I was watching this guys video, and people are actually excited to pay 24 dollars to get this mount. I'm just curious how people get excited to spend money on a game they pay monthly for something like this? Anyone else ever think that about cash shops?
Is it a dead topic and we've accepted defeat to be paying for this type of stuff?
Most of the people who opposed this quit the game long ago and I was part of the people protesting about it on the official forums, which left the ones that now fully support it. So yes it's a lost cause now, they put out regular cash shop updates that even wow players demanded stop. I think the last time wow added something to the cash shop was 3-4 years ago? FFXIV gets new stuff to buy for stupid amounts of money every few months and they lap it up.
This is the real reason Square loves Yoshida so much, he managed to make a large group of players accept insane levels of monetization. he took it above and beyond levels they thought were possible. With him as the head of the online division, I'm kind of glad ffxi has such an old engine because he simply cannot add this stuff to the game even if he wants to, and he surely would.
From my experience playing f2p games, a cash shop allows sub-standard players (or casuals) to get prestige looking gear that used to only be obtained by elite players, so they love it.
Back in the day I remember the first NA player on my server having a full sky set and he wandered around in his osode and haidate and would get everyone checking and admiring him, now you can use your credit card and get the same thing no matter how terrible you are at the game.
Cash shop stuff in an mmo is basically designer label or the latest apple phone gear irl, people buy it to get prestige from others looking at them. This kind of fluff garbage barely sells in offline games cause there is nobody to show off too.
Plenty of people don't buy out of the cash shop, you just don't see them talking about it, because they either get shushed or aren't getting shared due to the nature of the internet and social media.
I think the turning point personally was when they started putting unique emotes in the mog station. Everyone complained that, "This is highway robbery! They're not even account wide, it's ***!" then bought them anyway. People who used to post here regularly, included. I held out for about 2 months on those, and the only reason I finally caved was that everyone else around me had bought them, and been spamming them and socializing with them. That's the added pressure. Everyone can say it's BS to pay for, but at the end of the day, they want to feel included on their preferred method of social interaction. They don't want to feel left out.
What really grinds my gears about it, is that when pressed about it, SE will say stuff like, "Oh, well, we need the extra revenue to make you the quality content that you deserve! We can't afford to otherwise." and I think one of the fall back lines is also, "Well, they needed more servers, and the cash shop paid for them." But I mean, the server thing hasn't been an issue for years, and they only reduce the amount of content that comes out in each patch, to the point where sometimes a major patch happens, and for a lot of people it feels like nothing changed.
As for Jump Potions. I hate them. I hate them so much. They've let too many people who not only don't want to, "waste time on the main story" into the game, but also let so many noobs in along with them. It's to the point where on the OF, people compain about getting Holminster Switch in Shadowbringers, because most of the time you get noobs and it takes 2~3 times as long as it should because of that. And the noobs don't improve or learn from it, cause you can lead a noob to mountain dew, but you can't make him drink!