Guild Wars 2

INTRO:
—————
I want to apologize upfront for my bad english, i am not a native speaker but will do my best to keep this post as clear as possible
Let me start by saying that i am playing GW2 since a few days after release and am still enjoying it very much.
Something that i havent done is spending any real cash in the store, because of a few reasons:

First, there is not much desirable to even buy with gems.
The few things that i would buy are way off in terms of pricing, not considering the conversion rate (gold/gems), but the real money i would need to “waste” on a few goodies.

This is my first MMO and i never would have bought GW2 with a monthly subscription. I do however would like to support the company and enable them to produce more content and release patches more frequently (on top of an improved QA and Support).

Before i will list the things i would buy, i want to give a short insight to my mindset when it comes to purchasing video games. Normally my main focus is value for money (cash vs playtime). For me, it has to be at least in the 1€/hour range to even consider buying any game. There is a sale on a lot of sites almost every week and i pick a few gems for around 5-15€ a few months after release.

Keeping that in mind, paying 5€ for a single bag expansion in GW2 is totally out of the question.
Were not living in 2007 anymore and the current store has no microtransactions of any kind.
Steam released a few sale figures last christmas and they also said that more people buy stuff for cheap (obviously), but resulting in overall greater income for the publishers, although prices in some cases were cut by 75% and more.
I think with a real microtransaction store people would be inclined to make an impulse buy more often, i know i mos def would

THE LIST:
—————
*<> Permanent Banker/Trader (Usable by all chars) – 400 gems
*<> Specific dyes (no rng/unlocked for all chars) – 50 gems
*<> Bag slots – 50 to 100 gems
*<> Bank slots – 100 to 150 gems (adding to the 7 normal slots)
*<> Weapon skins – 150 to 200 (endless use)
*<> Armor skins – 100 per item or 400 per set (endless use)
*<> Character expansion – 300 gems
*<> Permanent tonic (if i could fight in it) – 350 gems

Some might say im a cheepo, and maybe youre right, but that is the pricing i would be comfortable with, spending a few bucks here and there, which is more than i am now!
Of course there are a few items that you only need to buy once and be done, but there could be a lot more items (for example skins), that would generate a steady stream.
Also in regards to colours, there could be a lot more things that can be done.
For example different camoflage types, neon, transmutation stones for changing weapon colours aswell.

I am really interested what you guys think and maybe we can all benefit from that!

Cheers!

-wide variety of armor (not town) skins

Of the things on that list the only things I would not buy are the dyes and tonics.

If the skins actually worked like GW1 costumes(meaning unlimited uses on all characters and didn’t take up extra storage to keep them around) then would buy then even at current prices. With the way they work now I am not going to buy them at ANY price. I do not like the triple cost of the item itself, storage, Fine Transmuatation Stone AND THEN there is still the inventory management overhead.

I am almost maxed out on bank expansions from a mix of buying gems with money and gold so that is mostly irrelevant. At current rates I can probably max out all bag expansions on characters that need it as well. I have 8 characters and in practice it seems only 2 of those actually need bag expansions, the rest are getting by just fine event with 8 slot bags. I probably don’t need those bag expansions if I upgrade to all 15 slot bags(20 slot bags are too much for what they provide but that is for another thread).

As mentioned above I already have 8 characters so character slots aren’t a big issue. I COULD use another 8-16 but that is mostly because I want one of each profession set up for open world, dungeon and WvW.

I don’t think dying weapons should be a gem shop item. Weapon skins are fine. Obviously if they add in dying for weapons then there should NOT be anymore weapon skins that only differ in color.

Neither banker nor trader is all that useful. Permanent merchant would be tempting but probably not.

Town cloths are a big maybe. I find the current ones unappealing and I want to see an option to auto-switch when you enter a city. They also have the same problem as the armor skins minus the transmutation stone issue. The fact that they are account bound is irrelevant.

Oh and the current prices for stuff are already cheaper than what they used to be in GW1 so that is probably I find them more acceptable.
Except the skins, GW1 had better deals for those even without GW2’s effective triple price increase from transmute/storage.

Name change
Town clothes
Sun glasses I can wear as actual armor.

