Why no Plex system?

[RichardButte]

Actually they are 160k now on NA. (Multiple reasons, one of the main reasons is it can be turned into battle.net balance now).

When they launched they were worth 10-20k.

Ah yeah, that's right: you can sell them back to Blizzard now.

Still, 160k was nothing to the people who were sitting at gold cap in WoW, and it still didn't adversely affect the economy.

I am TELLING YOU what will happen.

I can tell you things as well.

For example, I can tell you that I'm typing this post from my home in the underwater city of Atlantis, where our advanced technology allows my people to tap in to your surface internet. We do this because, while we Atlanteans may possess the secrets of eternal life, how to cure all diseases, and effortlessly producing unlimited quantities of nourishing food, you surface people still have us beat in video games and adult entertainment.

We can tell each other these and plenty of other things. Doesn't mean either of us is right...

Give me more power at the expense of most of the playerbase, hf.

You won't have "power" over anything.

If the gold barons of WoW, armed with automated 3rd party addons that monitor market fluctuations across literally all servers to build their fortunes based off of the algorithms detected in price changes didn't break WoW's economy, no one in FFXIV is even going to come close...

And WoW's economy, like XIV's, is one where currency is worthless to plenty of players because they have nothing to spend it on.

The only reason I'm against this is because gil is not a necessity, especially if you don't craft or gather. The average Joe player does not really need bags of gold to sustain themselves. The vast majority of battle content means you aren't using gil for anything but teleporting and repairing. Hell, the game even offers you materia on a plate.

But, for as little gil as people supposedly need, RMT barkers are still everywhere, which means that SOMEONE is buying gil from them, otherwise they wouldn't be advertising.

[Snow_Princess]

This is smarmy. Unnecessary and smug sounding. That's what I was referring to.


I'm not sure what confusing language I'm using. I am NOT against PLEX, I am against ILLEGAL RMT's. However I also understand that RMT happens whether or not we want it toand PLEX would funnel the money to a better place AND likely eliminate gil seller spam and bots (somewhat).
I understand what you're saying, but you're out and out ignoring what I'm expressing: People are already able to buy , with gil, the top tier equipment according to you. This means that with enough effort, anyone can farm Gil and kit out their characters at their own pace. hence it's NOT timegated. TIMEGATED items like tomestone gear CANNOT be affected by RMT , either illegal OR dev run.

Neither of us knows , for sure , what this would do to the economy because neither of us can fortell the future. But I can say for sure it would reduce illegal RMT and put money in SE's pocket instead since people are definitely WILLING to exchange money for Gil (or the gil sellers wouldn't be doing it) and eliminating the risk of banning would make people much more likely to use the legal channel.

It would also put a hard value on Gil, which may end up HELPING the economy if people can finally have a reference other than "oh hey.. people are selling this for 2 million right now". IF we had plex they could go "well, 15 dollars buys me 10 million gil, is that minion worth 15 dollars?"

You are wrong, I did not ignore that point:

surely you realize it been illegal and the prices is a deterrent?

Also it is not hard to look what the value would be. a month sub is 9-15 dollars depending what account you have and sign up for (or is it 8.99 for legacy + 6 months?) There is a lot of things on the mog station that cost more then this that people buy in the range of 2-5 M ( I actually do not remember but it was in this range and not a lot) granted it is likely due to the fact it is still discouraged, so the demand gets unknown, devaluing the real cost.

For "ILLEGAL RMT's" why are you against it? do you even know why it is a violation and the logic behind it?

That is all you care about? OF COURSE that will happen! but it will reck havoc on the game's enon, something that is not well off as is. I tried to explain what will happen when you suddenly let people buy gil freely (basically) The only unknown here is to what extent would people holding gil buy? Because there is a very limited number of them , but they hold tons of gil. This does largely depend on people knowing how to value things. Meaning at first release if they are sold for 2-5 M each, someone is gonna stockpile them, till people realize it is set too low, sell them for a higher amount, then the people with stockpiles releases theirs.

In the end of the day there is not enough things to buy to warrant it. All it would do is make the housing situation worse, trying to bride people in seeing houses for 400-1000 dollar sub times. You NEED to fix the games encon before you put this system in. Do you even realize how much gil is being horded?

And WoW's economy, like XIV's, is one where currency is worthless to plenty of players because they have nothing to spend it on.

