I miss playing MMO’s, but micro transactions ruin any sense of progression for me.
Any mmo’s out there that fit the bill?
Cosmetics are fine, as long as you can’t just turn around and sell said cosmetics in game.
Final Fantasy XIV would fit the bill. The cash shop only has cosmetics, and you can pay to add more retainers (basically bank space), but in terms of actual gold buying or power upgrades, none of that exists.
Hmm these look sus:
https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/product/804 https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/product/822 https://store.finalfantasyxiv.com/ffxivstore/en-us/product/809
Maybe they’re not so popular, or in context not worth that much, but levels and money usually are no-nos for me. Because the one appears to be straight up levels and gil.
This is a story skip. Many forms of character progress in FFXIV are gated by that individual character completing the main storyline quests.
A story skip boosts the character to the beginning of the current expansion tier, so it is not possible to use this mechanic to compete with standard players on current content. I think the intended use case is alt characters (which are less necessary in FFXIV because you can play all jobs on one character, but many players still have them).
I play FFXIV since 2014 and I honestly wouldn’t recommend anyone to buy this. You’re just paying to not play the game and skip the main quest (which locks up a bunch of content behind it).
Worth actively recommending against, even.
Yeah, they’re a skip to endgame content. But they’re not any kind of “instant win.”
The couple types of pvp aren’t tied to your character level, and the most difficult raid content is best run with a group that you practice with. If you’ve never played, simply grabbing the game and one of those packages isn’t going to give you an immediate edge.
XIV is sort of a single player game with a bunch of coop boss fights.
And, not to be cliche, but you can play through the entire first two arcs (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) completely free, with no real limitations. The only things locked out of the free tier are the more social aspects, and any content above level 60. A handful of jobs are locked, but there is a ridiculous amount of content available for free.
I’ve played a few other mmos and hated them all. XIV is something weirdly different. And the overwhelming majority of the community is chill and friendly.
I’d argue that if you never played, then getting one of those packages would actually make you play worse than someone who’s played from the start.
Leveling up in Final Fantasy XIV is easy. Just play the story and you’ll reach max level by the time you finish it.
These items are intended for players who create an alt and who wish to skip most of the stury if they already played it.
Also reaching max level is kind of where the game begins (raids, dungeons, gearing up, etc).
Also 500,000 Gil is pocket change…
Really think you should give FFXIV a deeper thought beyond just looking at the store and finding the level skips.
Even if you were to buy a skip, there’s still a considerable amount of game in front of you to play. They are only meant to get people to modern content without having to (to some people) slog through hundreds of hours of older stuff. It’s not a p2e micro-transaction by any means — far from it.
Hopefully you understand why I was a little suspicious!
But I tried it out, and holy moly it feels like a different era. My brain can’t compute the fact that I just got a free to play game (Just have the demo, which honestly sounds like a ton of game) and it’s not trying to sell me anything in game? The tutorial was all about game play in universe, and never once told me about premium currency? My ui doesn’t have 5 different things? Crafting doesn’t involve long cool downs that I can 5 gems to speed up?
Like it feels like a different era of game, thank you for being persistent! I’ve only played a couple hours, but so far it feels like it’s going to become a comfort game at the very least.
Absolutely, it’s absurd to conflate XIV’s level skips with being able to buy gold in other games.
XIV was actually my first thought re: the OP’s query.
I agree with this whole-heartedly, there’s simply no way any reasonable person would consider skipping story content as buying power in the context of how FFXIV works as an MMO.
It lets players jump right into the new content without worrying about dozens or hundreds of hours of prior story they may or may not want to play through to get to the latest content at the same level as everyone else starting out, that’s all.
