Guild Wars 2

Sorry for the massive post. I’ll start off by assuming we can all agree that the gold selling issue is having a major impact on the game. We might have different opinions on the magnitude of that effect, but we can all agree there is one. In my own opinion, a major part of this problem is that, even though players are provided with a legitimate way to trade gold for real-world money in the form of gem purchases and currency exchange, gold sellers are able to dramatically undercut this with the prices they offer.

Now, as far as buying gems with gold via the exchange goes, I feel the prices are fair. 1 gold currently buys roughly 270 gems, and the boosters and other items you can buy with this I consider fair. However, in terms of real-world money, the items available are simply not worth it. For example, depending on which gem package you buy, a black lion key costs roughly $2 US. This is simply staggering. I can’t think of any normal player who would pay that much to open a black lion chest, the rewards of which are generally underwhelming. I think that the massive amounts of black lion chests posted on the trading post for one copper above vendor price back me up on this. However, were the keys, say, $0.25 or even $0.50, I’m sure I would have happily bought $10 worth without a second thought. Right now, each black lion chest on the market is a potential $2 that Anet is could be earning, but since the number of them keeps going up, it’s money they will never earn. That doesn’t even count the stacks of them sitting in peoples’ inventories. I personally have over 200 of the things collecting dust, which would currently cost me $400 to open. I’m sure there are plenty of other players with the same situation, and if even one of them paid $400 to open them all I would be shocked.

In another example, the 2000 gems for the Deluxe Edition upgrade would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30, as opposed to the extra $10 you would have paid for it had you bought the boxed version. I can understand that someone should have to pay more for the upgrade than they would have if they bought it originally, but having the cost to do so be triple the difference between the standard and deluxe boxes makes no sense to me. I had planned on buying the deluxe edition, but only the standard was available in the store I bought the game. I was very happy to see it available on the BLTC, and was going to buy it there. When I opened the “buy gems” interface and calculated the cost of buying it, though, my credit card went back into my wallet and has remained there ever since. I would have been fine with paying, say, kitten premium for the upgrade versus the boxed purchase, but paying three times the amount for something I could have gotten literally the day before for $10 was ridiculous.

Now, what I’m suggesting is either increasing the number of gems you get for a gem purchase, or at least slashing the prices of items on the gem store drastically to make the in-game benefit match up more with the real-world cost. I haven’t talked to a single player who has bought gems with real-world money to buy items from the gem store. At best, they’ve used in-game gold to buy gems. At worst, they’ve simply done without and never opened the screen again.

The way gold sellers tie into this is simply the difference in n-game value that real-world money will get you is vastly different between their prices and Anet’s, in terms of buying gold from them versus buying gems to sell for gold. The current prices we’re seeing every time we go in to Lion’s Arch are roughly $1=1g. Buying gems and selling them for gold gets you roughly $1=20s. It is in fact, much cheaper to buy gold from the gold sellers and then exchange that gold for gems to buy gem store items than it is to buy the gems from Anet.

Now, if the difference in value was smaller, I’m sure that, in addition to the people now buying gems from Anet who had previously bought from neither them nor the gold sellers, many of the gold sellers’ customers would buy from Anet instead. The fact is, those sites are an absolute breeding ground for identity theft, but with the payoff being so much greater for dealing with them, they’re thriving anyway. The fact is, the people who would be inclined to buy gold from anybody would vastly prefer to buy it from Anet, but with so great a disparity they’re either not buying from anyone or taking their chances with the gold sellers.

Long story short, I hope that this would both boost the number of players giving Anet their business, as well as help undermine the gold sellers who are stealing that same business, and by extension, Anet’s money.

Yes, basically yes. I have said something like this before.

The fairness of the Gem/Gold exchange has been both a great feature and the doom of the game economy. Most MMO’s that have this type of feature are not fair in the amount of in game currency for their Gem’s equivalent currency. The rate is usually so high that many are discouraged of doing it and just buy the Gem equivalent with $$$.

But because in GW people can get gems via gold with a fair rate, Anet had to control the gold and make it so that the majority of players can not get a hold of more gold than what they need to play the game. This way they make it an incentive to people to buy gems with $$$ for Gem shop exclusive items.

