Guild Wars 2

So, the gems used to cost about 60s and now reached 1g40s, i understand that due to the events(lost shores + black friday) there should be a demand for gems but this is really becoming too expensive to buy with gold.

“there should be a demand for gems but this is really becoming too expensive to buy with gold” Just what Anet wants how do you think F2P games work?

Inflation. Notice how the cost of everything in the TP has gone up as well?

More interest stuff to buy with gems = higher the price.

First reason why this is happening is that more players are buying gems with golds instead of irl money and the second is because there were black friday sales, now there are makeover kits. More interesting stuff they add, higher the prices will go untill A LOT of players actually switch from buying the gems via golds to irl money.

My problem with that is that some TP stuff are considered almost mandatory, like the BL salvage kit and the bank space.
Now that the gem prices have gone through the roof I feel stucked.

grind more gold or pay cash. that’s the way it is.

Nexon & friends got some good things in store for us!

I dont think the difference is the lack of items. I think the fact that people want more of the items because of high level gear that needs them has caused a perception of a lack of items because they want those items now coupled with teh fact that prices have all raised due to less bots.

I think it’s cuz we’re earning so much in-game gold, and don’t have a lot to spend it on.

Since the lost shores event it has become insane easy to earn gold through dungeons (not by selling, but raw gold generated from completing something). This is, I think, a very large reason for the huge inflation. My dungeons now changed from 20-60s per run to 1g-2g per run just from drops by mobs that i vendor + rewards from those bags, money drops etc.

people don’t want to give Anet money any more.

alcopaul.2156:

grind more gold or pay cash. that’s the way it is.

And there it is, this is one of the major reasons why people are quitting the game in masses. Gold grinding is extremely boring, still reliant on RNG and the grind is pretty intense if you want anything decent ~ and finally, you have cash ~

Gems went up because of a few things. The three biggest contributing factors are 1) Black Friday Weekend sales, 2) New Transformation kits in the Gem shop and 3) Holy Good God Look At That Item Grind To Upgrade Your Ascended Back Piece.

This increased the value of Gems to encourage spending cash, rather than relying on Gold to obtain them, just as ANET probably planned. I do wish they would be a little more subtle and less misleading about their marketing goals though. They’re really just yanking most people along on a chain.

Esrever.8613:

people don’t want to give Anet money any more.

I do .. And every friend I have in GW 2 are still doing that.

Only because few angry players on the forums dont want to give money to Arenanet doesnt mean anything

Ive spend already about 300+ euros on gems and its still rising.

You are forgeting one thing. ARENANET has tools how to measure everything. They know how much money they make trought gems, they know everything. We dont.

So you can just make assuptions all day about how is nobody giving money to Anet but the facts could be totally different.

What if Arenanet is making morey money after the lost shore event than before?
What if players are playing more then before?
Did you consider this maybe?

Just because few players complain more on the forums doesnt prove anything.

We just dont know … Arenanet knows.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

alcopaul.2156:

grind more gold or pay cash. that’s the way it is.

And there it is, this is one of the major reasons why people are quitting the game in masses. Gold grinding is extremely boring, still reliant on RNG and the grind is pretty intense if you want anything decent ~ and finally, you have cash ~

While I don’t disagree, I always laugh when people say that others are quitting the game in masses. It’s like when infomercials say it’s what everyone is RAVING about when it’s obviously not true lol. Although I can easily see people leaving over the horrible TP pricing and loot or lack thereof right now.

There isn’t too much to log on for atm.

Indeed, I’d buy more gems if they’d update the gem store. They really need some new stuff in there, A LOT more skins, weapon skins, armor skins, etc. A permanent banking golem. STUFF.

Eli The Yahoo.9782:

What’s happening to the price of gems?

It’s going up.

Dogblaster.6713:

Esrever.8613:

people don’t want to give Anet money any more.

I do .. And every friend I have in GW 2 are still doing that.