Wrong, there is a housing shortage where a system like this would wreak havoc on. As far as I know this situation does not exist in any other MNO. People buy ... well i know back in the day I rejected an offer for to sell a large, wanting more then 100 M in an unfavorable location. I do not know the amount, but I did file a report for them asking too much. But I would venture a guess some houses sell for 200-400 M on other websites. What you think will happen when you throw in legal RMT in the mix of a really bad shortage like that? There are people that have an insane amount of gil stockpiles, and what do you think will happen if you put that in circulation?

FFXI is proof what happens when you release flood gates, ever hear of the story of a a gil sale one christmas? It would be much worse here because of the housing shortage. You know.. something that is so unstable people buy them at 100-400 M at times? without RMT involvement.

[Krotoan]

You are wrong, I did not ignore that point:

nothing you said here says anything about how purchasing gear for gil is not a timegated thing and therefore timegated progression is not affected by direct money-gil conversion. I'm not implying people are buying gil with real money and buying gear, I'm saying that people who put in time to farm gil at their own pace are already to unrestricted buy better gear on their own schedule. I might be sounding repetitive but I cannot think of another way to express this.

For "ILLEGAL RMT's" why are you against it? do you even know why it is a violation and the logic behind it?

again: Illegal RMT funds bots, spammers and creates incentive for flooding of our economy from those bots who don't have to sleep or rest. All of those affect me negatively and therefore I am against it.
SE likely is against it because it uses their resources to create money for someone else, which is a bad position for any company and loses them subscribers who don't want to deal with said bots/spammers and distantly since we have games of chance in within the mechanic of this game there could be problems with actual legal gambling regulations if gil can be converted back to money (which Dev driven RMT cannot be).

In the end of the day there is not enough things to buy to warrant it. All it would do is make the housing situation worse, trying to bride people in seeing houses for 400-1000 dollar sub times. You NEED to fix the games encon before you put this system in. Do you even realize how much gil is being horded?

Just because you do not value your gil, doesn't mean others also don't. I will agree the ILLEGAL HOUSE FLIPPING market will get ridiculous. But those can be reported or , more hopefully, SE has a plan to make housing more available.
I have no doubt people have up to their max characters on the servers, each with both retainers stuffed to the gills with... Gil. That's on them. Once the gil gets redistributed to people who will actually spend it? it may be chaotic for a while but it will be balanced eventually.. or SE will be FORCED to deal with it. I have no problem with either situation.

Wrong, there is a housing shortage where a system like this would wreak havoc on. As far as I know this situation does not exist in any other MNO. People buy ... well i know back in the day I rejected an offer for to sell a large, wanting more then 100 M in an unfavorable location. I do not know the amount, but I did file a report for them asking too much. But I would venture a guess some houses sell for 200-400 M on other websites. What you think will happen when you throw in legal RMT in the mix of a really bad shortage like that? There are people that have an insane amount of gil stockpiles, and what do you think will happen if you put that in circulation?

FFXI is proof what happens when you release flood gates, ever hear of the story of a a gil sale one christmas? It would be much worse here because of the housing shortage. You know.. something that is so unstable people buy them at 100-400 M at times? without RMT involvement.

People can toss around their Gil how they like, I'll still be able to hunt/venture for my mats and sell them at the new "ridiculous" prices and get my piece of the crazyness. A house coming off of a demo timer won't be any more expensive (which is the current SE condoned method of acquiring a house) and anyone trying to flip them for even more money is subject to GM action (or once again.. maybe SE will actually do something if it becomes an epidemic, or MORE of an epidemic for those of you who will scream it already is).

[Snow_Princess]

nothing you said here says anything about how purchasing gear for gil is not a timegated thing and therefore timegated progression is not affected bydirect money-gil conversion. I'm not implying people are buying gil with real money and buying gear, I'm saying that people who put in time to farm gil at their own pace are already to unrestricted buy better gear on their own schedule. I might be sounding repetitive but I cannot think of another way to express this.


again: Illegal RMT funds bots, spammers and creates incentive for flooding of our economy from those bots who don't have to sleep or rest. All of those affect me negatively and therefore I am against it.
SE likely is against it because it uses their resources to create money for someone else, which is a bad position for any company and loses them subscribers who don't want to deal with said bots/spammers and distantly since we have games of chance in within the mechanic of this game there could be problems with actual legal gambling regulations if gil can be converted back to money (which Dev driven RMT cannot be).






Just because you do not value your gil, doesn't mean others also don't. I will agree the ILLEGAL HOUSE FLIPPING market will get ridiculous. But those can be reported or , more hopefully, SE has a plan to make housing more available.
I have no doubt people have up to their max characters on the servers, each with both retainers stuffed to the gills with... Gil. That's on them. Once the gil gets redistributed to people who will actually spend it? it may be chaotic for a while but it will be balanced eventually.. or SE will be FORCED to deal with it. I have no problem with either situation.




