[Cash Shop Idea] Game Time Token

[alimdia]

Thank you for answering.

1. The money has to come from somewhere, so someone has to buy tokens so that others can buy it with in-game cash. This means that there has to be at least 1 person who would pay for at least 2 months worth of subscription fees, so that someone else can buy one of those monthly game time tokens through in-game cash. But, what makes you think that (s)he won't be buying more tokes? When will it be enough? If people are willing to 90 bucks so that 6 characters can wear a dress you can buy from the Cash shop, what do you think will happen if people can buy game time tokens and sell those on the market boards?

That doesn't strike you as at least a bit concerning?

No, as this as covered earlier in this thread, there's a hard limit on how many tokens someone can purchase with real money in WoW. This is why I said this can be fully controlled by SE. SE is the only one that has full control on 1) how much gil players are able to earn, through increasing or decreasing supply of items, and 2) can limit the sale of tokens in any way they see fit. So nothing will spiral out of control as long as SE keeps control of it.

2. People will sell those tokens so that they will get more gil in game. What do you think will happen to the economy on the market boards? Do you think that due to this the prices of the items they sell on the market boards will go down? There are so many items on the market boards which go for tens of millions in gil. If people get the means to get gil by selling tokens on the market boards, do you really think that this doesn't affect everyone to a point that more people are going to consider using RMT (legal or no) to get the money to pay for all of that? What about new players? How are they going to be able to get something from a market board if the prices are astronomical, unless you can get gil through RMT?

Isn't that a concerning issue for you?

Again, the economy can be fully controlled by SE through supply and demand, if they want something to be valuable and expensive they make it very difficult to obtain (see thavnairian set when it was added) when they want it to be cheap they make it available through more ways, or in higher quantities, or with less restrictions. Those items worth ten millions of gils are worth that much because SE wants them to be worth that much, if things ever get out of hand you will surely see a change in availability, this is something they have been doing since ARR launch. Even in a supposedly "free market" such as ours the devs still hold a lot of control through supply and demand. Now if you think SE is incapable of maintaining control on the market that's a whole different thing. And I'll again refer to WoW's market, you speak of hypothetical cases when we already have another game that has had the system for a while, their market was not destroyed by sub tokens nor it's unsustainable if you don't sell tokens.

3. How on earth can you justify determining the price of game time based on in-game currency? I mean, have you forgotten what happenend with the housing prices? If you look at that, what would be a "reasonal" price for game time on the markets? 25M for 30 days? So, rich people will be able to buy game time?

How is this not a major red flag?

4. How on earth can you justify determining the price of game time based on supply and demand? Let's say the game time will be sold for 25M today, 25.2M a few hours later and in a week it's risen to 26M. How can this be considered to be remotely fair? We are still talking about game time here. Not a piece of gear.

I feel like I'm repeating this very often, but again the devs have control over this, in WoW they use an algorithm to determine the market price of the token, they set an upper and lower limit so things don't go out of control, so even after accounting supply and demand shifting the price they will always remain within SE control.

If you still can't see any fault a Token system with means of buying it from the market boards, then it won't matter what i say. You will not find any fault in regards to a system like this. Which is exactly why it makes me sick to my stomach.

If you don't want to discuss this then we don't have to. I'm just telling you, your fears are unfounded, the economy isn't going to collapse, the game isn't gonna drop a massive amount of players, it won't cause a new calamity. Well, this depends on how much you trust SE to control this system, I personally believe they are capable of doing it right.

I understand you're against the principle, and I respect that, but I don't think this can harm the game as long as SE takes care of it.