Guild Wars 2

Gem prices (in game gold) have risen over 300% since launch. This is a heavy burden for new players who want to buy bag/bank upgrades, character slots, transmutation crystals (fine transmutation stones were once a common reward), and other purchases that were once much easier to obtain just by playing the game.

Whether the exchange rate is being manually soft-capped over time to keep prices from skyrocketing out of control or not, the exchange rate in the game is only going to get worse and make the experience a lot less fun for newcomers who want to play the game the way I did when I started on day 1 of head-start, which i can sum up this way:

“after just paying $60 for the game, I’d like to NOT use my credit card for a while to buy gems, ok?”

Be thankful that we can buy gems with ingame gold.

Also the prices are like that because people still exchange gold for gems.

The more people use gold to buy gems, the more gold they need to buy gems. The only way to stop this is for people to stop using gold to buy gems. So, if no one buys gems with gold, then everyone can buy gems with gold, but if everyone buys gems with gold, then no one can buy gems with gold.

Simple.

Oh, and working as intended. The gem thing is a cash shop created to earn income for the companies that created the game. It’s not there to give away free stuff to cheapskates. That they allow this option is a gift, not a right.

Oh, and I’m a cheapskate, and I have no problem with the way it works. Take a high-level toon and do Wurm/Shadow/Elemental/Maw/Teq/Shatterer every day if you need gold. You get at least 1 rare worth around 20 silver from each event, more if you’re lucky (Shadow gave me a Dusk), and enough other loot to more than cover the wp fees. It’s a small but steady income for just an hour a day.

tolunart.2095:

The more people use gold to buy gems, the more gold they need to buy gems. The only way to stop this is for people to stop using gold to buy gems. So, if no one buys gems with gold, then everyone can buy gems with gold, but if everyone buys gems with gold, then no one can buy gems with gold.

Simple.

Oh, and working as intended. The gem thing is a cash shop created to earn income for the companies that created the game. It’s not there to give away free stuff to cheapskates. That they allow this option is a gift, not a right.

Oh, and I’m a cheapskate, and I have no problem with the way it works. Take a high-level toon and do Wurm/Shadow/Elemental/Maw/Teq/Shatterer every day if you need gold. You get at least 1 rare worth around 20 silver from each event, more if you’re lucky (Shadow gave me a Dusk), and enough other loot to more than cover the wp fees. It’s a small but steady income for just an hour a day.

I may need to re-state my OP here. I’m not referring to myself. I have all professions covered and maxed, even one extra char slot I don’t use. I have more bank expansions and bag slots than I need. I’m set. [and “I’m set” in no small part due to the fact that I was able to buy lots of gems at a comparatively low exchange rate.]

What I’m pointing to is the difference a new player will have with this game versus what I experienced back when the game started. The difference in the exchange rate is huge, and certainly this must be of concern to the developer, not to mention the new player?

If it was a concern to the devs they wouldn’t have set the system up to allow gold to gems conversion in the first place.

If it’s a concern to a new player they should check out what MMOs are about to release and get into it from the beginning. This is a natural process that occurs because of the way money enters the game, and it’s not going to change.

There is a theoretically infinite amount of money being generated, and by necessity a finite number of things to spend it on. After some years players who have been around a while will have more coin than they need for day-to-day expenses, and can afford to spend more to buy things. The devs oblige them by giving them more expensive things to buy. A new player cannot expect the devs to throw away everyone’s coin so the new player begins on an even footing with someone who has been accumulating currency for months or years.

If you want to enter an MMO on more or less equal footing with the rest of the players, sign up during the first month after release, at the latest, and do the things other players do to make money. Start six months in and it’s unlikely you’ll ever catch up without working at it much harder than other players.

Actually it’s over 1,400% as the original exchange rate was 27.5s for 100 gems.

Others have hit upon the salient points.

1) It’s a Cash Shop, they want you to spend actual money for this stuff;
2) The Gold to Gems was something they didn’t need to add;
3) The reason they did was so gold that players paid for gems is used to pay players who sell gems for gold, whose gems went to the players who were buying gems, nice circle of life thing going on;
4) The price floats and is determined by the stockpile of gems and gold at the exchange. The rate will continue to rise until just as many gems are sold for gold as gems are bought with gold;
5) Never ever forget that ArenaNet needs players to spend real money on gems. It is their only source of continuous income. This isn’t like WoW where you have to spend $15 a month to keep playing or a F2P MMO where you have a 10 slot inventory and classes locked behind a paywall.

I never understand these posts. I guess they just want the employes at arena net to work for free.

How does the gem/gold exchange rate change compare to the inflation of gold in general? The fact that it’s gone up 300% (or 1400% or whatever) isn’t as meaningful if it’s driven in large part by inflation (granted, if that inflation was mostly COF and such then yeah, new players get screwed either way). In fact that may be the bigger issue here. Let gem/gold exchange be what it will be, but make inflation less punishing to new players all around. Given the change to dungeon gold recently, this might be the direction they’re trying to go?

What we have is growth in money supply among active players. And while that may drive classic “inflation” on the TP, more money chasing same amount of goods", what we have at the Gem exchange is something completely different.

The rate is solely based on the ratio between two caches of items at the exchange, gold and gems. Simply the act of buying gems with gold will increase the exchange rate. It has nothing to do with the amount of gold among the active playerbase. We could have zero change in the overall gold supply and as long as players are buying gems with gold, the exchange rate will rise.

Well, my point is the more gold people have, the more they have to spend on gems. It’s going to impact the gem/gold market even if the exchange rate is calculated independently, because many people are going to base their conversion decisions on how much gold they have to spare.

a new player has a different advantage: being able to buy gems for IRL cash and get massive amounts of gold for them.

10$ would have got you around 2.5g at launch, now it nets you in the range of 20g… since there hasn’t been that much inflation in other markets (ecto, 80 rares, t6 mats) it means a new player coming in with a little cash has a HUGE advantage over us old folks who would have paid 5x or more for the same things with cakitten launch.

Prices keep rising because the market is being saturated by gold, especially since the pavillion and champion updates. (Read Deadeye and Ember farming) People rake in tons of gold with these methods, and use that gold to buy gems, which in turn floods the gem market with gold and makes gold prices rise.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Gold > Gem conversion was 5G next month, or hell even at the end of this month.

Imperatora.7654:

a new player has a different advantage: being able to buy gems for IRL cash and get massive amounts of gold for them.

10$ would have got you around 2.5g at launch, now it nets you in the range of 20g… since there hasn’t been that much inflation in other markets (ecto, 80 rares, t6 mats) it means a new player coming in with a little cash has a HUGE advantage over us old folks who would have paid 5x or more for the same things with cakitten launch.

Exactly. With the current exchange rates, you can net a much larger amount of gold using fewer gems. There are still a lot of things you can buy with gold so it’s not going to be wasted. Now if people saw this trend they could have bought and hoarded a bunch of gems and waited for the price of gold to go down significantly like right now and then sell all their gems and not have to spend a single cent of real money.