Guild Wars 2

i refuse to repeat myself.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

This has always been how cash shops work in MMOs. Always.

Sorry but if you thought this one was going to different for whatever reason you were only fooling yourself.

Echarmion.1893:

Snores.7806:

What happens if you’d like more Bank space? Or you have 5 toons and would like to roll another ? Or maybe you’d like a semi-decent armor skin and didn’t want to grind 40 dungeons to get it ?

So you are unsatisfied with getting 5 Characters to level 80 (which is hundreds of hours of playtime), along with two different PVP modes to keep you occupied for the 50$ you paid

LOL hundreds of hours of playtime for 5 level 80’s, silly you can get to level 80 in a matter of hours not days,weeks, months literally 5-8 played hours per character. Heres a hint you can max all trade skills multi-times, it takes roughly 20-30gold, a few crafting boosts and you’re good to go.

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

Asglarek.8976:

Echarmion.1893:

Snores.7806:

What happens if you’d like more Bank space? Or you have 5 toons and would like to roll another ? Or maybe you’d like a semi-decent armor skin and didn’t want to grind 40 dungeons to get it ?

So you are unsatisfied with getting 5 Characters to level 80 (which is hundreds of hours of playtime), along with two different PVP modes to keep you occupied for the 50$ you paid

LOL hundreds of hours of playtime for 5 level 80’s, silly you can get to level 80 in a matter of hours not days,weeks, months literally 5-8 played hours per character. Heres a hint you can max all trade skills multi-times, it takes roughly 20-30gold, a few crafting boosts and you’re good to go.

so essentially instead of seeing the imaginative outside world, you bought/ got from the sky 20 – 30 gold for a character and just grinded crafting for 5 to 8 hours? What fun is in that? I would not even deem you able to comment on this game then, because you obviously did not explore 99% of it.
If I invest 6-10 hours into GW2 daily, even with raising my profession up, the maximum I’ll go up will be 10 – 12 levels. Not more. Having 2 level 80s and raising another character up I feel as if I already had the moneys worth of this game, just because how much time I invested in it, so if it suddenly broke or I got bored of it, I wouldn’t regret buying it.

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

THANK YOU! I only just found this gem of a thread with it’s decent discussion and through all the posts and the emergence of the real conspiracy screamers, you’re the only person who pointed out where League offers up exactly the kind of cash shop AND it’s also the most popular game on the planet…

GOOD GAME =/= PROFITABLE GAME

GW2, may have made fat stacks. But that isn’t to say

PROFITABLE GAME =/= GOOD GAME

The churn and burn ethos is also commonly attributed to Robert A kotick of Activision, as well as EA games who are two publishers who quite literally have made such monumentally STUPID gaffes such as using the word “exploit” when talking about a much loved franchise, Call of Duty, or monumentally STUPID marketing schemes such as the “sin to win” competition on the release of dante’s inferno, lets not mention the fake christian picket line either… or the “your mom will hate it” dead space 2 commercial.

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

But the cash shop is optional here too and the exchange rate was clearly not meant for players to spend their cash in order to get gold. Unless you have a 1000 loose dollars in your pocket somewhere. You can keep a competitive edge completely ignoring the cash shop and you can get skins without spending real money, but buying gems with gold. :/

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W scamming model.

I don’t know what is it with you people seeing pay to win here. You know what would be pay to win? If you couldn’t get the items by actually PLAYING the game. What couldn’t you get so far?

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

it is the thing of balance between grinding and paying… do you think things are balanced? pls enlighten me since im not into paid, does each member of team have to pay 5 tickets or 5 tickets for the whole team? is it balanced?

and saying that this game has better game shop than others is ridiculous since this game is buy to play, and game shop is for “cosmetics only”. so you can not compare it to free to play games that make money in game shop only. now how exactly is paying to play tournament cosmetic? i am talking about principle. this is pvp part of the game, basically paying to even play. again i understand that i can also grind my way into paid tournaments, but what do you thin anets real reason behind this system is? dividing pro from casual or money? i mean really… there are much better ways of dividing those two groups, and since their paid system did exactly the opposite, anet is gonna put ranking now as it should have from start… but does that mean paid tournaments are going out? it remains to be seen.

at leas when they put ranking system, pro are gonna grind tickets in free tournaments but with paid environment, which means there are gonna be even less good teams out there that can get their hands on tickets. are they gonna buy them in game shop? yeah, right. so there we go with the “lets make money by selling tickets so people can play the game they already bought as buy to play” disguised in “we want to separate pro players from the casual players” idea.

an this is only pvp which is more vulnerable since less people play it. and if you go to pve part of the forum, there is a lot going on there also on this pay to win or whatnot subject…

but yeah, maybe im just paranoid since our pay to win is much better than some other games have it:P

Didnt take part in them, not a PvP player myself but I beleive everyone taking part will require 5 tickets to participate!

But keep in mind buying the tickets its not the only way you can get them and thats what keeps it balanced. If you’re a person who has money but not time you can put in some money and buy the tickets. If you have time but not money you can complete PVP daily achievemtns and get free tickets, you can play regular PvP matchs and get free tickets as you level up in PvP rank or you can participate in Free tournaments and get rewarded with free tickets! Even if you do no PvP whatsoever playing anything in the game allows you to buy your 5 tickets right now for 1g 250s more or less! (buying gems with in game money)

further more participating in paid tournaments reward you with gems as well if you do well! coming first twice will get you enough gems to buy 30 tickets

I am sorry but you’re the one who decided the cash shop is just cosmetic no one said that cash shop will be exclusively cosmetic! there are no required Items and you can purchase anything from it without even using money but cosmetic? its definitely not the case plenty of examples that arent cosmetic such as boosters, bankers, inventory expansion etc…

Anyhow its really not an issue! its not hard to earn 1.2g can be done in a day easily!
and if you like PvP then why would it be a big deal taking part in PvP that will get you free tickets + you finish daily pvp achievements and monthly pvp achievements that get you even more tickets!

Its not a pay to win, its a pay to save time! which is how it should be! Paid touraments are meant to be hardcore tournament with greater rewards! but no reason why you cant have great pvp doing the free tournaments ! I dont see why hardcore PvPers will want to do paid tournaments and nothing else! is there a good reason why paid tournaments shouldnt be that special occation you engage in after earning a good number of tickets?

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

Are you sure? unless things changed since last I played league you had to unlock your favorite hereos which you could do by spending money or playing the game! how is that really any different ? both cash shops are optional ! bought give you a way to aquire what you want even if you’re not willing to spend money!

