FFXIV - A Step to P2W (My 2.45 Feedback)

[Taliph]

No, Yoshida said it will never be "Pay to win", and no one as of yet has shown any proof or screen shots of Pay to win elements, e.g Exp boosts, auto win vouchers, the ability to do more content than other players who don't use it and so on.

We pay a fee to simply access the game, everything else is up to SE's discretion, and you agreed to that when you hit "I agree" in order to install and subscribe to the game.

RMT is pay to win, don't need a screenshot for that. You blame players when SE should have testers in their employ who should have foreseen this issue, especially as there are plenty of industry examples.

If you doubt that RMT isn't pay to win, simple; you cite exp pots, I say RMT can level a craft without crafting... Worse then an exp pot.

Your arguments are crap, it's been beaten to death.

[NoF2P]

We pay a fee to simply access the game, everything else is up to SE's discretion, and you agreed to that when you hit "I agree" in order to install and subscribe to the game.

Thanks for explaining the agreement in simple terms. It gave me time to click the "Cancel Subscription" button before SE exercises it's discretion and removes that too! One less voice to darken the posts of the gil sellers.

[AdamFyi]

Snip

Can these actions be considered RMT? Are these people gaining any real world money? Nope. Can we call them RMT knowing that they don't get any real world money out of this? No. A solution is not always as simple as you can give it. The way the game was coded may have placed restrictions that can prevent them from doing certain things. If likely so, they could have delayed the Eternal Bond system to find a better solution, but you'll see topics complaining about "cancelling my subscription" instead of what we have if they delayed it further.

[Taliph]

Can these actions be considered RMT? Are these people gaining any real world money? Nope. Can we call them RMT knowing that they don't get any real world money out of this? No. A solution is not always as simple as you can give it. The way the game was coded may have placed restrictions that can prevent them from doing certain things. If likely so, they could have delayed the Eternal Bond system to find a better solution, but you'll see topics complaining about "cancelling my subscription" instead of what we have if they delayed it further.

RMT is not only defined as a player receiving real cash for ingame goods, it is also the purchase of ingame currency for real money. You are effectively skipping over half of the definition.


The tradability of bracelets for ingame currency is called indirect RMT, the person paid real money for an item to convert to ingame currency. While that doesn't have as harsh of an effect on the ingame economy, it does have some. The issue lies in the fact that this also enables pay to win in some areas of the game.

[Havenchild]

There are several arguments in this thread in response to the promise bracelets and such and a lot of them are not exactly well thought out.

Wall Incoming

Let's talk first about these sellable promise bracelets.

1)This is good for a few reasons. For one, the biggest fear with Eternal Bond especially after the fact they announced the various plans to be used, was that you were required to pay real money on top of a sub fee to get all the benefits of the highest planned marriage. Making the bracelets able to be sold essentially, allows Gil to be the purchasing option for some, where IRL money outside of subscription is not. (Plus)

2)Money moves away from the direction of Gil Selling RMT businesses, and instead into the hands of SE. Some may not think of this carefully, but this is in fact a plus. RMT accounts are generally based of macro farming bots that through time, increase the the amount of either items, or direct gil in the economy. (Shards, Crystals, Quests) By not supporting this behavior you essentially hurt the true culprit of inflation. Once they sell their shards into the economy, they can then sell you the farmed gil (tracked by SE) for IRL money. Now while some of us may know of a Gil Buyer who is yet to be banned, do not put it past yourselves to think they cannot or will not be banned. The safety net for actually buying gil from these bots is rather thin, and it is not wise to doubt SE, for a random ban even in time. (FFXI, had a ban cycle, that caught many by surprise, many years later after they purchased gil). Many players know this, so many players DO NOT buy gil because of it, of course you have risk takers anyway who probably have so much money to throw at the game anyway it doesn't matter to them even if they were banned.

