Guild Wars 2

I can almost understand the prices of the consumable items at launch, when arenanet had no real measurement for the gem/gold ratio. I am not really on the page with the concept of boosts and strange items like self rez orbs (will only be used where it can be used as an exploit), boosts (yeah armor boosts….) in a game declaring pay 2 win a taboo (the boosts don’t matter much but then why did you implement them at all (so you ruin your reputation by implementing items going against your philosophy, no matter how small and how many buy them?)? Even the chests and keys from tf2 with super rare skins (although to be fair those probably sell very well, company reputation be kitten) can be considered shady. But i understand it sort of.

What i don’t understand is how blind one can be when setting the price tags. Who in their right mind would spend 3 gold in gems on a 15 minute crafting station?? Or 2G+ for an hour of swiftness under water?? You can argue that while the price of gems in in game currency increases the cost of buying them in real life currency remains the same. But would you? Would you buy an armor repair canister instead of waypointing and paying in silver when you could have transferred those gems into gold and walked away with fatter pockets. Would they have to remove the crafting stations in borderlands when they realize that people can go there for free instead of wasting heaps of money on a consumable that has taken developer hours of other things?

It also boils down to this: Cosmetic things like minipets, costumes and skins can be ridiculously overpriced all they want, because there aren’t many alternatives to them if you really want those. Boosts and services that are non unique and rivaling the services we can use outside of the cash shop (like armor repair, crafting stations and such) have to be competitive when it comes to the price tag. And they make the cash shop look bad. So stop the non cosmetic services for your own good and lay those developer hours somewhere else (i would gladly have bought the jetpack for a thousand gems for example, but i wont spend a dime on a swimming speed boost).

P.S. It feels like someone pointed at the wintersday sales and said: “look at the sales figures for the wintersday skins and compare them to the amount of keys sold for the rng halloween skins! It means that we will sell more if we make them a gamble!”. Yeah that might be it, but it can also be a factor that the wintersday skins wasn’t up to par with a frigging chainsaw sword.

Now a question for anyone still not asleep:

Do you buy any of these odd items like revive orbs, repair canisters, boosts and so on, are they strangely priced for what they actually are and do they serve a function? Non cosmetic items so to speak?

I personally do not buy them, I do have them however. From random key drops or completing something.
But I can also see why someone would buy them for use in Dungeons or WvW where getting reapairs and such might be harder to come by.

Yes, I’ve “bought” non-cosmetic items. My first “purchases” (trading with gold to gems) was digital collectors upgrade, full bank unlock and enough gems to buy character slots for one of each class. This probably isn’t what you meant even though it fits. Instead, here’s some anecdotal stuff: it was fairly profitable to buy black lion salvage kits in the past and use them so that is what I did. Other players did too.

As of late, I’ve grabbed mostly cosmetic things such as minipets and fine transmutation stones though I’m not too big on most of the current selection of minipets with no offense to Anet’s mini making machine team. (Please give me a Kuunavang again.)

As for some of the items, I can understand your point. I’m not sure if Anet is expecting people to buy them in bulk and instead; they give value to these items by simply assigning it arbitrarily. The only definitive answer you can get is from Anet and I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for them to divulge digital store sales in such detail.

I bought a few boosts back when gem/gold ratio was a LOT lower. Probably will never buy any of those again.

In addition, I’ve bought the total makeover kit twice now and will probably buy it a third time.

I’ve bought bank tabs, character slots, and the mining pick from the store. Mostly from converting gold to gems, but I’ve spent a few dollars as well.

I don’t buy boosts and such, simply because I have a bunch from playing the game, and I don’t use them as it is. So, don’t need more of them laying around.

I do agree that the gold to gem ratio is currently insane and needs some adjusting. I also agree that some of the costs in the store are out of balance as well. $10 for the unlimiting mining pick, sure. COsts for bank tabs and char slots are pretty much the same as what they were in GW1, so I’m good with that. Some of the littler things…meh. If I feel it costs too much, I just dont buy it. It’ll go on sale eventually

mirifrost, you’re projecting your own experiences & feelings onto the entire game which is faulty logic. Sure you don’t buy boosts, but maybe there is steady boost sales. You might not want to pay cash for gems; but that might happen on a regular basis. You literally have no basis or evidence for your assertions.

