Guild Wars 2

{I. Forewords}
Thank you for coming. This post will be very long but should be easy to digest, as it is based around a very simple idea. This idea, I believe, is easy to implement into the game, but a bit hard to convince ArenaNet into, as it might affect the company’s revenue by a small percentage. But trust me, with its implementation, our game will have more sustainability.

I would like discuss about allowing us to purchase Character Slot Expansion (abbreviated as “CSE” in the following) using Glory.
English is not my mother language, so correction of grammar is welcomed. Of course, your thoughts on this topic are more appreciated. Read on!

{II. The Author}
I am Ferik. I am a Guild Wars 2 player from Taiwan. Just another player, really. Just like you. I’ve been playing structured-PvP since 2012 launch. Every time I get a new set of PvP skins (either by ranking up of winning matches) I feel the need to make new characters so I can put the new armors on them. However, due to my contract (actually, OUR contract) with ArenaNet I cannot make more than 5 characters without spending my monthly salary.

I am a casual player so I am willing to spend dollars to compensate for not playing as much as others.I imposed some sort of volunteer subscription fee on myself and have been buying Gems monthly.

I spend my Gems on buying CSE and other new skins on the Gem Store. By now, I am only Rank 35 but already have 22 characters on my account. All but 2 are level 2 people with level-80-awesomeness. These soldiers of mine exist for one sole reason—to fight OTHER players in the Mists.
Thanks to my constant character expansions, the game always feel new for me, as I don’t have to delete level 80 characters to create new ones but honestly who would do that bro I always have new faces to play the same conquest mode with.

{III. New Characters and PvP}
So what exactly does keep making new characters mean?
Well, as a player, I am very satisfied with my result and I continue to play GW2 PvP ’til this day, all my hard earned Glory spent buying new skins, gold spent getting new dyes from Trading Post and real dollars used to make more new characters. These are the PvP progression for me, and I am happy with keeping this progression going.

But are all players willing to pay real money from time to time, especially when they already invest a large amount of time into playing the game?
When I browse these forums, I find many players unsatisfied with the GW2 PvP. One of the common complaints they voice is the lack of progression—-however much effort and time you invest into PvP, the game always feel the same. This lack of progression feels especially strong for devoted players because they put so much time and effort into the game, it is simply wrong to ask them to pay dollars to make new characters.
And how will GW2 PvP feel progressive and refreshing at all if all you could choose from are those 5 same characters since last year??

{IV. Let Us Buy Character Expansions—with our time, not our money!}
Currently, if we players want to make any more than 5 characters on our accounts, we need to purchase Character Slot Expansion, which adds 1 character slot to our account at the cost of 800 Gems (in translation, $10.00 USD). What I want ArenaNet to do is to make CSE purchasable through Glory, so that players have a choice to buy CSE using either real money or their investment of time.

{V. What can this bring into Guild Wars 2?}
1. PvP Progression:
In the well-known game, League of Legends, players spend their points to unlock new characters—-which in a sense is to get new characters using the time spent playing the game. “Progression” in that game basically is the amount of characters available on the player’s account.
In Guild Wars 2, the idea to buy CSE using Glory would be quite the same—-we use our investment of time to trade for more available characters. The more you play, the more characters you get to choose from, which means:
-(1) More Class/Builds to choose from

-(2) More Skins to show off (because with so many armor skins in this game you DEFINITELY need more than 5 slots to put them all on!!!)

-(3) New playthroughs. I am a RPG player and I love them.

2. Player Choice
Again, the example of League. New characters can also be bought using Riot points, which is bought with real money. The same system already exists in Guild Wars 2 as we currently buy CSE on the Gem Store.

As it is now, the new glory vendor sells Custom Arena, also Gem Store item. If we can do the same thing with CSE~~wouldn’t that simply be a win-win? We players save the money we would spend to buy CSE on buying other stuffs, and ArenaNet gets a even bigger PvP playerbase as more players would pour into PvP knowing this is the best/most economic way if they like having new character slots.

3. A Game-wise Reward
One of ArenaNet’s new direction with sPvP in GW2 is to make PvP rewards player as the whole game, not just in the PvP section. In a sense, it means our investment in PvP rewards us on the entire game’s level. This is why the developers gave us Tome of Knowledge to level up, gold from wins, and Magic Find improvements in PvP, and why PvP skins in the future will carry over to PvE.
In coherence with this new direction, CSE, as you would think, is exactly a reward that carries over to the whole game. We play PvP, earn Glory, and use them to unlock slots so we can make more characters.
More character slots also ensures that the player is to stay in the game for much longer for the years to come, because a new character simply means a new game.

{VI. Method of Application}
So, to apply this change for the game, how are we going to do it? I suggest the following:

1. Keep Glory Alive
In comes naturally, that, if my suggestion is to work, Glory must remain in the game. One of my problems with ArenaNet’s plan to eliminate Glory and use gold as a global monetary in GW2 is that gold simply cannot measure PvP progression, while Glory (and Rank Points) can. The current Glory Vendor sells skins costing Glory+Gold and I would like the Kodan to stay that way. If you cancel Glory and make those PvP skins measured in pure Gold, those skins are simply going to lose their meaning of displaying a player’s PvP experience.

2. Sell Character Slot Expansion at 40,000 Glory
This price, as some of you already see, is the price of a Cultural T2 PvP skin. Why set it at 40,000, not 60,000, the price of T3 skins? Look, I would really like to set it at 60,000 if that number means something, plus I love cultural T3 especially human female ones but 40,000 Glory is a more meaningful number because it translates to a very specific amount of time.

Let’s suppose you play Hotjoin all day long. Also suppose Hotjoin games take 10 minutes to complete each. You win some, lose some, but overall your win rate in Hotjoin is 50% (many of you exceed this rate. Even myself have 760 wins out of 1,300). Without any booster, you accumulate Glory at the rate of (125×50%+200x50%) x6 =975 Glory per hour.

Now, I am certain an average player can score top stats a few times in an hour, and each scoring get you 10~15 Glory, so estimatedly we earn 1,000 Glory per hour.
It takes 40 hours for us to unlock a new character.

And 40 hours is exactly the average weekly working hour for a human.
That is, you play sPvP steadily for a week and you are rewarded a new character.
Fair deal, yeah?

{VII. Closing Words}
So, that’s it! Thank you for getting this far. Again, this is really just a long debate over a very simple matter, but I believe it is necessary to make it this long so I can persuade ArenaNet to implement this small feature. It would mean much for people who want MOAR characters and are willing invest time for it!
Happy 2014 and I hope to see you guys in the Mists

you can do that already!, buy gifts, sell on TP, and then convert to gems.

Asahi.1487:

you can do that already!, buy gifts, sell on TP, and then convert to gems.

Yes, we can do that. But it would so much better if we get to directly buy them using real Glory.
Check the price I proposed. It exactly displays the PvP investment!

Except glory is going to be nuked out of the game so it wouldnt really work for too long if at all