Now what are the negatives exactly?
Legal RMT? I'd pray to understand how does this effect the economy in any drastic way. The people who were gonna buy gold anyway, can now do it legally through RMT. The new people who wanted to buy gold but were scared, will now do it through SE. Again this isn't exactly bad or good. Supporting SE is a plus. Supporting outside sources that can make money like RMT sellers, is different because they intentionally inflate the economy with Gil /Items through hours of non player based farming( farming on end). SE exchange however does NOT do that. They are essentially selling a product that not every single person wants. Not everyone likes the new Dyes, not everyone wants to get married. SE also has WORSE exchange rates then RMT services do on average on most servers. If someone wanted to buy gold, it would be 100x better to go to the RMT service directly. You may argue, "yeah but SE can detect that and that's against ToS" , and you are 100% correct, but again if they were buying gil to begin with, promise bracelets ain't gonna change that and new people coming into the mix trying to profit from SE's (Legal RMT) are not gonna do it for very long because it's quite expensive for the gil exchange. It's more of a few time deal til they can buy whatever they need to.

So your next argument (OP) is it's unfair because some players can now get ahead of others, ("They can now craft and full meld 110, with no problem !"), this is a more subjective issue, and I fail to understand why exactly is it a problem.

If your argument was:

A) "Now were gonna have well-geared players, who know nothing of their class in the endgame!." - You are delusional. Getting fully melded gear does not change a bad player. A player that does not know how to play their class effectively is subject to be judged regardless by the rest of their party in any instance anyway. Gear does not change this at all. This basic fact holds true for both crafted gear and regular obtained gear.

B) "Some people can now get World First faster due to being able to gear up faster, hence unfair!" - Again, delusional. May I remind people that World First T13 was done in crafted gear already BEFORE SE implemented Promise Bracelets and Eternal Bond.
Essentially this means that people had access to crafted gear beforehand ANYWAY. It was simply of matter if you want the gear or not. If they wanted to buy gil, and chose to do so, it wasn't from any system from SE at the time. If good players are now able to gear faster BECAUSE of SE's promise bracelets, not only does this not directly effect someone outside of that persons static, but it essentially may help that static out of a DPS rut they may be in. Basically completely eroding this argument. It doesn't directly effect anyone. The economy still moves, more people will get their money faster, more people will undercut.

C) "Inflation of items because they're are now less of them in the economy!" - This is a fact regardless of promise bands in the mix or not. Prices of items are usually determined FIRST by their availability, but when it comes to crafted gear it's determined by how DIFFICULT it is to obtain the base ingredients/ crafting level required and THEN availability. Any items when they first came out will be inflated. On smaller servers you'll see another issue, of plain ol rarity because not many people will have 4 stars capable of doing the crafts. As time goes by and more people grab get a hold of sealants and Mastercraft Demimateria, both which are quite easily farmable, prices go down. The more people that are capable of actually making these items, the cheaper the prices as well. SEs promise bracelets are not entirely effecting inflation of these prices, which many in this thread seem to believe. The prices are inflated based of your circulation of gil which is still DIRECTLY fed to you by RMT services from outside establishments. Gil that is farmed on end by non-played characters on average. The very subtle way it (SE "RMT") changes prices is by now lowering the availability of an item being on the market board, which again this goes back to the first two lines of how prices are dictated. The thing to this is though, that items which are being sold, will effectively sell in due time ANYWAY. Whether someone bought gil to buy them, someone bought promise bracelets and sold those, to buy them, or people went old school and just farmed up their own gil through blood, sweat and tears and buy them. Not a game changer in this environment as many assume so.

D) Finally and my favorite also from OP, people can get their relics first easier! - I can't even begin to start with this. Who the hell cares? RMT Services/ Desynthing/ 3Star Crafters, are in so heavy supply on generally every single server by now that even if you didn't know any desynthers/3 star crafters, you can do it yourself (big point here, I might add) or craft it yourself (another big point I might add). If you are playing this MMO and you are so far locked into a social bubble that you know OF not a single person / friend to assist you, you can do it yourself or put up a PF for someone to do it for you, again if this is still a problem for you, then the problem is not the game or SE or marketboard prices. The problem is you.

