Gem Store Prices

Gem Store Prices

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Posted by: AlphaNeonic.1925

AlphaNeonic.1925

I think some of the pricing on this stuff is WAY off. Let’s discuss!

100 gems – 14g – $1.25

Let’s start with the Home Portal Stone – 900 gems

First, having this priced at 900 gems so people either have to buy a 1600 Gem Pack or convert hard earned gold to gems is just lame. Let’s ignore that for a moment though, and look at the actual price.

$11.25 or 126g

The most a port will ever cost is about 5 silver, and that’s if you go all the way across the world. Let’s say 10 silver per use, for porting to home and back to where you were. You’d have to use this item over well over 1,000 times for it to start paying for itself. That’s being generous too. More often than not, the port will probably only cost you about 3 silver or so.

Besides the nodes, is there ANY reason to justify going to your home instance that often?

You’re paying 1/6th the price of the game for something other MMOs (Everquest, WoW, Rift, etc) have built into the game. The home instance portal seems way too expensive for what it offers. It’s a neat convenience item, but until the home instance actually means something, the item is about worthless.

That’s an item unique to the Gem Store though. Let’s look at items you can actually get in world.

Dye Packs

One Dye Pack sells for 200 gems.

200 gems – 28g – $2.50

With this pack, you get 5 common dyes and 2 uncommon or rare dyes.

Maybe… MAYBE this might be worth it if you got an Abyss or Celestial, but chances are you won’t. Every single common dye can be purchased for 6s or less (a total of 30s for the 5 random ones you will get in the dye pack) and the most expensive uncommon dyes (besides Gold which is 4g) is about 66s.

Out of all the rare dyes, only 5 of them are over 10 gold.

This item is not worth it. In fact the ONLY reason to buy this over just buying the dyes you want on the trading post would be gambling to make money from the rare dyes you MIGHT get. More often than not, you’ll be receiving 1-2 gold worth of random dyes for about 28 gold. I can’t see this as anything other than preying on the ignorant.

Of course, the Gem Shop briefly offered ONE RED DYE for 250 gems, so compared to that, the Dye Pack seems downright generous…

Let’s get to the bread and butter of the Gem Store:

Black Lion Keys

One Key – 125 gems – 17g – $1.56
5 Keys – 450 gems – 85g – $5.63

In a Black Lion Chest you will receive 3 items. A booster, and two other items from selected drop categories.

The Good – Self Style Hair Kits and Total Makeover kits are pretty decent offerings here. At $3.13 and $4.38 each, they seem to be a great find if you get one out of the chest. Also, they’re only available in the gem store so there are no feelings of being ripped off because you could have bought it for 10 times less on the trading post. A Black Lion Claim Ticket is nice as well.

The Bad – Essence of Luck of Scrolls of Knowledge are pretty insulting as they’re plentiful and easy to aquire in game. It only takes about 10 seconds of salvaging to get either rarity essence and many of us have a full stack or more of the scrolls, and counting. The ticket scraps are pretty bad too as they only serve to have you buy MORE chests.

“Man, 8 scraps… might as well buy 5 more keys.”

Looking at the prices of keys, unless you’re lucky enough to get a full scrap as a drop, you’re spending a minimum of $11.00 for a full ticket. More likely you’re spending $15 to $20 for a full ticket and sometimes more than that.

Why is this a problem?

If you were to get $20 in gems and covert to gold, you’d have about 140g. The most expensive Ley Line skin (and typically the most expensive skin of any of the active black lion sets) is 70g.

You could buy one and have 70g leftover.

The armor? Full sets for $10 … but then single pieces for $5-$6??

Give us more things that aren’t in the game. Don’t take 2 gold worth of dye and sell them for 30 gold.

Stop with the lottery boxes! They might make you more money in the short term, but trust me, they only make people angry and feel like they’ve wasted money. The drop rate on the “good stuff” in the Black Lion Chests is CLEARLY not in line with what people want from them. I started out buying keys at least once a month. I’ve bought them maybe twice this year. Each time ended with “Well, that was a waste.”

