CREDD/PLEX/WoW Token system

[Arrhin]

You can use purchased Gil to buy performance enhancing items and gears, it's pay to win...hard fekkin no. Not to mention all of us that play the crafting game would have a huge incentive to play ruined. Systems like this remove any feeling of accomplishment from the game, jus like illegal RMT. Can we jus PLEASE end the -make the game easier for me- posts? I'm not sayin that XIV is perfect, but for the sake of the Twelve jus...no..please

[Liam_Harper]

I'm all for this. There are multiple benefits to the system.

-Enix profits by at least $5 per token. A token is typically sold for 20e and redeems for 13-15e worth of Enix product.
-The cash shop becomes open to every player with ingame currency.
-Earning gil has a purpose.
-RMT sellers have a 100% safe, legal competitor. This wrecks their business.

WoW made a lot of mistakes, but this wasn't one of them.

[Yamimarik]

Socially, morally, and economically I'm very neutral I suppose on the issue? But I would be interested on how this system would work technically.

We have 3 different tiers of subscriptions right now. For people who got the legacy price, entry price, and standard price. Would there need to be 3 separate tokens for each pricing plan?

Also, and you know this would be the next step players would ask for, would there need to be a token system for retainers? And if so how would that work out too? Because currently if you have any amount of extra retainers set up it gets taken out at the same time as your subscription as well.

So yeah I'm just curious, especially w/ some of SE's "spaghetti code" how this would work out on a technical sense.

[MoofiaBossVal]

I'm honestly surprised a token for FFXIV hasn't been added yet.

For as long as WoW has been running, there were all sorts of shady gold selling and level boosting services centered around WoW. They constantly spammed the chats and advertised on forums, over time becoming ingrained in our minds like all successful advertisements. As the game grew and the amount of effort required to obtain something we wanted rose (more expansions = more time spent leveling = more time playing through stuff we don't want to play through just to get to the content we want to play through, or more expensive gold sinks = more time spent farming), players became more and more likely to turn to these services. As such, many had their accounts banned (for possessing stolen or duplicated gold/chargebacks) or their accounts stolen, and the success on the end of gold sellers and level boosters only encouraged them to continue their operations. No matter how hard the GMs tried to shut them up, they would still pop up and the problem only grew. Trying to stamp it out was a losing battle.

Blizzard realized that if they could never get rid of gold selling, than they could at least try to make it as safe possible. Thus, their ingenious solution: the WoW Token. Blizzard legitimatized the gold selling process and made it safe. Players who REALLY, REALLY wanted to skip the tedium could, and due to the design of the process, Blizzard was also able to reward players who took the long and hard path and invested much effort into the game, by allowing them to convert their ingame gold into a token for a service they otherwise couldn't get without paying real money. My friends who played WoW nonstop were able to pay their subscription fee using the gold they earned ingame. They were able to continue playing WoW and buy other Battle.net games for just playing WoW. Blizzard still gets their money; the person who bought the token with real money pays for the subscription of the player who bought the token with gold. The person who wanted the gold is happy. The person who wanted Bnet balance or a free subscription is happy. Everyone wins.

I don't think the P2W accusations holds much water in FFXIV. There is little competition in FFXIV, far less than what there is in WoW at this point.

[HakaseNyan]

There's one hurdle before all of this can even be considered: the mogstation isn't connected to the in-game client. The in-game UI completely lacks cashshop elements, and your crysta balance isn't a viewable currency.

Also, this entire situation sounds like one big headache for Square-Enix. Black Desert Online does this legal RMT garbage where 90% of the cashshop items can be listed on the marketplace. I believe the items first started out where you could pre-order them, top order always won, then they changed it into a bidding system where RNG wins. Also, each item had a fixed price - unlike FFXIV where it's a completely free market.

RMT is frowned upon. Making it 'legal' shouldn't change that. It's the same shenanigans except now it's free2play-cashshop-greed shenanigans. You can argue all you want about how gil isn't being injected into the economy - that doesn't change anything. The fact is it still gives people the option to pay real world money for an in-game currency. That is pay to win.

[Vahlnir]

RMT is frowned upon. Making it 'legal' shouldn't change that. It's the same shenanigans except now it's free2play-cashshop-greed shenanigans. You can argue all you want about how gil isn't being injected into the economy - that doesn't change anything. The fact is it still gives people the option to pay real world money for an in-game currency. That is pay to win.

I agree, and I don't really like the idea of a "WoW Token" sorta thing in this game. But I think it would be foolish of me to say that it'd be devastating. Gil, outside of housing items and glamour gear (I consider even the newest crafted sets glamour because people can get the same level stuff or better the first day of a raid) has very little value. I would prefer to see more gil sinks in the game over a token system though nothing as crazy as a 5 million gold dinosaur mount that WoW has. 5 million gil in FF XIV is nothing but 5 million gold in WoW is a pretty hefty sum that very few people will ever achieve. It'd be like asking people to fork over 1-200 million gil for an outdoor furnishing like a Market Board or something.

[Awha]

I would be all for it, but the major down side with FFXIV is it is extremely easy to make money. If the tokens do not go over 100 mil I prob could pay for my sub for around two years just off what I have currently between three characters, and that is with only causally trying to make money.

[Kurando]

I think the question is, whether the Chinese/Korean markets will ask for it because they influenced the story skip and job boosts being added to our version of the game. If they request and have these tokens implemented for them, it's just a matter of time before it comes our way....

[Reinha]

Either gil has no value in which case there isn't a need to buy gil with real money and this token system won't work.

Or gil does have value and people get to bypass the effort needed to collect it, and now regular players who actually play the game to get gil have to compete with the gil buyers for desirable things like houses, new minions, glamours and gear on the MB. I don't want to have to pay more gil on the MB or have more people camping houses just because some people open their wallets.

[CrystalRainbow]

Once you are at level cap please explain what need for Gil is there?

After you do that..
Tell me which Once you couldn't get Gil for within a few hours?

Ways to make gil quickly.
Get 8 people together with 2 checks each. between items and Gil you can trun 500k quite easily.
Gold chest bunny farming 100k