TL;DR: That's most of the arguments I've seen in this thread and most have generally been debunked by either myself or other players. Crying foul over every single thing SE does, like on these forums is childish, and many so called adults need to start fully in those shoes they claim to be wearing and stop complaining. Effectively, you are complaining about something that has more positives then negatives in the game and that in turn if removed, may hurt more dynamically, due to the fact eternal bonding requires the special bonuses (mount/minion) to be paid for IRL so now others who cant spend more cash IRL (I cannot express enough how big this population really is) can't buy it with gil either (generally preferred option in P2P MMOs).

PS: People really shouldn't use the Relic as an argument here. The time required to get up to the Zodiak line is not grand with preparation. (I took alil under a week in a half WITHOUT preparation (Alexandrite) / Materia on hand (went full CRIT/DET) , and this was BEFORE atma drop rate buff.)

[LunaHoshino]

Is the priority so low? why? Are they intending to solve it some day?

Probably because the demand has already died out. No one on my server is selling the bracelets anymore-- the market for them has been dead for days now.

[AdamFyi]

indirect RMT

There we go. Now we're using the correct term, awesome! But now I must pose you a few questions; How would this affect the gameplay of other players? Raiders? Casuals? Mid-core? Newcomers? Is there some sort of wall that prevents players access to content in-game that can only be broken through by paying? You yourself said that it had no impact on the economy. So you can't use that as a reason. o:

Refer to Havenchild's post as they explained much better than I could.

[Taliph]

There we go. Now we're using the correct term, awesome! But now I must pose you a few questions; How would this affect the gameplay of other players? Raiders? Casuals? Mid-core? Newcomers? Is there some sort of wall that prevents players access to content in-game that can only be broken through by paying? You yourself said that it had no impact on the economy. So you can't use that as a reason. o:

Refer to Havenchild's post as they explained much better than I could.

Really? You might notice if you actually read my posts that I have used the specific term "indirect RMT" many times in the discussion of this topic. You also might notice that nothing havenchild's post states is relevant to this thread or the issue of pay to win being introduced in this game, nor have they given any evidence disproving my points.

Edit to add: nitpicking over my correct use of the general term "RMT" and referring to off topic posts as your argument prove beyond any doubt that you do not have a leg to stand on.

[ZhycranaDranix]

"Some people can now get World First faster due to being able to gear up faster, hence unfair!" lulz ?

All players capping ''world first '' are dedicated players who have everything lvl 50 close knit FC's to where if they can't help themselves the next player will.

/end argument

Pay to win ?

*let me get hmm 10 mil gil off 40 bucks
Pentamelds IV atm should suffice to get you atleast on par with poetics maybe lower at the moment (one piece would probably blow through 5-10 mil off mat alone) .....so you're essentially paying for gear that's lower then gear already obtainable ingame ? Pentamelds provide a minimal stat increase over the poetics mainly people are using them for the vit for T12 ....IF THEY"VE even gotten this far...

This whole pay to win thing is crap to me .....its more like pay to obtain glam gear to me. No one is using this to actually WIN anything. i118 players are still gated behind T9 in some communities while final coil has been progressed already w/o the melds in some cases......

Pay to win to me would literally be a i155 chest piece right now that you can only obtain in the cash shop and the stats are just mind blowing......

[Taliph]

"Some people can now get World First faster due to being able to gear up faster, hence unfair!" lulz ?

All players capping ''world first '' are dedicated players who have everything lvl 50 close knit FC's to where if they can't help themselves the next player will.

/end argument

Pay to win ?

*let me get hmm 10 mil gil off 40 bucks

Ok, with 10 mil, that's all 8 crafts from 1-50. Or most of a BiS crafting set. Or most of a BiS gathering set. All pay to win.

You do realize that combat is only one part of this game, right?