123500-credd-system

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This is a run-off from another thread. I felt it would be derailing there, as it's not about a possible change to F2P, but the current CREDD system and how that has worked for players, how it could be improved, etc. If a mod feels this would be more productive and still retain clarity in another thread, by all means, merge away.
 
 
So, a few questions:
 
1. Did you know about CREDD when you joined, and did it affect your motivation to try the game in any way?
 
2. How well does CREDD work for you? Do you enjoy it as a stand-in for the more traditional F2P/B2P systems? Do you use it at all and does it seem markedly different from how other games work their sub systems?
 
3. Do you think advertisement of the CREDD system to the gaming public would help Wildstar? How could this be done?
 
 
 
I'll go first.
 
 
1. I didn't really know about CREDD at first. I think I saw something about it in one of Carbine's videos, but it seemed harmless enough. Once I got into the game I realized that it involved buying gold with real money, and that was a big warning for me. After playing for awhile and investigating a bit more, it seemed mostly harmless, so I decided not to quit over it. After a month or so I started to really love housing, realized at my level I could never farm the gold I needed for decor, and decided to buy CREDD. Since then I've spent probably around $200, averaging a bit more than one CREDD per month. I've also spent a lot of time grinding gold in the game, and trading for profit, so CREDD has probably accounted for about 30% of my in-game income.
 
2. CREDD has served me well so far. While I usually hate cash shops and the idea of buying gold, I play Wildstar more for housing than gameplay (and so my opinion should be recognized as niche). Now, though, I will say that with the inclusion of PVP gear for gold, I am wary. I don't want to see more opportunities for people to buy gameplay advantages with real money. All said though, I think CREDD offers a lot of the benefits of alternate systems, but without the reputation of F2P (granted, that reputation is bad to me, but might be good to others). I also like that CREDD creates a relationship between two fundamentally different pay styles.
 
3. I've seen plenty of people asking for F2P/B2P on gaming forums. Enough that I believe some players are right to point out that it would be a draw (I simply don't have reason to believe many of those asking for the change would stay or support the game with real money). So I think this desire from a curious public could be exploited by advertising the CREDD aspect a bit more. I would start by maybe inventing some marketable terms (typical PR rhetoric job) and by implementing some gameplay device that is very clear and very early in the game, which explains CREDD in great detail. I may have missed this during my own experience, but given how many people don't seem to have the slightest notion that CREDD exists and may work to their advantage, more visibility wouldn't hurt.
 
I've also wondered if it would be helpful to give players one free CREDD instead of one free month, so they are uniformly introduced to how it works and won't shy away. I realize that the free month is what you use to play the game after installation though, which I suppose means players would have to get one free CREDD as well as, say, a day or two of free play time.
 
 
 
Them's my thoughts. Free free to pick apart, or add your own answers. At the moment I think CREDD is doing well and could be mobilized better to draw in players.	
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1. Yes, I knew and understood what CREDD was before I bought the game. No, it made no difference to me at all beside the fact I thought it was a nice option for people.
 
2. I have only bought CREDD once and that is for a prize from  Blazing Saddles in the upcoming Thaydfest. I don't consider it a 'stand in' for F2P mainly because I thoroughly dislike those types of games. For me it is simply an option for other folks to use if they so choose.
 
3. Possibly. I thought it was pretty clear back in beta but honestly I haven't seen anything about it past that. I'm not in advertising so I really don't know what would appeal to people that could not afford $15 a month in their entertainment budget. My *opinion* on it is if you had to solely base playing ANY game on being able to purchase something like CREDD then maybe it isn't a good game choice for you.	
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1. Yes
 
2. It's off my radar. I think it's a cool idea for people who want a B2P type option and for those who want to buy gold.
 
3. I have no idea.
 
 
I think it's been a boon to the game. I also wonder how much it "front loaded" subs, given some people are playing now off of CREDD likely paid for at launch. I wonder how NCSoft accounts for those numbers.	
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1. Yes
 
2. It's off my radar. I think it's a cool idea for people who want a B2P type option and for those who want to buy gold.
 
3. I have no idea.
 
 
I think it's been a boon to the game. I also wonder how much it "front loaded" subs, given some people are playing now off of CREDD likely paid for at launch. I wonder how NCSoft accounts for those numbers.
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1. Did you know about CREDD when you joined, and did it affect your motivation to try the game in any way?
 
I knew about it and it appealed to me (see #2).  The main motivation for trying this game was because my raid guild migrated here.
 
2. How well does CREDD work for you? Do you enjoy it as a stand-in for the more traditional F2P/B2P systems? Do you use it at all and does it seem markedly different from how other games work their sub systems?
 
So far I've only paid for one month of subscription.  Except for a two week break I've been subbed here since early access and other than that one month I've used CREDD to maintain it.  It works for me because I know how to make money in RPG's.  The buddy that got me into SW:TOR is less interested in grinding currency (and complains that his gear is garbage...)  He much prefers F2P games over CREDD type systems.
 
If there was no CREDD option here I wouldn't have stayed.  I can well afford it but the last thing I need is yet another wallet remorah.  When you look at your monthly budget you need to look at it in total.  Enough remorah's and you've just bleed out.  And "Oh just don't eat out" does not fly with the wife.
 
3. Do you think advertisement of the CREDD system to the gaming public would help Wildstar? How could this be done?
 
Can't hurt, will probably appeal to certain types of people, unfortunately F2P is a far easier concept to understand and sell.	
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Can't hurt, will probably appeal to certain types of people, unfortunately F2P is a far easier concept to understand and sell.
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1.  I did know about it, but really didn't care about it.  I had also played EVE and dealt with the PLEX system similarly.  It was good to have around, though.  When I wanted to redesign the Shadowcaster for the guild post-drop 4, I knew I wasn't going to have time before Thaydfest to get it in order if I was grinding cash.  So I bought and sold a CREDD.  It gave me enough capital to build.
 
