Guild Wars 2

Problem with Goldsellers.
question in bottom:

So here is a problem I actually haven’t experienced with goldsellers before (no matter if it is sold by the company or thirdparty. I see no difference on the two from a gameplay and enjoyment experience).

So I am sitting here thinking: “I would actually like to buy the living stories I don’t have and play them. I don’t mind paying the price it cost” (its 1280 for the season 2 and an extra 800 for the season 3 I can’t play, so 2080 gems which is roughly 25€).
Then I look at what that would get me in gold. Anet will sell me roughly 600gold for that price, that is actually far more than my char has on him and even at a 4g/h ratio (which from what I read is pretty high income grind) it is 150hours of grind.

There is No Way in hell the living stories will ever even come close to making or opening something worth 600g.
So if I was to give the extra money (and I Truly don’t mind that if it was, it’s 25€ which is very cheap for me) I should definitely get direct gold instead of stories as it gives me far more hours of “income”.
However I will NEVER buy gold, I don’t care if it is from some sweatshop thirdparty seller or from the company itself; it is cheating, it cheapens the effort of legit players and it decrease the enjoyment of everyone which plays on a fair playing field.

So since I would feel bad for buying something which has far less worth than simply buying gold, I have a hard time even wanting to buy anything….
So instead of me starting to use extra money on stories, later the cool tool animations (which they where just animations as I am using magic tools), perma bank stuff etc etc etc. I am constantly recalculating what that would be in pure gold and therefore coming to the conclusion that buying anything else is pointless and again I will Not buy ingame currency as it is cheating etc. as mentioned (and I could use 1 day at work and buy 3200g+ ingame (200€=16000gem= 100g per 500gem, so 3200g), making any time I use ingame on gaining anything an utter and complete wasted of time which will instantly turn me off from playing as any time spend I should just be paying my way out off…)

So yer, this is actually an issue I haven’t seen in other mmo’s I’ve invested time into…
Any cool idea’s of a different way of looking at it? which could change my mind and make me not feel so “depressed” over spending time actually playing the game to progress, instead of simply taking some overtime at work (and cutting months of grinding off for every day i just do RL work) ?

normally my argument is “it is against the eula etc. and hope the little piip piip gets perma banned when they do it” but here it is highly encuraged and the devs really want us to do it, making any kind of this argument nullified

edit: calc for gold price

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

you didn’t read my post at all. your answer is talking about something completely different than what i am saying.

in short: the problem is how depression it is that i know i need to use 800hours of ingame grinding to just make up for under 8hours of RL work.
there is absolutely no point in ever playing the game at that point, any logic dictates that if i want to use time in the game because i want something in it i should just take a few extra hour of overtime and buy whatever i wanted instead of using several houndread hours of grind time…
instead of pvp’ing i should just pay someone 3.000 gold and make them fight and win for me so i can get a nice trophy… etc.etc.etc. anything in the game is LEGALLY, which is the key word, Far easier obtained by me just going to RL work -_-

which is incredibly depressing and once i realized. it and did the calc i feel sad when i start the game…

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it
it’s sell lvls, sell all gear, next step is to sell prestige=pay us x amount and you get to be nr.1-2-3-4 pvp ranked best player in the world :/ i dont like all this pay instead of play thing, it makes me sad : . (
________
yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

Anet doesnt sell gold, they only sell gems.
The gem to gold exchange feature in the game and the exchange rate is set by the players and any gold you get from exchanging gems is coming from other players.

Nyx.6532:

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

seriously, how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it

---

yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

So after you worked over time and bought everything you want in the game whats the point of playing for you?

I play the game to do things i like doing and earn gold for the goals i set for myself.

So what if it takes 800 hours for me to get that legendary piece i had fun collecting the funds for it

mauried.5608:

Anet doesnt sell gold, they only sell gems.
The gem to gold exchange feature in the game and the exchange rate is set by the players and any gold you get from exchanging gems is coming from other players.

tomato, tômata.
result is exactly the same, there is absolutely no difference in its effect.

Linken.6345:

Nyx.6532:

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

seriously, how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it

---

yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

So after you worked over time and bought everything you want in the game whats the point of playing for you?

I play the game to do things i like doing and earn gold for the goals i set for myself.

So what if it takes 800 hours for me to get that legendary piece i had fun collecting the funds for it

Exactly, That is my point….
why would i even play now? why wasted my time with it when i know i could just buy everything and done with it.. then why even start in the first place… and grinding the hours it takes to earn it now seems idiotic to do compared to just doing a few extra work hours.
So its made it all pointless, which is why the game now feel depressing to open :/

Well if you dont like the game as it is , then LEAVE.