You even admit yourself that the boosts have little benefit. So how is that a violation of gw2 anti-pay2win philosophy? Remember little benefit does not mean useless. Using them is a nice little boost, a small contribution for a short time. It’s like eating food or drinking an elixir, except it fills a different “slot”.

Specifically, armor repair kits have a potentially irreplaceable function in fractals and WvW—repairing may not be available “in the field” without abandoning your group or starting over. For the completely responsible & skilled player in guild groups, probably not necessary. For a casual running with lots of PUGs who forgot to repair at the start of the fractal level, priceless. Please provide some links showing where self-rez orbs won the day for a group in your favorite situation and describe why that’s unbalanced or unsavory.

There are several items in the store which I don’t think the average player (or average gem store purchaser) would buy.

Underwater swiftness? Repair canister? Revive Orb? Hell no.

I too don’t understand why they would spend time programming these items when the time could be used to invest in other better items.

bluemonkey.1762:

mirifrost, you’re projecting your own experiences & feelings onto the entire game which is faulty logic. Sure you don’t buy boosts, but maybe there is steady boost sales. You might not want to pay cash for gems; but that might happen on a regular basis. You literally have no basis or evidence for your assertions.

You even admit yourself that the boosts have little benefit. So how is that a violation of gw2 anti-pay2win philosophy? Remember little benefit does not mean useless. Using them is a nice little boost, a small contribution for a short time. It’s like eating food or drinking an elixir, except it fills a different “slot”.

Specifically, armor repair kits have a potentially irreplaceable function in fractals and WvW—repairing may not be available “in the field” without abandoning your group or starting over. For the completely responsible & skilled player in guild groups, probably not necessary. For a casual running with lots of PUGs who forgot to repair at the start of the fractal level, priceless. Please provide some links showing where self-rez orbs won the day for a group in your favorite situation and describe why that’s unbalanced or unsavory.

I mean that they should focus their precious time on making things that sell well and don’t make people point to their manifesto every dozen or so seconds, i just flipped through the store on my way to the BLTP and seing the crafting stations. Then i reflected on the above as i was browsing through the different categories of the store. I should have sticked to my point better but this is what i am confused about:

1. Developers spend time making pointless mechanical items like revive orbs, swim boosts and killstreak boosters instead of laying that on fun things more people would want to buy like skins.

2. They then make them so unrealistically priced for what they actually are so that they can’t even be seriously thinking someone would actually buy them, ending up in the development time wasted.

(3.) As for the pay 2 win argument, its not my bugbear but pointless items like the repair canister serve no realistic purpose and make new players raise an eyebrow when they see that repair icon on their bar and happen to find a repair item on the gemstore. Ofc its not p2w but why even disguise things like it even the slightest?

Look at it this way:

How much will 8 gold get you?
A slow self revival.

What situation would that be worth it, unless you can use it to bypass or cheat content?
It will not be used as a convenience item, never. Its not that everyone will buy them because they have to use them to complete the content but it will probably never be bought unless someone find a way to break them (like revivng in places they aren’t supposed to be etc.) So why develop it and why have them there? Only thing is that people can point and complain how it is pay 2 win (and that was the point i was getting at, it can only hurt them) to be able to buy a rez in hard content and etc.

What about 2 gold?

-A full armor repair.

We can repair in dungeons and wvwvw, only thing i can think of is hysterious failure in fractals, and then you have to be really desperate to haul up 2G for a repair, which your party members might not give a hoot about and simply quit at that stage. And for the casual player in fractals, you think a casual would pay that? They continue fighting in their underwear. The hardcore? They give up and restart.

I ask you, would you personally actually buy them?

