CREDD/PLEX/WoW Token system

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

This. You're forgetting that these transactions to buy the tokens for gil take place on the marketboard and subject to tax, a gil sink.

And the tokens would be subject to market factors like anything else.
If enough people are taking part in these transactions, the gil value of a token falls.
If there's a huge demand for them, it rises.
It'll never be as simple as $20 = 20 million gil.

Being a legotimate way to purchase gil will take some business away from RMT, as the risk of getting caught will always be a factor. One many judge to be worth it currently, but with a legitimate alternative that risk loses its value.

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Youre missing my point (and I think you meant to quote me too).

It doesnt matter what the price is, what matters is how the Botters can game the system and still end up ahead of SE. Even if the token fluctuates, RMTers just fluctuate with it. And since inflation is a thing that is still occuring, the cost of tokens will likely rise overtime as more gil is added to the economy from other sources, and as a result, increase the profits for RMTers. You arent solving the gil issue, youre just kicking it down the road.

This also doesnt address to big problems: 1) This system directly benefits people with gil, or people with deep RL pockets, 2) overtime with Gil inflation, starting players or poor players to catch up or keep up will need to start using Tokens as a means to close the gap. So your telling start players that they need to spend an extra x amount of cash to even use the MB realistically. This isnt like players who already have wealth (and are money savvy) and use that wealth to make more wealth.

Again, the core issue isnt getting Gil. People turn to RMT cause the prices on the MB are to expensive due to inflation. Thats the core issue. SE needs to control the inflation issue, not create methods where its easier to get gil moved around.

People who buy gil from RMT dont care about value, they care about convenience.
Thats why the buy gil instead of making it themselves.

Make this more convenient than RMT and you rob them of their main selling point.

Please, no. I like the fact that both gil and the market board are mostly irrelevant for me right now. There are plenty of things I'd like to buy in the Mog Station and having it only purchasable with real money makes it easier to limit my purchase and it also means I don't have to farm for gil and use the market board.

I also don't like the idea of having any item be obtainable both via gameplay and real money at the same time. Either use one or the other method, or do it like seasonal items where it's available in game first before being available for real money purchase, but not at the same time.

And if people really need gil, they should obtain it via gameplay, not just hand over real money for it.

Been there done that with EQ2. They took a great game without as large a fanbase as WoW and turned into a cow wringing machine.

First they looked the other way with botters; then they looked the other way with the in game money sellers. Then the cash shop went from fluff to a couple "mild" advantages, but nothing game breaking. Then the items that could be freely traded and sold on the in game market that were the equivalent to one month's sub.

Then those became the main way that people made money. Low on funds? Swipe your cc, sell the thing, get ton of money. Repeat.

Then they added more and more pay to win elements - just as the doom and gloomers predicted. Spells have levels there. You level up, you get the level 1 version, and there were I think 8 levels total. Increased levels hit for more - typical stuff. You can get it in game buy finding the item (they went whole expansions where there was quite literally zero way of getting them short of cash shop)... or you can wait to slowly level it (progress bar, one spell going up one level in upper tiers? 40+ IRL DAYS). Or, for the low low price....

The "serious" raiders were expected to max out their hardest hitting spells, if not all of them. One character getting maxed for raiding that way was well over $1,000 USD - JUST for the spell upgrades. Not to mention buying the sub items that were turned into money, that's about another $500 USD. Every expansion was a gear reset, or very near to it - either by upping itemization or by increasing level caps. You wouldn't wear a level 50 ring on a level 60 character, etc.

And the cycle repeated.

Lot of the diehards have long left that mess.

When you introduce pay to win, it only leads to one place.

Leave the cash shop full of the fluff stuff - fun glamour items that have no bearing on game play. Even gear sets without any stats that give extra exp like they have. Even the jump and story boosts so people can catch up easier to their friends - if they stick around, they will learn in time.

But adding in pay for gil or pay for a sub item that you can sell? It's a mistake.

Sorry for long windedness on this - I left a lot of good friends and 10+ years of character development on alts and etc because it got to be too much there because of the irreparable damage that was done.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

People who buy gil from RMT dont care about value, they care about convenience.
Thats why the buy gil instead of making it themselves.

Make this more convenient than RMT and you rob them of their main selling point.

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They care a lot about value. Youre not going to buy from an RMT if they charge you $20 for 500k. People typically base purchasing on the best bang for their buck so long as the risk is within reason. People arent going to end up turning down a better deal from an RMT person so long as they think they wont get caught.

I'm on the fence about this. In other games it's not really a big deal, but I think it would impact housing negatively. Since the high priced plots price people out of the system, being able to just legal RMT gil will just add more buyers when there are already a limited amount of plots. If they fix the housing system then that's another story.

Secondly, games like WoW got around the inflation (which might have been caused by garrison/guild hall missions indirectly encouraging buying of tokens by giving everyone a ton of gold for doing almost nothing - man would not surprise me if they did actually did this intentionally to give people gold to buy tokens /tinfoil) by adding mounts and pets that cost a ginormous amount of gold (500k - millions) on merchants and that being the only way of getting them.

Right now on FFXIV you can get most mounts and pets that aren't promotions by just playing the game regularly, if they went that route (Having super expensive untradeable mounts/minions bought with gil - talking millions of gil not 100k) that would be lame. Sure, some of the rare mounts cost a lot (like the PoTD, HoH ones), but you can get most of them as drops even if rare, too.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

People typically base purchasing on the best bang for their buck so long as the risk is within reason. People arent going to end up turning down a better deal from an RMT person so long as they think they wont get caught.

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That's only true of the people already buying gil. There are a lot of people who aren't buying gil from shady RMT sites but might if there was an official channel. Those people would absolutely pay more to buy from official sources.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

That's only true of the people already buying gil. There are a lot of people who aren't buying gil from shady RMT sites but might if there was an official channel. Those people would absolutely pay more to buy from official sources.

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Then the token does nothing to address RMTers because RMTers not getting those sales regardless, nor does it address the inflation issue.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Then the token does nothing to address RMTers because RMTers not getting those sales regardless, nor does it address the inflation issue.

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Nor does it address the possibility of people buying gil from RMT to finance their sub for cheaper (according to OP's suggestion).

If they are going to introduce official gil buying, it makes more sense to follow what the rest of the gaming market does by making us purchase a separate premium currency to then exchange for "free" in-game currency or other items. Of course, either solution seems to introduce many issues on it's own, which is probably good cause to avoid the path altogether.

I'd prefer it if the XIV team makes it so players that want to stay have to contribute to supporting the servers and the game directly.

There's no gil sinks in this game that really amount to anything. It's far easier to accumulate gil than to actually spend it - something I don't mind as you don't need to go out of your way to purposely farm gil (a massive QoL change from other games that I personally enjoy), be it from grinding, crafting or whatnot. I like the fact that running a dungeon or two covers my repair costs for the next 15+ dungeon runs, or 1 raid prog night.

This system also doesn't account for regions that are able to buy items for cheaper than other regions and then reselling at a profit. I'm unsure if this was addressed, but why that other MogStation store popped up and could work (please do not support third party purchases!). The thought that the possibility of one of these third party traders buying a token that could be sold in-game, making XIV lose money, upsets me. That's a beginning of how games could die. For all its ups and downs, XIV doesn't deserve that kind of fate.