It should be noted that you cannot, in fact, “buy everything”. Sure, you can find some way to buy a perfect pvp team for pvp wins and you can buy raid carries and dungeon carries and fractal challenge mote carries. But then what are you gonna do while they finish that stuff for you? Literally sit in your chair, staring at the screen while watching someone else complete all the content for you? I guess if that’s your definition of entertainment, go for it.

Nyx.6532:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

you didn’t read my post at all. your answer is talking about something completely different than what i am saying.

in short: the problem is how depression it is that i know i need to use 800hours of ingame grinding to just make up for under 8hours of RL work.
there is absolutely no point in ever playing the game at that point, any logic dictates that if i want to use time in the game because i want something in it i should just take a few extra hour of overtime and buy whatever i wanted instead of using several houndread hours of grind time…
instead of pvp’ing i should just pay someone 3.000 gold and make them fight and win for me so i can get a nice trophy… etc.etc.etc. anything in the game is LEGALLY, which is the key word, Far easier obtained by me just going to RL work -_-

which is incredibly depressing and once i realized. it and did the calc i feel sad when i start the game…

I read it, and it reminded me of the quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

You’re making yourself unhappy because some amount of money will buy some amount of gold but this amount of gold is more than the gold you think that some item is worth.

I gather you can afford the cash value. If you want it, buy it. If you don’t think it’s worth it, don’t. Watch the YouTube instead. And quit making yourself unhappy because this amount of money get you some # of ingame tokens (gold).

Skittish.4539:

It should be noted that you cannot, in fact, “buy everything”. Sure, you can find some way to buy a perfect pvp team for pvp wins and you can buy raid carries and dungeon carries and fractal challenge mote carries. But then what are you gonna do while they finish that stuff for you? Literally sit in your chair, staring at the screen while watching someone else complete all the content for you? I guess if that’s your definition of entertainment, go for it.

true, but i think the problem here is “burden of optimal play”. i am a min/max optimum player by heart. if you give me a mechanic which makes me far more proficient in the game i almost garanteed have to use it, it is very annoying for me not to as i feel that others like me will use it and i will be far behind the optimal play.

so it basicly bumps me out and removes most of the fun of playing.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Nyx.6532:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you are unwilling to pay cash or gold and you feel that it won’t be worth the cost then maybe you’d be happier watching the episodes on YouTube and skipping those maps.

you didn’t read my post at all. your answer is talking about something completely different than what i am saying.

in short: the problem is how depression it is that i know i need to use 800hours of ingame grinding to just make up for under 8hours of RL work.
there is absolutely no point in ever playing the game at that point, any logic dictates that if i want to use time in the game because i want something in it i should just take a few extra hour of overtime and buy whatever i wanted instead of using several houndread hours of grind time…
instead of pvp’ing i should just pay someone 3.000 gold and make them fight and win for me so i can get a nice trophy… etc.etc.etc. anything in the game is LEGALLY, which is the key word, Far easier obtained by me just going to RL work -_-

which is incredibly depressing and once i realized. it and did the calc i feel sad when i start the game…

I read it, and it reminded me of the quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

You’re making yourself unhappy because some amount of money will buy some amount of gold but this amount of gold is more than the gold you think that some item is worth.

I gather you can afford the cash value. If you want it, buy it. If you don’t think it’s worth it, don’t. Watch the YouTube instead. And quit making yourself unhappy because this amount of money get you some # of ingame tokens (gold).

lolz Awesome! job on the qoute hehe.

and yes i know i am, but i can’t stop it.. i think “hmm i really want to get fully geared someday, happy Stats isnt so importent from where i am to max gear so no pressure of getting it Right now”… then instantly the thought comes “but you should just do 3-4 days of work and you would be maxed out”.
which now results in me either getting sad about it because it is such an easy and optimal solution to do, or i do it and feel like the game is basicly over and i just wasted a Lot of money on nothing and then i hated the devs for feeling manipulated into losing the enjoyment and a lot of money..

so it is a no win situation, which is an issue i haven’t had often :/

Nyx.6532:

mauried.5608:

Anet doesnt sell gold, they only sell gems.
The gem to gold exchange feature in the game and the exchange rate is set by the players and any gold you get from exchanging gems is coming from other players.

tomato, tômata.
result is exactly the same, there is absolutely no difference in its effect.

Except that it is not.

The gold you buy with your gems was farmed by players. You buying it via gems (or other people) keep the price and supply in check.

Yes, it might seem that gold magically appears in your wallet and you just bought it from arenanet, but if you spend 5 minutes and read on how the gem exchange works you’d know that is not the case.

Back on topic:
If you keep calculating what your best return for your money is, then just stop playing. By that logic you would have to only play the maximum gold yielding aspects of this game and never move away from them and I doubt you’ve been playing that way so far.