2.  It is presently markedly different, but it doesn't really need to be.  It is possible (I'm assuming my post on the matter is where this is coming from; I've been out of circulation today) to essentially make a vendor who sells exclusive items for high amounts of platinum and provide no other way to get these things.  That would require people to either grind the plat themselves or buy CREDD, which would mimic a F2P system in the broad strokes.  The reasons it currently doesn't are twofold:
 
First, the only way this can work through Carbine's end is if they make sure there's a vendor selling things for a huge and set amount of money that can't be garnered another way.  Right now, the entire system is almost completely player regulated.  We set the CREDD prices, both to buy and sell, as well as the prices of things on the CX.  Therefore, not only do the things people buy end up being obtainable by SOMEONE in the game (therefore they can't be too hard to get), but we decide how much plat you even get for your money.  The closest thing to what I'm talking about would be something like Expert riding, which costs a large amount of plat.  Because of the current rate of CREDD exchange on Entity, it would take between five and six plat to even get the 80 plat for the riding, meaning that without any currency grinding you're talking about 100 to 120 dollars.  That's not due to the riding, that's because CREDD is comparatively cheap.
 
Second, there just isn't enough that plat does for you.  The riding skill above isn't in any way mandatory (or even worth the money unless you're rolling in it).  Gear can cost just a few plat for a whole set.  You know exactly what you're getting.  Most importantly, you can glory farm a set from nothing that would be just as good.  Since there are other easily available options, there is downward pressure on player prices for gear.  And that's just talking about things you can buy with plat.  There's a reason people essentially talk about buying it for housing.  Almost everything is locked behind Renown, Glory, Prestige, or other currencies.  There's very little on vendors that requires that much plat anyway.  And, of course, people are farming enough plat on your server that the price of CREDD isn't a big deal for them.  That should tell you how much plat is already flowing around if you actually want to grind it.
 
It COULD be done that way.  It isn't right now, though.  There's not enough regulation on Carbine's end to make it work that way.
 
3.  It might, but I think people know that CREDD exists on the whole.  It's usually the first thing brought up.  People essentially answer it by saying they don't want to spend time getting in-game gold.  That tells you how useful they'll be to NCSoft's efforts to increase the game's playing base.  What is known is that NCSoft, if they are aiming for F2P or B2P, are hoping to attract just a handful of people that will spend epic craploads of real money on the game to make up for the shortfalls.  That's all that would matter.  THOSE people might already be playing and using CREDD because it's available.  In that case, advertising it a bit more might help.	
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1) Yes, I knew about it. It had a small impact on whether or not I would start playing as I think the subscription model is outdated and overpriced. The way I figure, a complete game is around $60, and I'll have access to it forever. That means if I'm paying $15/mo, I should be getting a full game's worth of content every four months, with access to that conent forever - not the case with subscription-only MMOs. So I generally avoid games that don't have a F2P/B2P option that somehow allows me to permanently unlock content access.
 
2) I paid for the first few months after launch. By then, I had enough CREDD to get me by. Right now, my account is active through August and I have 40 CREDD stockpiled. So I'd say the system has worked well for me, especially considering how little I play (I'm still getting my first L50 attuned...).
 
3) Nah. People who care will click on the link and read more like I did. People who don't will just get confused.	
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1) Yes, I knew about it. It had a small impact on whether or not I would start playing as I think the subscription model is outdated and overpriced. The way I figure, a complete game is around $60, and I'll have access to it forever. That means if I'm paying $15/mo, I should be getting a full game's worth of content every four months, with access to that conent forever - not the case with subscription-only MMOs. So I generally avoid games that don't have a F2P/B2P option that somehow allows me to permanently unlock content access.
 
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I don't use CREDD because I don't play the game enough to farm that much and am more of an on and off subscriber.  CREDD is a great system though.  I believe EVE did this first.  WoW is now going to implement this system also.  Personally, I think this is a lot better than a f2p or b2p system.  People seem to still think it is a type of f2p, but it isn't even close.  They don't understand someone is still paying real money basically for that sub.  Maybe if games like ToR and Rift etc. had a system like this, they may still be doing good and having a lot more quality content and less cash shop content.
 
This also helps eliminate some gold farmers imo.  Why not pay your money with the actual company to sell for ingame currency vs giving a credit card to someone overseas and trusting your information will be safe along with them deliivering your in-game currency. 	
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how do you judge how much a full games worth of content is?
lots of single player games are actually really short compared to an MMO 15 - 20 hrs and done. I would think in 4 months you would get more than 15 - 20 hrs out of an MMO. I'm curious just how much do you think 15 dollars a month should buy.
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The CREDD system stinks.  It draws no new players, its confusing, no one wants to grind plat to play their sub bill, and most people don't even know what it is or how it works.
 
To increase the population they need to simply go to a F2P on weekends model. 	
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CREDD is a great system though.  I believe EVE did this first.  WoW is now going to implement this system also. 
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Netflix proves the standard MMO subscription is way overpriced.
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WoW system is different, as in WOW is offfering their "credd" themselves for in game currency, so players are buying subscription with ingame money from blizzard.
 
 
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1. Yes, I personally found out via info on the site and also from watching all the WildStar Weekly / Nexus Report vods on YouTube. It wasn't a big thing to motivate me to play the game (that would be Chuas) but it was a nice added incentive. c:
 
2. I paid for a few months, but now I am primarily on CREDD so it works out well for me. I like the idea that it offers a service to all that pursuit CREDD, such as the players obtaining money for their hobbies, other players obtaining time for playing the game as a hobby and providing Carbine something in the middle for the player not personally paying themselves.
 
From back when I was looking through the site which explained how the system worked I never really thought of it as a "Pay-to-Win" service, since while yes a player could purchase something which might have been unobtainable unless they were more invested, it doesn't work well towards making them above others due to how the game's mechanics work with combat and such. I personally think of it as a "Pay-to-Fund" system, since the housing is pretty much crack to most players. :P
 
3. A bit tricky, but I'm not entirely sure how to explain it personally.	
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Eve had the same system as WS but WOW is going to use a different system
 
With Eve and WS other players actually buy CREDD and sell it to other players, so if no one buys credd from crabine then there is no credd to be sold, therefore it's not F2P or B2P since someone else is paying for your subscription basically.
 