TL:DR (no, not even close sadly). The pricetags for some “micro” transactions are so ridiculously thrown together a lot of items server no function as they rival other in game services. And the revive orb was given as an example because if it was ever bought, you be kitten sure it would be used in a way to cheat the game, otherwise noone would cough up 8 G for one rez (like high end fractals). And the currencies are linked so every time i buy, say 2000 gems i can choose on cool looking and unique skins or unique services that aren’t comparable (like unique colours in makeover kits). I can also decide to transfer them to in game gold at a slight loss. So say you had a spare 125 gems, would you buy a 30 second kill exp multiplier that refreshed with each kill or walk away with 2.5 G more in your pocket? I am just asking them to stop putting time and effort into swimming boost and directly comparable in game services like a 15 minute crafting bench for 3G instead of mapping to your borderlands for free. Or atleast make the price tags less random (huh slap on a 100 gem, it is what we had at launch, never mind the actual value of the item). Its for their own sake, and for us as we can hopefully get more things more uniformaly agreed to be positive like armor skins and unique services like say the option to “mod” more freely with the custom arena kit.

A service that was done well was the molten pick. It was realistically a robbery but it didn’t feel like it because you had it, it was there and it wont vanish. Sure years of mining before breaking even but after that im making a profit! It had a unique look too.

What if the crafting bench had been 1000 gems but not a consumable but have a recharge? Suddenly it has value, you can be that guy in your group summoning a crafting station in the middle of nowhere. And it cant be said that you are an kitten for not mapping to borderlands. Because its yours now, a proper service and an item for the collector.

That would probably sell more.

As John Smith will doubtless tell you, there is a huge % of playerbase for whom money is no object. They are “comfortably off” in RL. You know, the guys who don’t give a crap that the RL economy is in the pan – the ones we all aspire to be!

Svarty.8019:

As John Smith will doubtless tell you, there is a huge % of playerbase for whom money is no object. They are “comfortably off” in RL. You know, the guys who don’t give a crap that the RL economy is in the pan – the ones we all aspire to be!

Yeah, its a difference between the guy showing up in the ferrari and the one pouring all the champagne down the drain because he can i suppose. :P

I posted this in the thread about the new crafting stations but it holds true for any item that is similar. My last line is most relevant to this discussion.

JK Arrow.7102:

I tend to agree with OP. No matter if you look at it from a gold or real life money perspective, the maximum 30 seconds or 5 silver saved by going to a town clearly is not worth the 3 gold or $1.25 used to buy them.

Honestly when I saw the item for sale I thought, who would actually buy this item? I can’t for the life of me picture a scenario where I would have to craft something that second away from a town…

Convenience/showoff item for sure but I can’t believe they would sell this in the gemstore instead of some of the other items people are begging to spend their money on.

I have like 15 repair canisters left from trying to get chainsaw.

I think these items are being suggested and implemented by someone that doesn’t understand this game at all.
Also, why does the crafting station look like something Moto invented? He’s smarter than that.

They are kind of stuck because these are just not good items for the game. Access to merchants and town services is what keeps people coming back to towns, giving them life. The more these convenience items are used, the less alive towns will be.

To answer your question, I wouldn’t spend 3 gold on anything that didn’t last – I don’t see how 3 gold is worth a repair canister when it only costs like 11 silver just to go to a repair anvil. I wouldn’t mind the TP gold to gem rate prices so much if it was easier to make gold that didn’t involve hours of grinding the same dungeon. I haven’t bought anything from the gem store since it exploded to 3 gold, but I know thats the players who did that….. if anyone is actually paying 3gold + for the cosmetics in TP, it’s probably because they can afford to. So much for attempting to enjoy the little things……

mirifrost, you danced around the subject my reply to pick at details: your reply is entirely premised on the notion that most people see it your way and would use gold (rather than cash) to buy these things. You may represent the bulk of the community, you may not. And if there’s a small player base buying the bulk of the gem store items, guess what? The developers will continue to cater to that group primarily and mostly ignore your objections.

I agree, it’s ridiculous to pay 8g for a revive orb. How about $2.25? Or how about: they just needed a random drop to fill a BLC? On the off chance that someone said, “Oooh, shiny, I want some more” well, the gem store provides that possibility directly for things that aren’t uber-rare. Warning to the key buyers: the possibility to get a swim speed buff has displaced some probability of getting a magic find or karma boost (lucky you!).

