Repost from a reddit thread.

 

 

I miss the old weekly passes, even though I get why they were removed with players having large stashes of cartel coins built up from free CC.

 

Is there any interest in a way for an item to be sold as sub time, bought with real money? IE a 20 dollar item that one can buy that grants a month of subtime (you wouldn't buy it with CCs, just real money, to avoid the free cartel coin problem), that would not be bound and would be sellable on the GTN?

 

I know that many players I know would play the game if there was an ingame method for earning sub time that didn't take away from revenue from Bioware, and I'm curious why this doesn't exist. It doesn't result in any lost revenue for Bioware, it can only reel in more players who play the game enough to afford to buy an item that cost real life money with credits, and helps fight gold farmers by giving players a legitimate way to use real money to acquire credits at a rate that's more reliable than using say, cartel packs / CM items.

 

EDIT: repost from below but the revised version of the system:

 

I think the market would self regulate with a system like this:

 

You spend 20 real life dollars to get a token worth one month of subscription time. Immediately when bought, you list it on the GTN or other comparable marketplace. You cannot "hold" it. You have to list it. You can list it for whatever price you want, and can set it to drop price after a set period of time, or stay at wherever it is. You can list however many tokens you want, as long as you buy them.

 

If you want to acquire one from another player, you can buy it from the login screen as a subscriber or F2P player. If you are F2P it will allow you to even use escrow funds to buy the token. You are ONLY allowed to buy one every three weeks on an account, and it is bound to your account, you cannot resell them. This gives you an ample window to refresh your sub time, but doesn't allow a single player to buy out the market completely. You also cannot "pick" which one you buy, you buy the lowest listed one currently available, period. This prevents "money trading" by buying from specific players and prevents the facilitation of gold farmers.

 

This also prevents the exorbitantly rich by setting the price by buying everything on the market. Because the diversity in customer base is high, you cannot price just for the super rich, because people will auto buy the lowest one. However, because it costs real money, generally nobody will be stupid enough to list it for WAY too low. If needed, they could set a price floor to prevent anyone accidentally putting it for way lower than they intend. This regulates the market, allowing it to have some flux, but never to an unreasonable degree, and should place it well within the price range of someone who actively plays the game with the intent to earn a somewhat substantial amount of credits over the course of the month.

 

It's a legitimate counter to gold farming, as it's legitimate, steady (CM items are volatile and are impacted by rarity and embargoes, this item would be omnipresent and would never be embargoed, and not be determined by RNG), and doesn't cost bioware revenue, since the sub token would be more expensive than a regular subscription, it could actually make them more money than a regular subscription ever would!

Edited June 6, 2017 by GrandLordMenace

I understand why people want this and I do not object to it. However, the problem is going to be they will be listed on the gtn for prices that are beyond the reach of free to play players. If I ever saw one listed below 50 million I would be shocked. There are some issues with it that would need to be worked out, but if they could be worked out it would be a nice feature.

I understand why people want this and I do not object to it. However, the problem is going to be they will be listed on the gtn for prices that are beyond the reach of free to play players. If I ever saw one listed below 50 million I would be shocked. There are some issues with it that would need to be worked out, but if they could be worked out it would be a nice feature.

Pretty much this. They would be used by people who *were* direct-paying subscribers, but wanted to stop paying cash money. It's possible, if you apply yourself and have lots of spare time, to accumulate more than 50 million each month so as to buy your next token.

 

(Case in point, a thing called PEX in ArcheAge. You need(ed) two of these to buy a month's worth of "Patron" time if you didn't want to directly pay RL money for it, and given the player-to-player price of them, it was feasible to accumulate enough gold to pay for your two PEX in less than three weeks of the month.)

 

The other point is that there would be a fairly sharply-defined maximum price above which they would not go, defined by the maximum feasible number of credits a player could accumulated during a month.

I think the market would self regulate with a system like this:

 

You spend 20 real life dollars to get a token worth one month of subscription time. Immediately when bought, you list it on the GTN or other comparable marketplace. You cannot "hold" it. You have to list it. You can list it for whatever price you want, and can set it to drop price after a set period of time, or stay at wherever it is. You can list however many tokens you want, as long as you buy them.

