[THEORETICAL] Reverse cash shop?

[tocsin]

With all of this outcry over the advent of the cash shop, I wanted to see what peoples reactions would end up being if the reverse were true. I mean being able to buy subscription time with gil, and have those two be interchangeable. I come from the EVE online universe, where people can literally buy a 30 day subscription and sell it for in game currency, openly. It added a standard to the in game currency, and created one of the most stable MMO economies in existence, that is literally tied to the out of game world economy. This would eliminate RMT, since SE essentially becomes the RMT.

I'm just curious, and this is welcome to trolls and flamers alike, what people would think if such a thing came into fruition? how many people would unsub?

edit: also, keep in mind this doesn't result in lost money for SE at all. It just means that player x is paying for player y's sub, in return for gil.

edit 2: based on entries so far, I will further clarify this, to see if we can get something open as possible.

1. Gil cannot be traded out of the game for real world money. For that matter, gil does not get created or deleted during this, only gil already in the system gets circulated.

2. the marketplace directly determines the value of a subscription. Literally, someone uses real world money to buy a sub, sells it for gil, then uses the gil to buy items from the people looking to fund their sub again.

[wicked-one]

I like that...

[Aylis]

Full support from me. Wildstar does this too with its C.R.E.D.D system and it works very well there. Who knows, it might even act as an effective way to bleed excess gil from the economy and better balance/stabilize it.

[Fornix]

Thus far 3 MMO's have such a pay through play system in place. EVE with their PLEX, WildStar with CREDD and Runescape with Bonds. The latter has even taken it to the next level, by allowing players to buy RuneFest + hotel tickets directly through bonds. RuneFest is comparable to what the FanFest is for FFXIV. Tying not only the purchase of digital gold to real life cash, but also indirectly allowing for the purchase of physical goods with digital gold.

Myself I have no issues with such systems. RMT is bound to happen anyway, letting it take place in a controlled manner is no problem to me.

Although there are plenty of players who'll jump on to the concept, pulling a pay 2 win card and whatever more.

[RaspberryRipple]

They should do a reverse cash shop where players cash out gil onto a real money prepaid debit card.

[Fornix]

They should do a reverse cash shop where players cash out gil onto a real money prepaid debit card.

That is very likely to run into the same issues the Diablo 3 real money auction house had. Players would become reluctant to spend ingame currency or bind items due to the real life value associated with it. It created a very undesirable market. One which is best to be avoided.

[tocsin]

They should do a reverse cash shop where players cash out gil onto a real money prepaid debit card.

Yeah, even in the existing models, "cashing out" in game currency can break the system. the trick is using real world money to circulate gil through the system at faster speeds, and incentivize both end game crafting and gathering as legitimate avenues to paying for your sub. if you want to do dirty work for 20 of your 30 sub days, you can buy your sub and play the other 10 days on someone else's wallet.

[Renik]

You shouldn't be able to get gil using RL money, and i hope they don't allow us to sell cash shop items in game, so if you can find a system that follow those rules they can do w/e they want.

Don't forget, if RL money gives you access to any in-game currency, it is indeed pay to win.

[Sho86]

Don't forget, if RL money gives you access to any in-game currency, it is indeed pay to win.

Then by that note we already hit pay-to-win at a point with 'Enquire Within' painting that is/was a sell-able housing item from vet rewards. You could just make a new alt and plop them up, and I've seen them go anywhere from 2mil to 100k depending on the server.

On the topic of D3 cash-outs, that honestly was fun for a little while when it was new. Getting $25 for a 'Yellow' (roughly our Blue, but range in rolled stats were wider) was nice, but considering they designed the game around it, things got stale fast. I still think it would've been interesting had they made the game just a game with R-AH as a truly side-thing.

I have no experience with payable sub's through gil, although I certainly wouldn't object being a crafter. xD

[Renik]

Then by that note we already hit pay-to-win at a point with 'Enquire Within' painting that is/was a sell-able housing item from vet rewards. You could just make a new alt and plop them up, and I've seen them go anywhere from 2mil to 100k depending on the server.

That's a big mistake, but it's just temporal, everyone will get it for free sooner or later, but just because they made one mistake we can't let them make more, Yoshida said already that the cash shop policy will be "no pay to win," he even said it in English, of all the lies or false lies (misunderstandings), this would be the worse one, and the players should take the responsibility to make that statement true, even if it means making some players pay for a game that since the start have been tagged as a pay to play.