Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

I wouldn’t be so quick to place all the blame on Colin. It could very well be that most of it he had no choice on. We just don’t know.

As director, making those choices was literally his only job. He had a grand vision, and a compliant publisher. He did in fact carry out the grand experiments he intended to. I don’t fault him for trying, but we now know that those experiments failed.

Moving forward Anet needs to own that. This kind of failure isn’t a cause for shame, but failing to learn from it is.

I don’t fault Colin for trying something new. He was responsible for perhaps the grandest public experiments in shaking up the genre anyone has tried. It is unfortunate that the community was repeatedly nonreceptive to those experiments and each was met with a desire for more of what they already had in stead of genuine enthusiasm for the new things he was trying.

Anet is now past that point. HoT’s entire design ethos was stop experimenting, start building an easily extensible, sustainable future building upon lessons learned about what works and what does not.

Unfortunately the one place where those lessons are being most successfully applied are in the realm of monetization rather than customer satisfaction.

PopeUrban.2578:

Ayrilana.1396:

I wouldn’t be so quick to place all the blame on Colin. It could very well be that most of it he had no choice on. We just don’t know.

As director, making those choices was literally his only job. He had a grand vision, and a compliant publisher. He did in fact carry out the grand experiments he intended to. I don’t fault him for trying, but we now know that those experiments failed.

Moving forward Anet needs to own that. This kind of failure isn’t a cause for shame, but failing to learn from it is.

A director also has to follow the directions from those above them. The position varies from company to company so there’s no way to know what he did without seeing the job description. A director could very well have full control over a game or they could just be a glorified lead.

Anyway, this is a bit off topic. I just wanted to point out that it’s a bit unfair to point all of the blame at him without knowing the full situation. Something I doubt we’d ever know anyhow.

I think there is a real possibility that Anet is both raising Gem prices and causing inflation to curtail the saved up wealth in gold that players are sitting on, and to get those people to eventually spend real money for gems.

BLT Items have been coming out at an alarming rate and this is one step they have implemented to get players to reach into their gold savings.

The other step taken has been to increase the value of the loot drops and add a gold incentive to the dailies. This has injected more gold into the game economy and is akin to printing money and causing inflation.

I am sure there will be players returning to the game with the introduction of more content down the road, and they will be surprised that their stored up gold isn’t quite worth as much as it used to be.

I believe ectos will reach 1g a piece within a few months.

There is the possibility that this is not going to happen , but keep an eye on what is released in the coming months. See if they release more ways to make gold easy; it just might be to phase out the virtual middle and upper class of the game so you end up spending real money more often.

Again, Anet does not use the gem store as a balancing lever for the gold economy. There are numerous public websites that have tracked the exchange rates since launch.

The gem store is and has only ever been adjusted for the real money to gems economy. More desirable gem store items are directed at encouraging money>gems purchases. Whether those purchases are made with the intent of trading the gems for gold at a better rate, or buying the items directly is not a consideration for Anet as the goal of time limited sales are rollouts of new gem store items is always players purchasing more gems.

Gold/Gem conversion rates are not an issue Anet cares about, because it is a system designed primarily to sell more gems, not a system designed to allow players to avoid buying gems.

PopeUrban.2578:

Again, Anet does not use the gem store as a balancing lever for the gold economy. There are numerous public websites that have tracked the exchange rates since launch.

The gem store is and has only ever been adjusted for the real money to gems economy. More desirable gem store items are directed at encouraging money>gems purchases. Whether those purchases are made with the intent of trading the gems for gold at a better rate, or buying the items directly is not a consideration for Anet as the goal of time limited sales are rollouts of new gem store items is always players purchasing more gems.

Gold/Gem conversion rates are not an issue Anet cares about, because it is a system designed primarily to sell more gems, not a system designed to allow players to avoid buying gems.

Gold/Gem conversions are very much important to Anet if they make a profit from the gem store. Think about how much gold has been saved up after everyone bought what they wanted in weapons and armor. The amount of people who are sitting on their gold has increased with time. Its important to remember that The gem/gold conversion rate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. changes to both how much gold can be made in game, and how often people buy items at the gem store play a role.

Just imagine if everyone made 20g extra a day, what do you think that would do to the gold to gem conversion rate?

Cobrakon.3108:

PopeUrban.2578:

Again, Anet does not use the gem store as a balancing lever for the gold economy. There are numerous public websites that have tracked the exchange rates since launch.

The gem store is and has only ever been adjusted for the real money to gems economy. More desirable gem store items are directed at encouraging money>gems purchases. Whether those purchases are made with the intent of trading the gems for gold at a better rate, or buying the items directly is not a consideration for Anet as the goal of time limited sales are rollouts of new gem store items is always players purchasing more gems.

Gold/Gem conversion rates are not an issue Anet cares about, because it is a system designed primarily to sell more gems, not a system designed to allow players to avoid buying gems.

