Guild Wars 2

CrossedHorse.4261:

Celtic Lady.3729:

The gem store is like anything else in this world – if you make 7-digit salaries, everything is affordable.

… except happiness, apparently. Lol, I reckon I could be plenty happy with a 7-digit salary.

Gosh if only… dreamy sigh You have any idea how much less stressful life could be with a 7-digit salary?

I recall seeing a resource gathering pack of some description a few months ago on the Store and I nearly fell off my chair when I converted the gem price to real cash. For £45, I could buy several great indie games and still have £20 left over for a few pints and a curry. Why would I fork out £45 for a collection of flashy-looking convenience items locked to one character?

A lot of the time, I feel gem prices are about 25-40% too high for the value of the item being purchased. Sale prices feel like the ‘real’ price and it’s pretty annoying. This applies particularly to RNG and single-use items, especially consumables. Realistically, you need to be looking at the cost of the game versus the cost of the item you’re buying, and it’s on that basis that I think the gemstore is generally overpriced.

I think we have a serious lack of very low value items as well – minor cosmetic, consumables and fun items in, say, the 25-100 gem range.

I do buy things from the gemstore occasionally, however, if I see something I really want and is worth the cash. I’d buy a lot more if they were IMO more reasonably priced, and if there were more flexible gem transactions available.

My issue with the Gem Store is the fact that the minimum amount of gems I can purchase with real-world money is 800 or rather, $10 worth.

Think about this, how much is a monthly subscription for other MMO’s?

Not too far off, is it?

If you make one purchase on the Gem Store using real money, you basically paid a 1 months subscription, and can only get 2-3 (cheap) items out of that 800 gems.

My fix would be:

Add a way to choose how many gems we can purchase, 100, 200, 300…etc.

OR

Fix the pricing scale and make everything in sets of 400 Gems 800 Gems 1200 Gems and so on.

Style

Armor sets are worth it. For $10, I get some sweet looking armor. Personally I don’t feel the one time use a large problem since it is very unlikely I need multiple copies. If I do, I don’t mind paying another $10. It will be cool tho if these armor skin pieces can be MFed. Sometimes we don’t use every piece and perhaps 4 leftover pieces can be forged into a random armor piece skin.

Single armor piece skins, backpack skins, weapon skins. Some of these items are a hit while some are just meh. Price wise, I am rather comfortable with it. $6 for a quiver is totally cool for me, but eyepatch…maybe not.

Town clothes are underrated. Although I feel they are a little costly, I love them and will buy them if they are cool. Like for the pirate outfit, the cannon skill is awesome! When are we getting wedding gowns?

Special

Most of these items are worthless to me.
Mystic forge stone ($3 apiece?!), revive orb, normal transmutation crystal, dye pack etc. I wonder who buy these.

Metabolic primer might be the only thing that is worthy. And it is cheap. $1.50 for a 12 hours effect.

Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic is useful but a little expensive. Still, something that you buy and enjoy, and forget the $10 you paid. WvW zergs gotta love this.

Transmutation Crystal are almost essential to vain players. The price is fine too.

Transmutation Splitter. Important for transferring of soulbound items to another toon. For $3, you’d better transferring legendaries. Actually you need a transmutation crystal ($2.50) as well so a transfer cost $5.50. Worth it? Hell yea.

Black Lion Salvage Kit. Most of us get these from BL chests I bet. We don’t use it often only when retrieving expensive runes or salvaging exotics. It is rather cheap for 25 charges.

BL keys are subjective. Espcially the contents changes, buff/nerfs frequently. Love it or hate it, face it. Most of your transmutation crystals, BL salvage kits and booster comes from these.
P.S is there really a need for BL chests in the game???

Upgrade Extractor. Very important item for very expensive upgrades. It all comes down to how much gold $3 is worth. For now, not many upgrades are worth it. I’d rather turn the $3 into gold and use it to buy the upgrade.

Black Lion Introductory Package - $20. NO. MEANS. NO.

Services

Instant Repair Canister, Merchant Express, Bank Access Express,Trading Post Express. Okay these are not expensive…but I don’t really use them. Like I stock a ton of these for FREE from dailies and BL chests and even so I don’t use them.

