Any update on Gil for Crysta? [WOW Gold for Subscription Model in FFXIV]

[RyuDragnier]

If i remember right, GW2 did this, and it was still cheaper to buy from bots.

People are still fools if they buy from bots in that game. It's ridiculously easy to make money in GW2.

[Dzian]

That'd depend on how they go about it. If they copy the system WoW uses, it'd involve player A buying a subscription token, player B using gil to buy it off player A, and redeeming it to add a month of playtime to their account.

The catch being, at least what it is in WoW, is the token costing $20, while a normal month costs $15.

Eve Online had been doing that since pretty much day one. With it's PLEX system.

It doesn't impact subscriptions at all as even if you use in-game currency to buy a plex and sub your character for a month. Someone somewhere still paid the real money for that months so the net income is still the same.

I'd quite like to see it in 14 as it would actually make gil useful and worth something. If I could toss someone a few million gil that is just sitting there useless to me and get a months sub time then groovy.

Probably find it helps circulate gil massively instead of finding it just sits there and accumulates and accumulates and accumulates some more..

[Marcellus_Cassius]

This seems like a good method to fight RMT and add value to the gil currency.

[OurMom]

They should bring that here. If it's fixed prices it should be fine, it works in WoW and BDO.

[Nezerius]

I'm not saying it's F2P. But that i don't want them to think that if the token works they can make it F2P next.

Except if they see that it works, they wouldn't even have to change anything else. They'd simply be making more from the normal subscriptions + token sales.

[Elamys]

Every version of just straight buying the in-game currency from the cash shop in MMO's has been an abject failure

WoW token is far from an abject failure. It was so successful they now allow it to be used for other Battle.net purchases. I never encounter RMT bots anymore in that game. Nobody cares about them. Why buy gold from a sketchy bot when you can get thousands upon thousands through a legit method? The seller of a token is pretty much guaranteed for it to sell within an hour, while the buyer is given an option that's not real money to continue playing a game they like. My fiancee makes a lot of gold in WoW. It's been a huge relief that if there's a point where money is tight, he doesn't have to give up his favorite game, he can just drop the gold on a completely legitimate and safe purchase.

People were convinced that WoW tokens would be the death knell of the game, unleash pay to win on us all (actually they said that for the sparkle pony too, so I'm going to disregard that), and were the worst idea ever. They weren't. They got added in and absolutely nothing about how we interact with the game changed. The increase in prices on the auction house was because of the insane amount of gold someone was able to get passively from garrisons and class halls, not from people selling tokens.

Right now a North American WoW token is selling for 167k. That's a pretty sharp drop, but that's still a healthy amount for $20. I have no reference for what RMT is selling gold for on NA servers because I have literally never seen one since the token was added.

[MomomiMomi]

No player would be inconvenienced because no one is required to use it. If anything it would make more people participate in the market and keep that gil flowing instead of being hoarded now that gil wouldn't be worthless.

That was directed at Kisa. I should have probably just quoted it. As I said in my first post in here, I absolutely do want this system to come to FF14.

[MomomiMomi]

Guild Wars 2 did it for a premium currency, not a subscription cost, it would be the equivalent of giving you credit in the Mogstation for gil as all the items are purely cosmetic or just exp and level buffs. FFXIV is designed for people to be subscribed to get content.

Sure it's not the same, but Square Enix rely on the subscription cost for most their money, not a premium currency that people are buying anyway. I don't see it ever being added, as the WoW servers are a lot more populated and gil being added to servers has less impact than the FFXIV ones. Giving people the option to buy or sell gil for sub costs would mess up the stable income Square Enix gets with this game, which is not worth the risk of satisfying a small section of the player-base.

Also the way it currently works they can outright ban anyone that is RMT'ing. If you had gil to sub cost involved in the game it would make that a lot harder on the developer end, I imagine and also a lot more difficult to prove if genuine customers were using third party exploits to help them get free sub costs.

I don't think they will do that anyway. We can already see with the companion app that they crave for money. So this is basically doing less money right? So no worth?
More seriously I don't think they will do it, or i hope not at least. I don't want them to think something like "hey let's make it F2P since our F2P mobile games are making more money that all our MMO additioned".

One of the biggest obstacles of this system, clearly, is getting people to even understand how it works.

1. Gil is not added. It is moved from one player's hands to another.

2. SE still gets their money. This system is a three-way trade. The buyer receives (Crysta), the seller receives Gil, and SE receives the seller's money.


This system actually leads to SE receiving more money, because players who would not normally buy from the cash shop would end up doing so. Players who don't think the subscription is worth their money might shift their opinion.


I absolutely will not buy from the cash shop. Full stop. I will not be paying my money for anything on there.

But if I could buy those in-game items with gil, gil that is in dire need of something to be able to spend it on, I would. I'll take it all. Have all my money, SE! Rather; have someone else's.

[LyraKuroneko]

snip

The main problem isn't the system or the understanding of it, it could be good i agree. What i'm afraid of is SE never ending greed. I'm sure they can find a way for us to not have it worked the way we thought would be good and make profit out of it.

[MomomiMomi]

The main problem isn't the system or the understanding of it, it could be good i agree. What i'm afraid of is SE never ending greed. I'm sure they can find a way for us to not have it worked the way we thought would be good and make profit out of it.

The whole point of the system is profit for the developer, though.

Like I said, it's a three-way trade, where all three parties get something they want.