People can toss around their Gil how they like, I'll still be able to hunt/venture for my mats and sell them at the new "ridiculous" prices and get my piece of the crazyness. A house coming off of a demo timer won't be any more expensive (which is the current SE condoned method of acquiring a house) and anyone trying to flip them for even more money is subject to GM action (or once again.. maybe SE will actually do something if it becomes an epidemic, or MORE of an epidemic for those of you who will scream it already is).

Point... missed.. completely...
You think.. RMT are the only ones that bot? I highly doubt it given how I watch max level bots, bot it up for a year in HW. Ye they did help devalue the materials but the bigger factor in that is the fact crafted gear is in low demand so the mats stay on the MB for too long, then people undercut spam each other. People also semi-bot, it makes them look like they are a real player but still going on auto, half paying attention to it. Maybe that is why they are never caught? cuz of semi auto and never deal with RMT? idk

The main reason RMT are against the ToS is because of property ownership, has nothing to do with what you said. When you sign the ToS you agree SE owns everything, this means you can't be selling their property for your financial gain. The RMT have very little impact in this game, people really want this because they think it fights RMT and it is worth fighting for? please, the econ is not healthy enough for RMT to impact it a whole lot, and there is a few reasons for this.

1. RMT gil costs too much
2. Gil for the most part is worthless
So RMT are shooting their sales because how this game works, and it is basically the reverse of FFXI back when the cap was 75. When RMT had that sale it was obvious they impacted the econ, here you would not see that at all outside housing.

With the tokens however, it becomes a different story, and it would move high amounts of gil for a lot cheaper then the RMT sell for. It ruins their business, I am not in disagreement that it will impact RMT. However the econ is so badly built it would case more problems then solve. Why are you debating with me when we have completely different points?

You > I like to have Plex to fight for RMT
Me> it is a bad idea because FFXIV's econ is bad. I am not even looking at the effect of it has on RMT because that is not effecting the playerbase. Having a plex system NOW with the econ the way it is NOW! would be a 1000 times worse then what the RMT do to it, because people do not buy lots of RMT gil because it costs too much, esp if you compare that to what people sell wedding bands and such for.

I know it would cause problems because my main thing is to craft and I deal and look at trends every day to try make the most money. I do it because I just want to see how much gil I can make cuz I find it fun, I do not care if it is pointless. That is why I hate spending it unless I need to.

[Krotoan]

Point... missed.. completely...
You think.. RMT are the only ones that bot?

Never said that. People use bots to play, we know, but the really annoying ones are the ones populating maps with names like "Vxxxvghhr Whxxblg" who are teleporting from node to node harvesting resources endlessly and dumping them at the NPC or yelling the same thing over and over in the middle of town. These are the gilfarmer bots. I couldn't care less about high level players using bots, they are few and far between enough that it's of little consequence to the rest of the playerbase, though if i PVP'd I might feel different.

The RMT have very little impact in this game, people really want this because they think it fights RMT and it is worth fighting for?

I've stated how they affect the game and it's NOT only the economy they hurt.


"1. RMT gil costs too much"
it's something like 10 mil for 5 dollars on my server. Someone who has money to throw at a game rather than time wouldn't even blink at this price. it's a value meal at Mcdonalds.

"2. Gil for the most part is worthless"
If it was as worthless as you say, nobody would be selling it for real money. There is a profitable enough market for it as is proven by the continued presence of the illegal RMT bots and criers.

With the tokens however, it becomes a different story, and it would move high amounts of gil for a lot cheaper then the RMT sell for. It ruins their business, I am not in disagreement that it will impact RMT. However the econ is so badly built it would case more problems then solve. Why are you debating with me when we have completely different points?

I'm not sure what your point is other than you like to repeat things about the economy being bad because you don't think gil is worth anything and repeating points from other threads I've seen you post in.

My point in TL;DR form: PLEX isn't a bad idea because RMT is present in this game already and giving the money to the devs instead of the farmers is good.

You > I like to have Plex to fight for RMT

Wrong. I guess I didn't state it plainly enough. I dont want to fight FOR RMT. It's there already. Redirecting it to a cause for our possible benefit is better than letting it thrive and funding gil farmers.

Me> it is a bad idea because FFXIV's econ is bad. I am not even looking at the effect of it has on RMT because that is not effecting the playerbase. Having a plex system NOW with the econ the way it is NOW! would be a 1000 times worse then what the RMT do to it, because people do not buy lots of RMT gil because it costs too much, esp if you compare that to what people sell wedding bands and such for.

