Real Money to Get In-Game Currency: Eternal Bond Edition

[NyarukoW]

Ah, but you forget that not every Gil seller is an actual business......but in this context, the real money gives gil in the hands of someone else ... This is RMT with a different face.

RMT = real money trading.

Selling an item in game for in-game currency is certainly NOT RMT, it is in-game trading with in-game currency. Buying an item from the cash shop is NOT RMT. Buying the item from the cash shop and selling it for gil is loss making by individual players, who have managed to convert good RL money into gil while donating to SE. What it does is distort the distribution of gil for a short time, because the percentage of players with excess gil that can afford to part with that gil is very limited like the top 1% or so. For it to be affordable for large numbers of players the, converting $10-40 for nominal amount of gil like 500K is just ridiculous. This mad rush for converting wedding bands into gil is self-limiting and unsustainable.

SE has always had a stance that people cannot profit via the use of real money. ...

There is no profit when it is all in gil. The profit can only occur when you sell the gil to get real money and produce real profits. People trading on the MB can make gil gains all the time, you can even call that MB trade profitable. And getting gil in-game is far cry from pay-to-win, even if you can afford 110 crafted gear, the poetic gear and FCoB drops are at 120 and above.

[Teryaani]

So wait... people are ANGRY that other people buy something using real money, selling it for in-game money, for something the angry people themselves don't want to PAY for with RL money but want?

I think that, if you clear away the anti-cash shop bits, the crux of the problem is that a way exists to exchange real cash for game cash which is something that Square doesn't want people to do.

Edit: A way that you can't get into any trouble over.

[ManweSulimo]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2638553

^ reposted here:

I don't understand why people have such issues with this. This should curb some of the incentive for people to buy botted gil.


Person A spends a great deal of time grinding in the game. Let's just say they are good at everything and they work really hard at it - crafting/gathering/desynth/spiritbonding/selling primals and coil fights/playing the market for capital gain/you name it- and this person A earns millions of gil doing all of these things. Time in the game is important to person A. He enjoys earning gil and is proud of his accomplishments in the game.

Person B spends a great deal of time grinding in real life. Maybe they built some kind of business and work really hard at it, whatever it is that they chose to do - and this person B earns hundreds of thousands of dollars doing what he does. This person works hard doing whatever it is that he chose to do. Maybe this person has a family and decides that although he likes to play this game, time in his career and family is more important to person B than time grinding for things in the game. He enjoys his life irl and is proud of his accomplishments there.

Persons A and B both want to enjoy whatever aspect of the game they choose. They just have two distinct paths of doing exactly the same thing. Person A would rather spend his time playing the game grinding than grinding in real life for real money because the game is way more enjoyable to him than whatever work he chose to do. Person B would rather spend his time earning real money because grinding for gil is less enjoyable for him. So with the real money he spent his time earning he pays for a wedding band and puts it up on the marketboard to make some gil. With the gil that person A spent his time earning he buys the wedding band because he doesn't want to spend real money on the game.

So person A wins because he didn't want to have to spend real money and he didn't have to. Person B wins because he didn't have to spend time grinding gil and he didn't have to. Square enix wins because they earned some revenue in this transaction. Persons A and B can both continue to enjoy the game even better than they otherwise would have because square enix is able to afford to invest even more into it from the extra revenue. Persons A and B win again because this takes away from the botters' market share of gil buying. This drives down the price that these botters can sell gil for because some percentage of the market for gil-buying is being satisfied due to the gil sale of these cash shop items. Would be cool if it lowered all the way down to breaking even for the botters what with subscription fees, etc. for all their bots vs. money made by their bots (which would put them bankrupt and out of business!!) Imagine an FFXIV experience with no spam bots!

Any haters will at least be able to agree with this let's count the wins: win-win-win-winwin-winwin. 7 wins is pretty good maybe even 8 because SE wins they don't have to spend as much resources banning bots! Now let's count the losses: ... 0?

Guys please take a step back and realize that the primary currency in life is time and we can all spend it however we choose

[Teryaani]

I don't understand why people have such issues with this. This should curb some of the incentive for people to buy botted gil.

