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

[Rylock]

The PLEX system is one of the things that interests me about EVE, and for that game I think it is a perfect fit. EVE is INCREDIBLY economy based, the entire game is based around it. Your guild is not a guild, it is a corporation. There is industrial espionage, there are guarded convoys for moving materials to market. Tieing the currency to something with a real-world equivalent goes hand in hand with the rest of it.

Does that fit with FFXIV? Not so sure. There are some pros to the system for sure, the big one is that it cuts down on the more aggressive RMT. 1.0 managed to avoid these problems because they pretty much just sat in cedarwood and killed leve karakuls all day, but I remember in XI having to fight for claim with someone who would scream at me in chinese every time I succeeded. It adds more wide-spread competition, which means their corner of the market is smaller, and less will try to occupy it. I foresee that it would increase the number of people who make the real world money > gil transfer, but cut down on the amount of RMT farmers in the community. Maybe a worthwhile change, hard to say.

For me though, the reason that would bother me to see it in this game, is that it does tie a real-world equivalent to your in game currency. For EVE this is fine because a lot of the game is about playing with market factors and having that little extra bit of risk when you take your ship out adds to that. But for FFXIV, I feel it doesn't. The best gear in XIV is all untradeable, and that pattern will likely continue in 2.0. So what it means is that the few big-ticket items are really expensive comparatively. The $-gil comparison is only visible if you go looking on RMT sites, but with the introduction of a PLEX-like item it becomes very obvious. Would you be willing to spend the equivalent of $50 on that double-meld relic weapon? Money becomes more of a concern if there are fewer steps between it and the real world, and to me that ruins some of the "fantasy" in the game.

And it doesn't help that for a lot of us coming from XI, ANY form of RMT has a horrible stigma attached to it because we did interact with the farmers. They were everywhere. We remember the christmas gil sale and how it devastated the economy, and how it took years to recover from. In any case, I doubt SE will be doing anything like this for the launch, alternate payment models seem like something to mess with after the game has been out for a bit and the community more stable.

[indira]

the OP is tired of paying so much on RMT gil.

[Abriael]

Except we're forgetting that RMT and botting will still exist, meaning easily obtained gil in large amounts will still exist for the ones willing to risk their accounts or the companies that deal with RMT. If they chose they could still sell gil on their site, in a model close to this:
10$ = game time item = for example, 1mil gil ( if 1mil would be the average price of such item on a server)
RMT company takes notice and adjusts their prices resulting in:
10$ = 2mil gil on a RMT site

With the obvious and very positive result of slicing radically the profit of RMT companies, as they have to sell cheaper gil that took them the same resources to farm.

I'm just not sure why people claim, or fail to see, that introducing real money 'advantages' (as in, I can earn gil without actually playing the game for more than 30 minutes) has no long term impact on the game's economy. Just makes me go Jackie Chen face. Furthermore, why they refuse to acknowledge that it is an advantage.

That's probably because you don't know much about economy. Without making massive transactions or direrctly inserting currency into the economy, you can't have an appreciable effect on the economy.

To prevent the first, you simply limit the amount of months someone can purchase in a period of tine (as it's done on TERA). You don't need to prevent the second because no currency is inserted in the market with this system.

As a matter of fact, currency is removed from the market, as this kind of transaction is normally taxed, further helping to prevent inflation.

There's no "advantage" because money does not grow from trees. People paying for this service would still have to spend a sizable amount of time making the money for it.

To be honest, if you can't afford to pay for subscriptions, then you can't play. If you can't afford a decent computer to run the game on, then you can't play. If your real life is crammed with changing jobs, moving to other country, loosing the roof on your house etc. then you can't play.

It's not your place to decide this.

Tough cookie, but FF XIV will not suffer, as people are leaving and coming back to any MMO constantly.

Wrong. It's SE's best interest to allow as many people as possible to keep their subscription active. This is as elementary as it gets. Every lost accounts "hurts" them, because it's missed income. No matter if it's small or large. Missed income is missed income.

I'd rather if SE offered deals like 3 months worth of crysta (game time) purchased = get 1 month for free, or something along those lines. Cheaper crysta prices during big holidays or whatever.

This has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Are we really facing some major unofficial gil selling issue that we need to legalize and increase RMT?

Considering that RMT bots have been around until the very last day of the game before the save, despite the game's unpopularity, yes. Because if ARR becomes even remotely popular, the problem will become unbearable as much as it was in XI.

The real problem of RMT is not that people can buy gil with real life money, but the fact that RMT companies have a workforce against which players cannot compete, and end up controlling the economy to maximize their own gains. Slicing their profits considerably also slices their budget (as they can't spend more than they earn in a game), considerably reducing the workforce that they can use to control the economy, and their ability to control the economy at all.

the OP is tired of paying so much on RMT gil.

