SE Please implement a Chonoscroll/PLEX system in FFXIV: ARR

[GodseijuroHiko]

I agree with Aenarion that the vast majority of objections to a PLEX-like system are borne from not understanding exactly how it works. I also agree that it is unknown how a game like FFXIV would react/change to its introduction and it may or may not be beneficial. It clearly works well for EVE because of its lack of server segregation. I have a vague recollection of cross-server trading in 2.0 said by a dev somewhere but I could be mistaken. If that were the case, a PLEX-like subscription model might be more effective.

Here's the basic rundown of how RMT works compared to PLEX. Under the current conditions, there are only three ways to increase the "total amount of gil in circulation" (i.e. the sum of all gil in all players' inventories, henceforth "tgil"): killing human mobs which drop gil, selling items to NPCs, and quest rewards. There is no other way to increase tgil in the game. There is also currently only one way to reduce tgil: taxes in market ward transactions. This is known as a "gilsink". It's also possible to reduce tgil by buying items from NPCs, but that introduces more items into the economy as well so it's not a true gilsink.

RMT has a negative impact on the economy because it relies heavily on increasing tgil, thereby devaluing everyone's gil. This is bad because it causes inflation, i.e., more money is in circulation so the average price of goods increases. The same principle applies in real life. If the US government decided to print $10 trillion extra dollars today to pay off the national debt, it has increased the total amount of money in circulation ("tmoney", if you will), causing rampant inflation of prices. This principle also why a movie ticket which used to cost $8 1995 is now $14 in 2012. Back to the game, we saw a similar inflation in market ward prices after the Atomos exploit went live since it created an easy way to increase tgil and was being done on a massive scale by many people. The takeaway point of this is that increasing tgil generally causes inflation (increases in prices) which is generally not good if it occurs too quickly. Conversely, any measure that does not have an impact on tgil will not have this inflationary effect on the economy.

PLEX, notably, DOES NOT increase tgil at all. In-fact, it may even decrease it. Here is how it works in excruciating detail. Players use real money ($) to buy an in-game item called "PLEX". This item goes into your inventory, just like any other item, but can also be consumed to increase your subscription time by a set amount. You can sell it on the open market for whatever in-game price you want to sell it at. There is no way to (legally) sell it for real money. The market will decide what price PLEX sells for in in-game currency, just like any other item. If the same market ward tax is applied to XIV's PLEX, then that would actually serve as an effective gilsink as well, especially if the PLEX item sells for a high amount.

As a player, you have several options under this system. 1) You can play the game exactly as you are right now, treating PLEX just like a monthly subscription. Every month, you pay your monthly fee to get 1 PLEX and then use it immediately. It's easy to automate this step so you don't even have to worry about lapsing your subscription. 2) You use in-game currency to buy PLEX from other players. You have effectively made playing this game free for yourself. You probably fall into this category if you're a producer in the economy and have a lot of disposable income from selling crafted items or farming mobs. 3) You use real money to buy PLEX to sell on the market. This is generally the case for people who have a lot of real money but not a lot of time to spend in the game. You will earn in-game currency and pay for someone else's subscription to the game.

A few things to note here. At no point does in-game money get injected into the system as a result of PLEX. It merely stimulates money to change hands, from producers to consumers, who thus have more money to spend on producers. Similarly, the number of "subscriptions being paid for" does not increase or decrease. The only change is who is doing the paying. Player A might be paying for 3-4 other players' subscriptions on any given month but the number of "paid for" accounts does not change. (This is the bottom line for the company running the MMO, by the way.)

How does this affect RMT? Well, basically it means they have to compete with PLEX-buyers for the same product (in this case, gil). Let's say you can buy gil from an RMT company for $10 per 1 million gil right now. This RMT gil was created using methods that increase tgil (which is ultimately good for RMTers and bad for players since it makes them more real money per gil sold, especially over long periods of time). On the other hand you can buy 1 PLEX for $10 from Square Enix, which you can sell on the market wards for ~10 million gil (market price will fluctuate). Magically, SE has undercut the RMTs by 10x making it astronomically less profitable for RMTs to operate in your MMO. Thus, they would have to work 10x harder or 10x longer to make the same $10 from a player who is interested in buying currency. Presumably, it would be so difficult that they would stop operating in the game because it no longer makes economical sense, weighing subscription fees to revenue. Will the RMTs be able to use PLEX to make their own accounts free-to-play? Of course they can, but that would involve spending their product (gil), which cuts into their bottom line. Will it stop RMT completely? Of course not, there will always be sweatshops that work their slaves harder and longer for money but the vast majority of them will realize that other MMOs are more profitable in real money terms (money earned per time spent).

