So now that FFXI may be dying soon..Follow

You know, no matter how many times I hear this it never ceases to be hilarious.

FFXIV's entire cash shop has 164 items on it... 164 on the entire thing.

Tera (an actual f2p game) has 180 items in the character tab (costumes and costume pieces) ALONE. So not including the other 4 tabs in their shop, Tera already beats FFXIV on cash shop content.

Aion? 1048 items in total.

Guild Wars 2? 172 items in total. And that game isn't even free to play.

The official forums have this preoccupation with XIV's cash shop as though it's this hideous monster out to devour their children. Do I think a subscription game should have a cash shop? No I do not. I especially object to the concept of having to pay an additional subscription fee for bank space. I find that particularly offensive. But let's talk about what we're talking about here without hyperbole.

He's not wrong though, it's on the same level of use when it shouldn't be (since most of the items could easily be thrown in game, since yoship loves making us run obsolete content.) The differences is, games that RELY on F2P to survive, uses that format instead of content updates, which is why they have insanely slow content updates but CONSTANT cash shop updates. This is why XIV gets compared to F2P games in terms of design, because it's extremely similar but without the actual good from F2P games (proper content setup.) It's designed heavily around restrictions you normally buy an item to get around or 'reduce', which is why people on the OF fear cash shops, because it's very easy to see that XIV's is only a stone's throw away from doing the same if they really wanted to, and it'd be hard to say "they wouldn't do x", when people were very adamant that SE would never make a cash shop in a "sub game, because our sub fee gives us access to everything."

Protip: If a service doesn't make money, they don't keep utilizing it, this is why SE shutdown 3 services in the span of the last 7 months. Do you honestly not understand that YoshiP pushes us to "buy more retainers" instead of solving the issues..or are people really that dense and not understand what's going on?

I mean, I don't give a **** about a cash shop, but it's really not that hard to see it's making a ton of money, especially when the amount of the new mog station mounts per parsing shows at minimum 14,000 "activations" as yesterday. $20+ mount x 14,000 people, that isn't a decent amount of money from something not counting subs and the continuous Fantasia uses? (Trust me, if you played on Balmung, you will see just how often people buy fantasias and renaming services alone.)

TERA has been free to play for several years now. When you're solely using a cash shop to fund content updates, it makes sense that it's larger than one belonging to a game that has other means of funding. They do offer a 'subscription' option, but it's just that... optional. I'd also point out that it's not accurate to say there are x amount of items in the character tab. Items sold in the cash shop in TERA are not all universal. Items are divided depending on sex and race. A male elf doesn't purchase the same tuxedo that a male human does, though they look exactly the same.

I think the underlying issue here is that SE is putting a good amount of time toward developing 'optional' content when they're already obviously under-manned for the part of the job you pay them to do. I don't think people would care about the cash shop if SE were pumping out enough of the content you pay for and/or allowing the items to be obtained via alternative means.

I can purchase or trade for any item in the TERA cash shop without having to open my wallet. Can you say the same for XIV? GW2?

I agree, that's a problem. And given SE's obviously barebones team, I'd prefer to see their efforts more focused on game content and not fluff. That all being said, how long do you suppose it takes for an artist to re-texture the unicorn mount to look like Sleipnir? Or for someone to throw an old holiday costume into a cash shop template and post it? My guess is not very long. Few hours for the re-texture, couple minutes for the post?



GW2 has a currency exchange but that's irrelevant. We're not here to talk about alternative cash shop models. Tera letting you sell cash shop items (or SWTOR doing that too) isn't a standard cash shop feature in most of the f2p games I've tried, it's fairly unusual. Doesn't really matter here because we're talking about how XIV's cash shop is apparently so monstrous as to dwarf the income of its subscriber base as it prepares to eat the sun.

I don't think the cash shop produces as much income as some people think it does. I *DO* think that SE spends too much time fiddling with it and I'd like them to stop that. I'd have preferred to see Sleipnir (for instance) be obtainable from the Odin fight. There's an Odin fight... why can't I get his mount from him when his mount is an item in the game? That seems like a legit complaint to me.

Because they're optional. They're not mandatory. They don't contribute to player power at all.

Having Sleipnir might be cool, but it doesn't provide me a crit bonus.

Retainers.

So much hurt in this thread.

You're paying for extra inventory, when instead they can actually provide it in-game. The fact they haven't is strictly because of how well the mog station is doing. No company running any kind of online service can't have such shoddy infrastructure to the point it will be rendered useless if they increase the data even a tiny bit - by law (especially in Japan) it has to pass numerous certification before you're even allowed to offer a service. Maybe in Canada it's far more lax though.

So it doesn't offer your "crit bonus", but it sure as hell lessens the need for them to fix problems when you can simply "buy more retainers."

Then again..people find this game perfect, so no need to follow industry standard.



Unless you get them from an NPC in-game, it comes from the mog station.

Edited, Apr 14th 2016 6:19pm by Theonehio

Well then I am the opposite and disappointed the grind pt option is shunned. I would like the option to do whatever I please while queuing for dungeons. While the duty finder is a welcome addition for lessening downtime. It periodically limits me on what I can do while queuing. Theoretically it is possible for the developers to make a duty finder that allows you to participate in whatever you wish while queued but there are limitations existing now. But that is due to them not being able or unwilling to tune the duty finder. You don't have to worry about flavor of the month jobs here because exotic builds is virtually non existent due to jobs being designed similar but with different colors.

Just to re-iterate here, the duty finder could be tuned better to allow players to queue regardless of what they are doing it just has not done it. It is said it respects your time and that is true to some degree. But I pose the question, what is more important?

Having something to do at all times which might not be where your passion resides at the moment?

Having something to do more often but not all the time which is exactly where your passion resides in the moment?

Which circumstance would be more uplifting and light you up, make you savor and appreciate what unfolds?

If the worry here is that a grind party option would devastate the duty finder. I don't see that being the case with some changes to the duty finder. However, if no changes could made. I would be fine with this option being tied to guildleves limiting it to spurts due to the leve allowance.

http://guildleveideas.webs.com/

And as your queue pops, you're even more limited because it has to copy your ENTIRE account data to transfer to the duty servers temporarily.

The thing I hate most about retainers is that you know the developers won't increase inventory space because it would hurt retainer subs, it's directly influencing players who don't buy them in order to make them more valuable.

Also since you seem so willing to apologize for anything they seem to do, if they added a potion that did give a crit bonus it wouldn't matter even then. You can still clear any content the game has without it right?

Oops, double post.

I'll edit this one to actually say "thank you" to folks who buy extra retainers or make purchases through the game's cash shop. You help pump more money into my favorite game, thus insuring the game will continue to be updated and expanded in the future. And you help SE monetize the game through avenues requiring minimal effort on their end. So, seriously, thank you!


Edited, Apr 15th 2016 11:48am by Thayos

Yeah, exactly.

I've played this game far more than most of the Debbie Downers (with the exception of Hio), and free inventory space has never been a problem for me.

On one hand, I don't craft a ton -- but neither do the folks who almost never play this game. And I'm still carrying around a lot of lower-iLevel gear that I should just straight-up toss out. And that's exactly what I'll do, when inventory space actually becomes a real problem -- and then I'll play for another two or three years before worrying about it again.