WoW system is different, as in WOW is offfering their "credd" themselves for in game currency, so players are buying subscription with ingame money from blizzard.
 
You see the difference?
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No, thats not how it works, WoW system is essentially the same as CREDD but with a few more restrictions, you must sell it on the AH and if you buy it off the AH you must use it, you cannot resell it later
 
Blizzard is not directly selling game time on the AH, Just like Carbine they sell a token to players and those players can sell that token to other players
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			I've seen credd at 19 plat now for months in the EU is that the max price?	
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I don't use CREDD because I don't play the game enough to farm that much and am more of an on and off subscriber. CREDD is a great system though. I believe EVE did this first. WoW is now going to implement this system also. Personally, I think this is a lot better than a f2p or b2p system. People seem to still think it is a type of f2p, but it isn't even close. They don't understand someone is still paying real money basically for that sub. Maybe if games like ToR and Rift etc. had a system like this, they may still be doing good and having a lot more quality content and less cash shop content.
 
This also helps eliminate some gold farmers imo. Why not pay your money with the actual company to sell for ingame currency vs giving a credit card to someone overseas and trusting your information will be safe along with them deliivering your in-game currency.
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I don't use CREDD because I don't play the game enough to farm that much and am more of an on and off subscriber.  CREDD is a great system though.  I believe EVE did this first.  WoW is now going to implement this system also.  Personally, I think this is a lot better than a f2p or b2p system.  People seem to still think it is a type of f2p, but it isn't even close.  They don't understand someone is still paying real money basically for that sub.  Maybe if games like ToR and Rift etc. had a system like this, they may still be doing good and having a lot more quality content and less cash shop content.
 
This also helps eliminate some gold farmers imo.  Why not pay your money with the actual company to sell for ingame currency vs giving a credit card to someone overseas and trusting your information will be safe along with them deliivering your in-game currency. 
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Rift had Rex before Wildstar.
Rex is exactly what C.R.E.D.D is ,but there you have the ability to use it on other services and items,besides your sub.(soon to a Wildstar near you?)
As for ToR,try and play that game without a sub and come back to tell us how nice it was(not),meaning,each and every player that is seriously in the
game is either subbed or spends a small fortune in the in game shop.
What is funny is that everytime I buy REX as a F2P player in Rift,I am actually paying more for a months worth of time that a one month sub.
Just saying.
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CREDD is also $20 to purchase, so it's also more expensive than a month of typical sub; however, you wouldn't buy CREDD for a sub for yourself. You'd buy it to cover a friend's sub, or to get gold in-game by selling it.
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Exactly.that is why when a f2p player buys a sub with in game gold,is actually making the company more money than a subbed player.
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The major difference is that, as a subscription game with a system like this, Wildstar (like EVE), gets a lot of the benefits of F2P with none of the drawbacks.  
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Apparently you're not familiar with the new gambleboxes that give you a chance of obtaining legendary gear. Each gamblebox currently costs around 2-3 plat worth of Partial Primal Patterns, and the odds of obtaining a piece of legendary gear is so low that Jabbithole hasn't managed to catch one yet with more than 60 attempts.
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I'm not sure to what degree (if any considerable one at all) this game suffers from its F2P mechanisms, but they're certainly there.
 
The moment you can use real life dollars to buy gear, runes, buffs, or anything else that affects combat, you've crossed the line into cash shop territory. I certainly don't see it as being the same or as problematic as cash shops in specifically F2P games. But I think we do need to be aware that the game is endorsing the foundational concepts of P2W, if nothing else.
 
And I understand P2W, generally, as any situation where you can use real dollars for gameplay advantages.	
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Then my friend explained it incorrectly ><
Thanks
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1. Did you know about CREDD when you joined, and did it affect your motivation to try the game in any way?
 
2. How well does CREDD work for you? Do you enjoy it as a stand-in for the more traditional F2P/B2P systems? Do you use it at all and does it seem markedly different from how other games work their sub systems?
 
3. Do you think advertisement of the CREDD system to the gaming public would help Wildstar? How could this be done?
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CREDD is not a subscription, and this game is not a subscription-only game. It is a hybrid model that uses cash-for-plat sales to allow some subscribers to pay a lot more cash to obtain substantial in-game advantages--unless you're seriously going to try to argue that plat doesn't grant you any advantages here, which would be flatly absurd--and uses that cash to retain people who want to play without paying cash for a subscription fee.  
 
This game suffers from many of the drawbacks of F2P systems, which should not come as a surprise to anyone who actually understands how CREDD works and why people would pay cash for it.
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The effect of CREDD on the game is not pervasive. That is, I feel no pressure to buy CREDD. Perhaps you do. However, it does not appear to me that using real life money to buy power in the game is the typical use-case.
 
While I prefer a pure sub situation, as long as I don't feel like I'm being pressured to use real life funds to purchase in-game items, I'm OK.
 
I agree that it is possible to gain substantial advantages over others by spending real life money in game, but I don't think it is happening enough to affect me. If it did, I would see that as a problem.
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They're not technically responsible for anything you said besides making a legendary item a low drop rate from a gamblebox, where each box costs you either a level of plat that you can obtain instantly with ~4 bucks in cash, or the time it takes to farm 2-3 plat, or the time it takes to repeat 30 gold medal runs from veteran shiphand missions. The odds of getting the legendary item in any one box are too low to calculate based on current datamining samples but certainly <5%, and we expect legendary items to have low drop rates for something we can run shiphands for.  This is why people don't take your anger with it very seriously.  We set all of those prices ourselves and there's a fairly low barrier to get them (as well as paths to alternatives). 
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When people other than you see it as a problem and leave over it, you have fewer people to play with. So personally, I think it's a problem whether it affects me directly or not.
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... How is it less advantageous for me to take 15 plat for myself away from another player than it would be for me to simply get 15 plat without taking it from anyone?
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Fixed for you, revisions for accuracy in red.
 
