I still don't think you put enough emphasis on the actual purpose of CREDD, it is clear as the sky that the CREDD system has been ideated to supply subscription model haters with a way to play for free (and for NCsoft to make cash).
It is not clear as the sky. I think the model is there for anyone who wants to not pay real money for a sub month to have a way to do so.
Those people are the target audience of this system, not the "market players"
Wrong. Market players will probably take advantage of this way more than the farmers or grinders. Why? because the market players understand the value of money. They are the people who figure better ways to get gold as a means to get things. They will also understand the value of not having to pay a sub fee every month. Market players will be more flush with gold, so they won't mind plunking down a chunk if it for more game time.
CREDD will be there to supply casual non-sub model players with an access to the game imho,
among all the other types of players who want to not pay for a sub for at least one month.
which means that in order to make these players obtain CREDD in a reasonable way the cost of these 20$ tokens will not be really high on the auction house
The price of CREDD will be what the market will bear not anything else.
Point of clarification too, CREDD will not be on the Auction House it will be on the Commodities Exchange. The auction house will have an interface that will let you see who is selling, all the prices, all the info etc. The Commodities Exchange will (at least with CREDD according to the article) only let you buy the cheapest one at time of purchase and not even see who's it was, or how many others there are. You will automatically get the lowest price one and the price will only be driven up by people buying and down by more people putting CRED into the market.
OR they will make gold farming easy.
I think you are wrong here also. Carbine has stated over and over they will not make this game easy. They have also sited many ways that other games have failed at the economy game and alluded to not making those mistakes. I know they have sited the GW2 model of everyone being able to loot mining and tree nodes (farming)and how that tanked the commodities market. They have implemented a non sharing system to combat that.
Like you say maybe a small percentage (I'd say a 1% of lucky loot droppers, and a 1-2% of hardcore market players might have interest in playing this system but the 97-98% of the player base of an MMO like Wildstar will be interested in them only for the f2p aspect.)
I am totally convinced that all this market regulation you are talking about will not influence CREDD, if what Sasquatauch said is true then only the lowest price CREDD can be bought which means that the risk/reward action of playing the marked on CREDD is crazily high and would probably only work as really long term investments. Like you said, Gyoin, maybe in a couple of years the 30g CREDD you bought will be worth 1000g and you'll profit, but it's still a really minor part of the economy considering the time span.
CREDD is not there to be a robust part of the ingame economy. It is there to give people a legal and safe alternative to turn real money into gold, and for people to be able to play the game for free. The people who play the CREDD market against itself in hopes or plans to make more gold off it are a byproduct. CREDD will be a great long term investment.
Look at
http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem and click the all button. That is a year of gem prices in GW2. Similar system. Buy something for real money from the company which you can now sell to a player for gold. Over the course of the year the price went up and up. So much that any gems you bought in the first month are now worth 11.5 times what you paid for them. On average if you bought gems at any time and waited a month, your investment doubled in price (gold).
To recapitulate, this system imho, is only there to make sub-model haters still find interest in the game, and it will be a very casual system which will not require insane grinding to achieve otherwise no casual gamer will ever adhere to it.
I think the system will be of interest to every player who wants to not pay a sub for at least a month. I actually think the farmer who grinds out what little gold he has will be the last person to buy CREDD since it will be a higher, harder won, percentage of their worth.
- Some people will buy CREDD from time to time and pay a sub the rest of the time when its convenient.
- Some people will get near to the end of their sub and decide they will work just hard enough to buy next months sub with CREDD.
- Some people will play the CREDD market with hopes of turning a profit later on down the road.
- Some people will buy the game then make sure they do whatever is needed to have enough gold to never pay a real money sub again.
- Some people will play the AH or have other means of gaining gold wealth, then decide since the price of CREDD is such a small percentage of their net worth that they will buy some instead of pay real money.
It really sounds to me that your biggest fear with CREDD is that if people are crying about not having enough gold to buy cred, Carbine will make it easier to make gold. I do not think this will happen. Carbine is making the game very hardcore friendly. That doesn't mean non friendly to casuals, but the results of that decision is close.
Carbine will be hearing crying about endgame and the 1%ers so much that people crying about not getting the game for free because its too hard to work hard will not be on their radar.
NCsoft will get paid no matter how you play the game. Their profit margin is built into every sub price including CREDD. Paying real money for CREDD is just a stupid tax imo. If you want to play the game for free, then make gold and buy ingame CREDD. If you care less about CREDD and want to save money then buy a year or 3 month sub. If you want to pay for the game month to month then pay the sub that way. OR God forbid, mix and match. No one said if you buy CREDD once you have to devote all your game time to buying CREDD every month.
It would be nice if they do allow that though. Trading those is time well-spent IMHO.