Gifting. Why B2P needs ingame Crown to Gold trading.

Rojnaar · March 2015

No gifting, nada. All you do is open the door to all those key loggers to hack accounts and "gift" away all the crowns on it. They exploit anything and everything to do what they do, your fun and experience be damned.

NO

Danikat · March 2015

I'd be in favour of the ability to buy crown store items for other people, as long as the only difference to buying them for yourself is which account they end up on. In other words they're not tradable in-game, you simply select to buy it as a gift, put in the name of the person it's going to and it lands (bound) in their inventory.

I think it would be nice to be able to buy a friend crown store items as a gift. Or maybe simply buy them crowns and let them decide what to get with it.

Any form of crowns to gold conversion would be a bad idea however. IMO the only reason it's not pay-to-win in GW2 is because the best equipment you can buy with gold (crafted or looted exotics) is so cheap and easy to get that I can't believe anyone bothers spending real money on it. (You can also use it to save time on making the top-tier equipment, ascended, but that's a very round about way to a minor benefit.) If it wasn't for the fact that pretty much the entire game is built around minimal vertical progression it would be a very straight forward P2W system.

It's impossible to say what impact it's had on the economy for cosmetic items (especially high-end cosmetics like legendary weapons) because it's been in the game since launch, but I'd be willing to bet prices would not be as high as they are for many items without it.

Wing · March 2015

NO

anytime you create something that can be bought with real money and traded it becomes its own form of currency. and as a result devalues the in game currency (something ZOS has taken pains to try to avoid) I am sure we can all point to games where this is happened and lets hope we NEVER have to point to ESO.

a good example of how to do purchasable items for other right is something called a "money bomb" from another MMO

it was a purchasable item from the store, but not tradable. the user threw it down and it exploded into a bunch of in game goodies. now the thing is the BUYER could not pick up anything that dropped. so why do it? because usually the people that threw them down got a bunch of attention and praise, and this would cause a chain reaction of "i want to get one too" from people. and soon because of one item a hole party was taking place.

that is a good way to do it

-wing

boggie · March 2015

If any kind of irl cash to gold conversion were ever implemented, no matter how roundabout or convoluted, I would be quitting the game immediately. Those of us on limited incomes are already placed at a disadvantage due to things outside of ZOS's controll (lower framerate, lower render distance, and more lag on a cheaper computer, for example). The day that I get stomped in pvp or can't find a dungeon group because little Billy got his hands on his daddy's credit card, flipped 10 guar mounts for gold, and turned around and used the gold to fully trick out his character with all legendary gear/top tier pots and food and is now far more powerful without ever having to do anything in game to EARN those things, is the day that any and all integrity is sucked out of the in-game economy.

Why anyone would WANT what would effectively be a pay-to-win system within the game is beyond me. Gifting? Maybe. Provided the gifted item was BOP to the recipient, and there was no way to do a secure "trade" for the gift (risk of being scammed would deter enough people from trying to get around the system to at least mitigate the damage to the economy) it MIGHT be ok. I'd have to see how it played out. Yeah, being able to use crown store items as rewards for guild events and such would be cool, but there are things that can be used now for the same purpose (either in-game items like upgrade mats or valuable motifs, or if you want something "special", perhaps an explorer's pack code which can be purchased online and then given to another person).

Alphashado · March 2015

No way. Using a credit card to fill your bags up with gold is a terrible idea. It would remove any amount of class and integrity ESO has left and it would be a giant step towards P2W.

If you can use a visa to buy legendary gear and weapons, that is straight up P2W. Period.

LtCrunch · March 2015

No.

cyqa · March 2015

I'm going to have to add my voice to the resounding no thank you's.

Phinix1 · March 2015

Grapdjan wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

Do you remember when everyone was happy about gold sellers being gone?
[reminiscence]

Adding gold into the crown store would just be a way to bring them back in a legal manner, with @ZOS approval.
What would be the advantage cash shop gold vs gold seller gold?

Because it is completely different. You are buying an item worth one month sub directly from Zos with cash and selling it to another player for gold. Or buying crowns directly from ZOS for cash and gifting them to a player. Botters and gold selling websites do not have anything remotely to do with this suggestion.

Not really different. Most gold sellers are based in China where they can run sweatshops for dirt wages, which is how they are able to sell gold so cheaply.

I guarantee that one of two things would therefor take place: It will be cheaper to buy enough gold from Chinese sweatshop gold sellers to buy the item for a month's sub than it would be to just buy the sub, which will lead to more gold sellers, or they will set the gold price so high for these items that even the gold sellers won't be able to sell gold cheap enough to make it cheaper than just buying the sub, in which case it would be totally pointless as you would have to grind harder than a Chinese sweatshop gold farmer to afford it.

The percentage of players that would waste a month on such mindless gold farming just to buy an item to pay for that month's mindless gold farming is very small. Like less than 5% of the population.

