Why no Plex system?

[Shihen]

Few things here.

You can have a player wanting to buy a house (assuming that there are any plots), but he doesn't have enough gil in order to buy it. With this system, he could buy a Game Token and sell it through the Market boards, in order to collect the amount of gil needed to buy that house.

That literally costs no effort what so ever from the player, just a deeper pocket.

Those pockets don't get deeper by themselves. The effort cost is there, it just doesn't take place in FFXIV.

someone has to buy the Token, so SE will still get their money (and maybe more). Even though that is true, who in his or her right mind will by Tokens aside from paying for their own use or gifting it to a friend/relative? The only reason i can think of, is to sell it for gil and that's exactly the wrong reason to do it for.

You can save up that money to buy something that actually matters in real life.

For a lot of people, getting the most out of this game does matter in real life. It's a connection to people you never would have met otherwise, and experiences you never would have had otherwise. Enjoying it matters.

You're basically giving in to people who are greedy and want to get Gil by throwing real money at it.

The main reason behind it is the desire that you just have to have it. But, wouldn’t you agree that there is something very wrong with that picture?

What about the guy working 9-5 with kids, a wife, and 2-3 hours of gametime a day? Greedy probably isn't the best word for him. And the girl trying to balance a few courses, studying, and working part time probably just wants to get the most out of a hobby she enjoys.

Some people love the game just as much as anyone else, they just don't have the time to invest in it. I don't want to see an unrestricted money to gil conversion system, but I think a capped form of conversion should exist. Marketable game tokens with a monthly cap on how many you can buy, for example. Enough to equate to a crafter that spends a few hours a week on the market, and far less than the hardcore crafters that do nothing but.

You can only really stop RMT if no one is buying from them.

Agreed.

What you are suggesting is to have these kinds of players the means to still pursue the same activities, but through means supplied by SE. That doesn't fix the root of the problem, namely that people are buying gil with real money.

Lost me a bit on this one. If you're an RMT company and you buy a 15 dollars worth of gil via token from SE, what are you going to do with it? Sell it for 16? No one will buy it when they can just get it from SE at 15, and selling it at anything less is a loss.

With a monthly cap on tokens in place, RMT will still exist but their profits will take a massive hit. Less money means bans are more effective as replacing lost accounts is now more costly, and the end result is a better experience for all legitimate players.

Edit: Actually, I see your point here. If players buying gil for real money is a problem, it doesn't change anything. I'd just argue that allowing players to buy gil for real money in moderation via game time tokens does more good than harm.

People are saying that we are living in a regression, that everything is expensive, but on the other hand we're buying a luxury item like the latest iPhone for more then 800 bucks because it's the "thing to have"? Then we have people saying that they'd want to be able to buy game time with an in-game currency, so that they can save money on a game with a 15 dollar a month subscription?

What is wrong with this picture here?

It's not because they have trouble affording a 15 dollar subscription. There just aren't many gil sinks in the game and they have far more than they need. If they can save money by giving what they don't need to someone who does need it, then all the better. It's not really any deeper than that.

I want people to be able to play this game and love it as much as i do.

This is a sentiment we share. I just think there should be a way for people with less time on their hands than others to get a limited push forward. If it also pushes RMT closer to the garbage bin where it belongs, even better.

[Khalithar]

I wouldn't be against it. By having their own legitimized way of essentially buying gil, it would cripple the profits of the illegal RMT and send money directly to SE instead so people that need more gil can spend money without having to worry about their credit card/account being stolen. I would never personally participate in this system, but I'm not against it.

[Krotoan]

Those pockets don't get deeper by themselves. The effort cost is there, it just doesn't take place in FFXIV.

This is the part I don't believe most understand. I think a lot of the opposition thinks some people just magically have more money.
I has a job, I work a lot. I play FFXIV to relax, not to put in another 40 hours a week farming for stuff. My time is worth significantly more than 15 extra dollars a week.. or even 100. Giving your players the option to trade money for removing tedium is smart.
In the end we are all spending TIME. How you spend it is entirely up to you though.

