Guild Wars 2

I loved the Molten pickaxe for its convenience. Even though it wasn’t “cost effective” compared to buying the picks from a regular merchant.
But the new Consortium Mobile Crafting Station for 100 gems for 15 minutes of use is just way too expensive. Right now in terms of gold (100 gems each), they’re about ~3+ gold each for 15 minutes of crafting use.

While you can easily just either go to LA by several ways or just use your WvW home borderland if you want to craft. The price just doesn’t justify its use for convenience when you’re still only a few clicks away from using a free regular crafting station.

Please do consider selling a permanent crafting station for more gems and I’m sure more people would be more interested in this.

Why do people always think that the pricing should be based on the gold to gem rate?

These are convenience item and they are quite nice if you simply want to skip a loading screen or two.

I agree. I can’t imagine any situation where you’d need to craft something and couldn’t either wait until you can go to a city or stop what you’re doing to go and then go back to where you were later. You’re not going to be crafting in the middle of a dungeon or dynamic event chain are you?

Add on the fact that getting to a city and back is easy and relatively cheap (I can’t remember exactly but even waypointing from the tip of Orr to the most Northern WP in LA and back at level 80 is just a few silver) and there’s really no reason to buy this at all.

I suspect they wouldn’t want to make a permanent version because it would also act as permanent bank access, but they could easily remove that feature. (I seem to remember early on, possibly in the betas, crafting stations did not have bank access.)

lordkrall.7241:

Why do people always think that the pricing should be based on the gold to gem rate?

These are convenience item and they are quite nice if you simply want to skip a loading screen or two.

It’s just generally a justified number to compare to. The issue is not about it being a convenience item. It’s a about a price that is not justified for the alternative means of using a stationary crafting station.

A silly scenario would be:
‘Oh I have to craft stuff for today’s daily. Rather than just clicking for a few seconds and get to my home borderland in WvW or going to LA. I’ll buy a portable crafting station for 100 gems!’

These things offer no advantage over others whatsoever and as you said. It’s just a convenience item. So the more reason there should be a permanent version of it.

lordkrall.7241:

Why do people always think that the pricing should be based on the gold to gem rate?

Okay.

I can buy a mobile crafting station and skip a loading screen for one euro.
Or I can wait through 15 seconds worth of loadings screens, craft in LA, and eat one euro worth of ice cream in real life.

In the world of micro transactions, one euro is a lot of money – I’m with the OP, I think it is too much money. You get 15 minutes worthof crafting, but essentially you only SAVE a few seconds. Since you probably won’t craft inside a dungeon or fractal, there’s simply not enough reason to spend the money.

I’d rather have ice cream.

Blackwyn.8127:

It’s just generally a justified number to compare to. The issue is not about it being a convenience item. It’s a about a price that is not justified for the alternative means of using a stationary crafting station.

A silly scenario would be:
‘Oh I have to craft stuff for today’s daily. Rather than just clicking for a few seconds and get to my home borderland in WvW or going to LA. I’ll buy a portable crafting station for 100 gems!’

These things offer no advantage over others whatsoever and as you said. It’s just a convenience item. So the more reason there should be a permanent version of it.

Why? ArenaNet does not want people to buy stuff via in game gold, they want people to buy gems with real money. Therefore they will never take the current gold to gem rate into consideration when pricing items.

So, why shouldn’t people be allowed to do that if they want to? Does it hurt you in anyway that people have the ability to pay a few gems in order to craft where they are standing at that time?

It costs at most 5 silver to port to a town to use the crafting station there. Anyone who buys these are not doing it for cost savings but for convenience.

Ayrilana.1396:

It costs at most 5 silver to port to a town to use the crafting station there. Anyone who buys these are not doing it for cost savings but for convenience.

Again, never argued it wasn’t a convenience item. What I’m trying to say, its price does not justify the level of convenience the item offers compared to the alternative free / cheaper ways of doing it.
I can travel to LA or WvW home borderland and craft for free. Worst case scenario, I use the ~2-3 silver to the crafting station waypoint and wait the 15 seconds of load screen. A convenience item in my idea, should be something worthwhile compared to the existing means that already exists.

For example, the Molten pickaxe. As I mentioned before, cost effective compared to buying picks from a merchant is pretty horrible. But I always carried around different picks, as I really didn’t want to use an Ori pick on a copper mine and / or sometimes I just didn’t have the right pickaxe.
So the Molten pickaxe was a given to me in terms of convenience, cause I could finally just get rid of all the different pickaxes I carried around depending on the situation and now I can just mine any ore to my heart’s content without having to worry about wasting pickaxe uses.

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.

You can buy ori mining axes for 350 karma. This is just a response to your unlimited mining pick example.

In regards to the gold->gem cost, yes it does seem a little high. I personally feel it should be around 50 gems. I’m pretty sure it’s an item that’s in low demand so lowering the cost may increase demand for it. Not many people need to craft immediately.

lordkrall.7241:

Blackwyn.8127:

It’s just generally a justified number to compare to. The issue is not about it being a convenience item. It’s a about a price that is not justified for the alternative means of using a stationary crafting station.

