treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
The Guild Wars 1 store was very successful because it sold things players wanted: useful features such as character recustomization, new costume skins that were fitting to the world lore, and utility features such as expanded storage.
The Guild Wars 2 is a copy of Aion’s store. Useless items (pets), classic Korean grinder items (boosts), a few useful things (expanded storage) and a very high number of so-called “funny” skins (boxer gloves and etc), which I have never seen being used in game.
Why is the gem store so bad? Why isn’t it similar to the GW1 store? Where are the decent looking costumes, such as clothes we see the NPCs wearing, instead of that “let’s add real world funny stuff” nonsense? Why didn’t the game release with an option to buy character recustomization, since this would obviously be in demand and help the in-game store?
The only thing I ever bought were more inventory and storage space. I didn’t buy anything else, even when I wanted to support the game, because there was nothing else worth buying there. If even when people want to support the game there isn’t anything worth buying, the gem store is really in trouble.
I agree that the Gem store is very lacklustre.
Considering how crucial it is to GW2’s longevity I’d have thought they’d invest a little more thought and passion into it.
I mean as someone who doesn’t care for mini-pets and has kind of settled on a specific look there’s really nothing of interest worth buying.
The few armour and weapons skins they’ve released have been locked inside those stupid RNG boxes too.
When i go into a store, i buy the stuff I want, I don’t buy raffle tickets.
Imagine this in real life.. walk into a corner shop and buy 5 “random item” coupons. “Man I do hope i get bread and milk!” “Hmm, nope. Washing up powder and cat food”
It will take a few months to develop the cash shop, but what direction are they going to go?
Are they going to do a mix of gambling with an equal mix of directly purchased item skins, or are they going to concentrate on gambling and put everything in chests?
Since I do not gamble, I think you know the direction I want.
I strongly support purchaseable versions of some of the clothes we see NPCs wearing. I think a lot of people would buy them!
If it were a copy of Aion’s store—at least where the cosmetic stuff is concerned—I’d be a lot happier with it. They actually have some neat things in there, like unlockable emotes and dances. The clothes and stuff they offer are largely pretty goofy, but we’ve gotten almost nothing but goofy in our gem store so far anyway, and their costumes can be worn anywhere.
I really don’t know what the heck it is with cash shops and the apparent chronic allergy most studios have to putting things people would love to buy in them, but yeah. Funcom has done really well with The Secret World’s cosmetic shop; I’m pretty envious of all the customization options they get to buy for reasonable prices, even though I don’t play the game and dislike the idea of sub fee+cash shop immensely.
(edited by Bonefield.9813)
and a very high number of so-called “funny” skins (boxer gloves and etc), which I have never seen being used in game.
The reason you don’t see people using them is that, with the exception of one ugly armor set for each class, all the skins in the gem store are for town clothes. Nobody goes around in their town clothes, as you have to manually activate them, they disable your weapons while showing, and there are so many things that automatically switch you back to armor.
A cosmetic item that nobody gets to see is useless.
As for the RNG boxes, I don’t recall them having anything useful that is soulbound. Meaning that you could just buy what you want from the trading post and not worry about the RNG hating you.
They did essentially no work on the gem store prior to release and have done only minimal work on it since.
I have no clue why they haven’t allocated resources into the money making part of their game, but it is what it is.
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