Here is a different way to look at those 25 Euro spent:
- you get aproximately 20 hours of story without achievements and replay
- you get access to some areas which provide very easy access to ascended trinkets with all stats on them available as choice

Eventually you end up with less than 1 Euro per hour spent. Try matching that with any other activity. Also factoring the cost from the ascended trinkets into the calculation would make the Season 3 maps shoot past 600 gold easy (ever tried crafting exotic trailblazer trinkets?).

That gameplay and hopefully enjoyment is no where with those potential 600 gold in your wallet.

Nyx.6532:

Skittish.4539:

It should be noted that you cannot, in fact, “buy everything”. Sure, you can find some way to buy a perfect pvp team for pvp wins and you can buy raid carries and dungeon carries and fractal challenge mote carries. But then what are you gonna do while they finish that stuff for you? Literally sit in your chair, staring at the screen while watching someone else complete all the content for you? I guess if that’s your definition of entertainment, go for it.

true, but i think the problem here is “burden of optimal play”. i am a min/max optimum player by heart. if you give me a mechanic which makes me far more proficient in the game i almost garanteed have to use it, it is very annoying for me not to as i feel that others like me will use it and i will be far behind the optimal play.

so it basicly bumps me out and removes most of the fun of playing.

Maybe I’m weird, but for me, the most proficient use of my time in gw2 is spending it learning both prefession skills and mob skills so I know how to counteract them. Optimal gameplay is knowing how to play the game and the encounters in it, and with the minute difference between ascended gear stats and exotic gear stats, having a fat wallet isn’t going to be the biggest factor at all in reaching that optimumness.

Nyx.6532:

Skittish.4539:

It should be noted that you cannot, in fact, “buy everything”. Sure, you can find some way to buy a perfect pvp team for pvp wins and you can buy raid carries and dungeon carries and fractal challenge mote carries. But then what are you gonna do while they finish that stuff for you? Literally sit in your chair, staring at the screen while watching someone else complete all the content for you? I guess if that’s your definition of entertainment, go for it.

true, but i think the problem here is “burden of optimal play”. i am a min/max optimum player by heart. if you give me a mechanic which makes me far more proficient in the game i almost garanteed have to use it, it is very annoying for me not to as i feel that others like me will use it and i will be far behind the optimal play.

so it basicly bumps me out and removes most of the fun of playing.

I think you are fooling yourself.

First of all, you are not a true min-maxer. Not in Real Life, because then you wouldn’t be here wasting precious time/money on a computergame. And not ingame because if you were you wouldn’t be here posting your doubts but buy what you need and be on top.

I think you can’t make a choice because you want it all. And we all know that you can’t have your cake and eat it at the same time

How about doing it the poor way on one character and the rich way on another?

Nyx.6532:

Problem with Goldsellers.
question in bottom:

So here is a problem I actually haven’t experienced with goldsellers before (no matter if it is sold by the company or thirdparty. I see no difference on the two from a gameplay and enjoyment experience).

So I am sitting here thinking: “I would actually like to buy the living stories I don’t have and play them. I don’t mind paying the price it cost” (its 1280 for the season 2 and an extra 800 for the season 3 I can’t play, so 2080 gems which is roughly 25€).
Then I look at what that would get me in gold. Anet will sell me roughly 600gold for that price, that is actually far more than my char has on him and even at a 4g/h ratio (which from what I read is pretty high income grind) it is 150hours of grind.

There is No Way in hell the living stories will ever even come close to making or opening something worth 600g.
So if I was to give the extra money (and I Truly don’t mind that if it was, it’s 25€ which is very cheap for me) I should definitely get direct gold instead of stories as it gives me far more hours of “income”.
However I will NEVER buy gold, I don’t care if it is from some sweatshop thirdparty seller or from the company itself; it is cheating, it cheapens the effort of legit players and it decrease the enjoyment of everyone which plays on a fair playing field.

So since I would feel bad for buying something which has far less worth than simply buying gold, I have a hard time even wanting to buy anything….
So instead of me starting to use extra money on stories, later the cool tool animations (which they where just animations as I am using magic tools), perma bank stuff etc etc etc. I am constantly recalculating what that would be in pure gold and therefore coming to the conclusion that buying anything else is pointless and again I will Not buy ingame currency as it is cheating etc. as mentioned (and I could use 1 day at work and buy 3200g+ ingame (200€=16000gem= 100g per 500gem, so 3200g), making any time I use ingame on gaining anything an utter and complete wasted of time which will instantly turn me off from playing as any time spend I should just be paying my way out off…)

So yer, this is actually an issue I haven’t seen in other mmo’s I’ve invested time into…
Any cool idea’s of a different way of looking at it? which could change my mind and make me not feel so “depressed” over spending time actually playing the game to progress, instead of simply taking some overtime at work (and cutting months of grinding off for every day i just do RL work) ?

normally my argument is “it is against the eula etc. and hope the little piip piip gets perma banned when they do it” but here it is highly encuraged and the devs really want us to do it, making any kind of this argument nullified

edit: calc for gold price

What does this post have to do with “gold sellers”?