:D

The reason why i suggested weapon transformation is simply because, if i take my guardian for example, the AC weapon skins dont match at all with any colour combination i have tested so far.
If i could change the glow to another colour, that would be amazing!

I agree with the armor skins.
There sould be a special locker and no need for any transformation stones.

I won’t ever buy bank or bag slots at their current prices. The only way I’d pay 400 gems for that 5th bag slot is if were account wide, definitely not per character.

The bank is, what, 30 more slots for 600 gems? Why would I ever want to do that when I could get over 3x the amount of storage space just buying another character slot (for the same price if they’re on sale)? The pricing on bags/bank just seems completely illogical to me.

The only thing I would be sorely, sorely tempted to buy would be a permanent makeover kit of some sort and even then it still bugs me that a name change isn’t included with a total makeover. Being able to change my hair color/style at whim would be nice though.

Lane.3410:

The bank is, what, 30 more slots for 600 gems? Why would I ever want to do that when I could get over 3x the amount of storage space just buying another character slot (for the same price if they’re on sale)? The pricing on bags/bank just seems completely illogical to me.

Convenience – having a mule may be cheaper on a slot/gem basis, but you do need to shuffle and search when you need something. Given the amount of time I have to play, I don’t want to waste any when I could just get some gems.
As for bags, it actually make more sense to buy gems with gold and buy bag slots than it does to get 20 slot bags.

I have bought the following :
- 5 extra char slots.
- As many bank slots as are available.
- Extra bag slots on all my chars (3 chars have full).
- More dyes than I can count.
- A bunch of keys.
- Reading glasses.
- A top hat.
- Some seasonal stuff.
- Some gold.
So basically, I’m comfortable paying current prices for things.

- I have not bought the GW1 armor skins purely because they are skins I dislike. If they added some of the “better” GW1 skins as GW2 armour, I would buy them so fast.
- I haven’t bought any of the res orb / repair cans / salvage kits etc because I’ve had so many from chests that there’s no point.

Ninth Requiem.3250:

Convenience – having a mule may be cheaper on a slot/gem basis, but you do need to shuffle and search when you need something. Given the amount of time I have to play, I don’t want to waste any when I could just get some gems.

I don’t even use probably 80% of what’s in my bank on a regular basis. Unfortunately, there are so many account bound items in this game I literally have nowhere else to put them. So, in my case, I could easily stash almost everything on a mule character and not be inconvenienced.

I would buy cores.

I farm lodestones like a farmer farms things that can be farmed by farming. I have the MF, I have the routes laid out, and most of all I have a GOAL I’m farming towards (Infinite Light, you will be mine!).

A cold evaluation of the value of my time tells me I WOULD pay real money to expedite that process buying cores/lodestones effectively from an NPC – but I WON’T pay money to buy gems and turn them into gold because I don’t want to see that gold go into the hands of other players, even taxed 15%. I don’t want to contribute to the runnaway inflation of money being created without goods being created, and I don’t want to fill the warchests of people flipping lodestones.

Nike.2631:

… and I don’t want to fill the warchests of people flipping lodestones.

No one is flipping lodestones, no profit in it:
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/search?name=lodestone&sort=buy_volume&order=-1&category=-1&subcategory=-1&rarity=-1&levelmin=0&levelmax=80&available=0

I agree that I would buy a lot more things if they were cheaper.

And also weapon/armor skins being unlimited use would make me much more likely to buy them. I’d often like to use the same skin on multiple characters, and I don’t want to pay 5$ per weapon.

I look at things as if it were real life. Would I spend 1$ on some random thing? Probabaly. 2$? Sure. 5$? Yeah, maybe not.

5$ for a character slot is fine. For a bag/bank slot? I don’t think so.

I would buy minis and tonics for 1-2$ each as well.

Heck, I’d buy pretty much anything that interested me for 1$.

Special items/decorations for my player house and guild hall

A name change maybe -just maybe(doubt) but that is it. Anet have done nothing to prove to me they are doing that interests me or that I support.
In fact the changes to the game have so bad that there is likely little reason I would ever give anymore money to this company again.