Undiscussed Major Flaw with Krono's Tokens -- F2P plat Cap

Are you sure? It was always reported, and I was under the impression it was like how AAs are handled going from gold->silver. You can't earn more, but you don't lose what you have. There would have to be a way for it to give back the plat if you revert back to gold then, wouldn't there?

the problem is not how much it costs you to buy the item you want to trade, but how much the person you trade it to will make by selling the barter item. Say an item like a diamond costs you 209 each to buy so you buy a few stacks. then you trade them to someone for their kronos. when they take those diamonds to a vendor, they are only offered 190 by the vendor. this is a loss of 19 each for them. it may not sound like much, but multiply that by 1k. now you can see why you won't want to accept such items for trade- someone will lose somewhere- either the person buying the diamonds or the person accepting them for payment,

Why does this even matter? Go gold and it's a non issue. Same with every other complaint against f2p.
I don't think it was ever said anywhere that f2p players would be allowed access to all the benefits I receive as a paying customer.

i have 3 accounts out of my 5 that went silver. i forgot to remove plat from a couple of toons. they lost them when entering the game. another toon forgot he was silver and took the money out of a house he was about to sell back. the money went poof and was instantly lost forever- over 5k

we aren't talking about them having all the privileges, but if kronos is going to be a viable way to sell for plat and silver customers are seen as a market for them, they have to have a way to pay for the kronos that they are buying to go gold. some people have more plat or access to more plat than they have in real life money.

1053, which will cost you 220077

I would petition. Currently in the FAQ:
- Character Coin Limits: The amount of coin you have is unaltered when you lapse your Gold membership. However, you'll be unable to gain any more coin until you reduce your current coin total below the Silver or Free per character limit.

So after all these years, SOE now decides they want to sell plat.

No, Sony selling plat would be completely different.

Sony selling an item for $US that some players will be willing to purchase with plat is re-distribution. Since plat re-distribution has always taken place in EQ this isn't a new development. Since Gamecards are openly auctioned trading plat for gametime isn't a new development.

After all these years Sony is offering a secure way for someone to trade plat for gametime.

Exactly. Not sure how people could have been oblivious to this having gone on for so long now.

No one loses. I have 6300pp, if barter trades aren't unusual I will prefer to have a Black Gold Ingot than 6300pp and will purchase some. If someone would rather have 80 BGI than a Krono they will make that trade. If BGI becomes a common unit of barter on FV I will add a /buyer line of Black Gold Ingot 6250pp. This would allow a non-Gold member to redeem BGI and get the 500k a Gold member can receive, but in increments that don't exceed the plat cap, rather than the reduced sellback price from a vendor.

Even if they do trade BGI and then sell them to a vendor for less than I paid no one has lost. I have the Krono instead of the 504k plat I spent on BGI, I'm pleased. The non-Gold member has the plat from selling 80 BGI to a vendor, something they would rather have than the Krono which they acquired by spending $17.99 US or by PL'ing or cybering someone or whatever, if they would have been more pleased to have the Krono they shouldn't have done the trade with me.

You can claim that I lose because I spend the plat to allow the barter unit to enter circulation but that's incorrect. If I would rather have the plat than the BGIs I wouldn't buy them, I will only buy them if it provides me with a benefit.

My supply of BGIs would be no different than my supply of perfected distillers, purity augs or double XP potions. It's something that currently provides me with no benefit that I chose to purchase because of a possible future benefit to myself or a guildmate. Maybe I'll make some more OoW era tradeskill augs and use the BGIs at some point.

No, you just can't get anymore.

First one sounds like a bug, the second working as intended.

if i had a million on a gold account, it went silver, it would be there when i log in.
It would eat anything new I sold, refuse any trades people would give me, and I couldnt loot anymore on corpses.

Never see a poof on a few accoutns i had in this boat.

Wrong, that was changed like day one. The lvl 95 cap is 47.500 plat on a Silver account, every plat you have over that is still there. You just cant pick it up, or even move it. But it is not destroyed as you suggest. It just sits there in limbo until you spend it down below the cap. i have many. many characters with well over 350k plat on each one on my 2nd account, no one dime poofed logging in.

You can simply buy it from the market as intended, no flaw. And how do they lose money if your on F2P you arent giving them any, but if your plan is to buy and resell them you have to up your account they made clear what F2P was and what you could get before it launched. if your unhappy with the limitations it is completely up to you on if you want to change them.

The first round of these will be very limited only to those who attended fanfaire, so expect the asking price to be much higher than expected

Krono are designed to be traded, and aimed at those who cannot or prefer not to carry a recurring subscription. Once you start using Krono, you will probably continue to do so because it offers all the benefits of trading plat for SOE cards and none of the risks.

F2P accounts are meant to have restrictions. Lifting these restrictions by subscribing is a powerful incentive to obtain Krono.

It does sound as though SOE *ahem* forgot about the F2P crowd in this case. Unless they subscribe "somehow", they really don't have a frozen chance in hell of buying one.

For all of the solutions proposed, none of them addresses the problem. F2P really need a top-down solution to obtain gold status via Krono.

My solution would be the ability to purchase Krono Shards. Maybe break the Krono into 10 pieces? This addresses the issue and allows plat-capped players to access the Krono program without absorbing a plat loss.

Piestro, thanks for weighing in on this.

Isn't the whole point of making a game to make money? Do those making the decisions WANT subscribing to be a challenge?

It really seems like a backwards mentality to me. Quite confusing!

John Smedley said:

"I firmly believe that free-to-play is going to become the predominant model in online gaming for a lot of reasons:

* The upfront cost of buying a game is a large barrier to most people.

* Recurring subscriptions are going to increasingly be a barrier - like I mentioned earlier, when we do exit surveys of the people that quit EverQuest II, we see an astounding 40 per cent of people specifically mention that the recurring subscription is a real barrier.

* It works on a worldwide basis . . ."

"Since I think free-to-play is the future here are some thoughts on some core values I think we should adhere to for future free-to-play games . . .

* Let players be able to get most things that you sell in the store just by playing the game.

* Convenience items are good ways to make money . . ."

By and large, "every other complaint against f2p" is coming from individuals invariably defending a relic of games past. Gamers should jump on board while they have the opportunity to impact the future of their beloved Titles.

Failing to support the Pay to Play model in new features and expansion releases contradicts the new vision of SOE. Preferably SOE "gets it right" in regards to Kronos as opposed to implementing another feature half-way. Again.

Krono are only created by someone spending $17.99 US. Players making that purchase will decide what to do with those Krono. Those players have the motivation to appeal to non-Gold members as a larger pool of potential customers will by basic market forces result in a higher sale price and/or quicker sale.

The notion that anyone, Gold or not, is entitled to being able to purchase Krono for plat is simply absurd. If you want a Krono you have to make an offer by /auc, /buyer or however that makes someone want to spend $18 on you.

The higher the price that you offer whether in plat, Black Gold Ingots, PL, loot rights, cyber or whatever the more people that will be willing to spend $18 and the more likely that someone will choose to sell to you.