Guild Wars 2

I understand about inflation and all (well, I understand enough, anyway), but gem prices have gone up too much too fast lately. I mean a month or so ago I could buy 400 gems with 70-ish gold – now it’s up to 100g! At this rate a character slot will cost more than a legendary by the time summer is over.

And yeah I know it’ll probably fluctuate, and I’d be a lot more patient with that if I was just waiting on buying pretty outfits and fun toys, but character slots are kind of a fundamental game thing – altoholics are a core group of MMO player types, it’s something that actually keeps people playing and encourages more spending in the gemstore (once you have those alts, that’s when it’s time for the pretty outfits!) so it seems like an odd decision by Anet to have them priced so high anyway. Especially since owning alts doesn’t really give you any perks in game (like in WoW where timegated cooldowns often aren’t account-wide, despite you having 50ish character slots for free there) – it’s just something for people who enjoy variety or leveling or dressing up different characters.

Why do you think gem prices have gone up so much?
Anet doesnt control the exchange rate between gold and gems.

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Lower cost of character slots (or remove cost all together), I suppose. I can wait for the rates to adjust for buying vanity items, but no character slots = fewer things for me to do in game = higher risk of me burning out on the game entirely.

I wish I could sell my unwanted character slots… #LifeOfAMainoholic

mia.8209:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Lower cost of character slots (or remove cost all together), I suppose. I can wait for the rates to adjust for buying vanity items, but no character slots = fewer things for me to do in game = higher risk of me burning out on the game entirely.

So, you’re asking for the gemstore, ANet’s source of money to pay the monthly bills since people don’t pay a subscription in this game, to give everyone free character slots when ever they want, up to the max number of slots. Why should ANet, which is a business trying to make money, do this?

How about if you find $5 and buy 400 gems with gold and let that be your discount.

Or wait. Historically, the gold:gem ratio has ups and downs. I don’t expect to see 17g:100 gems again, but I also don’t expect to see 20-25g remain the equilibrium price (unless ANet offers more shared slots or something equally popular).

Wintersday tends to drop the ratio, while newer, lucrative farming activities tend to increase. However, mostly the ratio is steep right now because whoever is running the shop has finally started offering things that a lot of people want on a more frequent basis.

Anyhow, as Just a flesh wound suggests, you have options:

• Wait.
• Save more gold.
• Spend a bit of RL cash to defray how much in-game gold you need to spend.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

mia.8209:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Lower cost of character slots (or remove cost all together), I suppose. I can wait for the rates to adjust for buying vanity items, but no character slots = fewer things for me to do in game = higher risk of me burning out on the game entirely.

So, you’re asking for the gemstore, ANet’s source of money to pay the monthly bills since people don’t pay a subscription in this game, to give everyone free character slots when ever they want, up to the max number of slots. Why should ANet, which is a business trying to make money, do this?

How about if you find $5 and buy 400 gems with gold and let that be your discount.

mia.8209:

character slots are kind of a fundamental game thing – altoholics are a core group of MMO player types, it’s something that actually keeps people playing and encourages more spending in the gemstore (once you have those alts, that’s when it’s time for the pretty outfits!) so it seems like an odd decision by Anet to have them priced so high anyway. Especially since owning alts doesn’t really give you any perks in game (like in WoW where timegated cooldowns often aren’t account-wide, despite you having 50ish character slots for free there) – it’s just something for people who enjoy variety or leveling or dressing up different characters.

mia.8209:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

mia.8209:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Lower cost of character slots (or remove cost all together), I suppose. I can wait for the rates to adjust for buying vanity items, but no character slots = fewer things for me to do in game = higher risk of me burning out on the game entirely.

So, you’re asking for the gemstore, ANet’s source of money to pay the monthly bills since people don’t pay a subscription in this game, to give everyone free character slots when ever they want, up to the max number of slots. Why should ANet, which is a business trying to make money, do this?

