Premium Currency and Such Stuff and Fluff

There will always be many stances on micro-transactions. This is inevitable but a choice must be made in order for the game to survive. I will be addressing many of your points in my feedback and I will attempt to keep it as organized and error-free as possible.

The biggest issue with buying items is the pay-to-win effect on the game if targeted more towards this. PinkCrown was correct as to say items should be more of a cosmetic feel. However, this may grasp the attention of a few while others looking to pay and gain that advantage over others. I remember playing a game where you could create your own items with its own stats potentially worth up to $10,000. The sad fact was, people bought into this and accounts were worth up to $20,000 a piece when combined with stats and achievements. This system sounds completely beneficial to the survive of the servers and game in general. The problem occurs when you had players like me who refused to pay for valid reasons and there was a massive gap in PvP. I do not foresee this happening on the scale it had evolved to in this game. A similar effect may occur on a smaller scale through beneficial items being sold. I applaud PC for calming cosmetics would be the mass of items sold.


I completely disagree with the fact that rare and unobtainable (after the fact) items were sold on the gem market. Most of the players, including the new players, were completely oblivious to the fact they even existed! The items were then stockpiled in the banks of the rich and never circulated. This was a huge issue economic wise. I will now be directing this section to the Jagex created game Runescape. Runescape included a variety of rares released into the game. 

After a certain point, these items were no longer obtainable to the average player. The highest valued items:
 circulated heavy however despite their rarity. Players knew these items and wanted them for their collections. The price of these hats soared from 2,000 gold ending up at 2,147b (max cash due to unsigned integer limits.)The fact remains that the economy was solid. Now relate back to FO: sets were rare if they included all pieces and a box. you now had to convince players that wasting 6-10 spaces in their bank was worth the absurd amount of money. Most of these boxes did not look stylish anyhow and would not be sold to wear with the amount of players on the market. This was most likely the downfall of sales in boxes. Players abusing the free gems might buy a box here or there for the extra money but no real money was obtained through this system. Limiting the amount of rares to notable and desirable items versus thousands of discontinued player created items seems to be the better solution. 


I will say that I was never one to buy currency for the game. However, placing ads in the downloadable client (at the top) is unquestionable. It does not affect anyone in anyway but generates revenue for the game. Allowing premium players to remove this ad by logging into a account payed to remove the banner with a reasonable amount or possibly a monthly fee to help keep the server alive. Players like me (the ones who choose not to pay for a game) continue to support the up keeping of this game. Selling unneeded things such as additional bank space is a great approach to generating money and encouraging the trading of the premium currency. 


I will state that the market was flawed and this was a large issue. My attempts to merchant were quickly foiled as I was limited to selling 5 items at a time that never sold due to the horrible graphical user interface of the market. The ugly setup drove players away and had me selling my items to a computer-controlled store for quick money. This effectively helped me retain my 3% which was an interesting attempt to reduce inflation.

To solve inflation, players must be paying gold for necessities and feel as if they are not losing too much. The 3% tax through the market left no room for merchants and did a great job driving us away. Instead(as a suggestion), having repairable items will take money out of the economy and keep players from grinding 24/7. Hopefully we will not be seeing monsters drop multiple items worth 5,000 gold with a store nearby to sell to. 

A fiat money (money worth of no real value but entrusted by users to be accepted everywhere) system is the common and a successful approach in many popular games. I am unfamiliar with the Realm of the Mad God trading system but I believe it is a item for item trading system. This will be incorporated with the player to player trading system. We may see more of a economy with player to player trading though. 

it is questionable. first, it doesn't bring that much money, second, it's not reliable (someone can easily abuse it so you don't get any more ads, or people might not pay for advertising if your game isn't popular already, and third, there's people whoa re bothered by ads.
and PoE's system is anything but elegant. it is interesting and works but trading is horribad experience. 

and yeah, when working on premium currency stuff you don't need to add something that almost everyone will need. some people dont like paying for cosmetic effects, some people don't like p2w. point is, get something that enough people will pay for. not everyone needs to spend hundreds of dollars, but make it so that casuals can spend up to $10, and also add some more rich stuff (like mvp mentioned, item design. and usually stuff like that).

Having to repair gear to get coins out of the game is a good idea.

I hate pay to win. Anything that is more than 1% better than the best free gear just angers the general populace of a 'free' game. See Golden Pickaxes, Monthly Gem pack items, Arc Reactors, etc.

Again, I refer everyone to this video on micro-transactions!

FO's market system wasn't completely terrible, and worked well for the earlier period of the game. I was able to acquire several of the rarest items long after they came out, just through smart market decisions in 2010/2011. The problem as others have stated is that limited edition discontinued items sky-rocketed in value, while the gold-standard became increasingly valueless. Collectors and other rare-item owners had no reason to give up their best items, because there was nothing to give them up for, and no trade system. Later on, new players had no hope of getting into the elite merchant class without spending loads of money on gems.

