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

Seems like what is wanted is a loophole by which non paying customers can receive the full benefits that full paying customers receive.
Is this not what is being proposed? A means by which non paying members can subscribe Gold without actually paying a cent? Subsidized by myself and others who pay to buy the Kronos? All the F2P member needs to do is find the way to farm and keep the required payment amount. It's being suggested that they need a larger cap for this very purpose. Yes?

Is this what SOE intended with its "free" to play model? Is this what I'm supposed to be embracing?

You're also subsidizing our food stamps and health care in addition to our gameplay.

I, on the other hand, as a FTP player am the only person who is truly supporting the game by being a "full paying customer" of unlockers. Of recent, I've been spending more on AA unlockers than a monthly subscription would cost. That premium is worth it to me to be able to convert my financial resources into useable game assets as opposed to having subscription time rot away while at work, parent teacher conferences, and other obligations.

As it stands now, the existing unlockers will not last forever. While SOE is "definitely considering changes as time goes by," I will be taking my full paying support for five accounts back to Atlantica Online, Runes of Magic and Vindictus the same way I did two years ago.

300% increase in unique logins from the implementation of FTP.

Gold members' money is the same color green as FTP players' money.

After buying the first Krono by barter or whatever they would be a Gold member with no plat cap. Even if they reverted to Silver for awhile they could still have a large amount of plat and/or a Krono for when they want to be Gold again.

Yes, you should be embracing more players for the game. If Bob is willing to pay for his account and Dave's as long as Dave PL's him then you have 2 paying customers. Without that option you might have 0 or 1 paying customers as Dave might not be willing to play if it costs him $US every month and Bob might not be willing to play if he has to spend most of his playtime advancing his character.

If you don't want to group with Bob, don't. If Dave's /auc PL spam annoys you put him on ignore. The $30 or so (assume Bob is on a sub plan) that Sony receives is ultimately to your benefit as long as you play Everquest.

Trajet, you have missed the boat. The ENTIRE reason Krono were introduced was so that players could trade them to other players for PLAT. Furthermore, since SOE is in business to make money and not for charity, it follows that SOE wants as many people as possible to subscribe. This means every single player should have the same access to purchasing Krono, Gold sub or otherwise.

You just made my point after attempting to refute it. Krono will sell for far more plat than F2P accounts have access to. By the by, the only alternate currency I see possibly traded for Krono, outside of plat, is power leveling. The point is that for F2P, plat will be the main method.

People, we WANT these people to subscribe. You must understand that. Your smarmy statement about entitlement appears shortsighted and vindictive.

In short...yes. Note: Below I'll be using the term legal. I mean the usage of the word in the strict sense of "is compliant with the rules". I'm not in any way suggesting law enforcement could or would get involved in it.

I'm a player with more money than time. Some people are players with more time than money. Sony would like some of that money of mine. So what they've done is found a way to make everyone more happy.

I get access to plat, in an amount I couldn't (legally) acquire for myself in the time I can play. By trading my money for plat, what I'm really doing is trading my money for time. Time spent not farming plat is time I can spend on playing the game.

Players with more time than money get access to gold membership by trading for plat. Effectively, they're trading the time spent gathering plat (through farming or selling items, learning to "work" the bazaar to find the best prices and resell, etc) for something they could previously only get through money. This is something they couldn't (again, legally) do before.

Sony is getting money and facilitating the trade in a secure, legal manner. I don't see much room for complaint, especially if the enterprising player can trade an item (or multiple items, or services such as PL-ing) for their first Krono. Once that's purchased and activated, they don't have to operate with a plat-cap.

Black Gold Ingots are plat. There might even be a better item, hundreds of players will search for items that have a higher stack value (~120k for BGI) and/or a smaller % loss if the items enter and exit circulation after a single player to player exchange.

After purchasing a single Krono using BGI, that player has a month to accumulate plat and buy another Krono with no plat restrictions. Someone intending to pay for their sub only with plat purchased Krono should do this, even if they will spend months at Silver before they click another Krono.

I'm not attempting to refute your point. I'm explaining to players how to acquire Krono. If you want to acquire Krono and are restricted to 50k plat (Level 100) you need to use your brain and/or read posts and use the brain of the poster to bypass that restriction.

Sounds like its time to add a vendor only item that you can buy and sell back for the same price. Sounds like an easy fix.

I saw 2 things that where not completely correct, These Krono where created to prevent scamming.

and the populations are up 150% not 300 unless its doubled this week heh

20:30: I stand corrected. You are right.

20:00: "I know a lot of people the people in this room came up through our subscription times when we first launched in retail times. Things have changed quite a bit . . . We've been switching slowly but surely all of our games to the free to play model." - John Smedly.

That's how it is in EQ2.