How about if you find $5 and buy 400 gems with gold and let that be your discount.

mia.8209:

character slots are kind of a fundamental game thing – altoholics are a core group of MMO player types, it’s something that actually keeps people playing and encourages more spending in the gemstore (once you have those alts, that’s when it’s time for the pretty outfits!) so it seems like an odd decision by Anet to have them priced so high anyway. Especially since owning alts doesn’t really give you any perks in game (like in WoW where timegated cooldowns often aren’t account-wide, despite you having 50ish character slots for free there) – it’s just something for people who enjoy variety or leveling or dressing up different characters.

One character slot is $10. If you’re having trouble getting hold of $10 for a character slot the game gives you the option to get a slot completely free, not having to pay a penny, just by playing the game and earning gold to buy them. So since the game already give you a way to get slots for free, I don’t see a reason for ANet to cut the gem price to zero.

After all, unlike WoW this game does not charge you a monthly subscription. With WoW, you pay $15/month or $180/year for those 50 “free” slots. You can play this game after purchase and not pay real money at all for gem store items.

Maybe you could buy $15 or $20 in gems each month as your subscription and use the gems from that to buy char slots.

mia.8209:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who sets Gem prices? source

John Smith
There seems to be some confusion:

The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.

If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

So, what exactly do you want ANet to do?

Lower cost of character slots (or remove cost all together), I suppose. I can wait for the rates to adjust for buying vanity items, but no character slots = fewer things for me to do in game = higher risk of me burning out on the game entirely.

Everything on the gemstore is priced on $$$ NOT gold. You want the gold cost to go down? Get more people to spend money on gems to convert to gold.

mia.8209:

character slots are kind of a fundamental game thing -

You make it sound like you only get a single character slot. You don’t. Even free to play accounts have two slots. If you want more than 5 characters, I think it’s only fair that you pay for the extra slots. I did as did many others. I would argue bag slots are more of a fundamental game thing but we’re still charged for the ‘extra’ ones that don’t come with the account. No charge on character slots would be ridiculous and a business has to pay the bills. I don’t see what’s stopping you from putting real money into the game if you dislike the current gold > gem conversion rate, especially if you enjoy the game as much as you claim you do.
Also, 5 characters with 5x 20 slot bags = 500 storage slots. 50 characters with 5x 20 slot bags = 5000 storage slots. What would be the point of the bank/material storage tabs if we could just lump everything on alt characters? ANet would lose out on money there too. Not to mention the problems with the economy due to people being more able to hoard the crap out of stuff. At least if you want to do that as things are now, you have to pay for the ability to do so.

You get everything on the gem store for free, as long as you have the gold to do so. All it takes is time, how long it up to you.

mauried.5608:

Anet doesnt control the exchange rate between gold and gems.

Oh, my sweet child of summer…

Yall have a strange concept of “free”…

Not interested in debating this – I’ve said what I came to say, thanks for reminding me why I avoid forums though!

Avoiding be cause they are arguing? Boy, that’s weak, can’t stand some dialectic? Anyway, I understand your point, but if you are so eager to get a char slot, just buy one, it’s 10$.

Gem store prices are always based on the cost of buying gems with real money. And in that sense the price of a character slot has never changed (except on the rare occasions they’re on sale). It’s been 800 gems or $10 US, £8.50 etc. since launch.

The fact that we can also buy gems with gold is a nice gesture from Anet (and also helps to make buying gold with gems seem more reasonable) but they’re never going to set prices based on the gold to gems exchange rate. It’s a bonus option, not the primary method of getting gem store items.

mia.8209:

Yall have a strange concept of “free”…

People call it free because it doesn’t cost any real money.

If I was unemployed and broke and could only afford to buy essentials I would still be able to buy gem store items because I could use gold and gold doesn’t cost me anything except time (which I’d have more than enough of if I was unemployed).

Of course the amount of time it takes varies a lot (right now the exchange rate is high because there’s been a consistent run of new and returning items in the gem store, including some which were very popular, for over 2 months), but it still doesn’t cost real money to buy gems with gold.

