Guild Wars 2

Sadly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The achievement items aren’t bought, they’re earned (even though I really don’t like the skins, and would love another option to choose from).
ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free. I could see them reducing the price of an armour set if you’ve already bought it X-amount of times, but never just handing it out for free.

JayyxDawg.5081:

Sadly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The achievement items aren’t bought, they’re earned (even though I really don’t like the skins, and would love another option to choose from).
ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free. I could see them reducing the price of an armour set if you’ve already bought it X-amount of times, but never just handing it out for free.

It is NOT free if i spend 20 dollars on an armor set for 1 character. I could go to any other f2p mmorpg out there and get an outfit for 50 cents account-wide. Also no intelligent person is going to pay 20 dollars 10 times for the same armor set on all of their characters. I am potentially discouraged from making purchases because I know I’d have to buy it 5 times (potentially paying 100 dollars) just to have 1 armor set on all of my characters. I will never purchase gems again unless I get account unlocks. And anyone that isn’t a moron will do the same.

EDIT: Like I said, it is NOT free if you’re paying 20 dollars for an outfit. So don’t act like they’d be losing out on money it would encourage more people to buy them if it was a permanent unlock (that is also more fair to customers, they shouldn’t ask TWENTY DOLLARS for ONE OUTFIT and not give you it account-wide). Everyone I know ingame refuses to purchase gems because they know the outfits are not account unlocks. And who do you know that would spend 200 dollars just to get 1 outfit on all of their characters? No one. They’ve done EVERYTHING else account-wide there is no logical excuse they can’t do it with things from the gem shop.

If someone pays 20 dollars for a cosmetic outfit on a game.. I think they deserve at the VERY LEAST to have it account-wide.

Brewergamer.8357:

JayyxDawg.5081:

Sadly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The achievement items aren’t bought, they’re earned (even though I really don’t like the skins, and would love another option to choose from).
ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free. I could see them reducing the price of an armour set if you’ve already bought it X-amount of times, but never just handing it out for free.

It is NOT free if i spend 20 dollars on an armor set for 1 character. I could go to any other f2p mmorpg out there and get an outfit for 50 cents account-wide. Also no intelligent person is going to pay 20 dollars 10 times for the same armor set on all of their characters. I am potentially discouraged from making purchases because I know I’d have to buy it 5 times (potentially paying 100 dollars) just to have 1 armor set on all of my characters. I will never purchase gems again unless I get account unlocks. And anyone that isn’t a moron will do the same.

EDIT: Like I said, it is NOT free if you’re paying 20 dollars for an outfit. So don’t act like they’d be losing out on money it would encourage more people to buy them if it was a permanent unlock (that is also more fair to customers, they shouldn’t ask TWENTY DOLLARS for ONE OUTFIT and not give you it account-wide). Everyone I know ingame refuses to purchase gems because they know the outfits are not account unlocks. And who do you know that would spend 200 dollars just to get 1 outfit on all of their characters? No one. They’ve done EVERYTHING else account-wide there is no logical excuse they can’t do it with things from the gem shop.

If someone pays 20 dollars for a cosmetic outfit on a game.. I think they deserve at the VERY LEAST to have it account-wide.

I dont know why someone would want the same outfit on all his characters in the first place.

Brewergamer.8357:

JayyxDawg.5081:

Sadly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The achievement items aren’t bought, they’re earned (even though I really don’t like the skins, and would love another option to choose from).
ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free. I could see them reducing the price of an armour set if you’ve already bought it X-amount of times, but never just handing it out for free.

It is NOT free if i spend 20 dollars on an armor set for 1 character. I could go to any other f2p mmorpg out there and get an outfit for 50 cents account-wide. Also no intelligent person is going to pay 20 dollars 10 times for the same armor set on all of their characters. I am potentially discouraged from making purchases because I know I’d have to buy it 5 times (potentially paying 100 dollars) just to have 1 armor set on all of my characters. I will never purchase gems again unless I get account unlocks. And anyone that isn’t a moron will do the same.