Platinum cap on silver is a stupid concept anyway, because the value of platinum changes per server and over time, while the cap is fixed.

An old friend logged in as silver a few months ago, and had a lot of plat with no way to increase it, so I told him to buy stacks of Blue Diamonds 262pp each 26k/stack and store them in his bank. The loss on resale on many high value items (not all) is 10% blue diamonds sell for 236pp per. So he reduced his cash below the silver limit, and could over time loot and recoup the 10% he would lose from the initial adjustment. A silver account can as the Character approaches the limit invest into gems Ruby is always available on jewelry NPC, and with an Extraplanar Trade Satchel, store 32 stacks for trade value, it just takes some thought and a little planning. For high value trade, a deluxe Toolbox with 10 stacks of Blue Diamonds would have a sale value of 236k pp. I have not used or considered Black gold Ingots as a barter item, but 114k per stack sale in 8 slot trade window would be near the million mark, so being a little inventive could provide a useful tool, ( BGI 6300pp to buy 5714pp to resell)

Most of you guys are COMPLETELY missing the point of my original post. I want SOE to make money, ALOT of money, so they keep making games I like. But when they add new things, like Kronos, that are so very obviously targeted to the F2P player to offer an alternative method for them to conver to a paid subscription ... I want to see them make a few changes to the game, via cap limits raised or unlockers offered to make this EASY for people to buy.

If you start making people jump hoops to stockpile diamonds, or borrow moms VISA to sub one month, you DEFEAT the purpose and intent of the token. Every single hurdle suggested here drives more ppl to just say "F-it, thats to much of a PITA, I am taking my money elsewhere".

Less roadblocks is better. Better for the player, Better for the seller and Better for SOE, and Better = more years of continued Everquest gaming.

This isnt Rocket Science, its just simple common sense.

FTP players are one target.

Another is Gifting to other people, you could pay for time and give it to a friend to play. I am thinking this is more likely to be a main cause then selling plat.

1) F2P player wants to purchase Krono
2) F2P player buys a gamecard or makes a direct purchase from Sony to unlock their plat limit
3) F2P player accumulates plat and purchases Krono

A) F2P player wants to purchase Krono
B) F2P player buys a gamecard or makes a direct purchase from Sony and goes Gold for a month
C) F2P player accumulates plat and purchases Krono

I) F2P player wants to purchase Krono
II) F2P player accumulates plat by storing it as Diamonds or BGI or with a friend
III) F2P player purchases Krono

How exactly is 1-3 EASY compared to A-C or I-III? The returning player who is low on plat, already has enough SC to purchase the plat unlocker who is willing to grind out 250k plat (or whatever amount) in non-prestige gear who has no friends on Gold accounts who can hold their plat has to buy 40 BGI for 252kpp and then trade those and 21440pp to someone for a Krono.

If the Krono is on an AFK trader it's still pretty easy, just go "/auc WTT 40 BGI and 21440pp for a Krono, if someone is willing to spare 2 minutes for a returning player you can buy the Krono from Traderxx and sell the BGI to any merchant and get your plat back".

So it costs the player 23440pp, how much SC for a plat unlocker should they pay to save 23440pp? Well if $17 is worth 250k (price of Krono when purchasing 2 or more at a time) that means 23440pp is worth $1.59. Even assuming a double promotion is the built into the SC pricing model this puts the break even point of a plat unlocker around 3000sc for the purpose of buying Krono.

Now removing one of the motivations to go Gold (the plat limit) costs Sony how much in expected revenue as that many fewer people think it's worth it to go Gold and instead spend even $5 once to permanently eliminate the plat limit?

No, it's not rocket sciece, but it is Econ 101.

I have said it before and will say it again. Bronze F2P is a way for People to test drive EQ without having to spend any $ at all, family, friends, whoever wants to. Silver is a lowcost step up for bronze to expand the Plat and AA limits, OR, for Golds to stay in touch while having financial difficulties and not being able to pay the gold fees. In either case, the idea is to allow one to acquire/maintain the addiction at a minimal cost. The various options for enterprising people to gain financially are numerous, the new Krono simply allows SOE to move into the plat market, in a controlled way, that should be secure for the citizens of Norrath. I would expect that ingame services for hire such as powerlevels, AA, gear for $ will continue, but still put peoples accounts (and possibly much more) at risk. In the end to consider Bronze/Silver as anything other then comealongs or stayalongs is misguided. Soe wants everyone to go Gold and stay that way. If the plat rich, $ poor, can acquire the means to maintain gold status and are happy to buy Krono from a player, who is willing to pay SOE for a secure ingame method to gain plats at a bargainable rate, then all three parties will be pleased (hopefully). Of course if there is a higher Krono influx then willingness to part with plat the trade value will change, possibly drastically. So back to plat limits, maybe there will be a fee introduced to raise limits for silvers, to 1k, 2k 5k, per level, if people have lots of $ they can just go gold, if not, then they can be inventive in accummulating plat to trade for Krono and gold status. Or not.

