121233-an-innovative-new-business-model-idea

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Here's the general idea: separate earning CREDD from farming plat. People still buy plat for cash just like now, people earn CREDD by being constructive and helpful.
 
Here's how it works. 
 
1. Carbine starts selling plat directly at a rate of tied to the total plat supply--set currently at whatever fraction of the total plat supply generates 10 plat per $20. Customers who spend that cash buy the same plat they've always bought, but it's now free from player-based market manipulation and controlled by the rate of plat generation through the content.
 
2. CREDD is retained as a token that can be redeemed to pay for a subscription but is no longer earned with plat. Instead, it's earned with a currency--we'll call it Urnedsub just to give it a name--that is nontradable, nonsellable currency that can only be earned through any of a variety of non-toxic aspects of gameplay. 100 Urnedsubs can be redeemed for a single CREDD token.
 
3. How do you earn Urnedsub? Obviously the details of how these are earned would need to be sorted out carefully and can be tuned according to the kind of playerbase that the developers want, but the idea behind them is that you get them by making the game a more fun place to be for everyone else, rewarding people for being an asset to the game by letting them play for free. This contrasts with the current system, which rewards people by letting them play for free based on their ability to accrue plat regardless of whether the activities that they perform to do that are constructive or destructive to the game.
 
For example:
PvE:
Join the queues without a fully premade team and complete a shiphand, adventure, dungeon, or raid successfully? Get an Urnedsub!
Playing a support role while these instances are being successfully completed? Have another Urnedsub!
Pass on the boss loot so others can have it? Get an Urnedsub!
Participate as one of at least five people in a world event? Urnedsub for you!
Every hour spent mentored down to help low level players earns 2 Urnedsubs!
PvP:
Complete a PvP instance that was even remotely competitive (<5x as many kills for the winners than for the losers)? Get an Urnedsub!
Playing a support role to help your team win? Have another Urnedsub!
​Crafting:
Are you crafting items that other people find useful? For crafting items, get Urnedsub at a rate defined by the item crafting tier and value every time someone else consumes, soulbinds, or crates them!  (Thanks, Chilla! Good point!)Social:
Have a housing plot interesting enough to attract people to hang out and party, run challenges, and so on? For every person-hour spent non-AFK by other people at your plot, get an Urnedsub!
Do paying subscribers think you're an asset to the game? Each of them gets 20 soulbound consumables each month that gift a selected player with one Urnedsub, to use on whoever they want!
I'm sure there's many other ideas that could be added to the list, but these will do as starting examples for discussion purposes.
 
4. Are you the sort of player that unapologetically trashes everyone else's game? I'm sorry to say that if you're here If you're going to make everyone around you have less fun, you should pay for the inconvenience to everyone else. It won't cost you a huge amount for each infraction, but if you make a habit of them they'll start accumulating faster and faster until you take the hint.
 
PvE:
First to quit an instance? Ooooh, lose an Urnedsub.
Click "Need" on an item that's not even for your class? Ouch. One less Urnedsub for you.
AFK for more than five minutes in an instanced raid or dungeon? Pay an Urnedsub token for making everyone wait around for you!
Decline 3 queue pops in a row? How about entering one or stepping out of the queue until you're ready to go in. Lose an Urnedsub. (Thanks for noting the exploit to discourage, Zoomie!)
PvP:
Roflstomping the opposition? (>5x as many kills for the winners as the losers) Pay an Urnedsub for unsportsmanlike behavior.
Camping the opposition's spawn zone? Pay an Urnedsub for every kill within ten meters of the opposing spawn.
Social:
Spamming chat? Urnedsub fee for being an irritation, please.
Every time you buy an item off the AH/CX and then turn around and list the same type of item at a higher price within the same day, the artificial inflation will cost you an Urnedsub.
Are you irritating paying subscribers? Each of them gets five consumables each month that removes an Urnedsub from your balance. Better not tick off too many of them. (As Zoomie rightly notes, this could encourage some highly undesirable organized efforts by players to push individual competitors out of the game. Bad idea, and thanks to Zoomie for noting it.)  
General:
Lose more than 3 urnedsubs in an hour? Double the rate of losing Urnedsubs. Take the hint or start paying in cash for the privelege of playing the game. 
Consider and discuss!
 