The only limited edition items that I would be in favor of (I think, haven't thought this through properly yet) are event-related account-bound items, such as things for alpha players, moderators, holidays, anniversaries, etc. Everything else should be attainable by an F2P players who puts in enough time and effort to be among the best.

tl;dr: I'm in favour of a strong cosmetic item/appearance system of micro-transactions - where spending is optional, and winning is skill-based.

but just outfit and cosmetic things
I kinda liked the way it was heading with complete sets and UM shop, with items increasing prices, but I feel that for that system to work it needs to be carefully worked out. It would give hoarders chance to give their items for a chance of other items, and items would be always obtainable, but for a higher price.
Maybe if demand and popularity could be somehow worked into pricing, so that the prices are generated sort of like a stock market.

My honest opinion, though fully knowing it'll never happen. I honestly think that there shouldn't be a premium currency because it just makes the game quite unfair for people who don't have money or who choose not to pay. Personally speaking, if you're gonna get really good items, either grind for them or make them super difficult to get. You shouldn't have to pay to get super awesome items. Premium currency just kinda ruins the game, and you basically can only be a super strong player if you pay for it. That's just my opinion and how I feel with full knowledge that someone's gonna disagree with me. But personally, if I'm gonna pay to play a game, I'd rather make a one time payment (such as World of Warcraft) and build my character through actual questing and all that stuff, not spend $2,000 like I did in FO.

I'm not abolished to the fact of paying money for content. But the content that was offered in Fantasy Online was borderline mentality aiee. I don't want some nom-a-nom-nom outfits. Literally I cared about less than 1% of the outfits in that game. Luckily there was uber items... but they kept changing! I eventually reached a point where I got fed up and stopped buying stuff.

Content is good, but it's gotta be consistent. I'm also not abolished to the fact you can do something like FO did. Where you pay hundreds of millions in pure coin for some good items. The GOOD items have to be at least SOME hard to get, but if you're gonna make uber items : Make them a one time deal. Don't change them over and over and over again. =z=

I mean, if you pay for stuff, you should get good items. But it should be along the lines where it gets you from point A to Z faster, not "You can only reach point P in the game, then you have to buy items in order to get any stronger!" You should be able to get really strong in game naturally, but paying for items "accelerates". Also if a super rare hard item from an ultra hard boss is offered, people could buy it so they don't have to spend hours searching for it. BUT it is still offered in game.

I think there must be something that you can pay to get it easily, but people that don't want to pay with their irl money must have a chance to get it and be like the ones that pay.

Premium Currency honestly just ruins games.

I want to clarify that I'm not against being able to, in some form, pay in order to get stronger weapons, I just don't think those should be locked to paying money. For example, in FO, if you wanted those any-level any-class new-strongest-item-ingame equips, you had to buy the latest gempack. And once a regular pattern for those was established the prices for said extra items just went insane.

If it was 100% my decision, I would advocate -no- additional items when purchasing premium currency (aside from the very rare special occasion type things). So for example, you pay £5, you get 500 gems. Yeah I'm going to continue calling them gems here, move along.
This would work by having a 'gem shop'.
In said shop would be say, the usual cosmetic things (that do not discontinue), as well as a selection of gear items. To give an example, lets pretend the game comes out with one area and the level cap set at 10.
There would be a sword in the shop, with similar stats to the strongest lootable/non-premium-currency-buyable weapon that currently exists. So your choice is to go through the usual game and get the current strongest weapon the long 'free' way, or if you want to, buy it via premium currency right away and then do the quests etc.
This item would have a level range of say 1-10, compared to the 'free' item having a range of maybe 8-10.

New area comes out, cap goes up to 20.
Existing premium currency item stays, another new one is added comparable to the new strongest 'free' item, for the range 11-20.

And so on. So rather than buying your way into being better than everyone else, you're fast-tracking your weapon, but still need to meet some sort of requirement, such as level, and you're on more of an even level than outright better.

Just in case - I'm working on the assumption that you can also, in some form, grind premium currency the same way as you could in FO. I won't go into the many ways this could be done and controlled, but for this example, lets just assume it's at least somewhat balanced and not limited and inflated. (I enjoy thinking of the control of say, spiral knights or puzzle pirates for their premium currency stuff).

I  also think there should be an even number of premium and non-premium currency sinks, so that -both- types of currency are enough in demand to encourage a flow back and forth of transactions, rather than one type of currency being worthless.
I also use 'cosmetic' loosely, I don't just mean outfits, but also maybe things like guild shields, customisable titles...etc etc.

I know premium currency can be a turn-off, because so many games do it so, so badly, and are obviously trying to just milk everything out of you.
I remain hopeful that we manage to strike a balance between being able to afford the servers etc while also allowing people to play for free (without being locked out of content) 

i agree, maybe a shop with all the year's boxes so no collecting and unlimited clothing options

I agree with Pink***. If there's gonna be premium currency, at least make it so that F2P players dont feel like they have to hit a brick wall or work harder and stuff to get as good as those who pay.

Ari didn't post on this thread... you mean PC