Emote Monetization needs to Stop.

[HyperiusUltima]

This here.

I'm going to be frank with people: We have not gotten a new emote to use in a long time that isn't monetized by the XIV Store. Why has this trend continued? Probably because people buy what they want. They see something cool, they'll probably get it - but we're paying like $7.00 USD for an emote - and that's before whatever tax that's involved depending on where you live.

I took a look at emotes, and the monetization has gotten so bad that a majority of emotes after 5.55(21/38 - a whopping 55%!) are monetized. And sure, we can try to count those that are involved in events - but what then? Your average player that runs the MSQ, doesn't do side content(if it doesn't appeal to them), and doesn't raid or do Beast Tribes hasn't gotten a new emote for THREE YEARS.

Of course, if we're looking at Events, sure: people will probably do them - but that doesn't say much for people who most recently have joined the game and missed out on them because they're getting into the experience. This whole Fried Egg debacle is cosmetic, sure, but it says a lot about how they're handling our Emotes.

Firstly, they're high quality, animated emotes that actually are pretty nice. The Fried Egg one is something I'd expect from a CUL quest or something, but NO. IT'S ON THE STORE. We already have an overly priced mount on the store that everyone wanted to get at Endwalker(Yes, the Whale), but remonetizing certain things just...it's a kick in the pants - and don't even get me started on the Meister Figures(which aren't actually Mastercrafts given the response people have given from previous problems with them) because those are stupidly priced just for an emote.

Music? Sure. There's some good albums and we all know Soken makes and recognizes bangers, alongside what other musicians compose for the game - there's an emote in a couple of those collections.

Secondly, is reintroducing past-event Emotes in the store. Like, I get it - some emotes are ridiculously popular such as Playing Dead like Ganondorf Gerudoman in Ul'dah. Why are they on the store again? Oh wait. To make more $$$. Stuff like the glowsticks and the ranger poses are pretty popular among the playerbase - yet when they were introduced, they were attached to Little Ladies' Day and the Moonfire Faire. Like sure, you can buy it off season, or it'd be better for people to just wait around for the event to come back and get it then - but no. They'd rather see them get their money up, not turn their egg sunny-side up.

Because right now? That egg is BOILED. That's right. You thought you'd have the Eat Egg Emote somewhere back during Hatchingtide this year - but no. It didn't show up. Instead, we got a Goobbue with flowers on it that luckily doesn't have any allergies. If Emotes aren't enough, there are various other things we can point at in regards to equipment and clothing on the Store, but I'm not going to rant about that in this post. I just want to make it clear that the monetization is hurting this aspect of the game. If we want to get REALLY technical, here's the amount of emotes that are locked to the Online Store, as of March 25th, 2025 for learnable emotes(excluding JP Only):

63/160(39.3%!)

Even then, you have about 6 emotes that were tied to Meister Figures. I just want emotes to be more tied to stuff in the game that'll actually give you something - not just throwing money for an animation since we already pay the $15/mo cost of a sub.

Updates and Threads

10/18/24

New Mogstore Supply Kit Discussion - Seems like we're moving in the right direction(in a week oddly enough), but I think this bundle is more an attempt at trying to get us to buy into a bundle while ignoring individual emotes they could easily run account-wide like the one they've got in the bundle. If you want it? Buy it.

11/13/24

Well, we got *four* new Emotes. Time to update the %. Needs more In-game Emotes still that are earnable through quests, though.

1/21/25

New Emote dropped, but that's it. Just one that is a drop in the bucket.

1/28/25

New Emote coming with Valentione's Event - Limited Time, and basically gonna get shoved into the cash shop a year after. Woo.

2/10/25

We got the Instax Photography emote on the way - and it's FREE. No strings attached, no purchases. We need more of this to drive this percentage down.

3/21/25

New /dazed emote on the way in 7.2. Also getting added loops for /read and /tomestone on patch day, but they're not being added into the % because they're still tied to one emote. Also realized I made a mathematical error, so I did a recount and fixed it to what it is supposed to be to reflect after patch drops.

Edited due to mistake.

[CVXIV]

tldr it's a fried egg
not that deep
get better bait it's genuinely boring

[CCheshire]

I support selling less cash shop emotes like they're a terrible value since they're for 1 character too.