Edits have and will be made to update and refine in response to feedback. 	
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			D'oh. Title misspelled "Idea". Fix plz?	
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The first priority in every game should be treating every customer as an equal customer until there is a violation of the EULA involved.  Implementing a system like the one you described is a damn fine way to drive away more players than you'd be helping.
 
Plus some of the implementations (getting rewarded for playing a support role) are wildly exploitable.	
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			Um...... no.	
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I agree in the concept of such a system. We should be rewarding people for positive traits such as giving and help rather than rewarding individuals for negative traits such as taking because taking always comes at someone's else expense. These types of systems have already been implemented in different formats and show positive results.
 
Need a simple example? Takes this forum then. If you post something that is helpful, there is a chance others will like the post. If you view your profile, you can see how many likes you've accumulated. The more likes you have most likely the better reputation you have and thus are rewarded by the community by being granted a stronger voice.
 
On the flip side, post some not nice things, troll, be cranky or whatever, and people most likely will remember your name, bash you in return and your voice just doesn't carry much weight.	
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Here's the general idea: separate earning CREDD from farming plat. People still buy plat for cash just like now, people earn CREDD by being constructive and helpful rather than greedy and toxic.
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There are a few problem I'll need to raise here.  The first problem is that, necessarily, this will create a vacuum of revenue in the game.  It's all well and good for people to be nice to each other (and I'll get to support for the idea later), but this does have the end result of having a lot of players being nice to each other and paying nothing.  That could constitute a problem.  Presently, I don't think there's a problem with CREDD being used as-is, because outside of a few exploits, there are very few times "greedy" translates to "profit" in Wildstar.  Particularly, most of the people I know who use CREDD to pay in actually just grind a gathering circle for a few hours, a relatively neutral thing to do.  Of course, CREDD works as a concept because, essentially, it's a trade:  a month's subscription time is bought in exchange for game currency.  As described, I wouldn't think this would work.  It seems more allegorical than anything else.
 
But, believe it or not, I think there may be something to this idea.
 
Let's remove CREDD from the equation and set that aside, and instead just connect the two dots directly.  Currency, whether game currency or another currency, being tied directly to actions which improve the community.  Yasfan touches on a few points that aren't currently addressed in the game, that rewards are tied very specifically to performance.  The rewards tied to that performance shouldn't be touched, of course, you shouldn't be able to "nice" your way into 1800 rated PVP gear.  However, two systems can be applied here that aren't presently being applied.  One is a system Blizzard introduced to WoW, which rewards players filling support roles where piles of DPS are showing up with extra rewards.  Why not throw boom boxes around to people who tank in PUGS at level 35, taking new players through Skullcano?  Or another currency?  Another is the Commendation system for FFXIV:ARR, where you could directly commend a party member who left a good impression.  Barring exploitation (the reason we can't have nice things), these are certain ways we could directly reward positive experiences.
 
Let's say that we find things that people feel are positive community moves.  Running low level dungeons even through your daily is done.  Queueing for PVP after your daily is done.  Helping a lower level member with a group quest.  Or, let's talk about implementing some hypothetical systems to do this.  How about a revamped advice channel that actively allows players to ask questions and, if a player answers it, that player who asked can point out the helpful answer?  Or, getting back to an earlier thread where we talked about players being able to construct their own group content, you can credit the person who made it and maintained it.  You put together these systems and others (trying to avoid exploitation as much as you can) and you add your currency to that.  Then, you can have players buy things, including different currencies like bonus renown, bonus experience, bonus cash flow.  And, in the opposite, have people who abandon group lose a chunk of this rating or chance at currency.  If it's a once-in-a-while thing as they should be, you can eat the cost.  But if you're joining groups and leaving as soon as a gold medal isn't possible, you can accumulate nothing.  I hesitate to suggest the opposite of this system (namely something that you use to black-spot someone), but having some excellent rewards at hand like boom boxes and extra buffs to cash generation might simulate having guild rewards for very community-driven solo players, and can make a community-driven guilded player very happy.
 
That idea works, rewarding people being helpful.  It's questionable if people being helpful are being genuinely helpful if it's for rewards, but let's just say some of these are rewards for "greasing the wheels" of Wildstar play.  I could get behind that kind of an idea.	
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The first priority in every game should be treating every customer as an equal customer until there is a violation of the EULA involved.  Implementing a system like the one you described is a damn fine way to drive away more players than you'd be helping.
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Great! When you're playing one of those, would you let me know?
 