I'm not seeing it affecting the gil sellers at all. The players willing to buy gil aren't going to go to these lengths, they'll just buy gil. You may see people that are more risk-averse try this, but not the gil sellers normal customer.

[MagicJohnson]

For future reference since the bracelets are going to be sold for gil regardless. They should either be bought in pairs, one bound to you and the other trade-able and made bound to your significant other or you should completely adjust the system to make all purchases bound to your account. If anyone wants to buy a gift for a friend, an option to do so in the cash store should be available where you enter their character name/server and the bracelet will be delivered to said person.

Boom, problem solved.

What if people just say "Trade me the X Gil and I'll buy you the Bracelet"? You're ideas are not bad, but they aren't the solution either.

How about a combination of the two:

First off, Bracelets are sold in pairs. Let's assume player A wants to marry player B. In order for player A to marry player B he has to input the character name and server in the page. Once both Bracelets are delivered to player A (since he made the purchase), have the Bracelet from player A be untradable and unique (Idk if they're unique already, I haven't bought any of this wedding stuff), while making the second bracelet tradeable. Both of the bracelets would have some kind of stamp, that would restrict their use to the couple that it was bought for in the first place. This would prevent people from selling the bracelets to individuals they're not actually commited with, and stop most of the issue. Alternatively you could just make the second bracelet tradeable ONLY to the player that's written on the stamp (player B).

I don't know how hard that would be to code/implement in game, as I have no experience in programming or game development. Also there would still be the problem of people selling actual weddings, I've seen people on PF saying "Will marry any race/gender, PST for price". But I don't think there is a solution for people selling the WHOLE thing, wedding and everything.

[FyrmurlFloerasksyn]

As you know, the promise wristlets were designed to be tradable so that one person would be able to purchase a pair of wristlets and gift one to their partner.

While the trading and selling of these items for gil is not against the terms of service, in the event this type of trend continues and topics continue to arise regarding whether or not this is considered real-money trading, we will have no choice but to change the design of this system. Therefore we would like players to stop selling and trading the bracelets for gil so that they can continue to be used for their intended purpose.

Not to be rude or anything, but did the team really think the players wouldn't find a way to exploit this? come on..

[Metabug]

I don't understand why people have such issues with this. This should curb some of the incentive for people to buy botted gil.

I'm not wealthy enough to play F2P games.

Guess what happens to market if person B pays $ for whatever he wants in-game? Prices skyrocket. Materia costs 2m+. Believe me, you don't want to be that player A doing his Novus.

[NyarukoW]

...
Guess what happens to market if person B pays $ for whatever he wants in-game? Prices skyrocket. Materia costs 2m+. ...

Do prices skyrocket in real life? Only when monetary policy is screwed up and inflation is thru the roof. The prices will NOT skyrocket it will stabilize at the market rate that is reflective of the market. Obviously transitioning from a gil only market to market where real money and gil is convertible will have to have prices rebalanced for the newer market, but it is no different than th EU countries transitioning to the euro currency, it is all about monetary policy and management.

[Venos]

Yes, please patch this and start selling fashions and modern outfits on the cash shop. Hey, $1 vs 3mil gil?

[ChibiChan_Hyperion]

snippity snip snip

*this is a little harsh-ish I've realized after the fact. My apologies, NyarukoW*

You can spin it however you want; the end result is still real money being used to acquire in game gil. The individual transactions themselves are not the target of the discussion. It is buying the item from the Cash Shop and then selling it for gil. Both transactions combined make it RMT. Again, the size of your wallet is not supposed to be able to determine your in game performance, especially outside of the scope of the item purchased from the Cash Shop.

Gil can very directly determine your in game performance, and confer advantages. Whether it does or not is irrelevant. That the possibility exists creates the possibility of paying to win.

snippity snip snip

I don't think buying gil is ever okay. How much you work in real life, and you money you earn therein, should not count as time being worked in the game. Your money in real life should not have an ability to affect your progress in game. Spending time in the game should be the only thing that does this. Nothing else, imo.