Cash shop announced?Follow

Many people justify their subscription fee as being an all inclusive ticket to ride all of the content; mounts included and pun intended. That's not my argument. It's the counter I get whenever I point out that F2P and/or cash shop can work. As I've said, we still don't know if the cash shop will include exclusive items so I'm not prepared to argue anything yet.

I personally don't have a dog in this fight, but I've never found that to be a requirement when trying to guess the outcome. You quoted my post so I assume you read it. You should already know that if I did care, I'd feel more like a snowflake for earning the mount rather than buying it. Ironically, content that is rewarding to me on that level is the very reason I would be likely to subscribe to ARR in the first place.

That said, I feel that something like Sleipnir should be implemented as a symbol of achievement rather than a beacon to other players that you have ten bucks to spare.



In typical RPGs you are able to select the action of each player in your group every turn. Some elements were still up to RNG, but for the most part you controlled everything. The original gambit system in XII allowed you to influence the play of other characters, but you could only directly control one.

Part of what they touched on at fan festival regarding ARR gambits was battles involving magitek, but I think that they said they wanted to add more consequential mechanics. Things that unlock extra parts of a dungeon or challenges that increase loot... things along those lines.

Yoshi said most cash shop items will be things that were previously obtainable in the game.

I forgot exactly which interview the quote was from, but it was linked after the fact on the official forums. I want to say it was a live letter translation.

Shut up and take my money!

Ok, i'll bite, I think the cash shop is fine along as the items are strictly vanity and/or mounts and minions. I see no problems if someone wants to spend some cash on a piece of vanity armor or a mount. And before the people start with the 'but we already pay a monthly sub, why should we have to pay for this...' argument, please remember, you do not have to buy any of the items, they are (or have been stated as such) just for looks. SE is not forcing you to pay for them.

Also, those complaining about the cash shop, any of yous purchase the CE of FFXIV? if so, you pretty much made a purchase for the 'cash shop' already, you paid cash and got a mount that is ONLY available when you purchase the CE.



Edited, Oct 26th 2014 2:00am by RyanSquires

If that's the case then it makes zero sense to have this argument now as opposed to... two years ago? Exclusive items have been around long before the cash shop. In reality there is no real difference to the situation now as opposed to before, only that the pile of exclusive items has grown. Cash shop wasn't the start of the trend, it just continues the trend..

The guy that just paid $25 for it would.

If they want to go that route, they can... but they can't add it later. That would either need to be in the at the outset, or never.

My FC and I were talking this over the other night. Same argument as here until someone brought up an interesting point:

FFXV sure looks like crapola, doesn't it? Gorgeous graphics but all this stuff about hyper-casual "one button gameplay" and "press X to awesome" combat doesn't bode well for a lot of gamers. Especially after all the megabucks SE has invested in it.

Since they managed to tun XIV around, perhaps they're tying to squeeze more money out of it now to buffer a possible failure of FFXV? Yoshi did say some time back, IIRC, that another mainline FF game failing could be the end of Square Enix.

On related note, of the 29 people in the Knights of Deneb, all but two of us have quit over the last three days. Ten deleted their characters and the others cancelled their subs. Myself (FC owner) and our #2 WHM are all that are left, and yes, they quit over the cash shop announcement.

No, I couldn't believe it either.

Edit: KoD on Siren is going to be recruiting starting Tuesday I guess...

Edited, Oct 26th 2014 3:16pm by DarkswordDX

So I guess you think Kingdom Heart's gameplay is crapola?

I think the resounding opinion on all my groups on Lamia has been "Meh."

I don't even keep a minion out 90% of the time.

Most people feel like it's a 'cash grab'. The collector's edition items were a one shot thing. You have to buy the game to play it, toss in some extra cash and get some nifty items. Not a big deal because people expect collector's editions of just about any game that is anticipated to release.

The cash shop is something that will be regularly updated. The concern is that the items available in the cash shop will be more enticing than things that would be rewarded either as veteran rewards for subscription, rewards for completing quests or achievements, defeating difficult content, ect. Basically the most attractive items will be exclusive to players who will pay more for them. The development team(already known to be spread too thin) will be distracted creating items for players to buy, rather than focusing on overall content.

Again, these are complaints I've read around the web as well as responses to my arguments that if implemented correctly, a cash shop can have minimal impact on the player base. It's not my personal opinion that cash shops ruin games, but I do think that cash shop exclusives are not a good thing. We still don't know what will be exclusive and what won't, but I keep raising the issue with Sleipnir; mostly because it's pretty iconic in my eyes.

I would equate it to high level 'town gear' that FFXI players used to sport back in the day. You noticed people who walked the streets of Jeuno with an Aegis, Ridill, Thief's Knife or even a title. Back then you were noticed for your ability to overcome difficult encounters or your dedication, rather than just being some schmuck with enough money lying around.

Personally? I'm not a fan. But I'm also not surprised. After SE sold paid inventory, paid bank space, and extra venture farming opportunities per character in the form of extra retainers earlier this year, there was no doubt in my mind that they'd add aesthetic items to their cash shop eventually. If they start adding other popular free to play style items in the future like exp boosts, armor skins or dyes, it also won't surprise me in the least.

As SE supporters are quick to point out, SE is a business and they'll do what they can to make money. Although, as consumers, we do have every right to voice opinions about a product and choose whether or not to support it. Ultimately, the consumers hold the power, and no matter how much a company wants to push their product on consumers, if the consumers collectively decide to vehemently refuse what that company is offering, then the company has no choice but to change their policy. A good example is what happened to Xbox One before its release. If everyone said "Oh well, Microsoft is a business and they want money so I guess this is ok" and then just bought it anyway, we'd have had a completely different product than what we got.

Similarly, consumers have the power to decide in this situation as well. There's absolutely nothing wrong with voicing distaste for all this cash shop nonsense in a pay to play game. Paying a subscription so that I can log into a game that will attempt to nickel and dime me for inventory, market space, minions, mounts, and whatever else they feel like charging extra for is not a very appealing payment option considering that players can already go and happily get nickel and dimed for free (lol...) in other games.

To answer that question, no, I'm not currently subscribed to the game. Although if I were, it wouldn't make any difference. If a customer doesn't feel that a product is worth it any more, they walk away. The ToS is irrelevent to that point.




The point is that consumers hold the power. If you want to nitpick about things like Xbox being a console and FF being an MMO, go right ahead, but the result of consumer backlash would be the exact same in any industry.

Company: "Here's a product."
Consumers: "We don't want it."

If enough of the target consumers share that opinion, the company is forced to yield, whether you're talking about consoles, MMOs, clothing, cell phones, or any other type of product you could imagine.