Cash for Gold.

KingMagaw · October 2017

starkerealm wrote: »

It's also a pretty horrible conversion scheme, from what I've seen. Supply for Grindstones and shards is virtually non-existent but the demand is even lower. The only people who can use those stones are ones who already spent money on the motif, and are unwilling to shell out more cash for the mimic stones.

Combine this with the part where the Grim Harlequin motif is (per unit) the cheapest way to buy stones, and you've got a big gamble trying to move them.

Now, they do move, but again, not many people want, or can use, those things to begin with.

Firstly it is the only way from crowns to gold i am aware of and i rather share information rather than not sharing it.

Secondly i screenshot what my MM shows (I only hold 2 trade guilds so data is limited to 2 guilds)

I agree the market isn't scrambling to buy them, but they do sell as per pic above even on my limited MM data

kyle.wilson · October 2017

This is a very bad idea. Having ZOS sell gold for cash would actually explode the botting community by setting a value to undercut.

Cpt_Teemo · October 2017

kyle.wilson wrote: »

This is a very bad idea. Having ZOS sell gold for cash would actually explode the botting community by setting a value to undercut.

Good botting is illegal in any online game except this one it seems

Ihatenightblades · October 2017

Why would they give gold for cash when they are giving horses and pets every other week

Resfeber · October 2017

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

kyle.wilson wrote: »

This is a very bad idea. Having ZOS sell gold for cash would actually explode the botting community by setting a value to undercut.

Good botting is illegal in any online game except this one it seems

Haven't played enough MMOs I see

kyle.wilson · October 2017

Resfeber wrote: »

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

kyle.wilson wrote: »

This is a very bad idea. Having ZOS sell gold for cash would actually explode the botting community by setting a value to undercut.

Good botting is illegal in any online game except this one it seems

Haven't played enough MMOs I see

Ive played several and i always saw buying gold as the lazy way.
ZOS seems incapable of unwilling to fight the bot frenzy now. They did a good job at the beginning, but I think they've cut their team so much that they can't do near the stuff needed.

Malacthulhu · October 2017

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

I am willing to bet this is happening anyway so why not make it officially done via either the Crown Store or PlayStation Store. For example 760,000 Gold for $39.99 or 5,500 Crowns. Or make it 1,000,000 Gold or more if it will help end the Cash for Gold trade taking place elsewhere. I don't know for sure this is actually happening, just a hunch. Let the Discussion begin.

It would damage thr game economy even more, The farmers are farming gold through normal methods. If people could all of a sudden buy gold for cheap, essencially introducing gold into the economy even quicker it will cause inflation as the gold sinks may not be able to keep up with it. Also, those people prob do not farm just one game and can prob still undercut ZoS on Pricing making it even more pointless.

MLGProPlayer · October 2017

TarrNokk wrote: »

cash for gold will kill the game.

It would kill the game for those whose endgame is playing the economy. I would probably quit myself.

Other than that though, most people won't care. GW2 let's you buy in-game gold with IRL money and it's doing fine.

Cpt_Teemo · October 2017

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

TarrNokk wrote: »

cash for gold will kill the game.

It would kill the game for those whose endgame is playing the economy. I would probably quit myself.

Other than that though, most people won't care. GW2 let's you buy in-game gold with IRL money and it's doing fine.

Same with WoW even though it lost tons of players still has more than FF14, Swtor, ESO, and Gw2 combined I believe

djdc1234 · October 2017

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

I am willing to bet this is happening anyway so why not make it officially done via either the Crown Store or PlayStation Store. For example 760,000 Gold for $39.99 or 5,500 Crowns. Or make it 1,000,000 Gold or more if it will help end the Cash for Gold trade taking place elsewhere. I don't know for sure this is actually happening, just a hunch. Let the Discussion begin.

Yes there are multiple sites offering to sell gold and items, you just PayPal em. Simple google search come up with lots

RPGplayer13579 · October 2017

Danksta wrote: »

You're oblivious if you only have a hunch that people are selling gold for real money. I see gold sellers everyday in /zone.