Finally, a note on "fairness". While it won't hurt the economy directly, it does allow players with more real-world money to have access to money, which can be spent on "good" gear. However, I don't believe it will destroy interest in crafting or melding because if anything, the demand for this good gear will increase due to more people having money to spend on it (making a tidy profit for producers). If that's the case, what does it matter to you as a regular non-PLEX-buying player? You are free to spend the exact same amount of gil to buy that same equipment or produce it yourself to keep or sell. What exactly goes into any particular piece of triple-melded gear? Just money, not skill, so it's essentially the same as the current system where you don't judge someone who bought their triple-melded STR gloves as opposed to making it themselves. If Yoshi-P's comments are to be believed, the best gear is going to be U/U anyway. However, buying enough Garuda/CC/AV runs to get your desired drop would be prohibitively expensive using just profits from selling PLEX (8M gil * 20 Garuda runs for 40 totems = 160M gil = $160 at least, using numbers quoted elsewhere in the thread; Darklight drops are a whole order of magnitude more expensive, since DL bodies generally require upwards of 200 runs). The only guaranteed U/U drop I can think of is White Ravens which isn't really game-changingly good. In conclusion, endgame gear will be unaffected by the introduction of PLEX.

Only took us 17 pages for someone to finally discuss the ups and downs of this system while demonstrating understanding as a whole. Thank you. I notice RMT getting screwed here, which brings me such GLEE!!! I $%#ing hate them lol.

[Abriael]

I agree with Aenarion that the vast majority of objections to a PLEX-like system are borne from not understanding exactly how it works. I also agree that it is unknown how a game like FFXIV would react/change to its introduction and it may or may not be beneficial. It clearly works well for EVE because of its lack of server segregation. I have a vague recollection of cross-server trading in 2.0 said by a dev somewhere but I could be mistaken. If that were the case, a PLEX-like subscription model might be more effective.

Here's the basic rundown of how RMT works compared to PLEX. Under the current conditions, there are only three ways to increase the "total amount of gil in circulation" (i.e. the sum of all gil in all players' inventories, henceforth "tgil"): killing human mobs which drop gil, selling items to NPCs, and quest rewards. There is no other way to increase tgil in the game. There is also currently only one way to reduce tgil: taxes in market ward transactions. This is known as a "gilsink". It's also possible to reduce tgil by buying items from NPCs, but that introduces more items into the economy as well so it's not a true gilsink.

RMT has a negative impact on the economy because it relies heavily on increasing tgil, thereby devaluing everyone's gil. This is bad because it causes inflation, i.e., more money is in circulation so the average price of goods increases. The same principle applies in real life. If the US government decided to print $10 trillion extra dollars today to pay off the national debt, it has increased the total amount of money in circulation ("tmoney", if you will), causing rampant inflation of prices. This principle also why a movie ticket which used to cost $8 1995 is now $14 in 2012. Back to the game, we saw a similar inflation in market ward prices after the Atomos exploit went live since it created an easy way to increase tgil and was being done on a massive scale by many people. The takeaway point of this is that increasing tgil generally causes inflation (increases in prices) which is generally not good if it occurs too quickly. Conversely, any measure that does not have an impact on tgil will not have this inflationary effect on the economy.

PLEX, notably, DOES NOT increase tgil at all. In-fact, it may even decrease it. Here is how it works in excruciating detail. Players use real money ($) to buy an in-game item called "PLEX". This item goes into your inventory, just like any other item, but can also be consumed to increase your subscription time by a set amount. You can sell it on the open market for whatever in-game price you want to sell it at. There is no way to (legally) sell it for real money. The market will decide what price PLEX sells for in in-game currency, just like any other item. If the same market ward tax is applied to XIV's PLEX, then that would actually serve as an effective gilsink as well, especially if the PLEX item sells for a high amount.

As a player, you have several options under this system. 1) You can play the game exactly as you are right now, treating PLEX just like a monthly subscription. Every month, you pay your monthly fee to get 1 PLEX and then use it immediately. It's easy to automate this step so you don't even have to worry about lapsing your subscription. 2) You use in-game currency to buy PLEX from other players. You have effectively made playing this game free for yourself. You probably fall into this category if you're a producer in the economy and have a lot of disposable income from selling crafted items or farming mobs. 3) You use real money to buy PLEX to sell on the market. This is generally the case for people who have a lot of real money but not a lot of time to spend in the game. You will earn in-game currency and pay for someone else's subscription to the game.

A few things to note here. At no point does in-game money get injected into the system as a result of PLEX. It merely stimulates money to change hands, from producers to consumers, who thus have more money to spend on producers. Similarly, the number of "subscriptions being paid for" does not increase or decrease. The only change is who is doing the paying. Player A might be paying for 3-4 other players' subscriptions on any given month but the number of "paid for" accounts does not change. (This is the bottom line for the company running the MMO, by the way.)