In THIS game, some customers pay for a subscription with cash and some customers pay for their subscription with effort. Only the effort that this game asks them to provide is not just useless--because Carbine flatly does not need them to collect plat and deposit it into a CREDD market--it is actually unhelpful in many cases because the plat that they collect can be very effectively collected by dominating the AH/CX markets and farming valuable content to the exclusion of others, thereby earning their subscription by making everyone around them miserable.
 
The only thing I'm suggesting here is that the game start asking them to pay for their subscription with useful effort--things that improve the game for everyone. 
 
 
 
Right now we have people who "earn" their sub by simply farming the crap out of gathering circles and vendoring the materials because there's already such a surplus that the mats are worth more at the vendor than at the CX. We have people "earn" their sub by doing nothing more than creating speculation-driven havoc on the AH/CX. They are "earning" their subscription by driving in-game inflation.  And those are not even close to the least constructive ways in which people have "earned" their subscriptions by accruing massive amounts of plat.
 
So with all due respect, the current system is already massively exploited at every turn. The only difference would be that the activities that earn Urnedsub are designed to be things that increase player cooperation and inclusion rather than player competition and vulnerability.
 
I make no pretense that the suggestions I've put forward are perfect--they are there to provoke discussion, not to be etched in stone. But the goal is to refine them by making it harder to exploit them than it is to just do them, not to be completely exploit-proof. The current system didn't manage that, and no system ever will.
 
 
CREDD only works as a concept from the perspective of people paying for their subscription with CREDD. Once you look at it from the other direction, the sheer lunacy of the plan becomes completely clear.
 
The person buying CREDD with cash doesn't care whether the plat they're buying comes directly from Carbine or indirectly through middlemen players acting as plat farmers. They are not paying for a subscription, they are paying for plat--and Carbine creates the plat in the first place, it doesn't need you to collect the plat and deposit it into the CREDD market. If "most of the people you know who use CREDD" are paying for their subscription by sitting in their housing plots doing nothing useful for anybody but themselves to collect plat that Carbine doesn't need them to collect, that is indeed a "neutral" activity. People who pay for their subscription with cash aren't "neutral", they're adding directly to Carbine's revenue stream.
 
But while Carbine doesn't need players to collect plat for them, they DO need is players who fill underfilled roles, queue up in queues that are empty, host social hubs, and so on. People who earn their time here by actually doing something that the game desperately needs, instead of by doing something it doesn't need at all.
 
That's not an allegory. That's doing something valuable to earn something of value.
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Great! When you're playing one of those, would you let me know?
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Not in this game you haven't.
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Been doing it for years.  
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I think you've misinterpreted the idea of CREDD.  The person sitting on his plot, getting currency isn't doing nothing and providing nothing, he's providing plat and getting his subscription paid for in return.  That's not lunacy, it's a personal transaction.  It's not a community relations move, it just puts a floor on RMT prices to theoretically drive them out of the market.
 
As I've described, there's a way to make this valuable, but I don't think it will necessarily work if we're saying everyone that queues repeatedly as a tank can just not pay a subscription.  The game does need people in those roles, but more than anything else, it does need their revenue.  I think it's a nice sentiment, but if Wildstar was really better off with a bunch of people filling the queues for free, it would have launched F2P and used them as a commodity already.  As it is, they need their subscription money to live.
 
I'm all for rewarding people for being good team players, but I don't think that giving all the people you think are nice a free ride and trying to make only the people you don't like pay works out well.  You set up a dichotomy where the game does better financially with a few complete pricks than a hundred thousand nice people who want to earn their sub by being good to the community.  Someone's got to pay to keep the lights on.
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Okay, then in this game I've been doing it for 6 months.  Can you reel in the attitude please?  I've already been moderated for asking you that in a much less friendlier manner.  What we're talking about doesn't warrant you being so rude.
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Someone DOES have to keep the lights on, which is part of why the current system is failing so hard. CREDD for plat incentivizes free play for players who drive paying customers out by locking down the AH, the CX, PvP, and everything else of value that they can lock down.
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...sorry, how is it rude to point out to you that this game flatly does not treat all players identically? Some of them pay cash for their subscription and directly support the game's revenue stream, others don't pay cash and may "earn" their subscription in a way that helps, has no effect, or is actively detrimental to everyone else's play. That's not attitude, that's just a fact.
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Do you not understand that CREDD isn't just randomly generated when someone spits out plat?  Every unit of CREDD is purchased with real money.  There is no such thing as free play in WS.  CREDD is $20.  It doesn't just auto-generate.  Someone HAS to pay for it.  Someone with a subscription buys CREDD, they've paid $35 that month (at minimum).  Someone buys that CREDD and applies it, then essentially both of those subscriptions were $35/2, which is $17.50 each, a net gain for Carbine on both subs.
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I do understand. The people buying that CREDD by and large are not buying it to pay for someone else's subscription. They are buying plat. That's what they want. And what I'm suggesting allows them to continue to do that.
 
