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

[Zfz]

Suppose this system goes online, I'm curious about its real effect.

(1) What is to stop RMT vendors controlling the prices on market boards? They do have a huge supply of gil.

(2) What happens if the RMT vendors just bot more, hack more, cheat more, use that "free" gil they got to buy up time cards, and sell them for real world money cheaper than Square Enix?

Mog Station - USD$12.99 per card, 1 month game time
RMT Vendor - USD$10.99 per card

Note that now they are actually selling game time which they bought with botted gil, i.e. Square Enix has let go of its monopoly on game time. It's even more profitable than selling fluctuating gil because game time has a official price tag. You just have to be slightly cheaper. Since the gil they use to buy up these cards cost only their bot subscription fees (or are stolen), they have a lot of wriggle room.

In effect, they become an officially sanctioned reseller of game time. And in order to be more profitable, they put out more bots, advertise harder in game, and they will also advertise for buying/selling the time cards in-game and there would be nothing anyone could do about it, because it is a legitimate tradeable game item.

What's to stop them spamming harder and longer than ever, now that they're actually trading something sanctioned by Square Enix?

[silentwindfr]

Now, I really want to ask something for the "pay to win" doomsayers:

You say that paying real money to get in-game rewards is unfair. What about people with real time jobs and family who simply CANNOT get the rewards because they don't have enough time?

So, I shouldn't be allowed a house because I'm a filthy casual who is struggling to get his wallet past the 500k gil mark?
I mean... having more money isn't fair, but having more FREE TIME is?

Plz explain this logic.

simply no! i'm tired of the sorry escuse: "i have a life and familly and i can't get many gils"
the truth is more you don't know how get more credit, it's you don't want to know... in reality you simply want to sit in front of your desk and play the game and get everything handed. the plex system help for this.... you have cash, buy plex and get the gils you don't want to earn by yourself.

want a trick for get gils? play crafter a bit and gatherer.... use the ixal quest for level up your craft. get to 50 and sell some prism, it's easy cash that recquire little to no time. don't want to gather? use your servan for get the shard and component! some ingot can be sell a tons of cash for a bit of work.

anyway, you have tons of way to get gil... you simply don't want to earn gil you want it handed! plex system only serve this purpose.... allowing people that prefer pay them way into the game instead to play the game!

the sub model is perfect, people are always complaining about it and all, but it's simply because they want to have the way to pay them way into the game. like use the shop or such. simply no plex system for god sake! it's almost worst than free to play!

[Bishop81]

Suppose this system goes online, I'm curious about its real effect.

(1) What is to stop RMT vendors controlling the prices on market boards? They do have a huge supply of gil.

(2) What happens if the RMT vendors just bot more, hack more, cheat more, use that "free" gil they got to buy up time cards, and sell them for real world money cheaper than Square Enix?

...

What's to stop them spamming harder and longer than ever, now that they're actually trading something sanctioned by Square Enix?

You assuming they aren't botting/spamming as hard as they can now?

[Vaer]

Suppose this system goes online, I'm curious about its real effect.
(1) What is to stop RMT vendors controlling the prices on market boards? They do have a huge supply of gil.

Well, that game time has to come from somewhere to exist, so if a legit player buys the game time card (from SE, SE gets the money when the purchase is made so they no longer care what happens to it) instead of buying the gil from the RMT than they otherwise would have, it still hurts the RMT in the end and SE profits.

The RMT now have to be the middle man in that scenario, and would have to bank on people buying it (trust issues) from them for real money.

The WoW token scenario is basically it becomes untradeable after it is purchased from the AH which is the only way to get it for gold, so you can't flip it anymore which would remove that entire scenario since you can't resell it. Other games don't have such restrictions, but it depends on the implementation. Blizzard goes even further since they control what it is worth based on an algorithm. You just place the item into the exchange queue and get a quote from them and you'll get exactly that much gold when it sells. Some things might change since it is in testing but that's how it works currently.

[AlexionSkylark]

So, in a sense, I didn't "earn" my house by playing the game for countless hours. And in your sense of judgement, that should be the only way people can have houses in the game. If I buy a house with PLEX money, that's "cheating".

OK, now... who even SAID that a house is a "reward for a massive, long effort"? AFAIK a house is just a feature of the game, which was even twisted to serve as a gil sink because of the SMAUGS that began to pop up. If anything, people selling plex would make the money that was piled up by the 1%ers of Eorzea finally have a chance to leave the economy.

You 1%ers really are very much alike your real-life counterparts. It's always all about retaining your priviledges.

[Tiggy]

No. Keep real money out of the game. Period. Many of the OPs points are assumptions. Plex existed in a COMPLETELY different kind of game. Just because it worked there DOES NOT mean it makes sense for this kind of game. At all.

OK, now... who even SAID that a house is a "reward for a massive, long effort"?

Yoshi-P. It was designed that way. Just because YOU think it's a "feature" that should be available to everyone doesn't mean that's how it was actually designed and mean to be. Check your assumptions.

[AlexionSkylark]

No. Keep real money out of the game. Period. Many of the OPs points are assumptions. Plex existed in a COMPLETELY different kind of game. Just because it worked there DOES NOT mean it makes sense for this kind of game. At all.

It also worked in Wildstar, and in TERA prior to the chage to full-fledged F2P.

[Anesjka]

I dont even have to read through all the replies to say ABSOLUTELY NOT...

These In game Items for subscriptions in EVERY game have caused nothing but problems, inflation, hacking & exploits...

All of them Free to Play models...which FFXIV is not...

If you cannot afford the subscription then might I suggest you go play Archeage and see what The playerbase and economy is like there...or maybe Everquest...

Veritable ghost towns....

It also worked in Wildstar, and in TERA prior to the chage to full-fledged F2P.

And look at their player bases....those games you can go HOURS without seeing another player.

And when you do... its someone glitching into the ground then saying stfu n00b , usux , gtfo play runescape....

Yeah...No thanks.

[Tiggy]

It also worked in Wildstar

Cause that game has been doing sooooo well since launch what with all the people leaving and them nerfing the heck out of the game. Lol

and in TERA prior to the chage to full-fledged F2P.

Going f2p kinda disproves your point. It obviously wasn't doing that well.

You failed to prove anything other than other games that used it clearly didn't succeed very well. It doesn't support using such a system in this game at all. If anything it's more reasons why we shouldn't do it.

[MageBlack]

No thanks.