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

[Duuude007]

A lot of people here don't seem to understand simple fundamentals of, "Supply and Demand." When new or rare items are released, demand is going to be high, so forager's set the bar on prices. As Demand dwindles, prices will begin to fall. (inb4 materia: Yeah, there's a lot of people still working on relics.) I don't know where the logic is behind, "This is expensive, so let's just get more money." That will just set the pace for inflation with a vicious increasing cycle.

Oh, and in regards to the wedding thing:
Yeah, just because people were doing it, doesn't mean it was acceptable. It was tolerated for this instance and they said that continued abuse of this system would result in them rethinking implementing things like that in the future.

Exactly. It can be considered a viable test model for what OP wants. It was heavily exploited.

What lessons were learned here, OP?

[axemtitanium]

Exactly. It can be considered a viable test model for what OP wants. It was heavily exploited.

What lessons were learned here, OP?

I actually think the price curve on wedding bands beautifully illustrates the power, limitations, and overall effectiveness of what a PLEX system could bring to FFXIV. Like any new item, it launched with a very high demand, commanding a powerful "premium" price point. Some enterprising extreme risk-seeking players gambled on this item being worth money and ponied up. I saw people boasting that they sold bands for 30M+ on day one. As the gold-digging masses caught wind of the entrepreneurs' success, the market became saturated with people hocking platinum bands for 15M, 10M, 5M, 2M gil. I think I saw some desperate stragglers selling them for 400k, futilely mining at that gold vein long after it had run dry.

The biggest weakness in all the doomsday scenarios that people keep dreaming up is a lack of follow-through for all steps of logic. SE sells a PLEX item to Player A for $10 through the cash shop which has no inherent guaranteed value in and of itself. Player A sells this item to Player B for some amount of money (let's just say 20M gil as a made-up number) which Player B already had earned previously through any of the ways people make money in this game. No gil is created as a result of this transaction; in fact, a little bit is destroyed as a result of Market Board taxes. 20M gil now has a "real world value" of $10 (although keep in mind that there's no way to transform 20M gil back into $10, legally).

I've seen the argument that illegal RMTers will just "lower their price and make even more money!!!!!11!". First of all, RMT botting has a finite upper limit to how much gil you can make per time per character. It's impossible to exceed this limit without paying for another character subscription. The price that RMT tells quote to you is the highest they can get away with charging based on supply (their ability to generate gil) and demand (people's needs to buy it). If suddenly, SE gets into the PLEX business, they now have a competitor to deal with who is both more trustworthy and won't get you banned for transacting with. So RMT has to lower their price to compensate for their lack of credibility. Let's say they're forced to sell gil at $10 for 10M gil. All of a sudden, the RMT business has had its profits slashed in half, for no reason, and with no way to make gil any faster. It has literally become half as profitable, per time, to spend money operating in this game. Yes, they can purchase PLEX with gil for their own characters to use but that just eats into their own bottom line even further. And if that character gets banned? That's even more profit lost.

Well, it doesn't stop there. The PLEX-buying players, feeling pressured to compete with RMT prices, will continue to undercut each other and the RMT to drive the price of PLEX down on the white market. It becomes a vicious cycle of undercutting until all but the most dedicated, penny-pinching, desperate RMT can still afford to operate in this game due to falling "real world value" of gil, lack of profits, and increasing costs. Eventually, the gil market value of PLEX will settle at some sensible rate with only minor seasonal fluctuations. I'm going to put my economist hat on and wager that the stable market price of a PLEX-like item in FFXIV will be no greater than 300k gil on a server with a mature economy. This is how RMT will be directly impacted by the introduction of PLEX.

I wrote all of this, in so many words, in the OP. I guess it was too much to ask for all the forum warriors in General Discussion to read actually it. To all the people who got so frothingly mad at my OP, I hope your jimmies were thoroughly rustled.

[Fenral]

snip

It's a sound argument, and definitely something the devs are thinking about. I have a few friends who would benefit from a system like this, so I'd like to see it happen.

If and when it does, the rage will be palpable, but the most vocal opponents will probably still pay their subs. Everybody wins.

[axemtitanium]

Click the arrow to see this post ^

I responded to you Duuude, hope you can provide some constructive feedback/responses.