Guild Wars 2

Qugi.2653:

Oh no! Here come the rabbit ear zerg soon to complain no ears.

Love your posts. You crack me up.

Well they’re losing out on me then for the finishers. I was planning on getting them all eventually but if I have to buy them all at once I’ll pass on most of what I don’t have. Some really need a price drop before I’ll buy.

Well the only finishers worth getting are Llama and Chickenado. And maybe Cow finisher

Behellagh.1468:

And it’s not about value to the players but as a means to provide a more steady income to ANet.

Not about value to the players? The players are the ones who need enticing to spend money. ANet offers, we buy. If we don’t like what’s offered, either because it’s too expensive (perceived low value) or because it simply doesn’t fit our aesthetic sensibilities, we don’t buy.

But the reason I highlight the specific statement is because that’s the drive to be unethical. Or, at least, inhumane. Treating the customer like moneymeat to strain a few dollars out of them. I’m all for paying the designers and the company. I do. I’m a “whale” (albeit a small one :P).

But good will is a long-term strategy for customer retention that many companies merely don’t grasp. And that’s sad when it comes to games. We need more companies to focus on humane design, which GW2 is fairly good about as a game, except in a few regards to rewards for time and actual money invested.

Exxcalibur.6203:

I’d recommend Skritt. It is my finisher of choice and it is magnificent.

Always wanted Ascalonian Leader but the animation is about 2 seconds too short or something and leaves me ultimately underwhelmed.

I’m the opposite, I feel like a super long finisher animation slows me down and doesn’t give quite such a final feeling to the foe’s end. Of course, I only use them in PvE situations so I don’t get very much experience of how they work.

sercommander.6817:

Well the only finishers worth getting are Llama and Chickenado. And maybe Cow finisher

But they aren’t 800 gems good. That’s a nice set of armor skins or decent gems to gold to put towards ascended crafting.

Rauderi.8706:

Behellagh.1468:

And it’s not about value to the players but as a means to provide a more steady income to ANet.

Not about value to the players? The players are the ones who need enticing to spend money. ANet offers, we buy. If we don’t like what’s offered, either because it’s too expensive (perceived low value) or because it simply doesn’t fit our aesthetic sensibilities, we don’t buy.

But the reason I highlight the specific statement is because that’s the drive to be unethical. Or, at least, inhumane. Treating the customer like moneymeat to strain a few dollars out of them. I’m all for paying the designers and the company. I do. I’m a “whale” (albeit a small one :P).

But good will is a long-term strategy for customer retention that many companies merely don’t grasp. And that’s sad when it comes to games. We need more companies to focus on humane design, which GW2 is fairly good about as a game, except in a few regards to rewards for time and actual money invested.

My statement may have been harsh but it’s the distilled truth. The customer is there to generate income for a company. It’s in the company’s best interest to keep the customer happy but not to the point of losing money in the long haul. They make more money by removing stale merchandise with low sales for a while and bring them back six months later than leaving it on “the shelves”.

And while a player benefits from buying an item off the cash shop, they benefit more by playing a game with no subscription fees, no pay for power from the cash shop and the option to buy the cash shop’s proxy currency with in-game currency.

Don’t you want to keep playing the game with no subscription or at all? I don’t see why ANet enhancing their revenue stream by rotating merch through the gem shop is bad.

And “inhumane”? No “inhumane” is raising the cost of a basic item needed for survival by 5000%. It’s charging $10 for bottle water at a disaster site full of thirsty people. It’s not removing poorly selling items from a store for a time.

Heh, I may have painted with too broad a brush, earlier. I don’t care for some of ANet’s strategies, but I do agree with doing something about stale merchandise, for a few reasons.

To leave the items indefinitely, players will just gold-grind until they can buy it. That equates to lost revenue, mostly. Sure, there’s gold→gem→gold, but the conversion rates aren’t terribly favorable to buyers (and I’m still kittened about the UI and truncation*). So, removing the items for a time does make sense. And really, after three years, if you didn’t have most of those skins, you weren’t going to buy them anyway.

The other, more expensive option would be to improve the gem store interface to include better search tools. As it is, take a look at your typical online stores (iSomething, Google Play, and uhgods, Steam), and you’ll find their shop interfaces woefully inadequate for searching through the thousands of items available. While GW2’s stock isn’t nearly so vast, the UI does make browsing a pain in the tuckus. So, rather than revamp the UI, a risky proposition with little profit, it’s easier to withdraw items. It’s somewhat ironic that it would be for the sake of customer convenience, but such is the case. Players can find new items easier and faster that way.

It does beg an interesting question of how long should items be available before withdrawing them. Right now, we just blissfully ignore the gem store offerings because they come on somewhat consistently, then hang around too long. So, a month? It’s timely, encourages purchases, but allows grinders to fetch gold to feed the gem conversion.

• But really, though, ANet, fix the gem→gold interface. Us paying players would appreciate not getting robbed.

I’m with you about the truncation. Sure let us ask for X gold but give us the change as well, we pay exact change when we buy gems.

Steam has search tools? I always have to resort to external sites to narrow it down by more than price or genre.

I said this before but the Style section needs to have sub tabs for Armor Sets, Armor Pieces, Outfits, Weapons.

Behellagh.1468:

I’m with you about the truncation. Sure let us ask for X gold but give us the change as well, we pay exact change when we buy gems.