This is you griping about not wanting to spend your € on something in-game… You want something, then buy it. You don’t want something, then don’t buy it… You don’t want to use money, then exchange your gold earned in-game for gems to purchase it for free…

Gold sellers hurt the economy because of the source of their gold: it’s from stealing from other people’s accounts and/or from people using bots (or other types of cheating) to farm. I hope it’s clear without further explanation why both those those are bad for the game.
(Yes, there are people who would sell their own legit gold — there’s not nearly enough of that to fund the black market.)

ANet selling gems directly for RL cash and allowing those gems to be traded (indirectly) for the gold of other players is a brilliant way to reduce the impact of gold selling.

Primarily, by creating a legit method for players to acquire, it makes it harder for the black marketers to succeed — they have to offer a lot more than 166 gold for US$10, otherwise people will just go with doing it via legit methods.

The OP is correct that allowing people to buy gold lessens the value of gold as an indicator of dedication to the game (and that’s why the new legendaries — as well as ascended and many other items — cannot be traded). On the other hand, there is absolutely no way to eliminate the possibility that someone is going to buy gold off the black market.

All game developers can do is to make it as difficult as possible for buyers to buy, as dangerous to their account as possible, and make it difficult for golder sellers to trade.

Still seems to be a misunderstanding of the concept of buying gold.
You cant buy gold directly with RL money.
You can only buy gems and then exchange them for gold.
The gold that is being exchanged is already in the game, and buying it doesnt add to the total amount already there.
Also I can see no correlation at all in someone having lots of gold = being dedicated to the game .
Some players keep their gold , others spend it as fast as they get it.
Both can be equally dedicated to the game .
Likewise theres no correlation between players who have a dozen legendary weapons and players who have none.
Some players like crafting and others dont.

So since I would feel bad for buying something which has far less worth than simply buying gold, I have a hard time even wanting to buy anything….
So instead of me starting to use extra money on stories, later the cool tool animations (which they where just animations as I am using magic tools), perma bank stuff etc etc etc. I am constantly recalculating what that would be in pure gold and therefore coming to the conclusion that buying anything else is pointless and again I will Not buy ingame currency as it is cheating etc. as mentioned (and I could use 1 day at work and buy 3200g+ ingame (200€=16000gem= 100g per 500gem, so 3200g), making any time I use ingame on gaining anything an utter and complete wasted of time which will instantly turn me off from playing as any time spend I should just be paying my way out off…)

This is like the philosopher-donkey who starved to death between two equally tall and succulent piles of hay, because he could find no reason to pick one over the other. I find your “dilemma” kind of baffling lol. First, it sounds to me like you have the kind of money to easily do both (expansion + gold) and not feel it. So I’m at a loss to understand why you’re wringing your hands and sweating over such a pittance to just buy the freaking expansion. It’s peanuts! Second, it sounds to me like you really don’t enjoy playing the game very much, and should probably just find something better to do with your time.

From what I understand the in game gold exchange was a necessary standard to maintain economy. Basically the system is to keep the price of in game currency from inflating into obscurity. This is used in real currency systems, it stabilizes the value of money. And where they are on a world market it’s necessary for their to be stability for prices for content otherwise someone could gain an unfair in game currency advantage or weakness by merely playing from where you live.

If you want to exchange gems for gold it’s not harmful to the game or promoting content in game. It’s part of the free to play model they are using and necessary to maintain staff for game content.

Buying from third party sellers is destructive to the game and content since the funds don’t go to Anet to support the game.

Don’t feel bad buying from Anet, with a free to play means you’re not obligated to buy a thing. But if you do, buying from Anet is supporting the game instead of someone’s pocketbook.

The Gem / Gold exchange rate does help to prevent in game inflation, but its not the only mechanism, nor the main one.
The biggest stabiliser on ingame inflation is the TP, thanks to its 5% listing fee and 10% selling fee.
Everytime something gets sold on the TP, gold equal to 15% of the sale price instantly vanishes from the game economy.
The biggest source of inflation is vendors, who buy all your junk items and give you gold in return.
Id like to see the vendor economic model altered a bit , so if a particular vendor has bought lots of junk items recently, the price you then get for junk items slowly goes down till it hits zero.
The prices reset the next day.
You could then choose to take a hit on selling your junk, or find another vendor who hasnt bought much .
Vendors located in remote faraway places would buy junk items at higher prices than those in populated areas like the cities.

mauried.5608:

The Gem / Gold exchange rate does help to prevent in game inflation, but its not the only mechanism, nor the main one.
The biggest stabiliser on ingame inflation is the TP, thanks to its 5% listing fee and 10% selling fee.
Everytime something gets sold on the TP, gold equal to 15% of the sale price instantly vanishes from the game economy.
The biggest source of inflation is vendors, who buy all your junk items and give you gold in return.
Id like to see the vendor economic model altered a bit , so if a particular vendor has bought lots of junk items recently, the price you then get for junk items slowly goes down till it hits zero.
The prices reset the next day.
You could then choose to take a hit on selling your junk, or find another vendor who hasnt bought much .
Vendors located in remote faraway places would buy junk items at higher prices than those in populated areas like the cities.

and how would summoned vendors work?