Only because few angry players on the forums dont want to give money to Arenanet doesnt mean anything

Ive spend already about 300+ euros on gems and its still rising.

You are forgeting one thing. ARENANET has tools how to measure everything. They know how much money they make trought gems, they know everything. We dont.

So you can just make assuptions all day about how is nobody giving money to Anet but the facts could be totally different.

What if Arenanet is making morey money after the lost shore event than before?
What if players are playing more then before?
Did you consider this maybe?

Just because few players complain more on the forums doesnt prove anything.

We just dont know … Arenanet knows.

well since next to nobody bought anything for lostshores from what I can see. The chests and dyes were universally considered pointless and even black friday generated less interest than the halloween event. I would guess the gem buying is much lower than before.

Rukia.4802:

While I don’t disagree, I always laugh when people say that others are quitting the game in masses.

To be fair, quite a large mass of people did quit just recently due to you-know-what that doesn’t belong in this thread.

Archmortal.1027:

Rukia.4802:

While I don’t disagree, I always laugh when people say that others are quitting the game in masses.

To be fair, quite a large mass of people did quit just recently due to you-know-what that doesn’t belong in this thread.

And how many is that exactly? We don’t know the number, let alone the proportion of the player base these people represent.

Basic necessities such as bank slots and equipment should be standardised even though the exchange rate is going up.

600 gems for 30 extra bank slots equates to about 8G at the moment. This, in my opinion , is not reasonable.

Archmortal.1027:

Gems went up because of a few things. The three biggest contributing factors are 1) Black Friday Weekend sales, 2) New Transformation kits in the Gem shop and 3) Holy Good God Look At That Item Grind To Upgrade Your Ascended Back Piece.

This increased the value of Gems to encourage spending cash, rather than relying on Gold to obtain them, just as ANET probably planned. I do wish they would be a little more subtle and less misleading about their marketing goals though. They’re really just yanking most people along on a chain.

It is inflation. Not only the price of gems are rising, but so is pretty much every item in the game. Dungeon rewards are also increased.
More or less, you wont even lose anything. eto’s went from ~13s to 34s in a few weeks, for example.

Shatters.7315:

Archmortal.1027:

Gems went up because of a few things. The three biggest contributing factors are 1) Black Friday Weekend sales, 2) New Transformation kits in the Gem shop and 3) Holy Good God Look At That Item Grind To Upgrade Your Ascended Back Piece.

This increased the value of Gems to encourage spending cash, rather than relying on Gold to obtain them, just as ANET probably planned. I do wish they would be a little more subtle and less misleading about their marketing goals though. They’re really just yanking most people along on a chain.

It is inflation. Not only the price of gems are rising, but so is pretty much every item in the game. Dungeon rewards are also increased.
More or less, you wont even lose anything. eto’s went from ~13s to 34s in a few weeks, for example.

The gold price of items on the Trading Post have gone up for a number of reasons, but as you’ll note only the last one of the reasons the Gem price has gone up has anything to do with that. Item value inflation is almost entirely due to the convenient coincidence of there being hardly any bots to supply the market at a time in which a massive grind requiring a huge number of supplies was introduced. This by proxy contributes to increased Gem Value. (You’d almost think ANET made the Ascended back piece such a grind to make a dent in the supply left over from the bots. In which case it’s another example of them lying to cover their Kittens during the AMA)

I’m not saying inflation isn’t the right word, but it’s an artificial inflation brought on by direct manipulation by ANET, and not by natural growth of the market.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Basic necessities such as bank slots and equipment should be standardised even though the exchange rate is going up.

600 gems for 30 extra bank slots equates to about 8G at the moment. This, in my opinion , is not reasonable.

If the price isn’t worth it to you, then don’t spend the gold. The extra space isn’t strictly necessary, although I will admit that it’s a nice quality of life improvement. If you have spare character slots, you can create alts for extra storage.

