Online Store is Getting Worse!

[Skivvy]

I think it's safe to say a lot of the items wouldn't exist without the cash shop.

I agree with this. However, I don't think FFXIV's cash shop is really predatory yet, people can argue the pricing, but that's not really predatory, in my opinion. Predatory would be if they were doing "limited time" sales, items on rotation, premium battlepass, lootboxes, pay for convenience, etc..

One of my bigger annoyances, which I just discovered recently, is the fact that they sell retainer level skips on the cash shop. I've always hated how your retainer reverts back to level one when you switch jobs, even when switching to jobs you previously had at max level. Instead of fixing this in-game, they've gone the simple route of just selling you a quick solution.

And then there's the selling of retainers in general. Before that was a thing, there had been several quotes floating around how they couldn't add extra storage because of <reasons>, but then that went away once they could charge you for them. And we can't forget the extra retainer if you pay for the companion app. I would have liked to have seen them focus more on reducing item bloat and creating better storage systems (glamour logs, material banks, etc), but at this point, are they really going to want to get rid of all that extra retainer profit? Only SE knows the answer to that one. :X

These definitely fall more into the predatory category for me since the in-game options are optimized poorly. I realize those are incredibly mild compared to what you can find in other games, but I don't think that gives SE a pass. Then there's the issue of them just being greedy AF as a whole with their pricing models, lack of account-wide items, sheer number of paid options in a subscription game, etc....

[Catwho]

Retainers are just the XIV version of XI's mules. FFXI charged you an extra dollar for each character on the same account. However, most of us just used them as storage and extra market board slots.

So XIV gave you actual extra characters for free, and made it very difficult to use those extra characters as storage, but added retainers that are easily accessible on the main account for that same purpose, instead.

(I still have an extra character for pure storage, but that's because I am in charge of the FC and the friggin chest was full of airship junk nobody was using.)

[Atelier-Bagur]

Yep, no point in buying fancy outfits off the store when you can download a huge variety of high quality outfits online for free.

Probably by then it gets so out of hand that it forces SE's hand to implement anti-cheat or whatever

[Rolder50]

Probably by then it gets so out of hand that it forces SE's hand to implement anti-cheat or whatever

Kind of already is that far. Looking at a certain illicit website and it has 18000+ mods with the top ones having 300k+ downloads

[Atelier-Bagur]

Kind of already is that far. Looking at a certain illicit website and it has 18000+ mods with the top ones having 300k+ downloads

By that I mean if people start making a lot of noise that the devs or mods start catching them often ( which lately that seems to be the case with a lot of streamers) where they realize the actual epidemic.

Right now, I'm assuming a lot in the team actively go out of their way to not look up the sites otherwise they'd be implementing the ban hammer so hard. They're in that awkward middle of acknowledging that it exists but not knowing HOW HARD are these mods existing for the game.

Which again goes back to my issue about people downloading mods that fix or add much requested features into the game when doing so makes it very less likely that the actual dev team will pay attention to these requests, when it does garner a lot of traction. Which is why a lot of official QoL stuff tends to take so long to implement I imagine.

Keep complaining to have them add these features, don't get lazy and complacent and have the playerbase do it. Get SE, it's their job to improve this game.

[Midareyukki]

Keep complaining to have them add these features, don't get lazy and complacent and have the playerbase do it got SE, it's their job to improve this game.

...wait, but when we point out that Hrothgar and Viera are getting fixes with such things and ask the devs to improve on it, people go haywire :x

[Atelier-Bagur]

...wait, but when we point out that Hrothgar and Viera are getting fixes with such things and ask the devs to improve on it, people go haywire :x

Cant please everyone at this point. But I think its better for the overall game to continue to want for them to better improve on the things they add; but also people need to watch out to not turn into total Karens while they're doing so, thats a big thing for me.

