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

[MoroMurasaki]

You seem to think I'm wrong. In the interest of not writing a post that is two pages long and everyone will ignore anyway, I chose to cut to the point.

It is a bad idea, it only benefits those wanting to cash out. It does not benefit the players, especially when there is no goldsink in the game. If the only goldsink is selling the gil back to SE via game credit, then SE has manufactured a loss that cost them nothing, but they can deduct from their taxes.

Player A wants gil and has disposable irl income. Player B has gil but wants to supplement their irl income by paying their sub in gil. SE wants money.

How are the two players in this exchange not benefiting from the exchange? Sure, SE also gains something... is that somehow a negative to you? Do you hate the game so much that you don't want SE to make money now?

I'm not saying this is a good idea, I haven't yet given it a ton of thought, but to say the players aren't benefiting is just nonsense.

[Alleo]

You seem to think I'm wrong. In the interest of not writing a post that is two pages long and everyone will ignore anyway, I chose to cut to the point.

It is a bad idea, it only benefits those wanting to cash out. It does not benefit the players, especially when there is no goldsink in the game. If the only goldsink is selling the gil back to SE via game credit, then SE has manufactured a loss that cost them nothing, but they can deduct from their taxes.

How does it not benefit the players? If you are in a bad situation real life and may not be able to afford the money for the sub but you have enough gil ingame you can buy such a token from the player that bought it legally from SE. SE gets money, the player that bought it gets more gil and can buy stuff with that and the other player can save a bit of real money. Win Win for everyone

Or are you of the view that gifts from the store (which is kinda the same way minus the gil) are bad for us too?

Also you dont need to be a crafter to make big amounts of Gil. Do treasure maps a lot and you are already getting quite a sum. Do content with rare drops (all the recent primal ones) and you get quite some good gil. Or just simply farm monsters for their skin.

[Zojha]

If you're not making gil in this game, it's because you don't want to, and that's fine.

True, but probably not in the way you think it is.

The gil inflow noticeably exceeds the gil outflow, so everyone should be making some gil. But the rate at which you acquire gil from the actual system isn't particularly huge. So when people talk about "making gil", it's usually taking it from other players via trading.

And that is something that not everyone can do, because when you take gil from one person, he no longer has it. Groundbreaking, I know. But it means that make up for that, he'd either need to get the gil back from the system, which actually increases the amount of money in the grand scale, or take it from another player himself, who then would need to make up for that as well. The latter option leads to a perpetual chain reaction, so if everyone tried to make gil via the market, the whole thing turns into a zero sum game.

Except: Not a real zero sum. There's market taxes and that destroys a bit of the gil. Merry-go-round trading with a constant tax is actually an efficient gil sink due to the ripple effect it has. One that gets completely invalidated by self-sufficiency, which is the first thing you'd want to cull if you were serious about getting gil sinks into the game. But no worries, it's just rhetoric - nobody really wants efficient gil sinks, people want expensive prestige items to show off for their gil that have absolutely zero effect on the economy because the gil used on them had long since stopped circulating and thus affecting anything in the first place. That's far more popular, if highly ineffective.

As a rule, in order for money sinks to do anything, they need to affect money that actually circulates. Money that's being hoarded is best left undisturbed. Why? Because the only reason we care about the amount of money in the first place is because of price inflation. It comes with adjustment costs, devalue of fixed income sources etc. Nasty stuff.
Now, you may have heard that prices are set by supply and demand. Well that's true, even in inflation. And what people do in the economic world when they have more money? Often, they use it to buy more stuff, i.e. increase demand. If supply remains static, that means rising prices. If people just sit on their money instead, no increased demand, no effect on prices. What does that mean for tokens? Well the people who want to sell the tokens for gil will want to use that money on something, i.e. get it to circulate. Hence, price inflation.
Things look a bit different with a capital market in play, but we don't have to worry about that here. Unless you RP as a loan shark, I guess.


The moral question that arises from all that in regards to sub tokens is:
Do you feel that people who make substantial net profits from the market board deserve an effective subscription discount?
As elaborated above, not everyone can do it. It's de facto an exclusive playstyle. Do you think it's justified to elevate it above all others? Any why in particular would playing the market be worth so much more than, say, raiding, mentoring, or any other piece of content?

One could make a case that, since people who take money from other players reduce overall demand and thus fight price inflation, they are doing the community as a whole a service and deserve it by merit of that. But then the system would need to be set up in such a way that the gil used for the subscription does not go to another player, but rather is removed from the game. Then it would function as a gil sink. The whole argument is wonky and doesn't hold much water, but you could try it at least. But then the people who wanted to do RMT with a clear conscience are mad.

Do people think about any of that? Do they care? My guess is: Nope. I think people are far more selfish and just think about what they could get out of such a system and then design their narrative around that.

[MomomiMomi]

As a rule, in order for money sinks to do anything, they need to affect money that actually circulates. Money that's being hoarded is best left undisturbed. Why? Because the only reason we care about the amount of money in the first place is because of price inflation. It comes with adjustment costs, devalue of fixed income sources etc. Nasty stuff.

Going to have to strongly disagree here. The money isn't being hoarded because people want to hoard it. It's being hoarded because there's nothing the person can do with it. This is not a natural state of affairs - money is meant to be used.

That money is supposed to be in circulation already. The fact that it's not is a problem.

[Elamys]

This seems like another really long post to say that something that has worked in other games could not possibly ever work in FFXIV, which is for some reason an argument that comes up a lot for a lot of features.

We went through all of these arguments when the WoW token was added to the game. Was it pay to win, was it going to cause massive inflation, was it favoring a certain subset of players, etc.