So yes, someone does have to pay that money. And they still will be able to, but the people who don't will have to start paying in some useful way too.
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I haven't misinterpreted CREDD at all. Carbine does not need players to collect plat and offer it for sale. It can do that without them to put a floor on RMT prices.
 
And I'm not saying everyone that "queues repeatedly as a tank" can just not pay a subscription--they have to be able to successfully play that role and complete the content. Mentored to level, if Carbine thinks that would be appropriate to avoid exploits. The scale for the currency can be set at whatever level of effort Carbine decides, but frankly the game would be far better off with people spending a few hours tanking in PUGs than it would having the same people spending the same time churning mats and vendoring them for plat.
 
Someone DOES have to keep the lights on, which is part of why the current system is failing so hard. CREDD for plat incentivizes free play for players who drive paying customers out by locking down the AH, the CX, PvP, and everything else of value that they can lock down.
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While I can appreciate that you're thinking of ways to "help" the community this entire idea is flawed and slanted towards your personal beliefs. 
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I do agree with the others that a system like this would be wildly exploited at every turn, but there is something to be said for rewarding participation more. Something like WoWs Q system where it gives goodie bags to people that Q as a role that's lacking in the Qs at that moment. Maybe something like a minor XP/Gold bump rewarded for Qing during off hours as well. Anything to get people doing stuff. And instanced content should provide greater gains than just hitting next and smacking some nodes for 2 hours or farming mobs for drops. Pay for your CREDD by doing content, not bumbling around by yourself.
 
They essentially went full bore into creating content, but forgot to include systems to keep people repeating it outside of random imbues (that they nerf at every turn).	
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...sorry, how is it rude to point out to you that this game flatly does not treat all players identically? Some of them pay cash for their subscription and directly support the game's revenue stream, others don't pay cash and may "earn" their subscription in a way that helps, has no effect, or is actively detrimental to everyone else's play. That's not attitude, that's just a fact.
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I am on board with the incentivizing good play, and I think that Carbine could do a lot in this area. But the way CREDD works is actually incredibly elegant and I am rather fond of it.
 
If you are buying CREDD, you are selling your effort. Either you saved up money from questing, you risked your money playing the market (which is a thing), you spent time crafting, you farmed a circle for someone else. Whatever. You put effort in and you got plat in return.
 
If you are selling CREDD, the way I see it is that you are buying effort from someone else. You would rather pay $20 than farm for 11 plat. Which is totally cool, some people have more money than time and they might not want to waste it doing something they find boring in order to generate enough plat to do things that they enjoy. 
 
As has been discussed, the CREDD system is a simple supply/demand system. If lots of people want CREDD, the price will probably bounce until others decide they would like to pay $20 to get whatever amount of plat. The system balances out.
 
Now if Carbine sold plat directly, how do they determine how much plat one dollar is worth? They have an infinite supply, and so their would likely be higher inflationary pressure and overall arbitrary decisions made by those who can generate plat from no effort. This is not a stable system, and is going to be susceptible to corruption and miscalculations about much many dollars one plat is "worth".
 
