Why no Plex system?

[frostmagemari]

There are some fundamental issues with being able to purchase gil with real money through any system. It means changing some pretty substancial reward systems, most notably the crafting gear. Crafting gear is currently the best gear available the moment of a raid launch. Further, the best gear a crafter can get is also often purchasable with gil. In both cases someone would, at least for a limited amount of time, be able to get the best available gear by buying it indirectly with RMT which effectively would make FF14 dangerously close Pay-to-Win. While one solution would be simply to nerf crafted gear that is sellable, that seriously impacts the reward to time investment that crafting takes which is rather unfair to crafters.

Personally, although such a system would effectively allow me to play for free, I don't think it would be good for the game.

It would hardly be akin to pay to win.
If someone gathered the gil through selling off materials and bought all that gear? Isn't that pay to win?
If selling one commodity is a legitimate way to get gil from another player, why isn't a time-token valid? Both need to be gathered in one way or another, both are available to players (some having more RL cash than time, some having more time than RL cash), and both need to be placed onto the market board for another player to buy...

The more people put up the tokens, the less the demand would be and one player may end up selling their token for less, which means they can't buy all of the gear they want. All an SQE Game-token system would mean is that a legitimate player gets game time out of the sale instead of a gil seller fattening their wallet.

[Belhi]

It would hardly be akin to pay to win. Is it pay to win if someone who gathered the gil through leves and selling off materials bought all that gear? Isn't that pay to win?
If selling one commodity is a legitimate way to get gil from another player, why isn't a time-token valid? Both need to be gathered in one way or another, both are available to players (some having more RL cash than time, some having more time than RL cash), and both need to be placed onto the market board for another player to buy...
The more people put up the tokens, the less the demand would be and one player may end up selling their token for less, which means they can't buy all of the gear they want.

It isn't pay-to-win if someone purchases those item by doing in game because they literally had to play the game to get the items. Pay-to-win means buying power in the game using real money. It would be the equivalent if they added high ilvl gear sets to the Mogstation. You could right now get a full 320 set of HQ and melded gear with real money if a PLEX like system existed in game right now. That is close to what the power of Creation tomestone gear.

[frostmagemari]

It isn't pay-to-win if someone purchases those item by doing in game because they literally had to play the game to get the items. Pay-to-win means buying power in the game using real money. It would be the equivalent if they added high ilvl gear sets to the Mogstation. You could right now get a full 320 set of HQ and melded gear with real money if a PLEX like system existed in game right now. That is close to what the power of Creation tomestone gear.

It's no different. If you can achieve the end result by paying gil into it, then it's the same between selling one commodity vs selling another.
The gear you're buying with your gil doesn't care WHERE you got the gil, only that you have it.
You're not throwing real money around to get an advantage in the game, you are putting up an item which is subject to the whims of the market. You might never sell your token because you're trying to get too much from it, or it could sell right away but you get near nothing out of it because you undervalued it.
It is the same as selling any other item on the market.

[Belhi]

It's no different. If you can achieve the end result by paying gil into it, then it's the same between selling one commodity vs selling another.
The gear you're buying with your gil doesn't care WHERE you got the gil, only that you have it.
You're not throwing real money around to get an advantage in the game, you are putting up an item which is subject to the whims of the market. You might never sell your token because you're trying to get too much from it, or it could sell right away but you get near nothing out of it because you undervalued it.
It is the same as selling any other item on the market.

No it really isn't because to get any other item of worth on the market you need to PLAY THE GAME. You cant just buy that stuff with real money without breaking the Terms of Service which risks you getting permabanned. A Plex system in the current version of the game would mean that people could buy gear just short of the best available in the game currently with real money. That is Pay-to-Win. Such a system completely destroys the reward system in games.

Tokens will always sell for plenty of gil because people like to play for free. The more likely outcome is that it will cause inflation in such gear because people selling tokens will be able to buy gear for more which will make it more difficult for players who aren't crafters but are playing the game for rewards to afford that gear.

[frostmagemari]

No it really isn't because to get any other item of worth on the market you need to PLAY THE GAME.

The 'How' on how people get the gil is irrelevant. The person selling the items doesn't care if you got a windfall from selling a lucky break item, or if you spent the money on tokens, or if you bought it from a gil seller. He only cares that you now currently have it and want to buy his item.

You cant just buy that stuff with real money without breaking the Terms of Service which risks you getting permabanned.

No one is buying anything WITH real money. Once it is in the game, it is a commodity that people will buy, or not buy. You are not handing the crafter a fistful of cash and getting items from them.

A Plex system in the current version of the game would mean that people could buy gear just short of the best available in the game currently with real money. That is Pay-to-Win. Such a system completely destroys the reward system in games.