The only thing costing SOE expected revenue is the LACK of available unlockers.

Disregard the Silver unlocker as a one time investment: $5.00
Disregard the class unlocker as a one time investment: $7.50
Disregard the race unlocker as a one time investment: $3.00
Disregard the inventory unlockers as a one time investment: $2.50 x 4 = $10.00
Disregard $25.50, almost two months subscription for a new player to make one SERIOUS character and enter the tutorial.

I'm very, very, easily getting 50 AA per day on my rerolled FTP toons due to the low AA bonus. To be fair, that's not an endless cash sink; however, that's a theoretical expected revenue of $37.50 per month for three months (rounding the months up because it's my post and I want to make it look better).
Disregard $112.50, over twice as much as a monthly subscription, to SERIOUSLY play one character to 4000 AA.

Disregard endless expected revenue due to the LACK of item unlockers.
Disregard $39.99 as there's no minimal incentive to buy RoF as one can't unlock prestige gear (to be fair, my personal opinion on this may vary if I hadn't re-rolled at FTP launch).
Disregard $20.00 (800 expansion AA?s) in VoA AA unlockers due to "no change at this time" in VoA content for FTP.
Disregard $X.XX in a plat cap unlocker to buy Kronos which this thread is about.
Disregard all of the above * box accounts.
Disregard some of the above * alts.
Disregard . . .
Disregard . . .
Disregard what you have to spend now and wait for the triple station cash sale at the holiday after the next one so FTP is really only spending $.12 to get what Gold pays $15.00 for.
Disregard FTP players who are asking for a way to spend money on your game.

That's a lot of disregarded for the anti-FTP camp's argument to hold water. SOE ought to be bending over backwards to accommodate FTP players so we can "subsidize" Gold players.

Right, it's disregarded since the logical course of action is to purchase a 3 month Gold sub for $38.97.

The extremely small number of players willing to pay $112.50 for $48.97 in virtual value (only the $10 in inventory unlocks retains value after dropping from Gold to Silver) and the small number of players willing to create absurd examples on message boards simply aren't that relevant.

Sometime during that 3 months buy one or more Krono with plat for the next time you want to go Gold on that account or possibly on a different account or possibly sell the Krono for BGI, PL or whatever if you later decide you don't want more Gold months on any account.

In the meantime with plat caps in place it's slightly more time consuming for a non-Gold account to accumulate enough wealth to acquire a Krono and that's one of the drawbacks of not being a Gold member.

That's the point.

is to go FTP in order to avoid rotting subscription when one doesn't log in for a week or a month.
is to go FTP in order to avoid rotting subscription time when one spends three months logged in making a UI mod as opposed to actively playing.
is to go FTP in order to avoid recurring credit card charges when one works on 100% commission.
is to take one's FTP business elsewhere when one runs out of things to buy.
is to foster easier access to your game so FTP players don't take their business elsewhere.
is to drive up expected revenue of your game to ensure it's vitality.
is to make good decisions for one's own unique family, financial or other situation.

The anti-FTP "No, because I said so" perspective is utterly beyond me. The historical response in the EQ Community has been how many convoluted hoops one can jump through to bypass restrictions and coaching on how best to cheat SOE out of money followed by a complete and utter uproar over the repercussions. That's healthy for the game.

If I spend money on the game, the proverbial "you" benefits. If I don't spend money on the game, the proverbial "you" lose.

The person with a truly subsidized Bronze account and zero unlockers diddling around in Blightfire Moors then disappearing for six months will almost assuredly not be buying Kronos anyway. There is not a serious FTP gamer that complains about paying a premium for FTP. They know they are paying a premium. The purpose of this thread is asking for the ability to pay a premium.

Globally, FTP blows subscription based models completely and entirely out of the water. What will Gold members do when they lose their own "cash is king" argument and the subscription model becomes the premium due to the majority of feature releases being available only via microtransaction? /wave Hero's Forge.

It's never logical to go FTP if it will cost you more than a Gold sub would cost you for a month regardless of what you do in the game. When you're buying those AA unlockers for the double XP weekend some common sense has to come into play to say you know if I just pay $14.99 I can get as much AA as I want for 30 days, I'll have no plat cap and Krono are coming, I won't get pop-ups, I can benefit from better gear and augs if I own any and so on.

If you're paying less than a Gold member, which every FTP player with a basic grasp of logic will be doing, you get reduced value which includes if you want to buy a Krono to go Gold you need to convert plat to BGI and pay 273440pp if a Gold player is paying 250k. That reduced value is the whole incentive to go Gold, the closer Silver is to Gold the less likely someone will use a Krono.