Guild Wars 2

DarksunG.9537:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DarksunG.9537:

So, just to clarify…you’re saying it is 1 FREEKING SLOT for 1 ITEM? For $8+? I can’t even encapsulate in words how much of a rip off that is Anet. The armor is already expensive, the keys are literally legally-distinct gambling, & you’ve put most of the rewards that should be in the game for goals into the store & at the same time you’ve made posts asking us how to fix RNG. Really? Is the continuing issue of rewards not extremely obvious?

I couldn’t have been happier with the value & quality of GW1 when it came out. Anet was amazing, I literally bought items I didn’t want just to support the company. Now It’s the most expensive MMO I’ve ever played. easily. For me to get access to the same quantity & quality of content & rewards I got in other sub MMOs, I would have to spend thousands of dollars per year in GW2 or play for more hours there are in the day with the sole purpose of maximizing gold generation.

You’ve misunderstood what you’re paying for. As Cyninja.2954 said, it’s a convenience multiplier item: for 700 gems, it extends the value of any account bound item you already have. If that’s not convenient for you, don’t get the item.

For me, it’s a great deal — I was expecting to pay 1,000 gems for something like this.

That’s some hard-core rationalization. You act like labeling something a “convenience multiplier item” allows for infinite valuation. If you need to convince yourself that you spent your money well, that’s fine, but don’t treat other people like idiots because they ascribe a reasonable value to a service.

Since the item, in fact, multiplies the convenience of other items, it is a convenience multiplier. A single infinite use item can now be used by a minimum of 5 characters without visiting the bank, which makes it far more convenient.

I’m not arguing that it’s a good deal for you — your definition of convenience is obviously different. However, you are trying to argue that it’s a bad deal for me and I’m not sure how you rationalize that.

Don’t spend the 700 gems if the convenience the item offers you isn’t worth 700 gems. Nothing wrong with that. At the same time, respect that the cost is a bargain to others who have a different opinion about convenience.

I don’t know why I am back at replying in the official forums, but I would like to give ANet’s some feedback.

700 is a lot of gems indeed, but I know where that comes from. ANet won’t be selling more than one copper fed tool anymore after this, so they need to cover the costs. It sounds very very bad, it is very very expensive, but I don’t see greed only behind this.

That said, I also have my complaints on ANet’s recent greed. Think about gem<->gold transactions. Gems are integer (meaning you can’t buy 1.4 gems), but gold is not. In the past, I was able to trade 104 gems and get my gold’s worth of it. Now, I need to sell as many gems as necessary for 1 indivisible gold. Not just that, but the rounding scheme is wrong too. Try buying 10 gold and 100 gold and you will see that 100 gold is cheaper per gem. This is SO WRONG, ANet.

Finally my feedback. The shared storage is a great idea. It should be a meta-bag on the inventory’s UI (to the left) that you can’t replace with other bags, but you can re-arrange its position (like some players are asking, put it in the middle, at the end, and so on). And why only 5 slots?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Whether you bought one when it first came out or four six months ago, make sure your request is gracious and polite — you have a far better chance of success than if you assume you “deserve” a refund for any of a variety of reasons, both good and bad. Customer Service personnel are only human, their options are limited, and you want them to spend any extra time on your ticket looking for a creative solution, not butting heads with a customer who assumes that “always right” means “always deserving.”

I agree.

And as someone who used to work in a somewhat similar role (totally separate issues, but still people emailing to ask us to fix their problems for them) good spelling, punctuation and grammar and taking the time to explain the situation clearly helps too. (They probably can check your account to find out which items you’ve bought, when you bought them and which ones are duplicates, but they’ll have a lot of tickets to go through so explaining it in the message would make it easier.)

E.g. “Please can you refund 3 of the 4 Copper-fed Salvage-o-Matics I bought back in December, now that I only need 1?” is much more likely to get a quick response (and probably positive) response than “i got 2 many TP salvge kits when do i get my gems back????”

Not that I’m accusing anyone at Anet of being a grammar kitten but when you’ve got 50 emails to get through the ones who look like they couldn’t be bothered to take the time to explain their request, and which are therefore going to take additional time to answer because you have to decipher what they’re talking about and maybe look up their records first, go to the bottom of the list.

