Should players be able to sell Mogstation items?

Hey, was wondering how people felt behind allowing players to buy and sell cash shop items.

Personally I would like something to spend Gil on. Just a general question, hope it does not turn into a shit storm.

You are asking for legitimized RMT. My answer is a hard no.

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Originally Posted by Moonfish

You are asking for legitimized RMT. My answer is a hard no.

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RMT is always going to be a thing, and this game already inconveniences players due to their fear of RMT.

SE will never win the war on RMT, but at the very least they could offer other options for players that have more pixel currency over real and provide them with an option to get some of the cash shop items. Who knows maybe they would even make more money off the cash shop. Isn't that a good thing for the company. I mean they make items single use so clearly they want people to buy multiples so give people a reason to buy multiples.

Haven't seen any shouts in a while. But people sell mogstation stuff in game quite regularly. It is a little bit of a risk since no guarantee. But with the gift system it isn't that hard.

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Originally Posted by Moonfish

You are asking for legitimized RMT. My answer is a hard no.

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Prohibition doesn't work. We have literally centuries of evidence of this. In the MMO space, we know the same thing, and have virtually the entire lifetime of the genre as evidence.

If there's a demand for something, people will create supply. That is one of the most fundamental rules of economics. Black market RMT causes all kinds of problems that nobody likes and cost SE money to deal with. Wouldn't it make more sense to bring it in house in a safe way and make some money off it instead? That's exactly why so many other games have brought stuff like play time tokens into existence: if players are going to buy it anyway, it makes more sense to have them buy it from a reputable source and make some money off the transaction.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

Prohibition doesn't work. We have literally centuries of evidence of this. In the MMO space, we know the same thing, and have virtually the entire lifetime of the genre as evidence.

If there's a demand for something, people will create supply. That is one of the most fundamental rules of economics. Black market RMT causes all kinds of problems that nobody likes and cost SE money to deal with. Wouldn't it make more sense to bring it in house in a safe way and make some money off it instead? That's exactly why so many other games have brought stuff like play time tokens into existence: if players are going to buy it anyway, it makes more sense to have them buy it from a reputable source and make some money off the transaction.

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Legitimacy.

SE doing it makes it a legitimate and wholly acceptable practice. There are people who would do this now if it wasn’t against the rules. The only things holding them back are moral high ground and possible ridicule from their friends since most of us despise RMT in all of its forms.

Breaking the rules doesn’t stop people since SE doesn’t ban gil buyers, only gives them a vacation.

Yes, RMT happens now on a fairly small scale relative to the mess that would be created from this.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Haven't seen any shouts in a while. But people sell mogstation stuff in game quite regularly. It is a little bit of a risk since no guarantee. But with the gift system it isn't that hard.

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I have gotten burned a few times trying to get an item that way. I do understand why SE would be hesitant, but just not sure it is worth the inconvenience, and the potential profits.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

SE doing it makes it a legitimate and wholly acceptable practice. There are people who would do this now if it wasn’t against the rules. The only things holding them back are moral high ground and possible ridicule from their friends

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I would bet those people that are that close just do it quietly and spread the money out a bit or just aren't that flashy about purchases. Except for the locked servers a quick check shows it's cheaper to buy tonnes gil then to buy the stuff on the mogstation at current per character pricing structure.


Also with the continuing growth of mogstation I would hope one day we get the reverse. And they take gil out of the game and turn it into digital purchases. I feel we are well beyond the moral high ground of rmt with jumps for jobs/quests/retainers. Build a system in the game and let money flow both ways. It is not like they ban paying bots anyways. As every server seems to claim a group of legitimate bots who have played for years with no issues.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

Yes, RMT happens now on a fairly small scale relative to the mess that would be created from this.

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The far bigger issue is: The inflation we had all these years would finally become an actual issue as the rich crafters that previously soaked up the gil and made it dead money would suddenly have something to buy with it and thus return the money into circulation.

That'd create a bigger mess of an economy than a data-center wide market board could hope to achieve.

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Originally Posted by Istaru

Yes, RMT happens now on a fairly small scale relative to the mess that would be created from this.

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What mess would that be? Plenty of other games have been doing it for years, in various forms. Aside from more profit and fewer* black market transactions (and the support headaches those create), what "mess" was created, exactly?


*It doesn't typically eliminate black market RMT because prices are usually higher, but having a legitimate and built in option tends to put downward pressure on their business.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Hey, was wondering how people felt behind allowing players to buy and sell cash shop items.