Banker Golem (2 weeks). Fair price. $6.25 unlimited easy access of bank for 2 weeks is actually a ton of convenience for those who rain loots. Personally, I don’t rain loots and I’ve got more than enough bag slots. I don’t hardcore farm either so there is no need for me to stay at a place for hours without getting to a bank.

Custom Arena Starter Kit. Share it with a group of friends and it will cost you less than your breakfast. Almost essential for hardcore pvp groups. (Oh c’mon share it with 5 guys and it will cost like $4/person for a month!) Custom Arena Time Token add 5 more days for $2.

Self-Style Hair Kit/ Total Makeover Kit. Worth keeping a few at hand. New gem exclusive hair are added once in a blue moon so why not. It is a little pricey but just like the real world, looks are pricey.

Unlimited Harvest tools. Okay..these ARE expensive. Yea sure unlimited charges sounds good. BUT it is 1k gems here we are talking about. Even if you run all ori ores in the world in a single toon everyday, it will take you a LOOOOOONG time to use up 1k gems worth of pick. If it is convenience we are talking about, tool merchants are really easy to find. Watchwork Mining Pick was the only one I bought since it gives me watchwork sprockets.

Name Change Contract is expensive but I feel quite justified. Teaches us to think hard before we decide on dumb names. I keep one at hand to check for name availability.

Boosts

All boosters are a waste of $$$. I don’t think Anet is stupid but I still don’t know why they put them on sale. Oh well, I am not complaning. Just don’t buy them.
The only reason why anyone uses the boosters is because they dropped from BL chests and are now taking up a bank slot.

Toys

These are subjective.
Personally I feel they are rather expensive. Especially the musical items. $10 ohmygawd.
Still, when I am bored, I do stupid things with money (like I do in shopping malls.)

I don’t understand minis. They are a completionist trap. Why the hell you need so many minis for?!? Barely anyone notices them if you carry one around, and for sure no one cares if your bank tabs look complete or not. Not for that price.
Quaggan minis are different tho. Because quaggans

Upgrades

Digital Deluxe Upgrade. $25 for bunch of useless stuff. You get a dumb mini a useless skill to show people you bought it.
Or $25 for a nice dinner with girlfriend. I’m having a hard time choosing.

Basic Ore Node Pack. $10. 3 copper, 3 silver and 3 gold ores everyday. A very easy way to get your daily gathering achievement. OR, you can find the nearest rich ore. This is very useful if you’ve mined all the copper, silver and gold ore in the entire world and somehow need 3 more of each.

Finishers are dumb. In Wvw, no one knows your name. And at $8 apiece, I don’t see why I wanna put a cow on you and run off.

Okay the better part of Upgrades section.

Character slots. At $10 a character I feel it is totally worth it. Most of us will NEED a few.

Bank tab and collection expander. Okay these are almost essential. BUT VERY EXPENSIVE. Yes it might look cheap at first. But it adds up.

11 bank tabs – $82.50
5 collection expanders $50
Total it is $132.50

Is it worth it? Well…yes if you are playing the game long term. These are permanent and it is very hard to play the game with only 30 bank slots.
Personally, as an artist myself, I know these work needs to be paid in dollars and cents. I take it I’ve paid my year of subscription and the rest of my life too. But if possible, wait for a discount.

P.S By the way there is really not many reasons to get collections expander since you hardly fill up 1.5k items except for a few you farm regularly like ori ores/ancient wood, bloodstone dusts/dragonite ores etc. I use them up or sell them the moment they fill up.
For market flippers, yes they gonna need them. Many hold a few thousands ectos on hand and other random stuff.

Bag slots. $5 a slot/ $15 a toon max.
I say while it is not expensive (kinda worth it) it is not neccessary for most people. Maybe on their main and that is it. I got it on 3 toons and I barely fill up except my main.
Also, it will be great if bag slots are account bound. If I want to delete a toon that I expanded bag slots on, I will love to be able to transfer them to a new one.
Or maybe pay some gems to recover bag slots from a toon.

Yes & No

Yes, if I see substantial content updates that I find interesting and worth my time to play I have no problem supporting the game financially. This being my first b2p/f2p game I decided back in BWE2 that I would support this game under the premise of a sub model devoting $10-20/month.

