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

[Jandor]

The appeals of the main topic of this thread are these two things:
- Players are able to use real money to get some gils.
- Players are able to use gils to get some ingame time.

Even if it will completly destroy the economy, and is a terrible thing to do against the pace of the progression each player must experience, there is still benefits to it.

I fail to see any potential interest in your "middle ground" system beside a few exceptions such as "but... I want to pay for my girlfriend subscription!", which you can already do with your credit card and game time cards anyway.

You started by saying:Well, if it can ease your concerns, I can guarantee you that nobody care about the ability of gifting game time using the Mog Station, in exchange of nothing.

Sure, it would be a nice little option for the very few people who'll use it... but it's still absolutly not in the range of a system like the one this topic is all about.

That was a very long and passive-aggressive way of saying 'I agree that would be nice option Jandor.'

[AlexionSkylark]

the pace of the progression each player must experience.

Who are you to tell anybody the pace of progression they "MUST" experience?

[MomomiMomi]

Putting a purchasable time system in, without taking a heavy and active hand against gil sellers, would simply enable them to empty out the market of all game time for sale, further fueling them.

So, you're worried that RMT are going to give their customers what they want (gil) while letting SE take their profit?

Why would they just hand over all their customers to SE again?

Also, I'm pretty sure that with the method that WoW is using for this, such a thing can't even happen.

[Duuude007]

Who are you to tell anybody the pace of progression they "MUST" experience?

He is someone who likely follows the EULA, are you not?

[Tiggy]

Who are you to tell anybody the pace of progression they "MUST" experience?

The developers have decided that. Fyce is just seeing the obvious patterns behind what Square is doing. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that MMOs like this have average time requirements for certain types of content. Generally enforced through RNG which is how this game primarily does it. Pay systems like what are suggested in this thread deliberately try to get past those time gates by paying real money. It has been explicitly argued for such results in this very thread as well. How can you not see this unless at this point you are just trolling to troll.

[Jandor]

He is someone who likely follows the EULA, are you not?

Stay classy Duuude007.

[Giantbane]

Did you miss the laugh after he said that? It was a joke. Like, "IF they ever go free, lol."

Don't be obtuse. It's no secret that SE pays very close attention to what WoW does, with good reason. I think it's more of a joke to think that WoW would actually consider going f2p in the semi near future.

You seem to be ignoring all the posts blatantly saying tokens can be purchased with in game money to pay for their membership. A plex system is intrinsically linked to the subscription system for this reason making what he said very relevant to the topic.

The denial is strong.

Posts? That's the very definition of what a PLEX system is. Nobody's denying anything.

Full free 2 play means anybody can play the game and nobody is paying for that time. In order to make money, the game's creators will often degrade the normal game in some way, either with in game ads, limiting game time, creating massive grinds, obscene difficulty or by limiting access to peripheral content like glamours or housing. How problematic this is depends on the developer's need or willingness to encourage/pressure its players to use the in game shop. Many people don't like this model because they would rather just pay for a good game without the incentives for the developers to degrade their own product.

The difference with PLEX is that the developers don't get any extra money when its purchased. For every PLEX purchased (well, almost, there will be unspent PLEX), that represents a subscription that's not paid. This is really just a transfer of the fee from one player to the other. This is important, because since SE doesn't stand to make any appreciable amount of extra money, it creates no incentives for the developers to degrade their own game (unlike the existing cash shop...).

So, yes, technically somebody could play the game without paying any money. However, in each and every instance of this, somebody else IS paying for them to play. Thus it's not really Free 2 Play. And most importantly, PLEX doesn't create incentives for devs to purposely degrade their own game, as there exists little to no monetary incentive for them to do so.

[Giantbane]

Putting a purchasable time system in, without taking a heavy and active hand against gil sellers, would simply enable them to empty out the market of all game time for sale, further fueling them.

As much as a system like this would benefit the game, it CANNOT function with current GM enforcement methods.

I have no idea how this would work to benefit RMT. It's not like they can turn PLEX into RL money any easier than they can turn gil into RL money. The real difference to RMT is that illegal RMT sales would now have to compete with officially sanctioned player to player sales. These player to player sales are of no use to them, because they can't be used to convert gil > $$, which is what RMT needs to function. This competition brings their profit margins down. Now add to this that they are an illegitimate gil buying service that involves significant risk to the buyer in terms of getting scammed by the RMT or banned by SE vs. a sanctioned gil buying service with no risk. This extra risk means they have to drop their prices even lower to compete and will result in further cuts to their profit margin. There's no win for RMT here.

[Duuude007]

Stay classy Duuude007.

In contrast with his regular displays of attitude, my statement was positively gentlemanly, thank you very much.

[Giantbane]

But it creates fraud risk.

Fraud risk is due to the fact that there's no sanctioned exchange for gil > $$ and back. This means there needs to be trust between parties in terms of getting goods for money paid. This creates the fraud risk. There would be no fraud risk with a PLEX market at all since you would get what you pay for via the in game market.