The WoW token was added to the game on April 7, 2015. You may notice it's still the most profitable MMO by any stretch of the imagination, even after 3 years of the token single handedly destroying the game (/sarcasm). The majority of players can still very easily afford the items they need. If they want more expensive items (rare transmogs, expensive mounts and toys, etc) they will need to earn the gold somehow. Some players will choose to do so the easy way, by purchasing a token. Others will do so by crafting or gathering, which is still extremely profitable. Even others will do so just by farming old raids and vendoring the drops. And it remains to be seen if the war campaign missions will bring in as much gold as the garrison or class hall missions did, but those were a large amount of completely passive income. As it turns out, no competent player who isn't blowing their gold on useless purchases is finding it impossible to purchase the things they need to play the game.

Also, the majority of people I know who have experience with the token do not pay for their game time exclusively with gold. Obviously there are some who do, but it appears to be a minority; most people, when they grab a token, are just shifting money into an unexpected life event, they just want to see if they're still interested in the game after a long break, etc.

Was there a little inflation? Yes, but the inflation had actually been happening since long before the token was added. The Black Market Auction House was added to the game long before the token because there needed to be a gold sink. Everyone had so much gold that prices were inflating out of control. After all, it seemed everyone had been playing for years at this point and had lots and lots of gold. But since the token was added, prices have appeared to remain much steadier as opposed to continuing to balloon upwards.

The subscription model being successful for an MMO is waning. When I invite my friends to play XIV, one of the biggest things that keeps people from trying it is the subscription cost. A lot of them already play WoW; most of them are still paying for their subscription. They don't want to pay two. If they want another MMO they have plenty of good non-subscription options. GW2 and ESO immediately come to mind. WoW and FFXIV are the only two subscription MMOs that actually have players right now. It's good business sense at this point to allow those who maybe won't or can't pay the subscription every month a way to play. Then you have more people in that maybe buy something from the cash shop when they have some extra money, or invite others who will play, or become so involved in the game that it gets figured into their monthly costs.

Do I think that a certain subset of players (crafters, or whatever) deserve a lower subscription cost? No. First of all, because it's not out of reach for non-crafters to make the gil/gold to purchase a token. Secondly, because not all crafters are even going to buy a token. I probably wouldn't if this system got added, because I want to keep my gil for other things. I can easily afford the subscription as it is now.

[MomomiMomi]

But no worries, it's just rhetoric - nobody really wants efficient gil sinks, people want expensive prestige items to show off for their gil that have absolutely zero effect on the economy because the gil used on them had long since stopped circulating and thus affecting anything in the first place. That's far more popular, if highly ineffective.

Oh, I missed this part. Which is just silly. I actually do want gil sinks. I've not once asked for "expensive prestige items" any time I've brought up gil sinks.

A game's economy is the most important part of the game to me. If a game doesn't have a good economy, I typically won't touch it. It's a very big reason why I barely play this game anymore.

This is even true of me in single player games. I'm often frustrated with them because the economy is almost always an after thought. In a single player game, there is no "prestige" for me to be looking for; I'm not going to be bragging to my friends that I totally bought some expensive item in a single player game. No, what I'm after is fun, and the part I care most about to achieve it is the game economy. This is true whether the game is multiplayer or not.

[Elamys]

What else would a gil sink be, though, if not expensive "prestige" items? It can't be anything related to progression in the game, because that makes it extremely unfair and cutthroat. It has to be something for vanity, that provides no real game benefit. And, well, as I said before, people are vain. Expensive but useless vanity items are really, REALLY effective at removing money from a game's economy. That is the definition of a gil sink. And if you add enough of them, especially if it's something consumable, it will be efficient.

[Berethos]

First of all, because it's not out of reach for non-crafters to make the gil/gold to purchase a token.

Wouldn't this statement only be true if we knew how much the hypothetical token in FFXIV would be sold for?

Sure, we know it's true in WoW, but that's also a game that has squadron style missions that can reward some pretty serious gold (even post nerf from the WoD expansion), and last I played the World Quests could be pretty generous as well. Oh, and the vendor items for prices at things like gear/items is higher as well. Mobs drop more money. Etc. That's all without looking at selling on the MB.

For one who is just adventuring there may be a good number of sources of gil, but few reward more than a paltry amount, and most of those are either luck based (drops like the hair from HoH - which it should be noted is server dependent if it's still a higher priced item) or take time to accrue (crystals/shards from killing mobs, since you won't be using them if you're not crafting), and require using the MB.

Adventuring on its own just makes more in WoW - noticeably more - than it does in FFXIV.

So declaring that it's not out of reach here when we only have an example to go by in a game that works differently in how it rewards those whose primary currency source is adventuring seems like its pretty premature.

Plus that pesky little thing I mentioned in my first sentence - we don't actually know what the gil cost for a token in XIV would be.

[Elamys]

I think all of us here in favor have been working under the assumption that it would be priced according to demand, as it is in WoW. In numerical terms the value of a single piece of gil is a lot lower than a single piece of gold. And while just doing dailies isn't as profitable in FFXIV as it is in WoW, in the sense that you aren't just handed gil. But instead doing dailies and adventuring and completing things like your roulette gives you materia and tokens that can be exchanged for items and sold. People who just do battle combat are not unable to make gil in this game.

[Delmontyb]

Regarding Gil sinks, I wonder why there aren't 1 million gil mounts, 5 million gil mounts, 50 million gil mounts, 500 million gil mounts... give me a reason to save, and more.
I really hope SE is paying attention to this thread, and that we can hope to have this type of system in the future. Those who think it's doom and gloom have been proven wrong by the fact the systems work great in other games. I prefer the sub model for this game, and this would be a way to help offset RMT. It seems like a logical option at this point in time.