No, when content is being produced in a way..like it has been, I use my ingame gold and stop w/the sub model.

as far as the individual price of content in the gemstore, it’s anet game and I’m indifferent as it does not change what I typed above.

If I consider my income it is extremely cheap for me. I already spent about 2000-3000 euros on this game. Way too much, I never though I would do that. But if I see a very nice skin I have to have it. Instead of RNG boxes etc. I just buy the skin via the trading post and turn gems to gold. I don’t have a lot of time and at the moment I play Dark Souls 2, so there is almost no time to farm etc.

It’ a simple equation: I work for one day, I can turn this money into more than 1000G at the current exchange rate.

In game I make around 2-3 gold per hour, so after 8-9 hours of in game ‘work’ I would have about 20+ gold which is nothing. I maybe play 1-5h per week (used to be a lot more at the beginning).

I think Gem store skins should be account bound though. Every company does that, it’s a pretty rip off.

Lol, I love it when people say things like “I work for one day and that gives me X gold”. It’s almost like nobody has anything else to spend money on. I work for one day and I don’t see any of that cash because it goes towards paying bills or the mortgage or food etc. Yes, yes, one day here or there is the equivalent of a fortune in game … not really. 1000g will buy you either a lot of stuff or not even half a legendary. It’s a little off.

But that said, no, I don’t have a general issue with things being priced the way they are in the gem store. Things I consider ridiculous, I don’t buy. Things I consider expensive but buy anyway – well, that’s on me and not being careful with my money, not ANet being greedy. (and seriously, once cash is turned to gems it feels like it’s not real money anymore, so I end up spending stupid amounts by “accident” but only have myself to blame).

CrossedHorse.4261:

Lol, I love it when people say things like “I work for one day and that gives me X gold”. It’s almost like nobody has anything else to spend money on. I work for one day and I don’t see any of that cash because it goes towards paying bills or the mortgage or food etc. Yes, yes, one day here or there is the equivalent of a fortune in game … not really. 1000g will buy you either a lot of stuff or not even half a legendary. It’s a little off.

True, but if I deduct all invoices etc. there’s still more than a half of it left.

ProtoGunner.4953:

CrossedHorse.4261:

Lol, I love it when people say things like “I work for one day and that gives me X gold”. It’s almost like nobody has anything else to spend money on. I work for one day and I don’t see any of that cash because it goes towards paying bills or the mortgage or food etc. Yes, yes, one day here or there is the equivalent of a fortune in game … not really. 1000g will buy you either a lot of stuff or not even half a legendary. It’s a little off.

True, but if I deduct all invoices etc. there’s still more than a half of it left.

That’s nice. Sigh. I wish that were the case for me. I needs a better job!

BEINGHUMAN.4167:

My issue with the Gem Store is the fact that the minimum amount of gems I can purchase with real-world money is 800 or rather, $10 worth.

Think about this, how much is a monthly subscription for other MMO’s?

Not too far off, is it?

If you make one purchase on the Gem Store using real money, you basically paid a 1 months subscription, and can only get 2-3 (cheap) items out of that 800 gems.

Your premise is so way off. The main difference is, you don’t have to purchase gems every month to play GW2, in a sub-based game, you have to pay the $15 per month to play.

I personally only buy gems when there’s really a good looking armor skin or a very useable tool in the gem store. Otherwise, it would take months before I make another purchase. On average, I probably spend $10 every other month, so that to me is like $5/month of subscription fee.

The only time your $10 is worth of 2-3 cheap items is because that’s what you’re buying, cheap useless items, like the town clothes or mini-pets for example.

Yes. Possibly you will spend thousands of hours being entertained in this game so spending a couple hundred dollers over that time seems reasonable. Television and radio are not free if you consider the bombardment of commercials. A night at the movies will cost at least $10 for about an hours enertainment. 1000 hours of movie theater is then ten thousand dollers while 1000 hours of gw2 is $40 puchace price and perhaps $200 worth of gems over that time. GW2 is cheap cheap cheap entertainment. I can never get over how little mmo players are willing to spend on something that entertains them for thousands of hours.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BEINGHUMAN.4167:

My issue with the Gem Store is the fact that the minimum amount of gems I can purchase with real-world money is 800 or rather, $10 worth.