No, it would mean that individuals who buy the token would have the opportunity to spend the gil on whatever they wanted. They could put it to a house fund, they could put it to buying gear, they could put it to upping a craft or simply making sure a minor class they're leveling has adequate gear, or it could all go to teleports and buying mounts; or it could go to someone gifting the game time to a friend and no gil is transferred anywhere. You don't know, you're using the worst case scenario as the basis for what everyone will be doing.

Tokens will always sell for plenty of gil because people like to play for free.

Tokens would be at the whim of the market. If one person decides to sell their token for 1mil gil, but the person that comes in afterwards decides they want to sell theirs first, so they put it up for 900,000gil.. and then the third... That's how a market works. You would have people competing to sell these tokens; but you assume that they will stay high and people won't fight to sell theirs first, as if they all agreed on the price before hand.

The more likely outcome is that it will cause inflation in such gear because people selling tokens will be able to buy gear for more which will make it more difficult for players who aren't crafters but are playing the game for rewards to afford that gear.

And then they'd see that they won't have nearly the sales they'd like, as more gil per item means less purchases. Less purchases means less net gil for the seller.. and prices will fall back to a comfortable level because selling two items at 150,000gil is better than selling a single item 250,000gil. Markets stabilize based around reliable sales, not hopeful windfall purchases.
I can tell you one thing, most people who buy the tokens won't just waste their money on frivolous purchases, because they are spending their hard earned money to buy these tokens.

[Belhi]

I know how markets work. I literally am studying economics in between posts here. There is more than enough gil in the market to have tokens are the very minimum selling for a million gil. More realistically, considering there are players with literally hundreds of millions of gil, they would be going for several million gil each. Further, because the tokens are a consumed commodity, people will keep buying them every month and as the price of the tokens goes up, those who play the market will look to generate more cash, particularly if the people who have sold tokens start increasing demand on the high value items like the high ilvl combat gear. These factors will put upward pressure on prices. Why? Because that is literally how it works in the real marketplace and that is a place where regulation is designed to control those factors.

Your completely missing the point here. At the end of the day, this system will allow you to buy gear just short of the best available in a tier with real money. That is Play-to-Win. It fundamentally devalues alternative methods of gear progression. Could they spend it on something else? Sure. However that doesn't change the fact they can, and will, buy gear that only Savage raiding can out do with real money under such a system.

The only way around this would be to change what high level crafters can make but that in turn will effect the reward value for the effort it takes to be a high level crafter.

[Brannigan]

It's no different. If you can achieve the end result by paying gil into it, then it's the same between selling one commodity vs selling another.

I just stopped in to say that this is the worst argument I've ever seen on this topic. Congratulations.
Also PLEX is just sanctioned gil buying and should be avoided because it explicitly attaches a real money value to in-game items and makes things less fun. See: Diablo 3 on launch.

[Krotoan]

Your completely missing the point here. At the end of the day, this system will allow you to buy gear just short of the best available in a tier with real money. That is Play-to-Win. It fundamentally devalues alternative methods of gear progression. Could they spend it on something else? Sure. However that doesn't change the fact they can, and will, buy gear that only Savage raiding can out do with real money under such a system.

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I'm still fuzzy on where "pay to win" is bad in a game where we're all working together? I understand it in a PVP setting (I know there's PVP in this game but as I understand it all applicable gear and progress wouldn't be affected by lots of gil) where if someone can buy a bigger better gun than you can then it feels unfair when they shoot you and your little f2p peashooter does nothing back. But ... we're fighting the bad guys together here, how does someone having their higher gear faster make it unfair for you?

[Snow_Princess]

I'm still fuzzy on where "pay to win" is bad in a game where we're all working together? I understand it in a PVP setting (I know there's PVP in this game but as I understand it all applicable gear and progress wouldn't be affected by lots of gil) where if someone can buy a bigger better gun than youcan then it feels unfair when they shoot you and your little f2p peashooter does nothing back. But ... we're fighting the bad guys together here, how does someone having their higher gear faster make it unfair for you?

Easy, the same arguments people use for why all the pointless time gating is a "good thing" for the game. You can't have people being far ahead because of RMT, people will complain.

Pardon my assumption.. but i don't think you actually know how the in-game economy works... or really understand what i said regards to solutions.

I never said "huge amounts of gil sinks that appear to the rich", i said useful gil sinks; gil sinks need to appear for everyone or they don't work. There just needs to be more of them.
And who said ANYTHING about removing 75% of the gil? Not me.. that's your own screwy idea that you just brought up so you can knock it down.


No, i'm not. At best you have 30 people in the queue at 6-9pm central time, with it being less at times earlier and after. Balmung, despite being listed as congested is not a hard server to get into on a nightly basis anymore; and these queue times are WITH the people that have gone back to AFK'ing all day long.