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

Nope, you get 10 free characters every week and you can unlock characters with the points earned in game. Unlocking one, even the most expensive one, is a matter of a few games. It’s a very quick process, I don’t play it a lot or regularly and I’ve already bought way more characters than I could (and want to) use. And used real money only for skins. And I didn’t need the skins, I just wanted to support the developers, since the game is free.

I’m starting to think that people who complain about “grindy” have never played an RPG before. Every RPG has some form of a grind and about every MMO does. It’s impossible for companies to constantly push out enough content to satisfy the hardcore gamers who revolve their life around the game. This is where a grind is used to keep them occupied as new content is released.

This game has very little grind. Do you need the handful of ascended items? No. Will they give you a significant advantage over exotics? No. Do you need legendary weapons? No. Do they give a significant advantage over exotics? No.

I’ll also add that this game had no monthly fee hence the cash shop. They also have no obligation to keep pushing out new content. There’s enough content to justify the $60 price.

Misconception 1:

“You don’t NEED the gear to play the game so it’s not an issue”

Response:
We don’t need to log on at all if we don’t want to it’s not mandatory, but it’s certainly part of the game and or progression, if you never feel like you’re going anywhere then what’s the point?

Misconception 2:

“Grind is an inevitable part of an RPG experience”

Response:
There’s no reason to make it the BE ALL and END ALL of your progression either. Easing the grind into a game, then hitting them with a huge increase in curve, only serves to highlight and exacerbate any form of serious grind centric content thereafter.

Misconception 3: ( and it’s a BIG one)
“They have no subscription, and don’t have to keep releasing new content”

Response:
Then why use that as a major selling point? why even open that can of worms? why place yourself in that obligation? in fact, when someone posted a thread stating they didn’t have to add new content outside of purchasable expansions, as long as they fix their broken bloody game. It was in fact met with staunch opposition and argument from players.

enough content to justify the 60 dollars? perhaps, but many wouldn’t have bought the game on that strength alone (and it’s not a strong one) and you lot know FULL WELL that they wouldn’t

Response to Response #1:

Only like three (?) slots currently have ascended items and legendary weapons are primarily for the visual effects. It’s a very minor part of progression in the game assuming you even care to have the 1% (guesstimate) increase in stats over exotics.

Response to Response #2:

Grinding is not the be all, end all of progression. Like I said above, the difference between legendary weapons to exotic weapons and ascended gear to exotic gear is so small that you’d likely not notice a difference. It’s only those hardcore players that want absolutely the best in slot for their tunes that would like care.

Without a “grind” then you’d have them on the forum complaining about nothing to do. It’s a no win scenario since they’ll complain about one thing or another. Anet can only release content so quickly and they don’t want to overwhelm all of the other players with content that they can’t keep up with.

Response to Response #3:

I was just being realistic to justify the initial cost. As an MMO, it’s expected that content is rolled out gradually. We’re running into two distinct polarities of players: hardcore and casual. I’m sure I don’t have to define each of them as we’ll as point out there are people who call in-between.

Anet, and likely nobody else, is capable of pushing out enough content updates to keep hardcore players occupied. It’s impossible to do so. All the other MMO’s incorporate a grind of sorts to give hardcore players something to do. Doing so will alienate casual players who don’t necessarily have all the free time to dedicate to the game and they’ll just feel overwhelmed and never be able to catch

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

No not really. There are some champs that are stronger than others but Riot doesn’t balance champs based on their price, they balance champs based on the metagame.

So you could buy a brand new shiny amazing champ with real money, and get completely dominated by someone playing a release day champ they got for free. And as someone else said you can buy champs by using IP, which is a currency you get just from playing matches.

Ayrilana.1396:

Response to Response #1:

Only like three (?) slots currently have ascended items and legendary weapons are primarily for the visual effects. It’s a very minor part of progression in the game assuming you even care to have the 1% (guesstimate) increase in stats over exotics.

Response to Response #2:

Grinding is not the be all, end all of progression. Like I said above, the difference between legendary weapons to exotic weapons and ascended gear to exotic gear is so small that you’d likely not notice a difference. It’s only those hardcore players that want absolutely the best in slot for their tunes that would like care.

Without a “grind” then you’d have them on the forum complaining about nothing to do. It’s a no win scenario since they’ll complain about one thing or another. Anet can only release content so quickly and they don’t want to overwhelm all of the other players with content that they can’t keep up with.

Response to Response #3:

I was just being realistic to justify the initial cost. As an MMO, it’s expected that content is rolled out gradually. We’re running into two distinct polarities of players: hardcore and casual. I’m sure I don’t have to define each of them as we’ll as point out there are people who call in-between.

Anet, and likely nobody else, is capable of pushing out enough content updates to keep hardcore players occupied. It’s impossible to do so. All the other MMO’s incorporate a grind of sorts to give hardcore players something to do. Doing so will alienate casual players who don’t necessarily have all the free time to dedicate to the game and they’ll just feel overwhelmed and never be able to catch

point 1: The point wasn’t about stats, it was about things that players deemed worthwhile as investments in terms of time and effort. If they don’t deem the items worth the effort, then there’s one less factor to keep them in the game, and dampen their feeling of personal progression. Saying you don’t NEED the gear is a moot point, of course you don’t NEED the gear you might however WANT it, but when that desire it outweighed by the repulsion from the grinding it would take to obtain said horizontal progression piece. Then you’ve got a problem right there don’t ya, and no amount of “you don’t need it” will stop the players feeling that they’re being held back from one aspect of their progression simply because they don’t want to play the market or grind their behinds off.

point 2: That’s not something that you can say for certain, for me personally however most of the “pseudo-endgame” content that I would be initially interested in, degenerates into grinding in no time, sure if i was a more pvp orientated player it might not be as bad, but speaking for myself entirely here, my endgame is all grind, grind with a side dish of grind.

Even taking stats out of the equation, if everything stays the same you get stagnation, and as for the idea that if there wasn’t this structure that players would be complaining of nothing to do, when your grind is too boring, painful and long you get a LOT of players who don’t bother with it entirely, thus the same issue crops up, they have nothing to do. And no one is asking for a-net to pump out more content, that would probably just cause further problems and bugs for everyone… no one wants that.

point 3:

I’m totally against grinding, it should be minimized and not in the sense of daily quests or whatnot, I mean it should just not take you a few months to get something aesthetic… EVER.

I always feel the best designed games, are the ones that you enjoy playing and in doing so work your way towards a nice goal and reward. The completion of a ton of grind should not be the reward, the time you invest having and mastering aspects the game should lead to the rewards and in fact be one in itself. and not just one big carrot at the end, as you’ll probably give up halfway and decide that it’s too demoralizing and quit the game entirely.