Think about this, how much is a monthly subscription for other MMO’s?

Not too far off, is it?

If you make one purchase on the Gem Store using real money, you basically paid a 1 months subscription, and can only get 2-3 (cheap) items out of that 800 gems.

Your premise is so way off. The main difference is, you don’t have to purchase gems every month to play GW2, in a sub-based game, you have to pay the $15 per month to play.

I personally only buy gems when there’s really a good looking armor skin or a very useable tool in the gem store. Otherwise, it would take months before I make another purchase. On average, I probably spend $10 every other month, so that to me is like $5/month of subscription fee.

The only time your $10 is worth of 2-3 cheap items is because that’s what you’re buying, cheap useless items, like the town clothes or mini-pets for example.

Unfortunately, I don’t think you really understood my point, and that’s okay. Like my first sentence stated, the problem (to me) is the fact I can ONLY purchase a minimum of 800 ($10) worth of gems.

Not a hard concept to grasp, really.

I totally understand that no one is forcing myself or others to use real world money to buy these items.

The reason I make the comparison between a subscription base and Gem Store base model, is that that’s all we have to compare it to!

This is suppose to be a micro-transaction base system, but why am I only allowed to pay a minimum of what closely amounts to the same amount I would pay for a 1 month subscription in other MMO’s?

I can not see the negative side to them adding a five dollar option, can you?

If it’s a problem with CC fees both in NA and the EU then I can understand the minimum. It’s usually a fix fee plus a percentage, maybe a minimum amount for that 2nd half as well.

General FYI, minimum package for Turbine Points is $7.99 for 600, for Perfect World Zen is $10 for 1000, for Nexon NX is $5 for 5000 and Sony Station Cash $5 for 500.

And one other thing. Every hear of the phrase “burning a hole in your pocket”? If you are required to buy more than you need, you are likely to spend the remainder sooner than later, thus needing to buy more when another short term available item or sale comes to pass. Yes it’s a bit predatory but only to those who absolutely can’t keep their impulse control in check.

You know, like gamers.

BEINGHUMAN.4167:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BEINGHUMAN.4167:

My issue with the Gem Store is the fact that the minimum amount of gems I can purchase with real-world money is 800 or rather, $10 worth.

Think about this, how much is a monthly subscription for other MMO’s?

Not too far off, is it?

If you make one purchase on the Gem Store using real money, you basically paid a 1 months subscription, and can only get 2-3 (cheap) items out of that 800 gems.

Your premise is so way off. The main difference is, you don’t have to purchase gems every month to play GW2, in a sub-based game, you have to pay the $15 per month to play.

I personally only buy gems when there’s really a good looking armor skin or a very useable tool in the gem store. Otherwise, it would take months before I make another purchase. On average, I probably spend $10 every other month, so that to me is like $5/month of subscription fee.

The only time your $10 is worth of 2-3 cheap items is because that’s what you’re buying, cheap useless items, like the town clothes or mini-pets for example.

Unfortunately, I don’t think you really understood my point, and that’s okay. Like my first sentence stated, the problem (to me) is the fact I can ONLY purchase a minimum of 800 ($10) worth of gems.

Not a hard concept to grasp, really.

I totally understand that no one is forcing myself or others to use real world money to buy these items.

The reason I make the comparison between a subscription base and Gem Store base model, is that that’s all we have to compare it to!

This is suppose to be a micro-transaction base system, but why am I only allowed to pay a minimum of what closely amounts to the same amount I would pay for a 1 month subscription in other MMO’s?

I can not see the negative side to them adding a five dollar option, can you?

You missed my point. If you want to spend $5 this month, every month, then save your $5 this month for next month so you’ll accumulated to $10 next month to purchase 800 gems worth.

At the backend, Arena Net is paying a certain amount of fees per transaction. For example, the fee is $0.10 per transaction (liberally low rate). For a $1000 worth of transaction, that’s a difference between $10.00 ($10 minimum) fee and $20.00 ($5 minimum) fee. They limit the number of transactions to save overhead cost so they can use the saved cash to improve their company rather than wasting it on fees.