My childhood nickname is Captain Obvious, so it is very possible. Also most of the time I play this game with my headphones turned off.

Betsararie · October 2017

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

I am willing to bet this is happening anyway so why not make it officially done via either the Crown Store or PlayStation Store. For example 760,000 Gold for $39.99 or 5,500 Crowns. Or make it 1,000,000 Gold or more if it will help end the Cash for Gold trade taking place elsewhere. I don't know for sure this is actually happening, just a hunch. Let the Discussion begin.

Just the worst idea

Saturnana · October 2017

I'd love to be able to buy crowns with gold.

Works for GW2, so why not for ESO?

Zbigb4life · October 2017

NOOOOOOOO, no reason for this

Storymaster · October 2017

The PLEX system employed by EVE is not just a way to get in-game gold for cash, people.

It's a way for people very successful at the game to pay for their subscription with in-game gold INSTEAD of having to use cash.

Cpt_Teemo · October 2017

Storymaster wrote: »

The PLEX system employed by EVE is not just a way to get in-game gold for cash, people.

It's a way for people very successful at the game to pay for their subscription with in-game gold INSTEAD of having to use cash.

IE: WoW Tokens

Anne_Firehawk · October 2017

TarrNokk wrote: »

cash for gold will kill the game.

It's already been killed by ZOS.

Asardes · October 2017

Housing isn't much of a gold sink for most players. Note that houses can also be bought with crowns. A 6 months sub can almost buy you one of the castles. Maybe if you try to collect all the blueprints for furnishings yourself it can be expensive. But players who have a lot of gold, and make gold constantly (which is pretty easy) will be only set back by that for a few weeks, maybe a few months. Housing has been in the game for almost 8 months.

Malacthulhu · October 2017

Asardes wrote: »

Housing isn't much of a gold sink for most players. Note that houses can also be bought with crowns. A 6 months sub can almost buy you one of the castles. Maybe if you try to collect all the blueprints for furnishings yourself it can be expensive. But players who have a lot of gold, and make gold constantly (which is pretty easy) will be only set back by that for a few weeks, maybe a few months. Housing has been in the game for almost 8 months.

Collecting bluebprints is not a gold sink so much aside from posting fees on traders etc.

starkerealm · October 2017

KingMagaw wrote: »

Firstly it is the only way from crowns to gold i am aware of and i rather share information rather than not sharing it.

One of only two ways. The other one is also a Style Stone exploit, but it's effectively gone now.

When Glass was first introduced as a style, you could buy the Malachite off of the Crown Store. Back then, it was bound, but a later patch removed that binding and introduced Mimic Stones. So... if you had known in advance that the binding on Malachite would eventually go away, you could have bought those up then, and sold off the stones when the items unbound.

In retrospect, I'm not sure why Shards and Grindstones aren't bound though. Since there's no legitimate way for a player to obtain them except via the Crown Store.

starkerealm · October 2017

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

Storymaster wrote: »

The PLEX system employed by EVE is not just a way to get in-game gold for cash, people.

It's a way for people very successful at the game to pay for their subscription with in-game gold INSTEAD of having to use cash.

IE: WoW Tokens

The big difference between MMOs like EVE and WOW, and with ESO is about how player population is visible and affects gameplay.

EVE needs other players. PLEX is a system designed to encourage you to engage with the content. EVE is a very traditional sandbox. You play the game with other players, not along side them.

As for the Token system... do you really want that?

You're spending $20 bucks for $15 bucks worth of gametime or store credit. On top of that, there's some pretty extensive restrictions on what you can, and can't do with those tokens.

Now, I'll admit, I don't know what the purchasing power of gold in WOW is. I know that it scales exponentially with level, to the point that early game purchases are trivial if you have an high level character to send your lowbie alt cash. But, still.