Yeah, it's rough it would have been a great event reward or even just earnable in-game.

[HyperiusUltima]

tldr it's a fried egg
not that deep
get better bait it's genuinely boring

To you it probably is, but it's getting to a point where new players are going to find having to dig into their wallets for some better quality emotes if they aren't already fine with what they have to express themselves. If they want it, they'll have to work for it as always - but more often than not, if they hate doing it they quit mid-way before they get to the reward.

[CVXIV]

To you it probably is, but it's getting to a point where new players are going to find having to dig into their wallets for some better quality emotes if they aren't already fine with what they have to express themselves. If they want it, they'll have to work for it as always - but more often than not, if they hate doing it they quit mid-way before they get to the reward.

I'd be surprised if people were really clamouring for an emote that lets them fry an egg, but I do understand the point

A lot of the stuff in the cash shop is overpriced
tbh the main complaint I have with the cash shop is that they insist on making most things there usable on a single character only rather than it being account wide

That and the bizarre decision to make certain items unable to be purchased as gifts when they could just check if the person you are buying a gift for already has the item, especially if they made all the items account wide

[Avoidy]

Agreed. A game that's buy to play and subscription based shouldn't even have a cash shop, but the community allows it because they just buy whatever slop comes out every time without fail. The higher ups know it'll sell, so they keep listing it. People act like it's fair that all this exclusive stuff is on there because it was in an event that came out 10 years ago, like lol, lmao. Yeah man, it's totally fair. You should've just joined the game 10 years ago bro. Just build a time machine, bro. And the way the cash shop is set up is so gross too. Let's say an outfit releases for 26 dollars, but all you want from it is the hat portion. You don't want anything else. Surely you can just buy the hat for a fraction of the cost, right? Nope! Gotta buy the WHOLE THING. One per character btw. Like, lmao. Even black desert, the greediest trash pile of a kmmo I've ever played in my life, run by out of touch idiots actively driving the game into the ground, lets people buy segments of an outfit at a reduced cost. But square doesn't. Why? Because no matter what, there's no end to the people who'll just buy it no matter how stupid it is. Even maplestory, a f2p korean mmo that helped normalize the f2p cash shop model on a global scale... let you buy a cash shop outfit, and then split it between your characters. But this game's like "nah, we're just gonna have the worst of every payment system." The only thing XIV has going for it is that you don't have to buy fake currency in specific amounts to buy something. But I digress.

This egg emote could've been part of a CUL quest. It could've been a moogle tomestone emote to get people back into the game. But the CEO wants a new yacht, and bad cash shop optics never reduces their sub count anyway. So here we are! This is the game the players want. People defend this tooth and nail, too. They'll call it "bait" when you criticize it. I have no idea why. They do it for free, too. So weird.

[Greyhawk]

I frankly wait for any sales to buy something, and I think the last emote was $2.00 that I bought. Almost 10 bucks for an emote is... well, frankly absurd. SE is squeezing every bit they can though out of the player base to support the company as a whole. I'm betting though the back of this game is getting tired from supporting all the dead weight.

[HyperiusUltima]

I'd be surprised if people were really clamouring for an emote that lets them fry an egg, but I do understand the point

A lot of the stuff in the cash shop is overpriced
tbh the main complaint I have with the cash shop is that they insist on making most things there usable on a single character only rather than it being account wide

That and the bizarre decision to make certain items unable to be purchased as gifts when they could just check if the person you are buying a gift for already has the item, especially if they made all the items account wide

They did away with gifts I think to combat RMT.

You can read it here.

I do agree with the idea that stuff purchased on the store should be account-wide. That would make it FAR, FAR more feasible than simply just doing it once per character. It'd also add value if you ever had the thought to create another character - especially for the roleplayers out there.

[MAJRIS]

the Fry is a nice emote but I wonder if its some chinese trending thing or if they just pick one random word in dictionary and turn it to emote?

Not going to buy lvl 27 culinary recipe, but I would definitely buy Limsa slav squat sit.

[Zakuyia]

If anyone complaining about this go play fortnite and pso2 come back to me about emote monotization...pso2 is worse some emotes are 90.00 due to reward bonus... 7.00 looking cheap...one emote i believe was almost 200.00 and u had 1 week to get it.