An idea to combat RMT...

[Clicked]

If you are against RMT because of account theft, spam and bots, then Mog Station needs to sell gil at a lower price than RMT vendors, which creates inflation, and you would need gil sinks to counter-act that inflation, only to create more incentive for players to buy gil, i.e. more inflation.

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game to someone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

[Vahlnir]

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game to someone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

Except the inflation has risen significantly in WoW as a result of their "tokens", it just took some time to worm its way into the economy.

[Clicked]

No game I've ever played that has an official way to purchase in-game currency for cash has seen a reduction or elimination of 3rd party rmt spamming. In-game inflation does tend to go up though.

In which game do game tokens cause inflation? They do not create in game money out of thin air.

Also, this absolutely does reduce RMT's incentive to sell currency because most people will be willing to pay more for official currency than risk getting banned for buying the fake stuff.

[Kelani]

Apologies I’d not realised there were previous threads with regards to this and yes I did mean buying a game time token like WOW offers

[Clicked]

Except the inflation has risen significantly in WoW as a result of their "tokens", it just took some time to worm its way into the economy.

Care to explain the mechanism of inflation then? Correlation is not causation. WoW (and all health economies) have inflation over time. It encourages people to spend money rather than horde it. In WoW's case, there are very few gold sinks. It's totally unrelated and has been happening since Burning Crusade when dailies became very popular. Sound kinda familiar?

[Krotoan]

Apologies I’d not realised there were previous threads with regards to this and yes I did mean buying a game time token like WOW offers

No apologies necessary, I am merely informing. The old thread is dead and forgotten, refocusing attention on this possible solution is good =]

[Snow_Princess]

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game tosomeone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

You are right in the idea of it does not make more gil, this is true, but that is not what leads to inflation.

What leads to inflation is the people with stockpiles of gil has a use for it suddenly, and the people with low gil would tend to actually use it. Since it is throwing more gil in circulation, that is what leads to inflation. (inflation is not necessary bad, btw, it is hyper inflation that is bad and the thing you want to avoid)

That alone is not a big issue though, the problem in making that system is throwing it in with a market with an extreme housing shortage. Most of the gil exchanged is housing, housing items, and glams. Because this game does not handle housing well, it would create more problems with housing. It has nothing to do with being a "doomdayer" DO THOSE GAMES HAVE EXTREME HOUSING ISSUES?!?!?!?! no? my point is well founded then. I can penta meld a job in full 320 gear cheaper then what I spent on 2 cherry trees, for example, with the first overmeld being a VI) Some fences costs even more then that, just a fence, and that leaves out spending 1 M+ in picture frames, 400k ish for a mailbox, and other things.

It would cause TOO MUCH of inflation in regards of 3rd party communication trade of second hand housing trading and housing items.

Basically they need to overhaul and fix the housing situation to fit this in the game, otherwise it causes too much problems, the econ of this game is not great. Because of high burn out of gear and replace, the encon is pretty dead after a few months after patch, SE needs a more substantiate model in general, and not a burst one. The reason for this is that they need to keep making new content too quickly from it, they really need some parallel progress concepts in this game. Fix that, and this idea will have room to exist in this game.

[kikix12]

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

This can work very well with "paid" accounts too. All it needs to do is add time to the account, and the system being set to prolong subscription when the number of days goes down to 7, let's say, instead of once every month. Voila. If you manage to buy yourself a token, you get "free" play, if not, then you still will pay to have access to the "premium" content that is not included in free trial. If you don't have recurring payment, then you would simply have to pay manually to unlock some time to try and get another token. Or an out-of-game "market board" could be made where players can exchange stuff to earn enough gil and buy a token without having access to the account. I mean, this game have a LOT of web-based databases. I can see my character, their gear and what not without ever logging into game. Such a market board would be easy.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

To be honest, it does have an inflation-increasing effect, but it's not direct. It would simply greatly incentivize gaining gil, all the while focusing loads of money in the hands of few people (the sellers). For rarer items, "few" is more than enough. The rare items prices would significantly go up into the air because there would be those rich players that have enough to pay for them, and buy all of them. The more common items would go up in price as well, but because there was more gil around since more people would farm for it specifically...and get some excess here or there.

Neither of these problems is unsolvable by suitable gold sinks though...but I don't remember a single game that would have gold sinks that are suitable...

[DeaconMoore]

In which game do game tokens cause inflation? They do not create in game money out of thin air.

Also, this absolutely does reduce RMT's incentive to sell currency because most people will be willing to pay more for official currency than risk getting banned for buying the fake stuff.

All of them. Inflation via usage. It takes money out of the pockets of people hoarding it and puts it in the pockets of those buying it to spend. It further encourages farming for the goal of generating funds and as more people are out farming and exchanging the currency people start jacking prices up to take advantage.

It doesn't discourage RMT sellers, they still make money doing it. The only thing that stops the RMT sellers is the shutdown of the game. It does encourage people to start buying currency that wouldn't otherwise though.

[BigRed5392]

No thanks, the last thing we need is for this game to go pay to win and selling gil would be the first step down that slippery slope. Not to mention destroying the economy.

Also RMT pay subs too. SE managed to pretty much get rid of them on FFXI with filters built into the chat, so I see no reason they can't do the same here. Obviously they have no desire to.

What really amazes me is anyone needing to buy gil when it's so ridiculously easy to make.

rmt do not pay subs. they use stolen accounts and credit cards. SE bans rmt more then anything. ff11 saw over 3mil rmt ban with 3billion takem out of circulation, the chat filters are in place just rmt figure ways around it.