Should we incentivize good play? Absolutely. Should we change a beautifully elegant system which provides 2 groups of people with something that they want with little to no effort on Carbines part? Please no.	
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			So OK, I've now heard the phrase "wildly exploited" several times. Just out of curiosity for those who are making this claim, how long do you think it takes people to farm 10 plat? How long do you think it would take them to earn 100 Urnsubs? If the two periods of time are approximately the same, how is it that Urnsubs are being exploited when the time is being spent doing helpful things rather than just sucking up plat as efficiently as possible?	
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			What exactly do you have against people farming plat? You seem very bitter towards people who farm plat, and are trying to paint them as nothing but selfish, and I think that's unfair. This coming from someone who doesn't even have enough plat to buy a CREDD right now.	
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What exactly do you have against people farming plat? You seem very bitter towards people who farm plat, and are trying to paint them as nothing but selfish, and I think that's unfair. This coming from someone who doesn't even have enough plat to buy a CREDD right now.
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AFK for more than five minutes in an instanced raid or dungeon? Pay an Urnedsub token for making everyone wait around for you!
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You insisted (here in post #286) that players cannot be expected to sit at their desks uninterrupted by real life for enough time to complete even the shortest silver dungeon (40 minute - STL).  In fact you went so far as to suggest that not being interrupted for 40 minutes was so unlikely that it was the root cause for failing silver rather than player ability.  I believe your exact words were, "doing a bunch of perfectly reasonable stuff" when referring to said RL activities requiring one to go afk.
 
How do you reconcile the above quote about Urnsub with your position that going afk in a dungeon is so unavoidable that it becomes an unrealistic expectation to not do so?
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I agree in the concept of such a system. We should be rewarding people for positive traits such as giving and help rather than rewarding individuals for negative traits such as taking because taking always comes at someone's else expense. These types of systems have already been implemented in different formats and show positive results.
 
Need a simple example? Takes this forum then. If you post something that is helpful, there is a chance others will like the post. If you view your profile, you can see how many likes you've accumulated. The more likes you have most likely the better reputation you have and thus are rewarded by the community by being granted a stronger voice.
 
On the flip side, post some not nice things, troll, be cranky or whatever, and people most likely will remember your name, bash you in return and your voice just doesn't carry much weight.
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I don't have anything against farming plat. But Carbine doesn't need players to farm plat. Carbine will still sell plat whether it does what it currently does, or whether it hands that same plat directly to the people buying it with cash.
 
So Carbine gains no value from farming plat. It's not bitter, I'd like to see Carbine actually get some value from people who aren't paying a subscription fee in return for letting them play without a subscription fee.
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I don't have anything against farming plat. But Carbine doesn't need players to farm plat. Carbine will still sell plat whether it does what it currently does, or whether it hands that same plat directly to the people buying it with cash.
 
So Carbine gains no value from farming plat. It's not bitter, I'd like to see Carbine actually get some value from people who aren't paying a subscription fee in return for letting them play without a subscription fee.
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(( Comment is just my personal stance ))  
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the idea behind them is that you get them by making the game a more fun place to be for everyone else, rewarding people for being an asset to the game by letting them play for free. This contrasts with the current system, which rewards people by letting them play for free if they're the greediest *cupcakes* in the game.
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I don't have anything against farming plat. But Carbine doesn't need players to farm plat. Carbine will still sell plat whether it does what it currently does, or whether it hands that same plat directly to the people buying it with cash.
 
So Carbine gains no value from farming plat. It's not bitter, I'd like to see Carbine actually get some value from people who aren't paying a subscription fee in return for letting them play without a subscription fee.
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			this is just a bad idea glad you are trying to come up with idea to help out but this is not it. They would have to change so much of the game to implement this that's no new stuff in game which wont bring in or back people.  	
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So in short you don't know how CREDD currently works.
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I think I'm just looking at this from a different perspective. :)
 
People who buy CREDD from Carbine want the plat that comes from purchasing it and selling it. Otherwise, why purchase CREDD (unless you're giving it away for a contest, or a friend, etc). I think the current method is a great way to allow players to obtain plat to do what they want to do in game, without having to feel pressured to play more / longer.
 