This had a side effect… gold is scarce and is more valuable than gems to most players. As in any economy a very restricted, scarce good immediately creates a thriving black market (in this cases gold sellers).

There will always be gold sellers in MMO’s but the choice of having a relatively fair exchange rate of gold/gems (1) has exacerbated them to the point of ridicule as pointed out in your 3rd to last paragraph.

Note 1 : It has been disclosed by Anet that this exchange rate is driven by market, while we have no way of testing this to be true it has, for now, led to a fair rate.

You can see that the price is driven by market when looking at the data for the prices of gems throughout the day. Prices are always highest at peak hours and lowest at off peak hours. If you look at the average price it steadily climbed from all the way back and continues. This is a good indicator that as players average wealth increases the price increases. As the price increases the more likely people are to buy gems with real money to sell for gold. Which keeps a steady supply to feed the demand. You can see the time frames in which supply and demand shifted significantly in the few big spikes in price that shifted back down closer to the average price later that day or the next day.

Now as to the problem with RMT gold sellers has there been any game that has successfully eliminated the problem? Or is the best case scenario to make it more trouble than it is worth so that it mostly dies down to one or two hard core RMTs? I would think that if buying gold with gems were seen as a good value by more then it would cut down or eliminate the RMTs. Yet from the RMT standpoint they would always offer a deal for more than you get from the gems so that there is incentive to buy from them.

As far as the real money price equivalency of items in the gem store I agree 100% that their cost is too high. The in game gold equivalency not so much of a too high cost. And obviously the driving factor of the demand for buying gems with gold. I assume that to many their hard earned real money is worth more to them that the in game gold and so they obtain the gems with in game gold instead. And I can only assume that enough people who have plenty of disposable income are inclined to buy gold with real money do so legitimately with gems. So in the case of GW2 it is a matter of the morale value of the players as to why RMTs remain. After all there is the legitimate method of buying gold.

Cancer.9065:

Note 1 : It has been disclosed by Anet that this exchange rate is driven by market, while we have no way of testing this to be true it has, for now, led to a fair rate.

I believe that once you buy gems you can sell them for gold. The only gems that are available for purchase with gold are gems that people who paid $ for gems are willing to sell.

I don’t think gold sellers, in the abstract, have a big impact on the game economy.

They cause some sectoral problems from overloading certain portions of the economy when they run bots or overfarm it, but prices on the whole aren’t really affected, provided the economy is reasonably well designed from a high level (and GW2s is reasonable).

Gem store gold prices are much higher than 3rd party sites because there’s insufficient demand for the gold for gems side of the transaction. They need more and better items available in their gem store if they want people to sell their gold for gems.

I dismiss all the conspiracies about A.Net wanting to force people to buy gold on this alone; if A.Net really wanted to make a ton of money off that exchange they would have a much, much better gem store than they do. It’s clearly not a priority at this time.

The problem with your proposal is that gold sellers will [/i]always[i] be able to undercut the company. If a player buys 50 gold from a gold seller, that gold could have come from maybe 5 or 10 stolen accounts.

If gold was easier to obtain via ArenaNet’s gem store, there would be more gold in the economy in general. More gold in players’ inventories leads to more gold obtained from stolen accounts, so gold sellers can slash their prices accordingly to again undercut ArenaNet’s lower prices.

Granted, the price for Black Lion Keys is just silly.

I’ll say this, if Anet simply halfed the cost per 800 gems (£to 4.25 UK) or doubled the amout gems you get per £8.50 (to 1600) AND offered a discount on bulk buying i’d be buying gems on a monthly basis. Simply put, the current Anet gem cost is a rip off even if you factor out the £1 to 1 gold that is plastered all over Lions arch.

Again Anet, half the cost or double the gem amout and i’ll buy gems from you every month, right now i will never pay what you are asking as it’s just way to much for what you can get with them.

@ Jia Shen

Oh, I’m not disputing whether Anet is truthful about gem/gold exchange. As a customer I put my faith on it and continue to give them my support via gems (for the items I deem a good value… mostly bank tabs atm). It is simply a statement that, as with any other non regulated business, we have to take it at face value. So far the system has led to a “fair” exchange rate (read that as “expected” for a market controlled commodity, perhaps I should have used a better word).

