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Thanks to Jarnys for thinking about it. Maybe someone else thought of it before, anyway, a great idea to generate more income for Ryzom : PLEX

PLEX is the Pilote License Extension from EVE Online ( Sci-Fi sandbox MMORPG ).

It enables player A to buy a PLEX ( a 30 days subscription to the game ) from CCP ( the company behind EVE Online ) and then sell it to player B for ISK ( ingame currency ), the PLEX can be then used to add 30 days of gametime to your account, so player A can spend ISK on ingame things, while player B can play the game withouth having to pay real euro's.

So basically it is RMT ( real money trade ) between players only, facilitated by CCP. Note that there is nothing sold directly from CCP to the players, there is no ISK created out of thin air and then sold to the players, as it would be in a cash shop. All the ISK is generated ingame by actual players playing the game, therefore no damage is done to the ingame economy or industry, industrials ( crafters ) and market players ( economists ) are not affected directly or negatively.

I think the PLEX system could be actually a great idea for Ryzom, one sells x amount of dappers for 30 days of playtime. If you make a lot of dappers then you can play for free. Meanwhile, WG gets their cash either way.

Lastly I want to add that it was and is definitely a great success in EVE Online, they have around 360k active paying subscribers with a big part being plexers, without compromising the hardcore sandbox gameplay. Just saying that EVE does something right, not that Ryzom has to copy everything from EVE.

So what do you think?

Being an EvE player , i can say the PLEX system there does work very well indeed . However , the game economies are massively different and i'm really not sure how that the system would convert successfully across to Ryzom ( if WG wanted to even go that route ) .
The problem i see is that basically , there isn't any need in Ryzom to " purchase " ( trade gametime for currency) dappers for use .

In EvE high end minerals ( more valuable stuff ) , is controlled by virtue of being in completely unsecure space where you can be blown up just for passing by the wrong person . That has a large cost involved with it because you lose money with every ship blown up whether insured or not .
You can also lose money in high security areas when mining the low end minerals , or running a mission . These also result in an ISK loss , even if insured .
In Ryzom , you die farming the best mats , or just fighting a monster.. no big deal , you just grind off those DP's and carry on , no financial loss really .
That in itself creatives a massive difference in the need to gain ingame funds fast ( thereby selling a PLEX ).

As mentioned, the economy in EVE is solid, and pretty much everything revolves around it: you use it to purchase ships, modules, blueprints, skills, materials, stations and corporation management, and you can incur significant losses when your best ship blows up or your corporation loses everything in a war. The cost of a monthly license is about 3-400 million ISK, which is fairly substantial and requires having already invested some time in developing a character. I think CCP struck the right balance.

With upcoming economical changes, we'll have to see if Ryzom permits this kind of addition, but under the previous (existing) model, it would not have worked as Dappers have no sink (Mektoubs and teleports, that's about it); the PLEX equivalent would probably have had to be around 40-50M Dappers or so, which only master crafters could possibly afford by grinding or going for boosts...

I agree - PLEX works in EVE as it allows more players to stay subscribed. Essentially the seller is employing the buyer for time in return for ISK.

Ryzom adds difficulties because, even if the proposed game time is traded for grind or supreme mats, there is no real way to gauge the value. In EVE, a buyer or seller can get a price check in contracts, market in Jita 4-4, or various aggregator websites to get a rough idea of how much a PLEX is worth at the time.

Ryzom does not have any equivalents to those and, without them, is sure to leave a sour taste as someone, somewhere got a better deal.

There are 2 things that would need to be done before:

1) find a better name for it (being a pilot on Atys seems kind of weird)
How about a tax recipe or something like that?

2) make the economy work better (which WG is trying to do during the merge)
I really like the economic system in eve as well but that would be very much overkill here in Ryzom... (not playing it as I don't like the leveling System though)


@Xemmy:
How about a billboard showing the "taxes per capita" in all nations? Where materials would be counted as if they were sold by a merchant for dappers.

It sure is a way to get more players subscribed. But I dont find "grinding just to be able to grind more" fun and we dont play games to get another part time job for nothing but to relax and have fun among friends. Thats why I think this kind of idea is not a good solution.