If they wanted to make legendary items available to people as a rare reward from running shiphands, they could have made those same legendary items drop from shiphands directly. If they wanted shiphand players to have a way to work their way up to eventually having legendaries, they could've made the currency earned from shiphands that is nontransferrable and can be spent for gear at a vendor with a set actual price, just like they already do for raid gear.
 
They didn't do either of those things.
 
Instead, they put in a system where you could take cash and straightforwardly turn it into legendary gear, through a mechanism that obscures the actual average price of getting what you want. And the reasons why they might want a system like that in place are completely obvious whether you want to insist that you don't see it or not.
 
When people other than you see it as a problem and leave over it, you have fewer people to play with. So personally, I think it's a problem whether it affects me directly or not.
 
... How is it less advantageous for me to take 15 plat for myself away from another player than it would be for me to simply get 15 plat without taking it from anyone?  :rolleyes:
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The advantage is time and the need to not have to do the content. 
 
Even though you get a decent amount of PPP, you'll be grinding VSH's for hours.  Alternatively you could grind for plat.  Some people are better at it than others.  Again you'll need to put some effort in.  It's far more convenient to just whip out the plastic and put in an order for CREDD.  Why you could just not eat at Wendy's for a couple nights and you'll have enough for 8 or 9 gamble boxes.	
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The effect of CREDD on the game is not pervasive. That is, I feel no pressure to buy CREDD. Perhaps you do. However, it does not appear to me that using real life money to buy power in the game is the typical use-case.
 
While I prefer a pure sub situation, as long as I don't feel like I'm being pressured to use real life funds to purchase in-game items, I'm OK.
 
I agree that it is possible to gain substantial advantages over others by spending real life money in game, but I don't think it is happening enough to affect me. If it did, I would see that as a problem.
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There's a huge concept you're not understanding, and haven't understood.
 
The reason you can even get that "advantage" (which you contend is actually a droprate so low it never happens anyway) is because someone else already owned it and gave it to you.  How exactly are you buying an advantage over the playerbase if you have to buy it directly from them?  That meant it was so easy for someone to get (or so inconsequential regardless), that the player had extra and sold it to you.
 
I mean, technically, I could use CREDD to buy iron ore if I was so inclined.  According to you, that would, likewise, be purchasing a game advantage.  The reason it's not P2W is, obviously, that iron ore is coming out of our ears.  Just because, in this scenario, I might find iron ore too expensive for me to personally spend time grinding it up doesn't at all make it some kind of huge distinct advantage.  Likewise, where do you think these partial primal patterns are coming from?  Other players, ones who found this, as you say, huge game advantage to be so useless that they sold it for less than you can buy a bunch of decor pieces.
 
I mean, you're not even railing against something that only drops in raids or high levels of unavailable content.  We're talking about an item that rains on your head in instances you can run solo in level 50 quest greens, fresh after the announcer guy complains.
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Oh, I understand that. But you are literally the only person I've heard who sees it as a problem, and you haven't left :)
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The advantage is time and the need to not have to do the content. 
 
Even though you get a decent amount of PPP, you'll be grinding VSH's for hours.  Alternatively you could grind for plat.  Some people are better at it than others.  Again you'll need to put some effort in.  It's far more convenient to just whip out the plastic and put in an order for CREDD.  Why you could just not eat at Wendy's for a couple nights and you'll have enough for 8 or 9 gamble boxes.
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I think I get what you're saying. But it seems like there's a difference in opinion of what exactly constitutes P2W, or more precisely here, an advantage, rather than either of you being wrong.
 
For example, this is subjective, but I don't think it's only a problem when people are buying legendary items or items no one else can get. To me, if one person buys a full PVP set with real money through CREDD, they have gained an unfair gameplay advantage over those who currently do not have the full set. The point being that we should be earning gameplay strengths through gameplay, not through our wallets, and everyone should be expected to dedicate a certain amount of time to earn the right to compete fairly.
 
That's my personal take on it.
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But I did think early on that the number of goldsinks, and the high cost of many of them, was a play to get us buying CREDD.
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By remarkable coincidence, people who have left are no longer on these forums. WoW's version of CREDD has been opposed vociferously there at least in part because people saw what it did here and didn't like it. And those people aren't me--I've never played or had any interest in WoW. Swords and sorcery is horribly overdone, IMHO.
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The thing that the player providing the plat values is the ability to continue playing the game, which does not provide them with anything more advantageous than the ability to be in the game at all.
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1. Did you know about CREDD when you joined, and did it affect your motivation to try the game in any way?
 
I'd heard about it but didn't really look into it until a few months after launch.
 
 
2. How well does CREDD work for you? Do you enjoy it as a stand-in for the more traditional F2P/B2P systems? Do you use it at all and does it seem markedly different from how other games work their sub systems?
 
Personally, I believe the concept of making gametime a tradable commodity to exchange with other players is a much better alternative to freemium.
 
Although I payed for an annual sub way back when, I still buy 1 CREDD a month. Not that I need the plat or anything, I just want to support the system and Carbine.  So yeah, I guess it works out pretty well for me.
 
 
3. Do you think advertisement of the CREDD system to the gaming public would help Wildstar? How could this be done?
 
As I mentioned, I'd heard of CREDD but didn't really know what it was at launch. I think the game could benefit from this system being advertised to new/potential players as a clear B2P option for those who want it.	
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I haven't seen people citing the existence of CREDD as the reason they left. Just because people left doesn't mean they left because of the reasons that frustrate you.
 
This same logic has been used for all sorts of different reasons to "prove" a pet issue in the game (CREDD, difficulty, runeing, etc).
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To me, if one person buys a full PVP set with real money through CREDD, they have gained an unfair gameplay advantage over those who currently do not have the full set. The point being that we should be earning gameplay strengths through gameplay, not through our wallets, and everyone should be expected to dedicate a certain amount of time to earn the right to compete fairly.
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Of course you haven't. Seen anyone leave because the game is P2W? I have, and if you really need some links I can dig them up for you. The game is P2W because CREDD bridges your wallet and in-game advantage. It is the only legitimate way to do that in this game.
 
Every complaint about this game being P2W is fundamentally a complaint that CREDD is being used to buy in-game advantages with cash.
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The issue here is that you can't really buy a game advantage if a player is selling it.  There's literally nothing on the AH or CX that another player hasn't already gotten, and in most cases it wasn't that hard to get (obviously, they didn't need it).  This is why I don't buy the argument; we're introducing areas of subjectivity at that point.  
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Right, but this only works because someone else has decided he or she would rather have the free play time than the plat. Who got the advantage? The player who purchased the plat or the playtime?
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Homework time: Person 1 wants a chance at legendary gear using the boxes. The boxes require 30 PPPs, which are granted for shiphand gold runs. But the chance of getting a legendary from those boxes is not 100%. We know it's a non-zero chance because people have gotten it. The estimate we have in Jabbithole is about 5% or something, so let's use that.How many times on avereage does this player have to complete shiphand gold runs to get a legendary he can use? Then, assuming he's clearing gold runs at 10 minutes each, how much real time he used in getting there?
 
Once you have the answer, contrast it with Person 2: he also wants the same legendary, but he will use CREDD instead of running content. Last time I checked, one PPP was at 10 gold. Bags require 30 PPPs. That's 3 platinum per bag. CREDD sells for about 13 platinum. So Person 2 is getting 4 (and some fraction) bags per CREDD.How many CREDDs would Person 2 have to buy and sell in order to get the same ammount of boxes Person 1 needed to beat the RNG? And how much real time would it take Person 2 to do so?
 
The answer? I have no idea. I stink at math. I'm just throwing this to annoy everyone here! 
 	
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The issue here is that you can't really buy a game advantage if a player is selling it. 
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Hmm. You're basically arguing that as long as some player out there profits from it, there's nothing unfair or advantageous in some dude buying gear with money. That makes no sense to me. What does one even have to do with the other?
 
If I enter a battleground as a fresh-faced 50 with crap greens (or even store-bought blues), and another dude who also just hit 50 walks in with a full set of PVP gear bought with real money, it really doesn't matter if that PVP gear was bought from a vendor or a player. Sure, if it was bought from a player, there's some kind of rebalancing going on. But the gameplay distinction is obvious and inarguable... the player with the full set of PVP gear, all other things being equal, will kick the living crap out of the player who does not have PVP gear.
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Acquiring PvP equipment is a basic step but you are far far from done.  Now you have to rune it and that's not cheap.  Even if you were able to farm all the mats you need you still need to have the runic modules to add the extra slot AND unlock all of the additional ones.  I think I dropped about 6-8 plat on this for my current PvP set.  (It's so nice to be effective).
 
Unless you were incredibly lucky and RNGesus smiled upon you, all of your slots would be optimal.  Fixing bad or less than great slots requires an item that sells for around three plat.  Somebody with plat to burn can optimize their gear far better than those of us who are either more frugal or have a lesser bankroll.  Color me frugal.
 
Now, do I care that somebody just blew $150 to get a perfect PvP set?  Nope.  At best they've got an equipment edge and frankly I see it as a crutch.  Because I'll be fighting at a disadvantage I'll have more incentive to hone my skills.  When I eventually catch up, they're the ones that will be disadvantaged.
 
It might be an issue with raiding where often you have to compete for raid slots.  But that only seems to be a thing for world first teams.  I'm way more casual than that.
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Your core argument here is that if I sell something on the AH or CX for plat, obviously I don't need it. Otherwise I wouldn't sell it, right? I mean, if I need it, why would I sell it for plat?
 
Unless I need something even more than I need this thing I'm selling, that the plat can get for me. Like access to the game for another month, without which absolutely nothing I have in my character's possessions matters for anything.
 
Your argument is like saying that if people on a sinking ship leave their dinner plates behind as they rush for the lifeboats, clearly they don't need food.
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And where does one buy PVP gear with cash/plat that is better than the first fresh-50? There are a couple, rare, pvp focused crafting pieces that I know of, but otherwise, you need prestige to get the stuff that will smear someone in the blue PVP vendor bought stuff.
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F2P doesn't bother me as long as it's not blatantly P2W.  What I mean by that is that you cannot achieve what you want to through normal gameplay without having to buy something from the cash shop.  I have similar issues if the cash shop becomes the real (GW) or de facto (SW:TOR) exclusive source of cosmetics.  So while the CREDD seller gets an advantage I don't consider it unfair or unreasonable.
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Might be missing something, I don't get the point here. :P
 
My argument wasn't that $ for gear goes all the way up, it's that it does exist, and there is a distinct gameplay advantage which can result.
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Except for two things:
 
-If you buy it from the AH, your CREDD has to be worth enough to outweigh the work involved.  Right now, a CREDD is worth (according to Ildur) less than 15 plat.  That may buy you a PVP set.  At the same time, how fast can you grind up 15 plat?  Do you consider yourself at a distinct disadvantage if you can or can't?  That's why the source is important.  Without regulation, essentially, we're setting our own prices.  A PVP set on the AH might cost 10 gold, it might cost 100 plat, but it was put together by a player who found it relatively easy and worth his time.  The gameplay distinction in the match may change, but then again, that distinction doesn't care if you bought a PVP set with CREDD, plat, or had it given to you by a guildmate.  You can't buy a game advantage that isn't already easily available to other people who didn't need real money to get it.
 