Every item has a standardised gem cost and there is a fixed $ to gem rate. So the bank slots will always cost $7.50, it’s only the gold cost that will vary over time. Also 8g is cheaper than the cost of a 20 slot bag…

Archmortal.1027:

The gold price of items on the Trading Post have gone up for a number of reasons, but as you’ll note only the last one of the reasons the Gem price has gone up has anything to do with that. Item value inflation is almost entirely due to the convenient coincidence of there being hardly any bots to supply the market at a time in which a massive grind requiring a huge number of supplies was introduced. This by proxy contributes to increased Gem Value. (You’d almost think ANET made the Ascended back piece such a grind to make a dent in the supply left over from the bots. In which case it’s another example of them lying to cover their Kittens during the AMA)

I’m not saying inflation isn’t the right word, but it’s an artificial inflation brought on by direct manipulation by ANET, and not by natural growth of the market.

Look closely at http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 and note that there was no spike in demand (buy orders) with the introduction of ascended gear. There was a big drop in supply (sell listings) around November 1 and a small increase in demand around November 6 – 8.

It seems most likely that the only direct manipulation by ArenaNet was due the mass bot banning that removed a lot of supply from the market… in my view, this was a good thing despite what it has done to prices.

From the way I see it the lost shores event caused a large number of people who didn’t care for legendary to get a precursor. I know I did.

These people sold them, even when the precursors were at their lowest they were worth more than these players have gotten total. I sold my spark for around 110g. Before then I never had more than 6 gold.

These people start buying stuff and they are willing to pay more for the stuff than they would otherwise consider. I wasn’t willing to spend more than 3g on gear, and was perfectly happy to just use them as I found them. But after I sold my precursor I bought 4 exotic weapons, 2 exotic rings, an exotic amulet an exotic accessory, 6 superior runes of mercy, 4 superior sigils, and about 5g worth of misc crap that I turned into commendations for a bunch of those highly compact salvage kits and gathering tools. I would have bought a full set of exotic armor too, but I couldn’t find any sets with +power + toughness +vitality that I liked. Two other people that were in my party for the event also got precursors, so I’m sure there were a lot of people who did the same thing.

These same people also bought gems. More gems than they ever before thought possible. That also drove the prices of gems up. It was just simple economics.

Astraea.6075:

It seems most likely that the only direct manipulation by ArenaNet was due the mass bot banning that removed a lot of supply from the market… in my view, this was a good thing despite what it has done to prices.

I wasn’t saying the coincidence was ANET directly manipulating the market, sorry if I gave that impression. Their direct manipulation to increase the cost of Gems comes from the first two things I listed. They want gems to be valuable so people are more tempted to spend real money on them. That’s why we’ve seen more content updates than in the first couple months, each with items that require Gems to purchase.

I do wish they’d do a better job of balancing new content vs. fixing current content, though. Hopefully they’re using any potential profit increase from the Gem store toward fixing the game and not just jamming more broken stuff into it.

The price is exactly the same as it was when the game launched. Ten US dollars for 800. I know you meant in game money but you didn’t actually believe they were guna stay affordable or even become affordable again did you?

This is a cash shop game, the gem prices are right where Anet wants them.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Basic necessities such as bank slots and equipment should be standardised even though the exchange rate is going up.

600 gems for 30 extra bank slots equates to about 8G at the moment. This, in my opinion , is not reasonable.

Yea I would like it if those account expansions could be bought directly with coin as well, even if the price went up occasionally as the game economy inflates but tempered to keep them affordable.

While people buy gems with in game money, the price of gold for gems will continue to go up. On the plus side this means gems to gold is also increasing and at some point you’ll be able to drop $50 and get a large amount of gold.

I predicted this would happen the very moment I heard how the game would manage gems, and guessed how exactly the system would work.

So after the game was released, I bought 20€ in gems and quickly got the rest with coins (about 25..40silver per 100gems by that time), and unlocked 15 characters slots, all bank slots and all bag slots in my main character and I told my guildies to do the same.