Gold/Gem conversions are very much important to Anet if they make a profit from the gem store. Think about how much gold has been saved up after everyone bought what they wanted in weapons and armor. The amount of people who are sitting on their gold has increased with time. Its important to remember that The gem/gold conversion rate doesn’t exist in a vacuum. changes to both how much gold can be made in game, and how often people buy items at the gem store play a role.

Just imagine if everyone made 20g extra a day, what do you think that would do to the gold to gem conversion rate?

It would skyrocket to meet the new standard and the actualy ingame effort required to buy one gem from a paying customer would remain unchanged. Just like how handing out extra gold for dailies and generally increasing rewards across the gam resulted in a larger spike in gold prices than simply adding rotating sales alone.

It wouldn’t change the amount of gems purchased by a significant margin at all.

Here’s another take on the direction of the exchange rate. It’s gone up because more people are playing. People have come back after the missteps of HoT. Spring patch fixed a lot of problems with HoT and some of the things they changed in core Tyria. WvW is partially revitalized. We are seeing fractals reworked. We are seeing better rewards for our limited game time.

Cobrakon.3108:

Gold/Gem conversions are very much important to Anet

And yet they’ve not changed anything. So it would seem not.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Arenanet has no interest in bringing the prices down. The higher price makes Gems > Gold more attractive, and that’s where they get their money from.

In addition to the items people want to buy, a reason for this is gold being more accessible. Everyone gets two gold in coin now for finishing their daily achievements, while dungeons are giving more gold again. Clearly, a lot of people are turning this influx of gold into gems via the exchange.

I must agree with this. as Anet has already given the main game away for free so to all the free to play ppl u get a great game and the ability to trade in gold for stuff u want in the store without ever spending a dime for any of the content. I expected the price to go up earlier then this and its been steadily increasing since launch. there are plenty of tutorials on the webs to get money quickly and the key to even real life purchases is to learn how to save for something you really want. Players can learn the skills to earn gold in game and save their gold so in 3 months time or less they can buy all the goodies they want later.

but for the ppl that are impulse buyers or the must have nows do to time limits then there’s the RL money to gems feature which also supports the game you play so it doesn’t go bankrupt and delete your character from existence.

It comes down to whats more important to you…money or time. if you dont have the money and have time to spend in the game then save your gold. if you cant play the game often but still want to get those cool sunglasses or a new glider skin then skip out on a couple coffees from Starbucks or don’t go out to eat 3 times in a month and save your money to buy gems. As for kids who dont have credit cards that is a horrible excuse, and kids can buy a VISA Debit card or similar card from Walmart or any gift card carrier and put cash on it and use it online without mommy or daddy ever knowing.

There’s a stream of YouTube videos of how young kids can make money by selling candy or snacks at school or other community acts that will enable an active kid to make some cash to use on a VISA Debit card to enable them to buy gems. or find GW2 Gem cards in game stores.

So whine all you want but I agree that GW2 should have high Gold to Gem prices and low Gem to Gold prices. I personally like supporting the game developers so I buy most of my gems with cash. Anet Is nice enough to give gamers an option which is by far better then most games on the market that force you to pay for their currency with only RL money.

^I am afraid you are mistaken. Play4Free accounts have no access to Gold-to-Gems exchange. They can, however, exchange Gems for Gold.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vyrulisse.1246:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The main reason we get these threads about gem prices is because people buy gems on an impulse. Something good appears in the gem store. The people who didn’t plan ahead all rush to buy gems. The ratio then shoots sky high and someone makes a thread about how high gold to gems are.

Make a habit of buying at regular intervals. Buy a set amount of gems per time period or when you reach a certain amount of gold. That way you won’t be buying gems when the prices are peaked. They’ll still be expensive of course but if you plan ahead you won’t be paying those premium prices.

That’s a bigger problem. With A.net’s habit of removing things seemingly arbitrarily to create forced rarity, we almost have to buy things we want on impulse or risk losing the chance for months or years.

There are a lot of good points and the best I’ve seen in this topic is just how overpriced a lot of gem store items are in regards to real money. I agree with that, some items are just insanely overpriced for what they provide.

I’ve suggested elsewhere that A.net come up with a schedule for the Gem Store regarding items that they have put in there, when they will go away and when they will come back. That would go a long way into helping people plan better… but is that what they want?

We are not talking about the same things here. You’re talking about buying items on impulse when they appear. I’m talking about setting up a system to steadily buy gems on a schedule so that when those items do appear you have the gems in hand already and don’t need to exchange gold for gems when the price for them is the worse time for you.

