[Cash Shop Idea] Game Time Token

[Aldora]

Aldora, as much as I'd love to discuss your reasons to oppose it, I can't just for the simple fact that your reasons are very personal, your biggest argument is that you don't like the thought that someone is playing the game without paying their own sub (not a free sub, mind you, since someone else is paying for it and SE is getting money in the end), you seem to value very little any other side effect (positive and negative) and that boggles my mind more than the existence of a sub token, I don't know what you find so extremely wrong about it when everyone benefits from it, including the company, and it's not like people will be forced to use this system, I dare say the majority of WoW players don't buy the token.

It's not about my personal reasons why i firmly believe that such a system should not exist. It's common sense. Or at least i like to believe that it's common sense that if you want to use a service which requires a subscription fee, that you would have to pay for it yourself. I mean, isn't that the same when using your cellphone? Or read a newspaper? Use public transport?

You keep saying that SE doesn't lose money over it, which in theory is true. Someone will buy a token in the cash shop and put it on the market boards in order to sell it. That in it's own is a problem. They buy the token, not because they want to gift it to others, ow no... They buy it with the intention to get in-game currency in return. That right there is the essence of RMT. Whether or not it's through RMT sites, or "legalized" by SE. It is still RMT. Based on that alone, the system should not exist in a subscription based MMO. And again, there is no way you can justify buying game-time through an in-game currency based on supply and demand.

So, in short, the main issues i have with a system like this are:

- It advocates RMT. It doesn't matter where it comes from. You should not be able to get in-game currency through RMT means, legal or no.
- The in-game economy determines the value of game time, whether or not it's player controlled or controlled by SE. Game time needs to have a fixed price for it. Not have it be determined by supply and demand.

I've said it multiple times, but people seem prefer to ignore that part:

But, make no mistake. I’m all for the opportunity to gift game time to friends or family, but not like this. If you want to gift game time, either buy a game time card for them, or have the ability to purchase game time through the Mog station, which then can be sent directly to the SE account of person you want it to be sent. The person would then receive either a real life e-mail saying that their game time has been extended for the amount which has been paid for, or the person would receive an untradeable and unsellable item in the Moogle Mail box which will extend their game time upon use.

I'm all for gifting people game time, perhaps because you want to introduce them to the game for longer then the free-trial period. However, only with the conditions as mentioned above. The item has to be sent directly to the account of the person you want to gift it to, plus it has to be an untradeable and unsellable item.

It should never be a system which is being presented through Cash Shop tokens you can sell on a Market Board, or can buy with in-game currencies. Those systems should simply not exist in a subscription MMO.

[Zojha]

Yay, finally a way to make big money as non-crafter that doesn't rely on RM...oh wait. *cough*

Could we, at the same time, put all craft-able gear into the cash shop? Just so we can skip the middle man, otherwise a DoW/DoM would buy the RMT tokens to afford the crafted goods who in turn use that money to buy the RMT token from DoW/DoM. Might as well pay for the goods with cash directly.

[HPDelron]

The pros far outweigh the cons for token systems like this. At the end of the day they remove bots and don't introduce gil into the system which makes th e economy more stable. It's safer for SEs customer base, it provides a service people clearly want (that's why they're going to illegitimate 3rd parties in the first place) and it makes SE more money which is more content for you regardless of your participate in the system.

Yay, finally a way to make big money as non-crafter that doesn't rely on RM...oh wait. *cough*

Could we, at the same time, put all craft-able gear into the cash shop? Just so we can skip the middle man, otherwise a DoW/DoM would buy the RMT tokens to afford the crafted goods who in turn use that money to buy the RMT token from DoW/DoM. Might as well pay for the goods with cash directly.

This would ruin the crafter market. The most important part of these token systems is that they force a buyer to go through other players at all stages. They don't reduce the value of gil in the market because they don't get gil directly, they get a token which they exchange for gil other players have worked for. They don't reduce the value of a crafting class because the only way that gear gets generated is by a crafter.

If you let people buy gil directly it reduces the buying power of all gil in the game because you're introducing a magic currency generating ghost into the system not tied to anyone in-games activity.
If you let people buy gear directly it reduces the value of those crafting classes because crafters now have to compete against a magic gear generating ghost not tied to any in-game activity.

These kind of token systems keep things tightly bound to the productivity of the player base. They introduce no new gil and create no new items. If you think about it you are not paying SE for gil or items. You are paying SE for the right to pay other players for their time. If you pay SE $20 for a token, and then another player uses that to resub. You're basically paying the other player $15 (their sub cost) for whatever they're willing to give for you that. That nullies $15 of your $20 payment to SE, since they won't be making a sub off that player. The remaining $5 is SE's fee for letting you pay another player in real cash.

Imagine you and your roommate play the game together. Imagine you two are in a party and something sick and expensive drops you need that gil. You turn to your buddy and go "Awww man, can I have that". He goes "Ehhhhhhh" and you go "Let me have it and I'll totally buy the pizza next time we play". He goes "Okay". You have now paid him half the cost of a pizza + delivery $8 for whatever that drop is worth.

This would be basically SE charging to be a trust worthy 3rd party to facilitate this kind of trade with any other player, anywhere.

