguely remember. I wouldn't call any cash shop consumer friendly and the sub should be value. If you don't and find a different game is, well go sub there. Money talks the loudest.

[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.

[Malmstrom]

With this comparison, I believe I can safely claim that the FFXIV Cash Shop is indeed greedy and unnecessarily expansive.

You can safely claim it.

You'd be wrong, but you can safely claim it.