Neural.1824:

I don’t think refunds are required for this sort of change, unless maybe you purchased a 2nd or so slavage-o-matic within the last month.

Outside of that, I’d rather see Anet implement something that lets you trade in an extra item like that for some other benefit of equal value. Maybe forge 4 copper-feds into a silver fed, or something like that. Even still, Anet doesn’t have to do to anything in these cases.

I would love to be able to trade in duplicates for other items of like value. I bought all of my salvage-o-matics some time ago and would not expect any refunds. I did get a lot of great usage out of them as well as the convenience of not having to move one around all the time so they were well worth the cost to me. I think it is more that I hate waste and would like to be able to retool or recycle duplicates in some way.

Anet, please have a recycling program or let us have a recipe for the Mystic Forge that with a little bit of work we could transform our duplicates into useful components or items of equal value.

DeviantShark.6548:

for me the problem is not the price, its the slots/price/limit ratio.

700 gems for 4 slots, times five (discounted 2800 gems for 20 slots) would be reasonable for me. On the other hand it is amazing QoL

The limit will be expanded over time, just like max bank slots and collection expansions.

very disappointed addition to the game. Each shared slot, should at least give space for 5 items and not 1. Sharing 5 items it total is not even enough, for food/siege weapons etc. To bad i already bought before i stumbled on this thread. Won’t ever make this same mistake again. But then again you already have my money, so why care.

Just sell us 5 slots for 700 gems, be nice to your fans. Why capitalize so much money on making your players able to appreciate the game more.

[Suggestion]

The new shared inventory slot is in theory one of the best qol feature and many have wished for this since the beta. But as it is the slots are way too expensive and to limited in numbers to be of benefit if you don’t own gemstore items.
That’s why I had the idea to bring another slot in the game:
Of course the shared inventory bag slot. We have so much stuff we need on all of your toons that even a full bag of 20 items could probably be not enough, but it would help. So the idea is an item you can buy in the gemstore which unlocks a merchant, where you can buy 20 slot inventory bags. For the start maybe you could buy a t1 one bag which you could use one per character. With this, more bags and containers could be added in the future.
But what for the inventory slots that are now to buy?
My idea is to change them so that they still have their use. Separate this slot from the inventory and make them into slots you can pin to your interface, for example you could pin this slots over your minimap. Items laid in there would be permanent visible to have quick access. This idea would separate the shared inventory slots strong enough from the shared accountbag, so that they still have use and give us the shared inventory we desperately need.

Now that I have had some time to think on this I will say the following:

It is a good idea, but VERY poorly implemented.

IF they had released this at the start of the game there would be no problem at all with the player base. Simply because they could have bought them, and just one of each of the “special items” and been done with it. There are only two ways I can see for them to release it now and keep the customer happy.

1) They didn’t have the tech at the time to make an account bound slot, so they should reimburse everyone that bought spare items now that they have it. Customer happy!
2) They had the tech but decided if they waited to release it until the players bought many of the special items they would make some temporary cash that would be reimbursed at a later date. Again customer happy!

They however choose to go with a third option and that was having an arbitrary cutoff timer in place so as to make themselves seem greedy in the eyes of the customer thus making them unhappy.

edit: clarity

The price is high except for people who have bought the 800gold + Permanent Bank access express , which in turn is a RNG item from Black Lion Chests.

I feel that they should have a cheaper one for those of us who don’t have or don’t plan on getting the unlimited salvage (copper fed salvagematic) , unlimited merchant/bank, unlimited harvesting tools, mystic forge conduit.

It really is only for PvEers, because in PvP you won’t be using any of the harvest tools or the mystic forge.

For WvWers , it really is only for the unlimited harvest tools , mystic forge/ bank (if you forget your siege), and copper fed salvage.

Pittcrew.6592:

A suggestion for refunds/compensation for items that are not Gem-store bought
These wouldn’t fully be enough, perhaps, but it would help to mitigate frustrations.

I would recommend the following trades be made available somewhere:

• Permanent Bank Access Express = 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold)
• Personal Merchant Express = 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold)
• Personal Trader Express = 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold)
• Permanent Self-Style Hair Kit = 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold)
• 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold) = 10x Shared Inventory Slot (Silver)
• 1x Shared Inventory Slot (Gold) = 1x Black Lion Chest Key
• 10x Shared Inventory Slot (Silver) = 1x Black Lion Chest Key
• 1x Bank Tab Expansion = 5x Shared Inventory Slot (Silver) [you can over-buy]
• 1x Bag Slot Expansion = 3x Shared Inventory Slot (Silver) [you can over-buy]

*don’t do the last 2 trades if you ever plan on expanding those limits
*note that Gold slots would be according to my suggestion earlier, in Page 3 on this thread (at least for now). it would let ANY item fit in it; has a limit of 5 currently, would suggest 10. Silver slots would fit anything except for the following infinite-use-items; would have a limit of 40

Silver Shared Inventory Slot exceptions:

• Permanent Bank Access Express
• Personal Merchant Express
• Personal Trader Express
• Permanent Self-Style Hair Kit
• Any Infinite-use Havesting Tools
• Any Salvage-o-Matic
• Permanent Royal Terrace/Captain Airship Pass
• Home Portal Stone
• Maybe something else if I’m missing it

Silver Shared Inventory Slot non-exceptions:

• Any remote Mystic Forge
• Herta
• Mawdrey II
• Princess
• Star of Gratitude
• Fractal Reliquary
• Karmic Converter
• Ley-Energy Matter Converter

Gold slot would cost 700 Gems
Silver slot would cost 50, 225/5, 400/10

I like this idea but I don’t think they’ll make it that cheap. 50 gems is about 62 cents (USD) ; it costs about 10 gold for 50 gems. If they do make this happen I feel that it would be about 100-150 gems an inventory slot ($1.25-$1.88 USD each).

I was thinking this “silver” slot would be a good option for people that crafted/quested to get Ascended Backpieces that cost more than 200 gold shared among their characters (i.e. Spinal Blades).

Arenanet has a dilemma in that they cannot make it too cheap relative to Bank tab slots and character-bound inventory bag slots. Who would buy them over accountwide bag slots?

At the current pricing:

• 1 bank tab (30 slots , 600 gems) = 20 gems per inventory slot
• 1 inventory bag slot (that can fit a 20 slot bag , 400 gems) = 20 gems per inventory slot
• 1 account-wide inventory item slot = 560 gems to 700 gems per inventory slot

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Aragorn.5462:

Would it be possible for a GM to give us the logic behind the no-refund policy that is inconsistent with the previous times they have offered refunds in the past (harvesting tool and wardrobe changes etc)?

Thing is about this refund policy, it’s actually not that inconsistent. When they changed the tools to account, they offered refunds on duplicates for those that wanted them because this was Anet directly changing how those tools operated. With Wardrobe, all those multiple gemstore skins bought suddenly were available for any character to apply at whim at only a transmutation charge cost, so again they refunded the duplicate purchases back to about a year I think? Maybe to release but I’m not sure on that one.

With this, the tools still operate how they did before, the wardrobe system still works how it did, so it isn’t logical from Anet to go way back and give refunds on items you bought to give yourself a convenience. Retail stores have far less friendly return policies than Anet, and digital stores are often even more stringent.

Note: I’m against the high price of this. I think it’s nothing more than a greedy cash grab, far too outrageous of a price. Btw, to those saying that paying with gold isn’t making Anet money, did you hit your head and forget that all the gems you can buy with gold were sold by other players? Whether you yourself pay with gold, or $, Anet is in effect making the same money off of you (although, because of the exchange rate you could argue Anet makes more money off of buying gems with gold)

This is about the best logic I’ve seen, sad it hasn’t come from ANET :/ That said while I understand your point I’ll still disagree. I think this change does in fact impact the functionality of all the convenience items like the terrace pass, salvage kits etc. While the items themselves are not directly affected as in a direct change to the salvage o matic, the purpose of having one versus many is deeply affected by this change. It is no longer needed to have several. So while I see your point that ANET didn’t change the items we’re requesting a refund on (strictly duplicates) they did negatively impact those who worked around the system of un-shared inventory slots while others that are new to the game don’t have this dilemma and know to just buy one of each item and move on.

Ugh, I looked at this and said, it’s cool, and I definitely want it, but not for the price. I’ll just wait, and even then I only need one, not two. But now I know exactly why I want five. One for my Copper fed, one for my silver fed, and the other three for my eaters.

so if i buy this and put a set of unlimited salvage tools in them….they work on all characters?

Duke Nukem.6783:

so if i buy this and put a set of unlimited salvage tools in them….they work on all characters?

No, you do have to equip them on each toon, and remember to put them back in these slots when you log off…:) EDIT: If you meant the unlimited gathering tools…lol my content reader is off today…the salvage-o-matics should work just fine, i think…

Duke Nukem.6783:

so if i buy this and put a set of unlimited salvage tools in them….they work on all characters?

Yea salvage kits will work just fine.

I am wondering why a maximum of 5 account slots were chosen as the number instead of 6? 6 makes sense because of the nature of ascended items. With 6 we would have been able to store a full set of ascended armor to use across multiple characters or even 1 each of an ascended backpiece, 1 amulet, and 2 of each of ascended jewelry to share across our whole account.

Any plans for the future in expanding this number?

Actually then you will want 7 slots. Because the aquabreather is a piece of armor that replaces your head slot. And you lose the 6th rune bonus unless you have the same rune on the aquabreather as well…

…but lolunderwatercombat, amirite?

Wouldn’t it be 9, or the full armor plus at least two weapons? Or 15, for the trinkets, too?

Despite being account bound, ascended gear (and gear in general) isn’t really intended to be shuffled around to multiple characters on a regular basis due to variance in builds. They made it account bound so that you don’t have to lose that investment if you decide you want to get rid of the character. It wasn’t really intended to be a “craft one set and never again” thing.

These slots are a convenience feature intended for things like eaters, salvage kits, map keys, and other such things that you wouldn’t want to be constantly moving around, but would rather just leave in the slot.

That said, i don’t see any reason for the arbitrary 5 slot limit, or why a single slot costs so much. They should have just make this a bag slot.

hennrick.4623:

Dear diary, today i saw how much the nearsight of the players can get.

People asking for more slots so they can trade gear between characters. Too bad that not only the potential 6 professions of your account would not like to see the armored gear of the other 3 but also that the gear is soulbound on equip, making the operation impossible even with a bank.

People asking for more slots for stuff that is cheap, or that is useful only in situational cases, or both. Stuff like crowbars and alikes for HoT or for food, that might and might not be wanted for every character on the account.

People saying “Duh else you can get to the HoT”, avoiding the fact that this makes you go across 2 loading screens and that ejects you out of your current map, like just after defeating Tequatl. Not a big deal for those that stay always in HotM probably, but lucky them then.

And then, people completely disregarding the economics of the game, where a copper salvage fed worth 800 can be shared with every other character with a price of 700 for a potential value of 800 x character gems making it useful with only a second character, completely overriding the needs of a player to buy stuff more than once and reducing the potential income overall of the company.
Also people calling Anet greedy for something not forced and that makes a player spend less money for an higher value service is plain ridiculous to me. The only complain that i have is that you have to necessarily have bought something with an high gem price before making a good use of it, so i would have liked it to cost less or have the ability to “boundle” it with gem store items.
Maybe is not everyone’ s piece of cake, but still has its worth for those who like it.

Also, for those who are asking refunds for items already bought multiple times: you have my sympathy and i hope Anet will manage something for you, but i hardly doubt you will get one. Simply because you don’ t have the right to do so. If something is broken or is not deemed fitting then there can be refund rights, but if something becomes outdated ( which is not the exact case, but is similar enough ) you still have benefited of that thing for a long time, and you decided to invest your income into that. No one forced you to do so and no one admitted that there would not be a way to share items for your characters ( and actually that already existed for a long time ), that was your choice weighted by you.

That is some exquisitely worded buyer’s Stockholm syndrome. Sorry, but people saying that 5 shared slots has the same value to them as an entire game are likely rationalizing a purchase. I mean you’re saying it has as much value as most of HoT. To say that people criticizing the price are “nearsighted” is irrational at best. People have plenty of reason to be upset.

I’ve seen people saying they use the slots for their unlimited tools. Can you use them directly from those slots or do you still have to equip them? If you still have to equip them, how is this any different than getting a personal bank contract?

I think there’s actually a legitimate reason why gem store items cannot be too good.

Look at boosters and BL keys. How can that possibly be cost effective? If you buy an item booster, I doubt it’d ever come close to making its cost. But you can get these just by playing the game. It makes sense that the intent is to get them as such, and you pay a premium to have them without playing the game.

If gem store items were too good for their value, then they would start to be viewed as mandatory, and that would have pay to win vibes. Take the watchwork sprocket pick, at which point was actually able to pay for itself a lot better than the other items— that caused a ton of trouble. It wasn’t mandatory, but it was a definite advantage even against similarly priced mining tools.

As is, the slots are meant to be used with other gem store items. Having a copper salvage kit means that if you have 3 characters, you will have almost tripled its effectiveness, and thus won’t have to buy 3 of them separately. If you buy one copper salvage kit; you can pay 700 more gems to have it be used on all other characters, which would be cheaper than even buying one more copper salvage kit— making it more effective on even someone with 2 characters.

(Though that certainly is an issue when it comes to people that did bought multiple copies). And we certainly have complaints about that, meaning that, in some cases, the slots are too effective and have made purchases redundant. For the price of 2800 gems, you will have gained the efficiency of people that have spend many thousands of gems for all those copies— there’s already an imbalance there.

It all depends on what you value. For example, I don’t raid, so I don’t see the need for high end level 80 food when there’s much cheaper food that’s almost as effective. I would find it a waste for my needs. I also think legendaries are also an expensive waste of time too, all for a skin and just a stat change. But hey, I just don’t bother with them if I don’t like them.

But this is from the perspective of someone that doesn’t buy gems with money. Gold can’t be redeemed for money, so the opportunity cost is obviously different. I also think this will only be the beginning, so we should have more slots to accommodate armor sets as well. But it really only works if you buy them in order— for example it makes more sense to have a good deal of bank tabs before buying a storage expander.

Sell the deluxe version of GW2 for 500 gems again.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’ve seen people saying they use the slots for their unlimited tools. Can you use them directly from those slots or do you still have to equip them? If you still have to equip them, how is this any different than getting a personal bank contract?

Generally the only reason people are using those slots for unlimited tools is for dedicated harvesting runs for rich nodes/permanent farms. You still have to equip them, but people like those slots for that use because personal bank contracts are expensive, but often people that regularly harvest daily perma-nodes camp characters at a specific place. If you’re only gathering one type of thing (say just plants, or just ore) then a 700 gem slot is cheaper than a bank contract. however, depending on exchange rates, 3 slots would probably more expensive (and less useful long term) for this purpose.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’ve seen people saying they use the slots for their unlimited tools. Can you use them directly from those slots or do you still have to equip them? If you still have to equip them, how is this any different than getting a personal bank contract?

You put the gemstore tools in there and have regular tools on your chars. Then when you start playing a char, click on the gemstore tools to equip. When you stop playing, click on the regular tools in the inventory to put the gemstore tools back in there. You just need to get in the habit of putting them back in inventory each time, and it’s a heck of a lot faster than running to the bank to deposit them to switch between characters. Personal bank contracts are much better than buying more than two of the account wide slots, but supply is so low that not everyone can get one of those.

True. I’ll probably buy a few slots specifically for the copper fed and for those contract NPC’s. It’ll take a couple seconds more than if specific items were in a slot but I’d have greater access to everything on all characters. To me that’s the best use for those slots and the bank NPC would be cheaper in the long run if they expanded the number of slots you could have (especially if you use gold to buy gems).

Edit: Nevermind. Looks like some people had the same idea and bought up all of the bank contracts. Or maybe it was just one person.

I love the idea of these and the price seems more than acceptable overall (frankly, if I were running GW2, I can’t imagine releasing these for this price — a single account-bound gemstore purchase stuck in one of these and it’s already losing them money? Madness, but good for me!)

The HUGE problem I have: The bulk discount. I’m a small-time, occasional purchaser. This isn’t going to change. I have only so much real-life money and only so much time to play. If these were 700 gems each, flat rate, I’d end up buying all 5 of them eventually, one at a time. But here’s the thing, and you can call me stubborn or bitter if you want: I am not going to buy ANY of these if I know I’m getting screwed and being charged more for them than the guy next door to me is, just because he’s got a better job and can reasonably buy all five of them at once. And yeah, I could save up my gem allowances for a while if I really wanted to; but frankly, spending two or three months sitting outside the shop with my nose pressed up against the glass going “I wish I could buy FunThing, but I have to save all my money for SeriousThing” is something I get enough of in real life. If the GW2 marketing department wants to start making me feel like a bitter second-class citizen in-game as well, I have no reason to stick around.

1 for copper salvager
1 for mystic salvager or silver salvager or BL salvager
1 for MF node
1 for Airship/Terrace access item
1 for… hmm, I dunno. I’d stick the home instance portal in there.

That’s how I would use them. If I had them. Which I don’t.

I do agree with most of what was said: it is a really useful tool. However, 700 gems for only 1 slot is too much overpriced.
I would agree to pay 700 gems for 3 slots, or 1000 gems for 5 slots, for instance.

GM Awesomeness.8619:

As for refunds: if you’ve had these account-bound items for ages, we won’t be doing refunds because you’ve already derived substantial benefit. If, however, you bought them more recently, we’re doing refunds on a case-by-case basis.

Curious, any one had any luck with these sort of tickets? So far mine seems to not be very fruitful despite there being clear precedent that gem store items made either fully or partially redundant, or having their functionality changed, by game updates can be subject for refunds.

Crise.9401:

GM Awesomeness.8619:

As for refunds: if you’ve had these account-bound items for ages, we won’t be doing refunds because you’ve already derived substantial benefit. If, however, you bought them more recently, we’re doing refunds on a case-by-case basis.

Curious, any one had any luck with these sort of tickets? So far mine seems to not be very fruitful despite there being clear precedent that gem store items made either fully or partially redundant, or having their functionality changed, by game updates can be subject for refunds.

No such luck everyone seems to be getting the same response, “It’s not possible” which seems silly, but that’s what they want to say.

Aragorn.5462:

Crise.9401:

GM Awesomeness.8619:

As for refunds: if you’ve had these account-bound items for ages, we won’t be doing refunds because you’ve already derived substantial benefit. If, however, you bought them more recently, we’re doing refunds on a case-by-case basis.

Curious, any one had any luck with these sort of tickets? So far mine seems to not be very fruitful despite there being clear precedent that gem store items made either fully or partially redundant, or having their functionality changed, by game updates can be subject for refunds.

No such luck everyone seems to be getting the same response, “It’s not possible” which seems silly, but that’s what they want to say.

So what is the point of encouraging people to send tickets in at all then, I wonder… that is just silly.

Unless they want to create unnecessary work for themselves of course.

This is a great quality of life item but it’s laughably overpriced. I mean almost $10 for one inventory slot?

Who runs your gemstore? All this kind of stuff does is drive players away.

I only put things there I use very frequently on ALL characters.

1) Copper-fed noisemaker
2) Mystic salvage kit
3) Permanent bank access
4) Tarrktun portal (for lack of a proper merchant contract, can sell stuff with it.)
5) Under consideration, currently running with mystic forge conduit.

I rearranged my storage to have other stuff I use frequently in the first pane.

In retrospect, I would’ve been just as happy with 4 slots but the discount when buying all 5 tempted me. And I already had the gems anyway.

Crise.9401:

GM Awesomeness.8619:

As for refunds: if you’ve had these account-bound items for ages, we won’t be doing refunds because you’ve already derived substantial benefit. If, however, you bought them more recently, we’re doing refunds on a case-by-case basis.