How does this affect RMT? Well, basically it means they have to compete with PLEX-buyers for the same product (in this case, gil). Let's say you can buy gil from an RMT company for $10 per 1 million gil right now. This RMT gil was created using methods that increase tgil (which is ultimately good for RMTers and bad for players since it makes them more real money per gil sold, especially over long periods of time). On the other hand you can buy 1 PLEX for $10 from Square Enix, which you can sell on the market wards for ~10 million gil (market price will fluctuate). Magically, SE has undercut the RMTs by 10x making it astronomically less profitable for RMTs to operate in your MMO. Thus, they would have to work 10x harder or 10x longer to make the same $10 from a player who is interested in buying currency. Presumably, it would be so difficult that they would stop operating in the game because it no longer makes economical sense, weighing subscription fees to revenue. Will the RMTs be able to use PLEX to make their own accounts free-to-play? Of course they can, but that would involve spending their product (gil), which cuts into their bottom line. Will it stop RMT completely? Of course not, there will always be sweatshops that work their slaves harder and longer for money but the vast majority of them will realize that other MMOs are more profitable in real money terms (money earned per time spent).

Finally, a note on "fairness". While it won't hurt the economy directly, it does allow players with more real-world money to have access to money, which can be spent on "good" gear. However, I don't believe it will destroy interest in crafting or melding because if anything, the demand for this good gear will increase due to more people having money to spend on it (making a tidy profit for producers). If that's the case, what does it matter to you as a regular non-PLEX-buying player? You are free to spend the exact same amount of gil to buy that same equipment or produce it yourself to keep or sell. What exactly goes into any particular piece of triple-melded gear? Just money, not skill, so it's essentially the same as the current system where you don't judge someone who bought their triple-melded STR gloves as opposed to making it themselves. If Yoshi-P's comments are to be believed, the best gear is going to be U/U anyway. However, buying enough Garuda/CC/AV runs to get your desired drop would be prohibitively expensive using just profits from selling PLEX (8M gil * 20 Garuda runs for 40 totems = 160M gil = $160 at least, using numbers quoted elsewhere in the thread; Darklight drops are a whole order of magnitude more expensive, since DL bodies generally require upwards of 200 runs). The only guaranteed U/U drop I can think of is White Ravens which isn't really game-changingly good. In conclusion, endgame gear will be unaffected by the introduction of PLEX.

Great post. Good to see someone that understand the system and can argument about it logically between all the fearmongering of those that don't even try to understand it.

[axemtitanium]

Great post. Good to see someone that understand the system and can argument about it logically between all the fearmongering of those that don't even try to understand it.

If you like it, you should link or copy it in the OP so it's not buried on page 17

[Abriael]

If you like it, you should link or copy it in the OP so it's not buried on page 17

good idea.

[AhmeraMae]

...

I applaud you, sir.

[A_Hortensia]

Oh man, so glad I voted already and that the election is almost upon us so I don't have to be barraged with anymore political ads! Okay, let's see what's going on in the Lodestone..

NO. OH GOD. NO. WHY?

1) Money, items, or any other entity which exists outside the game should not influence, effect, or hold value to any aspect, item, or currency that exists within the game.

2) Players who wish to experience/play FFXIV or FFXI should only be able to by being customers who support the company and it's staff with their own purchases/subscriptions.

3) When someone says: "This is unfair." or supports their statement with the reason: "Unfair." (Also: "unethical") That is a valid argument.

[ShivenCasull]

Oh man, so glad I voted already and that the election is almost upon us so I don't have to be barraged with anymore political ads! Okay, let's see what's going on in the Lodestone..

NO. OH GOD. NO. WHY?

1) Money, items, or any other entity which exists outside the game should not influence, effect, or hold value to any aspect, item, or currency that exists within the game.

2) Players who wish to experience/play FFXIV or FFXI should only be able to by being customers who support the company and it's staff with their own purchases/subscriptions.

3) When someone says: "This is unfair." or supports their statement with the reason: "Unfair." That is a valid argument. (Also: unethical)

RMT will exsist with or without the proposed system.

This system would in fact support the developers of XIV/XI

The "unfairness" can be relatively minimized with supply/demand and proper control of gil creation. (As someone said earlier, Yoshi wants the best gear in the game to be U/U)

[Abriael]

1) Money, items, or any other entity which exists outside the game should not influence, effect, or hold value to any aspect, item, or currency that exists within the game.

That's not for you to decide. It's SE's position to decide. Real world elements ALREADY influence the game. If you have more free time than someone else in your real life, you can play more, earning more advantages in the game.

This system actually just balances that out.

2) Players who wish to experience/play FFXIV or FFXI should only be able to by being customers who support the company and it's staff with their own purchases/subscriptions.

And in fact with this system they still do, even if indiractly. Person that pays with gil supports person that pays with money that supports SE. It's a very simple equation.

Mind you, even players that wouldn't pay at all, if there was such an option (not advocating it's implementation, just bringing an example), support the developer, as they effectively provide content for paying players.

Ergo, this argument is invalid.

3) When someone says: "This is unfair." or supports their statement with the reason: "Unfair." That is a valid argument. (Also: unethical)

No, it's not an argument at all. It's just an unproven and unsubstantiated statement.

Mind you, it's unproven and unsubstantiated argument simply because there's no logical argument against it, as it's been already proven a solid and beneficial system in other games.

[Wynn]

This suggestion was terrible the first time it got boo'd off these forums and it is just as terrible now.

Just say no to buying gil, no matter what form it takes.

[Aku]

No to buying gil. It's that simple, really.