Right now GW2 seems to be comprised of large carrots after pointlessly long grinds, or silly busy work and/or “use your imagination” esque flighty playstyles and ideas

QUOTE: "Didnt take part in them, not a PvP player myself but I beleive everyone taking part will require 5 tickets to participate!

But keep in mind buying the tickets its not the only way you can get them and thats what keeps it balanced. If you’re a person who has money but not time you can put in some money and buy the tickets. If you have time but not money you can complete PVP daily achievemtns and get free tickets, you can play regular PvP matchs and get free tickets as you level up in PvP rank or you can participate in Free tournaments and get rewarded with free tickets! Even if you do no PvP whatsoever playing anything in the game allows you to buy your 5 tickets right now for 1g 250s more or less! (buying gems with in game money)

further more participating in paid tournaments reward you with gems as well if you do well! coming first twice will get you enough gems to buy 30 tickets

I am sorry but you’re the one who decided the cash shop is just cosmetic no one said that cash shop will be exclusively cosmetic! there are no required Items and you can purchase anything from it without even using money but cosmetic? its definitely not the case plenty of examples that arent cosmetic such as boosters, bankers, inventory expansion etc…

Anyhow its really not an issue! its not hard to earn 1.2g can be done in a day easily!
and if you like PvP then why would it be a big deal taking part in PvP that will get you free tickets + you finish daily pvp achievements and monthly pvp achievements that get you even more tickets!

Its not a pay to win, its a pay to save time! which is how it should be! Paid touraments are meant to be hardcore tournament with greater rewards! but no reason why you cant have great pvp doing the free tournaments ! I dont see why hardcore PvPers will want to do paid tournaments and nothing else! is there a good reason why paid tournaments shouldnt be that special occation you engage in after earning a good number of tickets?"

ANSWER: what you are saying is true. however, how does it look like in practice? there are concerns from pvp players that this system is not allowing new players to play more competitively. the reason is that you loose more tickets by entering tournaments than you get them from playing them. and the difference is too big.

right now you can get tickets by only wining free tournament. this means beating 3 teams in a row. it is not that easy. then you can get them from glory boxes (RNG), and 1 from dailies. so realistically this leaves you with dailies and boxes. good luck with the RNG and there are only 7 days in the week. so by the Friday you have 5-10 (im being optimistic here) tickets which will get you 1 or 2 stomps in paid. are people gonna pay for more? i doubt it. problem created is new players just give up and there is less and less teams playing paids.

the way i see it is that scarcity tickets got, was internationally created to force people into buying for gems (ofcourse i can also spend my hard earned pve money to get stomped (1.2g!!!) but i wont for some reason). this is the unbalance i am talking about. can you imagine this in pve? i couldn’t imagine it in pvp but here it is.

for me it is a question of standing up against it when it is still small.

Hellkaiser.6025:

Ayrilana.1396:

Response to Response #1:

Only like three (?) slots currently have ascended items and legendary weapons are primarily for the visual effects. It’s a very minor part of progression in the game assuming you even care to have the 1% (guesstimate) increase in stats over exotics.

Response to Response #2:

Grinding is not the be all, end all of progression. Like I said above, the difference between legendary weapons to exotic weapons and ascended gear to exotic gear is so small that you’d likely not notice a difference. It’s only those hardcore players that want absolutely the best in slot for their tunes that would like care.

Without a “grind” then you’d have them on the forum complaining about nothing to do. It’s a no win scenario since they’ll complain about one thing or another. Anet can only release content so quickly and they don’t want to overwhelm all of the other players with content that they can’t keep up with.

Response to Response #3:

I was just being realistic to justify the initial cost. As an MMO, it’s expected that content is rolled out gradually. We’re running into two distinct polarities of players: hardcore and casual. I’m sure I don’t have to define each of them as we’ll as point out there are people who call in-between.

Anet, and likely nobody else, is capable of pushing out enough content updates to keep hardcore players occupied. It’s impossible to do so. All the other MMO’s incorporate a grind of sorts to give hardcore players something to do. Doing so will alienate casual players who don’t necessarily have all the free time to dedicate to the game and they’ll just feel overwhelmed and never be able to catch

point 1: The point wasn’t about stats, it was about things that players deemed worthwhile as investments in terms of time and effort. If they don’t deem the items worth the effort, then there’s one less factor to keep them in the game, and dampen their feeling of personal progression. Saying you don’t NEED the gear is a moot point, of course you don’t NEED the gear you might however WANT it, but when that desire it outweighed by the repulsion from the grinding it would take to obtain said horizontal progression piece. Then you’ve got a problem right there don’t ya, and no amount of “you don’t need it” will stop the players feeling that they’re being held back from one aspect of their progression simply because they don’t want to play the market or grind their behinds off.

point 2: That’s not something that you can say for certain, for me personally however most of the “pseudo-endgame” content that I would be initially interested in, degenerates into grinding in no time, sure if i was a more pvp orientated player it might not be as bad, but speaking for myself entirely here, my endgame is all grind, grind with a side dish of grind.

Even taking stats out of the equation, if everything stays the same you get stagnation, and as for the idea that if there wasn’t this structure that players would be complaining of nothing to do, when your grind is too boring, painful and long you get a LOT of players who don’t bother with it entirely, thus the same issue crops up, they have nothing to do. And no one is asking for a-net to pump out more content, that would probably just cause further problems and bugs for everyone… no one wants that.

point 3:

I’m totally against grinding, it should be minimized and not in the sense of daily quests or whatnot, I mean it should just not take you a few months to get something aesthetic… EVER.

I always feel the best designed games, are the ones that you enjoy playing and in doing so work your way towards a nice goal and reward. The completion of a ton of grind should not be the reward, the time you invest having and mastering aspects the game should lead to the rewards and in fact be one in itself. and not just one big carrot at the end, as you’ll probably give up halfway and decide that it’s too demoralizing and quit the game entirely.

Right now GW2 seems to be comprised of large carrots after pointlessly long grinds, or silly busy work and/or “use your imagination” esque flighty playstyles and ideas

So basically..you think there should be no carrot, no enhanced gameplay and anyone and everyone should be able to get anything within a few days? I dont think there would be any less complaining if they made every fight in the game harder with more difficult AI, I believe we would just see a different set of complaints.

i think lotro has a great cash shop. lots of fluff, boosters, unlockables and everything else. kinda makes me wonder what was Anet thinking when they have so little in theirs by comparison and the things you do wanna buy makes u feel like ur getting hit in the balls.