EDIT: Like I said, it is NOT free if you’re paying 20 dollars for an outfit. So don’t act like they’d be losing out on money it would encourage more people to buy them if it was a permanent unlock (that is also more fair to customers, they shouldn’t ask TWENTY DOLLARS for ONE OUTFIT and not give you it account-wide). Everyone I know ingame refuses to purchase gems because they know the outfits are not account unlocks. And who do you know that would spend 200 dollars just to get 1 outfit on all of their characters? No one. They’ve done EVERYTHING else account-wide there is no logical excuse they can’t do it with things from the gem shop.

If someone pays 20 dollars for a cosmetic outfit on a game.. I think they deserve at the VERY LEAST to have it account-wide.

It’s not free indeed, but if you can spend 60 $ to buy more why would a company (whose achievement by definition is earning the most possible) prefer to receive just 20? Even if this is a game, we are in a real world and all the love and unicorns mean nothing in front of money.
Besides, who tells you no one buys a skin for more characters? I have seen people having two characters with same skin. Not to mention some could have female and male characters, and like the skin for both gender so buy it twice.

They should just add achievement exclusive skins (fused gauntlets, fervid censor, sceralite shell, horns of the dragon, SAB backpack covers, tequatl wings, the list goes on) to achievement reward withdraw pool and be done with it.

Pip.2094:

Brewergamer.8357:

JayyxDawg.5081:

Sadly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. The achievement items aren’t bought, they’re earned (even though I really don’t like the skins, and would love another option to choose from).
ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free. I could see them reducing the price of an armour set if you’ve already bought it X-amount of times, but never just handing it out for free.

It is NOT free if i spend 20 dollars on an armor set for 1 character. I could go to any other f2p mmorpg out there and get an outfit for 50 cents account-wide. Also no intelligent person is going to pay 20 dollars 10 times for the same armor set on all of their characters. I am potentially discouraged from making purchases because I know I’d have to buy it 5 times (potentially paying 100 dollars) just to have 1 armor set on all of my characters. I will never purchase gems again unless I get account unlocks. And anyone that isn’t a moron will do the same.

EDIT: Like I said, it is NOT free if you’re paying 20 dollars for an outfit. So don’t act like they’d be losing out on money it would encourage more people to buy them if it was a permanent unlock (that is also more fair to customers, they shouldn’t ask TWENTY DOLLARS for ONE OUTFIT and not give you it account-wide). Everyone I know ingame refuses to purchase gems because they know the outfits are not account unlocks. And who do you know that would spend 200 dollars just to get 1 outfit on all of their characters? No one. They’ve done EVERYTHING else account-wide there is no logical excuse they can’t do it with things from the gem shop.

If someone pays 20 dollars for a cosmetic outfit on a game.. I think they deserve at the VERY LEAST to have it account-wide.

It’s not free indeed, but if you can spend 60 $ to buy more why would a company (whose achievement by definition is earning the most possible) prefer to receive just 20? Even if this is a game, we are in a real world and all the love and unicorns mean nothing in front of money.
Besides, who tells you no one buys a skin for more characters? I have seen people having two characters with same skin. Not to mention some could have female and male characters, and like the skin for both gender so buy it twice.

Everything else on this game is account wide. Why should cosmetics from the gem shop not be? It’s unfair to customers tbh, and you’d be a moron to spend any money on gems just to have it for 1 character if you are active on 10 characters.

I want to also mention that don’t you notice that the highest selling things are account unlocks? Bank tabs, character slots etc. They would simply sell more if they gave the consumers a better deal when they are spending their real life money on it. You wouldn’t suggest that bank tabs be separate to the character you bought it on right?

Iarkrad.8415:

They should just add achievement exclusive skins (fused gauntlets, fervid censor, sceralite shell, horns of the dragon, SAB backpack covers, tequatl wings, the list goes on) to achievement reward withdraw pool and be done with it.

Totally support this idea.

The thing is, though, everything in the gem store can be bought with in-game gold. You don’t need to spend actual money. It may take longer to be able to convert that gold into enough gems, but the option is there.
Also, it would be free, seeing as you’ve bought it once, and then taken nine other sets without paying. The price for most of these sets is rather high, but you can’t really complain when the money doesn’t have to come out of your own pocket.

