Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if anyone has read this article yet, but I would recommend it. It talks about some of the techniques used by game companies to monetize online games. Not all of the techniques used in the article apply to GW2 but some do. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/The_Top_F2P_Monetization_Tricks.php

In short, the article discusses coercive monetization and how it is used in online games (facebook, pc, or other). It offers an industry perspective on how a transaction system (using Gems for example) is intended to “…defeat a customer’s ability to make informed choices about the costs and values in these products.” There have been some forum posts here on the official forum that have said as much, but I felt that this gives a different perspective on concrete models employed by other games as well.

I don’t think this should devolve into an “NCsoft is so evil” argument because coercion, whether we like it or not, is used in many transaction models outside of gaming. It is considered acceptable for businesses to use coercion up to a point. In particular, methods of hiding the true value of a transaction through the use of a premium currency, as discussed in the article, has seen a sharp rise since the microtransaction model started becoming mainstream. I’m still surprised the Playstation store shows the dollar amount for games. Even Nintendo used a premium currency for the Wii store. I think it is necessary for consumers to understand the nuts and bolts of a financial transaction where possible and this helps add “a” perspective to that.

Guild Wars 2 has a better transaction system than other online games that I have played that have used most of the tricks identified in the article and then some. Still, some players take issue with hiding the value of purchases through the use of Gems. What I feel complicates that complaint is that it is likely that the use of Gems enables players to make purchases in the Gem store with gold. Imagine NCsoft letting you convert your in game gold to a dollar amount to make purchases in the in game store. Interesting thought, no?

As the article concludes, “Note that while these methods can be very successful with young and inexperienced gamers, they find less success with older and more experienced gamers, and this population represents a group with potentially very large gaming budgets.” Do you feel that your understanding of the GW2 in game store or lack thereof has affected your purchasing habits?

Interesting. I’ll give it a read. I’m in my mid forties. After having been taken for a fool once on the RNG winter minis i personally will never ever buy an RNG item from the store again no matter how practical, cool or great looking it might be.

I bought the winter minis and got exactly what I wanted. I wanted one of each, then realized I had excess gems (from gold → gems) so I made the combine mini then bought another chest and got the one I wanted (Mini Infinirarium).

That’s fair. I think what the article is trying to say though, is that if you want a mini and you pay X amount of gems, you have to think pretty hard about the amount of money that you payed for the mini. That extra step may seem inconsequential on a conscious or unconscious level but it is a conscious decision on their part to make you stop and think about conversion rates. If money isn’t an issue then the conversion rate isn’t a big deal, but if money is an issue then not having to deal with conversions becomes a bigger deal.

Well, the article is more referring to F2P game models.

The only parts of the article that apply to the Gem Store are the soft boosts and the non-transparency of the gem store itself.

Soft Boosts
The Boosters are soft boosts which players can buy to empower their characters. Keep in mind, however, that these boosts very rarely affect gameplay and when they do it’s minute.

Now, some might argue that the Crafting and Karma boosters can give a huge advantage to players. This is untrue.

While Karma boosters will allow players to gain an abnormally large amount of Karma versus other players, Karma as a currency is not scarce and is much too common for this to be a gigantic difference. Additionally, using this booster gets you the most when you save your jugs/drops/etc instead of farming events with the booster on.

Crafting boosters, on the other hand, can instantly apply a great deal more to players. Of course, the boosters themselves benefit players who do one activity for a large amount of time, meaning that when you use this booster you should expect to hit 400 in one sitting. Additionally, this booster doesn’t give you a flat 50% bonus crafting experience. It gives you a 50% higher critical crafting boost. This means that it can be detrimental. While you’re crafting, unless you craft each piece’s ingredients as you craft it (which gives you less experience), you’ll end up having excess materials because of those criticals. It also prevents you from following guides such as gw2crafts because of the critical boosts.

Transparent Gem Store

Even if the gem store were to have all their listed drop rates, people would still complain (yes this is tangential). Arenanet has cut down on the RNG chests to the point where it’s most likely all going to come from the Black Lion Chest (and these scraps are usable in the future, so it’s not JUST for Aetherized Weaponry). Additionally, the Mini’s have gone to a 3 pack mini set which guarantees you one of each mini.

The only true RNG Gem Store items are the Dye and Mini Packs. I can’t really say much about them as I haven’t used them or bought them. However, if you are going to buy them, the only forewarning that isn’t listed is that you CAN get multiples of the same dye/mini from them as they ARE near-true random (other than the rarity bumps).

The only RNG item left is the Black Lion Chest which I briefly touched upon. I’ll go back to it, as this is where I think Arenanet is going with them. You end up with these rarities of items. You’ll have common, uncommon, and superbly rare items. The uncommon items are considered rare in their book and the superbly rare items are superbly rare.

An example of these items are:
Single-Use Items Common
Backpacks Rare
Containers Rare
Influence Common
Tools Common
Everlasting Items Superbly Rare

Now, the new scraps are Common, which means you’re rolling against all the other Common items, whereas the tickets are Rare. Retries are also now Rare.

There’s probably a little manipulation going on in the background so that not everything has an equal drop rate as opposed to other things in their tier, but I doubt Arenanet will release that information, which is why, when comparing this to the article, there is a non-transparent RNG in the gem store. Also, their wording and player’s perception are two very, very different things.