Libel doesn't really add any solidity to your weak points, Indira.

[Nuinn]

With the obvious and very positive result of slicing radically the profit of RMT companies, as they have to sell cheaper gil that took them the same resources to farm.



That's probably because you don't know much about economy. Without making massive transactions or inserting currency into the economy, you can't have an appreciable effect on the economy.

To prevent the first, you simply limit the amount of months someone can purchase in a period of tine (as it's done on TERA). You don't need to prevent the second because no currency is inserted in the market with this system.

As a matter of fact, currency is removed from the market, as this kind of transaction is normally taxed.

There's no "advantage" because money does not grow from trees. People paying for this service would still have to spend a sizable amount of time making the money for it.



It's not your place to decide this.



Wrong. It's SE's best interest to allow as many people as possible to keep their subscription active. This is as elementary as it gets. Every lost accounts "hurts" them, because it's missed income. No matter if it's small or large. Missed income is missed income.



This has absolutely nothing to do with it.

It's not my place to decide whether someone should or should be not able to play, true. It's not my place to ask for alternatives either? Just as you are doing by asking for an alternative to keep more accounts active (which is where better crysta deals, or even gifting crysta to friends, come into play, so it has absolutely everything to do with it).

Money doesn't grow on trees, correct. My spare $$$ that I chose to spend on buying and reselling game time items will still allow me to get gil easier than other players, and in term allowing me to buy/finish/do stuff in game faster/easier/without the grind some or most players have to go through. I have to spend less time grinding and I'm happy about it. Thank the Twelve that I have enough $$$ I chose not to spend on a dinner and drinks that give me that advantage.

[Abriael]

It's not my place to decide whether someone should or should be not able to play, true. It's not my place to ask for alternatives either? Just as you are doing by asking for an alternative to keep more accounts active (which is where better crysta deals, or even gifting crysta to friends, come into play, so it has absolutely everything to do with it).

That's not an alternative. That's something else entirely. Both things could easily cohexist.

Money doesn't grow on trees, correct. My spare $$$ that I chose to spend on buying and reselling game time items will still allow me to get gil easier than other players

Easier? Are you telling me that earning gil in the game is harder than earning money in real life?

Boy, that's new.

[gahoo]

What is the objective? To increase subscribers by allowing a modified FTP model? or to combat RMT?

If the former, then yes I would agree that this could probably help, but right now whether or not the game needs the help is unknown, so seems premature to me.

If the later, "legalizing" the purchasing of gil would certainly increase the number of people to buy gil (obviously). Legalization is, at times, a response to a belief that the costs of prevention are outweighed by the problem. Here, the costs of prevention are predominantly absorbed by SE. They expend X amount to combat RMT, and while one can argue that those resources take away from development, I think that's a pretty flimsy argument. The cost to players of RMT is really if/when RMT is destroying some aspect of gameplay by monopolizing something. Again, not sure right now we are facing this issue.

So seems like adding this system would possible damage unofficial RMT, but at the expense of increasing RMT overall. I don't think we are facing a situation where unofficial gil selling is so rampant that we need to legalize in order to better control/tax the system. Looking at IGE, for example, prices for gil are such that it would seem nobody in their right mind would be buying ($13 for 1300 gil). Are we really facing some major unofficial gil selling issue that we need to legalize and increase RMT?

[Azurus]

After reading through all 16 pages I can tell that this debate is divided between the people who:

1. Have no real idea what the plex system actually is and are just scared of the acronym RMT.

2. The people that do know and are trying to explain its benefits to no avail. and

3. The people who somehow got ont he subject of a cash shop/ buying items besides plex and are arguing this even though it is not even a part of this argument lol.

I support this idea of a Plex like system, however I feel like the game systems as they were in 1.0 would support it poorly. We will need to see how 2.0 shakes up to determine whether or not it is feasible.

[GodseijuroHiko]

After reading through all 16 pages I can tell that this debate is divided between the people who:

1. Have no real idea what the plex system actually is and are just scared of the acronym RMT.

2. The people that do know and are trying to explain its benefits to no avail. and

3. The people who somehow got ont he subject of a cash shop/ buying items besides plex and are arguing this even though it is not even a part of this argument lol.

I support this idea of a Plex like system, however I feel like the game systems as they were in 1.0 would support it poorly. We will need to see how 2.0 shakes up to determine whether or not it is feasible.

Most honest response I've seen here yet. People have stated that it's too soon to know if we need this. I agree. 2.0 isn't even out yet. However, this is just a discussion on the idea. Yet most of the responses are fear of the letters RMT. There is still that guy who is ok with what little RMT we did have in 1.0 because we're used to it. It made me smile

[Kiroh]

I've said it once already today but since there are so many terribad ideas floating around the forums I'll say it again :

[axemtitanium]

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.