I hate the Gem Shop. I feel like most of the offerings fall between price gouging and insulting the average player’s intelligence. I want to support the game ArenaNet, but I’m not going to gamble on lottery boxes because “Hey, the current living story is pretty good.”

Give me something worth purchasing, at a fair price and without gambling, and I will give you my money.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

1st, never look at the price of a gem store item in terms of gold. Anet certainly doesn’t take it into consideration.

2nd, with that removed from the equation you have to compare it’s cash value to similar objects from other game’s cash shops.

3rd, convenience items like gathering tools and the various short cuts to player services are just that, convenience items. They aren’t there to make economic sense.

Lastly cash for gems is now the primary income source to keep the game running and updates coming. This is by design and is the trade off for not having a subscription plan.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: Astral Projections.7320

Astral Projections.7320

I don’t think most of the items make sense price wise either way, gold or cash. I do budget $20 USD a month, but I use that on costumes, armor and other permanent items. Those also seem rather pricy but at least they don’t disappear after you use them.

The home instance portal stone, imo is really overpriced for what you are now getting.

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Posted by: laokoko.7403

laokoko.7403

I’ve been one of the stupid person that invest alot of money on the dye pack. And really it is “much much” better to just buy it from the auction house, I some how get the impression all dye have equal chance, which is not, I learn it the hard way.

My opinion of the black lion chest is this. If you are after “gold” it is totally not worth it. You most likely won’t recover the gold invest. But it is nice for example a “name contract” or “makeover kit” drop, and you actually need it.

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Posted by: Shpongle.6025

Shpongle.6025

The prices make sense in a way but they also don’t make sense in a way.

But then again, how is Arena supposed to eat soup without an envelope ?

They have bills to pay too, you know.

Are you Shpongled?

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Posted by: mtpelion.4562

mtpelion.4562

Give me something worth purchasing, at a fair price and without gambling, and I will give you my money.

I find it kind of humorous that you wrote an essay decrying the gold to gem exchange rate and then close with this unrelated statement.

The money to gem rate has NEVER changed.

Server: Devona’s Rest

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Posted by: Gibson.4036

Gibson.4036

The current standard in F2P, cash shop model (I know, it’s technically B2P) focuses on getting small amounts of players to spend large amounts of money. The players who do this are known as the “whales”.

Those of us who aren’t whales, the majority that is either willing to spend small amounts of real money occasionally or who want to play completely free, like to think that the game would make just as much money if they offered things at lower cost because more people would buy.

Unfortunately, real life doesn’t seem to work out that way. It’s the whales that keep the game turning a profit. The occasional spenders contribute a much smaller percentage even though there are more of us. The players who don’t spend anything only contribute to making the population feel full and drop gold into the exchange for the spenders to buy.

I agree completely that gem store prices are ridiculous for the value you get from the items in game. But that’s because I’m not, and will never be a whale. So it doesn’t really matter what I think.

After two years, ArenaNet’s gem-store price policy has remained consistent, which means that they are getting the return they want.

(edited by Gibson.4036)

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Posted by: Smooth Penguin.5294

Smooth Penguin.5294

I think some of the pricing on this stuff is WAY off. Let’s discuss!

100 gems – 14g – $1.25

Did you know that you can exchange in-game Gold for Gems? When you do this, it’s free!

100 Gems – 14 Gold – $0.00

In GW2, Trading Post plays you!

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Posted by: Kaldrys.1978

Kaldrys.1978

Why does everyone try to use math to claim that gemstore items aren’t worth it? You realize that by their very nature these items aren’t supposed to pay for themselves or else the gemstore would be pay-to-win. Just look at the uproar over the watchwork mining pick as an example. By your logic a dye pack should return more than the gold that would be used to buy it. Obviously these items cater to people who enjoy gambling and are looking for ways to support Anet.

Anet has access to sales metrics on all of their gemstore items and yet every random player thinks that they have some unique insight to offer by suggesting that prices be lowered. If the gemstore isn’t selling you can bet that Anet as a business would have the biggest incentive to adjust prices.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

BL keys are lottery tickets — the value is in the anticipation, not the contents. Buy if you like to gamble, otherwise convert gems to gold and buy what you need outright on the TP.