Personally I would like something to spend Gil on. Just a general question, hope it does not turn into a shit storm.

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Is this for real? There is a reason why mogstation items have a gift option. There have been some occasions however where FC's sell some ites or give them as prices for their events, IF you really want that you might as well buy them from mogstation. Using gill kind of defeats the whole purpose of cash shop items -.-.

No, this should never be a conscience though in anyone's mind.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

What mess would that be? Plenty of other games have been doing it for years, in various forms. Aside from more profit and fewer* black market transactions (and the support headaches those create), what "mess" was created, exactly?


*It doesn't typically eliminate black market RMT because prices are usually higher, but having a legitimate and built in option tends to put downward pressure on their business.

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Does it really create "support headaches" though, since "unauthorized transactions are not enforceable by the GMs" seems like a pretty cut-and-dry approach.

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Originally Posted by ManuelBravo

Is this for real? There is a reason why mogstation items have a gift option. There have been some occasions however where FC's sell some ites or give them as prices for their events, IF you really want that you might as well buy them from mogstation. Using gill kind of defeats the whole purpose of cash shop items -.-.

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Using Gil to buy something someone already spent money on defeats the purpose. Since I was never going to buy the item in the first place it creates a net positive for SE since someone else bought the item off the station and I just bought it off the MB.

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Originally Posted by Awha

RMT is always going to be a thing, and this game already inconveniences players due to their fear of RMT.

SE will never win the war on RMT, but at the very least they could offer other options for players that have more pixel currency over real and provide them with an option to get some of the cash shop items. Who knows maybe they would even make more money off the cash shop. Isn't that a good thing for the company. I mean they make items single use so clearly they want people to buy multiples so give people a reason to buy multiples.

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How about no? A tiny minority breaking the rules doesn't mean we should do away with those rules.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Using Gil to buy something someone already spent money on defeats the purpose. Since I was never going to buy the item in the first place it creates a net positive for SE since someone else bought the item off the station and I just bought it off the MB.

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SE wouldn't see it like this. Letting you buy Mogstation items from other players deprives them of additional revenue you may have otherwise spent on that item in the Mogstation.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

What mess would that be? Plenty of other games have been doing it for years, in various forms. Aside from more profit and fewer* black market transactions (and the support headaches those create), what "mess" was created, exactly?


*It doesn't typically eliminate black market RMT because prices are usually higher, but having a legitimate and built in option tends to put downward pressure on their business.

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You think that there would not be a second coming of MogStation rage threads out the wazoo like when they announced it? Looking at your join date and your history, you weren't here. It was a shit show.

As for downward pressure, gil isn’t that expensive now. It would only be affected by the addition of legitimacy from SE.

It devalues efforts like crafting and gathering along with RMT too.

I would never have to put forth any effort to get money for glamours or housing or minions and such ever again. Unless you count going to the MogStation and inputting my credit card to be effort.

I will make this as clear as possible, if you ignore everything else and only read this part, ok with me.

My answer today is No.
My answer tomorrow is No.
My answer until my dying breath is No.
My answer until the end of time is No.
There is nothing you or anyone else can say or do that will change my opinion in any way, shape or form.

Save yourself the futility, don’t respond to me about this again. I will extend the same courtesy to you.
Have a blessed day.

I actually looked at my calendar to check if it was april yet....it wasn't.

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Originally Posted by Emstidor

Does it really create "support headaches" though, since "unauthorized transactions are not enforceable by the GMs" seems like a pretty cut-and-dry approach.

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Gil that's sold via black market RMT comes from multiple sources, some of which are stuff like hacking people's accounts and taking their gil to sell. That creates all kinds of support problems, because you now have a customer who needs their account restored, gil that is where it shouldn't be, another customer who has what is effectively stolen gil without realizing it, etc. It costs a lot of money in support costs to deal with that (Blizzard went into this many years ago when talking about it). One of the reasons why they incentivize using the token app is that it makes accounts so much harder to steal, which saves them money (and leads to fewer upset customers).

You also have the costs of tracking down accounts that are used to farm the gil, mules that hold it, and the whole infrastructure behind the operation. It's playing whack a mole with people are making money by doing it, so they have every reason to continue to do so. That's why prohibition never works, in any game, ever. The laws of economics can't be defeated by saying "we really want to ban this".

