Tokens are cool and all, have great benefits. Seems what IMC wants to do here is have tokens be sort of a premium benefit that encourages people to buy them via TP. The other reason to buy tokens is to get some fast cash. But there’s a problem here. Namely, the value of tokens on the market is low because if you already have a token, there’s no reason to get another one. Worse, the supply of tokens is only going to grow. Most damning of all, the token market moves so slow it’s hardly worth bothering with. Granted, free to play will help with some of this, but it’s not going to solve the problem entirely.
The goal here of course, is to get people to buy more TP. The TP market even has some cool stuff, enchant scrolls, soul crystals, warp scrolls, skill resets, etc etc. All great things in the TP shop. Now, this idea will work exponentially better the more content is added to the TP shop, but it seems that’s on the way anyway. That said, these things are made much more desirable when there is a culture that you’re expected to have these things at high levels. But having that behind a strict pay wall is bad too. So how do you circumvent the problem?
Token to TP exchange. Now, hold on, before you wig out, hear me out. Tokens are like, 190 or so TP to purchase yes? What if you could convert them back into TP, but say, get 100 TP for each token you convert? Suddenly you got free players scrambling to get tokens to burn them on enchant scrolls, soul crystals, fancy costumes, etc etc. This means they’re going to be buying a lot more on the market for silver. This means people will be a lot more likely to sell tokens for cold hard cash, as the cost of each token on the market would explode. Even better, it makes it an attractive alternative to gold sellers.
(Side note: A wipe of all posted tokens on the market (as in returned to their sellers and their market posting fees), along with a reset of token price would be necessary here. Not so bad at all considering the state of that market. )
Since all tokens have to come from the TP shop/DLC purchase at some point, the important thing to realize is that exchanging tokens for TP would -remove tokens from circulation-, while only putting back ~60% of the TP that was originally used to purchase them back into “circulation”, to be spent on skill pots and the like. People choosing to farm that much silver for stuff are less likely to spend money on your game at all in the first place. Meanwhile, “whales” or people likely to spend money on an MMO, will be more likely to buy lots of tokens for silver they can spend on gear, upgrades, attributes and so on. Buying TOKENS from YOU for silver, instead of buying silver from GOLD SELLERS, which is what many of the weaker willed ones are CURRENTLY doing.
It’ll make all TP items are accessible to everyone if they’re willing to farm them. Despite this, said items will be more desirable because it will be expected to have some of these things like soul crystals, high end head gear etc late game because they’ll be -accessible-. People will spend silver for these things, by buying tokens for TP, which will be sold by “whales” looking for silver. Because this would create a powerful token sink, the demand for tokens will rise, prices will go up and so too, will the desire to purchase and sell them on the market. Even better, the effectiveness of this strategy will only dramatically increase the more content is added to the TP shop, it has room to grow.
The end result? People want more tokens. People want TP. People will buy more tokens with TP to meet demand because not only will tokens sell for a higher price, but the market will actually MOVE at a viable pace, etc. Since the tokens are exchanged for a lower TP value than they were purchased for, that’s TP/$ that IMC gets to keep with no one even being mad about it. Less TP items to dollars spent over all will actually make it into the world, since the exchange rate is skewed in this manner. TP items will be more common, yes, but only because a lot more people are spending a lot more money.
Lastly, but not least IMC, you can put whatever the hell you damn well please onto the TP market, at any scale you wish and no one can say “pay to win” because it’s perfectly accessible to everyone.
Think about it IMC. It’s not a bad idea right? It’s even one that’ll make players happy and only serve to make you more money while bringing the “premium experience” to all your players at the same time.
Sincerely,
An occasional whale
(within fiscal reasonability of course, no I’m not fat, I just have a job )