You say it's the plat farmers that enable the toxic behaviour from CREDD because they have so much plat and they can afford to play for nothing, but that's not true. It's supply and demand. Some people have RL money to spare / want to invest more money in the game / want plat but don't have the time / blah blah - buy CREDD, sell CREDD, get plat. The opposite is true as well. Someone has too much time in game, doesn't have the RL money to make ends meet, has lots of time to farm plat, whatever, they enable the person who has purchased CREDD, by buying their CREDD. Everyone wins, all three people (carbine, buyer of CREDD with $$, buyer of CREDD with plat) 
 
As a side note, people who "contribute nothing" - do actually still contribute. I don't think it's fair to judge everyone so harshly. Instead of punishing people I think we need to do more to encourage them. Loyalty tokens, mentoring bonuses, whatever. Again, neat idea about encouraging helpful behaviour, but poor implementation to tie it to CREDD. Especially since you can just get your friends / 2nd account / etc. to exploit it and obtain "free" CREDD and not actually help anything at all. 	
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Meh, nvm.	
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Can someone explain why we're actually discussing this again with bibles of text?
The CREDD system is there cause it's proven already that such systems work.
And sure as hell beats goldsellers in regards to getting plat.	
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And how exactly does that endear Carbine to its userbase?  "Pay up or else"?
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 users who openly expect to provide nothing of value to Carbine
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Would the idea that you should provide value to Carbine--either through revenue or service--in return for continuing access to the game offend you? I would expect "earn your playtime or don't play" to be at the core of all games that aren't F2P. You must earn your subscription somehow.
 
Why should Carbine be expected to want users who openly expect to provide nothing of value to Carbine past their initial purchase?
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This is where your opinion and mine differ the most. :) YOU see it as a player in-game providing nothing of value; however, their plat has value to the person who purchased the CREDD (they want plat). Their body in-game provides value. Their simply being in the game, provides value. We can't judge what someone is doing or not doing to "provide" value. Are you watching people who buy CREDD 24/7 and looking at every little thing they have ever contributed or not contributed? 
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			Sorry for being blunt - Why should I provide my value to Carbine? Or in any case, why should anyone provide their value to Carbine?	
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But my presence has been paid for by cash.
 
If i use a CREDD to buy my game time, someone will of had to have purchased the CREDD. I am giving that person what they need/want (plat aka providing them with a service) and that person is paying ££$$ for me to play
 
Carbine hasn't lost ££$$ in this exchange what so ever.	
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Sorry for being blunt - Why should I provide my value to Carbine? Or in any case, why should anyone provide their value to Carbine?
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Why would someone even need to earn CREDD to begin with?
CREDD is a currency, handing it out like cookies will ruin the economy.
 
You want CREDD? buy it.
You cannot use a currency like this to just rewards more active people or make obtainable ingame without economical consequence (ganking in EvE).
Otherwise you create an inflow of currency and no outflow, inflating your entire economy to the point where platinum means nothing.	
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Why would someone even need to earn CREDD to begin with?
CREDD is a currency, handing it out like cookies will ruin the economy.
 
You want CREDD? buy it.
You cannot use a currency like this to just rewards more active people or make obtainable ingame without economical consequence (ganking in EvE).
Otherwise you create an inflow of currency and no outflow, inflating your entire economy to the point where platinum means nothing.
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Urnedsub isn't something every player needs to earn, just the players who are here but not adding to Carbine's revenues in any real way.
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Look, if you go a couple extra steps and you can make this fair without needing to implement a revenue loss.  Make cold gold and platinum the reward for doing the things you want players to do.  Make it easier for someone to make plat by running a tank in low level queues for a few hours that don't have one  (by raising the rewards of queueing, lowering the vendor price of commodities, implementing one of the aforementioned systems for rewarding helpful group behavior, or more likely some combination of all of them) than by running on a gathering circle for that same timeframe.  Then, the tank gets to buy a CREDD from the exchange before the gathering grinder does and Carbine still gets their money.
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You're right.
I recognize that Carbine created the plat and sets the fixed costs in the game. The in-game player who collects it and deposits it in the CREDD exchange is completely unnecessary because Carbine can automate that process.
We can and do judge activities as having different values all the time, so the claim that we can't is simply incorrect. That's why you pay a quarter for a package of dehydrated ramen, five bucks for a burger, and twenty bucks for a steak.
Players do not provide value just by showing up, that's why you don't get CREDD just by logging in.
I am not watching people who buy CREDD 24/7. I would like to see them earn credit for the things they contribute and not for the ways in which they detract. They can earn plat through both kinds of activity, so it's not a good way to assess that.
 
Then you've paid and you don't need to earn CREDD. I also pay and don't need to earn CREDD. Urnedsub isn't something every player needs to earn, just the players who are here but not adding to Carbine's revenues in any real way. So I don't see what it is you're objecting to.
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again, that's supply and demand.
I don't want to farm my plat, I sell CREDD for it.
Someone else wants to farm plat instead and buy my CREDD? let's make a deal.
 
