There will always be players complaining it's a cash grab regardless what a company does. Players want to spend the least amount of money possible, preferably zero. Even F2P games get complaints when players have to buy the cosmetic/vanity items they want when "it could have been a reward that would get us to log in to play".
Personally I don't think they need to boost the visibility of sales more than they already do. We get the Lodestone topics both when a sale starts and a few days before it ends. The launcher splash is an ongoing things for the duration of the sale. Sale items get featured on the default page of the new Store website plus have a separate category for those who want to see just the sale items, not the recommended or most popular.
The last thing I want is F2P style cash shop advertising when you get a pop-up as soon as your character loads telling you to go buy things off the cash shop, or reminding you about the cash shop when you reach certain points in content. Seeing other players using the cash shop items is more than enough of a reminder in game that it exists.
If the thought is "well if they can get more players to buy, then I can pay less", it's not going to happen. People willing to buy from a cash shop are generally already doing it. Lowering prices might attract a few more buyers on niche items but the volume of new sales almost never covers the difference for the revenue that would have been earned at the original price.
If they sell 10,000 units of an item at $3.50, then they need to sell 17,500 if they lower the price to $2 or 35,000 at $1 to get the same revenue. It's not going to work with items that you buy once then never need to buy again. $3.50 is already so cheap that someone who really wants it is going to go ahead and buy it. It does work with consumable items that the player wants to keep reusing and so has to keep rebuying (why we see things like the dyes selling 10 for $10 - people will keep repurchasing them at that price).