When it was originally introduced, the tokens ran at around 21k - 30k. Today, grabbing a token will set you back 170k. (For reference, those are the NA prices. The EU ones started at 35k and are currently running around 261k, Taiwan's market started at 250k, and now around 328k (it actually gained 10k in value in the past 4 hours), and Korean's market started at 123k and has since gone to 368.)

The system went live in April of 2015, it's now October 2017. On NA, that indicates and inflation rate of roughly 832%. In other words, WOW currently experiences somewhere around 333% annual inflation.

To put this in context, the average price of the Imperial Motif on the NA server hasn't moved much. It's actually diminished from 80k to around 60k now. While there's been some inflation since launch, most of that happened in 2014, and the market has been fairly stable overall.

Now, I know it's tempting to look at that and go, "yeah, I can drop 100k and get an easy influx of cash..." except, that's not what would happen. First off, yes, spending your $20 would get you some gold. However, the purchasing power of that gold would diminish quickly. Simply because, players would be willing to scrounge up the cash to buy these things. Like I said earlier in the thread, the instant you apply a real world cash value to an item, someone who makes enough, to utterly disregard the expenses involved in purchasing an item, will throw money at the screen and snap it up for more than you can afford. Because they now have a venue to do so, they will drive the prices up.

You think I wouldn't sell lots of the stuff I have on hand, to hoover up some extra crowns? I would. I'd buy those tokens from some kid who pilfered their parents credit card, and ran up a $1k bill. Would I do it intentionally? No. But, because of how the merchant system works, it'd be impossible to know the circumstances.

So, you want a staff that was 100k, but now it's 800k because some rich guy in Orlando is willing to spend $40 on tokens, flip them into gold, and then buy the item. And I know it can sell for far more because once the tokens got dropped, I watched guild store prices climb. And your choices are spend real money, or chase the grind train, except now it's out of control, and inflation is through the roof.

It's a bad idea. And I have watched this kind of thing (though not WOW's tokens specifically), kicking around in other MMOs that opened the floodgates for cash to gold methods. Like gamble boxes that allow you to sell their content. The gold you have in game devalues at a frightening pace. I mean, if you want a game where you're spending 15m for a perfect traited sword, cool. But, once you start that, your only means to participating the market in a realistic way will be via token purchases.

Bobby_V_Rockit · October 2017

Just give me my level 50 token in the crown store and I’ll be happy

disintegr8 · October 2017

Can't see it happening but gold is so easy to make in this game it wouldn't bother me.

AprilMoon · October 2017

starkerealm wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Lyserus wrote: »

If ZOS ever try that...

They don't even need any other help to destroy this game.
Think about how everything go sky high pricing and even more severe competition on traders, soon the market will die and players follow

And making "cash for gold" official sounds real bad.....less new comers can be expected

That's why you do a system where the cash is still made by the players and traded legally between players for cash. Like the PLEX system.

To inject raw gold for cash would be a disaster that most major MMO companies could see as a bad idea. The other option is to make Crown Store items able to be traded and all come in rune boxes.

Players can spend real money to buy items and sell them for gold to players, everyone wins.

The insidious thing with systems like that is, they then justify pay to win mechanics leaking in. I've seen it enough times to know.

If you can resell stuff in the store, that means you can resell the stuff with actual utility as well.

You still have the problem of rampant inflation. It's somewhat moderated, but it will still occur.

For example, I took a weekend with BDO earlier in the month. Six bucks on Steam, I've seen people raving about how well its economy works. I can take a minute. While I'm doing this, I'm looking at tutorials on how to produce stuff. Now, the game has a moderated auction house, meaning you can't overcharge, or dramatically undercut prices in one go. It can change over time, but your prices are heavily restricted. I'm also looking at these tutorials and seeing them talk about how much money the items they're describing sell for.

Thing is, these tutorials were written in February. The prices I'm seeing to day are roughly twice those. So over eight months, in a game with no direct player to player trading, except via the AH, and strict price controls on it... they've still experienced 100% inflation in that time.

