Guild Wars 2

Now that another patch has passed, one thing has continued to boggle my mind is if end game basically comes down to cosmetics, why hasn’t there been more options added since release in August? This seems as though it is such a simple thing to add and more cosmetic options for the players will give them more goals to reach. I would have thought they would have added a lot more armor/weapon skin options by now but instead we have gotten non cosmetic options (backpack, jewelry).

Is Anet just taking the easiest option? To me it is far easier to develop new items in the game that do not have an appearance than having to develop skins for every race and gender but is that what players would really want? I would be willing to bet that just about every player givin the choice, would rather have items added to the game that affect their appearance or simply giving them more appearance options than the game had at release. I do understand that they have released holiday related skins but imho they are more novelty than something someone would use as a permanent/full time skin.

The question is why isn’t Anet playing to the games strengths of end game cosmetics? Why is releasing more skin options such a rarity? To me it is a very easy carrot to throw out there for it’s player base and will go a lot further than adding new non-cosmetic items to the game. So if it all comes down to looks, why aren’t they building on that?

Hopefully ascended armor and weapons when they come have new skins.

I’m always confused by these kinds of complaints. I mean, for one, the game has hardly been out for half a year. They’re not going to pump out new armors so quickly. I don’t really know what to tell you if you’re already sick of GW2 because of the lack of cosmetics.
I understand that they’re part of the goal of the game (that’s why I liked GW so much), but they’re not the everything either.
Your post seems to imply that they’re not making new armors, and they’ll never make new armors ever. But it’s already been clearly stated that Ascended gear is on its way soon – it’s being introduced in stages.

New, expanded armor art nearly always came with new expansions in GW, so I guess that’s what tempers my expectations of how often new armors will be released, and the manner which they will be released in.

My personal gripe with the armor art? A lot of it is very similar to one another, and each class does not have its own, unique art. That’s really what my main issue is. I don’t want my guardian to look like a warrior, or my elementalist to look like a mesmer. That’s both boring, and tactically problematic – in WvW I want to stand next to the player that’s most likely to heal or buff me, and with armors spanning multiple profs, sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

I would love to see a Dark Ausran set to match the Dark Asuran weapons. Dying an Asuran cultural set isn’t the same. Red glowies to match the weapons would be pretty sweet.

For a game with microtransactions, it really is boggling how there is only 3 armor skins on the gem store. Would bet that players would tear holes in their wallets if new skins were released once every few weeks.

interpol.2397:

I’m always confused by these kinds of complaints. I mean, for one, the game has hardly been out for half a year. They’re not going to pump out new armors so quickly. I don’t really know what to tell you if you’re already sick of GW2 because of the lack of cosmetics.
I understand that they’re part of the goal of the game (that’s why I liked GW so much), but they’re not the everything either.
Your post seems to imply that they’re not making new armors, and they’ll never make new armors ever. But it’s already been clearly stated that Ascended gear is on its way soon – it’s being introduced in stages.

New, expanded armor art nearly always came with new expansions in GW, so I guess that’s what tempers my expectations of how often new armors will be released, and the manner which they will be released in.

My personal gripe with the armor art? A lot of it is very similar to one another, and each class does not have its own, unique art. That’s really what my main issue is. I don’t want my guardian to look like a warrior, or my elementalist to look like a mesmer. That’s both boring, and tactically problematic – in WvW I want to stand next to the player that’s most likely to heal or buff me, and with armors spanning multiple profs, sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

This presents another point, what they have actually done. While I am not in the camp of feeling betryed that they added a new tier of armor when they stated that the game would not be a gear grind, they seem to be reinforcing this with every update thus releasing even more accended gear.

Wouldn’t it have made more sense to release more cosmetic options via exotic gear instead of just releasing more and more accended gear. This way it would give players more options to play for while not funneling all players to accended gear. They could have taken this route with this Jan patch but they instead released even more accended gear. Given the choice, I would rather have new exotic skins than more accended gear.

And yes, I do feel as though the game has been out long enough to realistically expect these things by now.

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

AwwGee.5628:

For a game with microtransactions, it really is boggling how there is only 3 armor skins on the gem store. Would bet that players would tear holes in their wallets if new skins were released once every few weeks.

This. It is just incredible how they haven’t devoted manpower to creating awesome sets attainable through the gem shop.

It’s a loss for ANet, more than anything.

PinCushion.7390:

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

I wanted to play “Aion” again. It was pretty fun…kinda. The problem was that NCsoft didn’t bother to finish the job on the “3.0” release. The files were incomplete, and they didn’t bother to respond to the people that pointed it out.That’s a korean company for you, though. It’s sad that “A-net” is associated with them

Pustulio.8207:

PinCushion.7390:

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

I wanted to play “Aion” again. It was pretty fun…kinda. The problem was that NCsoft didn’t bother to finish the job on the “3.0” release. The files were incomplete, and they didn’t bother to respond to the people that pointed it out.That’s a korean company for you, though. It’s sad that “A-net” is associated with them

I thought it was a fun game for a while, but even with all the recent grind-reducing updates it’s still too much grind for me. In terms of game play GW2 has Aion beat handily, but Aion’s cash shop is incredibly well designed. And I don’t mean just in terms of customer experience. I mean in terms of making customers LIKE blowing money on useless pixels!

They’ve got the regular shop for people that just want to buy stuff quickly. They’ve got the Cube, so you can try to min-max for the best value of stuff you squeeze into it. They’ve got the Wheel of Fortune (or something) so you can get your gambler fix on. It’s full of little temp buff scrolls, temporary and permanent mounts, temporary furniture, temporary and permanent pets, and some neat weapon/wing skins. It’s honestly kinda fun to just shop, and they really know their market.

They run sales and promos pretty often that ramp up the urgency so you spend faster. They run custom promos, such as “All Asmodians get 50% off select items, because you guys are outnumbered in WvW.” They have certain pretty items and clothes run for a limited time only, so if you don’t buy it when it’s up then you can’t ever get it again. They have loads of stuff you can sell on the in-game TP for instant in-game cash. And, because of that, there’s very little Pay2Win in it. And they also hand out freebie items quarterly just to educate everyone on how to use the cash shop in the first place.

Seriously, the Aion Cash Shop is a work of absolute marketing genius. I wish I had invented it. They found a way to make truckloads of money and make us enjoy giving it to them! Props to NC Soft. Please send ANet a memo.

P.S. I’m so glad I don’t play Aion anymore, and so is my wallet. I kinda hope nobody at ANet reads this….but I kinda hope they do.

Releasing a ton of new armor skins on the gem shop would seem rather lame, to me. Not only is there no sense of accomplishment for getting them (other than you spen real life money on them) it would take away resources that could design new stuff to be put into the game for us to do.

In regards to the main point of the topic, it’s been discussed that ascended armor/weapons will be released at some point. I assume it will be soon since they’ve been releasing more and more ascended stuff with the past few updates and I’m guessing that they are releasing the “easier to deliver” stuff like rings and such since there’s no artwork associated with them outside of their icons and will release the stuff that will actually take time and effort to make for later on.

PinCushion.7390:

If you want to see a cosmetic cash shop done right, look at Aion. Since they went FTP they have been deluging players with clothes, vanity pets, housing furniture, and various sparklies.

The game play is still pretty bad, and no contest to GW2. But ANet could learn a few things on how to get players to happily max out their credit cards for meaningless digital shinies.

that said we need a lot of new stuff drop as loot in game too. store shouldn’t be for armor suits. it can be for town costumes, pets, those kind of shinies. armor and weapons should be a reward for playing THE GAME.