About people caring more for their real money vs in game money, the missing variable here is time. How much time does it take me to make 1g vs how much time I need to make $1 if I can make $$$ faster or with less effort that its equivalent in gold them I would value gold more (ie. buying gold becomes attractive).

Again, I do not think gold sellers will go away (or botting for that matter) nor do I fault Anet for this but simply point out that the current system that dictates the exchange rate creates good opportunities for gold sellers to prosper and gives players an incentive to risk getting banned by buying black market gold since they get a much better rate from them, as In they get more gold for the same amount of $$$ than from the gem shop (OP 3rd to last paragraph really captures this).

As I view it the chain goes like this:

Gems are a source of income for Anet.
-Anet created a way of getting gems “free” via gold exchange free market.
-To be able to profit they need to control the gold market so that not everyone can afford to covert gold for gems.
- As gold is controlled it becomes scarce and thus valuable.
- Farmers recognize this “need” and start botting to sell gold.
- Some players starved for gold risk it and buy from them.

The further up the chain you look a solution for the better said solution will be.

Are players wrong fro buying sanctioned gold, yes they are. I do think they should support Anet instead of a gold farmer. I was trying to remain “clinical” about it, not bringing morality into play, since I wouldn’t buy gold with gems even from Anet.

Actually, I think the biggest impact gold sellers and botters are having on the game is through the reactions of Arena Net developers to their actions. After all, it’s a no brainer that anything a developer does has a far bigger impact on the game than anything a person or even a large group of people can have. For example, the DR code that was implemented is having a HUGE impact on the game. It’s in like the top 3 subjects being discussed, maybe even the very top one!

To the OP’s comments, I do agree that the dollar cost of most, if not all of the items in the cash shop is over-priced. By that, I mean that not only would it be a better deal for us as consumers if they were to lower the prices some, but I think it would cause Arena Net and NCSoft to make more money from it.

After all, those items have an extremely small cost to produce, as they are mostly completely virtual items that can be copied and destroyed at will. I.e., supply is essentially whatever it needs to be to meet demand. Obviously, there is a floor to how much they could charge and it be more profitable, but I don’t think they are anywhere near it.

There’s a “sweet spot” of cost at which they would have enticed almost everyone who is interested to buy those things. Lower than that spot would not net them any more sales (or not more than a miniscule amount), while higher than that spot is more than many (perhaps even most) are willing to pay. Somewhat higher is where I believe they currently are.

I agree – I would be willing to spend some cash on gems every month or so to support Anet if it was worth it financially. If they gave more gems per dollar, or reduced the cost of most of the items, I would be willing. But yes, $2 for a single Black Lion Key, or $3 for a Dye Pack is way too much.

People are comfortable paying a modest premium for security, legality, and ease of use.

But they probably are not comfortable with the fairly huge premium that GW2 places on the transactions.

15% is a good number for regular trades in game – its a terrible number for anything related to real money.

Tallenn.9218:

There’s a “sweet spot” of cost at which they would have enticed almost everyone who is interested to buy those things. Lower than that spot would not net them any more sales (or not more than a miniscule amount), while higher than that spot is more than many (perhaps even most) are willing to pay. Somewhat higher is where I believe they currently are.

Yeah, I think ANet, like most companies, has not yet realized the phenomenon Steam discovered awhile ago: people really like sales and discounts. There have been a number of Steam games that, during one weekend of 75% or more discounts, have netted more profit than the entire year or however long the game had been up for sale prior to that. I’ve bought literally dozens of $2-$5 games that I haven’t even downloaded yet, for the primary reason that it only cost $2-$5, so why the heck not?

I suspect the prices that would actually net them the most profit are significantly lower than most companies expect, for most digital content.

Hippocampus.8470:

Tallenn.9218:

There’s a “sweet spot” of cost at which they would have enticed almost everyone who is interested to buy those things. Lower than that spot would not net them any more sales (or not more than a miniscule amount), while higher than that spot is more than many (perhaps even most) are willing to pay. Somewhat higher is where I believe they currently are.

