Concept: Gold-Crown exchange service

RAGUNAnoOne

A stock market style concept basically banks offer a feature that lets you buy crowns for gold and vice versa. the rate starts off at a specific mark like say 1-200 and adjusts dynamically. In order to avoid the "pay to win" scenario the in game crowns will be called "silver crowns" while the pay for ones will be gold crowns. 2 silver crowns can be traded for 1 gold crown for crown store stuff but gold crowns cannot be traded period.

What do you think? I know it most likely won't happen but I can dream can't I?

jedtb16_ESO

yes padawan... you can dream.

it really depends on zos' business plan.... which i doubt they will share with us.

KimberlyannKitsuragi

WoW has a similar concept with their WoW tokens. You get game time on the token for yourself or you can auction it for a set amount of gold (determined by Blizzard) that you'll get when someone buys your token. So I approve of this concept

SilentRaven1972

Please, no. After experiencing a similar system with Neverwinter Online, and seeing the trouble it brings with it...Just NO!!!

Olyboi

Thinking about NW's system makes me cringe.

Waffennacht

SilentRaven1972 wrote: »

Please, no. After experiencing a similar system with Neverwinter Online, and seeing the trouble it brings with it...Just NO!!!

@SilentRaven1972 what trouble,? When I played that's how I paid for all content, and mounts etc for free. What happened?

tryia3b14a_ESO

I liked the gold to crystals conversion in Guild Wars 2 (crystals are the real-money currency in GW2). I think it was well done and it rewarded players who have a ton of time, but not money in real life for playing thier game. Even the players who don't spend any money on the game do add some value to it by being available to group with, help out in pvp, help drive the economy, etc. So it's a good idea to incentivize free players to stick around too.

Even WoW now offers a way for players to buy game time tokens for real money and sell them to players for in game gold.

Elephant42

Without thinking too deeply about this I don't see any major obstacles to this as long as the following applied.

1. You could only buy crowns with gold from another player.
2. Crowns bought from another player are bound to your account i.e. cannot be onsold.

No doubt some will see it as thinly disguised PTW but I wouldn't worry as I can't see ZOS ever going for this...

daemonios

Not gonna happen. It opens up the possibility of gold farmers selling gold/crowns for real money. There have been gold sellers in ESO before, and there might still be some, but there's really not that much you can do with in-game gold. If you could trade it for crowns though, it'd be a farm/scam-fest. I've seen it in other games and it invariably ruined the economy.

QUEZ420

Zen Market for Neverwinter? Game time tokens for WoW? All sounds prty familiar to me.

FancyTuna8

It wouldn't work as suggested, but I don't know why anyone would say Neverwinter's didn't work. I have never spent a penny on that game, and haven't played it much when I hit a wall as far as my character's combat ability, but I have been able to buy many mounts, character race unlocks, inventory space, VIP time (similar to Plus), etc.....and even though I think the gameplay of ESO beats NW hands down, I have played NW a TON more because they offered me the opportunity to earn everything I wanted in game, while ESO always seems so limiting even as they demand cash for things (haircuts) that don't seem like they should cost. It really is a shame, because I think this game is so much better in crafting and combat, but the fun of the events and ability to earn things in NW have snowballed into me already having an advanced character there. I really want ESO to succeed, and hope that player housing and further revamping of character customization will give me the impetus to cut the cord on NW and start playing this game that I have actually spent money on.

Smasherx74

1000 crowns = 100k gold?

Sounds reasonable to me. Grind, get gold, pay for game content. ZOS is cheap so I doubt they'll do this.

Iselin

I can't believe people actually ask for RMT through cash shop like all the other cheap, no integrity MMORPGs have these days.

You want to be good at chess? Put in the time. Should be the same for any game.

I've been here for 2+ years because ESO doesn't have that kind of sleazy set-up and has a very carefully thought out crown store... and I'll be gone the second they compromise it that way.

SilentRaven1972

Waffennacht wrote: »

SilentRaven1972 wrote: »

Please, no. After experiencing a similar system with Neverwinter Online, and seeing the trouble it brings with it...Just NO!!!

@SilentRaven1972 what trouble,? When I played that's how I paid for all content, and mounts etc for free. What happened?

Gold farmers/spammers/sellers, bots everywhere, over-inflated market prices. Next thing you know, someone will want those troublesome little lockboxes. I learned my lesson, since that was the first MMO I ever played. Never again. If they ever bring it to ESO, I'll run so fast it'd make your head spin! I'll gladly spend money when I can on crowns for interesting DLC, mount/cosmetic skins, little extras, etc. In fact, I spent my birthday money on crowns today for both my accounts. But if they start to bring in any stuff that may give an advantage (not including XP scrolls, since an XP potion is available in-game), I'll find something else to play and spend my limited money on.

Ackwalan

Exchanging virtual gold for real money. Yup, nothing could ever go wrong with that idea.

For example. You have 10 million gold in your bank. That 10 million gold can buy the equivalent of 10K dollars worth of crowns. Now the IRS decides that since that gold has a real dollar value attached to it, they would like to talk to you.

Acrolas

WoW has a direct cash shop. The game time tokens just mean that somebody is paying $20 for a month even if they're not the person actually using it. They also retain an additional member they can continue to upsell to. For a certain point of view, that's double dipping.

Gold-to-crowns won't happen because I'm pretty sure ZOS isn't dumb enough to cannibalize its most diverse upsell source. If somebody can feasibly 'earn' the entire unique contents of the crown store in a few months by in-game conversion, then there's really no point in having a crown store. Not unless the prices are seriously inflated, which would kill the crown store just as well.

Vikaernes

Take a good hard look at Black Desert right now to see what this kind of scheme does to games.

Kammakazi

See I've got about 7 million gold laying around... lol