CREDD/PLEX/WoW Token system

I say hell no to legalized rmt. Keep that garbage out of the game. People should never be able to convert RL money into ingame money ever period.



The current cash shop is already way way too much with the "Cash Shop" Exclusive crap and job boosters.

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

No, because a sub is more or less guaranteed financial income every month compared to sporadic and unpredictable money trading (also potentially money laundering)

Remember that they have to provide a financial report to investors every quarter.. And there's a reason why virtually no other game allows players to buy premium items with "free" currency, because they're gonna get gamed eventually.

Money would indeed be lost. Instead of sub + optional revenue from every player, they would just be getting one or the other, occasionally both, from some players but not from others..

Besides all that, the key factor in inflation is how much currency is in circulation. It doesn't matter how many billions of gil players have, if they don't spend it, if they don't circulate the gil, then the effect on inflation is pretty negligible. What you'd be doing in fact is giving a reason for all that gil to enter circulation which will indeed lead to higher inflation numbers. If everyone is, or can be, a gillionaire, then the prices of everything will rise accordingly. Basic economic laws my friend.

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?????????????????????????

WoW's system:
Someone pays blizzard $20.
They get a wow token.
wow token is put up for sale for 300k gold
Someone spends 300k gold on token
seller gets (300k - tax) gold.
Tax gold is deleted from the universe.
Buyer can either consume the token to get 1 month sub (normally $15) or gain $15 credit in their cash shop.

So at the end of this transaction: gold is taken out of the economy. Someone resubscribes or purchases something on the cash shop. Blizzard gets 5 free bucks for basically nothing. A botter/hacker/identity thief lost a sale.

yall are all talking about gil sellers crashing markets as if there arent people who would rather pay for their subs and things with gil rather than having to use actual real world money.

yknow people with less disposable income who arent spending it on buying gil in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

people who would have canceled their subs to avoid paying, but decide it's worth staying subbed if someone else is paying for it.

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As someone else said, I'd rather these people actually pay their own sub if they want to stay. It makes it easier to see if a game is really worth it if everyone who plays it actually pays for it and not just stay because of being able to do it for free.

You can use purchased Gil to buy performance enhancing items and gears, it's pay to win...hard fekkin no. Not to mention all of us that play the crafting game would have a huge incentive to play ruined. Systems like this remove any feeling of accomplishment from the game, jus like illegal RMT. Can we jus PLEASE end the -make the game easier for me- posts? I'm not sayin that XIV is perfect, but for the sake of the Twelve jus...no..please

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Originally Posted by linay

As someone else said, I'd rather these people actually pay their own sub if they want to stay. It makes it easier to see if a game is really worth it if everyone who plays it actually pays for it and not just stay because of being able to do it for free.

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Why does it matter? SE gets their sub fees, plus an additional fee for the token. Someone who would have chosen to leave the game for a month because $15 is too much gets to stay, and instead of $15 for a month's subscription, SE gets $16-$20 depending on the price of the token. If you don't want someone else paying for your sub, then pay your own sub. But don't confuse this with people getting to stay "for free"; someone's still paying the sub fees, and they're paying them at an increased price, which is more revenue for SE.

I'm all for this. There are multiple benefits to the system.

-Enix profits by at least $5 per token. A token is typically sold for 20e and redeems for 13-15e worth of Enix product.
-The cash shop becomes open to every player with ingame currency.
-Earning gil has a purpose.
-RMT sellers have a 100% safe, legal competitor. This wrecks their business.

WoW made a lot of mistakes, but this wasn't one of them.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Why does it matter?

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I think it could be argued that people will become more fair weather (fickle) when they're given gil as an option. They enter into the gil system because saving $15 is pretty cool, then they get tired of playing for whatever reason and decide to unsub because their sub requires them to play (paying by gil). I think it would be important to see this physiologically like how if you like "hard challenging content" but the easy content rewards you more, therefore you spend most of your time doing the easy stuff to progress - even though it doesn't give you the most fun value (like how some do relic even though they don't enjoy it, I think the gil for sub may have that sort of deeper affect on SE). Once unsubbed SE has to work harder to get them resubbed which sometimes relies on them dropping huge content updates or expansions. Worse if the person who weaned off money onto gil then runs low on gil or is far behind and now just doesn't see value to resub anymore (too much "work" in their game and they don't want to pay cash anymore because they saw gil as an option).