Yes that does make sense in a structured market but some items have been gone for years and we literally have no idea when or if they will ever come back. This means we don’t know what’s next on the chopping block so to speak… My point is that your idea is a good one, a really good one and would make much more sense to people (or maybe just me, who knows) if they created a schedule. Clearly you can’t do this with new items because they aren’t made yet, but old ones? Sure. Put items in groups and have them alternate between them throughout the year. As new items are created, put them into existing groups.

This is really starting to annoy me.
When I started playing the price for 400 gems was only 50g and as a starter I thought that was a lot. Now its around 280g for 800 gems?

Sure it’s not a huge issue if you’ve been playing for a long time and have a lot of resources to generate gold, but newer players are going to be forced to either grind day in and out for gold or pay actual money.

There has been a huge inflation from gold to gems, the latter costing more and more to buy with every glider or skin they throw out. I’ll happily use real money to buy what I want, because I like this game and I’ll happily support it because of its b2p system. But I want to be able to not feel like I have to do it, or grind up gold I’d prefer to use on items.
Sure, with the new expansion and changes with the game it can be a lot easier to get gold, but point being you have to GRIND it to get any impressive amount.

I thought a selling point of guild wars 2 was the “no grind” system. Now I’m just kind of put off from buying gems alltogether because of the ridiculous gold prices.

ChartFish.1308:

Sure it’s not a huge issue if you’ve been playing for a long time and have a lot of resources to generate gold, but newer players are going to be forced to either grind day in and out for gold or pay actual money.

That’s kind of the point.

To be honest, veteran players were terribly spoiled. At the height of the dungeon farming era I used to exchange gold for gems every couple weeks and buy stuff I didn’t even want, lol. It was a huge part of the games appeal back then, but compared to the economic and micro-transaction systems in other MMOs we were very, very privileged.

I don’t like the way Anet let us get so comfortable, only to yank the rug out from under us, but I can look at this objectively enough to make peace with it.

People will start to say, “supply and demand”. Reality is that it has nothing to due with supply and demand. Gems are infinite. Gold are semi-infinite. Gems can be generated in demand. I say that their in-house economist is manipulating the exchange rates to force people into paying more cash to get gems instead of exchange in game gold for gems with these inflated rates. How many people know that GW2 has a in-house economist who works for them?

Unfortunately this topic is one that is cropping up every few days, or so it seems.

The gold to gem prices are set by player demand and supply not by ANet. There are only two ways for it to go down and that is for a lot of people to buy gems with cash (£, € or $) thereby adding more gems into the market, or for players to want something that they can only buy with gold and therefore encourage people to change gems to gold.

No game has a real economy as every player wants the loot that drops and most want to make as much gold as possible as quickly as possible, you only have to look at the outcry that comes with loot nerfs. This means that there is a constant influx of gold into the economy and not much to take it out, there are a few gold sinks but nothing major enough. ANet could put something in that costs a lot of gold, but really that would not be that different to what is available in the gem store when you consider the price as if it were in gold.

Personally while I don’t like the gem prices constantly going up (I started at launch, I remember when 400 gems was less than 50 silver!), I prefer this model of having things in the gem store than the other one of having them locked behind dungeons and raids where the item you want has a 0.0001% chance of dropping, and where you have to be able to devote hours a day for months in hope of getting something at the end. I work full time, and only have time for GW2 for an hour or so in the evening, i know I can get most of what I want eventually, either by saving up the gold or by wielding the credit card.

The system may not be ideal, but it seems to be one of the best balances between those players that have time but no money, and those that have little spare time, but do have a bit of spare cash.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gem-prices-have-doubled-in-price/first#post6192880

littlemunster.1059:

People will start to say, “supply and demand”. Reality is that it has nothing to due with supply and demand. Gems are infinite. Gold are semi-infinite. Gems can be generated in demand. I say that their in-house economist is manipulating the exchange rates to force people into paying more cash to get gems instead of exchange in game gold for gems with these inflated rates. How many people know that GW2 has a in-house economist who works for them?

Gems purchased with gold are not infinite.

Gems are not infinite.
Gems are not created within the game.
They are only created in exchange for RL money.
Even when you buy gems for gold , you are buying the gems off another player who originally bought them with RL money.
Gold is created within the game , so the supply of gold keeps increasing.
If the rate of gold supply exceeds the rate at which players are buying gems with real money, then simple supply / demand economics dictates that the price of gems for gold will go up.
As posters have previously indicated, Anet does not control the gold / gem exchange rate, players do.
If you want the exchange rate to go down, then buy lots of gems with RL money.

The problem is that gem sales are dropping, which means both less $ for Anet, and higher gold-to-gem conversion rates.

The problem is self fixing, as if gems for RL money sales fall, then the gold / gem exchange rate will keep going up, until its unnafordable to buy gems with gold, thus meaning that gems will only be obtainable for RL money.

mauried.5608:

The problem is self fixing, as if gems for RL money sales fall, then the gold / gem exchange rate will keep going up, until its unnafordable to buy gems with gold, thus meaning that gems will only be obtainable for RL money.