Yeah, I think ANet, like most companies, has not yet realized the phenomenon Steam discovered awhile ago: people really like sales and discounts. There have been a number of Steam games that, during one weekend of 75% or more discounts, have netted more profit than the entire year or however long the game had been up for sale prior to that. I’ve bought literally dozens of $2-$5 games that I haven’t even downloaded yet, for the primary reason that it only cost $2-$5, so why the heck not?

I suspect the prices that would actually net them the most profit are significantly lower than most companies expect, for most digital content.

I’m with you on the Steam sales.

And what these sellers of virtual goods need to learn is two very key things.

1. 50% of something is worth an infinite amount more than 100% of nothing
2. Virtual items are manufactured once, and only one item needs to be stored. contrast this with physical items (e.g. contrast eBooks with physical books) where multiple copies of a single need to be stored, shipped, and handled by humans.

The point of #2 being that there is not only a prototyping cost associated with a real item (as there is with the virtual item) but there are the substantial additional costs of manufacturing, storing, delivery, and handling that raise the cost of the physical item but should not impact the cost of the virtual item.

Between numbers 1 & 2 people expect much lower prices on virtual items then on their physical counterparts.

And we’re just not seeing it here.

Hippocampus.8470:

Tallenn.9218:

There’s a “sweet spot” of cost at which they would have enticed almost everyone who is interested to buy those things. Lower than that spot would not net them any more sales (or not more than a miniscule amount), while higher than that spot is more than many (perhaps even most) are willing to pay. Somewhat higher is where I believe they currently are.

Yeah, I think ANet, like most companies, has not yet realized the phenomenon Steam discovered awhile ago: people really like sales and discounts. There have been a number of Steam games that, during one weekend of 75% or more discounts, have netted more profit than the entire year or however long the game had been up for sale prior to that. I’ve bought literally dozens of $2-$5 games that I haven’t even downloaded yet, for the primary reason that it only cost $2-$5, so why the heck not?

I suspect the prices that would actually net them the most profit are significantly lower than most companies expect, for most digital content.

I’ve spent the last 6 months playing world of tanks and their model had me spending more money to take advantage of those sales than a monthly sub for WoW.

Ultimately, discounts or not stuff has to be priced right. If you want players to set the value of gold (and it will inflate so I wouldn’t worry about that) get the stuff in the gem store down. Honestly 100 or 150 for a key is plenty.

Anyone that needed to buy Gold for gear or repairs would be insane to use the ArenaNet ‘closed’ currency exchange system to buy Gems for RL$ and then trade them back to ArenaNet for Gold (does anyone REALLY believe there is a fair market price on Gold/Gems?).

Easy math shows that a person can get five times (or more) Gold for their RL$ than what ArenaNet will give. That is NOT a recipe for stopping gold sellers.

ArenaNet should have an open GEM / Gold market (just like EVE has for Plex) where players can buy and sell directly to each other over the market. Unfortunately, ArenaNet chose the path of soaking the most $$$$$ from the players.

And we all are paying the price, one way or another.

I am a new player to a game such as GW2 with a store that offers items actually needed for in-game transactions of any type. The only other one I was familiar with was for cosmetic items only.

Since I no longer pay a monthly fee for my gaming, I decided to watch the store and the market to see how viable it would be for me to use the funds I save from subbing to purchase items from the store that I wanted. I have been very disappointed.

1. Black Lion Keys are hard to come by unless you purchase them and they are very, very expensive. Especially since you do not get much return once you open one of the chests. Very dismal rewards offered there.

2. Gold purchases through the store are not something I plan to take advantage of. There again, the cost is too prohibitive to be profitable as far as I am concerned.

3. Selling on the TP is not profitable as far as I can see. I can be thrifty and go farm materials for items but the TP loses its effectiveness. Because my effort is worth more than I can make selling on the TP due to the high “tax” assessed on sales over and above the posting fee that shows up when you post anything for sale.

It would be nice to see Anet make some reasonable changes to the TP and the store so that we don’t feel like paupers all the time. I am not adverse to seeing a better and more robust market place environment where folks who farm materials and craft nice items can make a modest profit for their efforts. At present that is missing in this game.

lynspottery.6529:

It would be nice to see Anet make some reasonable changes to the TP and the store so that we don’t feel like paupers all the time. I am not adverse to seeing a better and more robust market place environment where folks who farm materials and craft nice items can make a modest profit for their efforts. At present that is missing in this game.