No, LotRO is terrible. It’s the example of what they should AVOID. They designed the game (from Isengard onward) around the cash shop and not the opposite.

This is the problem I have with the cash shop:

Some items in the game have fixed gold costs – most obviously T3 cultural armor.

Items in the cash shop have a fixed gem/cash cost.

However, the cost of gold in real money is more or less in free fall.

This does a couple things:

1. It will potentially make T3 armor a nearly trivial purchase in real cash.
2. Items in the cash shop become progressively less attractive.

Last night I used a Magic Find Booster to farm Karka – even with tons of MF, I didn’t get many Powerful Blood vials.

Now that booster costs 150 gems which is worth nearly 2g at this point.

If you convert in game gold to gems, it costs probably 2.4g (give or take)

Take any other booster and and and compare the utility of the in game gold you could have in place of the boost and it becomes hard to justify.

In my opinion, the economy is experiencing inflation, but the existence of fixed price costs creates some curious bubbles and issues.

Now if Cultural Armor was purchased with gems, it would make more sense because the cost in cash would remain constant and the effort to buy it in game gold would scale with the economy (currently, it is slowly getting cheaper)

TooBz.3065:

I think the developers are walking a fine line (and going it rather well). On the one hand, the company needs revenue to pay for servers / bandwidth, etc. On the other hand, their people who play the game the most likely do not have a lot of disposable income (people still in school).

By making everything obtainable in game (but not easily) the developers provide a way for people with lots of time and less cash to fully participate (farming). However, by providing the gem store, they enable individuals with more cash and less time to participate (buying gems).

Further, the system is designed to be more or less self regulating. That is, the if more people obtain items through farming (using the servers with out paying for their upkeep), the gem to gold exchange rate encourages people with less time to purchase gems to “keep up” (resulting in income that can be used to maintain the servers).

Personally, I like this system much more than having sponsored drops like the “7-Up Sword of Refreshing”

Quick Digression:

Galen Grey.4709:

sonicsix.5713:

I just got an email today… offering me free play time to come back to WoW. It’s patching right now. I was so excited about GW2, but the latest updates ruined it for me.

which part exactly? the inclusion of a completely optional new gear tier you can ignore and just still play all of the game?

And you’re going back to WoW because it doesnt have that?

I am confused!

For now you can ignore the new tier. However, I don’t think you can ignore it indefinitely. Remember leveling up and having a weapon that was 5 levels too low? The game became much easier when you obtained a properly leveled weapon .

I think once ascended weapons and gear comes out it will be the same.

The progression goes like this. People complain that there’s nothing to do -> new gear tier is added -> some people get the gear -> those people complain the game is too easy -> new content is added or difficulty is raised. At which point you can’t ignore the gear anymore.

tl;dr: paying for the servers to run the game without a subscription is difficult.

You describe very well this fact:

no matter what mechanics/physics/hooptydoopty mathing we apply
what matters are the people building the game
the builders have no choice but to be a spider
charlotte was a nice spider

Ditton.3149:

So basically..you think there should be no carrot, no enhanced gameplay and anyone and everyone should be able to get anything within a few days? I dont think there would be any less complaining if they made every fight in the game harder with more difficult AI, I believe we would just see a different set of complaints.

NO, I’d have more carrots on sticks, but shorter sticks to give you CHOICE as to what to do, not just what type of weapon but how you go about obtaining it.
Enhanced gameplay is such a marketing buzz-word that I’m not sure what you mean by it, it’s a very vague statement.
A few days of serious work and effort to get something? well a lot of the game is like that already, I’d remove the pseudo gating, and reductions that from the get go were met with ire and only served to make players feel they were being held back getting 60 tokens for a run is fine for every run not just the first of the day, if you like a dungeon path or just in general, run it a few times by all means and be done with it, karma and monetary rewards should encourage you to re-run content with friends but it’s not currently, everything feels a little too long, a little too unrewarding and a little too mind numbingly dull. But it has potential.

And things don’t have to be more difficult just more engaging, there’s no bloody cast bars in the game fgs! which doesn’t encourage interrupting! we have that particle effect that’s nice, but many just simply turn their brains off and dodge, skill, dodge, skill, skill, heal and dodge their way to victory there’s no examples of a perma cc mob in the game who would for example lock out a player dealing small dot’s on them, fine at one, but if there’s 2 in a group? now players have to think about how they can bring interrupts to the encounters, for many the gameplay is so bland they can just outgear and dps their way through it all, so no it doesn’t have to be harder, just more challenging and as a result more rewarding.
I used to log onto this game seeking to use my brain to overcome challenges, now it feels more like using my patience to overcome repetition.

ps: This is just the dungeon aspect orientated answer, you can adapt it easily to the overworld, wvwvw and spvp, for example spvp where you can as a team have 2 players channeling to open the gates to unleash a horrible beastie on the enemy team to help crunch that guardian bunker who’s just sitting on a cap point, the possibilities are endless. and I’m well aware of there being mobs that CAN perma CC you in locations where you might be solo in the overworld, which is the wrong place for them of course just so people don’t think I overlooked that deliberately.

I’ve told everyone I want gemcards for Christmas

I’m torn. On the one hand, I paid nothing past the initial purchase and the inventory space and character slots (which were optional) and I can play the game as much as I want or as little as I want while sampling various F2P titles whenever I want.

On the other hand, I hate gems for gold. Loathe it. Can’t even describe how hard it makes me cringe. Would so rather pay a standard sub than deal with it.

Also on the one hand I can see why churn and burn would be a great strategy in an economy like this one as well as a saturated market like the MMO market.

On the other hand, I really wanted to find an MMO I could happily spend years being a part of and loyal to.

What a horrible mess this is!

I refuse to believe the devs that are at the heart of this or any other MMO are at heart a bunch of bean-counting scrooges. I think they love creating games for players like us to enjoy.

But maybe I’m just being naive. My practical side says everyone is out to get me (not me personally, just everyone with a dollar in her wallet) and that it’s best to be cautious when purchasing anything. No more believing the hype. Let’s just see what there is to see and base our purchasing decisions on concrete reality, shall we?

Karizee.8076:

I’ve told everyone I want gemcards for Christmas

I don’t mean to offend you, but you do realize you sound like a viral marketer right now?

