Cash shop announced?Follow

It's going to be small at first, then grow over-time as the game gets older. This is how it always goes. At the end of the game's lifespan, the contents of the shop will be the most questionable. You can bet this follows the way Blizzard has handled their cash shop during the years.

No developer would ever pass on a cash shop in this day and age. You're not making more money by not having it available. People will kick and scream but just like with every other game out there, nothing detrimental will happen to ARR nor SE in the long run as long as they follow the Blizzard guidelines.

So get your frustrations out of the way and hopefully after the blind rage stops you can look around and see that SE's deal is one of the best out there. "Not having a cash shop" is NOT an alternative unless you suck at doing business.

Some people say they don't like it, though you don't have to spend money on anything which means you have a choice.

My personal opinion, I believe it's a fail safe just in case the game goes free2play then you have the cash shop as the backup.

I wouldn't mind seeing clouds attire or sephiroth sword or buster sword stuff like that or like zack's hairstyle and previous final fantasy gets ups and face features being bought on the store.

Would be pretty cool.

"Yes, we have enough money now."
- Said no successful business ever.

It is actually excellent marketing, SE is a FOR PROFIT business, hence them selling "fluff" items to make sales... If you are turned away from the game because someone has an item that only affects their appearance, than maybe you should rethink MMOs...

This is the new model for most games out, and future games to come, they all will have "fluff" shops.

Edited, Oct 21st 2014 9:07am by Jjay

All MMOs are by their nature timesinks, that's part of the beast, I'm sure you agree with that. My initial comment was that I acknowledge for many it's cheap entertainment and it gives them a sense of achievement they may not otherwise enjoy in an offline capacity. And while I'm not saying, "All MMO players are deadbeats" that certain demographic, we're politely tip-toeing around, is going to take real umbrage with items being locked behind cash payments where previously the only requirements to achieve something was practice and determination.

I will say I don't expect this trend to reverse. Microtransactions have been around for a while now, I remember them in EQ2 before that game eventually went F2P and more recently in games such as WoW, in addition to all the F2P tablet and mobile games that are rapidly dominating the gaming market.

One way to look at it is you must sort out your offline achievements before you can accomplish your online ones.

I will add my 2 cents in, I hate it and find it utterly disrespectful.

Since we already have a sub we have to pay per month and now we have a cash shop for vanity items.....why are we still paying a sub? or why are we not getting a sub reduction?

as it stands now you have to buy the box, pay a sub, and a cash shop....that just seems like a bunch of horse crap. why not just switch completely over to the Guild Wars payment style instead of this crap.

I'd be upset about it only if they were selling Atma drops at $10 apiece.

I have the magicked broom minion, THE BEST MINION EVER, why would I ever want to use any other minion ever, aside from maybe the cushion? Which I also have.

Sleipnir is not going to go faster than anyone else, nor is he going to fly or anything cool. Nothing lost there.

It does affect future updates, so it does affect your gameplay.

Up till now, 100% of the amount of time the developers spent on developing updates went straight into the game where you could earn your way into whatever it is they added.

Now a percentage of that development is going to make things for the cash shop, reinvesting your subscription dollars into that which would have been available by playing the game but are now going to be sold for money to the few who are willing to pay for it.

So, even if you aren't going to buy from the cash shop, you're going to be getting less update value for your subscription dollars than you used to. Now developers have to spend a fraction of their limited time making things for the cash shop which you won't have access to unless you pay up, and that's taking up the time they used to spend making things you could earn and play in the game without paying extra.

That is a valid point, although since some, if not the majority of for-sale items will be recycled from past events, it'll take less time for those. They already have a mass automated system to distribute items via Mog Mail for people who receive their veteran bonuses. Tying in the cash shop to that is just a matter of a bit of extra code on the website side of things, and after that it's just a matter of putting Object #54678 up for sale for $X.00, something that a code monkey on the website team can do in a few minutes.

I believe I saw last year's ghost costume as one of the items they're adding. So this year everyone earns the new dress, but if someone missed last year's event, they get the option to buy the ghost costume.

I think SE needs to fire their development team and hire some indie developers if vanity items is going to significantly cut into their development time. 100% of their focus went to "in-game development" yet patches are...mostly recycled content and recycled content format and most of the good looking **** WAS ALREADY VANITY ARMOR TO BEGIN WITH!

My, my my, how soon people forget things being blinded by the dreaded 'cash shop."

Gondai admitted they have a total of four people coding the actual battles.

FOUR. PEOPLE.

One guy in charge of all the FATES by himself. Now that's a thankless task.

Not getting sucked into the cash shop debate. I've said my stance there's no reason to draw it out. Those who believe it will effect their perceived value... over vanity objects are stating their own opinions as if they are facts and there's no logical discussion to be had.

My line is drawn at gameplay. If it effects my gameplay in any meaningful way, I will quit this game. As it does not, I really don't care. (and might enjoy it.)

It's sad that I feel that explaining my personal stance further is just inviting someone's scrutiny and judgement here. It really doesn't speak well with how we are as a broader community.

You didn't display your argument as a different viewpoint. You displayed it as a correction of my previous statement, thus I said, and quote:



A statement that remains true.

There is also a large amount of assumptions made on your part - as far as where the development teams efforts are divided. You cannot view the development cycle as a single liquid commodity. It was pretty clear that nothing impacting game-play has been changed whey the itemized exactly how their combat development works. And when you're arguing vanity vs vanity, I'm sorry, I see absolutely no value in that debate - as we already have paid for bonus content between collector's editions, additional in-game intensives added onto Square Enix products, and purchases of services such as Phantasia Potions and Server Transfers.

This is no different than any one of those, and slippery slope argumentative facilities are tired old hat at this point.

And arguing development percentages when you have no idea of what the level of team efficiency is, makes your argument invalid, especially given previous intensives listed above.

There's always been minions, mounts, services offered for players at a price outside the game. Until now, they were tied to the system differently. Kinda liking that they didn't tie Y'shtola to some SE product. Even if I am still paying for it. I probably still won't by it, but the fact that it's no longer under a pay wall of a different product makes the in-game items more enticing, at least.

Again, my line is drawn at gameplay impact. Nothing in these items impacts my gameplay, nor the development cycle as the gameplay elements are under an entirely different team within the ARR Development staff.

And I'm sorry that I tip my frustration over this, but paying for a subscription service does not give the right of an individual to dictate the man hour distribution of a company that provides the service. That's tantamount to paid servitude.

And the fact that people are calling this 'double dipping' is incorrect. You are not being charged twice for the same thing. Double dipping would be Xbox Live charging you for the Live Subscription to play FFXIV when you're already paying for a FFXIV subscription. Square Enix does not support that. What is being offered to you is something more and in some cases something missed for a little extra. It's complete optional, and it has no impact in the actual service you are receiving.

Anyways, I've honestly had my fill of this topic. I'm very staunchly against Buy to Win and I'm glad that's been clarified by Yoshida himself that it's not the case. Believe me, had it no been the case, and this did go buy to win, I'd be gone. However, them going this far? I'm not surprised at all, nor insulted. And I do honestly feel that most people who are raising in protest are much in the vein of those that they would prefer to deny other's content for the sake of placating to their specific ideal of how a game 'should be'.

This is just another choice added. And so long as they continue to implement it as advertised, I will have no issue.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2014 3:05am by Hyrist