JayyxDawg.5081:

The thing is, though, everything in the gem store can be bought with in-game gold. You don’t need to spend actual money. It may take longer to be able to convert that gold into enough gems, but the option is there.
Also, it would be free, seeing as you’ve bought it once, and then taken nine other sets without paying. The price for most of these sets is rather high, but you can’t really complain when the money doesn’t have to come out of your own pocket.

You’d have to make 640 gold for 1 cosmetic armor set, and if you wanted one for 10 characters.. that’s 6400 gold just for some cosmetics. There is some pressure into paying, trust me. I’d like to spend money but as of current I will only buy account unlocks such as bank tabs, character slots, I’d like to buy cosmetics but I(and everyone I know) will only do it if it’s for the whole account. I see it as prejudice against player that play more than 1 character, nothing more than that.

To all of those arguing against OP’s suggestion, may I point out the Guild Wars 1 cosmetic system did essentially what he suggested.

In Guild Wars 1 if you bought a costume from the cash shop it was then available to all your characters for unlimited use. You spoke to a NPC to get the costume at any time. If you deleted it, nbd. Speak to the NPC again and get another copy.

If Guild Wars 1 could use this system for all the years it had costumes, why not Guild Wars 2?

This isn’t going to happen. There are enough people buying one or multiple sets so why would Anet give up that money? Exactly – they wouldn’t.

It doesn’t matter, what you want. It matters what Anet makes most money out of. Face it, they didn’t make GW2 to make you happy, they made to make money. It just doesn’t make sense to give you 5 sets for the price of 1, if they have enough people actually paying for 5 sets -shrugs-

Firefly.5982:

This isn’t going to happen. There are enough people buying one or multiple sets so why would Anet give up that money? Exactly – they wouldn’t.

It doesn’t matter, what you want. It matters what Anet makes most money out of. Face it, they didn’t make GW2 to make you happy, they made to make money. It just doesn’t make sense to give you 5 sets for the price of 1, if they have enough people actually paying for 5 sets -shrugs-

then why is the exchange even in GW2 if all they want is get money from players?
they have pretty much cut their profit in half and don’t even encourage players to pay real money for gems…

Astral Projections.7320:

To all of those arguing against OP’s suggestion, may I point out the Guild Wars 1 cosmetic system did essentially what he suggested.

In Guild Wars 1 if you bought a costume from the cash shop it was then available to all your characters for unlimited use. You spoke to a NPC to get the costume at any time. If you deleted it, nbd. Speak to the NPC again and get another copy.

If Guild Wars 1 could use this system for all the years it had costumes, why not Guild Wars 2?

Thank you for responding with a mature response unlike these other people flaming me. They don’t seem to realize that the highest sellers are account-wide unlocks. Didn’t you notice that the account wide unlocks (bank tabs, character slots, etc) are the highest sellers? I can guarantee you if outfits were account wide they’d have alot more people buying them.

I also want to respond to those people that paying 20 dollars for an outfit in the first place is outrageous, and if you were to add up the cost of all the outfits it would come to over 800 dollars real life money if you unlocked every cosmetic piece. They would not lose money if they made purchases account-wide considering people would still unlock extra outfits, it’s not like I am suggesting that 100% of ALL outfits be unlocked with 1 purchase, I am suggesting if you pay for something (especially 20 dollars for a virtual outfit) that you should at least be sure that if you lose 1 piece or something you can retrieve it. I don’t see how that is unreasonable in any way shape or form since there are many better things to spend 20 dollars on. Such as.. account unlocks.

So let’s summarize that: Someone would still have to spend more than 800 dollars just to “unlock” every cosmetic outfit for their whole account with this feature I am suggesting. I know for a fact that more people will spend their money on outfits if they know it’s account-wide (as I said before, the best sellers are the account wide unlocks such as bank tabs, and character slots). Not to mention a company should look to satisfy the paying customer, not punish them. And those who say punishing paying customers is the best way to make money obviously know nothing about business. Thank you.

I will pay 1200 gems for an account unlock. I will not pay 800 gems for a one-time use skin. That’s what I will and will not do with my money.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I will pay 1200 gems for an account unlock. I will not pay 800 gems for a one-time use skin. That’s what I will and will not do with my money.

Exactly, finally someone that gets it. Account unlocks are what people want.