Curious, any one had any luck with these sort of tickets? So far mine seems to not be very fruitful despite there being clear precedent that gem store items made either fully or partially redundant, or having their functionality changed, by game updates can be subject for refunds.

I bought two more royal terrace passes in december, will be able to refund them and I will be putting that towards the new inventory slots, not my ideal solution, (I have much more than those two passes) but acceptable. Feel bad for those who have even more than i do for a longer period of time.

I would gladly pay 1000 for 5 slots but the current price is ridiculous. You really need to be running these kinds of things past focus groups.

Susulemon.3204:

Just sell us 5 slots for 700 gems, be nice to your fans. Why capitalize so much money on making your players able to appreciate the game more.

I totally wish they would do this. It would make players extremely happy, especially me. But I’m pretty sure Anet has already run the number projections on this and their strategy seems designed to maximize profits, which makes sense – for them.

Think of it this way: If they did sell the current 5 slots for 700, I’d guesstimate at least 90% of the active players would buy that – Today. That’s a HUGE chuck of gems up front. But, there is little long term gain for them if 90% of the players did that. They could of course increase the max number of these slots to 6, or 7, or 10 etc over time, and sell those “extra” slots for 200 each or something. This actually sounds like a “good” model for the players and Anet, but then you compare it to the current strategy…

You start with sticker shock and single slot pricing that sounds unreasonable. Let players know right away this is a costly thing. The die-hards and casuals with cash will get it anyway and make excuses to justify it, so they’ll snag 10-20% of players right off the bat. The rest will fume and gripe and wait for a better deal later. After a while they do a better “sale” and drop the individual price and group price, which now that time has moved on a bit, seems more appealing to the eager to get these but still on the fence players. So now you get maybe another 20-40% of players to fork over a large amount. More time passes and eventually they come up with the “super deal”, and increase the number of total slots (maybe to 6, or 7 or 10?), and lower the individual cost or group cost of the slots by like 20%-30% or more. Even though the pricing is now closer in line to strategy 1, it’s still far more costly. But at this point the price seems “reasonable” or even a steal. This is the time where all those “THANK YOU ANET!” folks will pop up on the forums and such, saying how much they are feeling the love, how much the company cares, etc. Suddenly that “appreciation” you are talking about will be there and all is forgiven. This is also where the last hold-outs and skeptics will finally cave in.

In the end, the second model is a far better business model than the first. It’s a much better long term strategy. And if I was trying to maximize profits, it’s what I’d do.

Nope not buying it (them). Because Anet has repeatedly disappointed me, I have stopped supporting the gem store. And yes I understand that’s how they make their money. I’ve spent more than a sub in the past.

5 is more than 4 … you can justify any number you want to make sense.

PopeUrban.2578:

Despite being account bound, ascended gear (and gear in general) isn’t really intended to be shuffled around to multiple characters on a regular basis due to variance in builds. They made it account bound so that you don’t have to lose that investment if you decide you want to get rid of the character. It wasn’t really intended to be a “craft one set and never again” thing.

Which has become a bit unnecessary since you can now salvage the ascended gear I and into useful stuff.

Still feels silly that masterworks, rares, and exotics are soulbound while ascended are account bound.

thats the point of the gem store, if your happy with the game you have the option to contribute, if you are not you dont. Much better than a Sub.

Re the invetory slot, I live the idea of giving instant access to my bank for all characters with 1 slot, decent QOL upgrade imo.

Shared Inventory Slots should be bags with more slots that hold one type of item (ie):
-6 slot inventory bag (only Ascended Armor)
-6 Slot inventory bag (only hold Ascended Trinkets/Backpiece)
-? Slot inventory bag (only holds Ascended Weapons)

vesica tempestas.1563:

thats the point of the gem store, if your happy with the game you have the option to contribute, if you are not you dont. Much better than a Sub.

Re the invetory slot, I live the idea of giving instant access to my bank for all characters with 1 slot, decent QOL upgrade imo.

Talking like everyone has that item. Do you have any idea how expensive that item is in actual money terms?

It’s 3200 gold.
100USD = 8000 gems = ~1000g

$320 USD
I live in Australia so that’s $460 for the instant bank access item.