So here is my theory about what Arenanet is doing. They built their game around focusing on the wants of a specific player base. Now that the game has gained steam they are now moving away from those niche gamers so they can focus on the larger mass market. Most people just don’t care about the changes and they are now making the game for these players. Here is an explanation of what I am trying to say…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/the-cycle-of-customers-who-care.html

Here is the money quote,

“Until soon, the product or service is used by people who don’t care so much about the original intent, they just want something easy and functional and available and cheap.”

Enzomiles.6197:

So here is my theory about what Arenanet is doing. They built their game around focusing on the wants of a specific player base. Now that the game has gained steam they are now moving away from those niche gamers so they can focus on the larger mass market. Most people just don’t care about the changes and they are now making the game for these players. Here is an explanation of what I am trying to say…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/the-cycle-of-customers-who-care.html

Here is the money quote,

“Until soon, the product or service is used by people who don’t care so much about the original intent, they just want something easy and functional and available and cheap.”

Yet ‘easy and functional’ do not describe an MMO with top end gear that is only available in dungeons yet has no dungeon finder.

I assume we don’t have one because that would make things too easy and functional, thus speeding up the process of content consumption?

I wish I could find a way to work in the MMO industry so I could learn why they make the decisions they do. They never come right out and tell us.

Corvindi.5734:

Yet ‘easy and functional’ do not describe an MMO with top end gear that is only available in dungeons yet has no dungeon finder.

I assume we don’t have one because that would make things too easy and functional, thus speeding up the process of content consumption?

I wish I could find a way to work in the MMO industry so I could learn why they make the decisions they do. They never come right out and tell us.

I think that those examples are tactical errors that will be fixed but that the overall strategy is still valid ….

The first step is people who care making a product for people who care.

The second step is people who care making a product for people who don’t care.

And the third step, so difficult to avoid, is that the growing organization starts hiring people, not necessarily people who care, to grow their ever-industrializing company. And since they are servicing customers who don’t care, those employees who don’t care can get away with it (for a while).

Mirta.5029:

Asglarek.8976:

Echarmion.1893:

Snores.7806:

What happens if you’d like more Bank space? Or you have 5 toons and would like to roll another ? Or maybe you’d like a semi-decent armor skin and didn’t want to grind 40 dungeons to get it ?

So you are unsatisfied with getting 5 Characters to level 80 (which is hundreds of hours of playtime), along with two different PVP modes to keep you occupied for the 50$ you paid

LOL hundreds of hours of playtime for 5 level 80’s, silly you can get to level 80 in a matter of hours not days,weeks, months literally 5-8 played hours per character. Heres a hint you can max all trade skills multi-times, it takes roughly 20-30gold, a few crafting boosts and you’re good to go.

so essentially instead of seeing the imaginative outside world, you bought/ got from the sky 20 – 30 gold for a character and just grinded crafting for 5 to 8 hours? What fun is in that? I would not even deem you able to comment on this game then, because you obviously did not explore 99% of it.
If I invest 6-10 hours into GW2 daily, even with raising my profession up, the maximum I’ll go up will be 10 – 12 levels. Not more. Having 2 level 80s and raising another character up I feel as if I already had the moneys worth of this game, just because how much time I invested in it, so if it suddenly broke or I got bored of it, I wouldn’t regret buying it.

Played through the game on first character, doing dailies, map completion, farming and saving mats etc etc . Rolled 2nd character had maybe 30-40 gold in bank found out you could suspend tradeskills without losing skills used mats I had and crafting boosts from chest I had collected got 3 more 80’s in the span of 3 days easy peasy and now I can stroll through the game in any zone/dungeon I want to in my multi-box train of ownage.

Enzomiles.6197:

Corvindi.5734:

Yet ‘easy and functional’ do not describe an MMO with top end gear that is only available in dungeons yet has no dungeon finder.

I assume we don’t have one because that would make things too easy and functional, thus speeding up the process of content consumption?

I wish I could find a way to work in the MMO industry so I could learn why they make the decisions they do. They never come right out and tell us.

I think that those examples are tactical errors that will be fixed but that the overall strategy is still valid ….

The first step is people who care making a product for people who care.

The second step is people who care making a product for people who don’t care.

And the third step, so difficult to avoid, is that the growing organization starts hiring people, not necessarily people who care, to grow their ever-industrializing company. And since they are servicing customers who don’t care, those employees who don’t care can get away with it (for a while).

I actually hope you’re right as far as a dungeon finder goes, I’m a fan even if a lot of other MMO players aren’t.

As for your quote in general, I realized awhile ago that the people in charge weren’t interested in the obsessive fans so much as a large, general player base. And that does make sense from a strictly business viewpoint. The more attention a customer pays to your product the more likely that customer is to see flaws and seek out newer, better versions of your product as soon as they become available. Sometimes companies benefit from the more apathetic customers.

But if your employees adopt a don’t care attitude? Bad. Very bad.

Fuz.5621:

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

Nope, you get 10 free characters every week and you can unlock characters with the points earned in game. Unlocking one, even the most expensive one, is a matter of a few games. It’s a very quick process, I don’t play it a lot or regularly and I’ve already bought way more characters than I could (and want to) use. And used real money only for skins. And I didn’t need the skins, I just wanted to support the developers, since the game is free.

In Gw2 you get free cash shop items with some daily achievement, monthly achievement (not 100% sure but I think also with zone completition). And in 1 day or 2 days of game play you earn enough gold to buy almost anything (1 single item though of course) off the shop as well.

Same thing with me, the only gems I bought with money was to buy the halloween costume, I didnt buy it cause I needed it but because I wanted to support the developers!

I am sorry but I dont see how the cash shop you mention is any different from this cash shop! both are optional and both give you access to free samples and both can be bought without paying any money!

Hellkaiser.6025:

Misconception 1:

“You don’t NEED the gear to play the game so it’s not an issue”

Response:
We don’t need to log on at all if we don’t want to it’s not mandatory, but it’s certainly part of the game and or progression, if you never feel like you’re going anywhere then what’s the point?

Misconception 2:

“Grind is an inevitable part of an RPG experience”

Response:
There’s no reason to make it the BE ALL and END ALL of your progression either. Easing the grind into a game, then hitting them with a huge increase in curve, only serves to highlight and exacerbate any form of serious grind centric content thereafter.

Misconception 3: ( and it’s a BIG one)
“They have no subscription, and don’t have to keep releasing new content”

Response:
Then why use that as a major selling point? why even open that can of worms? why place yourself in that obligation? in fact, when someone posted a thread stating they didn’t have to add new content outside of purchasable expansions, as long as they fix their broken bloody game. It was in fact met with staunch opposition and argument from players.

enough content to justify the 60 dollars? perhaps, but many wouldn’t have bought the game on that strength alone (and it’s not a strong one) and you lot know FULL WELL that they wouldn’t

Misconception 1:I have to play the game for the reward!