What do you consider to be reasonable changes to the TP?

I know that there are many craftable items in the game that make more than a modest profit. I suppose the question is how many, in your mind, should? Do you want every crafted item to be saleable?

Innocente.4271:

Anyone that needed to buy Gold for gear or repairs would be insane to use the ArenaNet ‘closed’ currency exchange system to buy Gems for RL$ and then trade them back to ArenaNet for Gold

You don’t trade them back to ANet for gold, you trade them to other players for gold. All the gems in the game were bought with real money, and all the gold in the game comes from in-game sources like vendors and events and drops.

Hippocampus.8470:

Innocente.4271:

Anyone that needed to buy Gold for gear or repairs would be insane to use the ArenaNet ‘closed’ currency exchange system to buy Gems for RL$ and then trade them back to ArenaNet for Gold

You don’t trade them back to ANet for gold, you trade them to other players for gold. All the gems in the game were bought with real money, and all the gold in the game comes from in-game sources like vendors and events and drops.

And you know this for certain, how? I have read many posts here and elsewhere that points to Anet having a hand in “fixing” where this exchange rate is at.

But, assuming you are right, the BIGGEST problem is that ther is nothing much worthwhile in the Gem store at present. OMG their latest idea of new items were 2 packs of overpriced dyes.

A makeover kit would boost demand 100×.

Gems are not sold for player gold, I don’t understand why people keep saying this. ANet controls the rate of Gold for Gems and ANet is who gives you the gold when you sell your Gems. If it was player gold then it would take time for purchases/sales to go through but it doesn’t, it is instant. That means that your sell price would have to exactly match their buy price at every single transaction which in real terms is impossible.

Paladine.6082:

Gems are not sold for player gold, I don’t understand why people keep saying this. ANet controls the rate of Gold for Gems and ANet is who gives you the gold when you sell your Gems. If it was player gold then it would take time for purchases/sales to go through but it doesn’t, it is instant. That means that your sell price would have to exactly match their buy price at every single transaction which in real terms is impossible.

i would tend to agree with this analysis. I have been on other MMOs where the Gold/Gem trade AH is much like the item TP. You can actually see the buy sell listings at each price. The fact that this is hidden, points to Anet control.

Whether or not ANet fixes the effective exchange rate is independent of whether or not I’m correct about where the gold and gems come from.

They may be independent, but Anet has the ability to “print money” Gems or Gold as they wish. What guarantee do you have there is a fixed “in game money supply”. Where is your source?

NinjaKnight.1340:

But, assuming you are right, the BIGGEST problem is that ther is nothing much worthwhile in the Gem store at present. OMG their latest idea of new items were 2 packs of overpriced dyes.

I would suggest that you find that the biggest problem is that -you- do not find anything worthwhile in the Gem store.

Some other people do.

I happen to agree with you. There isn’t anything in the gem store that I find interesting. But, that being said, I did spend some gems on an extra bank slot so gems have had a value to me.

There are plenty of stories of people who have spent a fair amount of RL cash on gems for things like boosters or black lion keys. I have seen a lot of people wandering around in the gem purchased outfits as well. As such, there is clearly some demand for what is on the trading house.

I hope they come out with more skins and / or affects that don’t have any impact other than cosmetic.

Tallenn.9218:

To the OP’s comments, I do agree that the dollar cost of most, if not all of the items in the cash shop is over-priced. By that, I mean that not only would it be a better deal for us as consumers if they were to lower the prices some, but I think it would cause Arena Net and NCSoft to make more money from it.

There’s no price point at which I would spend money on keys (since the chests have 0 value to me) but there’s no doubt $2 per key has to be a serious miscalculation on Anet’s part. The items that do interest me most personally are bank/bag slots and character slots.

The cost of buying a bag slot legitimately with $$ equates to $5 per slot, and the cost of a bank slot is $7.50. Thus the cost of 1 bank slot, plus 5 bag slots (one per 5 toons) would net you $32.50. Put another way, that’s more than half of what it cost at launch to buy the whole game just to expand your inventory by 20% or so.