A silly scenario would be:
‘Oh I have to craft stuff for today’s daily. Rather than just clicking for a few seconds and get to my home borderland in WvW or going to LA. I’ll buy a portable crafting station for 100 gems!’

These things offer no advantage over others whatsoever and as you said. It’s just a convenience item. So the more reason there should be a permanent version of it.

Why? ArenaNet does not want people to buy stuff via in game gold, they want people to buy gems with real money. Therefore they will never take the current gold to gem rate into consideration when pricing items.

So, why shouldn’t people be allowed to do that if they want to? Does it hurt you in anyway that people have the ability to pay a few gems in order to craft where they are standing at that time?

There is a very elaborate Trading system, designed by ANET, where Gems and Gold are interchanged in and out of game. I think if “ArenaNet did not want people to buy stuff via in game gold” then that system would not be there. Right? Mmhmm. So, a discussion about the cost of this new item in terms of in game gold is quite appropriate.

Additionally, for clarity, no one is saying people shouldn’t have the right to buy this. That fictional argument was created only by you.

It won’t be an item that I would buy. It takes 2 clicks (at most) for me to get to a crafting station at zero cost . I can think of better ways to spend in-game or RL money on.

I figure one of two things is happening:

1) ArenaNet is trying out a bunch of convenience items on the Gem Store to see what works for the average player vs. what doesn’t. Since it doesn’t cost them a significant amount in terms of development and deployment, these are easy things to do to the game. (Highly likely scenario)

2) They’re introducing these items as a way to buffer the players’ reaction if/when they decide to remove current easy access to services that already exist (i.e. two-click entrance to WvW from anywhere). I highly doubt this is what they’re doing, but it’s certainly possible, and it would drive interest in the GS amenities more.

I just don’t understand WHO would buy this. I know i’m not the targeted audience, but who is?
Why would you even need the urge to craft while busy doing something else? Maybe you need food? or equipment? You need to craft yourself a sword to kill that karka because…you forgot yours in the other pants?

Even so, trading post pick u kitten 0 gems, you’ll probably save money getting that , selling the 50 surplus gems, and buying what you need.

And i still have to meet anyone who bought tp pickup/ personal bank/merchant.

I’m not complaining, i just don’t see how anet could make ANY money out of these (or shirts, boosts and half of what is on the store).

Make it last longer (1 hours, enough to craft everything you need, with the ability to dimiss it), follow you around, give the npc ( is it an npc?) some funny lines and halve the price. Then MAYBE it will have some appeal in niche scenarios.

Aegis.9724:

I just don’t understand WHO would buy this. I know i’m not the targeted audience, but who is?

People with EXTREMELY limited play time, for example, working adults with small kids. If you only have an hour to play and you are somewhere far away from a crafting point that loading screen becomes a big deal and it’s not just a loading screen. It’s loading screen + walk to crafting station + loading screen back to whatever zone you were + walk to where you were/want to be. That might not seem much but when every minute counts, that’s a lot!

Even if you say “they can just craft at the end of the day” or something but that just means when they log back on during their next play session, they have to do “loading screen + walk to where they need to go” and again, if you play time is limited and very tight, the $1 is totally justified. Especially when you remember that not everybody loads fast.

Basically, these items are bought by people in whose calculation “time spent going to stationary crafting station” is valued more then the 100 gems.

I don’t really know if this item will sell more if it was priced at 50 gems or less. I suspect that consumer base for this product is pretty stable. It is not something the average player will buy no matter what it costs!

Blackwyn.8127:

Please do consider selling a permanent crafting station for more gems and I’m sure more people would be more interested in this.

What, so people can leave crafting stations laying around mucking up the scenery?

Of course they are expansive, they are The Consortium’s products!

In all seriousness, I understand that there are people with an extremely limited playtime that would buy it to save a minute of their time. However, I’m not sure if there are enough of these people to make it profitable for Anet.

Gabby.3205:

Of course they are expansive, they are The Consortium’s products!

In all seriousness, I understand that there are people with an extremely limited playtime that would buy it to save a minute of their time. However, I’m not sure if there are enough of these people to make it profitable for Anet.

I would disagree with that. I would content that this is probably a very high profit item for Anet. I do not think Anet had to expand a lot of resources in terms of code, artwork, testing to put this product out. But the few people who will buy this item will likely be repeat customers. More importantly, due to low development costs, the margin of profit for this item is likely to be far, far, far higher then a new mini, even a new booster and certainly new weapon skins etc.

So repeat customer + high margin of profit = high profit even though maybe less then 1% of the population is buying the item. At least that’s what I think.

I think the mobile items are pretty lame. Under what kind of situation do you urgently need to craft or mystic forge something.

Its not even all that convenient. The mf require you to have the correct item on your char to use. So you probably have to pop another mobile bank or equivalent to use.
For the craft station, if you are short of a single item and need to buy from the tp, you need to pop a mobile tp.
They might as well bundle the mf, tp and craft into 1. Perhaps that will be more useful.
Only those with too much gold to waste will bother to buy the items.

I wouldn’t buy this crap for 10 gems much less 100. Hell I wouldn’t take it for free… it takes up a valuable item slot after all. I’d rather use the slot on something more worthwhile, like crab meat.