Because station cash value fluctuates greatly because of 2x and 3x promotions. Something similar to the d3 auction house would be a better idea, with soe taking a cut of real money transactions. Didn't there used to be eq2 servers with something like this where they supported players selling to players? We don't need more plat entering the market sold by soe.
It's also good for gifting gold membership time. Not that anyone in EQ has ever logged into someone else's account for this reason.
Hopefully next patch, considering they're talking it up now. Personally, it can't come soon enough. I had a guildmate return just before Christmas, and he had a few days before he'd be able to go Gold. I would have gladly given him my Fan Faire Krono if I could, but instead I had to give him a gift card I had to get him Gold earlier.
Of course not, that would violate the EULA, people just use Game Cards which also allows them to gift SC. Krono allow you to do secure transactions with strangers, that is their only clear edge over Game Cards. Hopefully they are added to /buyer so I can pick some up without having to pay attention to Bazaar spam or even worse join ;general.
SOE taking a % of the real money transaction, initially makes sense but you are missing a very, very important point that would create a conflict of interest for SOE. SOE is the federal reserve bank of platinum, they make all pp, ... they control the PP supply with an iron fist. If SOE were to make PP scarce, the $$ to PP exchange rate would go up and so would SOEs earning. Example: Suppose that two people come to an agreement of exchanging $10 for 100k plat with SOE taking 10%. SOE would have a strong incentive to increase the amount of the transaction, because lets face it, 10% of $20 is more then %10 of $10. How would they drive up the price of the transaction? Easy, by decreasing the money supply so that 100k pp would go for $20 or $30 .... of which they just increased their earnings by 2 and 3 times. So, if SOE were to do direct player to player PP to $$ brokering, they would need a flat rate so they have no perverse incentive to tweak the PP supply to line their pockets ... another hurdle of this system, is that they would have to deduct $$ from someones account and transfer it to someone elses account, which they may not want to tackle. The $$ for Station Cash system is already set up and while SOE *could* tweak PP supply in order to increase the volume $$ for Station Cash transactions, if there is nothing useful for Station Cash to buy no one would perform the $$ for Station Cash transaction. Could such a system lead to out of control items being sold in the market place and a lowering of the PP supply (or conversely a cost increase on all items PP is used to purchase in the game, which would have the same effect. Really what we are talking about is the buying power of PP)? Perhaps. I very much doubt that someone on the EQ team has not thought of the $$ for station cash transaction ... perhaps, the Krono is nothing more then a testing of the waters for bigger things. Who knows.
I agree it would be very easy to implement sc for pp and could be a large cash infusion for EQ but we've been moving away from plat sInks the last few expansions. And i dot know really how bad it would affect the server economies. It would be very difficult to set something up like d3 but d3 has had the opposite of what you described, gold prices have plummeted but there's many factors involved there. Either way, I think we both agree it's time for SoE to get in on PP sales as part of the FTP services. Creating a safe way for players to purchase plat for money is pretty much an extension of beig able to trade game time for pp
Following the Krono model they would sell a tradeable item for 1050sc or more which can be redeemed for 1000sc. Redeeming the item would not be affected by double and triple promos, it would always award the person clicking it 1000sc.
I didn't say it *would* happen, I said it *could* happen and there would be an incentive for it to happen. It all depends who is the chairman of the PP reserve and what policies they implement. I think the only thing that would really change would be that instead of a 3rd party receiving a kick back for brokering a deal, would be that SOE receives it. Which I think would be a good thing. Either way, I am up for experiementation since there is certain amount of political sensitivities that must be considered in introducing such a system ... even though it is just a game. Cheers!
Directly selling plat is a profoundly different concept than selling items which can be exchanged. In the case of Krono a player still has to earn the plat, likely something they would have done anyways. If we sold plat directly it would inject more plat into the economy than would have otherwise been generated. And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of differences.
Oh, I did not suggest the direct selling of plat for $$ by SOE ... I suggested the ability to exchange Station Cash in game with other players instead of just the Krono. The Krono represents one item in the market place and that is fine .. Station Cash is also indirect item, but unlike the Krono it represents anything SOE sells in the market place including monthly subscriptions. For example, I could sell items that I farmed or tradeskilled in buyer mode and I price my items in Station Cash instead of PP ... which then I could buy a monthly subscription or xp potions or a mount or backpacks, ect. For example, suppose I am not interested in using the bazaar, tradeskilling and farming because I have a family and my time is limited ect ... but there are items that I would like to buy in the bazaar for a new character I am starting. I could simply go buy some station cash, exchange it with other people for PP that I could then go use in the bazaar ... or find a person that is trading items for station cash. For example, I want to help a guild mate buy a subscription to play for a month because he/she is having a tight month ... I can buy the station cash, from a player with my PP or directly from SOE with my $$, and give it to my guildie to use for the month. There is *still* that level of indirectness (the production and consumption of PP remain unchanged. PP is only produced by killing mobs and selling loot to vendors. And PP is only consumed by buying in game useful items.) ... and the only time that people would stop buying station cash would be when there are no useful items in the market place. But xp potions, bags, merc slots, subscriptions especially are VERY usefull. The important thing to note is that any of the scenarios above are already possible via the black market that already exists ... the only thing that would really differ would be who is pulling in revenue for assisting such transactions. I understand that there are political sensitivities that must be observed, so I think the Krono is a fantastic way to at least test those waters. Perhaps it won't work and will go away or perhaps it proves to be palatable for the public as a whole and leads us to other options. It will be interesting to see the results.
I support this move a lot, it would certainly be nice to have Krono be redeemable for SC or 30 days play time. Be great to give players a non black market way to get the benefits of game cards. To that end, also be very useful to make SC be tradeable, as I might have some SC laying around and decide I want to surprise a friend, or use in a trade of some kind. Is SC that I bought, why shouldn't I be able to gift it/trade it? For that matter, be grand to make loot cards tradeable in-game as well. As it stands now, you have to trust the other guy enough to complete the trade on his end if you give plat first or whatever. Is so much simpler to just put both in a trade window, be able to inspect the trade, and have no risk. This wouldn't stop the sites selling plat/loot cards whatever or the black market element of the game, but sure would be nice to let those of us wanting to play by the rules have real options. This would make the black market element shrink quite a lot too.
I"m hoping this works out well. It would be great to remove the plat sellers (commercial entities) from the game.
guess i will have to check with the person to see if they can make another toon. issue is from my understanding that they can get to the char. select screen and that is all. So i was wondering if i sent krono to them is SoE going to make it so that if the person can not log on a toon they can access it to pay for account to go to gold via, SoE site, or thru char. select screen?
Pick a server that neither of you play on. Make new characters, buy Krono on that server, hand to their character, click and gold. They can now log on their restricted class and/or race characters made while that account was Gold. If someone can buy a Krono from Sony for themselves they would simply buy a month of gametime for themselves. If someone is gifting a month it's cheaper to buy a Game Card and tell them the code than buy a Krono. The one corner case issue is someone has enough plat to buy a Krono and only has restricted class and/or race characters on that account. To avoid that corner case buy the Krono before your Gold sub runs out for when/if you decide to play EQ again.
