Quote from: EpyxZ on July 10, 2016, 05:52:11 PM

Any game that allows an item to be purchased for real world money is pay 2 win.

While everyone has their own definition of what p2w means, in most MMOs it's defined as being able to pay for in game power. There's many types of pay 2 win ranging anywhere between mild bonus rates such as a small exp boost or convenience features to save you time (generally considered acceptable and something we definitely do) all the way to the other end of the spectrum where free players cannot in any way compete with those who pay for items.

A good example of a pay2win style game is a lot of mobile games where in order to be able to compete you MUST spend money. The same thing that might take a paying player a couple weeks to do would take a free player months or even years.

In our game we sell customization options (how your weapons and character look) for cash but those customizations can be re-sold in game. By playing the game and earning in-game currency, you can buy those cosmetics from others who donated. This creates an in game peer 2 peer market for these goods which encourages people to spend money but does not punish them for being a free player.

Quote from: m4nki on July 10, 2016, 05:45:09 PM

So Jewels will replace the current in-game currency used in Apex?

What are the most important use cases for the currency in-game?

The Jewels will become the new reward for spending real life money on the game and will not replace the current in game currencies earned simply by playing the game. Right now when someone spends money they get fixed rewards based on what they spend (a number of customization points, some in-game currency and some vip tokens). We will be re-working that system to instead be a jewel shop where users can spend their jewels on whatever particular customization or item they want. This will be more user friendly (right now we have players who end up with garments they may not want which they must then find a buyer for) and allow us to expand and customize what items are being sold very easily. It's worth keeping in mind that the jewels will be able to be traded between players in game so that if someone does wish to buy items or sell items, they can do so and it is then peer2peer and not us generating and selling gear (which would be viewed as very unfair by our players)

The second major use case will be provably fair gambling. The funds from investors will be used not only to design the secure jewels transaction system used for the in-game shop but also to develop a series of provably fair gambling games. These games will be playable using jewels OR in-game currency (that way free players are not excluded). Those same provably fair gambling games will be made available seperate from our game in the form of web and mobile app integration. This means crypto currency enthusiasts can gamble their jewels without having to have any interest in our particular game while also allowing our players to keep playing even when away from their computer.

These mini games and the currency itself can be expanded beyond the scope of our server network and even into other games. I would be very interested to talk to creators of other private servers and custom games to talk about integrating our mini games and currency system into their projects as well.

For those who are curious, here's an example of our current in-game shop which uses a 'soul points' which players donate for. These are different styles that can be applied to your weapon in game but offer no stat benefits. Currently there are 92 different paid customization options for weapons and we add more on an ongoing basis. This is the type of system that would be replaced with an 'all in one' jewels shop where the jewels could be used to purchase character customization or other items.