Now all of them who didn’t heed my words are regretting it, like everyone else who has ever ignored my warnings.

As people at higher levels keep doing grindier things get more gold than those at lower levels doing fun things, they buy gems every now and them, either to get stuff or to save them for festivals.
Some people sold their remaining gems after they got what they wanted after release, but now they have realized that saving them is better, because you never know what the market may have in the future.
And so, as less and less people sell gems, and a few people grinds more and more gold, prices will keep going up.

Exactly as I predicted.

/boo

Also, lets not forget more people are getting more gold, and thus can have more opportunities to convert to gems. During the 3-day headstart, I was able to buy a new character slot for a paltry 1g40s, and almost got a second at double that price.

The prices are always going to fluctuate based on many different factors, but at least that also means you’ll be getting more gold for your rl money.

I am a casual player with a full set of exotics who despises dungeons. I am out of progression, both horizontal and vertical.

I may as well spend my gold on gems since there is nothing else to spend it on.

It’s the new make-over kit and hair style kit they just released into the gem store.

People are re-customising their characters & alts to fit the equipment that they like the best. This is natural.

Also, some people are stocking up on gems in preparation for the next event (Wintersday) where the release of new items into the gem store will be a likely occurrence.

With these two points above – gem conversion prices are going nuts. I expect it won’t be until after the Wintersday event is over that the prices will gradually decline.

Azelroth.6801:

I expect it won’t be until after the Wintersday event is over that the prices will gradually decline.

I believe the intention is monthly content updates so it may never end :P

R.I.P. GW2 as far as i know Nexon is an MMO destroyer i can say this as i played most of nexon’s games maplestory ,mabinogi , Atlantica, Vindictus bout 4 more wich i c ouldnt care less and those games from free to play became pay to even play your cursed story quests.

well, back when i was playing LOTRO, i was in a kinship named “Get Rich OR Die Grinding [GRODG]” …. lol

so no one really seeing that the price of gems will reduce?
bummer, i was patiently playing (not grinding) to get up to 2000 gems. now when the prices are so high i can only buy1000gem :/

It seems this should work well for NcSoft/Anet.

Gems cost more so people who have tons of gold lose more gold when they buy gems and the more casual players with less gold have to spend real cash on the gems.

So Anet gets more cash and the economy’s inflation is toned down a bit. Win-win for Anet I’d say.

My understanding is the gold-gems conversion rates are based on how many people are buying gems with gold vs how many are buying gold with gems.

Since way more people buy gems with gold than the other way around, it’s necessary that the rate goes up.

The parameters of the equation are, naturally, set by ArenaNet. I’m sure there are people who speculate with gems (maybe bought a lot of gems when they were cheap and then converted to back gold after a spike in price), but the exchange fee is so high, it’s not tenable for a currency-trade model.

Dogblaster.6713:

Esrever.8613:

people don’t want to give Anet money any more.

I do .. And every friend I have in GW 2 are still doing that.

Only because few angry players on the forums dont want to give money to Arenanet doesnt mean anything

Ive spend already about 300+ euros on gems and its still rising.

You are forgeting one thing. ARENANET has tools how to measure everything. They know how much money they make trought gems, they know everything. We dont.

So you can just make assuptions all day about how is nobody giving money to Anet but the facts could be totally different.

What if Arenanet is making morey money after the lost shore event than before?
What if players are playing more then before?
Did you consider this maybe?

Just because few players complain more on the forums doesnt prove anything.

We just dont know … Arenanet knows.

Seems like you think you know with a statement like this: "Only because few angry players on the forums dont want to give money to Arenanet doesnt mean anything

/facepalm

Mechanix.5719:

“there should be a demand for gems but this is really becoming too expensive to buy with gold” Just what Anet wants how do you think F2P games work?

GW2 is B2P, no F2P …

Personally I think people are hoarding gold, maybe this will have a good effect and spill over into real life where people will learn to be savers instead of impulsive buyers and there only means of a savings account is their credit card cash limit.