Economy 101
Has nothing to do with having to "earn" something.
This is merely me paying for someone's service.	
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Im sure WoW did/does this. From my healer days, if there were a lul in healers/tanks joining the groups, they would provide an additional reward chest once the dungeon was complete
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They are adding to the revenu by purchasing CREDD from players who want plat... If people didn't want plat, they wouldn't buy CREDD. Supply and demand.. 
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They don't make the plat. Carbine makes the plat. They are not the supply. At best, they are the limit on the supply. That limit can be readily automated.
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			OMG, it's a semantics argument LMAO  Of course technically we're not "making" our copper/silver/gold/plat when we sell something or get it as drops.  Just as a person IRL isn't technically making the money they get on their job, that's not what they're saying when they say "I make 75K a year".  When people say they are making plat in game to buy CREDD, it is quite obvious they mean they are collecting/earning it in some way, they are not trying to say they are manufacturing that plat in any way at all.	
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As for revenue loss, I'm not seeing it. The cash subscribers continue to pay cash for their subscriptions. The people buying plat for cash continue to have plat to buy for cash. And the people who don't want to pay a subscription fee now earn that by simply providing some service until they've put in the time, then can go do whatever they want. The only thing that's changing is the thing that people who don't want to pay a subscription fee do to earn the CREDD token.
 
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Your presence was not paid for by cash. The person who spent that cash spent it to buy plat. Carbine created the plat that they bought, not you. They didn't need you to farm it and deposit it into the CREDD exchange. They could do that directly very straightforwardly.
 
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Also, true Carbine created the plat for them to sell the CREDD.
 
However Carbine does not collect the plat. My time is money. If I and many others didnt farm the plat then the CREDD wouldnt be sold.
 
Likewise if I spend days and days farming plat, but no one sold CREDD then I would have to purchase a sub regardless of how much money I had - Supply and demand	
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Which of course removes the value of plat and then makes it a very strict pay to win. Pay $20 - get in game plat that's not earned by a player first, but is instead generated. You can't automate an economy and have it work properly by removing the demand to the supply. 
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apologies for the many edits - i keep thinking of things after i hit save xD
 
So if the person has subbed to the game by paying lets say £10. They don't have time to make plat (for various reasons such as long hours or a family) so cant afford to buy anything. Because they can't buy anything, items don't get sold. The seller of said items doesnt make money so cant afford to buy anything and so on and so on.
 
Prices then drop to a stage where its not worth selling them on the AH and CX so they get sold to NPCs thus removing them from circulation. 
 
I work my bum off working in the game to acquire money which I can then by a CREDD for which allows the seller to have money to buy things which then puts money in the economy.
 
The fact you don't agree with the workings is your opinion. What is being outlined is true economics. None of this economics 101 BS. Anyone can grasp basic economics. Truly not hard. But to truly understandit is why I earn my money IRL.
 
If the CREDD system wasn't in place the gold farmers would take over. As outlined in my above post re: Lineage 2. That's what happens when they get their hands on a game. Inflation would sky rocket, but peoples legitimate earnings via ingame mechanics would plateau. 
 
If Carbine increased the prices of items you sold to give those legitimate people more money wouldn't help. That would just inflate prices even higher as ever more money would be available.	
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I give up.....
Please go learn the fundamentals of economics, and stop turning this into a semantical fight.
We've given enough evidence to disprove your illusion.
 
Bye.	
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Also, true Carbine created the plat for them to sell the CREDD.
However Carbine does not collect the plat. My time is money. If I and many others didnt farm the plat then the CREDD wouldnt be sold.
Likewise if I spend days and days farming plat, but no one sold CREDD then I would have to purchase a sub regardless of how much money I had - Supply and demand
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If the CREDD system wasn't in place the gold farmers would take over. As outlined in my above post re: Lineage 2. That's what happens when they get their hands on a game. Inflation would sky rocket, but peoples legitimate earnings via ingame mechanics would plateau. 
If Carbine increased the prices of items you sold to give those legitimate people more money wouldn't help. That would just inflate prices even higher as ever more money would be available.
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Was in the middle of going all Financial until I notice something in your post.
 
and start giving those people a real way to earn their subscription by spending the same amount of time doing something the game does need.
 
