Why no "Plexx" system?

[Havenae]

Paying for convenience is equally bad. This is an MMORPG. It's not supposed to be convenient or played out in a week. It's supposed to be a journey. A true MMO is one where players progress by putting in the play time and effort to achieve gear, skill, and yes, in-game currency. That's the entire point of the game. I would hate to see FFXIV go down that road that WoW has taken over the years: buying level 90's, tokens for gold, gear, and so on and so forth. It's nothing more than a solo player game in a multi player setting. And it's god awful.

Let's not ruin one of the last true MMORPG's.

This post made me laugh. There's so much irony here.

Coming from an old gamer who played the Ultima Online when it first launched, played EQ when it was relevant, Ascheron's Call, ect.. Timesinks were never enjoyable. Convenience is not as equally bad as Pay to Win unless that convenience is pay to win. Which generally means you buy your gear, you buy you high level you buy stuff to augment your character. It's never usually associated with buying playtime, which is really all this is designed to do. Plex systems are no more than additional revenue for a game that is stolen by RMT companies.

RMT transactions are going to happen regardless of what you do. Even in the hay day of games like Everquest, Lineage, FFXI, ect.. RMT was present. The question is.. would you rather that money go in to the pocket of some asian based farm company complete with bots and tell spam that are quite literally making an unliscensed profit off of the game and destroying the game's economy? Or would you rather it go into the developers pockets? Not to mention the resources they spend on combating RMT that they could use elsewhere. RMT would still exist, but it wouldnt be near as problematic as it is currently.

Not only that but it affords players the ability to play the game to pay their way in.

This isnt a system that destroys or ruins games. It doesn't take away from the journey or take the point away. It works very well for a game that is accurately designed for it to work. FFXIV might not be that type of game But if it made SE some more revenue and curtailed the RMT issues this game faces then I'd be fine with it as long as it worked out well. The problem is, as I stated previously This game's economy is too weak for it, and that's just a starting point. I won't even touch how multiple servers and everything else would affect the system to a degree to render it an unstable payment method at best.

As for WoW.. I hate to burst this bubble and bring you this Sunday Paper, but this game's already went down that road. Your third to last sentence, describes this game to a TEE.

[Bodicca]

This post made me laugh. There's so much irony here.

Coming from an old gamer who played the Ultima Online when it first launched, played EQ when it was relevant, Ascheron's Call, ect.. Timesinks were never enjoyable. Convenience is not as equally bad as Pay to Win unless that convenience is pay to win. Which generally means you buy your gear, you buy you high level you buy stuff to augment your character. It's never usually associated with buying playtime, which is really all this is designed to do. Plex systems are no more than additional revenue for a game that is stolen by RMT companies.

This post made me laugh. There's so much . . . something here.

By definition MMO's are time sinks, in and of themselves. What aspects of the game and which time sinks you find enjoyable are entirely subjective. That includes accumulating in game currency. A lot of players put a ton of time into crafting for the sole purpose of amassing gil. This is just one aspect of the game that buying gil would trivialize. This doesn't even begin to address opening the door to buying runs and essentially top tier weapons and gear with actual money.

This isnt a system that destroys or ruins games. It doesn't take away from the journey or take the point away. It works very well for a game that is accurately designed for it to work.

Actually, it doesn't work at all. It happened in RIFT. It happened in WS. It's happening in WoW and every other game that has this feature. Anytime that a game allows you to buy in game currency it allows you to bypass content. If anything, this feature would be less devastating to FFXIV than other games due to content being gated behind content. But a horrible idea nonetheless.

Why would any game designer think it's a great idea to let players bypass playing their game? Even if that means you need to play in order to acquire in game currency? That's the way it's supposed to work. Selling tokens only serves to bring in more money for the company and allow cyclical players their quick fix before they move on.

There are better ways to deal with RMT spam.

[Havenae]

Actually, it doesn't work at all.

Works perfectly fine in EvE.

[Darkova]

This is just one aspect of the game that buying gil would trivialize. This doesn't even begin to address opening the door to buying runs and essentially top tier weapons and gear with actual money.

How would buying this plex trivialize the amassing of gil by the players who already do it? If anything this gives them the incentive to do it more since they would use the earned gil to play the game for free. The players who do not want to take the time to farm the gil themselves will be giving Square money as well.

As to what content can gil bypass? None. Even if you payed a group of people to carry you, you didn't bypass the content. Also, they can't do anything with their bought top tier gear. It doesn't hurt you or anyone else since this game doesn't have open world PvP where buying gear would create such effects. They can't use it to clear additional content either since they had to pay others to carry them in the first place. They also would probably get bored and leave the game failing to earn it themselves since they were willing enough to pay others to carry them should the option exist.

I can't speak for the other MMOs, but WoW has not used the plex system we are talking about.

[Riinata]

<snip> Actually, it doesn't work at all. It happened in RIFT. It happened in WS. It's happening in WoW and every other game that has this feature. Anytime that a game allows you to buy in game currency it allows you to bypass content. If anything, this feature would be less devastating to FFXIV than other games due to content being gated behind content. But a horrible idea nonetheless.

Why would any game designer think it's a great idea to let players bypass playing their game? Even if that means you need to play in order to acquire in game currency? That's the way it's supposed to work. Selling tokens only serves to bring in more money for the company and allow cyclical players their quick fix before they move on.

There are better ways to deal with RMT spam.

Ummmm.... EVE does it perfectly fine. Quit being ignorant.