Second thing, and this is older, I'm not naming one game, I've seen it in a bunch of MMOs. Every game I've seen that let you move cash store items to other players lead to a situation where you were seeing items in the cash shops (or their lucky bags) with direct gameplay effects. (This includes BDO, by the way.) The rational is fairly straightforward and wonderfully insidious: "It's not pay to win if you can (theoretically) obtain it without spending money." So long as someone pays them, the developers don't care, and can still say it's open to everyone.

In fact, I've had people argue with me on these boards, without a hint of irony, that "Neverwinter is not pay to win." Because everything you pull out of the gamble boxes can be listed up on the AH, and because you can grind for Zen (the real money currency), and then buy it from other players using a time gated currency (called Astral Diamonds).

Cryptic games are hilariously pay to win. There are often entire tiers of gear that are cash only. In the case of Star Trek Online, all of the endgame ships require you to either grind for a month during an event (for specific promo-only ships), or require you to cough up some cash. (Or, buy them from other players who coughed up cash.) This isn't something like the Apex mounts, by the way. In STO, your ships are, effectively, a class, and those tier 6 ships have more stats, access to unique abilities that nothing else in the game can obtain, and have more equipment slots. To say nothing of simply higher stats, which they also have.

But, because you can, theoretically obtain everything through grinding, you'll see people arguing, "no, really, it's not P2W."

Selling stuff, player to player, from the crown shop is a terrible idea, full stop.

Black Desert Online is Korean most of their games are pay to win I've spent over 200 dollars on there but I won't knock the its absolutely amazing and I would spend that money again given the enjoyment i've had out of that game. It may not be worth it to some people but for me it was totally worth it I've spent hours grinding on that game maids were necessity, so were upgraded pets. It wasn't cheap but totally worth it. And the price restricted prices on the AH are an absolute amazing idea to stop people making billions from the sale of real currency shop items ingame.

Mureel · October 2017

Shadzilla wrote: »

Gold is so plentiful and underpowered in this game as is... Crowns rule all, there is so much stuff you cannot get with gold but you can with crowns its disgusting.

yeah but all junk/fluff. Nothing necessary.

Zinaroth · October 2017

RPGplayer13579 wrote: »

I am willing to bet this is happening anyway so why not make it officially done via either the Crown Store or PlayStation Store. For example 760,000 Gold for $39.99 or 5,500 Crowns. Or make it 1,000,000 Gold or more if it will help end the Cash for Gold trade taking place elsewhere. I don't know for sure this is actually happening, just a hunch. Let the Discussion begin.

The only effect this will have is to add a maximum price for gold on illegal sides.

starkerealm · October 2017

AprilMoon wrote: »

Black Desert Online is Korean most of their games are pay to win I've spent over 200 dollars on there but I won't knock the its absolutely amazing and I would spend that money again given the enjoyment i've had out of that game. It may not be worth it to some people but for me it was totally worth it I've spent hours grinding on that game maids were necessity, so were upgraded pets. It wasn't cheap but totally worth it. And the price restricted prices on the AH are an absolute amazing idea to stop people making billions from the sale of real currency shop items ingame.

Yeah, I took a stab at it, when it was on sale a week or two ago. The basic gameplay loop is pretty entertaining. I didn't spend any money with them, but still, if you just want to grind for a couple hours, it's actually pretty smooth. Personally, if I'm aiming for something like that, I'll probably just fire up Grim Dawn, but, BDO does deliver.

That said, the economy is bjorked. The price capping creates a situation where stuff is ludicrously under-priced, and you end up with shortages. There's an interesting concept where you're basically vendoring your trash drops to other players, but beyond that, the details of the market system make it inordinately difficult to buy something if there's high demand for that item, even if there's also sufficient supply.

Barbara73 · October 2017

I'm amazed you cant buy a fully leveled toon in the crown store yet that will play by itself while you watch Netflix. Now it that happens I would be interested as long as it can do trials on its own.