[MegaThread] Ideas to solve the Money Cap issue

The cash cap is indirectly a population cap. A cap on any currency in a game causes some players to stop playing. I've seen many people not even reach level 30 because they became frustrated with the cap. A higher population means that paying players have more people to enjoy the game with, which means more friendships form. An MMO is predicated on friendships and population, so the cash cap does hurt the game to some extent.

Even free to play people will spend money on the game eventually if the game is enticing enough. The more people play and are happy with the game, the more likely those people are to contribute to and support the game. A higher population spending slightly less money can actually expand the profit margin more than a lower population spending slightly more money.

The cap is there to entice players to become Legendary, if they raised the cap to where anything other than broker items could be purchased then there would be a loss in subscriptions. There isn't a problem with the cap, it's just a problem with the community.

People would still either subscribe for the DLCs or buy the DLCs to continue playing. More people playing means more DLC sales or subscription sales. Even if subscription sales dropped, the DLC sales would more than make up for it.

The devs slapped my wrist when I put that gif up :-( lol

I have stated on previous thread that it should be increased...I'm not premium, I'm legendary...

I state it should be raises but with caution...It shoudl not be raised to 100K...or even 10K...I think raising the value to say, 4K or even 5K would make sense...especially where the new content is expensive to repair gear...

I keep on hand 3 sets of Soda Cola Max, just in case a players need cash for repair or soda in an instance...It isn't expensive for me to make more...but it would be for someone that is premium....

you sir are a good samaritan. *bows my head to you*

It is nothing...but in game cash...

I can farm various instances for some rare drops that are sellable...Ace Chemicals I tend to get the mutant clown boots every time I run it...still searching for the kick me sign...LOL...

I had close to $50 million before I became legendary...I was the guy that undersold most items in game at the broker because of my lack of higher on hand cash...LOL...

All my toons are close to being empty now...One toon I spent almost 1.5 million creating sodea cola max for people...just because...Just like I give out any aura I get as I don't need it....

I've only skimmed through some comments but I've read threads about the same topic before.

I've been both Legendary and Premium. Currently, I'm Premium with all DLCs including the current one.
Now, having been both types of member, my opinion on this is that they should never raise the money cap for premium players unless they plan to add a game-changing benefit to Legendary status.

Now, I'm gonna do a comparison how much a Legendary player and Premium player pay and see if it's really worth it for the money cap issue to be touched.
Legendary player: $15/month assuming that they didn't get any savings plan
Premium: Only pays for what he/she wants.

So, let's assume that LP has been legendary for a year and PP has bought all the DLCs up to the current one.
Legendary player: $15 * 12 months = $180
Premium player = $10 * 11 DLCs = $110

Now, DCUO has been around for 3 years and 7 months. That's 43 months. Not including the BETA period by the way.
The game went free to play November 1, 2011. I'm assuming that on that day Premium and Free status were introduced because I wasn't playing the game by then.
So, let's do more calculations:
Legendary player: $15 * 43 months = $645
Premium player: Still $110

Now, assuming that LP has been playing since the game was officially released and that PP has been playing since the game went free to play, I don't think that it's really fair to raise the money cap for Premium given this information. This will only anger Legendary players and may drive them to just go Premium or worse, rage quit the game which would be bad for the game's revenue.

Now, as I mentioned above, there's only one way I can think of that may satisfy both Premium and Legendary players on the money cap issue.

Raise the money cap for premium players (Maybe with each DLC they buy or every $5-$10 they spend on the marketplace? I dunno. Also, by the way, Premium players still shouldn't be able to mail or trade money with this added benefit) and introduce another game-changing benefit for Legendary player that will be only exclusive to them.

I buy Interface 1s every time I max out my wallet or get near the cap. I carry 2 stacks of 16 at all times. Each Interface sells at vendors for $1100+

I have never had a problem with the cash cap since.

They should do something about it. I've personally had 4 different friends at different times give up and stop playing the game over frustrations with their cash cap, even after I offered to take care of them money-wise in game. I'm a subber for the record and wouldn't have a problem with them adjusting the Premium cap.

This is exactly why I think the cap hurts the game. It lowers the population of the game by causing frustrations. Less population means less enjoyment for those who do pay and less likelihood for those who have not yet paid to become inclined to make a purchase. With fewer friends in the game, incentive to keep playing declines.

If people aren't happy with the cap, they can buy escrow tokens or sub. If they're not happy with those options then too bad. People could skip a pizza 1 night in a month and get a subscription. If people read the actual limitations and benefits of each level of play and based their decisions knowing that F2P and Premium will never get better than what they had since the F2P model dropped in 2011, I think that there would be a lot less whining on the forums.