I don't think they should implement something that caters to such a small demographic, while at the same time risking opening themselves up to gold sellers if they don't keep the price constantly adjusted to prevent it being cheaper to buy gold than buy a sub.

I vote NO.

Attorneyatlawl · March 2015

Heck, NO. if I wanted pay to win or progress, I'd go find some cruddy cheater and gold buyer/seller f2p game where everyone bought their uber gear for real money. Selling gold like the op suggests absolutely and irrevocably destroys the in game economy as well as anyone caring what you have for equipment since it could easily have just been bought.

Richard_Ralh · March 2015

The way I see it is this! If I want to spend X amount of crowns to get packages of x amount of gold, then that should be my sole prerogative! The game doesn't give big enough gold rewards for missions and I have yet to come across anyone that actually likes incessant grinding for gold other then getting exp! And I hate to be the one to tell you guys, but many companies make partnerships with gold selling partnerships that if the would support whatever mmo on their website then the are welcome to sell their gold packages! My idea is simpler and stays within the current mmo, whatever that mmo may be, say spend 100 crowns for a crown store bought package of 1000 gold; 200 crowns for 2000 gold, etc...just a thought though! Not trying to offend anyone!

Leeric · March 2015

Why would you even suggest such nonsense....

Frenkthevile · March 2015

eisberg wrote: »

AlexDougherty wrote: »

eisberg wrote: »

Frenkthevile wrote: »

NOPE, if they do something like this i'll quit. GW2 economy was RUINED the same way.

How was is ruined exactly? GW2 system actually takes gold out of the economy, not add to it.

If it was anything like Swtor prices destabilised.
When Swtor launched it's cash shop prices for crafted stuff vanished (they were inferior looks, clearly inferior), and it started a weird cycle for prices on GTM.

New stuff was priced high.
Rare stuff was priced insanely high.
Stuff from a couple of months was about what the crafted gear used to be.
Stuff from a bit further back was going for buttons.

It really did destabilise Swtor's GTM economy.

Yeah, for Guild Wars 2 the GEM to gold conversion didn't do anything to the prices, maybe except for the legendary weapon which are weapons with different animations but are no more powerful than any other weapon.

For Guild Wars 2, the Gem to Gold/Gold to Gems has actually been a good system. The whole system takes gold out of the economy, since the pool of gold and Gems are coming from the players. Currently to get change gold in Gems, it cost 1 gold 60 silver to get 11 Gems, but it cost 11 Gems to get 1 Gold, so 60 silver is being taken out the economy for every 1 gold bought (100 silver = 1 gold), and that 1 gold came from a player who bought 11 Gems at 1 Gold 60 silver.

So at worse, it may have made weapon skins ultra expensive, but they are just skins, so no big deal.

Skins were the only real content they worked on for 2 years lol, so it's a BIG deal imho.

Endurance · March 2015

Grapdjan wrote: »

With the payment change comes the opportunity for ESO to earn more cash for a healthy future, through a variety of combinations. People like me who will subscibe and also drop cash on the marketplace on boosts and fluff, those who buy DLC, those who buy DLC and fluff etc.

But without having a means of gifting Crowns/items ingame ZOS could be missing a trick. There will always be people without access to credit cards or much disposable income who would play, and grind away incessantly to earn gold in game with which to buy Subs/items/DLC from those with lots of spare cash but not so much time.

If gifting and crown exchange is in place then you could quite reasonably expect one cash rich casual player to actually be purchasing their own sub, but also potentially buy three or four other subs from people who are time/gold rich in game.

Everquest 2 has an it's called a Krono for example, which you purchase from the SOE online store for a little more than 1month recurring sub. It then is delivered to you in game and is tradeable to other players. Once bought it can be used to furnish the buyer with one months sub.

With the basic premise that more people playing equals more community, more player generated online presence and a better future for the game it seems shortsighted to not at least consider implementing such a system.

sooo people are supposed to be allowed to trade crowns or tradable subscriptions for gold and walk around with 10~15mill gold with barely any achievement in making it while the rest is stuck with 30k gold? i dont think so.. thats a horrible sense of P2W that would most likely drive off 1/3 of the playerbase

Rair.Kitani · March 2015

If you want to gift someone - send him/her a paysafecard!!!
If you're able to gift items via store there will always we demand from people willing to buy "gifts" and within days a blackmarket crown-gold conversation will be established

folklore · March 2015

I do appreciate what you are saying through this post. You do make some great arguments and reference to models that seem to be viable. It'd also help with gold sinks and stuff, but I can see it being slightly problematic.Thank you for the hearty post, though!

My decision was long made when B2P was first announced, and hints of a cash shop were floating about. I personally don't think that anything on the cash shop should be available in such means. I'm honestly quite happy with the current system.