In my honest opinion. I think they should make it character-bound infinite withdraws.

So say I have an engineer and a ranger. And I buy a pair of armors – Aetherblade And Krytan. If I use the Krytan armor on my ranger, it will make it fully unlocked for my Ranger infinitely. However if I wanted the armor on my Engineer I have to buy a new set for her. If I got the Aetherblade set and used it on my engineer, then it should be free infinitely on her, but if I wanted it on my ranger, I’d have to buy it again in that case aswell.

Character-bound infinite withdraws might make it easier to implement from the current system. Otherwise I guess if they made them just account-bound, they’d have to reimburse quite a few people for the multiple sets they may have already bought. Though, I would be reasonably happy to swallow this cost for the benefit of having an account-wide permanent access to the skins from now on. And would happily pay 1200 in future for each account-wide permanent access skin.

This is the sole reason i’m still buying skins with gold. I don’t mind spending 10 € once every couple of months when a new great skin comes out, but i have 7 character slots and i use both in pvp and pve every single one of them. Do the math, is 140 € per skin if i’m willing yo buy it for every character. Sorry, not going to happen.

Luckily i have plenty of gold to spare, i had a couple of lucky drops and i invested that money with a nice profit, i use it for gems. I’d rather use it for a legendary, but you can’t have everything and with the current system i’m not willing to put the required amount of real money into skins.

I also come from other games where skins or premium items/heroes costs 2-3 € instead of the (now standard) formula of 10€/set in gw2. I seriously don’t get it, and i’m a bit concerned about where this game is going. The upcoming wvw season 2, featuring massive rewards for winning servers will bring a lot of money from transfers. Is this going to be a pay to win game (skins in the gem store, in a game where skins are the endgame, is pay to win indeed, which i wouldn’t mind if at least you could get the things for a fair price / fair amount), i don’t think i’ll be sticking around. There are much better games that one can play if it’s willing to put 15€/month into a mmorpg..

CrossedHorse.4261:

Though, I would be reasonably happy to swallow this cost for the benefit of having an account-wide permanent access to the skins from now on. And would happily pay 1200 in future for each account-wide permanent access skin.

I agree.

yep, even while it would be overpriced compare to the GW1 version, i could ignore the price if it’s account unlocked like GW1. (the GW2 versions are €10,- while the GW1 versions are €8,99, the price push would make it even higher then that.)

I think it would be only fair, just think about how much money they make from each set

20dls for 800 gems right?

100.000 sets sold would be 2.000.000dls, and 100.000 is a pretty conservative estimate… I’d say they are making easily 4MM dls for each new set on its launch period… then you have all the weapons, convenience items, bank/bag slots and the game itself

korelg.7862:

I think it would be only fair, just think about how much money they make from each set

20dls for 800 gems right?

100.000 sets sold would be 2.000.000dls, and 100.000 is a pretty conservative estimate… I’d say they are making easily 4MM dls for each new set on its launch period… then you have all the weapons, convenience items, bank/bag slots and the game itself

Yea most other f2p games don’t charge this much for an outfit, and if they do it’s always definitely an account unlock. It’s a real life money purchase they should be rewarding us with an account unlock. Satisfied consumers leads to success with any business.

korelg.7862:

I think it would be only fair, just think about how much money they make from each set

20dls for 800 gems right?

100.000 sets sold would be 2.000.000dls, and 100.000 is a pretty conservative estimate… I’d say they are making easily 4MM dls for each new set on its launch period… then you have all the weapons, convenience items, bank/bag slots and the game itself

most (if not all) ppl only buy 1 set and keep on transmuting it, making it an unlock only encourages players to purchase them.
and no, they don’t buy transmute stones, you can get them in-game for free so why buy free stuff….

I’m also someone who would buy more gem skins if they were account bound. I am really skeptical that there are enough people buying five sets of each skin to outweigh the number of people buying zero because they aren’t account bound. Same with dyes and gathering tools (which at least were sort of changed).

The additional cost to the game though is the way that the gem store feeling like a rip off effects the way players view the game. I absolutely love the game, but I find it really difficult to recommend to people because of things like the gem store (and the temporary content). Its like someone slapped a McDonalds logo over the face of the Mona Lisa, it doesn’t ruin the rest of the painting, and it kind of makes me want a Big Mac, but it hugely devalues the overall value of the product.

