What or who is GR.A.C.E. ?

[Technorabbit]

Wait.

What if I want to reactivate an account?

[Traderjill]

I have a couple questions:

1. The description of the item makes me wonder.. are you guys planning to open up GMI access to froobs beyond view-only?

2. Do you have any existing plans to allow us to use GRACE in a way where we could use it to add 30 days to a non-active paid account?

[MachSchau]

Cool credit sink I like it.

[sannz]

Cool credit sink I like it.

QFT. Especially since it might get quite a few vets back into the game seeing that they could just use this to play instead of paying.

Question will be how often and in what intervals it can be used.

[lazarus]

Am i the only one that see it as a problem that the max Price of the grace is 1b?

[Tikra]

Am i the only one that see it as a problem that the max Price of the grace is 1b?

4b+ actually, since its only available on GMI. GMI holds at least 4b creds

[Bonghigs]

I'd like to buy less than 0 of them, please.

This... can we please fix at least some of the GMI exploits before adding items like this... hell, can we just stop adding new things and spend a couple weeks fixing exploits in general?

[I know i won't get it, but i would love some commentary from Genele or someone official on why FC lets exploits stand for so long when they are well known and ruining the economy/community, which directly forces players to leave the game out of frustration.]

[Genele]

Since this thread is about GRACE and not exploits, I will answer the GRACE related question first and then sidetrack my post with an answer to another post which is not related to the GRACE item.

I have a couple questions:

1. The description of the item makes me wonder.. are you guys planning to open up GMI access to froobs beyond view-only?

2. Do you have any existing plans to allow us to use GRACE in a way where we could use it to add 30 days to a non-active paid account?

1: No, but I am trying to find out if we could allow froobs to upgrade their accounts with the 30 day game-time code and set up a membership type which doean't require any credit card information. No promises though as this will be billing team's decision entirely.

2: Same goes for this question: GRACE will not be possible to use on an inactive account, but it will be up to the billing team to decide if we could allow the 30 day game-time codes to be used this way.

We will post an FAQ with questions from this thread when all the decisions have been made and the billing part of things has been finalized. Until then, know that the suggestions have been brought up and are being sorted out.

_________________________________________________

So over to the off topic question that I just had to reply to because I am sick and tired of getting thrown in my face that we don't care about exploits. I know this is off topic, so if you want to discuss or comment on this topic further, I suggest you make another thread.

This... can we please fix at least some of the GMI exploits before adding items like this... hell, can we just stop adding new things and spend a couple weeks fixing exploits in general?

[I know i won't get it, but i would love some commentary from Genele or someone official on why FC lets exploits stand for so long when they are well known and ruining the economy/community, which directly forces players to leave the game out of frustration.]

The simple answer to your question is: Because many of these exploits don't get reported with enough details for us to get them fixed.
If you are annoyed that other people break your game experience and you know how they do it, then say something in the Report an Exploit part of the forum instead of just assuming someone else has already reported it.
Reality is that few people actually report these things.
For me to talk to people and go like "Hi, I'm Genele. I think you are exploiting, would you mind telling me how you do it?" How many people do you think would actually tell me anything?
We have to rely on honest players to give us information, that is just how it goes. It is a lot easier for honest players to be able to infiltrate exploit communities to get information than it is for us developers. (True story, my play characters' organization got so paranoid that all their exploits got fixed that they stopped talking about them in the org channel...)

Also, the market exploit that everyone seem to talk about was fixed almost a year ago.
(I got called back from vacation at the time so I remember it clearly...) The reason why we found it that time was not because someone reported it, it was because one of the people who exploited went so far that the market system crashed. The biggest issue with cleaning up after that exploit was the fact that people who didn't intend to exploit were used passively by the exploiters. We did however go through all the market logs and all the money and items that had been exploited in the market system at the time was removed, many players were banned and anyone claiming something else is lying (After all I went through the logs with CS myself during my vacation, so its a bit hard to forget.)

If you know of any other issue that has not been fixed, again please let us know how it is done so we can fix it. We always prioritize fixing exploits when we have enough information to get it done in a timely manner.

At the end here I just want to say that we can't just stop developing the game because a small group of our players have decided to make it their life's purpose to break the game for everyone else. You also have no idea how much time we actually spend on fixing exploits. Every time I write in the patch notes that we have fixed exploits, its because we have.

[Traderjill]

We will post an FAQ with questions from this thread when all the decisions have been made and the billing part of things has been finalized. Until then, know that the suggestions have been brought up and are being sorted out.

Thank you!

[Slynn]

Afaik every eve Plex ingame have a fixed buy price in it. Like 500m credits or something. Is it possible to get GRACE with fixed prices also?

[Genele]

Afaik every eve Plex ingame have a fixed buy price in it. Like 500m credits or something. Is it possible to get GRACE with fixed prices also?

