It's time to reevaluate the idea of adding a PLEX/Chronoscroll-like system to FFXIV

[Magis]

So pay 2 win. No thanks. It works in a game like EVE with a massively regulated economy built around it where your items/ship can be destroyed, but it would spell disaster and massive inflation in XIV.

Edit: I'm on my computer now so I can give a more in depth post now rather than what I posted originally on my cell:

Second, Blizzard just announced that World of Warcraft will be implementing a system extremely reminiscent of PLEX. Whether you love it or hate it, WoW's popularity and success are undeniable and certainly enviable.

WoW has been losing subscribers since the end of The Burning Crusade/beginning of Wrath of the Lich King. Nothing they have introduced has stopped the dropping in subs, except for temporary upticks at expansion launches. Now, there is the fact the game is old as well, but I wouldn't look at anything WoW did post-TBC as proof it was a good idea. See: MMOCharts of WoW subs.

It allows the players with more money to pay for the players with more time. For many working adults, playing an MMO is a hobby they enjoy in their limited free time. On the other hand, many younger players don't have a stable source of income and are forced to cancel their subscriptions unexpectedly, depending on real life events (which is ultimately lost revenue). If a time-rich player could buy game time paid by a money-rich player, SE can reclaim that lost revenue and keep a subscriber.

You say below it isn't pay 2 win, yet in your example the person is cutting down time for X by basically buying gil. They get a free item to sell for X amount to get free gil. Free in terms of the game of course, real money is spent, but that is irrelevant. So is it pay 2 win or not?

Players have been asking for a way to gift game time to other players through Mogstation. This is a simple way to do so. What could be sweeter than finding a game time item in your Mog Mail from a good friend?

You can buy time cards from various stores. Heck, sure let SE sell on the Mog station time cards, but having them sellable in game as well isn't needed for that.

It helps combat illegal RMT by cutting into their bottom line and making the game less profitable to operate in. There was a time about 4-5 months ago that I thought RMT was not a big problem in this game. I'd go almost a full week without getting a gilspammer tell. Today, I blacklist on the order of 3-4 spammers per day, more on the weekends. By providing a safe, legal alternative to RMT, you take away their customers and eventually, you make it almost impossible to turn a profit as an RMT.

Not really. Last time I played EVE ages ago, there was still ISK spammers. EVE had a better way of managing them, but RMT was alive and well. The difference is EVE has a division of real economists who regulate and balance the economy so it doesn't flop. It also has massive gil sinks. Anything (almost?) created can be destroyed, be it ship, station, w.e. This is not the case in FFXIV. Now you've given RMT a way to sustain their accounts without buying subscriptions though. Because they can farm gil way faster than players using bots/hacks, they can buy more PLEX cards. Since they probably don't care for the amount it costs, they would pay higher prices, driving up costs. This injects money into the market as people sell cards to them. In this case, SE can't do shit cause no one illegally bought gil, so the STF can't just delete the gil from their accounts like that is done in illegal RMT (gil is deleted from buyer and seller). With the monthly fee removed on the accounts, the sellers can sell more gil for cheaper prices (less expenses).

By making it easy to stay subscribed, you make it easy to keep people subscribed. Most MMOs have peaks and troughs of subscriber numbers fluctuating in waves around major content patches. If you could easily maintain your subscription using in-game currency, there would be much less inclination to un-sub during the off-months. It's so much easier to get someone "back into the game" and actively playing if they can just log in whenever they want to check out the new content or seasonal event.

People who get bored after content patches are done through aren't the ones that are going to grind the prices required to buy a PLEX card. Usually the people who did this in EVE had multiple accounts mining at the same time and had a reason to buy those PLEX cards (pay for extra miner accounts).

PLEX is not Pay-to-Win. Yoshi-P has repeatedly stated that the best gear and items in this game would always be from raids. He even went as far as saying that crafted gear was too strong in Patch 2.4 and that he wouldn't make the same mistake again in the future. At its level best, a PLEX-like system will allow money-rich players to gain access to mid-to-upper-mid tier crafted equipment, vanity minions/items, and rare glamour gear. In fact, the silly brouhaha over the fact that Eternal Bond items were being bought and traded for gil serves as ample evidence that those players did NOT manage to pay their way to a win.

If it isn't pay to win, why would anyone sell a PLEX card besides they accidentally bought one? Because they get free gil to spend on things that they otherwise would have to PLAY THE GAME FOR. You are skipping parts of the game that otherwise would have to be done through either grinding, farming, or just patience from duties. Selling PLEX cards to buy a house, selling PLEX cards to buy materia for a max meld, selling PLEX cards for even paying people to do a Coil run or give them a pony (I saw a gold buyer do this) is pay 2 win, regardless if it isn't BIS or the top of the line.