Put lots of things in the gem store that are good value and you get lots of money AND lots of happy customers (I mean, really, how hard would it be to churn out some of the recent dyes/tattoos/reskins for 50-100 gems each, or to make skins account bound). Put a few things in the gem store that aren’t good value for money and you get a fair bit of money, some happy customers, and lots of unhappy customers. Happy customers play more, buy more, and recommend the game to others more. Unhappy customers… don’t.

For all those saying “They want to sell as many as possible so they make the most money!” that reasoning is flawed, and here’s why. The current single use setup for skins means that the only ones that are going to buy a gem store one are those that are really high level and REALLY like the skin (since it’s one-time use they’ll likely want it on an ascended armour set or something similar, since otherwise they’ll just need to spend more on transmutation crystals) or those that are low level and don’t understand how the skins work. And let me clarify, neither of those customers are going to be buying more than one of these skins, EVER. I’d love to hear from ANet for metrics on how many people actually buy more than one set of the same skin, because I guarantee you it’s abysmally low.

The thing is, most of the customers that are not buying gems would gladly buy them if gem items gave a better value for the money spent. If I could put any gem store skin into a skin archive from which I could pull infinite copies whenever I liked? I’d likely have bought up nearly every skin that’s been offered. Because that’s a good value for my money, and it makes me happy to support a game that does that good faith in the customer. If I could put Royal Terrace passes on all my characters at once after buying one in the gem store, I’d have snatched one up INSTANTLY. The gathering tool thing has been fixed somewhat, but there’s no reason there can’t be a similar library with it. Buy the tool, you can now pull infinite copies from a tool storage for all of your characters. They could even do it better with Transmutation Crystals, simply use these on an item to add them to the same skin archive that the gem store skins are automatically added to. These are just some of the options that they could do to make so many more happy customers that will gladly buy up the items that get offered on the gem store. The OP is absolutely correct, as is the poster above me, players need to see that there’s good value for their money spent.

Oh, and I also agree that dyes need to unlock for all characters on your account, otherwise I’m not touching any gem store dyes, ever.

I posted this the other day but got no feedback: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Armor-Skins-Usage-and-Wardrobe/first#post3681544

It was an idea on how to revamp how gem store skins work, making them unlimited use but adding another method for ANET to redistribute what would be a loss of revenue, into another revenue generator therefore balancing it out.

Was hoping SOMEONE would give some thoughts/feedback/ideas on it lol.

I know the present system loses money from me not purchasing like I did in the other game. In Guild Wars 1 I bought every single costume they put out because they had unlimited use for all characters, were wearable in combat and an NPC stored them for you so you never had to worry about losing them. In this game I’ve bought zero costumes and only 2 armors. They have lost the sales of the costumes and the other armors because of how rigid and alt unfriendly their cosmetic system is.

Astral Projections.7320:

I know the present system loses money from me not purchasing like I did in the other game. In Guild Wars 2 I bought every single costume they put out because they had unlimited use for all characters, were wearable in combat and an NPC stored them for you so you never had to worry about losing them. In this game I’ve bought zero costumes and only 2 armors. They have lost the sales of the costumes and the other armors because of how rigid and alt unfriendly their cosmetic system is.

You must mean Guild Wars 1, but yea you are totally right I agree.

Brewergamer.8357:

Astral Projections.7320:

I know the present system loses money from me not purchasing like I did in the other game. In Guild Wars 2 I bought every single costume they put out because they had unlimited use for all characters, were wearable in combat and an NPC stored them for you so you never had to worry about losing them. In this game I’ve bought zero costumes and only 2 armors. They have lost the sales of the costumes and the other armors because of how rigid and alt unfriendly their cosmetic system is.

You must mean Guild Wars 1, but yea you are totally right I agree.

Oops yeah, edited. ^^

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

I posted this the other day but got no feedback: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Armor-Skins-Usage-and-Wardrobe/first#post3681544

It was an idea on how to revamp how gem store skins work, making them unlimited use but adding another method for ANET to redistribute what would be a loss of revenue, into another revenue generator therefore balancing it out.

