A little thought for the game. I understand the issues obviously, but...
Ok, right now there is this thing called Crysta. It has only one real use: Buying subscription and other things for your FF14 account. The money is already in SE's hands.
My idea? Make Crysta tradeable/giftable.
Let me explain what I mean by tradeable first: (And I know that this is the idea that many people would disagree with)
We have market boards right?
Well, we could add a second function to those boards where people can put their crysta up for sale and others could put up requests for purchase. There would be three values: Buying/selling, Price, and number.
Now, this won't be a direct purchase. Instead, let us say the current Sell price on Crysta is 1000 gil per crysta for the lowest sell price. Say the current buy price is 900 gil per crysta for the highest buy price.
If someone then tries to sell crysta for 800 gil, the person who is at 900 gil buy price will buy the crysta at the 900 gil price up to their maximum amount. They are paying for their priority in buying. First come first served if there are multiple at the same prices.
If those amounts remain the same, someone could later go and try to buy crysta at 2000 gil per crysta. That would result in them buying at 1000 gil per crysta until they reach their maximum or until the person with 1000 gil per crysta runs out before moving to the next. Again, paying for priority.
In these case, first come first serve regardless of price.(so if someone tried to sell at 800 and then another tried to sell at 900 and another tried to sell at 700, the 800 would sell first, then 900, then 700).
There are both advantages and disadvantages to this:
Some Advantages:
Less reason for RMT to exist. Risk getting banned by buying gil or do it legit?
Makes it possible for people to obtain service if they are on hard times.
Profit from Crysta sales goes to SE instead of bots.
Some Disadvantages:
May be considered a way to 'pay' to win.
Would require a bit of work to tweak it to work properly.
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Secondly would be gifting. This crysta would not be given directly. Instead, the person with the crysta would select a service to gift to the other player. So say I have a friend who I want to gift an extra retainer for a month to. I would then, using their character name and server, choose the appropriate character (if there are two with the same name and server, (which there have been), that is when choosing matters. In order to prevent confusion, the selection would provide levels, appearance, GC, FC, whether they are on your friends list or not, and so on. It would even show their player message.
After choosing the player, I would then have a choice of gifting them various services. After selecting which services I want to gift and for how long (if applicable), I confirm it and they are given the service or services.