I honestly think this is a bad idea. Evidently we do experience inflation in AO (even though it has been less severe over the years than in some other games I will not mention the name of). But keep in mind that inflation also happens in the real world. You can look at how much a house cost your grandparents and laugh at the price they paid because it was so low compared to what it would cost today.

The price of an item in an mmo will always reflect the time/effort it would take to obtain it, the amount of time it takes to obtain credits and the demand on the item you wish to purchase. With GRACE it is fast to obtain the item, but the time measurement will reflect your personal economy too.
For the buyer the questions will be: "How much game time am I willing to spend on grinding credits to pay for my subscription? Maybe I should just pay my own subscription so I can do other things when I play?"
For the seller the questions will be "How much do I need these extra credits right now? How much do I think my real money is worth in credits?"

Even though we do have some exploited credits and some credits from times when our design was less good (cough... ingots cough...) people who sell GRACE today will sell it for a price that makes sense today. If GRACE is priced too high, no one will buy it.

With a scenario where we experience more inflation in the future and we have a cap on how much credits that players can make off of GRACE. Then players would get unhappy with the credit value of their real money and spend them on a credit sellers instead. Because credit sellers exist, there is a market for paying your way in to power in the game. And is it not better to invest that money in to getting future updates for the game you care about?

If we experience little inflation in the future, the price of GRACE will stabilize at a price that both sellers and buyers will be happy with.

These were just my personal thoughts on the subject.

[Macrosun]

Afaik every eve Plex ingame have a fixed buy price in it. Like 500m credits or something. Is it possible to get GRACE with fixed prices also?

Just wanted to point out plex in eve has afaik never been fixed price. it was 700m+ recently even.

[Esssch]

1: No, but I am trying to find out if we could allow froobs to upgrade their accounts with the 30 day game-time code and set up a membership type which doean't require any credit card information. No promises though as this will be billing team's decision entirely.

Wouldn't that take 2+ GRACE to achieve? Last time I looked at a froob account-page, you still have to buy the actual expansions, as well as gametime. Are you planning on taking the price off the expansions?

[Ekarona]

I hope you QA the system properly unlike GMI was done... I won't go to details, but I found the QA lacking and unprofessional with its launch...

Forcing any price on GRACE might be unwise, considering some of the possible upcoming changes. Also in future there might be changes in active playerbase and resources they have available and places that need those resources.

[Maofex]

Afaik every eve Plex ingame have a fixed buy price in it. Like 500m credits or something. Is it possible to get GRACE with fixed prices also?

Eve PLEX has a fixed price to buy from CCP with RL money. When you put it up on the market ingame, it's the market that decides. I don't know the recent prices, but 700M+ recently doesn't suprice me. It was 500M+ about a year ago.

[juggaloklown]

I would prefer it being added to the store rather then market.... as a credit sink.

Why they are at it set a credit value for other store items too. If it's possible.

But if funcom did that they wouldn't get the $15 I assume the G.R.A.C.E. will cost.




So Eve,Rift and I think Wildstar just added this type of thing too.

But with Rift it's more like buying funcom points with credits then spending the points to buy the subscription in the Item store.

[nat3s]

(even though it has been less severe over the years than in some other games I will not mention the name of).

We will have to agree to differ on that.

What I hope we will agree on is the reason for the inflation in AO; no credit sinks and a number of exploits. AO has lacked day-to-day sinks such as gear repair, vanity items and a PLEX system. GRACE will go a long way to fix that in my mind (as the credits evaporate when the GRACE is converted to game time) and I am stoked to see you taking such a positive step. (you'll be getting my sub back for doing it).

One question, do you plan to increase the credit cap beyond 999,999,999 as the price of GRACE will, at least initially, be > 1bil given the current state of the market and the wealth available to some chars. Flicking between chars to deposit > 1 bil is frustrating.

Thanks

[TharBeDragons]

...as the credits evaporate when the GRACE is converted to game time...

GMI tax evaporates. Most of the credits just go from one player to another.

[Honorbound]

Apparently some poeple have a hard time with grasping what this is about. You are not making game time out of thin air by giving worthless ingame money to FC in exchange for game time. You (or someone else) buy extra game time with real money from FC, then you can transfer that game time to someone else in exchange for ingame money.

The ingame money stays in the system, it is only transferred from one player to another, except for the GMI tax which is lost. It could be a moneysink (due to the expected high market price of thes items), but only if the credit price stays within reasonable limits so that players would actually be able and willing to buy these items from others, which I can't really see happening if it indeed will be on the order of several billions.

[nat3s]

GMI tax evaporates. Most of the credits just go from one player to another.

Not sure I follow you, someone pays 1bil* for a GRACE, they use the GRACE to extend their game time. They are down 1bil on the transaction (traded creds for game time). Each GRACE used is 1bil less creds in the economy.

* assumed cost of 1bil.