These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Out of Pod Experience

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

JaGex reinvents the plex - and my dreams beyond
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Kenneth Skybound
Gallifrey Resources
#1 - 2013-09-25 23:15:11 UTC
So, it turns out that JaGex, makers of RuneScape (and various, less successful projects like Fun Orb) have devised a way to help deal with RMT called Bonds.

Player A buys bond with IRL money, trades it to player B for in game money. Player B uses bond to extend subscription or get access to specialist items.

I'm seeing parallels with PLEX and the Nex Store here and if JaGex never even thought of EVE, let alone potentially speaking to CCP directly, I'll be shocked.

But here's the dream

Two games which have a IRL to In game cash conversion that is one way via means of an item. This item in both games is both an intermediary currency and a method to extend one's subscription.

How big a leap would it really be for JaGex's "Bonds" and CCP's "PLEX" to become tradable across games? The impact of which including those who are badass at one game could have an honest step into the other, paying for one sub by making in game cash on another (just like people sub their alts via their main, or their main via their alts here).

(Full details on JaGex's move here: http://services.runescape.com/m=news/an-important-message-from-mod-mmg)
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#2 - 2013-09-26 00:07:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Akita T
As long as one could only trade "bonds" against "PLEX" and vice-versa at a fixed rate and nothing else, I don't see why not.
The impact would be fairly neutral or even positive overall - most likely only switching some people from playing game A to game B while the same amount switch from B to A (and at best, adding new subbers to both games with an easy head start for those involved in the exchange).

However, if the rate would not be fixed, or if you could change PLEX directly for whatever in-game cash the other game has (or bonds for ISK), things get more complicated and (at least potentially) bad for one of the games (if not both).
It doesn't have to be bad, it just can become bad in certain circumstances, which would best be avoided.

Personally, from a consumer standpoint, I'd LOVE to see more games adopting PLEX-like intermediate currency-like items, and entering into a mutual fixed-rate exchange agreement (fixed at the RL cost equivalent).
And it can actually only help the game companies too, for two reasons: cross-polination (so to speak, as in, basically, sort of free cross-game advertising) and overall increased loyalty to the games belonging to the exchange group (since the customers get more value through variety for their buck).

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC
voetius
Grundrisse
#3 - 2013-09-26 08:22:53 UTC

About other games parallels to PLEX. I recall reading an article on Massively (I think) about Tera Online before it launched where they said they were going to implement the same sort of gametime mechanism as PLEX, called Chronoscrolls IIRC. There was a dev post where they explained how it worked and they even said that they had talked to CCP about how plex worked.
Kenneth Skybound
Gallifrey Resources
#4 - 2013-09-26 08:23:01 UTC
Akita T wrote:
As long as one could only trade "bonds" against "PLEX" and vice-versa at a fixed rate and nothing else, I don't see why not.
The impact would be fairly neutral or even positive overall - most likely only switching some people from playing game A to game B while the same amount switch from B to A (and at best, adding new subbers to both games with an easy head start for those involved in the exchange).

However, if the rate would not be fixed, or if you could change PLEX directly for whatever in-game cash the other game has (or bonds for ISK), things get more complicated and (at least potentially) bad for one of the games (if not both).
It doesn't have to be bad, it just can become bad in certain circumstances, which would best be avoided.

Personally, from a consumer standpoint, I'd LOVE to see more games adopting PLEX-like intermediate currency-like items, and entering into a mutual fixed-rate exchange agreement (fixed at the RL cost equivalent).
And it can actually only help the game companies too, for two reasons: cross-polination (so to speak, as in, basically, sort of free cross-game advertising) and overall increased loyalty to the games belonging to the exchange group (since the customers get more value through variety for their buck).


Yeah, I fully agree with you there on a static exchange rate. The two economies would easily handle such a situation.

Another bonus I see of this kind of connection is that for groups who form and don't feel like playing one game 23/7, they've got that in house flexibility to move around. By making the games feel more connected, players groups that spawn within them would be more involved with each others. (In my head it's like international relations between two countries).
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#5 - 2013-09-28 23:26:27 UTC
While there certainly would be a lot of advantages eventually, early on, it might actually cause more problems than it helps, so all devs/publishers would have a hard time actually coming to an agreement.

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC