[Returning player] gem store issues.
I very much doubt that higher purchases will be discounted since gems are linked to gold. Most games don’t allow you to exchange the in game currency with their cash shop currency.
You can always pre-purchase the Ultimate Edition of HoT and receive a 50% discount on the Gems included. Other than that, as posted above, the status quo will remain as you are able to obtain Gems at no real money cost, whatsoever.
Welcome return.
Hey everyone,
I haven’t touched this game in a very long time. Alot has changed and with the new expansion coming out I wanted to give GW2 another try.
After playing a long list of video games, I am kind of disappointed with the current store currency, the gems…
What I am trying to say is, I want to support this game. But you are making it very difficult with these prices and absolutely no discount at larger quantities. There is currently zero benefits into purchasing 800 gems or 8000 gems. Most games nowadays offer it’s customers a discount for the more time they buy for their subscription or for the currency of it’s cash shop.
Can I expect to see something similar done to the gem currency in GW2? or just something that will never happen?
Thanks.
The new approach to cash shops is to hold Sales on the “items” rather then the currency. Bulk discounts create a side effect of the apparent value on items that are hard to dismiss. On top of which you also have gold/gem exchange that would have problems (on top of the mountain of existing ones) where speculation can cause even more volatility due to possible influx of “cheap gems” bought in bulk during seasonal events. This is why many F2P games are starting to adopt a Store sale only strategy.
One example of this is SOE’s Station Cash and Planetside 2. Periodically SOE would have a Double/Triple Station cash weekend, where all currency purchases would yield 2/3x normal per $ amount. However, in game they had single items on daily sale rotations (50%), and about 8 times a year they had discounts on entire categories of weapons and cosmetics (ranging from 10%-90% off in flash sales). If you had a subscription, you also go 500SC a month (which was later converted to a permanent 10% discount in the store).
What happened was people would stock up SC during the double/triple weekends (which also had bulk discounts), and use it only on sales throughout the year. $100 of station cash, and a moderate amount of patience, could unlock all the functionally oriented equipment in the game, with tons of SC left over for future items that eventually go on sale.
Now compare this to GW2 strategy, which uses weekend and single day sales to drive massive amounts of purchases on just cosmetics. It also allows them to stagger sale schedules in order to snag as many people as possible on their highest potential price point. Consider Angel wings….. they largely dismissed them until recently. First they sold the Black ones, which looked nice. Then a month later they sold the White ones, which more people wanted initially. The result? You got people who preferred white wings to buy black ones on speculation that no white ones were coming, then got them to buy them again when the white ones came out. You also got people who were dissatisfied with the black wings (having grown board of them) to buy the new “cooler” white wings at the same price point due to hype. Both of them were also one day sales…. driving the hype through the roof.
I’d rather buy the gems i need for the item i want then feel forced to buy more gems, just to get the discount.
Plus the way the gold/gem exchange is the system couldnt do discounted bundles.
It’s better this way, plus you can buy gems with gold . . .how many of your long video game list can you do that in.