PLEX does not cause inflation. Nor does it "damage" the economy. The addition of this new item with ties to real world currency is a value-neutral action. The real cause of inflation (i.e. average price of items on the market board increasing) is when there is too much gil in circulation and not enough gilsinks to remove it. Notably, illegal RMT money-making strategies generally involve exploiting gil fountains to massively increase the amount of gil in circulation, causing inflation for everyone. In contrast, PLEX would introduce zero new gil in circulation and may in fact have a very slight deflationary effect because it promotes the spending and transfer of gil between players (which is taxed through the market board, a gilsink). Again, see the Eternal Bond trading which has notably not wrecked the economy of any server I've heard of.

See above about RMT. Eternal Bonding slowed down because it isn't a consumable. Once the subset of people who wanted the item all got it, the price fell. PLEX is consumed as it is bought however, be it player or RMT.

It's funny how quickly the goalposts move. First it's only minions. Then it's only one ring. Now let's just let players transfer IRL money to gil.

[Colorful]

It's like almost no one understands what OP is saying, or how this would work.

So pay 2 win. No thanks. It works in a game like EVE with a massively regulated economy built around it where your items/ship can be destroyed, but it would spell disaster and massive inflation in XIV.

Could you please explain how it would cause inflation? New gil wouldn't be put into the economy, it would be taken away for existing player's earned gil and then given to another player in exchange for the 'PLEX' (whatever they decide to call it). If it were to bring in new gold, it would impact EVE much more than XIV and EVE is a game built by player driven economy. As for it being pay to win, you can't purchase any of the best gear with gil. But... you can purchase runs of the content that provides the best gear so I'm not quite sure at that point.

[KisaiTenshi]

So pay 2 win. No thanks. It works in a game like EVE with a massively regulated economy built around it where your items/ship can be destroyed, but it would spell disaster and massive inflation in XIV.

Go look at Archeage that tried to do this. Took the hackers less than a month to make it useless. EVE is unique because the game is equally mean to players and bots. Want to make goldfarmers lives miserable, do nothing but raid their ships and destroy their PLEX supplies. Have an Axe to grind? etc.

These kinds of systems only work in PvP-centric games because that puts an actual reward for the PvP system, not just griefing because PvP attracts sociopaths.

Everyone, please do not encourage "revenue" mechanics from F2P games (this includes things like Gachapon, I'm looking at you Gold Saucer.)
What will happen is that the Gold farmers will instead buy up all the "plex" resources and then sell them at whatever rate they want it to sell for so they spend less time actually farming, and more time stealing peoples accounts to charge "plex" on. That is what happens in these other games that have tried to duplicate EVE's plex system. One account gets broken into, the "stored" credit card information gets used to charge as much as the card will authorize, they sell it in the game, and then give the gold to their gold farming accounts before the stolen account gets discovered.

I wouldn't even consider it unless every player was required to have an authenticator.

Here's the thing:
EVE is a "hardcore" PvP game, which has the equivalent of perma-death. The only other game that did this was Wizardry Online, that SOE shutdown because "lack of interest" , which was also a hardcore PvP with perma-death, and sanctioned inventory theft. It also had a "plex" type of system.

WoW is ... I have no idea because I've never ever played it. AFAIK WoW, Star Trek online, Star Wars TOR, all tried to variations on subscription/freemium hybrid models because they want to keep players coming back. But in actuality, what makes people leave subscription games has nothing to do with money and everything to do with content. Freemium games never have to improve the content. Indeed most freemium games only offer very trivial cash shop item updates as patches, and the major content updates are bi-annually. The rest of the time you're just grinding to get the BiS gear so you can faceroll over the new content.

[axemtitanium]

What will happen is that the Gold farmers will instead buy up all the "plex" resources and then sell them at whatever rate they want it to sell for so they spend less time actually farming, and more time stealing peoples accounts to charge "plex" on. That is what happens in these other games that have tried to duplicate EVE's plex system. One account gets broken into, the "stored" credit card information gets used to charge as much as the card will authorize, they sell it in the game, and then give the gold to their gold farming accounts before the stolen account gets discovered.

Except "buying up all the PLEX" is quite possibly the single most ruinous thing the RMT could ever possibly do to themselves. Think through your scenario one step further. So they've bought all the currently existing PLEX and attempt to resell it at their higher rate. Then what? Players will say "oh look, PLEX is pretty expensive right now, I should go sell some too" and undercut the LIVING HELL out of the RMT. All of a sudden, their big stock gamble has become worthless as the price of PLEX gets driven into the ground by the gold rush.

As for credit card theft, it's fairly easy to trace stolen accounts, items, and gil. SE bans RMT accounts all the time for this so there's no reason their current methods wouldn't work for it, nor do they have to change anything about it. Should people use authenticators? Yes. Should people input their passwords on shady websites like sQu@r3eniX.com? No.