(edited by Wombatz.8350)
Why I don't spend money on GW2
Whilst your views and opinions are respected, please don’t forget you speak on behalf of yourself with regard to some of these things.
As an example “Or why I can make astronomical 5 (!) characters without buying additional slots. Who the hell needs more than 5 characters, in like ever?”
Answer: I have already purchased 2 more character slots and will likely buy even more. Hence, having these for sale in the gem store is a good thing – for me, but maybe not for everyone.
Ultimately, what you choose to spend gems on will differ from other people’s spending, and thus, whilst many items in the gem store may not be something you will buy, others will. Also remember too, the game has been out a little over 2 months, I am sure as time goes on, the number of items in the gem store will increase (as I seem to recall it did in GW1?)
Yaaa..... How many classes are there and how many races and how many different story line possibilities? There are reasons to buy gems. It’s for people that don’t have an infinite amount of time to earn the gold needed for those bag slots, and bank slots AND yes even character slots.
And though I have not yet bought any, the armor you can buy with gems does look pretty cool. You do have to admit that. =]
Everything sold by the gem store I can very easily do without (except maybe the inventory slots, and those are dirt cheap). More importantly: The playerbase seems to think alike in that respect. And insignificant demand for gems obviously leads to insignificant value of gems. Hence using the gem store as a means to indirectly buy gold becomes unattractive as hell (sorry, not paying 10 bucks for Gold I can farm in 1 hour).
I do wonder why T3 cultural costs 5 bazillon gold pieces and 0 gems. Or why I can aquire like 8 different armor skins through dungeon-grinding but a whopping amount of 1 through the gemstore. Or why I have surplus fine transmutation stones in the bank – despite never buying a single one in the gem store. Or why I can make astronomical 5 (!) characters without buying additional slots. Who the hell needs more than 5 characters, in like ever?
Then what would you add in in?
Putting in anything that gives a distinct advantage would be a very bad move and that has killed off several f2p games in the past.
More skins? You can bet <insertPricyStuffHere> that they’re working on that.
The thing is, the Gem-to-Gold exchange should never be primarily used as a means for people who can spend RL cash to acquire super-fast Gold. That’s just asking for a ton of problems. The Gem-to-Gold exchange should always be about selling your leftover Gems once you’ve bought whatever you wanted to get.
As for the character slots? A lot of people will want more than 5, actually. Five allows you to have one of each race, but there’s a total of 8 classes, so if you want to try every class, you need at least that many. Obviously, to get each combination, you would need 40, but that’s a bit unrealistic. However, going through all classes, then picking 1-3 characters that have the race and profession combinations that you prefer isn’t really an unrealistic thing.
And let’s face it, once you reach a certain point with the bags, it will be cheaper to buy the extension and a lower level bag rather than upgrading all of your bags, in terms of cost-per-slot.
The main thing why I don’t buy anything from the gem store is because there is -nothing I want from it-. All the skins are all kind of scrappy and go on the towns clothing slot that I never want to walk in. (I didn’t spend all this gold and tokens to look good in armor for nothing!) Most of the headgear looks absolutely horrible because it makes your character’s hair disappear! My pretty elementalist suddenly looks like a bald redneck when she puts on the GW2 cap. What was Anet thinking with this?
And when you calculate the gems per gold ratio, its so much better to just spend an hour doing 3 AC runs and transfer that into gems, than to spend 5 euro on a few gems that allows you to buy like 1-2 items from the store.
If the plan was to activately discourage buying gems with real money, they’ve succeeded greatly so far!
I really like how they’ve structured the gem store so far. It’s not obnoxious, meaning that they don’t create broken economic systems that players then need to supplement with artificial components purchased from the cash shop (Star Trek Online I am looking directly at YOU).
I just don’t understand why they haven’t put in character appearance change as a cash shop service – its like they don’t want my money or something.
I really like how they’ve structured the gem store so far. It’s not obnoxious, meaning that they don’t create broken economic systems that players then need to supplement with artificial components purchased from the cash shop (Star Trek Online I am looking directly at YOU).
I just don’t understand why they haven’t put in character appearance change as a cash shop service – its like they don’t want my money or something.
They will, they said they’re going to.
In fact there was an issue on the forums where they goofed up and accidentally had appearance change items available in the gem store briefly, though they didn’t work yet. Then they quickly took them back down.
So they’re still trying to get it to work for whatever reason. We’ll see them though.
As soon as they give me a nice way to store armor, weapon, and town clothes skins I’ll use the gem store. They’ve got things I want but no where to store them. It would be a good idea for things in the gem shop to have their own storage tab (like minis). It’s easy to buy minis since they don’t take up space. I don’t buy booster packs since I might or might not need them right now and storing extras takes space. I don’t buy keys for the same reason. I might get what I want, but if I don’t I’ll need somewhere to store the extra stuff. As someone pursuing multiple crafting disciplines (cooking!!!) my bank is already slammed with stuff.