Yeah sure every other player is going to spend nearly half a grand on one kittening optional video game item lmao.

wow… this thread is hard to read!
I mean even I wrote here multiple times and I can’t follow anymore with whom/what I discussed…

With my current count (well like gaile asked) here are at least 3 different kind of discussions and opinions in here (1. refunds, 2. price problems, 3. suggestions/like it) and to make it even harder to write/read at least 4 long totally different threads have been merged in here.

Actually gaile opened this thread and her post has now been merged and changed to position 18.
If really any dev reads this thread (like gaile wrote in her post) and at least understands any part of it, well I can only say that I have big respect for this person!

Bomber.3872:

wow… this thread is hard to read!
I mean even I wrote here multiple times and I can’t follow anymore with whom/what I discussed…

With my current count (well like gaile asked) here are at least 3 different kind of discussions and opinions in here (1. refunds, 2. price problems, 3. suggestions/like it) and to make it even harder to write/read at least 4 long totally different threads have been merged in here.

Actually gaile opened this thread and her post has now been merged and changed to position 18.
If really any dev reads this thread (like gaile wrote in her post) and at least understands any part of it, well I can only say that I have big respect for this person!

I don’t think they read it.

Airyll.7849:

I have fifty character slots, ArenaNet. Fifty. Five-oh. A number that will increase, because I like making characters and I like making a variety of builds and generally I like your game. These shared inventory slots are designed for people like me, who have a minor army of characters at our disposal.

And speaking as a very clear target of your marketing, I have to make a request: please pass the illegal substances you’re smoking over to me so I can get high with you. I might actually see some imaginary value in your newest shared inventory slot if you did that.

Why would I spend 700 gems on one slot when, for only 100 gems more, I can buy a whole new character and start with twenty free slots, discounting the additional 4 I get from the early level bag and also discounting the easily spammable free 5 slot bags from easy champions on low level 1-15 maps. I can make a mule for only 100 gems more and they have twenty times the space this slot does, as well as give me a new character to play with in my spare time.

Why should I spend 700 gems on one shared inventory slot when I can just buy an extra bank tab for less than that, and then use one not shared inventory slot on all my characters for consumable bank merchants? Which, I might add, are easy to get for free when you have the vast amount of characters I do. I’m drowning in the consumable bank merchants and they sure don’t cost me 700 gems even if I did purchase them.

You’re mad.

The person who saw this item and said “Yeah, 700 gems is definitely a reasonable price for one slot” is mad.

Is it convenient? Definitely. Is it ultimately practical or as convenient? No, not by a long shot.

50 Chr. slots… So you bought 45, that is 36.000 gems. And you are complaining about 700 gems? Duh…

Ha ha, well, we’ll just see how many they sell of those

None for this account, not even close, they would have to knock a zero off that price.

The unfortunate thing about this thread

1) Three different conversations that probably would have been better kept seperate
2) Lack of enthusiasm on all three topics to actually affect any change :/

The last time the community convinced ANET to change it’s mind we hit 60 pages in the first 24 hours, and another 60 in the next 24 hours. This has barely hit 11 in 24 hours which means they’re not concerned about offending too many people.

In general it’s actually a decent deal for people like me, IF they were to refund the duplicate items we have.

I thought this was an amazing deal, I couldn’t wait to buy the gems to purchase them. I thought we’d get to exchange/refund the previous purchased tools (like in the past) but then I came to the forums and found out that ANET is not doing that.

Wow, I went immediately from very happy to very sad.

This just doesn’t sit well with me. I’ve always thought their Customer Service was great, they’ve always treated me well. Their current response has stained that perception and I don’t like that.

I’d really like to see the top notch Customer Service I know and love return.

WoW,i can not believe how many lazy people is out there.No wonder everyone complains how hard getting legendary is.

Before this sale,people willing to spend over 5 k gems to buy tons of Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic for multiple chars,just because they are lazy to use bank in pvp lobby,which teleports you back wherever you were.

Loging one char,and put 5 items in bank,and reloging on desired char,takes 20 sec.Ye,complain more,how these sales sux,and you are first to spend money on them…

Laziness is sickness.