 

If you want to acquire one from another player, you can buy it from the login screen as a subscriber or F2P player. If you are F2P it will allow you to even use escrow funds to buy the token, to expand the customer base, plus they'd be indirectly contributing to subscription numbers and the company that makes the game. You are ONLY allowed to buy one every three weeks on an account, and it is bound to your account, you cannot resell them. This gives you an ample window to refresh your sub time, but doesn't allow a single player to buy out the market completely. You also cannot "pick" which one you buy, you buy the lowest listed one currently available, period. This prevents "money trading" by buying from specific players and prevents the facilitation of gold farmers.

 

This also prevents the exorbitantly rich by setting the price by buying everything on the market. Because the diversity in customer base is high, you cannot price just for the super rich, because people will auto buy the lowest one. However, because it costs real money, generally nobody will be stupid enough to list it for WAY too low. If needed, they could set a price floor to prevent anyone accidentally putting it for way lower than they intend. This regulates the market, allowing it to have some flux, but never to an unreasonable degree, and should place it well within the price range of someone who actively plays the game with the intent to earn a somewhat substantial amount of credits over the course of the month.

 

It's a legitimate counter to gold farming, as it's legitimate, steady (CM items are volatile and are impacted by rarity and embargoes, this item would be omnipresent), and doesn't cost bioware revenue, since the sub token would be more expensive than a regular subscription, it could actually make them more money than a regular subscription ever would!

Edited June 6, 2017 by GrandLordMenace

Legit question: who in their right mind would pay $20 for a 30 day sub to sell to a stranger for virtual currency?

 

The reason I say stranger is because if you have a friend that you want to experience the game you would buy a 60 day sub game card and give it to them. Or you could just setup an account under their name and pay $15 for a 30 day sub.

Edited June 7, 2017 by psandak

You could never price this within range.

Using the latest gold spam numbers I received in game mail.

$3 for 10m Credits.

$20 / 3 rounded lets say 7

7 x 10 = 70 million base price.

Legit question: who in their right mind would pay $20 for a 30 day sub to sell to a stranger for virtual currency?

 

The reason I say stranger is because if you have a friend that you want to experience the game you would buy a 60 day sub game card and give it to them. Or you could just setup an account under their name and pay $15 for a 30 day sub.

 

^^ Exactly.

 

None of this makes any sense in the context of this MMO. It is done on a few other MMOs, but honestly it makes little sense there either because it makes little economic sense.. other then to benefit subscribers with high in game currency balances who want to play the game as a subscriber but pay absolutely no real money to do so.

The WoW token system works very well and it should be the same sort of setup if they ever did the SWTOR token why do you think nobody buys gold in WoW because the token system has done it's job and I would like to see SWTOR become credit maggots free.

The WoW token system works very well and it should be the same sort of setup if they ever did the SWTOR token why do you think nobody buys gold in WoW because the token system has done it's job and I would like to see SWTOR become credit maggots free.

 

LMAO. That does not explain why there are literally dozens of active sellers of WoW gold for RMT.. right now.. today.. and always have been.

 

Again.. this sort of thing only benefits wealthy veterans who can afford to actually purchase the tokens from others in game. And like it or not.. as long as players are willing to trade real money for faux money in game.... RMTs will find a way to thrive. They come with the territory, apparently because players still make use of illegal services rather then setup a thoughtful wealth generation plan for their in game efforts.

Edited June 7, 2017 by Andryah

I understand why people want this and I do not object to it. However, the problem is going to be they will be listed on the gtn for prices that are beyond the reach of free to play players. If I ever saw one listed below 50 million I would be shocked. There are some issues with it that would need to be worked out, but if they could be worked out it would be a nice feature.

 

The best solution is do what Blizzard does with their Wow tokens, you just place it on the GTN and the server determines the price, not the player, which means it will be fairly priced for all involved...its a nice idea to be honest.

The best solution is do what Blizzard does with their Wow tokens, you just place it on the GTN and the server determines the price, not the player, which means it will be fairly priced for all involved...its a nice idea to be honest.

 

Won't work here.

 

Why?

 

Because SWTOR has a free flowing CM to Credits economy and players will buy on the CM items they can resell for much better returns then letting a server price fix their purchase.

 

WoW has no equivalent to the CM with items that can be freely resold in game for in game currency. So these tokens remain one of the only legal ways to convert real money to gold for WoW. SWTOR has literally hundreds of items that players can purchase for CCs and then resell in game for credits... and players doing this conversion are going to go with what gives them the highest return... which would not likely be something price fixed by the server.

