While you can't turn them back into cash, you can sell them for in-game gold. So they aren't totally wasted, like SOE's currency is.
Having wasted a buncha time on DCUO (an SOE game) I found their currency to not have this problem. Items that can be bought range from 100sc-1500sc. So no matter how much you have, you can spend it down to nothing. But yes, there is no way to exchange cash for in-game cash.
It's easy enough to offer goods that allow players to maximize their in-game cash. I don't understand games that try to make sure you have some left over. That just breeds frustration over time. Seems to me that you should let them spend down to 0 if they want to–they are more likely to buy more, sooner. But maybe those games have analytics data that shows the contrary to be the case :)
I can see why most (all?) titles with in-game purchases nowadays have a special in-game currency. It greatly reduces the number of real-money transactions, which reduces cost (fees) and minimizes errors. It simplifies implementation and maintenance by orders of magnitude.
An in-game currency also sugarcoats the real price of things, like the ubiquitous x.99$ tag does, which is an extra tool to spur consumption. I'm not sure that I would buy anything in a game that shows me a virtual item with a $5 price tag–it would be too obvious to me that I don't really "need" to buy it :) So maybe some sugarcoating is agreeable to players. I do hate it when games intentionally choose a conversion rate that makes players less able to intuit quickly how much in real money a virtual commodity will cost. But I think the big games nowadays are above such shenanigans.
Having wasted a buncha time on DCUO (an SOE game) I found their currency to not have this problem. Items that can be bought range from 100sc-1500sc. So no matter how much you have, you can spend it down to nothing. But yes, there is no way to exchange cash for in-game cash.
It's easy enough to offer goods that allow players to maximize their in-game cash. I don't understand games that try to make sure you have some left over. That just breeds frustration over time. Seems to me that you should let them spend down to 0 if they want to–they are more likely to buy more, sooner. But maybe those games have analytics data that shows the contrary to be the case :)
I can see why most (all?) titles with in-game purchases nowadays have a special in-game currency. It greatly reduces the number of real-money transactions, which reduces cost (fees) and minimizes errors. It simplifies implementation and maintenance by orders of magnitude.
An in-game currency also sugarcoats the real price of things, like the ubiquitous x.99$ tag does, which is an extra tool to spur consumption. I'm not sure that I would buy anything in a game that shows me a virtual item with a $5 price tag–it would be too obvious to me that I don't really "need" to buy it :) So maybe some sugarcoating is agreeable to players. I do hate it when games intentionally choose a conversion rate that makes players less able to intuit quickly how much in real money a virtual commodity will cost. But I think the big games nowadays are above such shenanigans.