[cougarel]

I love the way you keep shoving the lie with the bots will go away, i really do. They will never go away as long as there are customers for those services.
And no, it's not a good system as it will ruin the economy in the game, but keep looking in the mirror and say the phrase .
I really try not to say something offensive, but you know very well who keeps the same bs line when they are provided with logic and facts . Try not to regurgitate the same line over and over again as it won't become true or fact.

As a matter of fact, I've played another game which went from sub to f2p and in the begging the cash shop had only these cosmetic items. But then , via trial and error in sales , version of items which could have been bought and then sold ig appeared. Guess what, that game is full with rmt bots (cause you know, you need ig currency to buy from ig shops) and has killed the economy and the only ones that can play or enjoy it are the whales which keep shoving real money .
Ah, and a variant included game time (as in premium account) so please spare me the bs.

[Demkristo]

I see absolutely no reason to add this feature to our game. Devs need to focus on more important things. You can get large amounts of gil without much trying anyway.

[alimdia]

snip

Trust me, there's nothing close to "common" in that common sense. Say today they add the token, what could go so terribly wrong in the game that the thought of this makes you sick to your stomach? I really want to understand what are the extremely terrible consequences you're seeing. If you decided to answer this question, try answering from the hypothetical scenario where sub token was already added to the game.

About RMT, I explained this in the first page, why do you think RMT is bad for the game? It's not bad "just because", I explained in post #7 what's the big difference between RMT with bot-obtained gil and a sub token sanctioned by SE, one has a deep impact in the economy and no one can control it, the other can be fully controlled by SE. If you remove the primary reasons why RMT is considered bad, what do we have left to oppose?

A last question, what exactly is wrong about a sub token controlled by supply and demand? Having a static price can be damaging to the economy, the economy keeps shifting, there are times gil circulates more and is easier to get, and other items it is not, the prices of all other items in the market are subject to inflation and deflation, why not a sub token that is also purchased with in game currency?

I reiterate, you're reacting like something catastrophic would happen should this is implemented, but you're not explaining what exactly. I want to understand your point of view.

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@cougarel this game isn't going f2p so I don't understand your comparison, you say bots will stay around as long as they have customers, but isn't the whole point of this token to take away most of their customers?

@Demkristo They have different teams working on different areas of the game.

[Zojha]

This would ruin the crafter market.

That's kind of the point - right now, the token would only be bought by rich crafters, because the economy is set up to shove gil from the DoW/DoM classes where it is majorly generated to crafters and from there, it trinkles back to Gatherers and to a limited degree DoW/DoM via crafting materials. Crafters are the gil sponges of the game and this token idea serves only one purpose - to allow crafters to not just sit on that money but actually buy something useful to them with it.

You could just give active crafters a permanent subscription discount, same deal. (Well, and increase the average subscription of a non-crafter in the process to cross-subsidize, someone's got to pay after all)

[cougarel]

Alimdi (fixed ), I really love your perseverance, I admire it. Aldora provided scenarios which can and did happen to other games and also provided feedback from the so well game we are saying not to copy, but somehow these requests keep coming .
If you buy with real money an item from the shop and you sell it in the game-> RMT. You keep asking why it's bad:
1.some players have the time and the energy to farm the required gil to pay for the item or like in most cases will begin to use (guess what) a bot to farm that gil, cause he wants to play and not only farm.
2.People which can afford those items will buy them from the cash shop and sell them for ig currency-> ruins the market , makes the ig currency lose it's value in most cases ,as most players will try to buy these items and the other items which we keep gathering or crafting will be on a second plan.
3. The same people from point 2 will have a large amount of ig currency and will spike prices and only a handful of people will play the market thingie.
I could go on with more points but after painting a picture with these scenarios , you are not able to understand, then it's futile .

I'm not OP, and none of the scenarios you painted happened in the games that have a similar system.

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[HPDelron]

That's kind of the point - right now, the token would only be bought by rich crafters, because the economy is set up to shove gil from the DoW/DoM classes where it is majorly generated to crafters and from there, it trinkles back to Gatherers and to a limited degree DoW/DoM via crafting materials. Crafters are the gil sponges of the game and this token idea serves only one purpose - to allow crafters to not just sit on that money but actually buy something useful to them with it.

You could just give active crafters a permanent subscription discount, same deal.

Well no it's not the same deal because if you just give the crafter a free sub, they now have both the gil they made from crafting -and- the free sub. In a token system the crafter would have the option to
A) Spend their crafting investment on a sub
B) Keep their crafting investment as in-game items/currency.

If we keep your narrow framing for a bit and look at the non-crafter. They would have the options:

A) Grind out what they need, slowly.
B) Pay an in-game crafter with a sub token for some of their gil.


Without the sub token, both them only have option "A". With the sub token the overall options for both the crafter and the non-crafter have improved. Since a token system introduces no new gil the value of gil remains fixed. This means that the non-crafter who decides not to participate in the system and just grind it out has to do the exact same amount of grinding and is no worse off. The crafter who decides not to participate and keep all their in-game money, has the same buying power they did before.

Again, this is really no different than your buddy agreeing to pass on a drop worth a few mil in exchange for some pizza.

[alimdia]

Op, I really love your perseverance

I'm not OP, and none of the scenarios you painted happened in the games that have a similar system.