Likely the developers don’t want to “break the game” by offering anything too good or too permanent. Playing it safe allows them to see what people will do with it & whether it’s a line of development worth exploring (no need to guess or predict—they will have the data to demonstrate)

For the rarer items, they have established an excellent marketing model: limited availability. It forces people who want something to immediately purchase it or lose the opportunity. My guess is they have already developed a whole line of products for the summer & fall—most of which will be available for 4-6 weeks and then removed. Also note, the gem store prices aren’t “random”: the developers put a fixed cost in gems to buy the items. The only thing random about it is the gold equivalent. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it.

To answer the question you posed at the end of the original post: I don’t buy anything at the gem store. I have neither interest nor $$ nor gold to spend on cosmetic (useless) luxury (overpriced) items. But I remain open to the possibility that SOMEONE completely different from us might buy these things.

Once upon a time I bought Karma boosters. Back when the Cursed Shore was still your primary way of getting karma, and you had to manually farm the ~1 million needed to acquire Obsidian Shards for a legendary.

I’ve also purchased Crafting boosters… again in the game’s infancy when speed crafting characters to 80.

There’s a lot of fluff I wouldn’t buy. Most of the other boosters barely serve a purpose, and the Magic Find booster is unlikely to recoup its gem value in additional drops, even with heavy farming. Still, I suppose some of these are ‘for fun’ items that people buy as a novelty. Also, something to shove into the Black Lion Chest as filler. That kind of thing.

I agree that it would be ideal to adjust these prices to reflect their utility, but to be honest, I have no problem ignoring things that don’t appeal to me. Maybe it appeals to others. Maybe not. Maybe they just sit in the store window and never go anywhere. There’s really nothing wrong with that.

A few others have basically said what I feel is going on. All these convenience items are there for the people who are buying gems with real money. They are the players with the disposable income to spare, and have limited time, who are willing to buy these to speed things up/make their game more convenient. Players who buy gems with gold will never buy these disposable items; they’re meant for a different market.

I’ve bought all of my gems with cash myself, but I only ever buy gem store items with permanent benefits (extra bag slots, extra bank slots, Molten picks etc.) The one exception to this rule are Transmutation Crystals, which I buy a few of whenever they go on sale, since I know I will need a fair number of them once I start equipping my characters with level 80 Exotics.

bluemonkey.1762:

The thing is that you cant say its just X dollars either with how the gem exchange works, it still got its value in in game gold, no matter if you bought them with real money or in game gold. And the costs for a lot of these maybe doesn’t feel random as i put it but arbitrary, they sell some services more suited to real micro transactions (imagine 10 gems for exp boost) so that they are almost cost less, meaning players will impulse buy them. It’s still gems spent, just less in magnitude per sale but with a higher frequency. There are some incredibly niche services with little to no value, its a guy selling you bottled sea water at the shore, and in the situation you wanted to buy it for some reason it shouldn’t be priced like a coke or bottled drinking water from the guy next to him. For one creating services not rivaling the already implemented ones could help in the case of nodes and crafting stations. Theres also the thing about boosters. There is probably one there that got a proper value, and that is the karma booster. That’s because it is worth its weight in gold for people opening all their stacked karma boosters at once for their legendary, making it a much bigger service than gain X more experience for an hour since given that you can click fast enough, it will always help you as much as you need. If it only gave you 50% from events it would be worthless, you won’t get any return worth that from just event rewards even when grinding penitent/dungeons/wvw etc. The crafting ex kitten imilar, but not as practical, given the time it takes to actually preform the task to fully utilize it. Magic find is paying more for the booster than you can possibly expect to get return on, glory boosters are handed out like candy and glory is a valueless currency anyways, you can’t stack exp items the way you can hoard jugs and the exp currency is even for legendary crafting thin as air. And i would really appreciate if it was possible to see the sales of these individual items, my guess is that karma boost would be top and glory/exp/killstreak/swim in the bottom (not boosts used, boosts bought specifically and not handed out as consolation price for not getting a weapon ticket).

Boosts and niche consumables need to be priced to be impulse items to sell realistically, and the value of the gems i would dare guess isn’t ruled mainly by them as much as they are by new costumes, minis, keys and skins. So it would probably not end up in a currency arms race just because consumable items outside of services like increased bank, appearance and server transfers etc suddenly wasn’t a joke on the buyer.