That would take much, much longer than you’re thinking, I’m sure.
One only has to look at the rate at which gem prices are increasing over time to see that; it will be a long time before gems become “unaffordable”. (And they are currently the highest they’ve ever been)
It wouldn’t be in A-net’s best interests to wait until that happens as an incentive to buy gems.

The high current rate is only unusual in that we’ve gotten used to a low rate for so long. There’s been a perfect storm recently with all the old rate-trends overlapping, resulting in a massive spike. People are now in panic mode, so any minor change to the gem shop (or gold supply) results in a spike with a slower drop back to a previous (and lower) equilibrium.

littlemunster.1059:

People will start to say, “supply and demand”. Reality is that it has nothing to due with supply and demand.

Incorrect. The exchange is setup to reflect supply & demand.

littlemunster.1059:

Gems are infinite.

Only theoretically. In reality, no.

ANet created a set of gems at the start. New ones are only created when players pay cash and since players are not infinite (and none of us have infinite disposable income), gems aren’t infinite.

littlemunster.1059:

Gold are semi-infinite.

Only theoretically. In reality, no.

Coin can’t increase in supply any faster than the number of players completing content that rewards coin (or items that are converted to coin).

littlemunster.1059:

Gems can be generated in demand.

They could be, but, as noted above, they are only created when people spend RL cash to get them.

littlemunster.1059:

I say that their in-house economist is manipulating the exchange rates to force people into paying more cash to get gems instead of exchange in game gold for gems with these inflated rates.

You can say whatever you like — you’d need some facts to back up your claim if you want to convince others. The facts are: all of the recent increases in the gold:gem rate can be explained by pre-existing trends that are spiking now:

• Demand Spike: People spend gems to change servers; price always spiked when WvWers bandwagon, which happens during ‘Seasons’ and started again with linking.
• Demand Spike: People spend gems whenever there are coveted items in the gem shop. ANet has recently been returning such items to the store on a regular basis — we used to weeks without major changes; now we get new & returning items weekly (or more often).
• Demand Spike: Any change to BL chests spikes demand, too. We’ve had several such recently.
• Supply Drop: there’s a seemingly large group of people who have stopped dropping RL cash on gems. Some are doing so in (mild) protest to ANet policies/GW2 changes. Some have just bought nearly everything they want or need.
• Supply Drop: with more gold, a lot more people are unwilling to spend cash on the game if they don’t have to.

littlemunster.1059:

How many people know that GW2 has a in-house economist who works for them?

Best thing that happened to the industry. This game has less gold inflation, more things that you can sell to buy the things you want, and the possibility that you never have to spend RL cash on the gem shop.

I love this games economy. Best of any MMO ever and I’m glad we have John Smith. However, I would like much more gem sales on “essential” items like bank/bag slots for new players to not have to suffer so bad if gold – > gem prices are going to only continue to rise.

There are no essential items in the gem store.
Players now seem to be claiming that items that are nice to have are essential.

Blackworm.2167:

The problem is that gem sales are dropping, which means both less $ for Anet, and higher gold-to-gem conversion rates.

But it might not be. The only thing needed for the exchange price to go up is more gems are pulled out of the exchange than put in. That’s it. Players could be buying gems and NOT converting them to gold but actually buy stuff at the shop. An increase in gold coming into the game plus the increasing rate may discourage converting left over gems into gold.

It’s just there is a number of scenarios that don’t mean gem sales are dropping. I’m expecting another $25-30 million quarter for 2Q.

Behellagh.1468:

But it might not be. The only thing needed for the exchange price to go up is more gems are pulled out of the exchange than put in. That’s it. Players could be buying gems and NOT converting them to gold but actually buy stuff at the shop. An increase in gold coming into the game plus the increasing rate may discourage converting left over gems into gold.

It’s just there is a number of scenarios that don’t mean gem sales are dropping. I’m expecting another $25-30 million quarter for 2Q.

That is indeed a good point.
I just don’t personally think that is the case at this point in time, but then again, there is no real way of knowing without A-net revealing their charts.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

littlemunster.1059:

People will start to say, “supply and demand”. Reality is that it has nothing to due with supply and demand.

Incorrect. The exchange is setup to reflect supply & demand.

Due to the exchange happening through a 0 transparency intermediary who is directly benefited from an increasing gold to gem ratio, this is both impossible to prove factually as well as potentially unlikely.

This isn’t EvE were they trade PLEX face to face through buy and sell orders.

mauried.5608:

There are no essential items in the gem store.
Players now seem to be claiming that items that are nice to have are essential.

I don’t think playing the game without buying bank slots would be very fun. You wouldn’t even be capable of swapping your ascended gear between characters because your bank would always be full of things you can’t put into storage(and the amount of items that can’t be put into storage keeps increasing every patch).