Character slots seem just a tad high at $10, but at least I can see the argument for that pricing in terms of the broader game market, not to mention the play you would get for that investment.

Anets gem store is just bad… There’s hardly anything there worth buying and seeing http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/824-new-items-coming-soon/ leads me to believe that they have no sense of how to properly run a cash shop.

For example:
Permanent Bank Access Contract
Permanent Black Lion Merchant Contract
Permanent Trading Post Pick Up Contract

I know most people would love this but lets be realistic. It’s kinda silly and won’t retain long term revenue (which yes, even you cheapos that don’t want to spend extra, should be concerned about). Why not just 30 day access? I think 30 day passes for these items are perfectly acceptable and would generate (even at cheaper prices than permanent access) much more long term revenue. Or at least offer both, with the 30 day access being considerably cheaper.

Other than that, armor skins are atrocious and there is a complete lack of weapon skins. I want both, I want a constantly updated cash shop that actually facilitates player interest and drives up gem/gold sales to a proper level.

Aero.4829:

I know most people would love this but lets be realistic. It’s kinda silly and won’t retain long term revenue (which yes, even you cheapos that don’t want to spend extra, should be concerned about). Why not just 30 day access? I think 30 day passes for these items are perfectly acceptable and would generate (even at cheaper prices than permanent access) much more long term revenue.

30 day passes would generate much, much less revenue than selling permanent access passes (at their theoretical revenue maximizing points).

The key idea is that buying a 30 day pass is paying for a service while paying for a permanent access pass is creating an asset. If I have a 30 day pass, I feel bad every time I have to re-buy the item; if I have a charged item, I feel bad every time I use a charge. It is micro-losses. On the other hand, if I have a permanent item, I feel awesome every time I use the item. I’m getting value for no cost, something for nothing. That skews the incentives – massively.

There may be no functional difference, for example, between a permanent merchant contract and a merchant contract with, say, 10,000 charges – but people will pay much, much more for the one without the charges.

In a similar vein, Arena.net makes a lot more money if they allow these items to be traded and not binding them to the purchasing account. The ability to sell them makes them that much more valuable, juicing sales now – the ‘lost sales’ from resales down the road aren’t even pure downside from the way it juices demand for gold and hence gems to gold conversions.

I’m actually surprised by the amount of bind on acquire in this game, it’s totally unnecessary and likely costing A.Net a substantial amount of money.

Regarding how the exchange rate of gems to gold is handled, I don’t know how ANet does it, but I know what I’d do:
On launch, establish an exchange buffer of a certain amount of coin and a certain amount of gems (eg. 1 million gems and 1 million silver). The relation between the coins and gems in the exchange buffer determines the exchange rate. Gems sold are added to the gem pool, and the coin awarded is subtracted from the coin pool and vice versa.

I’m pretty sure there’s no ANet conspiracy to keep exchange rates fixed at a certain level, because the current rate is not favorable to them. There’s no way I’m buying gems for real money at the current exchange rate. Whatever gems I’m picking up is gonna be bought with gold, and gold has no value to ANet. This is no so much because the gems are expensive to buy with real money, but by comparison they’re dirt cheap to buy with gold.

They have publicly state how the gem exchange works. The price is more or less set by supply and demand. But functions like a stock price as well. Any gems bought with gold were sold by someone who paid real money for the gems, generating the supply. Players wanting gems but not wanting to spend real money, generating the demand. The perceived value then influences the price as well. If the real money cost of gems is too high the supply will go down while demand remains relatively constant and the price goes up. If the cost in gold to buy gems is too high the demand will go down and the price will shift down as supply remains relatively constant. The general wealth of the average player will also influence the price. The more gold the average person has the more they are willing to spend. As a result the price goes up. You can see these changes take place on a daily basis as the price of gems rises and falls. Offpeak hours where demand is lowest the price is lowest. There is no conspiracy as it is in arenanets best interest that the more value there is in buying gems to sell for gold the more money they make from people who want to do that. And the less likely those people are to turn to the RMTs who are currently a big problem costing them money to deal with. In the end artificially keeping the exchange rate low costs them money instead of making money so it is only foolish to think they would want to do that.