An idea to combat RMT...

[Kelani]

Just a thought, and it only crossed my mind as back when I had a PC I played WOW for a little bit, but what if SE made it available to buy Gil through the moogle station? I know Blizzrd implemented a feature where you could buy a token and then sell it on the market for in game gold. Not sure if it stopped the RMT spam or not but SE’s idea of combating RMT isn’t working!

[Mwynn]

Just a thought, and it only crossed my mind as back when I had a PC I played WOW for a little bit, but what if SE made it available to buy Gil through the moogle station? I know Blizzrd implemented a feature where you could buy a token and then sell it on the market for in game gold. Not sure if it stopped the RMT spam or not but SE’s idea of combating RMT isn’t working!

That is ... RMT.

Real Money Trade, use your Real Money to buy Ingame Items.

[Zfz]

Depends on what you think is a problem with RMT.

If you are against RMT because you think real money should not be exchangeable for in-game money, then selling gil on the Mog Station makes the situation worse.

If you are against RMT because of account theft, spam and bots, then Mog Station needs to sell gil at a lower price than RMT vendors, which creates inflation, and you would need gil sinks to counter-act that inflation, only to create more incentive for players to buy gil, i.e. more inflation.

It seems like you're the latter; how would you respond to the inflation that comes with official sanction on buying gil for real money?

[Clicked]

If you are against RMT because of account theft, spam and bots, then Mog Station needs to sell gil at a lower price than RMT vendors, which creates inflation, and you would need gil sinks to counter-act that inflation, only to create more incentive for players to buy gil, i.e. more inflation.

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game to someone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

[Vahlnir]

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game to someone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

Except the inflation has risen significantly in WoW as a result of their "tokens", it just took some time to worm its way into the economy.

[Clicked]

Except the inflation has risen significantly in WoW as a result of their "tokens", it just took some time to worm its way into the economy.

Care to explain the mechanism of inflation then? Correlation is not causation. WoW (and all health economies) have inflation over time. It encourages people to spend money rather than horde it. In WoW's case, there are very few gold sinks. It's totally unrelated and has been happening since Burning Crusade when dailies became very popular. Sound kinda familiar?

[Snow_Princess]

There's no inflation in the token model. You buy a subscription token for real money, then sell that token for gil in game tosomeone else. That someone else gets to pay for the game with in game currency, but SE still gets the money from the original purchaser, and the original purchaser gets their gil.

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

You are right in the idea of it does not make more gil, this is true, but that is not what leads to inflation.

What leads to inflation is the people with stockpiles of gil has a use for it suddenly, and the people with low gil would tend to actually use it. Since it is throwing more gil in circulation, that is what leads to inflation. (inflation is not necessary bad, btw, it is hyper inflation that is bad and the thing you want to avoid)

That alone is not a big issue though, the problem in making that system is throwing it in with a market with an extreme housing shortage. Most of the gil exchanged is housing, housing items, and glams. Because this game does not handle housing well, it would create more problems with housing. It has nothing to do with being a "doomdayer" DO THOSE GAMES HAVE EXTREME HOUSING ISSUES?!?!?!?! no? my point is well founded then. I can penta meld a job in full 320 gear cheaper then what I spent on 2 cherry trees, for example, with the first overmeld being a VI) Some fences costs even more then that, just a fence, and that leaves out spending 1 M+ in picture frames, 400k ish for a mailbox, and other things.

It would cause TOO MUCH of inflation in regards of 3rd party communication trade of second hand housing trading and housing items.

Basically they need to overhaul and fix the housing situation to fit this in the game, otherwise it causes too much problems, the econ of this game is not great. Because of high burn out of gear and replace, the encon is pretty dead after a few months after patch, SE needs a more substantiate model in general, and not a burst one. The reason for this is that they need to keep making new content too quickly from it, they really need some parallel progress concepts in this game. Fix that, and this idea will have room to exist in this game.

[Clicked]

So someone can buy a big mansion, expensive glamours, expensive mounts and be rich ingame, by trading (buy token, sell it for gil) money ----> gil via SE? Isnt this a form of P2W?

No because you can get all the same stuff if you earn the gil in game. P2W would be like if there were a cash shop selling ilvl 350 gear in it even though the best gear in game is 340. But P2W means literally anything you use your credit card for nowadays for some reason. A TON of people now believe FFXIV is P2W because it's sub based. This is NOT what P2W meant back when the acronym started being used.

What leads to inflation is the people with stockpiles of gil has a use for it suddenly, and the people with low gil would tend to actually use it. Since it is throwing more gil in circulation, that is what leads to inflation. (inflation is not necessary bad, btw, it is hyper inflation that is bad and the thing you want to avoid)

That alone is not a big issue though, the problem in making that system is throwing it in with a market with an extreme housing shortage. Most of the gil exchanged is housing, housing items, and glams. Because this game does not handle housing well, it would create more problems with housing. It has nothing to do with being a "doomdayer" DO THOSE GAMES HAVE EXTREME HOUSING ISSUES?!?!?!?! no? my point is well founded then. I can penta meld a job in full 320 gear cheaper then what I spent on 2 cherry trees, for example, with the first overmeld being a VI) Some fences costs even more then that, just a fence, and that leaves out spending 1 M+ in picture frames, 400k ish for a mailbox, and other things.

It would cause TOO MUCH of inflation in regards of 3rd party communication trade of second hand housing trading and housing items.

That's very true. I don't think having more money exchanging hands would be a bad thing but for the fact that we don't have enough housing for the demand (and it seems we never will). That has to be solved first.

[kikix12]

This only works if the game has an infinite free trial/non-premium status though. You can't exchange tokens and activate the account without logging into a free account.

This can work very well with "paid" accounts too. All it needs to do is add time to the account, and the system being set to prolong subscription when the number of days goes down to 7, let's say, instead of once every month. Voila. If you manage to buy yourself a token, you get "free" play, if not, then you still will pay to have access to the "premium" content that is not included in free trial. If you don't have recurring payment, then you would simply have to pay manually to unlock some time to try and get another token. Or an out-of-game "market board" could be made where players can exchange stuff to earn enough gil and buy a token without having access to the account. I mean, this game have a LOT of web-based databases. I can see my character, their gear and what not without ever logging into game. Such a market board would be easy.

Anyway, there are enough threads of the doomsdayers saying it would destroy the game because they haven't seen how successful it is in other games without being P2W (unless you think WoW is P2W). Better not to beat this dead horse again.

To be honest, it does have an inflation-increasing effect, but it's not direct. It would simply greatly incentivize gaining gil, all the while focusing loads of money in the hands of few people (the sellers). For rarer items, "few" is more than enough. The rare items prices would significantly go up into the air because there would be those rich players that have enough to pay for them, and buy all of them. The more common items would go up in price as well, but because there was more gil around since more people would farm for it specifically...and get some excess here or there.

Neither of these problems is unsolvable by suitable gold sinks though...but I don't remember a single game that would have gold sinks that are suitable...