Won't work here.

 

Why?

 

Because SWTOR has a free flowing CM to Credits economy and players will buy on the CM items they can resell for much better returns then letting a server price fix their purchase.

 

WoW has no equivalent to the CM with items that can be freely resold in game for in game currency. So these tokens remain one of the only legal ways to convert real money to gold for WoW. SWTOR has literally hundreds of items that players can purchase for CCs and then resell in game for credits... and players doing this conversion are going to go with what gives them the highest return... which would not likely be something price fixed by the server.

 

I think the price fixing is unnecessary, but the problem with equating the CM with instant credits is flawed, IMO. Cartel coins are acquired free by every subscriber, plus cartel market items have inherent rarity due to embargoes and the RNG drops. Even a hypercrate generates far more value when held back. This leads to a volatile market, since we have NO IDEA when bioware will make a future item direct sale,or keep it unavailable for years.

 

A sub token would serve a different purpose by being permanently available. As long as you regulate how many purchases a single player can make (giving a rate limit of three weeks), force players to buy the lowest priced item listed, make the marketplace cross server and expand the market to F2P players who can use escrow funds to buy this specific item, and prevent the hoarding of the item by forcing the sale to occur immediately after paying the 20 dollars and closing the ability to resale, the entire system would regulate itself with limited dev intervention.

 

A player would not sell for too high because then it would never be sold, as the cheapest one would always be bought, and no one player could dominate the market by having billions of credits. Because no super billionaire can buy out the market, the price has to remain reasonable for the players in the middle class, since there are very few super rich moguls, which I define as anywhere from the 50mil to 250 million credit players.

 

Additionally, the price wouldn't ever get too low because the sale sample size would use all the game servers, and the price getting too low would cause for less people to supply it, driving up the sale price due to scarcity and increasing demand, causing them to be more feasible again. If it gets too expensive, no one can afford it and the price will drop. Supply and demand working in tandem with an established ruleset.

 

Plus, it would be fast, much faster than the cartel market, because that is unregulated and gated for days after purchase. Finally, who does it even hurt? Even if implemented and it serves relatively little people, bioware doesn't lose money at all outside of the probably small development cost, since they managed to get at least people to pay 20 dollars for someone else's 15 dollar sub!

Edited June 7, 2017 by GrandLordMenace

LMAO. That does not explain why there are literally dozens of active sellers of WoW gold for RMT.. right now.. today.. and always have been.

 

Again.. this sort of thing only benefits wealthy veterans who can afford to actually purchase the tokens from others in game. And like it or not.. as long as players are willing to trade real money for faux money in game.... RMTs will find a way to thrive. They come with the territory, apparently because players still make use of illegal services rather then setup a thoughtful wealth generation plan for their in game efforts.

 

gold farmers are illegal and cheap. Because they are sketchy, they are cheaper. There will always be those who will cut corners to save even more money, and so there will always be gold farmers. This game lacks a stable, quick consistent way to turn real life money into credits instantly, as the CM is highly volatile. Implementing this will only help get rid of gold farmers, even though it won't eradicate them completely. Many are just looking for a legitimate way to gold farm, without the work of pricing CM items themselves. And players like myself are willing to give them profits in large amounts to pay for our subscriptions.

The WoW token system works very well and it should be the same sort of setup if they ever did the SWTOR token why do you think nobody buys gold in WoW because the token system has done it's job and I would like to see SWTOR become credit maggots free.

 

Agreed!

I understand why people want this and I do not object to it. However, the problem is going to be they will be listed on the gtn for prices that are beyond the reach of free to play players. If I ever saw one listed below 50 million I would be shocked. There are some issues with it that would need to be worked out, but if they could be worked out it would be a nice feature.

 

You'd be selling to the same market that unlocks get sold to - namely, overly cool guild leaders who like to reward members and people who are just about to drop their subscription. This wouldn't be like EvE Online, where one could simply grind their way into a free subscription.

 

Imagine for a second if F2Ps could do that. SWTOR probably wouldn't stay open long. It's very money-hungry.

It may be nice that WoW can afford to do this, but you have to consider that there is no financial incentive for BW (or anyone else) to implement this. Edited June 15, 2017 by JediQuaker