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.