I’ve got well over 4000 hours in, and I’ve never bought a bank, bag or character slot. I’ve never bought a storage expander either. I actually went almost 4000 hours without spending any gems at all, until I just really wanted a BL salvage kit and was tired of waiting for one to drop . . .
At the very beginning it was a little bit of a struggle bc I didn’t understand what I needed to hang on to and what I could get rid of, but it has been a very long time since it was an issue. I don’t even use my guild bank at all anymore. It’s been completely empty for months . . .

Substance E.4852:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

littlemunster.1059:

People will start to say, “supply and demand”. Reality is that it has nothing to due with supply and demand.

Incorrect. The exchange is setup to reflect supply & demand.

Due to the exchange happening through a 0 transparency intermediary who is directly benefited from an increasing gold to gem ratio, this is both impossible to prove factually as well as potentially unlikely.

This isn’t EvE were they trade PLEX face to face through buy and sell orders.

While it’s true that there’s little direct transparency, ANet has explained the mechanic and the facts are consistent with the listed details. Further, ANet doesn’t directly benefit from an increasing gold:gem ratio — they benefit when veterans spend more than they used to and new players spend something in the first place; the increased ratio doesn’t help make that happen enough.

Put another way, the most inefficient method for ANet to make more money is to invent a complex, secret scheme to drive gold:gem prices up and hope that folks spend a lot more than they used to. It’s far, far easier for them to just add stuff to the shop for which people are willing to drop RL cash.

That said, I’d agree that it’s been foolish of ANet to have done so many things at the same time that tend to increase the rate — they could have discounted server transfers with the linking experiment (and again for the next transfer period, but lock people out of a second transfer for a longer period). They could have added some incentives for people to convert gems to gold (such as the mini they offered a while back for having spent enough RL cash on gems — people treated it as “buy mini, get a gems” and that helped drive the rate down).

Putting that another way, ANet’s left hand seems rarely to be aware of what it’s right hand is doing.

This is yet another example of where existing mechanics and lack-of-care-by-management offer a simpler explanation of the facts than the more-exciting conspiracy theories.

What could Anet do to fix it?

If they manually reduced the exchange rate the best case scenario is that over time it gradually returns to where it is now and then continues to increase. A much more likely situation is that everyone who is aware of the change will convert as much gold as they can to gems while it’s cheap and it will jump straight back up to where it was, or possibly even higher.

Of course this might be mitigated by some people then converting their gems back into gold, but even then it’s only a short-term fluctuation before things go back to where they are now.

The only other option I can think of is to remove the exchange rate system and permanently fix the price at one point. Which almost certainly would be too expensive for some people and then there would be no hope of it changing. It would also make life much easier for gold sellers – all they have to do is beat that price and they have a much easier time getting customers. Right now they’re trying to hit a moving target and every time the amount of gold you can get for your gems comes even close to their prices they lose a lot of customers, because why would you risk getting banned (or having your account stolen by the sellers) when you can buy gold safely through the game itself?

The only other option I can think of is to wait until the exchange rate is so high that it becomes worthwhile for lots of people to buy gems and convert them to gold (which will cause it to swing the other way). Last time I looked it was about 200g for £10 which means many mid-range items on the TP (ie not legendaries and skins that have been gone for 3 years) are the same price as items from the gem store. If it keeps going buying gold with real money may become a viable option for a lot of people.

Which, on the plus side would reduce the cost of buying gems with gold but on the downside would cause a lot of inflation as all that new gold enters the game.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

. Further, ANet doesn’t directly benefit from an increasing gold:gem ratio — they benefit when veterans spend more than they used to and new players spend something in the first place; the increased ratio doesn’t help make that happen enough.

Of course it does.

High gem to gold ratio dis-incentivizes using gold on gems already purchased and incentivizes buying gems to turn into gold.

One circumvents the obscene gold hoard the veteran player-base has amassed and the other makes converting $10-20 worth of gems to a newbie more appealing than it has ever been.

A low ratio means the average veteran can buy gems in the system with easily farmed gold and the new player has less reason to convert to gold because they don’t get as much.

Anything that gets people to buy fresh gems is a net gain for Anet. As long as the total number of gems/gold in the exchange is kept behind closed doors, there’s little to keep them from just letting unfortunate excess fall through the cracks and have the price creep ever so higher as the years tick by.

The only way for this to blow up in Anet’s face is if they overplay their hand and let the ratio rise so high that the average player can no longer purchase gems using gold to any reasonable degree. The image of a micro-transaction store that can be bypassed with gold disappears and it no longer looks like a system designed to work for the player. Even if this isn’t truly the case, image and perception are everything. If people lose faith in the system, then it doesn’t really matter. People like micro-transaction systems that appears to be made for their benefit, not one that looks like it’s just there to grease their wallets.