There are gold sinks added into the game to compensate. For one all salvage has a price. Waypoints are also gold sinks as well as one time keys, potions, and other single use items that are sometimes needed for buffs and whatnot. I’m actually happy they dumped armor repair having two costs, it still requires paying the Waypoint fee but no longer charges again for the repair after port. Another cost I would be OK with adding is portal scrolls charging a fee for the port. Also by having gems as a sink for gold every time they’re bought with gold it again removes currency from the economy. Vendors for trash really are the low end of gold flow into the economy.

Also should add if they need an adjustment they can change the trash reward at vendor to boost or reduce gold. Biggest additions of gold to the game are actual drops from quests, events, and HP’s. You always get more currency from those than trash for time played.

This is the one of the weirdest stances I’ve seen in a bit.

“Any cool idea’s of a different way of looking at it? which could change my mind and make me not feel so “depressed” over spending time actually playing the game to progress, instead of simply taking some overtime at work (and cutting months of grinding off for every day i just do RL work) ?” -Nyr

First off it sounds like your current goals are to be fully ascended and maybe a legendary. It’s very unclear, but I think that’s what you mean. If you could state it that would be nice, otherwise, people just have to keep guessing.

So back to the question. It’s a moral question, and it truly can’t be answered without answering “Why play video games at all?”. It’s a complete waste of time to play any if we go into statistics. If you’re not making money from it then the numbers will never show it has a use. But if you go from a psychology of play viewpoint it’s extremely important.

To boil that down it basically means, without some form of play in our adult lives it becomes extremely hard to continue doing a task. Psychology of play also has a lot to do with learning, but that’s a fun thing that can be checked out on the web. My point is that the numbers shouldn’t matter, because of the reasons you play video games in the first place.

tap tap Next up is going back to the guild wars mechanics everyone was touching on.

Spending money on the game is supporting the game! How could you ever feel bad or feel like you’re cheating? The coolest thing about it is that everyone can’t do it! What I mean by that is the conversion for gems to gold is completely determined by the players. The price fluctuates every time a new skin that everyone wants comes to the gemstore, it’s the honestly one of the coolest things about the game.

It also means that if every single player in the entire gw2 community decided tomorrow they wanted to buy gold with gems to get as much as they could. Then the gold stash would run out, and it would become incredibly cheap for players who want gems to buy them with gold. But as soon as the first person in this scenario starts buying gold with their gems/real money the price for the next person is going to go up. Which makes this particular scenario basically a non-existent outcome since no one would ever want to pay $1 for 1 gold if it ever got that crazy.

Lastly having a min/maxed character won’t change your environment or standing in the game. If you feel that’s what you want to better your experience then that’s your reason to do it. And again it’s supporting the game you put hours into.

The exchange system was one of their better ideas. It does a lot for the game:

- Lowers inflation as the majority of players is far more likely to spend gold on gems rather than the vice versa
- Stops the other group from using RMT services by providing them with the means to exchange gems for gold
- Lowers the amount of RMT users and frees up company resources which would otherwise go to preventing such
- Supports the game through income which would go to the RMT traders
- Adds some quality of life to the game which is never a bad thing
- Prevents P2W by allowing anyone to acquire store items – not that P2W is an issue in this game
- Allows the most busy of folks to enjoy the game without a worry

Very generally speaking, you’ll never find a game that has a cheap currency exchange that favors the digital currency over $.

This game is no exception and it’s quite easy to see why. The only ways this could happen is if, 1) the digital currency is scarce or 2) There’s literally nothing worth spending $ on.

Neither of those are healthy game states and developers actively go out of their way to avoid either of those situations happening.

Nyx.6532:

Then I look at what that would get me in gold. Anet will sell me roughly 600gold for that price, that is actually far more than my char has on him and even at a 4g/h ratio (which from what I read is pretty high income grind) it is 150hours of grind.

There is No Way in hell the living stories will ever even come close to making or opening something worth 600g.

But why are you looking at what this would get you in gold? I don’t understand your motivation here. Why does it matter to you how much gold you could buy withg gems if you want to play the LW seasons?