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Originally Posted by Kohdo

SE wouldn't see it like this. Letting you buy Mogstation items from other players deprives them of additional revenue you may have otherwise spent on that item in the Mogstation.

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Maybe, maybe not we do not know that for sue. Though I can say in my case and a few other I know we simply do not want to spend real money on item so that sale SE will never get if we did not buy the item off another player. But if someone else bought it and I bought it off the market board they have a higher potential profit. Granted many variables to account for. I mean I have no desire to buy something off the station, I will either buy it off a FC mate or something. I am of the position it is time to stop inconveniencing players in fear of RMT.

I mean the reason we cannot mail between our alts is probably due to their crusade against RMT. Sure having such a massive influx of Gil being put back into the economy will suck, and properly the market will never recover due to how long the hording has gone on for. At this point can SE really do anything to combat this, waiting just allows the coffers to get larger, and I do not see them adding any gil sinks in the future so should this really be a reason to not allow people the option to buy mogstation items from other players easier?

I mean I have not even been playing all that long and I am fairly close to being Gil capped on my main. So I cannot imagine how much Gil some long time players are sitting on.

Also either way I am never going to buy an item off the station, I will just buy them off someone and use the friend code. Part of me was just being silly I guess wanting the process to be a little more convenient. Was not my intent to cause a shit storm as I said in the OP. Let us be cordial towards one another. We can be mature about this.

Fact: anyone outraged about RMT wouldn't do anything if they actually implemented this, just like people who were outraged by the idea of jump potions kept playing like nothing happened and realized the sky didn't fall.

Other games have this and none of your wild ideas of how bad it could get ever happened in those games.

Should players be able to spend real money to buy cash shop items to sell for in game currency... That is your question?

Why not it sell gil?

Well, since this game is P2P and has a cash shop like F2P games...might as well let us sell the items on the market board like the F2P games!

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Originally Posted by Istaru

You think that there would not be a second coming of MogStation rage threads out the wazoo like when they announced it? Looking at your join date and your history, you weren't here. It was a shit show.

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You mean like with Shirogane? Jump potions? The mog station itself, apparently. The game survived. Forum explosions are always temporary.

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It devalues efforts like crafting and gathering along with RMT too.

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You can't craft any of the items in question, so no it doesn't.

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I would never have to put forth any effort to get money for glamours or housing or minions and such ever again. Unless you count going to the MogStation and inputting my credit card to be effort.

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You can currently get those things with a credit card. How exactly is it earth shattering if someone else gets them with a credit card and you get them with gil from said person?

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I will make this as clear as possible, if you ignore everything else and only read this part, ok with me.

My answer today is No.
My answer tomorrow is No.
My answer until my dying breath is No.
My answer until the end of time is No.
There is nothing you or anyone else can say or do that will change my opinion in any way, shape or form.

Save yourself the futility, don’t respond to me about this again. I will extend the same courtesy to you.
Have a blessed day.

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So you can't name an actual game where this system has caused problems and don't have a logical argument for it except that you really really don't like it because reasons.

Got it. Have a good one. :)

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Originally Posted by XovanPrince

Should players be able to spend real money to buy cash shop items to sell for in game currency... That is your question?

Why not it sell gil?

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Who is saying I don't /wink wink. This is all part of my master plan raise demand for Gil. All jokes aside people already do this, just have to jump through a few hoops and is not that secure you can get burned since the buyer has no real protection so you have to be careful from whom you buy the item from. Though word spreads fast when someone does do this so at that point it becomes a one off for that seller since no one will buy an item off them again.

Just a general reminder has nothing to do with the person I quoted or what they wrote. As people we may not find ourselves in a agreement, but that does not mean we have to be hostile towards one another.

Just wondering what makes FFXIV so different from say WoW that making cash shop times market permitted would cause major issues that have not fallen on to WoW.

1 person wanting the item in the end, should only require one mog station purchase, the real money was spent, but somebody else bought it with gil, no wrong has been done and SE has their cash and a real money paying player got some gil he would have other wise never obtained. RMT are a solution to both players who dont have a real job and working people who dont have time to play all day every day. SE understand that you have to try and help both, or else you end up with many hardcore players who produce no extra income, and lose a lot of paying customers who get frustrated at being treated like they dont have the right to enjoy the game fully due to their real life obligations such as work.

