It's time to reevaluate the idea of adding a PLEX/Chronoscroll-like system to FFXIV

[Tiggy]

Also, you just proved my point with your statement about money changing hands helping the economy. EXACTLY. That money, that was fattening a 1%er's wallet, changed hands and were consumed in favor of a commodity (real estate).

No it in no way proves your point. In that scenario 1 set of money was made. Went from player A to player B for a sub price, then player B blew it on a house making the money leave the game. There is no economy there. That's just a massive gil sink being funded by real life money.

EXACTLY. That money, that was fattening a 1%er's wallet

Please keep saying this like it's accurate. Eventually it might become real that it's safe to assume most players sit around with fortunes in their wallet and that it's safe to make broad assumptions...oh yeah even you keep saying 1% so even you know it's not a lot of people. Why should sweeping changes be made to the entire game for the 1% of people hoarding money? Them holding onto the cash literally doesn't effect anything at all. The economy moves on with out them without anyone even knowing that money is locked away. I don't even know what point you think saying 1%ers over and over again is proving. I know a player with over 300m who hasn't logged in in 6 months. That fortune is literally hurting no one. Not one person.

I have no problems with gil sinks. I have problems with you trying to offload parts of the economy onto a system supported entirely by real life money. That is not an economy. It's p2w. Even in your example the person wanted a house, used the rmt money to give a friend a free account, and then bought the house using the money get got by the trade. He purchased the house with gil yes, but he got that gil solely due to the purchasing of real money in the first place which is getting him access to something he couldn't have done otherwise obtained access to. That's flat out p2w, and on the side the player getting a free month of play was being tricked into working a sweat shop just to pay for his account off the blessings of another player instead of just enjoying the game. That's a terrible situation and is another reality to your sob story.

Real life money should never be able to create any items of appreciable and transferable worth to other players. Square already messed up badly enough by making wedding bracelets trad-able. They don't need to make it worse. Balancing the gil sinks out does nothing but make playing the game by purchasing said RMT currency a requirement from time to time. Know this square. I would quit instantly. Put that in your statistics jar.

[AlexionSkylark]

Snip.

OK, you wanna know where else this money could be going, if not rotting into a character's pockets? Into the luxury market that FFXIV has become. From the rich, to the rich. Where the cost of things is priced thinking of people with 10 mil+ into their account. By distributing the ammount of gil to a bigger multitude of players, less and less people will be able to afford overpriced stuff, and that would actually provoke DEFLATION, which is a good thing by any standard.

[Intaki]

No it in no way proves your point. In that scenario 1 set of money was made. Went from player A to player B for a sub price, then player B blew it on a house making the money leave the game. There is no economy there. That's just a massive gil sink being funded by real life money.

You still seem to fail to understand what actually occurs under this system. Player A had that money before Player B ever bought a subscription token. Maybe he farmed it, maybe he's a marketboard mogul, whatever. By trading that money to Player B, and Player B buying a house, money that was previously in circulation is now completely removed from the economy. Gone. In this scenario gil was not created, it was removed. This is literally the exact opposite of inflation.

Do you know what WOULD inflate? The price of all those easily attainable goods that you see going for 1 to 10 gil on the marketboard. You could expect some of those prices to start jumping into the low hundreds. Imagine that! New players would actually be able to sell the crap that fills their inventories and make a fair bit of money.

[Magis]

In the end, it's people asking to pay money to get ahead. I don't know what kind of mental gymnastics you have to do to somehow convince yourself that isn't paying to win, but no thanks; keep IRL money out of the in game economy.

[Jandor]

By all means show a different game other than Eve where such a system works. Eve's economy is very different from normal MMOs after all. So far only Tera and Wildstar have been presented as normal MMOs and quite honestly both of those games aren't doing so well and so they don't make very good examples since we can't separate out the specific effect the RMT system had on player satisfaction.

Eve's economy isn't that different to other MMOs. The in-game currency changes hands a lot more often but actually generating currency is generally achieved through missions (quests) & bounties (killing monsters for gold.) In-game currency is mostly removed from the game through tax on market transactions.

The scale is different but the basics are the same as FFXIV.

[AlexionSkylark]

Now we have Jon. Jon and his friends have been playing ffxiv semi-regularly. They decide to band together and spend there in-game time raising gil so they can buy a house for their FC. After a month of saving, they finally have enough for their house!! Oh wait, what's this? Bill used his real life money to buy up the last plot?!

Yeah, I'll pass on that kind of a situation being brought into this game. People with time to play the game shouldn't be screwed over by people who don't.

Now you're finally pointing the finger at the REAL issue: the lack of plot wards for sale. That has been noted time and time again in these forums, and that's where our attention should be focused. If anything, I'll even say this balancing of the economy (money shifting from the 1%ers pockets to a more distributed base) will reinforce the shouting for more plot wards, and that'll end up benefiting EVERYBODY in the long run. This is a much more likely scenario.

BTW, your avatar really looks like an Ul'Dahn monetarist. Heheh. (just a light-hearted funny comment, c'mon, I'm not angry at anybody here )

[chrillix]

Now you're finally pointing the finger at the REAL issue: the lack of plot wards for sale. That has been noted time and time again in these forums, and that's where our attention should be focused. If anything, I'll even say this balancing of the economy (money shifting from the 1%ers pockets to a more distributed base) will reinforce the shouting for more plot wards, and that'll end up benefiting EVERYBODY in the long run. This is a much more likely scenario.

BTW, your avatar really looks like an Ul'Dahn monetarist. Heheh. (just a light-hearted funny comment, c'mon, I'm not angry at anybody here )

I would consider the real issue in this situation to be that someone paid real money to obtain something in-game that people actually prevented people playing the game to do themselves. The lack of housing wards is another issue, and I agree they definitely need to add more.

Also, if I could dress myself up like that rich lalafell monetarist in a few of the main story cut scenes I would But I don't think that outfit exists so I chose a goblin merchant instead haha.

[Dante_V]

I also want to point out that I don't think this is "Pay 2 Win". If the dynamic between real money and buying market board items is Pay 2 Win, it's already happening in large numbers. Pay 2 Win by definition is a competitive advantage over other players using real money. Paying gil to be carried thru Final Coil isn't pay to win nor is their any real competitive advantage to clearing the raid in respect to other players. Again if we are too acknowledge that this is Pay 2 Win then it is already occurring.

[AlexionSkylark]

And how does that balance out the economy?

Like in the real world, much better results are achieved when you have a bigger market, meaning more people with gil to buy stuff.
If you make the "filthy casuals" an economically active part of the community, how in heaven and hell is that a bad thing? Aside from taking stuff like crafting and housing out of the exclusivety of a small elite that built up in the game.

Again, how does having more people becoming viable crafters and sinking money into the housing system hurts the economy?
Oh yeah... less monopolizing the market, the lessening of the overpricing in crafting materials provoked by deflation. That is SO bad, SO SO bad.

[Tiggy]

Were you not the one just complaining there isn't anything to spend money on? Seriously you can't make some people happy. There's more than one way to skin a cat. That's the point I was making. Your solution isn't the only way to get people to spend money.