If you feel it takes too long to earn the gold then the alternative is to spend real money. If you can’t do that then there are numerous ways to make gold faster. If none of those are an option then you simply need to be patient.

The gem store is one of only 2 ways Anet makes money to keep the company and therefore the game running. The other one is sales of copies of games, which fluctuates a lot. Meaning the gem store is what they rely on for a consistent income. Asking them to reduce the prices, particularly when you’re not actually spending any real money on it in the first place, is asking them to reduce their income and therefore what new content and features they can afford to develop for the game, so that you can spend less time playing before you get your new character. Put in that context does it still sound reasonable?

The OP is correct that the price shot up suddenly and stayed there. I thought it was just a blip, mostly caused by the Chaos Gloves, but it does look to be stubbornly sticking at around the 100g for 400 gems price.

After the Chaos Gloves there were a few other desirable things on promo but for the last week or so I’ve been wondering what the store is offering that is keeping that price high. Maybe it’s nothing in particular. Maybe 100g is the new 75g.

I’m not someone who is ever going to spend RL cash for gems so I consider it a bonus that I can convert gold to gems. As such, I accept that the exchange rate may not be optimum for me. And gold is pretty easy to earn in game.

DoctorDing.5890:

After the Chaos Gloves there were a few other desirable things on promo but for the last week or so I’ve been wondering what the store is offering that is keeping that price high. Maybe it’s nothing in particular. Maybe 100g is the new 75g.

You’re not the only one who is wondering. The promos now consist mostly of minis and those shouldn’t be THAT desirable.

However I have a suspicion that the cause of the lasting high gem price is actually WvW. It has seen quite a resurgence since they reverted back to the good maps and there is a lot of recruiting going on for the servers. Transfer costs are payed with gems which, in this case, are bought with gold by the recruiting servers in 99% of the cases. Now, the top servers are locked and therefore can’t recruit for themselves, but the linked low tier servers are open and I bet there is a LOT of people moving into them to take part in the higher-tier WvW. And since almost surely these pairings are not there to last, they are buying extra gems to cover the next transfer to the server that recruited them, or to the next paired server.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

DoctorDing.5890:

After the Chaos Gloves there were a few other desirable things on promo but for the last week or so I’ve been wondering what the store is offering that is keeping that price high. Maybe it’s nothing in particular. Maybe 100g is the new 75g.

You’re not the only one who is wondering. The promos now consist mostly of minis and those shouldn’t be THAT desirable.

Quite a few people collect mini pets – which means buying all of them.

Although none of these ones are new they have all been unavailable for quite a long time (and gem store minis aren’t tradable so they weren’t on the TP either) so I imagine several collectors have been buying the full set.

It may not be as many people as bought the chaos gloves for example, but if each one buys 7 or 8 minis (or however many there are, I can’t check right now) that adds up to a lot of gems.

I think you’re right about WvW contributing too though. And there’s also a new Black Lion weapon set. Sales of keys, and therefore gems, tends to go up whenever one of them comes out.

But it’s also because the exchange rate is based on the volume of trade in each direction. There doesn’t need to be a highly desirable item in the store right now for the exchange rate to be higher than usual – there just needs to have been one or more recently and then nothing to prompt a similar spike in people buying gems with cash and exchanging them for gold. That means the exchange rate goes up and then doesn’t come back down.

If new and popular returning items disappear from the gem store for a long time, then the exchange rate will drop. This happened last year between about April and August sale when the gem store was very quiet. (Note: I am only saying this happened in one previous year, not predicting it will happen this year.)

It goes even faster if something happens to encourage more people to buy gems and convert them to gold. But that’s a lot rarer because in spite of all the people on the forum telling people to get a part-time job if they can’t make gold fast enough in reality it’s generally much easier to farm gold directly than to earn extra money and convert it.

DoctorDing.5890:

After the Chaos Gloves there were a few other desirable things on promo but for the last week or so I’ve been wondering what the store is offering that is keeping that price high.