I’m trying to understand what you are writing, but it’s really difficult, maybe you can word your sentences a bit more clearly? What has all this to do with gold sellers?

You seem to treat content as investment of your money that needs to have a monetary return. You think that if you invest 600 gold / 25€ in the LW seasons, these seasons should yield you at least an equivalent value in gold/€.

But that’s not how paying money for entertainment works at all. You’ll never get real money back if you buy gems for gold, unless you become a blackmarket goldseller yourself.

If you rather work 2 more hours in your job than playing GW2 for 30 hours, then go ahead and do that.

Maybe you can clarify for yourself and for us why you are playing a game in general? That is an important question that everybody who spends a significant amount of time on something needs to answer for themselves. I guess most of us play for the entertainment, just like we do other things that give us joy. I never get my money back in a monetary way when I buy a ticket to watch a movie or when I go to an entertainment park. I get something for my money that I apparently value higher: entertainment, fun.

If you can make money with it, great! I think a few people can do that, like dulfy with his Youtube channel. But most of the time, people cannot turn their hobby into a business. We pay with time/money, and get entertainment in return. If we start to value the entertainment less than before, we might change the way we spend money on it. If I started thinking that all the movies in the cinema are crap nowadays, I might decide to stop spending money on it. But saying that I don’t want to spend money on cinema tickets because I don’t get a monetary return on investment makes no sense at all. That’s not what I expcted in the first place.

Just like that, I play GW2 to enjoy the content, and when I purchased the LW seasons, my main question was: will it give me enough hours of fun for the money? The second question was how hard I want the Tyria Mastery points ^^

If LW S2 could be played within 3 hours, that would have been too expensive to bother. But I spend much more of my freetime in it, enough that the price per hour became really insignificant, much less than I pay for one hour at the movies.

tl;dr: Answer yourself the question why you play an MMO, then decide if you consider money spent on it lost or invested in entertainment and fun.

I haven’t read all the replies so far so if what I say has been said before, please just ignore.

So you want the story but wont spend real cash because you would feel like you are cheating? You could grind it out in game and have it not feel like cheating but it seems like too much work? I hope this is what you mean or close to it lol.

You could look at it this way instead, take me for example I got ALL of the stories for free simply for playing the game as intended and logging in within the required time frames. I did not work hard for them, all I did was simply log in when it was required.
Now I could look at that as ME cheating because I got it all for free when there are players like you who missed out and have to pay for it if they want it.

So my advice, just buy the gems and pay for the stories if you just want to experience them and have fun with them. Forget the gem to gold ratio, just focus on what’s fun for you in this game and roll with it. You are not cheating the company or the “legit” players like myself. In fact you missed out on getting a “nice gift” at the time it was available and now have to PAY for that gift. If anything YOU should feel like the cheated party here. That’s how I would feel if I was in your situation.

Well that’s my opinion, hope it helps some lol.

people seem to misunderstand a handfull of points here so i will try to clarify

1. i do Not mind spending money. as said i make over 200€ for a day of work, that’s without overtime which i can easily take, so the amount is not the main thing and after seeing the actual € price of stories etc. it is not an issue for me at all (they are fairly cheaply priced, considered they don’t do P2P setups or many “forced payments”).

2. i lose the interest in playing when anything i can do in the game in a full day of boring grind (which is part of the course with mmorpg’s) i can do in under 10minutes of RL work. it means any ingame effort is a complete and utter wasted of time.

3. i feel like there is things in the game i “Need” to get, like maxed out stats. so i Need to figure out a good way to get there. but when the best way is without a doubt just RL € and getting the gear is always a lot of “mindless grind and boring hours” (no matter if you do pure pvp you need to do your Crafts to 500 now, boring mindless stuff), then it becomes a question of "what bores me more; 8-16 hours of work or 800-1600 hours of grind (lets say 3/4 of all game time is funtime, which is a little high in an mmorp, thats still 200-400 hours vs. 8-16hours boredom. meaning i feel like a complete idiot for spending any time at all trying to archieve Stats ingame.

4. “if you have the money, and you want to stats, why not just spend the 2 days at work?”.
because its a slippery slope, if i start spending several houndread of € just to get gear, it will constantly pressure me to just buy more and more, and when i’ve bought everything then what is the point of playing? i am just throwing money at the dev so they give me digital pixels instead of giving me a fun experience of which i was searching in the first place.

as a short summary of all this:
so “what do i want from it?” i want a gameplay experience where my RL work isn’t involved at all. i want a place where i can simply log in and feel that what i am doing in the gamespace actually matters for my character within the game-space while giving me positive and enjoyable experiences.
i want to disconnect from the real world and just enjoy cobling off for a few hours from all the stress, all the deadlines, all the real worlds maximizing of efficiency.
i simply want a space where i can relax and not have to think about how i should be doing Real work to allow for optimal enjoyment of my actions.
IRL this is the reality, you weigh work hours which created income with the time you have left to enjoy that income and try to find the best solution. having to do the same with a game seems very counter intuitive to what the game is supposed to do for us..