Vs the game just being another bill like power or insurance (starbucks, whatever, spending your money - a currency you don't really have a choice in having to earn). So even if you're not feeling like playing now you might just stay subbed because why not (SE needs to revamp the vet. reward system to further encourage this imo) and if you did resub you'd not have to think about the work you need to do in game in order to play.. in game (not having to think if you're far behind and want to pay by gil but don't have the means to generate the gil needed comfortably to play and "play to pay").

I know some people could use it to great effect but I can't help but imagine that this system will create a less tightly bound relationship between player and SE. Imo, I feel PLEX/CREDD/Tokens create/promote a flimsy relationship and that it'll only be a benefit to SE in the short term (maybe for a few years). I'll give PLEX credit though in that EVE is a super hardcore game, so if it shakes off people who aren't insanely in love with the game then it's actually fine because the game wasn't for them anyways (it's not a theme park MMO).

That's of course ignoring the RMT part of the argument of why it might matter to some people (not wanting to see it promoted even if it can't be defeated).

Socially, morally, and economically I'm very neutral I suppose on the issue? But I would be interested on how this system would work technically.

We have 3 different tiers of subscriptions right now. For people who got the legacy price, entry price, and standard price. Would there need to be 3 separate tokens for each pricing plan?

Also, and you know this would be the next step players would ask for, would there need to be a token system for retainers? And if so how would that work out too? Because currently if you have any amount of extra retainers set up it gets taken out at the same time as your subscription as well.

So yeah I'm just curious, especially w/ some of SE's "spaghetti code" how this would work out on a technical sense.

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Originally Posted by Roda

?????????????????????????

WoW's system:
Someone pays blizzard $20.
They get a wow token.
wow token is put up for sale for 300k gold
Someone spends 300k gold on token
seller gets (300k - tax) gold.
Tax gold is deleted from the universe.
Buyer can either consume the token to get 1 month sub (normally $15) or gain $15 credit in their cash shop.

So at the end of this transaction: gold is taken out of the economy. Someone resubscribes or purchases something on the cash shop. Blizzard gets 5 free bucks for basically nothing. A botter/hacker/identity thief lost a sale.

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There's an inexhaustible list of variables that would effect the outcome. Overpricing the "token" item is one way to seemingly make it a wash, but again you aren't looking at it from a revenue stream perspective. SE can calculate expected revenue from their subs, they can't do much more than guess at cash shop items. Same goes for investors.

Since I've never played WoW I can't comment on the relative purchasing power of 300k gold in that game compared to FFXIV. $20 for 300k gil doesn't seem like fair trade IMO, but that's a subjective decision that only I could make.

What's not subjective is the actual economic effects. What would occur in this situation is basically us paying money to SE for gil redistribution. The main players that would buy a token early on are likely the ones already approaching gil cap, so all that gil they've been sitting on would then enter into the game economy and be redistributed to others. These other players would then have more gil to then buy up things on the market board. Problem arises when we see there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the amount of goods on said market board. IE, if there were 10 minions on the board before, there are still 10 minions up now - but everyone has more gil to buy them up (this is what causes inflation, a minimal "gil tax" barely makes a difference in this regard). Because our market board functions like an auction house, new items posted would have a higher bidding price. Auction prices only go down when stuff isn't selling, sellers become impatient and lower their price in order to sell - OR - more people enter the market to provide goods thus stimulating competition. (in the real world this does occur, as new businesses flock to more profitable industries to capitalize instead of existing industries which have a higher entry cost/lower margins)

At the end of this transaction: there is simply more gil in circulation which will, with 100% certainty, effect the market in some manner or another. How much and in what way depends on the inexhaustible list of variables that we can't account for. No doubt if the market data for WoW existed we could find out what actually happened as a result, and I'd bet money it would confirm the above economic law. You don't have to believe it, but that doesn't mean it's not real.

I'm honestly surprised a token for FFXIV hasn't been added yet.

For as long as WoW has been running, there were all sorts of shady gold selling and level boosting services centered around WoW. They constantly spammed the chats and advertised on forums, over time becoming ingrained in our minds like all successful advertisements. As the game grew and the amount of effort required to obtain something we wanted rose (more expansions = more time spent leveling = more time playing through stuff we don't want to play through just to get to the content we want to play through, or more expensive gold sinks = more time spent farming), players became more and more likely to turn to these services. As such, many had their accounts banned (for possessing stolen or duplicated gold/chargebacks) or their accounts stolen, and the success on the end of gold sellers and level boosters only encouraged them to continue their operations. No matter how hard the GMs tried to shut them up, they would still pop up and the problem only grew. Trying to stamp it out was a losing battle.