Why should anyone earn their subscription? Surely Carbine is the one whom must earn mine and others money?	
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ANY system in which you pay $20 and get in-game plat is pay-to-win. The idea that somehow it isn't if another player had to work for the plat that someone else buys is simply incorrect.
People model economies all the time, so they can in fact be very effectively automated. What I'm proposing does not remove either the demand OR the supply, and ties the exchange rate between cash and plat to the total plat supply. Carbine can control the economy by adjusting drop rates and plat sinks, just like they currently do.
 
Carbine is the supplier for your demand unless Carbine chooses to be hopelessly inefficient and insert players between itself and you as middlemen getting a cut for no real reason. THAT is economy 101.
 
 
Fixed for you, corrections in red to make it clear what people who pay cash for CREDD are actually buying. Oh look! No loss in revenue! 
I can do math too, it turns out.
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People will still be able to buy plat for cash through Carbine, those nasty gold sellers will still be competing with the game itself just like they are now.
Kindly take a moment to reflect on what the actual differences are between what I'm suggesting and what you're describing, because at this point you're no longer responding to my posts or the OP and criticizing a plan that nobody is suggesting.
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 and criticizing a plan that nobody is suggesting.
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			Are you stalking me or something Beattlebilly :P	
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Are you stalking me or something Beattlebilly :P
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I think the original post is up to date yes? If so my feedback is a flat no to plan.
 
There are many things wrong with this that force specific playstyles, favors pve over PvP, punishes in a way even for being good at pvp., and has many exploit built in.
 
Under part 3
 
Pve
So players will do 4/5 and bring in one pug. When does it register and award group? If upon entry premade can boot 5th and burn through content with full. If upon completion team gets to end have someone step out and kill with or without 5th there at last boss.
 
However this also harms sub 5 groups who would be willing to teach if you are not to allow for partial premade get reward too.
 
Is support role linked to other award of being picked up? If not people will rotate roles and not necessarily play those roles. Unless Carbine locked people into a build this is not feasible method. From what I read some warriors can tank as DPS if using certain builds.
 
As for mentoring what is to stop afk mentoring?
 
 
PVP
So a team is being punished for being better?
What is to define support role in PvP? Unless Carbine locked people into static build to register as support you can't measure this well.
 
CRAFTING
This screams urnedsub trading. Since what is to stop player mass crafting easy to use things and just handing them out?
 
You can't say it must be through AH as not all trades and purchase are done through it.
 
SOCIAL
I've seen that I can talk and still be marked Afk. I think this alienates RP sessions from this system.
 
Under section 4th
 
PVE
So player can lose currency if Emergency comes up and they must leave or take longer than x amount of time? 
 
You can not roll need on gear specific to class from what I see in grouping and items seem to share stats too that may help one with a role more as well such as tech on medium leather what if DPS medic and stalker tank both need? Esper can't need the leather and I don't think warrior can need on either.
 
The decline thing can happen by accident too. Things can happen in life to cause.
 
PVP
Again you punish for playing better.
As for spawn camping, Carbine should put in better control to prevent. Often what I see is that to prevent this terrain and close ranged anti player NPC or turret is used.
 
SOCIAL
Why punish people for playing market? If price too high just don't buy it.
 
Honestly this plan seems bias and comes off as being a swing at poeple who get their sub through CREDD to me. This also force people to approach game in a way that can make it more of chore than choice which is no good.	
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Carbine provides a game to earn their £££ I, and other pay our £££ - granted via different means, but paid all the same, via legal means 
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Are you stalking me or something Beattlebilly :P
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I think he stockpiles his likes and delivers them in machine gun fashion ;)
 
On topic:
Yasfan, I am thinking you are misunderstanding a serious point in the whole CREDD thing, and apparently have a serious chip on your shoulder about "plat farmers." I wonder if this chip also carries over onto people who choose to farm their own mats vs buying off the AH. What's the difference, really?
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If there is a way for people to pay for their subscription without anybody spending real money, I'll be against it.  There needs to be a revenue stream for Carbine.  Besides, earning it by doing positive things?  You're going to pay for a sub using a subjective system?
 
The current model isn't broken, I see no reason for Carbine to fix it.	
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I would like to see them earn credit for the things they contribute and not for the ways in which they detract.
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