Was hoping SOMEONE would give some thoughts/feedback/ideas on it lol.

I think another thing that could be done that would be reasonable is like lower the prices of outfits. 20 dollars for an ingame virtual outfit is a bit extreme, if we can’t get it account-wide then we should at least pay less for it.

Brewergamer.8357:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

I posted this the other day but got no feedback: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Armor-Skins-Usage-and-Wardrobe/first#post3681544

It was an idea on how to revamp how gem store skins work, making them unlimited use but adding another method for ANET to redistribute what would be a loss of revenue, into another revenue generator therefore balancing it out.

Was hoping SOMEONE would give some thoughts/feedback/ideas on it lol.

I think another thing that could be done that would be reasonable is like lower the prices of outfits. 20 dollars for an ingame virtual outfit is a bit extreme, if we can’t get it account-wide then we should at least pay less for it.

20?
don’t you mean 10?

sorudo.9054:

Brewergamer.8357:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

I posted this the other day but got no feedback: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Armor-Skins-Usage-and-Wardrobe/first#post3681544

It was an idea on how to revamp how gem store skins work, making them unlimited use but adding another method for ANET to redistribute what would be a loss of revenue, into another revenue generator therefore balancing it out.

Was hoping SOMEONE would give some thoughts/feedback/ideas on it lol.

I think another thing that could be done that would be reasonable is like lower the prices of outfits. 20 dollars for an ingame virtual outfit is a bit extreme, if we can’t get it account-wide then we should at least pay less for it.

20?
don’t you mean 10?

Alot of the outfits are 20, since the lowest purchasing amount is 10 dollars for 800 and some outfits are 1000 gems. This is only due to them not having a 5 dollar or so purchase option.

They could make it so that people who buy the skin with real money to have them as a 1 time purchase and then added to the achievement tab, and people that buy the skin with gold converted to gems not.

Rens.9870:

They could make it so that people who buy the skin with real money to have them as a 1 time purchase and then added to the achievement tab, and people that buy the skin with gold converted to gems not.

That would be nice as well, when I pay IRL money for something I would like it to be an account unlock.

Brewergamer.8357:

sorudo.9054:

Brewergamer.8357:

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

I posted this the other day but got no feedback: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Armor-Skins-Usage-and-Wardrobe/first#post3681544

It was an idea on how to revamp how gem store skins work, making them unlimited use but adding another method for ANET to redistribute what would be a loss of revenue, into another revenue generator therefore balancing it out.

Was hoping SOMEONE would give some thoughts/feedback/ideas on it lol.

I think another thing that could be done that would be reasonable is like lower the prices of outfits. 20 dollars for an ingame virtual outfit is a bit extreme, if we can’t get it account-wide then we should at least pay less for it.

20?
don’t you mean 10?

Alot of the outfits are 20, since the lowest purchasing amount is 10 dollars for 800 and some outfits are 1000 gems. This is only due to them not having a 5 dollar or so purchase option.

i just checked, there isn’t a single skin or town clothing that go’s beyond 800 gems, none.

i would be interested to see how many style-items are sold more than once to one person, i would not think it is that often.

One thing i have seen people say often is that the gem-store stuff is all too expensive and recent earning statistics seem to support that.

Soo why not make a cheaper versions of all the items in the gem store as a 1-time skin and keep current prices for the the new infinite skins? this might solve both problems.

They’re losing my money because I refuse to buy an armor set unless I can put it on all my characters. Then, and only then, will I ever consider buying an armor set (thankfully the armor sets they’ve made are uninteresting to me). I have only bought a masque (which annoyed me that I can’t use it in PvP, also) and a Staff (which also annoyed me that I can’t use it in PvP, also). I also validated buying them for one character as they were rather Mesmer-y in style.

I bought a cosmetic outfit in GW1 because I could use it on all my characters.

Lorelei.7809:

They’re losing my money because I refuse to buy an armor set unless I can put it on all my characters. Then, and only then, will I ever consider buying an armor set (thankfully the armor sets they’ve made are uninteresting to me). I have only bought a masque (which annoyed me that I can’t use it in PvP, also) and a Staff (which also annoyed me that I can’t use it in PvP, also). I also validated buying them for one character as they were rather Mesmer-y in style.