edit:
the entire discussion of the impact of RMT is something which should have it’s own thread (if needed to analyze etc. actually have several pages on that one if is, but think it will derail the discussion heavily if brought here).

it’s also worth noting that this the issues of rmt is mostly created because the game is no longer a horizontal progression system but now a vertical progression with continually increase of stats for a very long ingame play time (which creates the “burden of optimal play” issues, which in turn makes RMT a real strong issue, with horizontal progression RMT is far less impactful and therefore less of an issue)

Maybe its time for a single player game OP

Nyx.6532:

Linken.6345:

Nyx.6532:

Donari.5237:

I understand the feeling that it’s cheating to buy gold even via the legit company provided method. I, like you, am livid at gold sellers.

However, it is designed into the game economy and is meant to dissuade illicit gold buying, which is far worse for the game as the vultures and leeches strip mine the game for gold in order to profit off impatient, unethical players, without heed to how they are wrecking the game experience for real customers. Moreover, remember that gems don’t just buy gold: gold buys gems! And new gems only show up for purchase if people do swap their gems for gold. If you buy gold with your cash-bought gems, you are helping drag the price down for players that need to gather up gold in-game in order to get the pretty things on the gem store. You’re adding to the supply to meet the demand.

I seldom buy gold with my gems, I pretty much have to really want a thing on the TP that I cannot otherwise get (I don’t mean a legendary, egad, I’m not spending that kind of cash on pixels — if I were I would have long since ceased my whimpers about how much I want a permanent hair stylist, lol). But when I do, I am secure in the knowledge that ANet both approves and desires the transaction in order to keep things balanced.

I hope that helps.

how is
“you know this thing people do that f’d your enjoyment, effort put into the game and all the fun out of archieving stuff?”
“yer?.. yes, good.. we are going to do that ourself now, so forget about any kind of damage control or minimum amount of people doing it etc…”

while we are at it why not sell hacking and botting tools as well? i mean it is a huge issue in general in mmo’s and people will always use them, so why not just let Anet prvide them? they will even be better than ever as they will be part of the ingame UI’s…

seriously, how that is a logical “reasoning” is beyound my understanding :/ i just don’t get it and can’t get my head to accept it

---

yer it sadly didnt help. i just can’t get my mind of the “ow there goes 1 day of playing, you could have had an extra legendary piece there, boy you must be having fun for giving up 1 legendary piece just for that play session” … and no i was not having That! much fun, no one is :/

So after you worked over time and bought everything you want in the game whats the point of playing for you?

I play the game to do things i like doing and earn gold for the goals i set for myself.

So what if it takes 800 hours for me to get that legendary piece i had fun collecting the funds for it

Exactly, That is my point….
why would i even play now? why wasted my time with it when i know i could just buy everything and done with it.. then why even start in the first place… and grinding the hours it takes to earn it now seems idiotic to do compared to just doing a few extra work hours.
So its made it all pointless, which is why the game now feel depressing to open :/

Why play?

Because playing is fun. The act of participation should be fun in itself. If it isnt, for you, then you have already answered your own question.

I’m probably still not really quite getting what you mean, but from points 2&3 on that last post it sounds to me that at the moment you’re playing the game purely to make gold to buy things (be it LS episodes, skins or whatever), but because there’s the option of spending real money to do that you feel that negates the point of actually playing the game to earn the gold?

Personally if it’s got to this point “what bores me more; 8-16 hours of work or 800-1600 hours of grind…”, where you’re actually having to decide weather work or playing the game is more boring, then it might be time to take a break from it and actually play something else just for fun! (and possibly investigate a job you might actually enjoy doing lol).

On points 3&4 I’m not entirely sure what it is you’re planning to buy in terms of gear / maxed stats anyway. Ascended stuff doesn’t take that long to get in game, and if kitting out in a full set of ascended stuff feels like a grind, then maybe you need to play different modes/do different things in the game to mix things up a bit. It’s my understanding legendary stuff doesn’t have any stat gain (maybe I’m wrong), so from a max stats point of view ascended is fine.

As for;
“4. “if you have the money, and you want to stats, why not just spend the 2 days at work?”.
because its a slippery slope, if i start spending several houndread of € just to get gear, it will constantly pressure me to just buy more and more, and when i’ve bought everything then what is the point of playing? i am just throwing money at the dev so they give me digital pixels instead of giving me a fun experience of which i was searching in the first place.”