As for being the big bad dude killing the fun for all those poor unfortunate people wasting their money in the same way as people pouring champagne down the drain, I just hope we won’t get more store fillers in the future. How many do you think will flip through an update filled with new dance books, armor skins, costumes, minipets and custom arena kits and think: “Man i wish there where a boost for giving 10% increased damage while mining for one hour, priced at 100 gems/unit ofc.”? Or what about a item making map travel “free” for 15 minutes (cost 250+ gems)? Or an item that takes you party directly to the fractals of the mist hub from anywhere (50 gems/unit)? I can make up some new strange items on the spot and you must agree that those do not sound like good ideas. I know that there will probably be a handful of players buying them for fun, but what about if a useful item was added instead? Maybe a build template that allows you to save a build to load it out of combat for free for 100 gems (once saved the item is consumed and you can load the build as many times as you want, with a cool down of 10 minutes) meaning it isn’t like the repair canister as you do not simply change your build one time and the gems are lost, making it an investment instead, removing the feeling of wasting money for having to respec for your party if you got enough builds saved (and thus enough items sold). Or what about selling an item opening a portal to a challenging mission for everyone in the area for 30 mins with special loot inside and a guaranteed gauntlet or something for completing it once? Heck you could probably make it insanely hard but have a guaranteed ticket drop at the end with the service simply porting your party (and no one else) one time to that mission making it 1 try per party and purchase. That would solve the problem of the rng nature, make it a prestige item and sell interesting content.

i vote for 10 gems for karma / glory / swim / killstreak booster, 20 for crafting / MF / exp one.
Let say in bigger part of Europe a cup of coffee is 1 Euro. I can make one at home almost for free, but I pay this price to sit in a bar with friends, to read newspaper or just to spent some time outside. I can have a juice too, a coke, soda and so on for almost the same price. It is just there, cheap and fresh unlike most of real life pleasures. As miriforst said – it is something so trivial that i dont care how much does it cost.
If i want to drink a MF booster in GW2 – it is 150 gems or ~2 Euros … WTF ?!? It is not a common buff, but i dont see it as exceptional as you price it. It is temporary buff, we all can play without, so it should be cheap and trivial. Make the boosters so cheap that no one would ever think do they worth.

You guys all forget the point. These thing are meant to be bought with real cash, not gold. You’re able to buy 13 instant repair canister for 810 gems or 15 for 900 gems. (you save gems when you buy 5 at the same time). 800 gems cost 10 Euros/10 Dollars.

There’s part of me that wonder how much of the hate is generated simply because they gave us the option to buy gems with gold. Currency exchange hate. Can’t make money crafting hate. Can’t make lots of gold playing hate. But I have to farm to make gold, why do they hate farmers, hate. RNG BLC hate (because I spent all my gold for keys and got nothing).

Sure you still need coin to work toward you legendary unless you spend a lot of time gathering all the materials needed and even then.

I think those items are mainly meant to be bought with cash. I do think the prices are a bit stiff, though. $2+ for a 15-minute crafting table, or a one-time armor fix, is just not worth it when it takes maybe 60 seconds to teleport back to and reach an armor repair person if you know where one is.

The prices for the infinite picks, bank slots and other permanent items seem okay to me. I feel like ANet is losing out on a lot of revenue by making their temporary boosters so expensive, though.

I’m averaging between $30-$60 a month buying gold and items from the gem store. I have 5 different characters and I just started a guild so I buy keys, the molten pick, and a lot of influence with guild commendations using gold. I am a casual player and I play about two hours a day as thats all my wife will let me play and I don’t farm as I only have one character at 80 right now. You don’t get much gold in lower areas so I purchase gold to buy stuff for crafting and for repairs and to buy exotics and armor for all my characters. Lately, now that I have one character at 80, I have been spending a bit less probably $30 a month but I was spending $60-$80 a month since August until March just to keep making progress. Gold conversion has been going up so I love buying gold as I have been steadily getting more each time and it is still rising which is more gold for the buck, a good deal. Prices in the store could always be lower but if you buy in bulk like keys or things on sale and its fairly reasonable, I mean $10 isn’t breaking anyone for hours and hours of entertainment. Also for those selling items, the trading post is the way to go as you get a 10-40% premium on some items vs. the vendor so making money has become easier thus my lower spending for gold lately. I believe the economy is in great shape and has gone from feeling like it is squeezing the player to making it more fun earning gold and the store is slowly getting more things to buy so the future looks bright. Lastly, if you don’t spend money on the game, do not expect new content and continued support so everyone should be spending at least $10 a month just to keep the game and the company happy and wanting to create expansions.

reality check

You would have an argument if you posted euro prices (eg 10 euro for a sickle). However, by posting with gold as your examples, you effectively stated you don’t pay for that stuff and therefor, your argument actually has no value.