Dye Packs are less variable lottery tickets; the same argument applies. If you want the actual dye, it’s far cheaper to buy on the TP.

Home Portal Stone — those are possibly overpriced because most of the specific convenience they offer (mining your home instance nodes and/or charging quartz) can be done with a mule toon at a cost of 800 gems. Still, a lot of people say they are buying them to avoid loading screens and the time it takes to move characters from map to map.

Even if the above wasn’t true, imagine what would happen if ANet decided to offer items in the gem store that were clear money makers: people would go ape accusing ANet of creating pay-to-win (and other people would go even apier saying, “that’s not p2w, darn it!”) and the gold:gem exchange rate would skyrocket, as people converted to take advantage.


Finally, I agree with Kaldrys about the primary metric for deciding if things are priced too high is whether ANet is selling enough at those prices.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: AlphaNeonic.1925

AlphaNeonic.1925

Even if the above wasn’t true, imagine what would happen if ANet decided to offer items in the gem store that were clear money makers: people would go ape accusing ANet of creating pay-to-win (and other people would go even apier saying, “that’s not p2w, darn it!”) and the gold:gem exchange rate would skyrocket, as people converted to take advantage.


Finally, I agree with Kaldrys about the primary metric for deciding if things are priced too high is whether ANet is selling enough at those prices.

I’m not saying we should be able to buy things on the Gem Shop and immediately turn around and sell them in game for profit. It’s not about players making money, it’s about getting value out of the money we spend and not feeling cheated by what we got from our purchases.

Whether you go by the actual dollar value of the item or the time spent in game making gold to acquire the item without spending real world money, the items are too expensive. When you can do the math and the price of an in game item is insanely marked up on the Gem Shop, you don’t feel good about your purchase.

Ideally, ArenaNet makes money and players feel good about the purchases they make. It should be a win/win situation.

It’s not though. The black lion claim tickets are a perfect example.

Use money to buy gems so you can buy Black Lion Keys so you can open Black Lion Chests for a chance to get Black Lion Ticket Scraps until you get Ten Black Lion Ticket Scraps and trade them in for a Black Lion Claim Ticket and trade that in for a skin.

The only reason there is to make you jump through all those hoops is to disguise the fact that you’re ultimately paying 20-40 dollars for a single weapon skin. If you’re okay with paying half the price of the game for one skin, more power to you.

It clearly works. You’re right. If Anet is selling enough of these items, things won’t change. I suppose I’m not the demographic for the Gem Shop, which seems to be either people who don’t care about how much money they spend, or people who can’t see they’re being charged outrageous prices for skins or lured by the extremely minute chance of a permanent exotic dropping.

As it stands now, I won’t be buying anything from the gem shop until they get rid of the lottery boxes and start offering things at fair prices.

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The only reason there is to make you jump through all those hoops is to disguise the fact that you’re ultimately paying 20-40 dollars for a single weapon skin. If you’re okay with paying half the price of the game for one skin, more power to you.

Boy are you off. The scuttlebutt is you have a 1 in 20 to 1 in 25 chance for a ticket when opening lots of chests (1 in 4 or 1 in 5 for a scrap, 1 in 40 to 1 in 50 for a whole ticket). So a 7 ticket fused skin you would need 140-165 keys. At 25 keys for 2100 gems that’s 11760-13860 gems which is $147-174. At this moment that many gems can fetch you 1040-1225g at the exchange which is enough to buy 2 of the most expensive fused skins and have change left over (or one of most precursors). And that’s guaranteed. There is no guarantee that 140-165 tickets will yield 7 tickets.

So yes, it’s to obfuscate the true cost of those skins. But it’s much worse than you think.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

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Posted by: Svetli.4276

Svetli.4276

gold to gems do it now !
every 25-26 gold i have i buy 200 gems i do not regret ! soon the exchange rate will be 1 gold 1 gem !
never buy gems with money cuz a net do not use this money to make expansion but to support other games they are making

“What you wish for may not be what she wishes for.” – Skull Knight