[Midareyukki]

Cant please everyone at this point. But I think its better for the overall game to continue to want for them to better improve on the things they add; but also people need to watch out to not turn into total Karens while they're doing so, thats a big thing for me.

Eh, the Karen days are long gone, rarely do you see shoes being thrown around. Bc you know, ear pulls and actual dialogue happened, which people are very quick to ignore and still call those races as "whiny". And you can't please everyone, but you can at least endeavour to please someone rather than no one.

But at least on the topic of third-party tools rather than mods? Uh... I wonder if Square's open to suggestions. Because by this point there's probably millions of add-ons out there, and Square likely won't look at them all. But if fan feedback might help, should people try to say what they'd like to see featured? Or is that kind of bate and could lead to dangers if people try? You know, like... not outright name anything, but at least say "There's a third party tool that does this QoL\Accessibility thing (and not mere aesthetics), it's really helpful"?

[Atelier-Bagur]

Eh, the Karen days are long gone, rarely do you see shoes being thrown around. Bc you know, ear pulls and actual dialogue happened, which people are very quick to ignore and still call those races as "whiny". And you can't please everyone, but you can at least endeavour to please someone rather than no one.

But at least on the topic of third-party tools rather than mods? Uh... I wonder if Square's open to suggestions. Because by this point there's probably millions of add-ons out there, and Square likely won't look at them all. But if fan feedback might help, should people try to say what they'd like to see featured? Or is that kind of bate and could lead to dangers if people try? You know, like... not outright name anything, but at least say "There's a third party tool that does this QoL\Accessibility thing (and not mere aesthetics), it's really helpful"?

Thats a tricky conversation since SE is just very hard against third party tools. I feel like sometimes it might be easier to talk to the dev team if they happened to be westerners. Which is something that always bug me when people complain why SE doesnt cater to the rest of the world when it comes to instant communication when people forget this game is a Japanese team so just like how in other development teams make interviews or interact more with their home audience such as WoW, the same applies to SE and the Japanese forums since thats where they get the majority of their feedback. There's nothing nefarious or nationilistic about that, its just common sense.

Honestly, I would just play it safe and just keep posting feedback and gathering attention in our side of the world rather than rely on 3rd party to fix those issues. If this game were a single player game or if the dev team had an open community with people who create addons then we wouldnt be having this conversation lol

[LianaThorne]

By that I mean if people start making a lot of noise that the devs or mods start catching them often ( which lately that seems to be the case with a lot of streamers) where they realize the actual epidemic.

Right now, I'm assuming a lot in the team actively go out of their way to not look up the sites otherwise they'd be implementing the ban hammer so hard. They're in that awkward middle of acknowledging that it exists but not knowing HOW HARD are these mods existing for the game.

Which again goes back to my issue about people downloading mods that fix or add much requested features into the game when doing so makes it very less likely that the actual dev team will pay attention to these requests, when it does garner a lot of traction. Which is why a lot of official QoL stuff tends to take so long to implement I imagine.

Keep complaining to have them add these features, don't get lazy and complacent and have the playerbase do it. Get SE, it's their job to improve this game.

It's been stated more times that I can count by now that mod usage is a grey area to the devs. They state out right that it is against the ToS for legal reasons but have also stated that they can't track our PCs or know what we're doing on them. Therefore, use mods if you like just don't take it to the point of causing a scene that will affect investors or get them in legal trouble. The mod scene will exist regardless of if Square actually implements new features because mods are not plugins. 3rd party QoL/UI/actual in game functions are called plugins. There is a difference. The plugin scene might take a hit if some of their work gets added into the game because then no one would really need two copies of the same feature (unless the plugin one still functions better than the official one). Mods will be unaffected though as those are mainly cosmetics & photography based assets.

One last thing I want to add, mods will not cause the downfall of paid cosmetics. They've been hand-in-hand for a while now. At the end of the day, people want to be able to show off their outfits to other people and have other people actually be able to see them. Why else do people just stand in Limsa in droves when new outfits come out?