CREDD/PLEX/WoW Token system

[Xatsh]

I say hell no to legalized rmt. Keep that garbage out of the game. People should never be able to convert RL money into ingame money ever period.



The current cash shop is already way way too much with the "Cash Shop" Exclusive crap and job boosters.

[Roda]

No, because a sub is more or less guaranteed financial income every month compared to sporadic and unpredictable money trading (also potentially money laundering)

Remember that they have to provide a financial report to investors every quarter.. And there's a reason why virtually no other game allows players to buy premium items with "free" currency, because they're gonna get gamed eventually.

Money would indeed be lost. Instead of sub + optional revenue from every player, they would just be getting one or the other, occasionally both, from some players but not from others..

Besides all that, the key factor in inflation is how much currency is in circulation. It doesn't matter how many billions of gil players have, if they don't spend it, if they don't circulate the gil, then the effect on inflation is pretty negligible. What you'd be doing in fact is giving a reason for all that gil to enter circulation which will indeed lead to higher inflation numbers. If everyone is, or can be, a gillionaire, then the prices of everything will rise accordingly. Basic economic laws my friend.

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WoW's system:
Someone pays blizzard $20.
They get a wow token.
wow token is put up for sale for 300k gold
Someone spends 300k gold on token
seller gets (300k - tax) gold.
Tax gold is deleted from the universe.
Buyer can either consume the token to get 1 month sub (normally $15) or gain $15 credit in their cash shop.

So at the end of this transaction: gold is taken out of the economy. Someone resubscribes or purchases something on the cash shop. Blizzard gets 5 free bucks for basically nothing. A botter/hacker/identity thief lost a sale.

[Mavrias]

yall are all talking about gil sellers crashing markets as if there arent people who would rather pay for their subs and things with gil rather than having to use actual real world money.

yknow people with less disposable income who arent spending it on buying gil in the first place.

[linay]

people who would have canceled their subs to avoid paying, but decide it's worth staying subbed if someone else is paying for it.

As someone else said, I'd rather these people actually pay their own sub if they want to stay. It makes it easier to see if a game is really worth it if everyone who plays it actually pays for it and not just stay because of being able to do it for free.

[Arrhin]

You can use purchased Gil to buy performance enhancing items and gears, it's pay to win...hard fekkin no. Not to mention all of us that play the crafting game would have a huge incentive to play ruined. Systems like this remove any feeling of accomplishment from the game, jus like illegal RMT. Can we jus PLEASE end the -make the game easier for me- posts? I'm not sayin that XIV is perfect, but for the sake of the Twelve jus...no..please

[Rongway]

As someone else said, I'd rather these people actually pay their own sub if they want to stay. It makes it easier to see if a game is really worth it if everyone who plays it actually pays for it and not just stay because of being able to do it for free.

Why does it matter? SE gets their sub fees, plus an additional fee for the token. Someone who would have chosen to leave the game for a month because $15 is too much gets to stay, and instead of $15 for a month's subscription, SE gets $16-$20 depending on the price of the token. If you don't want someone else paying for your sub, then pay your own sub. But don't confuse this with people getting to stay "for free"; someone's still paying the sub fees, and they're paying them at an increased price, which is more revenue for SE.

[Liam_Harper]

I'm all for this. There are multiple benefits to the system.

-Enix profits by at least $5 per token. A token is typically sold for 20e and redeems for 13-15e worth of Enix product.
-The cash shop becomes open to every player with ingame currency.
-Earning gil has a purpose.
-RMT sellers have a 100% safe, legal competitor. This wrecks their business.

WoW made a lot of mistakes, but this wasn't one of them.

[Shougun]

Why does it matter?

I think it could be argued that people will become more fair weather (fickle) when they're given gil as an option. They enter into the gil system because saving $15 is pretty cool, then they get tired of playing for whatever reason and decide to unsub because their sub requires them to play (paying by gil). I think it would be important to see this physiologically like how if you like "hard challenging content" but the easy content rewards you more, therefore you spend most of your time doing the easy stuff to progress - even though it doesn't give you the most fun value (like how some do relic even though they don't enjoy it, I think the gil for sub may have that sort of deeper affect on SE). Once unsubbed SE has to work harder to get them resubbed which sometimes relies on them dropping huge content updates or expansions. Worse if the person who weaned off money onto gil then runs low on gil or is far behind and now just doesn't see value to resub anymore (too much "work" in their game and they don't want to pay cash anymore because they saw gil as an option).