I know it would cause problems because my main thing is to craft and I deal and look at trends every day to try make the most money. I do it because I just want to see how much gil I can make cuz I find it fun, I do not care if it is pointless. That is why I hate spending it unless I need to.

I got this part, several times. In your opinion FFXIV's economy is poor.

Let me ask you then, don't you think a large scale crisis in the economy, lamented by almost ALL players would spur the devs to do something about it even faster than 3 months of posts in the forums? Do you think that if your "destroyed economy" happened they would just shrug and give up the game to the chaos?

[Snow_Princess]

Let me ask you then, don't you think a large scale crisis in the economy, lamented by almost ALL players would spur the devs to do something about it even faster than 3 months of posts in the forums? Do you think that if your "destroyed economy" happened they would just shrug and give up the game to the chaos?

Nope:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...space-increase

Also the housing problem exists that they are unable to fix, so for now because of that, doubt they would be able to. (Housing shortage exists because of too low supply for the prices they give, so they got to hike the cost, or the supply. Given the track record to solve housing issues
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...dium-large-%29
what makes you think they can handle econ crises that may come out of introducing the plex system here? or comment on an issue with 200+ likes?) I would venture a guess it is why it is not in place, because they know how bad the econ is. They know enough that it will not work here. If they can't fix the econ without a flex system, with having the housing shortage, how in the heck would they be able fix it with one? O_o

But if you insist in giving more econ power to people like me I am all for it, hurt most of the people in the game long term effect, so just be careful what ya wish for. I do find it odd how you can't give econ arguments back in why it can support it or not. Keep in mind I am not the only one that basically said gil is worthless so making this plex system isn't a good idea:

The only reason I'm against this is because gil is not a necessity, especially if you don't craft or gather. The average Joe player does not really need bags of gold to sustain themselves. The vast majority of battle content means you aren't using gil for anything but teleporting and repairing. Hell, the game even offers you materia on a plate.

It's a good idea to combat botting and unsanctioned RMT, but the sort of people who would benefit from this... don't really seem to need it in the first place.

[Krotoan]

But if you insist in giving more econ power to people like me I am all for it, hurt most of the people in the game long term effect, so just be careful what ya wish for. I do find it odd how you can't give econ arguments back in why it can support it or not. Keep in mind I am not the only one that basically said gil is worthless so making this plex system isn't a good idea:

Your reasoning: I cannot quote exact numbers to show the economy can support it so I'm wrong. Someone else said gil is worthless, so I'm wrong.


People have also said: Mogstation is bad. Royal Menagerie is too hard. Housing is fine how it is. Savage raids are too easy(and too hard). People say stuff a lot on this forum. All of these comments have likes and support.

You're saying that if PLEX is introduced, the piles of gil that people like you have hoarded will hit the economy and destroy it right? My stance is you cannot know that. We are a vocal minority here, almost every argument made here doesn't represent the majority of players.

What giant power do you think you'll have over the economy if PLEX is released? You'll buy a whole bunch of PLEX cheap when it comes out because the value wont be really known yet to players, then when it rises you'll sell them all for a huge profit and.. what? Now you have the lions share of the "worthless" gil to do what? Prices will inflate, people will sell items at these new "inflated" prices and things will have about the same value to everyone. New players will get their gear from quests and dungeons, Old players will have things to sell at new ridiculous prices and be able to afford the new ridiculous prices.
This is what I've always seen happen with currency infusions.

[RichardButte]

What you think will happen when you throw in legal RMT in the mix of a really bad shortage like that? There are people that have an insane amount of gil stockpiles, and what do you think will happen if you put that in circulation?

One of the reasons (if not THE reason) people have these "insane stockpiles" of gil is due to RMT bots farming up massive amounts of gil, which in turn causes rampant inflation.

Curbing RMT makes in-game prices go back to being reasonable because once all of the excess money has left the market, there aren't as many RMT bots around to cause inflation.

There is no additional currency being generated via plex, it's just one player giving money to another player.

In the case of RMT, automated programs are literally left running for the specific purpose of generating mountains of gil to sell to players. Subtract this gil and things would be better all around.

what makes you think they can handle econ crises that may come out of introducing the plex system here? or comment on an issue with 200+ likes?)

First of all, them commenting on threads has zero correlation to how they handle the economy.

Second, if they want to add more gil sinks, like I said earlier, just throw some 50 million gil mounts on a vendor somewhere (like WoW did).

Third, there won't be an economic crisis. There wasn't one in EVE, there wasn't one in WoW, and there won't be one here.

Stop "Chicken Littling".