Response: Nope you should play the game for the fun not for the reward!

This is the whole crux of the matter! and this is why people say that ascended gear or whatever is optional! once you realise it is optional you can then realise it doesnt matter if it takes you 6 months to get it! once you realise that it doesnt matter how long it takes you to get then you can play the game anyway you want, the way you enjoy it and use the rewards aquired through that activity to get the gear you want essentially totally eliminating grind! (ascended is kinda a bad example right now because they have yet to introduce all aveneus on how to aquire it but they did confirm that like exotic they plan to make it aquirable though every activity save for spvp just like exotics!) So lets take exotics as an example for now! the fastest fastest way to get exotics is to grind events such as say the claw of jormag, if you farm that event you could easily make 3 – 6g an hour which will net you 2 – 3 exotic pieces! But if you dont enjoy that sort of thing it will feel like a grind! thats playing for the reward! But if I am person who likes say Dynamic events I could just play dynamic events and then use the karma and gold to aquire exotic gear! it will take me an average of 2 – 3 days per piece most likely but I would have been having fun all the time and had to do 0 grind!

Thats what things being optional really means! play the game you like and see how that fits in getting the reward you like!

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

ANSWER: what you are saying is true. however, how does it look like in practice? there are concerns from pvp players that this system is not allowing new players to play more competitively. the reason is that you loose more tickets by entering tournaments than you get them from playing them. and the difference is too big.

right now you can get tickets by only wining free tournament. this means beating 3 teams in a row. it is not that easy. then you can get them from glory boxes (RNG), and 1 from dailies. so realistically this leaves you with dailies and boxes. good luck with the RNG and there are only 7 days in the week. so by the Friday you have 5-10 (im being optimistic here) tickets which will get you 1 or 2 stomps in paid. are people gonna pay for more? i doubt it. problem created is new players just give up and there is less and less teams playing paids.

the way i see it is that scarcity tickets got, was internationally created to force people into buying for gems (ofcourse i can also spend my hard earned pve money to get stomped (1.2g!!!) but i wont for some reason). this is the unbalance i am talking about. can you imagine this in pve? i couldn’t imagine it in pvp but here it is.

for me it is a question of standing up against it when it is still small.

I understand what you’re saying and yes they are a choir to get no doubt ! but thats because you’re considering them to be the standard PvP content. You’re considering every match is subpar unless its a paid tournament . I think paid tournaments should be the exception not the rule, kinda like meta events in PvE! Generaqlly you’re not playing meta events, generally you’re playing Dynamic Events. The meta event is a “special” occation you get now and then!

The fact that its hard to maintain a constant paid tournament can actually turn out to be a good thing! It would be a problem if free tournaments are ignored in favor of paid ones! not everyone wants to go professional all the way! Casual players would like to partake and thats not considering not everyone will manage to get a permanent team setup which is a requirement for paid tournaments!

Ultimately it will be up to the players! The decision is up to them! It would be sad if free tournaments are “snobbed” out just cause paid tournaments are considered to be the norm, Free tournaments should be the norm and paid tournaments should be the cherry on the cake in my opinion!

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

Fuz.5621:

Mercucial.6759:

Galen Grey.4709:

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Oh, what content do you need to pay extra for before you can play it then? Must have missed something.

Au contraire, the cash shop doesnt offer me anything I want. So even if I want to buy gems, I wouldnt know what to do with them.

paid tournaments!? of course you can get tickets by winning free tournaments (theoretically possible) and grinding daylies:) it is a fine line anet is crossing… im wondering whats next? will it cost to rent a room in pvp? how much? of course you will also have freedom to do 100 other things to get your room, but if you dnt feel like it, gem shop!

so essentailly what you’re saying is making stuff optional and / or aquirable in other ways not just using money isnt enough for you? its still greedy / a fine line easily crossed?

What else do you want them to do ? any example of a cash shop in any game thats better then this?

League.

The cash shop is 100% optional. It pretty much just sells cool skins. You can buy xp boosts but it seems fairly pointless to me since since you’re learning the game on your to lvl 30, or IP boosts, but Riot gives out free IP boosts every now and then. My point is when you’re playing League the cash shop feels 100% optional. Players spend money on skins and stuff because they LOVE the game, not because they feel like they need to spend money to keep a competitive edge.

This.
I play LoL and their business model is SO much win. I’ve spent about 500 euros in a few months in their cash shop, just for some nice skin.
How many money I plan to spend in GW2 cash shop? ZERO. Not with this P2W model who forces you to buy gems.

no offence but isnt unlocking specific characters more pay to win then anything you could possibly buy in gw2?

No not really. There are some champs that are stronger than others but Riot doesn’t balance champs based on their price, they balance champs based on the metagame.

So you could buy a brand new shiny amazing champ with real money, and get completely dominated by someone playing a release day champ they got for free. And as someone else said you can buy champs by using IP, which is a currency you get just from playing matches.

Just a clarification to start off, not saying lol is pay to win! far from it! I said if you had to compare gw2 to lol I would find Lol to be more pay to win but still not pay to win enough to consider it as really pay to win!

that being said I am sure you’ll agree that practice makes perfect! so having your favorite character unlocked all the time will allow you to specalize in it more then someone who has to learn a new character week after week. Its a small advantage no doubt but still an advantage!

Enzomiles.6197:

So here is my theory about what Arenanet is doing. They built their game around focusing on the wants of a specific player base. Now that the game has gained steam they are now moving away from those niche gamers so they can focus on the larger mass market. Most people just don’t care about the changes and they are now making the game for these players. Here is an explanation of what I am trying to say…

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/12/the-cycle-of-customers-who-care.html

Here is the money quote,

“Until soon, the product or service is used by people who don’t care so much about the original intent, they just want something easy and functional and available and cheap.”

I disagree, I actually think its quite the opposite, they’re trying to make a game with something for everyone! They made a vertical progression system but locked it up in a single dungeon! (really infusions which is the only vertical progression system in the game really does nothing for the open world, its only useful against agony which is ristricted in FoTM)! they made items (starting with Named Exotics going to ascended and finishing with legendaries) That require an increasing effort to aquire! These are meant for people who like to work for their rewards! For people who like true horizontal game play, who dont want to worry about gear, who just want to experiance story, exploration and whatever they made a game that even with masterworks armor which you can aquire in 30 mins – 1 hour of game play or maybe more realistically a rare set which you can easily get in a day you can just about play any content available in the game ! For people who dont care for PvE you can just jump straight into PvP ! If you like crafting you have a game in which crafting not only gets you all the equipement but is also a viable way how to level your character. Truely there is something for just about every game type!