-PVP gear, at least the first tier, is actually purchasable from a vendor.
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F2P doesn't bother me as long as it's not blatantly P2W.  What I mean by that is that you cannot achieve what you want to through normal gameplay without having to buy something from the cash shop.  I have similar issues if the cash shop becomes the real (GW) or de facto (SW:TOR) exclusive source of cosmetics.  So while the CREDD seller gets an advantage I don't consider it unfair or unreasonable.
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Your argument is the guy with plat from CREDD  is going to have enough of an advantage to "kick the living crap out of the player who does not have PVP gear." ... not "have an advantage" you clearly said he would dominate. I'd like to know where this "dominant" gear is available for plat, because the only PVP gear I am aware of available for plat is from the vendor, which anyone can get, and a couple crafted pieces. So your argument falls flat, because the dominance you claim would happen couldn't possibly happen. Would there be an advantage to someone with extra plat who can change/add tons of runes? Sure. But I don't think it would result in an ass kicking.
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How is my point that one player will be inarguably stronger than another, as a result of a non-gameplay intrusion of real money, mitigated by the fact that the advantage could be gained by means other than real money? I mean, that just flies so far over my point that it's ignoring it rather than countering it. :o
 
"That distinction doesn't care"... I can't even comprehend why you're investing yourself with the perspective of the distinction, which doesn't exist and is totally irrelevant to a debate about gameplay fairness. Cannot process. :P
 
And btw, the fact that PVP gear is purchasable from a vendor is entirely the basis of my point...
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But my point wasn't that it would be frequent or game-breaking, simply that the game in its current state does support this kind of situation happening.
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So it's OK with you if, as long as it's possible for us to get the same thing through gameplay, they started to sell Legendaries in a cash shop? :P
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And my point is that it can't happen like that. They can get the SAME gear as someone who earned their plat in game. There is no advantage, other than saved time, which is kind of the whole point of CREDD.
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			That's suuuuuuuuuuch an extreme example. The chance for someone to hit 50 with zero plat is so ridiculously small.... and the fact is, they did have plat, they just spent it on something else.	
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Player X hits level 50
Player Y hits level 50 at the same time
 
Player X has no in-game gold, buys a full suit of PVP gear with real money
Player Y has no in-game gold, but also no real money to spend, so buys no gear
 
Both players enter a battleground
 
Being approximately the same in skill and such, Player X beats the crap out of Y due to his significant gear advantage
 
Now expand this scenario to account for a large number of players potentially going through the same motions.
 
 
This is a real situation that can happen, Mae. If you don't want to acknowledge that saving time can directly affect the fairness of competition between two players, I don't know what else to say.
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Player X hits level 50
Player Y hits level 50 at the same time
 
Player X has no in-game gold, buys a full suit of PVP gear with real money
Player Y has no in-game gold, but also no real money to spend, so buys no gear
 
Both players enter a battleground
 
Being approximately the same in skill and such, Player X beats the crap out of Y due to his significant gear advantage
 
Now expand this scenario to account for a large number of players potentially going through the same motions.
 
 
This is a real situation that can happen, Mae. If you don't want to acknowledge that saving time can directly affect the fairness of competition between two players, I don't know what else to say.
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That's suuuuuuuuuuch an extreme example. The chance for someone to hit 50 with zero plat is so ridiculously small.... and the fact is, they did have plat, they just spent it on something else.
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Would there be an advantage to someone with extra plat who can change/add tons of runes? Sure. But I don't think it would result in an ass kicking.
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But for every player "x" there is, there's a player "z" who gets something out of the deal too.
 
And if player "y" wants what player "x" has, it's just a matter of time, literally.
 
Again, CREDD is about trading real life time for real life money. In game, it all balances out because everything owned by a player has been payed by some player's time, whether his/her own or someone elses.
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So what?
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Homework time: Person 1 wants a chance at legendary gear using the boxes. The boxes require 30 PPPs, which are granted for shiphand gold runs. But the chance of getting a legendary from those boxes is not 100%. We know it's a non-zero chance because people have gotten it. The estimate we have in Jabbithole is about 5% or something, so let's use that.
How many times on avereage does this player have to complete shiphand gold runs to get a legendary he can use? Then, assuming he's clearing gold runs at 10 minutes each, how much real time he used in getting there?
 
Once you have the answer, contrast it with Person 2: he also wants the same legendary, but he will use CREDD instead of running content. Last time I checked, one PPP was at 10 gold. Bags require 30 PPPs. That's 3 platinum per bag. CREDD sells for about 13 platinum. So Person 2 is getting 4 (and some fraction) bags per CREDD.
How many CREDDs would Person 2 have to buy and sell in order to get the same ammount of boxes Person 1 needed to beat the RNG? And how much real time would it take Person 2 to do so?
 
The answer? I have no idea. I stink at math. I'm just throwing this to annoy everyone here! 
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It all balances out in your mind because you're not even attempting to place this in the context of competitive gameplay. You think it's "just a matter of time" like that's no big deal, when the reality of fair competitive gameplay is that time is incredibly essential. It's not something you can just conjure up.
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So it's OK with you if, as long as it's possible for us to get the same thing through gameplay, they started to sell Legendaries in a cash shop? :P
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This has made a VERY drastic assumption, that Player Y decided to walk into a BG with no gear exclusively because he had no CREDD and thus no other way to get gear.  That's what I'm saying.
 
At the very least, from zero, the scenario would be:
 
Player X buys a full suit of PVP gear with plat bought with real money.
Player Y buys a full suit of PVP gear with plat earned from playing the game.
 
Why would we assume that someone is walking into PVP without PVP gear because he didn't buy CREDD?  That's exactly the distinction I'm making here, that you absolutely don't need CREDD to get that gear.  How much time do you think was saved by doing that, if we're assuming Player Y then dedicates himself to just grinding up plat to buy his gear?
 
And we're forgetting that Player Y can literally join a guild that suits him up in top PVP gear for nothing but being a guildie.  That is also possible.
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I think what's possible vs what is the expected, normal experience of players is important. If this scenario happens once in a while, it's not a big deal. If everyone who hit 50 was getting destroyed by people with credit cards, that would be different.
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Is it technically possible to earn enough PPPs by just running veteran shiphands so that you can obtain that gear? Sure, it's possible. All it will take is 200 hours of farming on average, so I hope you don't think your free time is at all valuable. If you spend an hour every day farming for it, on average you should have a piece of that gear 7 months from now. Better get started, see you in October when you can start going after your next piece.
 
Or you can do the exact same thing without any farming at all, just add cash. Heck, at the cap-limited rate of one CREDD per day, if you can afford to drop the $600 maximum on CREDD you can pick up ~3 pieces of usable legendary gear per month, on average.
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And that is the problem with this perspective here:
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I never assumed that player Y had no other way to get PVP gear. I presented a situation where both players hit 50 and wanted to PVP right away because that's what they like. One player was able to do so with an advantage drawn from outside of the game, the other was able to do so but with no advantage. 
 
Sure, player Y could spend time grinding out the gear. I have no idea how long it would take, but even if it took three hours or thirty, they're still being required to do something that player X bypassed using real money.
 
My point is not to show what will happen in every circumstance, or that there can be no alternate circumstances. That would be stupid. My point is that this specific situation is highly plausible, that it puts player Y at a disadvantage due to external influences, and that, consequently, I deem it unfair. ;)
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Did you just pull an ad populum fallacy, Vic? People don't act like you, therefore, you are wrong.
It is irrelevant what people think right now. Let me illustrate:
 
In the middle ages people were really sure that the Earth was the center of the universe. Because if Galileo was right, there'd be parallax effects with the other astronomical bodies (like the Sun). They couldn't see that, so they assumed Galileo was wrong. Much later, with modern tools, someone managed to see and calculate the parallax effect and it turned out that Galileo was right. 
See how this works, now?
 
 
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There's one problem with your assertation I bolded above. PPP for sale is not infinite. It's not like you're buying them from a vendor. The laws of supply and demand would mean that even if you sank $600 IRL cash in CREDD, it wouldn't guarantee you to get enough PPP to get a legendary item. You would have to take into account 1) Selling the CREDD you buy for the same amount for all 30, 2) buying PPP at the current price so it's 3p per attempt at legendary.
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Just want to quickly clarify something as well, as I know this kind of thing can affect people's interpretation of words:
 
I am not making a case for removing CREDD, or trying to prove it's bad, or claiming it's unfair or dysfunctional overall.
 
I was trying to make a case that CREDD is not completely innocent of the sins of its kin. Someone said they felt that CREDD had none of the drawbacks of F2P, and I was mostly trying to nuance that by pointing out that there are certainly instances where the purchase of CREDD can cause a direct imbalance in fair gameplay, and a player can suffer for it.
 
Hopefully that at least clears up my intentions. :P 	
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I find this a bit petty. People who want to farm still need to sink an average of 200 hours per piece. Someone willing to throw money at the system, meanwhile, gets 1 less hour of farming per <insert value here>. Even if they can't buy them all in one swoop, they can still shorten the farming time by a considerable ammount just by paying.
Plus, remember that time isn't infinite either. A player doesn't have infinite time per day to farm shiphands. The CREDD seller still gets an advantage.
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Did you just pull an ad populum fallacy, Vic? People don't act like you, therefore, you are wrong.
It is irrelevant what people think right now. Let me illustrate:
 
In the middle ages people were really sure that the Earth was the center of the universe. Because if Galileo was right, there'd be parallax effects with the other astronomical bodies (like the Sun). They couldn't see that, so they assumed Galileo was wrong. Much later, with modern tools, someone managed to see and calculate the parallax effect and it turned out that Galileo was right. 
See how this works, now?
 
 
 
I find this a bit petty. People who want to farm still need to sink an average of 200 hours per piece. Someone willing to throw money at the system, meanwhile, gets 1 less hour of farming per <insert value here>. Even if they can't buy them all in one swoop, they can still shorten the farming time by a considerable ammount just by paying.
Plus, remember that time isn't infinite either. A player doesn't have infinite time per day to farm shiphands. The CREDD seller still gets an advantage.
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The major difference is that, as a subscription game with a system like this, Wildstar (like EVE), gets a lot of the benefits of F2P with none of the drawbacks. The one and only thing that F2P systems do on their own is to make sure that one portion of the players pay more money in order to subsidize players paying less (specifically nothing). In theory, this allows some people more access while requiring more funds to access the entirety of content.
 
The major drawback of F2P and B2P as a system is that the company sits in between the players that make money and the players that don't. This forces them to make decisions related to how to regulate the costs in between. They have to do this with pay walls, P2W, all the things we don't like about F2P and B2P. And if they aren't making enough money, they have to make these more draconian. This is why games on those models tend to slide towards the worst things about F2P; they have to in order to continue to be profitable. They have to make things exclusively purchasable by money and they have to spend man hours producing these. They have to make sure that the items players need to spend money on aren't things they can take or leave, because players can leave (and therefore leave them nothing). Therefore, their system, simply by definition, has to essentially correctly guess what will be wanted by the player base and paid for by that player base in order to cover an also-estimated guess of free players.
 
Things like CREDD put the company on one side of the transaction; the purchase side. Everything else is decided by the players. This means there can't really be P2W (because the items have to be accessible to enough of the population to put them into circulation) and there are no pay walls (because NCSoft and Carbine don't necessarily have to decide what is worthwhile and what isn't). They can, essentially, make the game for everyone at that point. People will self-regulate whether or not they will take the time to grind plat or buy CREDD to trade for plat. And people will therefore self-regulate how many free players are in the game. NCSoft doesn't necessarily have to guess anything anymore, the players themselves who do pay will decide exactly how many free players can be in circulation based on the extra money they pay.
 
This means NCSoft can basically put its hands up and say, "Hey, we just provide the resource." Hell, if they REALLY want to, they don't have to change the payment model to pull the strings. All they REALLY have to do is add more things that are very expensive in terms of plat and make those the only way to get those items. The one and only example of this in the game I can think of off the top of my head is the highest level of riding (80 plat). I don't know how many CREDD they've sold for people to not want to grind 80 plat, but all they have to do is put their hands up and say, "It's a one-time purchase, people have that much plat, and you have CREDD if you don't want to. But it's not locked behind any paywall." Which, to be fair, it isn't. You can grind up 80 plat if you really want that riding speed. Or, if you're on Entity (with our ~15p per CREDD exchange rate), you could purchase six CREDD. Essentially that means that some players will do without (they'll either use a CREDD or sub, though, so they're accounted for in the month). But every time that one-in-a-hundred person decides to just buy out the CREDD for it, he essentially puts six people in game for a month (paid up front, of course).
 
And nothing is locked behind a paywall or P2W, again, this is all completely above and beyond the system where NCSoft or Carbine have to do any guesswork. If there's not enough CREDD (or the prices spike), the free players just don't play (which means NCSoft doesn't have to direct Carbine to lock more behind the pay wall to compensate).
 
I think a lot of people are asking for F2P because they don't really understand that concept, that essentially NCSoft can make this game function exactly like a B2P game without any of the drawbacks of an exclusive cash shop. They can stand away from real cash exclusivity and P2W both by just having Carbine pull the strings of the CREDD system. They aren't really doing that right now (most items in the game, especially new stuff, are purchased with Renown, Glory, and Prestige), but they can if it comes down to it. They can have their cake and eat it, too.
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Well, there's a lot to that, because then you're making a huge assumption.  That "advantage" isn't a game advantage, it's skipping a theoretical time sink.  Theoretical, because this assumes a lot that you're not taking into account:
 
-Both players spend the same amount of time in-game
-Both players only ever want to do the same thing
-Both players have no other exterior sources of platinum income
-Both players have no other exterior sources of getting the gear
-etc.
 
My contention is, and has been since the beginning, that you can't really sell the game advantage, especially not as dirt cheap as 15p for 20$.  As soon as both players have their gear, they step into a BG at the same level.  All the CREDD player got as an advantage was that he didn't need to get the platinum himself by grinding, which isn't a game advantage.  Especially since you can get a crafted PVP set; that's entirely player regulated.
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Petty? I was pointing out that yasfan's assertation that you can just "throw money" at it and win is false, because the market isn't solid. Buying that much CREDD to put on the market would push the CREDD value DOWN. Buying up loads of PPP would push that value UP. At some point, either the PPP supply would diminish to a trickle, or the CREDD market would crash.
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I don't know where you get that list of assumptions from, Vic. I've clearly stated that my example allows for the existence of alternate ways to get gold, and why that existence doesn't detract from my point. I'm also unsure why "both players only ever want to do the same thing" has any relevance here. I created an example where two players are trying to do one thing in the moment, and in that moment, an unfair situation occurs. What do their future desires have to do with that? It's inane.
 
Let's get back to my specific example. You're claiming that a player can only get a savings of time out of CREDD, which is not a game advantage.
 
The point of my scenario is that two players hit 50 at the same time and both want to PVP right away because that's what they enjoy. You can't just shrug off human psychology here. It's a critical point, because this can and will happen, and once those two players have both entered the BG, the game advantage for one does exist.
 
Just because player Y has the option to go grind gear, doesn't mean there is no gameplay advantage should the player decide not to grind gear first or have no friends to get freebies from. Which I hope you agree is a reasonable decision PVP players should certainly be able to make!
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The rate of throwing money determines how destabilizing the act of throwing money is, which is why we differentiate between someone selling one thing and someone "flooding" the market. And this system is designed to let you spend a lot without spending a lot all at once to specifically avoid what you're describing.
 
This game limits cash purchases to one CREDD per day, so someone with money to burn has to burn it at a capped rate of $20/day, which pretty much destroys your assertion that the market would bounce this kind of P2W out of the game.
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That people gain plat by reselling CREDD doesn't bother me is true.  Legendaries dropping from a gamble box does.  I prefer to believe that they didn't quite think that system through and will hopefully rethink it.
 
For myself I plan to get mine the old fashioned way by running the content. ;)
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Just as an aside, has anyone gotten a legendary from one of these boxes?  I mean, I know people who do a lot of shiphands, and I've never heard of someone actually getting one.
 
Not really related to the conversation, just wondering if anyone's ever even seen one of these things.	
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You don't think?  Try it.  The market's sensitive enough that CREDD will spike up or down two plat in a few hours.  Cut half the PPP off the market and the price will rise.  You'd be surprised how hard that market will heel-spin if someone snaps up a lot of an item.
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Just as an aside, has anyone gotten a legendary from one of these boxes?  I mean, I know people who do a lot of shiphands, and I've never heard of someone actually getting one.
 
Not really related to the conversation, just wondering if anyone's ever even seen one of these things.
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Here is a link to the thread you're looking for.
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Perhaps you should better define "gameplay advantage", because if player Y goes out and grinds the gear, there is no gameplay advantage.  I'm assuming you mean a time advantage, in which case, the entire basis of your point rests upon how much time your money is worth.
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  I know more people who have gotten three luminous equivars from boom boxes than that.
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			I remember that part of the idea behind CREDD was for players with little spare time and with extra money to be able to keep up with those people with spare time to spend in the game if they choose to do so. Hence the in-game-advantage which is negligible at best.	
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How can you assume what I mean when I clearly stated it several times? <_<
 
If player X has a full suit of PVP gear, and player Y has none, that is a clear game advantage in power.
 
Your "because if player Y goes out and grinds the gear" comment is completely ignoring the very quote you're replying to. Please reread this in context.
 
 
 
 
The point is that player Y chooses not to grind. Which is a reasonable choice, and one which some players will make. They'll simply go straight to the BGs and start hacking. As a PVPer of 9 years, I know from experience that many PVPers prefer to PVP for their gear rather than grind gold for it. And in making that reasonable decision, fall victim to other players who have bought their gear with real money (granting a power advantage that was not earned through anyone's gameplay).
 
 
I have to leave this discussion now because I just received some rather frustrating news, and by the time I could come back, the current debate will be flaccid or lost. Have fun to all involved. :P
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One in that thread?  Any others?
 
And ilvl 68?
 
I really hope no one's mortgaging the future on that with CREDD, if that's P2W, that's the worst gamblebox I've ever heard of.  I mean, if it's really an attempt to get people to buy CREDD, they HAVE to be baiting us with more than that.  I know more people who have gotten three luminous equivars from boom boxes than that.
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And all you need to get there is have lots of cash.
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