Guild Wars 2

For those of you who hate reading watch this 6 mintue video: Gem Store Rant
It sums up this entire post (It’s not one of mine but from Dontain who I love for his brutal honesty.)

I’ll explain a litttle for thoese that don’t undestand the acronym in the title:
The black lion chest quite regularly is the only way to get some of the cool skins that come out.
However what this essentially boils down to is buying a lotto ticket. If I REALLY want an item from a Black Lion Chest (BLC) I have to throw my money/gems into a Random Number Generator (RNG) and hope I get them which is Bull kitten (BS – guess what kitten used to say!)
I’ve avoided BLC keys since day 1. I do not consider myself a lucky person. I will not buy lotto tickets in RL so I’ll be kitten if i’ll buy them in a game.
Look at the Molten Pick that just got released. I bought that in a heartbeat for conveniance alone. Apon discovering the kick kitten animation that came with it I bought another for my fire themed char.
Anet if you want to realese cool skins do this! Make them limited time so people will jump at them. It will also encourge the farmers to continue farming as they’ll want the cash handy when the next cool limited item comes out.
Believe me when I say I REALLY want thoese new colors but I will NOT throw my money/gems into a slot machine. This ‘booster pack’ mentality has got to stop.

Kaboose I agree.
What they could have done was made these skins random rare drops inside the dungeons.
To allow people to show their skills in beating a certain dungeon to get these items either from just a mob or from a specific boss to encourage people to do those dungeons.

And like you I avoid buying BLC keys.

meh. just allow black lion keys to be sold on the trading post. people with rl cash can buy them to sell for game gold. one way or another, the keys would get bought, then.
as it is, i just won’t buy the keys. judging from how many chests are sitting on the trading posts, we’re not alone in viewing them as a waste of resources.

if i’m gonna spend rl money on the game (and god knows, i do when i see something i REALLY want), it’s not going to be on a key for a random chance at items i rarely want or use, and can’t sell.
~sigh~

I totally agree with Kaboose.

I hope Anet notices how good the “non-rng sales” are.
They just need to look at the mining pick, i could bet they already made a huge chunk of money from it

To be cynical and Devil’s Advocate for a second, while I and a lot of other people here may hope that sales of items based on RNG are bad, we don’t have the figures. They might very well be ridiculously popular. We have no way of knowing either way unless ArenaNet tell us, and I doubt that’s likely to happen.

I would guess that the pick has indeed been wildly successful, but again, without the figures to hand, there’s no way of knowing.

Worst case scenario, us optimists are completely wrong and Black Lion Key sales outstrip pick sales by a factor of 10 to one.
Purely conjecture, I know, but without the figures, we have no way of knowing.

Well, seeing as they keep adding new rare stuff to the BLC it is quite likely that they sell very well.
Funnily enough we get threads like these ever single time something new is added to the chests, and people shouting about how everyone will leave the game. And yet they still add new things there, so clearly those threads are quite incorrect.

The BLC is maybe indeed a lottery ticket to nowhere, instead I also do prefer buying a lottery ticket instead of BLC keys.

But other hand I understand Anet, as this is one of their micro transaction income. Maybe you avoided this as a pest, but there are still dozen of people who got and/or dare to test their luck.
Also… if you realy think this is a money wasting lottery, you still can play it cheaper way: turn gold into gems, or create a new champ and get key from story mode.

I’d be VERY curious to see data comparing limted time items vs. RNG items.

I would love for this to stop. Sadly, many people bought 30 or even 50 keys when the new molten skins became available. That tells anet to make more, not less, RNG.

I’d rather pay 50$ for the item I want than 10$ for a one in a billion chance to get the item I want.

I totally agree with this. I think Valve was the first to do this idea with TF2, and I think it is a wholly despicable practice for any game. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it were just a random grab bag type of arrangement in the gem store, but the fact that the chests drop so commonly, it really feels like they’re pushing it on to us. I can’t play for more than an hour without having one of these end up in my inventory. And then they make sure to give out the keys just often enough that you are aware of what you can get from it.

Charging money for cosmetic stuff? If you want to dress up your character, that’s great! packs of random dyes and minis and the like? sure, that’s fine as long as the chances are fair to fill out your collection of whatever. But don’t go setting up your game like a hotel casino.