ChartFish.1308:

(snippety-snip)

…or pay actual money.

(snip-snip-snip)

Why do people keep saying this like it’s a bad thing?

there obviously happened some gold exploit or dupe because in the last 2 months the gold price for gems skyrocketed like crazy

same goes to prices for certain materials/items on trading post

Lexander.4579:

there obviously happened some gold exploit or dupe because in the last 2 months the gold price for gems skyrocketed like crazy

same goes to prices for certain materials/items on trading post

There is no exploit. I suggest reading up on supply/demand and how it relates to the gem store and TP.

Substance E.4852:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

. Further, ANet doesn’t directly benefit from an increasing gold:gem ratio — they benefit when veterans spend more than they used to and new players spend something in the first place; the increased ratio doesn’t help make that happen enough.

Of course it does.

High gem to gold ratio dis-incentivizes using gold on gems already purchased and incentivizes buying gems to turn into gold.

I agree that high gold:gem rates makes buying gems more attractive. I don’t agree that it causes:

• Frequent shoppers to spend more than they used to.
• Droves of non-spenders to start spending RL cash.

I’m sure that some people will spend more; I’m equally sure that it’s far too few to impact that total monthly income.

If people were spending more money (as this theory concludes), then we’d see huge dips in the rate after every spike. Instead, long-standing trends continue: rates increase when there are new reasons to use gems; rates decrease when there aren’t.

Again, if ANet’s wants to increase spending, all they need to do is: offer stuff that on which people want to spend RL cash; the gold:gem rate is entirely incidental to their goal.

Well I’ve just watched the exchange rate for the first time ever since I started playing. I can tell you now, The exchange rate was ok when I bought my first set of gems but when I exchange for gold it now cost me almost 150 gems more for the same gold is under 2 mins. Every time I bought gems the gold exchange cost more. It’s a bloody joke, we the players spend real money on gems you try to rip us off like vultures scavenging meat ??? This continues i’ll be forced to quit this and play elsewhere.

Baku.3128:

Well I’ve just watched the exchange rate for the first time ever since I started playing. I can tell you now, The exchange rate was ok when I bought my first set of gems but when I exchange for gold it now cost me almost 150 gems more for the same gold is under 2 mins. Every time I bought gems the gold exchange cost more. It’s a bloody joke, we the players spend real money on gems you try to rip us off like vultures scavenging meat ??? This continues i’ll be forced to quit this and play elsewhere.

They’re not ripping you off. The exchange rates fluctuate constantly based on the players.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Currency_exchange

Ayrilana.1396:

Baku.3128:

Well I’ve just watched the exchange rate for the first time ever since I started playing. I can tell you now, The exchange rate was ok when I bought my first set of gems but when I exchange for gold it now cost me almost 150 gems more for the same gold is under 2 mins. Every time I bought gems the gold exchange cost more. It’s a bloody joke, we the players spend real money on gems you try to rip us off like vultures scavenging meat ??? This continues i’ll be forced to quit this and play elsewhere.

They’re not ripping you off. The exchange rates fluctuate constantly based on the players.

Specifically it’s based on how many gems players exchange for gold, and how much gold they exchange for gems.

So it’s hardly surprising that you noticed the exchange rate changing between transactions, that’s exactly what is supposed to happen. At the moment, as this thread explains players who buy gems and convert them to gold are actually getting a very good price because the exchange rate is so high. You would have had to spend a lot more gems to get the same amount of gold a few months ago.

I admit to caving at the start of the price increase and buying gems with real money, because hey I love the game and it’s free to play and I don’t mind supporting it while actually getting something in return for it. But the higher the gold-to-gem prices get and the more I start to feel elbowed or “forced” into buying with real money (if there are things I want and the only other option is hours of mindless grinding that I didn’t choose to do on my own), the more reluctant I get to pay real money for gems. Now, part of that is because I’m a petty kitten and kind of a 2 year old about being told what to do, but it’s also a matter of sensing that if this keeps up then playing just becomes about grinding for the next shiny. And yeah yeah I know, part of that is par for the course with MMOs, and I don’t actually mind grinding for gold that much, but I do mind it when it’s not a choice.

Basically, if the prices temporarily spike and I happen to really want something from the store then I’m good with paying for it, but if they’re gonna stay like this forever then that has a fundamental impact on the way I play the game, and not in a good way.

Also agree that certain items – utility items like bank space, character slots – could stand to be cheaper if these rates are here to stay. A glider has little impact on the way anyone plays, but a character slot can be the difference between having a whole new character to gear up/deck out in shinies or having nothing to do in the game at all.

