Guild Wars 2

This is the kind of thing that shows Anet has no interest in respecting their players. This is using the guise of ‘simplicity’ to set up a market that is both cumbersome and unfair to players in order to force a marginal amount of players to spend real money on gems when they can’t afford to exchange in denominations with actual gold.

For those who don’t understand what I mean, here’s an example:

A player who doesn’t have a lot of time, but has a lot of money (they have a job) buys gems. They buy 800 gems and purchase a 500 gem item. They have 300 gems left over. Then, they decide they want to purchase a 400 gem item, but they need 100 more gems. On the new system they cannot only convert gold into 100 gems, they need to convert at least 400 gems worth of gold. But they don’t have that much gold, and because they don’t have a lot of time to play, they can’t farm it (and 400 gems isn’t cheap, it’s over 75 gold right now). Thus, this person must spend more real money on actual gems, at a minimum of $10 for 800 gems, even though they only wanted 100 gems.

This kind of practice is not “eliminating confusion”, it’s a practice to squeeze more money out of players and is basically one step below extortion. To make matters worse, it’s being intentionally presented to players as helping them. THAT is truly despicable.

Oh, and by the way, take a look at what’s in the store. Costumes priced at 700 gems, and accessory hats priced at 200 gems. Want them both? That’s 900 gems. But you can’t buy 800 gems and then convert gold for another 100. You need to convert at least 400 gems worth of gold. Can’t convert that much? Then you’re forced to buy another 800 gems. Anet knows EXACTLY what they’re doing.

We’re not stupid. We know how economics and finance work. If you’re reading this, John, you and the marketing team that tries to pull this kind of thing over players under the guise of ‘helping’ them should feel ashamed. You could at least be honest about it. Of course, I can’t imagine you don’t have some metric that said you’ll get more money out of squeezing your players like this than you’ll lose to people who call you out on what you’re pulling. And that makes it worth it, right?

hmmm well, your probably right. being able to buy exactly what you need/want is the simplest method

“Despicable” works, but it’s certainly not the word I had in mind.

Already I’m hearing from several guild members who only need “50 gems” to buy something in the Gem Store that they can’t afford (or just don’t want to buy) “400 gems all at once”, and this is really torquing them off.

Not to mention @ 72g27s96c per 400 gems, that’s just over 18g per 100 gems. 18g per 100 gems.. When it was 14g per 100 right before the patch? So in addition to not being able to buy just “50 gems”, any price increase is multiplied by at least a factor of 4 (if you used to buy gems 100 at a time).

If nothing else, A-Net, please at least add a line for “100 gems”, (and you can move the “Buy more Gems” button to right below “Get Gems”). The ability to quickly see the cost for 100 gem (without having to break out the calculator and divide by 4) would be nice.

I can kind of see the logic of trying to make the exchange more accessible to newer players. At the same time this is the sort of change that might really kitten off your whales. Hopefully they’re watching the metrics carefully.

My immediate reaction is that players can’t buy 800 gems for $10 now and easily convert that into gold? Isn’t that terrible design?

how many new players are rolling 75g that they can blow on gems?

I fully share your opinion of the change.

Southern.8973:

Not to mention @ 72g27s96c per 400 gems, that’s just over 18g per 100 gems. 18g per 100 gems.. When it was 14g per 100 right before the patch? So in addition to not being able to buy just “50 gems”, any price increase is multiplied by at least a factor of 4 (if you used to buy gems 100 at a time).

Up to 19g per 100 gems now.

76g 41s 69c / 400 = 19g 10s 42c per 100 Gems.

When it was just over 72g while ago. Like I said, any price increase is now multiplied by a factor of 400; When you have a wide swing of Gem to Gold prices (sometimes it would fluctuate by 2g per 100 Gems in a single day), now it won’t be unusual to see an 8g-10g fluctuation on 400 gems in a single day.

We’ve had a minimum increase of at least 20g just today (before the patch you could get gems for 14g per 100, which would have been 56g for 400 – instead at the MINIMUM you can buy, it’s 76g per 400).. So not only can you not buy just 100 gems at a 5g premium from earlier in the day, but you have to spend at least 20g more to buy the lowest amount of gems you can get.

(Spidy is broken, BTW – it’s still reporting 15g per 100. GW2TP is updating correctly, showing 19g19s per 100 gems)

This is indeed despicable, and I sincerely hope this bites them in the behind, making people not use the gemstore at all. Greedy kittens…

Imperatora.7654:

how many new players are rolling 75g that they can blow on gems?

Maybe once a week. But I was buying 4-5g worth of gems every day and 5x that twice a week. I was trying to be smart and stock up on gems between when items I want show up at the Gem Shop. I can’t do that anymore, except buying a much larger chunk, once a week.

Players were asking for a means to enter the amount of gems they want and click Okay if they had the gold to cover it as well as the original method of entering gold. Instead you set it up like buying gems with cash.

What? Did player who paid cash complain that it was unfair that they were forced to buy more than they needed so you needed to introduce some false equivalency to the exchange?

I’ll state this again. ANet Devs have been acting like Djinns of legend and warp players wishes into some unrecognizable result that only hinted at what players were asking for. You did this with trait hunting, the commander badge’s (but mostly fixed that), aspects of the new and “improved” TP and now the exchange. Why is it that adding method B means original method A must go out the window? Why?

Outrageous and despicable behaviour. Basically, your typical ANet cashgrab attitude. I am disgusted about this but not at all surprised. I can even laugh at their silly attempt of trying to present this as a feature that is useful to the players. It’s not the first time they do stuff like this, though, and definitely not the last. But, hey, maybe they’ll add a Gem Leaderboard showing who bought more gems in the shortest time…

But I wouldn’t put it necessarily all on JS, though, it’s the execs that decide what goes in the game and what gets out, in the end. For us, though, it’s the same result. Well, ANet is one company that won’t be getting their hands on my money.

Hi everyone,

We already have a thread dedicated to this topic here.

Therefore, we’ll now close this one in order to avoid duplicates and invite you to repost your comments, questions and concerns in the thread linked above.

Thank you!