Guild Wars 2

It seems a lot of the Living Stories have some unique rewards tied to them. Such as:
Armor – Scarlet’s Veil, Wurmslayer’s Armor, etc.
Weapons – Scarlet’s Kiss/Rainbow, Annelid Rifle Skin, etc.
Mini’s – Captain Mangus, Mini Cobalt Wurmhead, etc.
Tonics – Quaggan, Thoughtless/Selfless, etc.

Aswell as some Gemstore ones with it, such as:
Armor- Scarlet’s pauldrons/gloves, Zodiac Armor, etc.
Weapons – Black Lion Ticket Weapons, Kashmeer’s Staff, etc.
Mini’s – Molton Berserker, Mai Trinn, Majory, etc.

I prefer to see the Gemstore as a way to pick whichever reward I want from the gold acquired from playing the game, bit of a bonus. That there’re people that actively invest money into a game I love playing and get a small fashion advantage over me, I can live with that. But maybe I’ve had too many unlucky streaks in getting ‘lucky’ and simple adore the ‘everyone gets rewards, just not all rewards’-mentality. Now if I couldn’t exchange gold to gems, or buy black lion tickets of the Trading Post, it’d be a completely different story.

It’s all a matter of opinion. And this is not saying you’re not entitled to yours, just stating mine and I hope it’s without coming across as some A-net-can’t-do-wrong-fan.

chemiclord.3978:

I think what you’d discover is that the bulk of the player base would rather just dump $10 on gems to buy something they want rather than grind through content either to A) Eventually get it in game or rely on RNG that it drops for them.

True, but it doesn’t have to be a grind all the time. If I’m sitting on a few hundred gold and I happen to see something in the Gem Store I want, I don’t suddenly have to grind to get it, I can just convert gold to gems and get it.

I’ve done both, convert some gold to gems for something I wanted, and I’ve just paid actual cash for gems for other things.

Zylonite.5913:

The stuff in the gems store is fine but the problem is the inflation and the gap between the community.

We have the gold farmers and the TP flippers who are sitting on 30k to 200k golds which drivers up the gold -> gems.

And then we have the causal players sitting on 10-500 golds, mostly saving for something or invested in something and don’t want to pay the high gold -> gems exchange.

This model works for Anet as the causal players spend real money which some of it becomes gold in game and drives up gold > gems.

Well, it works to a point….Anet has mainly gotten away with it for as long as they have due to a recent lack of AAA grade competition in this specific genre; but that is changing and they’ll start having retention and recruitment issues much like how Blizzard’s population in D3 imploded when they tried to keep their player base loot starved to drive RMT sales.

Players come to play a game; not work a virtual second job. Having to run content that bores oneself until your eyes bleed just to afford the gold→ gems transactions for something you have no other tenable way of getting tends to leech the desire to think of the people making gem store and loot table policy decisions in any sort of positive light.

Killface.1896:

It is more and we need more goldsinks not inflation so its good it dont drop gold

Exactly.
We need more – and ideally only somewhat optional! – ways to remove gold from the game. In the very ideal case, they also hit the rich somewhat harder than the poor.

Carighan.6758:

Killface.1896:

It is more and we need more goldsinks not inflation so its good it dont drop gold

Exactly.
We need more – and ideally only somewhat optional! – ways to remove gold from the game. In the very ideal case, they also hit the rich somewhat harder than the poor.

The TP hits the rich way harder than the poor due to that tax.