You speak all high and mighty about RMT devaluation in game production effort, and yet spit on the REAL LIFE hard work of paying customers who would buy on mog station to then try to make some gils? All efforts have value, you just WANT to believe yours and the effort of hardcore gamers like yourself is the only "effort" that counts...

Stop talking like a selfish child, all players should have a way to obtain what they want in their beloved game, and they work hard in-game or in real life to obtain the pretty things they want. Its only natural that the two type of players would end up exchanging, they both can obtain what the other cannot, SQ should approve of such fairness.

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Originally Posted by Tridus

So you can't name an actual game where this system has caused problems and don't have a logical argument for it except that you really really don't like it because reasons.

Got it. Have a good one. :)

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For an example of where this has gone poorly - Archeage. Yes yes, AA has a multitude of other issues, but one of the contributing factors is that you can buy Apex on their website (and other market place items), and then resell it in the market. This has created an enormous amount of whales and has had a major effect on player / game balance. Has made the game majorly P2W.

Now, I realize that Archeage gameplay is vastly different than XIV gameplay. SE has designed the game so you really can't pull too far ahead of anyone else during a patch cycle. So the effects of any "P2W" are going to be substantially less in XIV, but they're still there.

I think one of the main spots you'd see this would be in the market place. Gil isn't a huge factor in this game, but it does for those who craft and like to control the market. And if people suddenly have easy access for tons of gil, inflation could then take over. Inflation will only hurt the players who don't want to have to buy extra gil (via mogstation item sale).

I'm not a fan of the idea.

I'm all for it personally.

-You can't P2W, at best you can get Normal 8 man quality gear, consumables and vanity items with gil.

-It gives RMT serious competition since selling cash shop items would be a completely risk free method of coverting rl money to gil. You won't get scammed or your account banned. This is major, even if the RMT sellers offered better gil rates.

-It gives gil a purpose, thus activites that earn gil like maps, crafting, gathering or selling minions have more purpose. It doesn't devalue craft/gathering, it makes them more worthwhile.

-It would drastically increase profits for Enix, cash shop sales would skyrocket, increasing available funds to put into the game.

-No more complaints about heavy microtransactions, since everything could be earned with ingame gil.

That's not legitimised RMT at all.

RMT is other people making money from the game.
Being able to sell mogstation items would have the money goung to SE, and it would remove the market for RMT entirely.
Kinda like WoW tokens.

I have no idea why SE dont do this, it'd kill RMT and make them more money, while giving people a legitimate avenue for either obtaining mogstation items without forking out real money, or buying gil without funding dodgy third party operations.

It'd kill bot farming, as people aren't likely to employ bots just to buy mogstation items, and the gil value of those items would be comparative to their demand, allowing traditional market forces to regulate them, and prevent gil-buyers from screwing up the market, because the more people do it the less profitable it becomes.

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Originally Posted by Skivvy

For an example of where this has gone poorly - Archeage. Yes yes, AA has a multitude of other issues, but one of the contributing factors is that you can buy Apex on their website (and other market place items), and then resell it in the market. This has created an enormous amount of whales and has had a major effect on player / game balance. Has made the game majorly P2W.

Now, I realize that Archeage gameplay is vastly different than XIV gameplay. SE has designed the game so you really can't pull too far ahead of anyone else during a patch cycle. So the effects of any "P2W" are going to be substantially less in XIV, but they're still there.

I think one of the main spots you'd see this would be in the market place. Gil isn't a huge factor in this game, but it does for those who craft and like to control the market. And if people suddenly have easy access for tons of gil, inflation could then take over. Inflation will only hurt the players who don't want to have to buy extra gil (via mogstation item sale).

I'm not a fan of the idea.

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Inflation wouldn't occur because this wouldn't generate gil, itd be the gil from players purchasing these items on the marketplace changing hands.

But by killing the RMT industry, you'd eliminate all of their bots that DO run automatically and generate additional gil.
This could actually fight inflation.

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Originally Posted by Kohdo

SE wouldn't see it like this. Letting you buy Mogstation items from other players deprives them of additional revenue you may have otherwise spent on that item in the Mogstation.

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A lot, if not all mogstation items are expendable tokens that unlock addition emotes, glamours or mounts.
So no, you can't use it and then sell it on, they're one time use, and SE would be getting the same purchases either way.

It's entirely possible that it could increase rmt as well. If it's cheaper to buy the amount of gil from rmt, then buy the item off a player with that gil, than it is to buy the item off the mogstation, then that is what people will do.