While I hate gem store RNG, I guess it’s a good thing they have a lot of it as it’ll save me tons of money that I might otherwise have spent on useless shinies. I’ll never touch anything RNG based with my real money.

RNG are annoying, limited release time is also annoying, Limited release time RNG is the worst of them all.

RNG has the potential to make more money if people spend lots until they get lucky but it also turns away those that don’t like to gamble.

Limited Release has the potential to make a lot of money by making people jump at the chance to get the in the future rare stuff but has the downside of all the work put into making that item is limited to the small time frame you allow them for purchase while annoying new players and players without disposable income that would have eventually been able to get them.

However would either of these work better than a permanent release well made shiny that is fairly priced?

Downsides: Less initial income from the item, more probability of people farming up gems for them.

Upsides: Income continues to come in from the time you release it to the time the game dies, the longer its available the more new players can then buy it, the more probability of people finally deciding they would like that for a new character etc, more chance of people saving up and buying it if they have low incomes themselves.

I mean I’d have to wonder how much stuff things like the plush backpacks and other social clothes that have been in store for a while and are staying there have earnt compared to something like the wintersday weapon skins which were limited release. (not to mention how much more you see stuff like the plushes compared to said limited release skins, I’ve never seen anyone useing the gemstore christmas skins so theres potentially a lot of wasted effort gone into them)

Of course this only gets better the better the item for sale is, if its a really really cool thing thats had tons of work put into it people are going to want to keep buying it for the foreseeable future, compared to a limited release or RNG release that had little work done and people are only going for because its “limited”

My take on it is this: some people will not buy a desirable item if the price feels too high, but the price of keys is low. Some people are going to try keys to see if they get lucky and get the item for less than they would be willing to spend outright. It’s easy for such people to actually spend more than they would outright, sometimes a lot more. Just ask the proprietors of certain establishments in places such as Las Vegas or Monte Carlo.

If you’re opposed to keys and chance-boxes, the only thing to do is not to buy. Ultimately their future in the store will depend on whether they are more lucrative than just selling items straight up. Generally, though, anti-key forum threads are just going to be ignored, especially if the bottom line shows that the protestors are in the minority.

I dropped $10 for the mining pick in an instant. I have never even glanced at items I would have to roll the dice for. I will buy a guarantee, not the possibility, of something cool.

Dasorine.1964:

RNG are annoying, limited release time is also annoying, Limited release time RNG is the worst of them all.

RNG has the potential to make more money if people spend lots until they get lucky but it also turns away those that don’t like to gamble.

Limited Release has the potential to make a lot of money by making people jump at the chance to get the in the future rare stuff but has the downside of all the work put into making that item is limited to the small time frame you allow them for purchase while annoying new players and players without disposable income that would have eventually been able to get them.

However would either of these work better than a permanent release well made shiny that is fairly priced?

Downsides: Less initial income from the item, more probability of people farming up gems for them.

Upsides: Income continues to come in from the time you release it to the time the game dies, the longer its available the more new players can then buy it, the more probability of people finally deciding they would like that for a new character etc, more chance of people saving up and buying it if they have low incomes themselves.

I mean I’d have to wonder how much stuff things like the plush backpacks and other social clothes that have been in store for a while and are staying there have earnt compared to something like the wintersday weapon skins which were limited release. (not to mention how much more you see stuff like the plushes compared to said limited release skins, I’ve never seen anyone useing the gemstore christmas skins so theres potentially a lot of wasted effort gone into them)

Of course this only gets better the better the item for sale is, if its a really really cool thing thats had tons of work put into it people are going to want to keep buying it for the foreseeable future, compared to a limited release or RNG release that had little work done and people are only going for because its “limited”

While I’m not 100% for it, limited time items make a lot of sense as they stimulate the economy a lot more then a permently avaliable item, so long as that item is desirable of course.
Players seeing the pice of gems jump up so much when a limited time item they want has apeared may consider spening a few real world dollars when they otherwise wouldn’t.
I’m happy to spend a litte cash here and there on gems, I want to support GW2 after all, but RNG just reeks of greed to me.
I’ll take limited time offers over RNG anyday.