I bought a cosmetic outfit in GW1 because I could use it on all my characters.

Exactly, I won’t really buy anything on GW2 since it’s mostly 1 character only. And even then most of them are a 1 time use that you could lose or upgrade from then it would be a waste. I WOULD however start purchasing if the outfits were “unlocked” just like the achievement cosmetics. I really would like to see an Arenanet Response on this.

Prod.3610:

i would be interested to see how many style-items are sold more than once to one person, i would not think it is that often.

One thing i have seen people say often is that the gem-store stuff is all too expensive and recent earning statistics seem to support that.

Soo why not make a cheaper versions of all the items in the gem store as a 1-time skin and keep current prices for the the new infinite skins? this might solve both problems.

This could definitely work as well.

Brewergamer.8357:

Satisfied consumers leads to success with any business.

Just an FYI. The current business model, whether you like it or not, is very successful. The amount of money GW2 made for NCSoft from microtransactions is impressive. So in order for them to rethink their strategies, and consider your idea, you’d have to get a lot of players to stop spending a lot of money. Bottom line is, while your ideas would make pretty much all players happy, it would effectively reduce microtransaction revenue.

As the saying goes – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

JayyxDawg.5081:

ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free.

Questions:

• How many % of the player base buy 1 particular set of gem store armor?
• How many % of the player base buy 2 sets of the same gem store armor?
• How many % of the player base would buy gem store armor if it had “replay value”?

If the #3 > #2, which I strongly suspect, then ANet would gain, not lose, money.

To be honest I’ve never bought armor skins because spending 10 euros for a single use skin is too much. Instead, if I could withdraw the skins any time, I’d probably buy several armors.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

JayyxDawg.5081:

ArenaNet would lose out on money if they allowed everyone to buy one armour set, and then have access to it on every character for free.

Questions:

• How many % of the player base buy 1 particular set of gem store armor?
• How many % of the player base buy 2 sets of the same gem store armor?
• How many % of the player base would buy gem store armor if it had “replay value”?

If the #3 > #2, which I strongly suspect, then ANet would gain, not lose, money.

Indeed. I don’t ever hear of 1 person buying the same exact armor set for ALL of their characters, or even more than 1 of their characters. In fact most the people I know won’t buy anything unless they are account unlocks (including me). I know they would benefit from making these cosmetics account unlocks. Then they are happy, and we are happy as well. It’s a win-win.

I’m definitely feeling what the OP is proposing. See, I came to GW2 after it sat on my shelf collecting dust for a few months, because I was heavily invested in Lord of the Rings Online. After the last expansion and assorted nonsense that isn’t on-topic, I started GW2 finally and am loving it. BUT, and this is a big but (phrasing), the cosmetics in this game, comparatively, is absolutely abysmal.

See, LOTRO had a system where you could buy cosmetics off of their in game cash store, which I should note did not operate with any sort of ingame currency -> premium currency exchange, you literally had to buy the premium currency with real money, or get tiny increments of it via ingame achievements that were incredibly impractical for accumulating large amounts.

So basically, all cosmetics were purchased with real dollars. But they were all of them, to the last, reusable on every character you owned. All you had to do was drop them into your wardrobe slots (which also had to be purchased, in increments! because a basic F2P player had no wardrobe slots) and boom. Any character can now apply the skins. Which meant that I bought probably more than I’d like to admit, because I loved having all different armor sets to mix and match on different characters and never worry about oh, well, let me go split this skin from an armor and then transmute it onto another armor and then trade it to another character and then split it again and then transmute again. Hell no. It was quick, easy buy, easy apply, and oh-so-satisfying.

There’s a bunch of armors I’d rather like to buy in GW that I think would look great. But I’m not spending a single cent on anything that isn’t account bound. If I’m dropping twenty dollars, I’m kitten well going to make sure I get my money’s worth. Especially in a pay-once game.

Yeah, it SHOULD have been like this from day one, but sadly as long as there is money to be made by multiple outfit purchases, I don’t think it will ever happen. The ironic thing is, I believe that with the way it is now, it probably puts people off buying more purchases because technically they already bought the set – why should they have to buy it again for another character?