[frostmagemari]

This is the part I don't believe most understand. I think a lot of the opposition thinks some people just magically have more money.
I has a job, I work a lot. I play FFXIV to relax, not to put in another 40 hours a week farming for stuff. My time is worth significantly more than 15 extra dollars a week.. or even 100. Giving your players the option to trade money for removing tedium is smart.
In the end we are all spending TIME. How you spend it is entirely up to you though.

I don't know why people seem to think that the gil would just appear from no where... but people seem to.

I really don't see the adverse effects people are being all apocalyptic about either. Having the game-time tokens sellable on the marketplace wouldn't cause inflation, if anything, it'd do a good bit of evening out the disparity in gil. People who have tons of gil are able to spend it on tokens that will usually be sold by those who have more RL money than they do time to make in-game gil. You'll rarely find the person with 100million gil selling the tokens, but you'll definitely see him buying them and spreading the gil in the system around more.
All the while, you give people less and less reason to buy from gil sellers; people who actively bring more gil into the system more than any individual player via their farming methods.
Left untouched, this game's economy will become near the situation that XI found itself in, and i'd rather not have to pay those prices again.

[Snow_Princess]

This is the part I don't believe most understand. I think a lot of the opposition thinks some people just magically have more money.
I has a job, I work a lot. I play FFXIV to relax, not to put in another 40 hours a week farming for stuff. My time is worth significantly more than 15 extra dollars a week.. or even100. Giving your players the option to trade money for removing tedium is smart.
In the end we are all spending TIME. How you spend it is entirely up to you though.

I get that, I really do, my opposition has nothing to do with impeed's someone enjoyment of the game because they make more money in RL. That is fine and something that should be considered when making extra stuff in the mog station and what prices to set for all the extra stuff.

I am opposed to it because the game's econ can't support it, it is the worst econ system I seen. First off the rich simply horde gil because there is nothing to do with it, they have the power to buy 10+ large if they could, some people have cap gil (999~ basically a billion gil on more then one retainer.) Now picture gil like this more in circulation for many to hold what happens? The housing shortage gets even worse, more people try flip them dispite being against the tos, and it may even provoke those that do not know better to monopolize the MB. If you can do it on a huge server such as mine what about the smaller ones? If the game econ actually was active I would think different but in the current state it just cause problems.

More gil spread around = more server load problems when housing is released then what we had on 3.4. I tried logging on the second servers went up but got disconnected twice because the congestion was unreal. The only way to solve it is to have more ways to spend gil, and raise the housing prices. IF SE can't meet the demands of housing, they need to increase the price and have the price balance things. People complained about 70 ish mil for larges when housing was first released because people had 1/100th of the gil they have today. They make the prices smaller when there is an af ton more gil being horded and that doesn't make sense to me.

You are going to have people spending 400-1000+ dollars on housing if they released this, that is how much people have gil wise, and how big the shortage is. Once you move that in RL, the prices are going to get insane till it finds a balance. Trust me I seen those 1k + KC stories, do not think the same will happen with housing should such a system get released.

Despite the huge benefit I would get if this should be in place, I am still apposed to it because of all the problems it would cause. Personally I would benefit, np but the general health of the econ be exponentially worse then what we see now.

[frostmagemari]

More gil spread around = more server load problems when housing is released then what we had on 3.4. I tried logging on the second servers went up but got disconnected twice because the congestion was unreal.

You do realize that Balmung had a FAR FAR larger population than it does now? at the best days prior to SB dropping, you still had queue times of hundreds of people. Now the highest queue i've seen is 30 people during prime time.
Balmung congestion was caused by being Balmung. The server had such a heavy load on it already that anything that sparked peoples interest would bring hundreds of players online because of the allure of whatever it was. Most of those people aren't on the server anymore.. We're still full, but no where near what we were.

That being said, the game could use a lot more gil sinks, useful gil sinks; but this isn't an either/or situation. There can be multiple solutions to the problem that the game faces.. more gil sinks (one option is vendor bought untradable items are used within crafting recipes throughout end-game crafting or catch up mechanics) AND a plex system can work in tandem to spread existing gil out, reduce the likely-hood of people buying from gil sellers and then taking gil out of the system via gil sinks.