Steam has search tools? I always have to resort to external sites to narrow it down by more than price or genre.

I said this before but the Style section needs to have sub tabs for Armor Sets, Armor Pieces, Outfits, Weapons.

Highlighted for Oh gods yes.

Heh, Steam has poor search tools. What’s more surprising is that Google, bastion of data farming and search engines, has a kittenty search tool when looking for apps. They ought to be ashamed.

Anti-derail finish: Yes, a gem store UI update is about due, so ANet can have a good rotation of Style and Finisher offerings without cluttering up their interface.

I got the Viper armor to skin the ascended armor I’m making for my ranger that I never play…

It’s a very nice skin.

Phalanx looks fantastic on males and merely good on females.

“It’s time to retire our nonseasonal finisher sales from the Upgrades section of the Gem Store. The entire current line of finishers will be removed from Upgrades after this week, so this is your last chance to purchase them directly using gems.”

OMG!!! I dont have money to buy them all right now!
Will those finishers on gem store Return so I can buy them later or am I screwed once it’s no longer available on the gem store?

Please I need to know! T_T
I want to be able to buy them later.

Well, they specifically say style items are coming back, but no mention of the finishers. With a finisher panel dedicated to them I can’t see them never returning, but the wording seems to imply that.

Finishers are stylish though so they’re style items. :s

“It’s time to retire our nonseasonal finisher sales from the Upgrades section of the Gem Store. The entire current line of finishers will be removed from Upgrades after this week, so this is your last chance to purchase them directly using gems.”

The bolder part implies there will be a non gem way to get them. Perhaps by playing PvP or other ingame content.

(and if there is a non gem way to get them I confidently predict that at least one person who bought a finisher with gems will make a thread to complain about it).

Yeah, that part you sectioned out makes me think PVP Finishers may come back as temporary reward tracks, kind of like how the Holiday Finishers were offered at the end of completing the Winter’s Day reward track. Pretty cool if that turns out that way.

At the very least I’m sure they’ll come back as limited time sales in the gem shop.

Well this sucks I just got the game and I do not even know how many we already get for each class, would of been nice to have more time.

-
right now, all i can think of is, NOOOO NOT THE QUAGGAN FINISHER!!!but the eye masks are pretty too lol just whatever you do
DON’T.
REMOVE.
THE QUAGGAN FINISHER!!!

-and llama finish -

I am sure they will listen to you because you type in all cap bold letter. That work every time. Just today I got big increase in pay from boss because I send email in all cap bold demand more money.

Hello

I’d just like to ask why the items are being removed before the month has even ended?
I understand the whole seasonal and such, but I just don’t understand why it would be removed just after a big sale event and just before a large portion of your player base gets their monthly salary?

The reason I ask this is because I had used quite a bit of my money on the anniversary sale, but I needed some of the pieces from the viper armor set (for my asura engineer), so I decided to instead buy the items that would be on sale and then wait until the next month with buying the armor set, but now I won’t be able to.

Just want to know the reasoning behind this choice of date and also hear if it could be extended so it can be bought by people that wanted to buy it at the start of next month.
And also if stuff like this could be announced a bit before the seven days count down.

Yours sincerely
Rye the Known

My guess? Tuesday will patch something in.

It’s month until HoT, they must be planning something.

Yes, but that still doesn’t make sense.. Why would they take off items that are potential revenue, before people get the money to buy it.
The whole reason with the announcement of the items going out of store is a normal sales trick to get you to buy it, so why would they remove it before people have the chance to buy it?

Most likely for every person that can’t scrape up the funds to buy it until next month begins they have plenty other purchasers that are buying in a panic who might never have bought the items.

I’d prefer everything to be available all the time. A fully stocked gem store has much more chance to have stuff I want and in turn tempt me to get something. If I can’t afford something, I simply don’t get it. From a sales viewpoint, I find the decision to remove stuff curious, my experience tells me that revenue from consistent product availability generally trumps that of panic sales, but then again that’s probably different with digital goods.

It’s so they can release them later in a “promotion” and people gobble them up. Sales are part of retail. I’d rather they were always up too, but it’s How Things Are Done™.

I’m just glad they give a countdown now. They used to pull them right off, no warning. I’ll accept this compromise.

Make Rye Known.6273:

Hello

I’d just like to ask why the items are being removed before the month has even ended?
I understand the whole seasonal and such, but I just don’t understand why it would be removed just after a big sale event and just before a large portion of your player base gets their monthly salary?

In the US, most employees get a weekly paycheck.

Mostly. I have a friend and the parent company of the one he works for is European based and he gets paid monthly.

Many get bi-weekly checks now, it seems. Less overhead in sending/depositing/accounting, I suppose.

As for extending the availability of items, every month some portion of players will likely desire an extension for this reason or that.

Good luck.

Make Rye Known.6273:

Yes, but that still doesn’t make sense.. Why would they take off items that are potential revenue, before people get the money to buy it.
The whole reason with the announcement of the items going out of store is a normal sales trick to get you to buy it, so why would they remove it before people have the chance to buy it?

You have your answer, it increases the sales of the items leaving, it increases their sales when they come back, and it leaves space.
As the item you want is not in the gemstore, you’re more inclined to buy something else, the new items and spend your gems. As a consequence, you’ll need more gems to buy the item you want once it returns etc.

I presume you mean real money. That’s why it is a good idea to have some money in the bank. Instead of spending every penny every month.

You never know something might come up.