It should be like the hellfire, radiant and zenith skins where you can take as many out as you want and apply it to any characters.

another thing i don’t get is why it has to be a skin replacer instead of something you can slot somewhere else, both GW1 and LOTRO has this and it works perfectly.
heck, even perfect world has it and ppl condemn it as a cheap game, at least it has a system that puts GW2’s system to shame.

naemyis.8731:

I’m definitely feeling what the OP is proposing. See, I came to GW2 after it sat on my shelf collecting dust for a few months, because I was heavily invested in Lord of the Rings Online. After the last expansion and assorted nonsense that isn’t on-topic, I started GW2 finally and am loving it. BUT, and this is a big but (phrasing), the cosmetics in this game, comparatively, is absolutely abysmal.

See, LOTRO had a system where you could buy cosmetics off of their in game cash store, which I should note did not operate with any sort of ingame currency -> premium currency exchange, you literally had to buy the premium currency with real money, or get tiny increments of it via ingame achievements that were incredibly impractical for accumulating large amounts.

So basically, all cosmetics were purchased with real dollars. But they were all of them, to the last, reusable on every character you owned. All you had to do was drop them into your wardrobe slots (which also had to be purchased, in increments! because a basic F2P player had no wardrobe slots) and boom. Any character can now apply the skins. Which meant that I bought probably more than I’d like to admit, because I loved having all different armor sets to mix and match on different characters and never worry about oh, well, let me go split this skin from an armor and then transmute it onto another armor and then trade it to another character and then split it again and then transmute again. Hell no. It was quick, easy buy, easy apply, and oh-so-satisfying.

There’s a bunch of armors I’d rather like to buy in GW that I think would look great. But I’m not spending a single cent on anything that isn’t account bound. If I’m dropping twenty dollars, I’m kitten well going to make sure I get my money’s worth. Especially in a pay-once game.

Glad you were brave enough to mention another mmorpg that had a better system, I usually avoid doing that because I get flamed on these forums for mentioning other mmorpgs. But yea, I just generally say the fact is that other mmorpgs out there don’t charge 20 dollars for an outfit and still let you have it for your whole account. GW2 would make me so happy if they made gem shop purchases account unlocks like the achievement unlocks.

In case Anet is listening I’m with some of the other players in saying that if purchased costumes behaved like my Zenith weapon skins that I’d buy many, many more of them. It would feel much more like adding to your collection (and we all love to collect), not buying something that immediately is burned. One time use items create stress and stress reduces sales.

Honestly I loathe the current system myself.

> 800 gems ($10) to get a 1 use set of skin items for armor.
> 200 gems ($2.5) for 5 transmuting stones lvl 80
> 150 gems ($1.75) for 5 transmuting stones lvl 79 or lower
keep in mind that the stones consume the item bearing the style and apply it to the new one.
> 300 gems ($3.75) for 1 transmutation splitter to seperate the cosmetic without destroying the item.
Also the only way you can keep a second set of armor if you applied it but wish to swap to a new one.

I get that Arenanet has a profit they need to make. But these prices feel a bit excessive for what you are actually receiving.

My suggestion really is to make the purchased items BOA, and done much in the way the heirloom and Achievement reward skins are done. If it has to be on a per character basis, thats fine. I can almost promise the moment they release a system like this, the cosmetic sales would spike.

Retroactively grant the skins to people who already bought it of course. Price point shouldn’t change. I feel that 10 usd for clothes in a game feels reasonable if they are a permanent reclaimable resource for the character.

There are clearly systems in place to implement this:
Hall of monuments reward vendor.
Achievement panel rewards pane.

Guild wars 1 actually did this very thing on an account wide, permanent basis, currently Guild wars 2 is inferior in this regard.

The existing system feels like its trying to keep away from repeat purchases. I may be one of those types that the “pure” gamer hates, willing to spend excessive amounts on a cash shop. But it has to have a certain value in it first.

TL;DR
Cash shop cosmetic clothing is overpriced and temporary.
Purchased cosmetic clothing should be an unlock treated much like Hall of Monuments/achievement rewards.
Inferior to previous game’s handling of this very thing.