The 3gp per 100gems is set by people like me, people who convert gems into gold. I’m fine with the current conversion, and it could rise a bit imho.

then let me dive in and talk about the euro price for a bit, i can be short and strong about it but that might bring up the wrong idea.

first look at this link:
http://www.x-rates.com/calculator/?from=USD&to=EUR&amount=10

in case you don’t realize it, this is the euro price of $10,-, the same price 800 gems is.
this clearly shows that the euro price, even when you include VAT, needs to be lower then it is right now.
IMO a price of €8,- is a good price, just right.

now with that out of the way, let’s compare store prices.
i am going to use 2 F2P games with in-game store to show you how ridiculesly overpriced Anet puts the prices, champions online and perfect world.
that’s right, a horribe freemuim game and a generic game with 20 mill+ players.

now to start ill begin with perfect world or PW for short, in PW we have to pay per costume and and boosts only take an hour, not to mention that some clothing are with an option of ether 30 days or permanent.(ill do the perm ones for comparison)
the costumes take around 250 per piece, looks expensive huh but now let’s look at the price to get points.
1100Z for €9,99, that’s already 300 points more then Anet gives and for the same price.
you don’t have to be a roket scientist to know that PW is cheaper with their items then Anet.

now let’s look at champions on line or CO for short, when you buy costumes you buy the entire set in one go and it’s unlocked and some boosts take 4 hours to get trough.
the zen price is the same so no use to fuzz about that, what is a point to fuzz about is the price for a costume set.
all the costume sets are 420Z, taking in cocideration that they give you 1100 point and not 800, that’s quite cheap.

now let’s look at the price in the BLT, 800GEM for €10,-.
a costume set is around 700-750gems, they don’t unlock and in case of armor/weapon skins they force you to use a different armor in order to infuse the apperance.
what’s worse is that because you need an existing armor to get the skin, the moment you find better armor in terms of stats you need a transmute stone.
single clothing takes 150-250gems, single weapon skins take you 600 points.
to take the weapon skin, that’s €6,- for a skin, ridiculesly overpriced.

so i challence anyone, anyone to say it’s the right price.
everything here are hard facts, the euro to dollar price has never bin done right and the gem price is so ridiculesly high it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.
and when F2P games have lower prices then this game, a game we have to pay for to play, just shows how low the experiance is in marketing.

Ah, VAT’s roughly 20%. So $10 US + 20% would be roughly €9.20. So they rounded up to an even number, sue them.

they still steal 80 cents, not’s not much but money is money.

Agreed, it was really stupid to spend multiple golds on one time use crafting stations/mystic forges, seriously it’s cheaper to buy the 5 month old one time use forges in the game then to via gems lol.

I think the real reason they’re priced so high is twofold. First as others have pointed out, for some money is no object and they’ll just buy dozens of XP boosters so they can have one on all the time or something like that.

However, I think the more important reason is that it adds perceived value to the Black Lion Keys. I imagine there are some people out there who open chests and think they came out ahead, because that experience booster they got is actually more expensive than the key. Same idea with the crafting stations, I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind deliberately buying one of those but someone trying to convince themselves the crates aren’t a waste can look at that inflated price and feel a little better.

The only reason why I wasted arround 8 gold on revival was to get myself splashed on the bottom of Rata Sum, and suddendly dancing on the Polimorph Arena :P, exploring other areas and eventualy got in jail for no reason at all (u need 1 person outside the prison to read why were u trown there, wonder what there would be written :O).

All Black Lion Chest that I have opened, was becuse I hoped in a permanent contract (with the generic merchant would have been great).
Now i’ll open them as long as I aquire the keys through drop or story mode.