The problem I am seeing right now is some people (not everyone) who wanted horizontal progression are just seeing that one dungeon FoTM where there is vertical progression and they decided just cause in that one place there is vertical progression then suddenly the whole game is about vertical progression when its absolutely not the case! The irony is if someone had to complain I honestly believe it should be people who go for vertical progression because predominantly the game is definitely horizontal! You could remove all armor and still tackle level 80 content! dont know any other game that allows that!

I dont know if your trolling or not but wow.

When you create something for everyone you please no one.

The reason no complained about the VP in the game before ascend gear was that it shipped with it and they accepted it as part of the game. FOTM is not the only VP in the game and that is only partly what people are upset about.

They are upset at that now because it wont stop ever that is the point of it. When you downlevel now you are OP. Now imagine adding 10% + more power and that content becomes useless and invalid and no point to ever go there. 99% of the game PVE a faceroll. You now have better stats in WvW and in a fair fight you will win every time.

The game is full of vertical progression. Please show me where they added horizontal level 80 content recently that would show me that they are going in that direction?

Do you not understand that it isnt about 1 dungeon?
I can see that this will be a waste of time oh well.

Narkosys.5173:

I dont know if your trolling or not but wow.

When you create something for everyone you please no one.

The reason no complained about the VP in the game before ascend gear was that it shipped with it and they accepted it as part of the game. FOTM is not the only VP in the game and that is only partly what people are upset about.

They are upset at that now because it wont stop ever that is the point of it. When you downlevel now you are OP. Now imagine adding 10% + more power and that content becomes useless and invalid and no point to ever go there. 99% of the game PVE a faceroll. You now have better stats in WvW and in a fair fight you will win every time.

The game is full of vertical progression. Please show me where they added horizontal level 80 content recently that would show me that they are going in that direction?

Do you not understand that it isnt about 1 dungeon?
I can see that this will be a waste of time oh well.

Funny because I am please and others are pleased! I am sorry but if you cant be happy having an entire game that provides exactly what you need and 1 thing that doesnt and you just want that one thing removed even though others love exactly that is a sign of egoism! If Ascended gear gated content or prevented in any way any player to play horizontally I would agree with you but it doesnt, not in the least! This has just turned into a religious crusade like thing sometimes to a level thats frankly rediculous! Look around and see posts like, I quit Gw2 over Ascended gear and go back to WoW ! I quit Gw2 and go back to gw1 over Ascended gear might make sense but back to WoW? how does that game have less gear progression then Gw2? it just doesnt!

Yes you’re right, I totally agree, because they joined vertical progression and horizontal progression together a side effect of that was that going back to lower level area makes you over powered! I do that all the time and confirm 100% there is this problem! further more if that wasnt enough for some reason we’re also downlevel to level of area + 1 it seems! anyhow ! solution is pretty easy! for when I PvE I have a Rare set completely geared towards MF. The lack of stats make the content a bit more challenging and the extra MF gives me a bit more reward for making the content a bit harder. Is that such a big deal?

I completely disagree with you over in a fair fight having ascended armor instead of exotic armor will result in a win! this game is not gear based its entirely skill based! how well you play your build determins who wins and not your gear. Thats just something that gives you an edge nothing more and a very small one at that! For starters you level gives you 50% of your stats! check it out, remove all armors and accessories and you’ll see ! Further more or attacks have a base damage! On top of that you have traits and you can consume food that will also increase those stats! Attacks also do a random amount damage ! even where stats are concerned their advantage is very limited! My main set isnt even fully exotic yet! got 3 exotic pieces and the rest including accessories are rares! and I Do quite well in WvW! if stats where so crutial shouldnt I be loosing most fights? I assure you I dont!

No offense and with all due respect but the problem you’re experiancing is you have the wrong impression of what horizontal content is! You just asked me “Please show me where they added horizontal level 80 content recently” Level is a vertical progression thing ! The whole point of horizontal progression is having the whole world to play in, levels are meaningless! And to answer your question specifically every single release they did they added new events, new jumping puzzles all around the world! They even added nice little things like the skritt bulgler that you can randomly come across anywhere which is nice! They added a new map (southern cove) ! any new content added is something new for people who play horizontally!

so please tell me what is horizontal content for you specifically I am curious!

Dreamslayer.7659:

This is the problem I have with the cash shop:

Some items in the game have fixed gold costs – most obviously T3 cultural armor.

Items in the cash shop have a fixed gem/cash cost.

However, the cost of gold in real money is more or less in free fall.

This does a couple things:

1. It will potentially make T3 armor a nearly trivial purchase in real cash.
2. Items in the cash shop become progressively less attractive.

Last night I used a Magic Find Booster to farm Karka – even with tons of MF, I didn’t get many Powerful Blood vials.

Now that booster costs 150 gems which is worth nearly 2g at this point.

If you convert in game gold to gems, it costs probably 2.4g (give or take)

Take any other booster and and and compare the utility of the in game gold you could have in place of the boost and it becomes hard to justify.

In my opinion, the economy is experiencing inflation, but the existence of fixed price costs creates some curious bubbles and issues.

Now if Cultural Armor was purchased with gems, it would make more sense because the cost in cash would remain constant and the effort to buy it in game gold would scale with the economy (currently, it is slowly getting cheaper)

Cash – gem exchange I think is set in stone. I’ve not seen it move and jump with the economy. Gold – Gem exchange and gem – gold exchange are the ones jumping up and down. If cultural armor cost gems, for most of us it would be unfordable. Why? Due to interesting things being introduced to cash shop (make-up kit allowing you to transform your appearance) and the inflation that was caused by halloween and soon will happen again with Wintersday, it’s getting real expensive to trade gold for gems. In order for you to catch a livable price you would have to continue hunting for it at night (sometimes the exchange drops really much), hour by hour. Just sitting there, checking the exchange. By taking the cultural armor tier 3 and moving it to the gem shop you would probably increase the price of gems yet again. Not to mention 100 gold is affordable if you decide that that skin is your goal after reaching 80. The same way that you can set out to obtain a legendary. It requires a lot of work, but if you’ll work towards it, you will get there.
The only really useful booster in my opinion is the karma booster. Do dailies and collect those jugs into your bank. At the end of the month buy a karma booster and jug them all down. 2X karma right there

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Asglarek.8976:

Mirta.5029:

Asglarek.8976:

Echarmion.1893:

Snores.7806:

What happens if you’d like more Bank space? Or you have 5 toons and would like to roll another ? Or maybe you’d like a semi-decent armor skin and didn’t want to grind 40 dungeons to get it ?