All games that have a F2P model like this have some form of limitations. Here you can get T4 without buying anything, however, it will take a while. F2P is a great Demo and Premium lets you get what you want when you want it. Legendary gets all of the perks because they pay regularly, you actually have to turn off automatic renewals to stop being charged.

It's all ready been stated by Spytle that PS4 has the highest population for subscribers on the PS server, but the PS3 has the highest overall population. It's sad that the lower population has spent twice as much money than the higher one. If you want more in game money, you should pay for it like everybody else has done since November 2011.

I'll go ahead and toss my two cents in, even if this thread is just going to get locked up tighter than Fort Knox (because God knows Arkham and Styker's aren't secure...).

I am a Premium player, and I choose to be. I do not struggle with the cash cap, as I have League mates willing to craft me mods as long as I collect the Exos myself (and they're awesome about surprise gifts of Exceptional Recovery Kits!). Repairs are a near non-issue most of the time, as I sprung for a slight backpack upgrade once just to be able to carry things to pawn at a moment's notice.

That said, up until around T4 I had problems keeping up with things just because gear sold for less. I would find myself regularly running Legends to try and get some soders to keep on hand to sell when it became necessary or whatever. R&D Plans (no use to a Premium after a certain point) sell for decent amounts and often come from Challenges or weekly boxes. Again, not a problem. Even T2 plans sell for over 2k.

SO: Is the cap a problem? I think it's a nuisance, but can be overcome if you get in with a nice League and are willing to work around things. Would I love to see some change? Absolutely; but it's not game-breaking to only have a 2k cap. Especially, now that Synth mods exist. I've only ever had two ideas for solutions on the topic, both of which have probably come up in the past, but I'll share them for the greater Forum community anyway.

1) Allow incremental Escrow "unlocks" to permanently boost your normal wallet across all characters. Some games with caps of a couple million (granted, different economy) on Free/Premium equivalents offer this option to upgrade to 10 billion or so for a one-time payment. For DCUO, this probably wouldn't work.

2) Bundle a $500 boost (subject to number crunching and adjustment) with each and every DLC Pack. It would encourage Premiums NOT to skip DLC content and provide just enough of a boost to feel worthwhile. It also allows gear to scale to higher prices (which is a slippery slope if someone still chooses to skip DLC, but...probably balancable. More DLCs = more money coming from Premiums and they feel like they're getting a nice bonus. Since DLC can only be purchased once per account, SOE still holds the cap in their pocket and Premiums HAVE to pay something to get this boost. For those of you not wanting to crunch those numbers, that comes up to a whopping...$7,500 cap as of current.

As an aside, I never thought about Interfaces and might be cashing out stacks of other gear just rotting for something a little more space-friendly. Thanks for that mention!

Giving unlocks for DLC purchases may be a bad idea, seeing that they are now looking at doing Monthly DLCs instead of Quarterly ones. People are going to be better off subscribing when that starts.

We still don't know what the pricing model is going to look like when that hits. Not to mention we don't know how those will be handled. It could be a "Here, buy this DLC and the rest of the content will fill in as it becomes available" (think Marketplace Bundle style) or it could actually be split up. I can tell you already that $10 for JUST a Power or $10 for JUST two Legends characters or whatever is going to drive the Premium players that DO play away faster than it will get them to subscribe (based solely on the opinion with other Premiums I have spoken to since the announcement of a change to how DLC will work, and my own personal stance on the matter.).

If this was true, they'd have done away with the cap a long time ago.

Majority of players = PS3
Majority of Subscribers = PS4
PS4 generated 2x of PS3 as stated in April by Spytle.

DLC purchases don't generate nearly the same amount of revenue as subscriptions do. If the Monthly DLCs cost 9.99 USD and Premiums buy them every month like they have the the last 11, then it could even out. However, I think they will either subscribe or only buy DLCs they want and skip ones they feel are unnecessary. Only time can tell with the new model.

That cannot be proven by the DCUO team with the current way the game operates. They have no idea why people stop playing or uninstall the game, so they cannot know how the cap actually affects the game. There is no survey when someone chooses to stop playing that asks "What was your reason for uninstalling the game?" I am not saying that removing the cap comes without risks, but it may very well provide rewards that outweigh those risks.

This math makes me want to switch games. I can spend $110 on a game and still have to put up with frustrating annoyances? Don't most full games cost around $60?

I like the suggestion about in game cash increase with each DLC purchased, I believe that is a great idea....I would say an increae of $250 in game cash....

If someone bought all 11 DLC they would have a total in game cash of...$4750...that is almost what you need if all your armor is broken, that works for me....