Vs the game just being another bill like power or insurance (starbucks, whatever, spending your money - a currency you don't really have a choice in having to earn). So even if you're not feeling like playing now you might just stay subbed because why not (SE needs to revamp the vet. reward system to further encourage this imo) and if you did resub you'd not have to think about the work you need to do in game in order to play.. in game (not having to think if you're far behind and want to pay by gil but don't have the means to generate the gil needed comfortably to play and "play to pay").

I know some people could use it to great effect but I can't help but imagine that this system will create a less tightly bound relationship between player and SE. Imo, I feel PLEX/CREDD/Tokens create/promote a flimsy relationship and that it'll only be a benefit to SE in the short term (maybe for a few years). I'll give PLEX credit though in that EVE is a super hardcore game, so if it shakes off people who aren't insanely in love with the game then it's actually fine because the game wasn't for them anyways (it's not a theme park MMO).

That's of course ignoring the RMT part of the argument of why it might matter to some people (not wanting to see it promoted even if it can't be defeated).

[Yamimarik]

Socially, morally, and economically I'm very neutral I suppose on the issue? But I would be interested on how this system would work technically.

We have 3 different tiers of subscriptions right now. For people who got the legacy price, entry price, and standard price. Would there need to be 3 separate tokens for each pricing plan?

Also, and you know this would be the next step players would ask for, would there need to be a token system for retainers? And if so how would that work out too? Because currently if you have any amount of extra retainers set up it gets taken out at the same time as your subscription as well.

So yeah I'm just curious, especially w/ some of SE's "spaghetti code" how this would work out on a technical sense.

[whiskeybravo]

?????????????????????????

WoW's system:
Someone pays blizzard $20.
They get a wow token.
wow token is put up for sale for 300k gold
Someone spends 300k gold on token
seller gets (300k - tax) gold.
Tax gold is deleted from the universe.
Buyer can either consume the token to get 1 month sub (normally $15) or gain $15 credit in their cash shop.

So at the end of this transaction: gold is taken out of the economy. Someone resubscribes or purchases something on the cash shop. Blizzard gets 5 free bucks for basically nothing. A botter/hacker/identity thief lost a sale.

There's an inexhaustible list of variables that would effect the outcome. Overpricing the "token" item is one way to seemingly make it a wash, but again you aren't looking at it from a revenue stream perspective. SE can calculate expected revenue from their subs, they can't do much more than guess at cash shop items. Same goes for investors.

Since I've never played WoW I can't comment on the relative purchasing power of 300k gold in that game compared to FFXIV. $20 for 300k gil doesn't seem like fair trade IMO, but that's a subjective decision that only I could make.

What's not subjective is the actual economic effects. What would occur in this situation is basically us paying money to SE for gil redistribution. The main players that would buy a token early on are likely the ones already approaching gil cap, so all that gil they've been sitting on would then enter into the game economy and be redistributed to others. These other players would then have more gil to then buy up things on the market board. Problem arises when we see there hasn't been a corresponding increase in the amount of goods on said market board. IE, if there were 10 minions on the board before, there are still 10 minions up now - but everyone has more gil to buy them up (this is what causes inflation, a minimal "gil tax" barely makes a difference in this regard). Because our market board functions like an auction house, new items posted would have a higher bidding price. Auction prices only go down when stuff isn't selling, sellers become impatient and lower their price in order to sell - OR - more people enter the market to provide goods thus stimulating competition. (in the real world this does occur, as new businesses flock to more profitable industries to capitalize instead of existing industries which have a higher entry cost/lower margins)

At the end of this transaction: there is simply more gil in circulation which will, with 100% certainty, effect the market in some manner or another. How much and in what way depends on the inexhaustible list of variables that we can't account for. No doubt if the market data for WoW existed we could find out what actually happened as a result, and I'd bet money it would confirm the above economic law. You don't have to believe it, but that doesn't mean it's not real.