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Originally Posted by Moonfish

You are asking for legitimized RMT. My answer is a hard no.

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I used to feel the same way. But then I realized the choice is legitimized RMT, or a gray market of people with dubious morals hacking the game and stealing accounts.

People are going to buy the gil one way or another - and quite frankly I'd rather see them buy it off another player legit than support these shady grey market's of dubious means.

This would make the purchasing of additional retainers pay to win imo. Right now gil is pretty worthless because you can't do much with it, but the second you attach a real life currency value to it is the second it becomes pay to win. Do you really want this game to take on THAT particular stigma?

If I am understanding this correctly, my view on it is it basically boils it down to RMT, and a person spending real money in exchange for game currency. In the case of selling mogstation items, if the mind is capable of bypassing ToS then it is also perfectly capable of figuring out how to make gil in the game. It's not just a waste of real life money, but also a waste of this person's mental capability.

I get buying mogstation items for personal use. I've bought a couple of items myself, but I would never use game currency to by a mogstation item because not only is against the ToS, which I AGREED to, it is also in violation of my own values.

https://media.giphy.com/media/xiMUwB...wO80/giphy.gif

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Fact: anyone outraged about RMT wouldn't do anything if they actually implemented this, just like people who were outraged by the idea of jump potions kept playing like nothing happened and realized the sky didn't fall.

Other games have this and none of your wild ideas of how bad it could get ever happened in those games.

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This.

Alimdia and I were official moderators of the NA version of a different MMO that actually wrestled with this issue, along with two other people that also ultimately migrated to FFXIV.

On one hand, we had the native Korean version where EVERYTHING on the cash shop was tradeable. On the other hand, we had the NA version which didn't let us trade anything from the cash shop until about halfway through its lifespan. Then we had the Chinese version, which was far and above the most populated and profitable version of the game (which I still greatly loathe because they're directly responsible for the sorry state of the game worldwide, because the developers designed a lot of systems with their version in mind and never adapted it to account for the situation in every other version. In catering to their version, they ultimately destroyed the game in every other region of the world). The Chinese version had actual legitimized gold buying.

- The Korean version had the most stable economy by far, though one should note that they allowed everything to be tradeable from the very beginning of that version's lifespan.
- The NA economy had gold buying out the ass at one point, but the localization team then went really hard on the gold sellers and buyers in a way we hadn't thought possible, and the botters were pretty much wiped out - at least for about a year or two. Long story. Anyway, our version eventually allowed some cash shop items to be sold on the market board, but not all. Our economy stabilized, though the bigger factor into this came from a design decision from a different version...
- The Chinese version also had a rather stable economy and allowed most (but not all) cash shop items to be traded through the market board, but everything was also inflated to hell. To curb this, the developers decided to make some huge gold sinks via enhancing fees for the strongest gear in the game, which was then transplanted to the other regions without the gold sink values being adjusted. That resulted in the Chinese economy having like 50x more gold flowing in their economy compared to every other version of the game. Not even an exaggeration.

Game economies are multi-faceted, and allowing mog station items to be traded among players for in-game currency is really a non-factor. All it does is allow the items to reach more people while wringing hands over 'principles!!1!1!'. If anything, the only reason it's already not the case is because SE execs think they'll actually lose profit by doing this.

Indeed, when the NA version of our previous MMO did this (in a super, SUPER limited way, the higher tier items from the cash shop that came out of that game's lootbox sort of thing were still not allowed to be listed on the market board, and the change wasn't retroactive for older items that had been taken out), the localization team at the time had told all four of us moderators that they had to fight very hard to convince the higher-ups to even make the lower-tier items tradeable, and that in all honesty, they would be lucky if they actually broke even on profits. Though I would argue that this also happened too late in our version's lifetime to really matter, as our version of the game had already lost like 50-60% of its population in the previous year for other actual bad gameplay design reasons too.

The people arguing that allowing Mogstation items to be tradeable is legitimized gold buying are being highly disingenuous. Allowing them to be tradeable just moves gil through the economy and allows the items to reach more people, while actual legitimized gold buying pumps more gold into the economy and will undoubtedly destroy it.

I'd be all for it.

Did not expect to see this thread again, but yeah I would still love to be able to buy mogstation items off the MB.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Did not expect to see this thread again, but yeah I would still love to be able to buy mogstation items off the MB.

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lol, oh snap. We've been bamboozled. I had no idea that this was a necropost D: