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Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
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Posted - 2011.07.18 16:59:00 -
[1]
well, ignoring the OP's typical drift from interesting idea to absurd conclusions(planned i'm sure):
Plex do provide the most effective hedge against the sort of "inflation" most important to players hoping to have thier virtual wealth as covetted by other players in terms of hours of play or $ that it would take to aquire such virtual wealth (the $ is self fufilling by definition)
Economists do not typically call this "keeping up with the jones"(tm) inflation ... inflation. While there are numerous inflation indexes and what fits the word "inflation" can almost drift into arguments of semantics , the most common is a basket of goods with similar baskets compared over time. If there is a drake in the basket, economists rarely will substitute it in the future with something of more utility like the tengu, even if for practical purposes, the Tengu would be the new Drake . (they struggle with things like does a 52 inch plasma screen = the high end 25 inch tube TV of 15 years ago)
What is important to "preserve ones virutal wealth" is to keep up with the reality you will be faced with in the future to stay on par with a typical player of your spot in the distributuion in the future.
The Plex has provided that mechanism and the floating price has indeed be a useful tool to give CCP cover of the market mechanism to adjust exchange rates which would be a marketing negative for them. (and I mean that in a complimentary way.. thats not a knock, it is the right way to handle it)
In terms of liabilty, while I see the free $ loan (time value of money) from players to CCP as a positive (being paid in advance is only a liablity if you squuander the payment and are stuck with the liablity without a complimentary asset held), the idea of an expiration date is probably good. It would provide something of an "escheet" mechanism, removing stores of plex held by players who forget about the game for a few years (a 24 month term might be good)
An expiration date would be almost harmless to active players who would only need to take the time and potential market fee charges to transfer the "riper" plexes to people who plan to use them for game time right away then repurchase "fresh" ones.
As a practical manner, rather than a rolling 24 months they should be sold in tranches that expire either June 30th or December 31st (actually fiscal year dates would be better for administration strains). New plexes created on a given date would get 24 months plust an additional amount of days or months (up to six) applicable to the series being held.
That mechanism would limit the number of plex items to 4 or 5 and be quite workable for the game market mechanisms to handle.
One caveat:
Free-to-play could provide a hit to plex value. I'd expect though that there would always be a "premium" mode as is common in most free to play games, which would be required for decent sp growth, waiving of some extra tax levied on on premium players etc which in addition to Aurum conversions would maintain the relative value of plex in the future even with a basic subscription being offered for free.
Plex have been a good invetion. They've end run the many burdens much of the RMT can impose on a game and have had only modest effect on competitive balance because increasing thath type of sale has not be a priority for CCP developers and it works seemlessly to access content meant for not $>isk purchasors.
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Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
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Posted - 2011.07.18 17:43:00 -
[2]
To add a bit more,
To avoid fall-out on a customer relations level (and perhaps even a legal basis in some jurisdictions.. even if the actions were dissmissible)
... any introduction of expirations should of course only apply to future plex sold.
The existing stock-piles will wain on their own over time... even if worth more some people will still use them here and there as us trader players know from the absurd variations we get in prices from market to market in many things and even sometimes plex .
The Plex for good promotions could be structured to encourage the purchasing and retiring of the legacy plex .... the premium of a plex without expiration and one with expiration will have some practial limit while retiring the first 80% of them (the last 20% will probably remain almost like collector's items.. covetted over time until the holders die in rl and leave them to their descendants in their wills.. which would be a eula violation)
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Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
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Posted - 2011.07.18 21:25:00 -
[3]
As I said above..
CCP doesn't need to change the existing plex (it would be a public relations disaster and against consumer protection laws in many states even if state law didn't apply to a foreign company)
They could leave those legacy plex as they are and issue new ones that expire . I wouldn't use the plex 1 2 3 and switch them. I'd name them by expiry date. June 2011, December 2011, March 2012. And you'd only have 3 or 4 that would still exist with the rest expiring worthless. (you wouldn't issue them for everymonth.. some purcahses would last a portion of the roll period longer).
You'd also have the legacy plex with no limit but those would shrink even though they have a bit higher value due to lack of expiration. Some people would use them anyway... and there could be ways to buy some from people who were selling them at a premium on the market.
You don't need black and white solutions to almost anything in the world.. just get closer....if the goal were to get rid of all of them getting rid of 1/2 of them is good in itself.
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Diomedes Calypso
Aetolian Armada
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Posted - 2011.07.18 21:31:00 -
[4]
BTW, I'm not sure that they're that concerned about the overhang of plexes so I don't think the expiration issue is any huge priority. The incremental cost of providing a month of game time probably costs less than a $1.
There is some risk that those plex would fall into the hands of people who intended to pay real $ to ccp but instead recieved those plex from other players for out of game barter (trading currencies in other games if not precisely rmt). Still, the vast majority of them are going to be used by people getting 2nd third 4th and 5th accounts that they never would have paid cash for .
Sitll, expirations would just be a sensible thing to do going forward. Setting the expectation of a future change in value (going to worthless) would give cover for other changes in subscriptions that partially impaired a plex value.
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