They could stop all additions to the store and the price could still continue to rise. For the price to lower, people buying gold need to outweigh those buying gems, so why do people need to buy gold? As hot gem store items increase the cost of gems, new gold sinks lower them. At this point, older players are likely losing the need to buy gold, so it’s down to the newer players.

Let’s not forget that the new daily reward is 2g in pure currency which increases the ability of all players to convert gold into gems which will drive the ratio that direction.

I don’t think the daily 2g is enough to be significant but the point about minis is a good one. I tend to think of mini collecting as a minority activity but, yes, there are certainly a lot of minis on the promo page atm.

And if you put on Anet’s shoes for a minute you would probably not be too worried to see a higher exchange rate because that means that folks who put their hand in their pocket and convert $$$ → gems → gold will be getting more gold for their $$$.

But never fear, one day soon I’ll weaken and buy a some gems at the current rate. That is sure to cause the price to suddenly drop, just to annoy me ;p

With the way sell prices are on farmed items like wood and metals you can still come out on top. You just have to spend time farming. Make a game of it by finding the quickest most profitable routes. I find it quite relaxing especially on the Shiverpeaks maps.

Its super easy to farm gold now,so gem price haven’t gone that much up if you take inflation effect,gold is worth less but gem always keep there value.

Slots go on sale several times a year. When they do the in game price of gems goes up, go figure.

Yargesh.4965:

Slots go on sale several times a year. When they do the in game price of gems goes up, go figure.

Actually, they haven’t. Slots were discounted several time in the first year, but hardly at all since then. Maybe once in the last 18 months or so.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Yargesh.4965:

Slots go on sale several times a year. When they do the in game price of gems goes up, go figure.

Actually, they haven’t. Slots were discounted several time in the first year, but hardly at all since then. Maybe once in the last 18 months or so.

They last went on sale in January (when they were 20% off). A quick google search tells me they seem to go on sale every January/February and occasionally at other times of the year but I couldn’t find anywhere that had a complete list of gem store sales or which items were discounted.

I seem to remember it being roughly twice a year, but I only really remember when I bought them. I only ever buy them when they’re on sale, but I don’t do it every time because sometimes I didn’t want any more characters.

The last time they were on sale was indeed January and I bought some then. I have ~2000 gems set aside that I refuse to spend on anything else, waiting to buy 3 slots. I had really hoped they would go on sale when everything else did (was that April?), but no.

At least I still have some alts to level and haven’t started twitching yet.

I’ve monitored the exchange rate for the last 8 months or so, and typically it spikes as new items hit the store, but gradually comes down in a couple days. It simply isn’t coming down.

A few months ago I exchanged at a rate of 65 gold to 400 gems. Recently it hasn’t gotten below 92 gold for 400 gems and tends to stay near 100g for 400 gems.

I suspected that Anet tinkered with the base exchange rate as part of “inflation”. I guess there could be other reasons but I don’t see those reasons as affecting the exchange that much. I’d expect to see a gradual increase but not a spike in a short period that stays near that peak level for several weeks (and counting).

skigorn.7910:

I’ve monitored the exchange rate for the last 8 months or so, and typically it spikes as new items hit the store, but gradually comes down in a couple days. It simply isn’t coming down.

A few months ago I exchanged at a rate of 65 gold to 400 gems. Recently it hasn’t gotten below 92 gold for 400 gems and tends to stay near 100g for 400 gems.

I suspected that Anet tinkered with the base exchange rate as part of “inflation”. I guess there could be other reasons but I don’t see those reasons as affecting the exchange that much. I’d expect to see a gradual increase but not a spike in a short period that stays near that peak level for several weeks (and counting).

Not necessarily.

As mentioned before WvW activity has picked back up and that could mean that players are moving from one server to another and if guilds are doing it, they are likely footing the bill for the moving and that could be by giving players gold so that they can convert to gems to transfer to the lower populated linked server. Which would keep prices steady if the store doesn’t have anything new leading non-WvW players to convert.