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

[Intaki]

Reading this thread, it's pretty sad to see all the silly strawmen being propped up by people utterly horrified by the notion of change. The PLEX system works and it works well. And a lot of the industry giants are beginning to take serious note. And if Blizzard really does go through with making their own equivalent system like they have said they are, expect it to show up here soon enough.

And Tiggy clearly has zero understanding of how the system works, even though it's been explained in extremely simple terms repeatedly. If you believe that something that literally creates zero in-game money can cause in-game inflation, then I am entirely able to understand why you're incapable of making in-game money in the first place.

[Tiggy]

I understand how it works just fine and your sob story changes nothing about a single thing I said. Keep assuming I don't get it though. I disagree with you. Deal with it.

Nice try attempting to appeal to my emotions with that sob story instead of making an actual point about how it won't effect the economy. I'll just leave this here. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emotional_appeal

Now, PLEX is the answer to BOTH Bill and Timmy. Timmy can now play for FREE, thanks to all the gil he's amassed, and Bill can buy his dreamhouse by the lake with TIMMY'S money. Not money created out of thin air, like a real money fountain (like a levequest or a duty roulette run) would do, but money that ALREADY EXISTED on the system, IN TIMMY'S CHARACTER, which will DISAPPEAR from the world the minute Bill buys his house. Money that would otherwise be kept in Timmy's account.

You DO realize money has to actually move around and be spent to have an economy right? Right? In your above scenario those two players aren't doing a thing to stimulate the games economy and you think that's a good thing? Really?

by people utterly horrified by the notion of change.

Best assumption in the whole thread by far.

The PLEX system works and it works well.

By all means show a different game other than Eve where such a system works. Eve's economy is very different from normal MMOs after all. So far only Tera and Wildstar have been presented as normal MMOs and quite honestly both of those games aren't doing so well and so they don't make very good examples since we can't separate out the specific effect the RMT system had on player satisfaction.

[Intaki]

By all means show a different game other than Eve where such a system works. Eve's economy is very different from normal MMOs after all. So far only Tera and Wildstar have been presented as normal MMOs and quite honestly both of those games aren't doing so well and so they don't make very good examples since we can't separate out the specific effect the RMT system had on player satisfaction.

It absolutely worked in Wildstar. Whatever you think of the game or its lack of commercial success, the in-game economy was vibrant and fairly booming. Luxuries were expensive, but never out of reach. And a CREDD could be easily bought by simply doing your dailies for not even a whole month. Sometimes the price went up, sometimes it went down, but it was never the horrific dystopia you seem to think it would be.

[AlexionSkylark]

Nice try attempting to appeal to my emotions with that sob story instead of making an actual point about how it won't effect the economy. I'll just leave this here. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emotional_appeal

Actually I just used those characters in an anedoctal manner. Feel free to change them at your pleasure, it's irrelevant to the point.

Also, you just proved my point with your statement about money changing hands helping the economy. EXACTLY. That money, that was fattening a 1%er's wallet, changed hands and were consumed in favor of a commodity (real estate). Again, MMO economies function a little different that real world ones, altough some paradigms persist. In MMOs you need to flush money out of the system, and that's what gil sinks are about.

Now, if you want to build a case against gil sinks, be my guest.

[Tiggy]

Also, you just proved my point with your statement about money changing hands helping the economy. EXACTLY. That money, that was fattening a 1%er's wallet, changed hands and were consumed in favor of a commodity (real estate).

No it in no way proves your point. In that scenario 1 set of money was made. Went from player A to player B for a sub price, then player B blew it on a house making the money leave the game. There is no economy there. That's just a massive gil sink being funded by real life money.

EXACTLY. That money, that was fattening a 1%er's wallet

Please keep saying this like it's accurate. Eventually it might become real that it's safe to assume most players sit around with fortunes in their wallet and that it's safe to make broad assumptions...oh yeah even you keep saying 1% so even you know it's not a lot of people. Why should sweeping changes be made to the entire game for the 1% of people hoarding money? Them holding onto the cash literally doesn't effect anything at all. The economy moves on with out them without anyone even knowing that money is locked away. I don't even know what point you think saying 1%ers over and over again is proving. I know a player with over 300m who hasn't logged in in 6 months. That fortune is literally hurting no one. Not one person.

I have no problems with gil sinks. I have problems with you trying to offload parts of the economy onto a system supported entirely by real life money. That is not an economy. It's p2w. Even in your example the person wanted a house, used the rmt money to give a friend a free account, and then bought the house using the money get got by the trade. He purchased the house with gil yes, but he got that gil solely due to the purchasing of real money in the first place which is getting him access to something he couldn't have done otherwise obtained access to. That's flat out p2w, and on the side the player getting a free month of play was being tricked into working a sweat shop just to pay for his account off the blessings of another player instead of just enjoying the game. That's a terrible situation and is another reality to your sob story.

Real life money should never be able to create any items of appreciable and transferable worth to other players. Square already messed up badly enough by making wedding bracelets trad-able. They don't need to make it worse. Balancing the gil sinks out does nothing but make playing the game by purchasing said RMT currency a requirement from time to time. Know this square. I would quit instantly. Put that in your statistics jar.

[AlexionSkylark]

Snip.

OK, you wanna know where else this money could be going, if not rotting into a character's pockets? Into the luxury market that FFXIV has become. From the rich, to the rich. Where the cost of things is priced thinking of people with 10 mil+ into their account. By distributing the ammount of gil to a bigger multitude of players, less and less people will be able to afford overpriced stuff, and that would actually provoke DEFLATION, which is a good thing by any standard.

[Intaki]

No it in no way proves your point. In that scenario 1 set of money was made. Went from player A to player B for a sub price, then player B blew it on a house making the money leave the game. There is no economy there. That's just a massive gil sink being funded by real life money.

You still seem to fail to understand what actually occurs under this system. Player A had that money before Player B ever bought a subscription token. Maybe he farmed it, maybe he's a marketboard mogul, whatever. By trading that money to Player B, and Player B buying a house, money that was previously in circulation is now completely removed from the economy. Gone. In this scenario gil was not created, it was removed. This is literally the exact opposite of inflation.

Do you know what WOULD inflate? The price of all those easily attainable goods that you see going for 1 to 10 gil on the marketboard. You could expect some of those prices to start jumping into the low hundreds. Imagine that! New players would actually be able to sell the crap that fills their inventories and make a fair bit of money.

[Magis]

In the end, it's people asking to pay money to get ahead. I don't know what kind of mental gymnastics you have to do to somehow convince yourself that isn't paying to win, but no thanks; keep IRL money out of the in game economy.

[Jandor]

By all means show a different game other than Eve where such a system works. Eve's economy is very different from normal MMOs after all. So far only Tera and Wildstar have been presented as normal MMOs and quite honestly both of those games aren't doing so well and so they don't make very good examples since we can't separate out the specific effect the RMT system had on player satisfaction.

Eve's economy isn't that different to other MMOs. The in-game currency changes hands a lot more often but actually generating currency is generally achieved through missions (quests) & bounties (killing monsters for gold.) In-game currency is mostly removed from the game through tax on market transactions.

The scale is different but the basics are the same as FFXIV.