Blizzard realized that if they could never get rid of gold selling, than they could at least try to make it as safe possible. Thus, their ingenious solution: the WoW Token. Blizzard legitimatized the gold selling process and made it safe. Players who REALLY, REALLY wanted to skip the tedium could, and due to the design of the process, Blizzard was also able to reward players who took the long and hard path and invested much effort into the game, by allowing them to convert their ingame gold into a token for a service they otherwise couldn't get without paying real money. My friends who played WoW nonstop were able to pay their subscription fee using the gold they earned ingame. They were able to continue playing WoW and buy other Battle.net games for just playing WoW. Blizzard still gets their money; the person who bought the token with real money pays for the subscription of the player who bought the token with gold. The person who wanted the gold is happy. The person who wanted Bnet balance or a free subscription is happy. Everyone wins.

I don't think the P2W accusations holds much water in FFXIV. There is little competition in FFXIV, far less than what there is in WoW at this point.

There's one hurdle before all of this can even be considered: the mogstation isn't connected to the in-game client. The in-game UI completely lacks cashshop elements, and your crysta balance isn't a viewable currency.

Also, this entire situation sounds like one big headache for Square-Enix. Black Desert Online does this legal RMT garbage where 90% of the cashshop items can be listed on the marketplace. I believe the items first started out where you could pre-order them, top order always won, then they changed it into a bidding system where RNG wins. Also, each item had a fixed price - unlike FFXIV where it's a completely free market.

RMT is frowned upon. Making it 'legal' shouldn't change that. It's the same shenanigans except now it's free2play-cashshop-greed shenanigans. You can argue all you want about how gil isn't being injected into the economy - that doesn't change anything. The fact is it still gives people the option to pay real world money for an in-game currency. That is pay to win.

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Originally Posted by Thi

No.

Keep pay to win out of XIV. These systems allow whales to legally buy currency and destroy game economies.

I've seen these systems in multiple games and it leads to inflation and even more cash shop items instead of in-game rewards.

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It would do none of these things. Not unless they started making raid drops from Savage and Ultimate BoE, which they obviously aren't ever doing. People love to throw the P2W term around without understanding what it actually entails. You are aware that FFXIV has the biggest cash shop out of all the subscription MMO's right?

WoW's cash shop doesn't even come close to offering nearly as many things as our cash shop does. (I have no issue with the mogstation cash shop, and think it's completely fine) WoW's economy is also perfectly fine, since you obviously can't buy BiS slot gear off the AH. I honestly don't care if they add it or not, but let's not jump the shark with false assumptions.


People also seem to not understand that the reason WoW Created the WoW token was to combat RMT/Gold sellers which has done incredibly successfully. So if SE implemented their own system to get rid of the ridiculous amount of RMT spammers that plague the game, I'd be all for it.

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

RMT is frowned upon. Making it 'legal' shouldn't change that. It's the same shenanigans except now it's free2play-cashshop-greed shenanigans. You can argue all you want about how gil isn't being injected into the economy - that doesn't change anything. The fact is it still gives people the option to pay real world money for an in-game currency. That is pay to win.

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I agree, and I don't really like the idea of a "WoW Token" sorta thing in this game. But I think it would be foolish of me to say that it'd be devastating. Gil, outside of housing items and glamour gear (I consider even the newest crafted sets glamour because people can get the same level stuff or better the first day of a raid) has very little value. I would prefer to see more gil sinks in the game over a token system though nothing as crazy as a 5 million gold dinosaur mount that WoW has. 5 million gil in FF XIV is nothing but 5 million gold in WoW is a pretty hefty sum that very few people will ever achieve. It'd be like asking people to fork over 1-200 million gil for an outdoor furnishing like a Market Board or something.

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Originally Posted by Selova

People also seem to not understand that the reason WoW Created the WoW token was to combat RMT/Gold sellers which has done incredibly successfully. So if SE implemented their own system to get rid of the ridiculous amount of RMT spammers that plague the game, I'd be all for it.

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The system doesn't combat RMT. It may lower third party RMT but it will not combat RMT as if anything it will increase total RMT, since it is itself RMT. Gil sellers and spam also exist past the addition of this system, WoW is still developing new and better filtering and anti-cheat systems to combat that (since this system will not stop it, third party RMT isn't killed from this). Running bots and spam/account hacks is relatively cheap, you won't kill them with these things (they're unkillable).