Few things with that;

a) If you run the risk where buying gems/using real money on the game could spiral to “several hundred euros just to get gear” then you really need to get some self control and be more careful with money.

b) As mentioned kitting out in full stats gear shouldn’t need any money and takes not long in game, so I’ll assume here “gear” might mean skins as well. In which case why do you feel the need to buy everything in the game? Just pick things you like and aim for those.

c) “…and when i’ve bought everything then what is the point of playing?” From this it sounds like your goal playing this game is to collect every single possible skin and item ever to have appeared on the gem store/in game. Which again goes back to why do you need them all? But also if the reason you play is just so you can buy all this stuff and for whatever reason your not having fun on the journey to doing that, then again I’d seriously look at taking a break from the game, finding a new reason to play , or moving to a game you find fun because of the actual mechanics/story or gameplay etc.

d) “i am just throwing money at the dev so they give me digital pixels instead of giving me a fun experience of which i was searching in the first place.” First thing, yes skins are digital pixels that serve no real benefit, but again why throw money at them if you don’t want them? They exist as an optional purchase for people that like the look of them and enjoy kitting their character out in some new outfits/skins, so when brought for the intended reason it’s not really throwing money away as you’re buying something that enhances personal enjoyment/experience/immersion in the game.

As for the last part of that quote, the devs haven’t given you skins etc instead of a fun experience. Yes the devs make skins etc (which help financially support the rest of the game), but they haven’t done this instead of making a fun game. They’ve provided a massive game, with lots of different modes, methods how you can do things etc, which is the fun experience for people to enjoy.

In fact you’ve even mentioned 3/4 of your playtime is funtime? So I’m not sure why you don’t just focus on doing whatever those things are in game and drop this goal of obsessing over gold / buying everything, which is what seems to be the cause of your boredom in the game. Just play because metas are fun to do, the world is fun to explore, pvp, wvw or whatever you find fun, gold will still accumulate and then it’s more fun to spend because you think about your purchase more carefully.

Hope some of that makes sense, but as mentioned at the start maybe I’ve missed the point your getting across.

*also don’t mean for anything above to sound harsh or anything, probably just my poor wording if it comes across that way ^^

Nyx.6532:

2. i lose the interest in playing when anything i can do in the game in a full day of boring grind (which is part of the course with mmorpg’s) i can do in under 10minutes of RL work. it means any ingame effort is a complete and utter wasted of time.

I think the part I bolded is where your issue arises. It’s not par for the course, actually. Poor game design will make you absolutely have to do long stretches of meaningless repetition before you can advance a tiny bit, but that’s not the case here. If you want the maximum shinies in the minimum time, sure, you’ll have to do things beyond tolerance levels to get there.

But if you’re ok to play the game content and now and then check your bank for accumulated mats/currency, you’ll find that you have advanced. I’m interested in the Stalwart Shoulders from PvP/WvW, but I don’t engage meaningfully in those parts of the game. Yet with badges from achievement chests I’ve done all the Big Spender dailies, used the guild boost on WvW reward, and am slowly inching towards my Legacy chest.

Sure I pushed to get my runestone a day from DM so as to collect the new backpack, and yeah it got a -little- tedious doing all those hearts every evening. But I was also enjoying Map chat, group events, and loads of mats and magic accumulation as side effects. Also, I didn’t have to grind it out so fast. I could have done it one night a week and still eventually reach that ascended back.

Would spending some cash on gems for gold shortcut some things like guild hall advancement? Sure would. Why would I do that, though? The game will eventually provide. My cash goes to gems for gem shop items, and an occasional small boost to gold to get TP items that came from the gem shop RNG and can’t be gained in game. I did flat out buy some gold with gems to get my commander tag right before the price went from 100 g to 300 g, as that was time sensitive.

In short, if you feel there are long tasks you must do to “advance” in the game as fast as possible, that could be shortened by gem-bought gold, you’re psyching yourself into not having fun.

Which is fine. Maybe casually going along doing fun stuff and occasionally realizing you can get a new shiny isn’t your style. You might want to try ESO, which has a cosmetics shop but no ability to buy the currency with in-game gold or vice versa, and to make gold you really have to get into a trading guild and meet its requirements to be able to sell to other players (and not all trading guilds are equal, they bid each week on the prime trade hub locations and can lose the trader they had the previous week). Achieves there are per character, too, so you can take years of play to advance each alt to where you want to be. Might suit you, who knows?

There’s nothing left to be said if you just ignore the answer everyone’s been giving you. Having the option to support the game and get geared out is just baffling everyone on how that’s a bad thing in the first place. It really is the previous analogy of standing between two different heights of bushes and starving.

If it’s only for living world then it’s even more baffling. You either want the content or you don’t, which is why someone answered you can watch it on youtube as an alternative option.

Finally it’s just extremely baffling if we’re going into this much detail about open world pve. You don’t even need full ascended for raids.