[Snow_Princess]

You do realize that Balmung had a FAR FAR larger population than it does now? at the best days prior to SB dropping, you still had queue times of hundreds of people. Now the highest queue i've seen is 30 people during prime time.Balmung congestion was caused by being Balmung. The server had such a heavy load on it already that anything that sparked peoples interest would bring hundreds of players online because of the allure of whatever it was. Most of those people aren't on the server anymore.. We're still full, but no where near what we were.

That being said, the game could use a lot more gil sinks, useful gil sinks; but this isn't an either/or situation. There can be multiple solutions to the problem that the game faces.. more gil sinks AND a plex system can work in tandem to spread existing gil out, reduce the likely-hood of people buying from gil sellers and then taking gil out of the system via gil sinks.

Can't do both at once. You would either have to give huge amounts of gil sinks that appear to the rich, while having some appeal to those that have less and wait for like a year?
Or if you want instant fix, you have to remove 75% of the gil and really tick people off.

It would be hard as af to fix at this point. If SE ever wanted a challenge this would be it. Making this mess into a stable and active econ without making most people mad be a huge achievement.

Also are you kidding me on the queue times? Even without change on the current pace of things it would be 5-10x worse when the new housing is released and if this system was to be released say 1 week or more before housing? you be seein queues like you did ending SB early release. Also balmung's queue times is off my point but SE made balmung's queue times bad for 2 reasons. 1. not having an official named rp server (2-3) and 2. not taking earlier actions to attempt to control the population growth. The current state of balmung is is what happens when you ignore problems/warning signs.

[frostmagemari]

Can't do both at once. You would either have to give huge amounts of gil sinks that appear to the rich, while having some appeal to those that have less and wait for like a year?
Or if you want instant fix, you have to remove 75% of the gil and really tick people off.

It would be hard as af to fix at this point. If SE ever wanted a challenge this would be it. Making this mess into a stable and active econ without making most people mad be a huge achievement.

Pardon my assumption.. but i don't think you actually know how the in-game economy works... or really understand what i said regards to solutions.

I never said "huge amounts of gil sinks that appear to the rich", i said useful gil sinks; gil sinks need to appear for everyone or they don't work. There just needs to be more of them.
And who said ANYTHING about removing 75% of the gil? Not me.. that's your own screwy idea that you just brought up so you can knock it down.

Also are you kidding me on the queue times?

No, i'm not. At best you have 30 people in the queue at 6-9pm central time, with it being less at times earlier and after. Balmung, despite being listed as congested is not a hard server to get into on a nightly basis anymore; and these queue times are WITH the people that have gone back to AFK'ing all day long.

Even without change on the current pace of things it would be 5-10x worse when the new housing is released and if this system was to be released say 1 week or more before housing? you be seein queues like you did ending SB early release.

Of course the server will get busier. It's what happens on content patches, but it won't be SB levels of people because so many people LEFT. They transferred and went to the servers that were classified as new. There are far fewer people on this server than there were, and while it will get busy, it will not get SB release busy.

Also balmung's queue times is off my point but SE made balmung's queue times bad for 2 reasons. 1. not having an official named rp server (2-3) and 2. not taking earlier actions to attempt to control the population growth. The current state of balmung is is what happens when you ignore problems/warning signs.

Neither points are relevant at this juncture. Balmung is now one of two major RP servers rather than it being limited to one (due to people leaving the server); and its population isn't getting any larger, it's only able to shrink at this point as people leave congested servers.

[Belhi]

There are some fundamental issues with being able to purchase gil with real money through any system. It means changing some pretty substancial reward systems, most notably the crafting gear. Crafting gear is currently the best gear available the moment of a raid launch. Further, the best gear a crafter can get is also often purchasable with gil. In both cases someone would, at least for a limited amount of time, be able to get the best available gear by buying it indirectly with RMT which effectively would make FF14 dangerously close Pay-to-Win. While one solution would be simply to nerf crafted gear that is sellable, that seriously impacts the reward to time investment that crafting takes which is rather unfair to crafters.

Personally, although such a system would effectively allow me to play for free, I don't think it would be good for the game.

[Vanitas]

I swear I thought the title read "flex" system at first. Yes we sure can /flex in this game.