[Cash Shop Idea] Game Time Token

[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.

[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)

[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.

[Zojha]

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.

Except they aren't doing anything with that gil other than accumulating it, because there's nothing worthwhile to use it on. We have people at the gil cap because of that. Losing that gil is entirely inconsequential.

That's why it is the same thing.

[Felis]

Except they aren't doing anything with that gil other than accumulating it, because there's nothing worthwhile to use it on. We have people at the gil cap because of that. Losing that gil is entirely inconsequential.

That's why it is the same thing.

The tokens will only help here if they are untradeable, but the OP want them to be tradeable.

[Kosmos992k]

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)

Excellently thought out reply, I agree completely. RMT is RMT, and RMT is prohibited.

Thank you for seeing and acknowledging my concerns and that i dislike it out of principle. I've been trying to get people to see the reasoning behind that. **snip**
We should not address the RMT issue by legalizing it. There is always going to be someone who will abuse the system. This is why i mentioned (on several occasions) that i'm not against gifting game time through the mog station, as long as it cannot be sold for in game currency or bought through it.

I cannot (and never will) agree with any forms of RMT. Truthfully, i also cannot stand it when people condone it for reasons mentioned earlier within this thread. Of course, I've made this known through my posts. This is my honest opinion and i will stand by it.

I agree with you. Unfortunately being principled seems to be very out of fashion these days, while personal enrichment at the expense of others is very much in fashion.

[HPDelron]

I agree with you. Unfortunately being principled seems to be very out of fashion these days, while personal enrichment at the expense of others is very much in fashion.

This is difficult to respond to because it frames things very vaguely. You say "at the expense of others" without saying who exactly is facing this expense, nor what this expense is. I'd like to better understand exactly who you expect to be harmed and how.


Suppose this system did wind up in place, and we have some players:

John: He has lots of gil but wants even more. He buys a token in the cash shop and sells it, gaining even more gil.
Steven: He has little gil, but wants to have some. He buys a token in the cash shop and sells it, gaining his gil.
Derek: He has lots of gil and does not want to pay his sub. He buys a token from the market board and for a lot of gil and uses it for his sub.
Anthony: He has lots of gil and is content with this. He does not wish to participate in the system and does not buy any tokens with gil.
Robert: He has little gil. He does not wish to participate in the system and does not buy any tokens from the cash shop.
Bill: He has little gil, and wants some. He cannot afford a token in the cash shop and so he grinds it out.
Mike: He has little gil, and wants some. He can afford a token in the cash shop but does not like the system and so chooses to grind it out.
Tom: He has lots of gil and wants even more. He can afford a token in the cash shop but does not like the system and so chooses to grind more out.
Frank: He has lots of gil and wants even more. He can't afford a token in the cash shop and so grinds it out.
George: He has little gil and doesn't want to pay his sub. He can't afford a token on the market board and so pays his sub in to SE as he always has anyway.

Which (if any) of these gentlemen is worse off in the token system than the current one? Why are they worse off?

[Kosmos992k]

This is difficult to respond to because it frames things very vaguely. You say "at the expense of others" without saying who exactly is facing this expense, nor what this expense is. I'd like to better understand exactly who you expect to be harmed and how.

I didn't say anyone would be harmed. I said it was about personal enrichment at the expense of others. Huge difference.

This is a subscription based game and RMT is completely prohibited in this game. Suggesting an RMT option seems to me to go against that very simple and clear rule. Subscription games are different to F2P games because everyone pays a subscription. In essence everyone has a stake in behaving to some extent since they put real money into it. If people can in effect play the game for free because they can use the gil they generate through their normal course of play to pay for game time purchased by someone else, they do not have the same stake in the game, and in fact their only real 'stake' is making more and more gil to finance their subscription.

This request is not about gifting time to friends - which I would support. Instead, it's about creating a mechanism for some players to maximize their gil in game through real money purchases in the Mogstation sold to other players who are wealthy in-game. It's RMT pure and simple. It's against one of the basic rules of the game. Just on principle it is wrong due to that.

It does also exploit those willing to use their game time to generate gil in order to purchase more game time because it funnels their gil to other players to lazy to earn the gil themselves. Making it a pay to win of sorts for those spending real $$ on game time tokens, and they do that by exploiting the players with the gil in-game.