In the post-Dawntrail era, The Final Fantasy 14 community hasn't been entirely pleased with the state of the MMO, and a very pricey recent addition to the online cash shop has turned the vibes from "bad" to something approaching "rancid."
The FF14 Online Store, known simply as the cash shop to most players, is where you go to buy real-money cosmetics. There's no in-game equivalent, but the web store has been offering various optional purchases for years. Among the options are costume sets, which initially offered seasonal outfits for $5 apiece, but over the years have come to include famous Final Fantasy costumes and other fancier clothing options for anywhere from $18 to $22 USD.
Now we have the belt-leather attire. It's similarly priced to previous outfits, but crucially it's split into two very nearly identical, but separate collections. Want the standard set? That'll be $18 USD. Want the version with slightly shorter pants and a fashionable hole in the back of the shirt? That'll be another $18.
To top it all off, a matching hat and glove set - which would've been included in previous attire packages - costs another $6. For a community that's already sent Dawntrail user reviews into "mostly negative" territory, and has been bleeding players to such a degree that Square Enix's president has apparently acknowledged the concerns, the move is going down about as well as you'd expect.
"This is a new low when it comes to the cash shop," as one Reddit comment puts it, and even as a former FF14er who never touched the real-money store, it's tough to argue otherwise. You'd be paying $42 for the complete set, which is ultimately more expensive than even the game's latest expansion.
"This cash shop item release is one of the most tone deaf decisions Square Enix has made regarding the game in recent memory," another commenter observes. You don't need me to run down what every redditor has to say about this outfit, but the tone is broadly, "hey, this sucks." Players are even offering their own alternatives, using in-game items to create outfits that look very similar.
In the grand scheme of the issues facing FF14 right now, an annoyingly expensive cash shop item probably isn't the most pressing. But with this release coming as so many complaints about the state of the game unaddressed, it feels especially bad.
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