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

[KisaiTenshi]

Did you miss the laugh after he said that? It was a joke. Like, "IF they ever go free, lol."

PLEX-type of system isn't the same as "going free" either. It turns the game into a "real" job if anything. If you want to play the game, you need to spend X hours to earn Y gold to give it to the protection racket, or you lose your ability to play the game. We wouldn't want this to happen now would we? One needs to evaluate if it's better to pay 15$/mo with a "real job" that pays real money instead, PLEX costs 15$, but it costs 2 million gold, and the RMT's are selling it below cost, then you may have to spend an entire week to make that much gold. One needs to get their priorities in order.

"Freemium" games start out free and remain free, and the "PLEX" or whatever premium currency is in the system winds up being a way for players to feed gachapon/gambling addicts. Sure, I'll buy 100$ worth of PLEX stuff and sell it to the biggest gachapon hoarder in the game easily, but what happens is I end up with rapidly depreciating asset either way, I'd be better off holding on to my real cash. Maybe the gachapon hoarder will get that rare item they can then turn around and sell for more than the amount they paid in gold to buy the premium currency. If the plex system only works to buy game time, it's not quite as destructive to the game environment as straight illegal RMT is. But it creates fraud risk.

[Tiggy]

PLEX-type of system isn't the same as "going free" either.

You seem to be ignoring all the posts blatantly saying tokens can be purchased with in game money to pay for their membership. A plex system is intrinsically linked to the subscription system for this reason making what he said very relevant to the topic.

The denial is strong.

[Giantbane]

Did you miss the laugh after he said that? It was a joke. Like, "IF they ever go free, lol."

Don't be obtuse. It's no secret that SE pays very close attention to what WoW does, with good reason. I think it's more of a joke to think that WoW would actually consider going f2p in the semi near future.

You seem to be ignoring all the posts blatantly saying tokens can be purchased with in game money to pay for their membership. A plex system is intrinsically linked to the subscription system for this reason making what he said very relevant to the topic.

The denial is strong.

Posts? That's the very definition of what a PLEX system is. Nobody's denying anything.

Full free 2 play means anybody can play the game and nobody is paying for that time. In order to make money, the game's creators will often degrade the normal game in some way, either with in game ads, limiting game time, creating massive grinds, obscene difficulty or by limiting access to peripheral content like glamours or housing. How problematic this is depends on the developer's need or willingness to encourage/pressure its players to use the in game shop. Many people don't like this model because they would rather just pay for a good game without the incentives for the developers to degrade their own product.

The difference with PLEX is that the developers don't get any extra money when its purchased. For every PLEX purchased (well, almost, there will be unspent PLEX), that represents a subscription that's not paid. This is really just a transfer of the fee from one player to the other. This is important, because since SE doesn't stand to make any appreciable amount of extra money, it creates no incentives for the developers to degrade their own game (unlike the existing cash shop...).

So, yes, technically somebody could play the game without paying any money. However, in each and every instance of this, somebody else IS paying for them to play. Thus it's not really Free 2 Play. And most importantly, PLEX doesn't create incentives for devs to purposely degrade their own game, as there exists little to no monetary incentive for them to do so.

[Giantbane]

But it creates fraud risk.

Fraud risk is due to the fact that there's no sanctioned exchange for gil > $$ and back. This means there needs to be trust between parties in terms of getting goods for money paid. This creates the fraud risk. There would be no fraud risk with a PLEX market at all since you would get what you pay for via the in game market.