Baku.3128:

Well I’ve just watched the exchange rate for the first time ever since I started playing. I can tell you now, The exchange rate was ok when I bought my first set of gems but when I exchange for gold it now cost me almost 150 gems more for the same gold is under 2 mins. Every time I bought gems the gold exchange cost more. It’s a bloody joke, we the players spend real money on gems you try to rip us off like vultures scavenging meat ??? This continues i’ll be forced to quit this and play elsewhere.

If you are buying gems with gold then you are not buying gems with real money. In this post you’re buying gems with “Monopoly money” and confusing that with the real thing. The real life $€ to gems hasn’t increased at all. It’s still $10€ for 800 gems and has been the same since launch.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Substance E.4852:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

. Further, ANet doesn’t directly benefit from an increasing gold:gem ratio — they benefit when veterans spend more than they used to and new players spend something in the first place; the increased ratio doesn’t help make that happen enough.

Of course it does.

High gem to gold ratio dis-incentivizes using gold on gems already purchased and incentivizes buying gems to turn into gold.

I agree that high gold:gem rates makes buying gems more attractive. I don’t agree that it causes:

• Frequent shoppers to spend more than they used to.
• Droves of non-spenders to start spending RL cash.

I’m sure that some people will spend more; I’m equally sure that it’s far too few to impact that total monthly income.

If people were spending more money (as this theory concludes), then we’d see huge dips in the rate after every spike. Instead, long-standing trends continue: rates increase when there are new reasons to use gems; rates decrease when there aren’t.

Again, if ANet’s wants to increase spending, all they need to do is: offer stuff that on which people want to spend RL cash; the gold:gem rate is entirely incidental to their goal.

I mostly agree, but I want to clarify:

Anet wants to sell you items in the gem store for gems. The amount of money they make is based entirely on the number of gems spent on items in the gem shop. The gem exchange rate is irrelevant.

That’s a bold claim, and so it is on me to demonstrate why.

Case 1) Someone pays $5 for the gems to buy an item in the gem store.
Case 2) Someone buys the gems for kitten item with gold. The gem price goes up. Someone spends $5 for gems and converts them to gold. The gem price goes back down to where it was before.

In both cases, Anet sold the same item and got $5 for it. However, in the second case, the gem price went up a bit before returning to equilibrium. Still, Anet made no more money this way.

The gem exchange ensures that all sales in the gem store are paid for with cash. (Not strictly true — you can get gems for free from AP chests. Those can be considered a giveaway of gem store items without any cash to be spent on them. If the occurrence of free gems is low, we can ignore this effect.). When someone buy gems with gold, the rate changes to produce incentive to balance the rate out.

The point is that Anet does not make more money when the gem rate is high. All that happens is that Anet gets paid for items that were already sold (which is what caused the rate to become high in the first place). In fact, if the rate is increasing, that means Anet is owed money that they haven’t collected on items already sold.

Once again, Anet does not benefit from having a high gem-gold conversion rate.

Greetings my fellow krytans,

I want to talk today to you about a problem that i believe that everyone has become a witness of, in a number of ways.
Prices of items in the trading post inflate to heaven, prices of items being guided too high for the rarity of the item etc.

The biggest problem in my opinion is that the gold-gem store shouldnt be connected in the first place.
Yes you are eliminating gold sellers,but guess what they still exist,and its so easy to buy and sell gold and never get cought doing it if you are smart.( I dont embrace the idea of gold buying and selling,nor i urge you to do it.)

So if the arena net team would take away the gold -gems conversion and vice verca and isolate the game economy to just gold,i think that this would bring harmony to the game and open new ways to reward people, as sometimes i am getting the feeling that the event should reward more for the time i invested in it,yet it doesnt.

Its all connected,the game cant reward people enough because then people wouldnt feel the urge to buy gems to get the stuff they really want from the TP,thats also the reason we dont have player trading,no tax to be removed from the game after the sale had happened.

Now,if the gem store had some really cool items or skins of prestige that would make me say, " kitten ,i want this skin-item sooooo bad" i woul be happy to send some money arena nets way,just for selling a good product. But i believe that people get a false feeling that they actually saved money if they convert to gems with ingame gold.
So sad that this applies only to gold farmers or people with extremely lucky accounts(yea i believe that accounts are cherry picked to receive good drops, see bodydocks youtube channel,that guy just farts precursors for goodmorning).

To sum up, the game right now depends on a number of casino type minigames in order to reward-take away from you,witch in other mmo games doesnt exist on this scale,gw2 really takes gambling for good loot on a whole new level.

I am not trying to send hate or anything bad to arena net or to the dev team, as i am sure that they are amazing people and are trying to make this game a better place for us to pass our free time in.
What i am trying to do is to wake up arena net and say that people come to this game,they have probably played other mmo games and have a different feel about rewards, kitten .I was playing another mmo lately and the way i got rewards in it felt much better as it was less rng related. If i wanted to make something i knew exactly what to get and how,none of the items required was rng related.