Of course the server will get busier. It's what happens on content patches, but it won't be SB levels of people because so many people LEFT. They transferred and went to the servers that were classified as new. There are far fewer people on this server than there were, and while it will get busy, it will not get SB release busy.


Neither points are relevant at this juncture. Balmung is now one of two major RP servers rather than it being limited to one (due to people leaving the server); and its population isn't getting any larger, it's only able to shrink at this point as people leave congested servers.

I will try one more time I guess... you are clearly not understanding me.

That being said, the game could use a lot more gil sinks, useful gil sinks; but this isn't an either/or situation. There can be multiple solutions to the problem that the game faces.. more gil sinks (one option is vendor bought untradable items are used within crafting recipes throughout end-game crafting or catch up mechanics) AND a plex system can work in tandem to spread existing gil out, reduce the likely-hood of people buying from gil sellers and then taking gil out of the system via gil sinks.

My point is you can't release huge changes to the econ and plex system at the same time. There is a good number of a select few that has tons of gil. You completely missed what I was saying when I was moving " take 75% gil from everyone to fix it", because that is how broken it is now. You would need a year or more while giving the rich enough gil sinks to impact their hording. If you can't make enough gil sink to have some kind of impact on the rich, you are still going to run into the same problems as now entering the plex system. How often do you craft? How often do you track who sells what? Some people come and go, make a thing here and there while there is a select few, that keep replacing and replacing and making tons of money. If you think the server transfers had a huge impact on how much gil this server has you are very mistaken, if that is the reason you went on that topic, I am shocked. You think I do not understand the in game encon? Then go ahead, release the plex system while I stand above the fire and grin with my free sub and larger incomes. The reason you do not see hyperinflation and why it is somewhat controlled has to do with the gil hording as a slight benefit to the problem. You release those flood gates giving people free sub, there be a drastic increase in gil in circulation, or horde themselves for housing. You think queue times is a good indicator? that is also looking at only the surface issue. Before SB, when HW was ending, ofc there be a spike in activity, some people where preparing. Then you have to consider even after the server move motivation and the afk thing, housing was still congested, as in I couldn't enter the house because too many are loaded.

With people saving up more to prepare for the housing and having more then ever before because the inflation is keep getting worse and worse, there WILL be a higher demand for housing then 3.4 and if you add the plex system on top of it, the servers are likely to explode.

Right now FFXIV's econ is not ready for the flex system, it would start chaos because how badly built it is currently, cause too much demand for housing, you get insane real dollar values for them. This is not limited to balmung. So basically you did not say anything to counter that main point.

I know how markets work. I literally am studying economics in between posts here. There is more than enough gil in the market to have tokens are the very minimum selling for a million gil. More realistically, considering there are players with literally hundreds of millions of gil, they would be going for several million gil each. Further, because the tokens are a consumed commodity, people will keep buying them every month and as the price of the tokens goes up, those who play the market will look to generate more cash, particularly if the people who have sold tokens start increasing demand on the high value items like the high ilvl combat gear. These factors will put upward pressure on prices. Why? Because that is literally how it works in the real marketplace and that is a place where regulation is designed to control those factors.

Your completely missing the point here. At the end of the day, this system will allow you to buy gear just short of the best available in a tier with real money. That is Play-to-Win. It fundamentally devalues alternative methods of gear progression. Could they spend it on something else? Sure. However that doesn't change the fact they can, and will, buy gear that only Savage raiding can out do with real money under such a system.

The only way around this would be to change what high level crafters can make but that in turn will effect the reward value for the effort it takes to be a high level crafter.

You forgot to add that people buy gil in this manner do not truly understand the value of items in said game (due to getting a large chuck without effort) this leads to them overpaying for top items, and you want proof? see the hyper inflation of the xmas sales in ffxi. So putting that in a slow moving encon like ffxiv and you get a perfect storm for an econ disaster. People forget it takes time to make something, so with a plex system + new patch, that new crafted gear would be insanely inflated.

I am apposed to it because I know what will happen to the general populace, I would benefit BIG TIME, and I doubt any token buyers will benefit in the long run. Basically it will make the rich, richer + free sub while middle and low end (who do not buy or those that did buy but don't keep buying) will suffer as far as long term.

[Krotoan]

Easy, the same arguments people use for why all the pointless time gating is a "good thing" for the game. You can't have people being far ahead because of RMT, people will complain.

People will complain no matter what is done. People complain when something is on the mogstation, people complain when something ISN'T available on the mogstation. People complained that housing was to expensive, people complain housing is too cheap. People complain that content is too difficult, people complain content is too easy.

This is not an argument. People complain about EVERYTHING.

Time gating is present to keep you from burning through all the content immediately and keep people playing longer. Buying craftable armor that isn't time gated anyway isn't circumventing this.