WoW added this because it harvests the whales (whale used a bit loosely here lol). Like how diablo 3 real money auction house didn't kill third party RMT (sites were live and active, lots of bots in the system too), just put blizzard in on the RMT revenue stream.

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

Since when does Gil affects raids or PvP? I dont see Pay to win here.

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Someone here has never heard of win trading or selling raid boss kills.

And yes they do happen.

I would be all for it, but the major down side with FFXIV is it is extremely easy to make money. If the tokens do not go over 100 mil I prob could pay for my sub for around two years just off what I have currently between three characters, and that is with only causally trying to make money.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Why does it matter? SE...

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I am not SE. What SE gets or doesn't get is not my concern. I don't want this game to be propped up by people with enough money to spend to pay for other players. If you want to play, pay for the game and pay for the sub. If you want something from the Mog Station, pay for it with real money. If you want something from the game other than a level boost or story skip, play the game.

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Originally Posted by linay

I am not SE.

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Exactly. /10char

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Exactly. /10char

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Now that you understand that, we can hopefully let this idea die.

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Originally Posted by linay

Now that you understand that, we can hopefully let this idea die.

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nah, some people want this so we'll comtinue asking for it.

I think the question is, whether the Chinese/Korean markets will ask for it because they influenced the story skip and job boosts being added to our version of the game. If they request and have these tokens implemented for them, it's just a matter of time before it comes our way....

Either gil has no value in which case there isn't a need to buy gil with real money and this token system won't work.

Or gil does have value and people get to bypass the effort needed to collect it, and now regular players who actually play the game to get gil have to compete with the gil buyers for desirable things like houses, new minions, glamours and gear on the MB. I don't want to have to pay more gil on the MB or have more people camping houses just because some people open their wallets.

Once you are at level cap please explain what need for Gil is there?

After you do that..
Tell me which Once you couldn't get Gil for within a few hours?

Ways to make gil quickly.
Get 8 people together with 2 checks each. between items and Gil you can trun 500k quite easily.
Gold chest bunny farming 100k

Keeping things simple imagine 10 people play the game and each pay $1 each for the service. After a while one player decides the game no longer holds interest for them, SE now makes $9 a month rather than $10. SE certainly would rather make $10 a month and so they do what they can to appeal to the widest base in order to keep and attract customers back to the game. They try new things (some of which doesn't work, some which does), they advertise, they do call backs, invite a friend.

Now under the new system 10 people play the game, 9 play for "free", and one pays $10 a month. Now if SE loses a customer who is playing for free it's not a big deal, but if they lose the paying customer they are in trouble. Now to ensure they earn money they need to keep appealing to the narrow paying player base. Free customers (or even the larger portion of customers who willing pay their $1) no longer matter because the bulk of their profit is tied up in the few players that are paying $10 a month. Rather than trying to give the player base new and different thing they hammer on the few things they know keep the whales paying.

This idea of appealing only to a very narrow portion of players carries a huge risk, if the free and "almost" free players leave the game because they feel like the devs have abandoned them, the whales too will eventually leave. However if they don't appeal to the whales and the whales do leave, SE loses income. Think of this like the high risk high reward. Games setup this way can make huge profit, but they also tend not to have much longevity.

How then can WoW get away with this? Well WoW is an anomaly among MMOs. I could have an hour long discussion as to why but to keep this as short as possible, WoW was in the right place at the right time and played their cards exactly right. FFXIV while successful cannot compete with WoW in anyway and SE should not necessary take it as a given that some financial model that has done well for WoW will work for FFXIV.

Think of FFXIV vs WoW like this - under the proposed model, FFXIV has 9 free players and 1 paying. WoW has 90 free players and 10 paying. (This is exactly the same proportion of paying to free players.) FFXIV loses 1 paying customer it's lights out but if WoW loses one paying customer it hurts but there are 9 others with time to attract more. The smaller population alone in FFXIV makes this a huge commercial risk, and given how they have been handling marketing, and statements from SE along the lines of "well you can take a break if you want", suggest that SE are comfortable with the idea that they have players who will pay a sub for a few months around a story release and then unsub while waiting for new content. Combine this with regular call back campaigns and the high volume of advertising around expansions SE gains very little by "keeping" free players through a token system.