The only gripe with GW2 gem store, that it’s arguably one of (if not the) best ever seen, is the RNG component of some items.

Manly all the Black Lion Chest items added for events (fused/halloween/sclerite ect skins).
Ofc is possible to say that you don’t need a skin to play the game at all, and you can bet with BL keys with ingame gold and don’t risk any real money….but a lot of ppl do, and then you see cases of players dumping 60 euros of gems in keys in order to get a skin and yet getting just the random crap of BL chests.

That’s not good.

Everything else is perfectly fine.

If anything, I think that they should list the items at something like $10 (or in your case euros) worth, and then ALSO have them in BLC’s for the people that want to gamble.

Esplen.3940:

Well, the article is more referring to F2P game models.

The only parts of the article that apply to the Gem Store are the soft boosts and the non-transparency of the gem store itself…

I agree with pretty much everything about your analysis. I think, though, F2P monetization models have been steadily bleeding into B2P and P2P games. I mean, even though F2P is mentioned explicitly it is definitely not just a F2P issue. I remember FFXI and their payment model being convoluted but still using dollar amounts. Now with FFXIV, even though it’s still P2P, they are making you use a premium currency (Crysta) to pay for your subscription and anything else you would wish to purchase. A lot at the heart of what was being said is that the F2P techniques are designed to reduce your ability to be an informed participator in the transaction. Any of the other free to play tactics mentioned would lose much of their efficacy if the transactions were stated in dollar amounts.

I agree that people would still complain about knowing the odds in RNG or looking at prices for weapons and costumes while thinking the prices were too high, but those complaints would be from a position of understanding. Right now, a lot of the complaints are from a position of confusion and some consumers are just shooting in the dark for an understanding of why they feel upset about some of the RNG stuff and skin purchases because of the conversion rates and premium currency. The soft boosts aren’t really a big deal to me either and like I said earlier, using a premium currency probably frees Anet up to do convenience things that are positive for customers. But that premium currency affects everything about how customers deal with purchases on the gem store. Even something as simple as buying the infinite mining pick for 800 gems, even when you know just spent $10 for those 800 gems, is going to influence your decision making, possibly, in a negative way.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that

a lot of the complaints are from a position of confusion and some consumers are just shooting in the dark for an understanding of why they feel upset about some of the RNG stuff and skin purchases because of the conversion rates and premium currency.

Because most consumers aren’t informed. Most consumers aren’t interested in why they’re upset. They are, however, shooting in the dark expecting a bulls eye.
Note: This paragraph came out wrong but I’m going to leave it here.

Honestly, if the Gem Store was in multiples of 1,000 for ease of access (1000 = $10), it would not have a layer in front of it, but it would make the consumer, aka the player, feel like they’re spending more. It’s a simple trick on the mind. If 600 gems was worth $10, people would be more inclined to spend 600 gems to get an item since it seems like less.

My main complaint is that they are constantly changing the drop rates of the Black Lion Chests, which makes it hard to find the drop rates of certain items (the wiki typically does drop-rate tables, but with each drop-rate change patch, that essentially needs to get scrapped or another table needs to get made with the older one getting archived).

EDIT: I could have made this response longer, but I’m really tired and you didn’t bring much points to which I could respond (namely because I never got into the FF scene, too many games for me to keep track of).

I will leave saying that yes, I agree that F2P models are bleeding into B2P and P2P games, but, specifically in GW2’s case, they need to have some form of money other than game sales, and this is what works (it worked in GW1, although they had no transparency because everything was priced in real money, iirc).

Of course, it wasn’t a gem store, it was simply a “buy these things that can make your account nicer, but not give you an advantage [except mercenaries, which were expensive, and even then weren’t superbly advantageous]”.

I’m going off on tangents and I can’t keep track of my thoughts, good night, I will come back to this thread if I can find it when I wake up.

Well… think about it for a second….

You own nothing in GW2. It is the property of arenanet. So before you decide to buy that armor for 50$; keep the following in mind.

1) We own nothing in GW2. We purchase a license to use the software.
2) How much time did it take to make? Is it worth the price?
3) They can duplicate the item an infinite amount of times.

The part I hate the most about this practice is that they don’t publish the probabilities of their lottery systems and target the game to people 13 years and older. How many people that age understand statistics? Besides young brains are easy to manipulate and take advantage of.

If you are adult and have your own money income then you free to buy whatever you want its your money and by time you earn your own money you are expected to use it responsible.

If kid who plays Gw2 then it is really up to parents. There are thousand reasons why they could give some cash for gems for their kids favorite game or refuse. Kids dont have credit cards and if kid uses credit card to buy million gems in game then its parents fault for giving opportunity (leaving credit card somewhere in open ect).

There is just one single little problem that I really, really, really, frown upon Gw2 gem store; You can SAVE your credit card for later purchases. Yes it is good way for less hassle but I bet this, that some smart kid will save that information and starts buying gems without even need to look at parents credit card. That is very stupid because by the time parents get bill, damage is already done.

Also, if you are that person who spent 1000 euros on Black Lion Keys and still didnt get your favorite skin… I hope you learned something lol.