Asglarek.8976:

Personally I think people are hoarding gold, maybe this will have a good effect and spill over into real life where people will learn to be savers instead of impulsive buyers and there only means of a savings account is their credit card cash limit.

mean while i’m learning the wrong lesson :/

Kite.2510:

My problem with that is that some TP stuff are considered almost mandatory, like the BL salvage kit and the bank space.
Now that the gem prices have gone through the roof I feel stucked.

Bank and BL kits mandatory?

Yeah no, even calling them almost mandatory is severe stretch.

I’ve played since BWE 1. I have never purchased gems, be it with real cash or ingame money. Never have I felt “forced” to buy anything.

Doing dungeon runs even if its a repeated run practically makes you fart gold now.

Gurpsmeister.9068:

The price is exactly the same as it was when the game launched. Ten US dollars for 800.

This.

I get the feeling that some people think that paying $60 for a game somehow entitles them to infinite updates and access to 100% of all extra content, forever, for free.

Surely you knew what you were buying when you bought the game, right? There were plenty of reviews saying how many character slots it included, how big the base inventory was, and so on. If you play enough to justify more, then surely spending $10 or $15 a month (which adds up to 30-50 cents a day) is a pretty good deal, as far as forms of entertainment are concerned.

A different issue is the pricing of some of the items. For example, I find that 250 gems (a little over $3) for a haircut is extremely high, and have no intention of ever buying one of those “kits” (how boring is that, by the way? Instead of a barber at each city, maybe with its own original hairstyles, etc., we waited 4 months and got a piece of recycled UI – so much for “putting the RPG in MMORPG”).

I think Arena Net has failed to grasp the concept of micro transactions, or to blend the gem economy properly into the game. The lack of (gem-based) vendors in cities is really hard to understand. It’s as if they didn’t know what their financial model was going to be while the game was being developed (and haven’t even managed to throw in some in the 4 months since launch).

If there were actual barbershops / salons at the major cities, where the NPC charged (for example) 15 gems for a haircut, 15 for colouring and 15 for a change to the beard / horns / accessories, people would be using it on an almost daily basis, trying out new looks to match their new armour, etc..

As it is, most people I know say they’ll just wait until they’re fed up with the way their character looks (if they ever do), and then get a single “full makeover kit” (only about $1 more) and keep that look for the following year or so.

But hey, the “gem economy” was born crooked in the first place (Mike O’Brien said before launch that players would be able to trade gems and gold directly with each other, but then Arena Net decided to become “the official gold seller” instead), so my hopes aren’t very high that they’ll suddenly figure it out. Should have spent more time studying Steam and the Mann Co. Store.

I bought all my gem shop items and slots with real money ($250 or so, including the game itself). Not going to spend another cent, though; the direction taken by the Lost Shores patch felt like a betrayal and makes me think that GW2 lacks a strong designer at the helm. Maybe the game’s original vision came from the guys who left to form Undead Labs, or maybe there was some internal reshuffling after launch that led to the current schizophrenic design. Either way, it’s going to take at least three months “on the right track” (hopefully starting with the Wintersday patch, and necessarily including the ability for players to trade gems directly with each other) to make me reach for the credit card again.

Comparing the Prices of Gems to what they give us in the game, it’s asking too much.
And the convert rate will get much worse than it is right now, it’s simple way to players start to buy gems and ANet saying “hey, there is a way to convert gold into gems!” (that became too expensive to most players to get).

I wouldn’t care about gems price one bit IF BL salvage kits and fine transmute stones were in dungeon chests as they were on MK dungeon but as it is now its unacceptable. Am i paying 3g for 5 fine transmute stone? kitten NO.

BL salvage kits and fine transmute stones are available from black lion chests, and even though gems have gone up in price, the keys themselves are still around 70s, last I checked, so that actually keeps the price more stable for those items, at least.