So to sum all this rumble up in a small sentence,take away the gems-gold convertion,both ways,make some cool items to sell in the gem store so people send money your way,fix the prices inflating(except if your real purpose is to guide new players straight to the gems market -.-).

Hope i dont see the game i love so much get destroyed over greed one day,cause the game spells to me every time i play it…..“buy gems,you will feel happy playing me…..”

Ps.To test my faith to the rng system i tried to forge a precursor in the mystic forge,used 1000gold worth of EXOTIC greatswords, guess what i got? Nothing what so ever!!!I dont cry for the gold as i was experimenting with it,but the feeling man,it felt wrong,twisted and bad.

Constructive talk is greatly apreciated on the matter, creative critisism is also wellcome.

Thanks for reading my thread-concerns about the games market-rewards.

Ps2: If i misspelled something or if my grammar aint right and you have a problem with it,then kitten the kitten off

just to make sure that we’re on the same page, you do know that when a player buys gold he is buying it from another player don’t you? So if player A sells 100 gold to player B in exchange for the gems that player B bought with real money, then there’s no increase in gold. Only an exchange of gold from A to B.

If you did know that, how does this exchange of gold from A to B lower prices on the trading post without an additional rework of how the game rewards players.

When the game first launched,did the gold for gems was traded from players? I remember a whole different system at launch and it was dictated by arena net.
Now if they changed that and baptised it something else ,player to player trading for example, well…..i dont buy that story, also i dont believe that every time a new item appears in the gem store people are running to convert gold to gems at that time to make the purchase.
Also, the rate always favors the gem to gold and not the gold to gem, if its player to player trading only, why anet has a tax to it?
Its all regulated by arena net,its their lovelyhood,why would they leave something so important to players or chance hm? Thats my point of view.

Edit: A very well placed position from your part, trading from player to player couldnt be simpler by a trade system, without taxes,hidden walls etc.
( prices traded in the example are fictional)

ex. player A has 100g ,player B has 1000gems,boom,trade complete,simple honest player to player trading.

Also, i never said that the exchange is lowering prices, i said it increases them by gold inflation. As stated by some notary arena net staff, prices for certain items arent supposed to be so high,yet they are because some players are playing the market with those items,mystic coins for example.

The gold <—> gems has always been player to player. Since launch.

The system is, player A buys gems with real money. He puts the gems into the gem pool and pulls out gold. Player B puts his gold into the gold pool and pulls out gems.

At launch ANet seeded the two pools with a sufficient supply of gold and gems. However that supply has been long used up and it’s all players gold and gems in the pools.

ANet has a tax because it’s one of their few gold sinks.

The gold to gems goes up with each new item because more people are converting gold to gems than gems to gold. The gem pool is shrinking and that makes each gem worth more because there are fewer of them in the pool.

Well, that cant be true, cause i can buy lets say 10000000gems with real money and throw them into the game economy and rended gems worthless,people would be able to buy them for copper, do you really think that this system is so deeply player driven?
I havent seen the price of gems go down not a single big,they have been going up by the week and sometimes by the hour.

My main point is that you cant have a player driven economy with having a pure dependance on the gem store for players to make their gold purchases.
Every other game i played didnt have this system,where the ingame market would be connected with the revenue that the company makes from the game.
Its the main drive of this game,think about it,why does the precursors for legendaries cost almost the same,sometimes more to craft with the new system that was supposed to be “revolutionary” and “unique”? To create a fix price for them forever,thats why!
Everything in this game is around the gems,and why wouldnt it? If player A-Z got rewarded for their time invested in the game,then there wouldnt be a real use for currency purchasing ,now would be ?

It all comes down to business in the end.

Back at launch ANet explained how the gold/gems worked. If it worked the way you describe it by pumping newly made gold into the economy, the inflation would be far worse than it is now with all those people able to create 1000s of gold in an instant.

Why would ANet design it like the way you think it works? That’s a sure way to have massive inflation. This way they can have player to player gold/gems trading and no increased inflation.

Edit: since you said gems never go down. Prices of gems over time. They go both up and down.
https://www.gw2tp.com/gems

What i am trying to pass to you is that the gems dictate the amount of gold in the game, and since there was a pre-set amount of it ,it kick started the economy, now people,including myself have to recycle that gold over and over and over,some are even hoarding it in inactive accounts but that isnt the point.
The point is,that the market of the game is too much driven by gems,and as a follow up to that,so are rewards,meaning less rewarding stuff,more people buy gems to fill their need to buy something cool.
Hope i made it simpler to understand this time.

No. Yes their players which buy gems to get gold for things but hardcore players do the opposite too. Spend hundred of gold to get gems for A-net items. TP tax takes gold out of the game too. I remember it something like 1/3 of players buy gems. I do not feel that Gem-Gold adds that much gold into the game to cause inflation.