Quote Originally Posted by Connor View Post
The only other MMO I’ve really played is ESO, but since that’s free to play I wasn’t sure their cash shop type stuff would compare to FFXIV’s.
Oh no, I would consider ESO way worse than XIV in terms of cash shop, ESO is designed to be painful to play without ESO+ so it might as well be a subscription MMO, and their cash shop is not only full of FOMO, it's heavily lootbox focused, with scarcely any outfits being obtainable without lootboxes or purchases.

A better comparison for the feeling you are going for, I feel, is GW2, which is pay to play without any subscription, not even the option to subscribe exists, and while they do employ FOMO tactics and lootboxes, they also allow you to buy cash shop currency with in-game gold at reasonable rates, in fact those rates are automatically calculated based on total currency that exists in the game, meaning you can reasonably get anything you want without paying.