So you are unsatisfied with getting 5 Characters to level 80 (which is hundreds of hours of playtime), along with two different PVP modes to keep you occupied for the 50$ you paid

LOL hundreds of hours of playtime for 5 level 80’s, silly you can get to level 80 in a matter of hours not days,weeks, months literally 5-8 played hours per character. Heres a hint you can max all trade skills multi-times, it takes roughly 20-30gold, a few crafting boosts and you’re good to go.

so essentially instead of seeing the imaginative outside world, you bought/ got from the sky 20 – 30 gold for a character and just grinded crafting for 5 to 8 hours? What fun is in that? I would not even deem you able to comment on this game then, because you obviously did not explore 99% of it.
If I invest 6-10 hours into GW2 daily, even with raising my profession up, the maximum I’ll go up will be 10 – 12 levels. Not more. Having 2 level 80s and raising another character up I feel as if I already had the moneys worth of this game, just because how much time I invested in it, so if it suddenly broke or I got bored of it, I wouldn’t regret buying it.

Played through the game on first character, doing dailies, map completion, farming and saving mats etc etc . Rolled 2nd character had maybe 30-40 gold in bank found out you could suspend tradeskills without losing skills used mats I had and crafting boosts from chest I had collected got 3 more 80’s in the span of 3 days easy peasy and now I can stroll through the game in any zone/dungeon I want to in my multi-box train of ownage.

Fair enough. I’m doing mixed play for my alts – on one hand I have lots of mats to use, on the other hand I prefer only leveling 1/2 professions per character. So now with my jewelcrafter I’m uncovering every zone that has a dungeon to be able to run them later, while still raising her profession. I also have enough starter and mid mats for my leatherworker and armorsmith.

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

. . . Now onto seriousness.

There’s nothing in the cash shop, that is Black Lion, currently which is absolutely necessary.

The extra Character Slot, Bank Slot, and Bag Slot area pretty much just gravy. Bag Slots are unnecessary unless you really fill up that fast. (Given recent complaints about drop rates, I find it really strange anyone would claim they needed more inventory space.) Bank Slots are almost unnecessary, unless you’re doing Cooking. In which case, you will probably need most of that space. A Character Slot is unnecessary unless five isn’t enough for you to get what you want.

The only real useful function of Gems currently is to turn them into Gold. Which is a fluctuating target and if enough people started doing it, it wouldn’t be profitable for the people doing exchanges anymore.

Currently you don’t outright require buying stuff off the Trading Post to be effective in 90% of the game. It may change in the future, it may not. But as of today . . . and as is highly likely for the near future . . . it’s not essential.

To reiterate: There is nothing on the Black Lion Gem Store which is vital to completing the game.

I think this youtube video explains how the economy works in GW2.

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

And this is exactly my point! people love to see consperacies everywhere! They love to think that everything Arenanet does is to somehow manipulate them! No I have absolutely 0 relationship beyond buying / playing their game with Arenanet! That I share the same surname with a certain member is pure coincidence And have been using this nick in gw1 since day 1 (my first gw1 character in fact) and chose it before I even knew said member existed so defintiely wasnt meant as a tribute / compliment

Also too bad the huge thread on ascended items got delete, would have loved to show you how I joined the chorus in my personal dislike of ascended Items and how I believed it would have been were they have the same stats as exotics, so no I dont appologize everything Arenanet do either! But this whole thing has long left the realm of constructive cristism and dwelled deep in the consperiacy realm now! Think about your own idea that I am some undercover employee for example, why do you think that? Every opinion I have ever expressed I backed it up with the specific reasons of why I believe as I believe! Dont think I ever tried to manipulate anything or anyone in the least! I just think since this ascended story startered people are just trying to find every single reason to lash out at Arenanet and if I believe the reason they state are incorrect or unfair I state my opinion on why I think its incorrect or unfair! thats all!

Do you really think that anyone who thinks arenanet are doing more right then wrong have to be under cover employees?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

Wait, wasnt Plan B to track every single user and use that memory eraser thingy Agent K gave us for this specific occation? what was it called? neuralearser something ? no wait that was Plan C right? or was it Plan K? man this is confusing!

Galen Grey.4709:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

Wait, wasnt Plan B to track every single user and use that memory eraser thingy Agent K gave us for this specific occation? what was it called? neuralearser something ? no wait that was Plan C right? or was it Plan K? man this is confusing!

No, Plan C was the Wintersday raffle they can’t win because it’s rigged, then we go laugh it off with thousands of Gold each.

And Plan K involved Skritt, a box of asuran failed experimental compound, and Havarti cheese.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Galen Grey.4709:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

nic.5720:

@ Galen Grey… I remember another poster on these forums describing you as a “silver tongued apologist” for ANet. I have to say that I agree with their assessment entirely.

However having read many of your posts recently, I am seriously beginning to wonder if your defence of ANet in almost everything they do, actually goes way beyond this.

Possibly into the realms of community relations/support liaison?

Is your choice of user name more than a simple coincidence or a passing compliment to a certain member of ANets’ staff?

Crap! Galen, they’re onto us. Quick, remember Plan B and hope they don’t sniff out the names this time!

Wait, wasnt Plan B to track every single user and use that memory eraser thingy Agent K gave us for this specific occation? what was it called? neuralearser something ? no wait that was Plan C right? or was it Plan K? man this is confusing!

No, Plan C was the Wintersday raffle they can’t win because it’s rigged, then we go laugh it off with thousands of Gold each.

And Plan K involved Skritt, a box of asuran failed experimental compound, and Havarti cheese.

Ohh yeah right now I remember, Plan K was fun!

I cant believe people think this game is p2w. This is one of the LEAST pay to win games I have ever seen, ever. Someone please point out to me which item that is exclusive to the gem shop gives me a statistical advantage over other characters.

The only truly exclusive gem shop items to me are bank and character slots and lets face it, you can live without them. Anet has to make some form of profit you know…

The only milking of the Cash shop I have seen are the black lion chests with their RNG rewards, but its just skins…..it doesn’t give you any advantage other than looking pretty. And the Halloween ones were craft able too!

Anyone who thinks this game is P2W needs to go play a Korean MMO, where ‘chance chests’ give the best weapons in the game, give 10x additional damage and are the ONLY way to get these items.

THAT is milking the cash shop, having a skin or a bank space that you cant craft is not.