Guild Wars 2

After the recent events I found the price of Gems to be trippled, so now I can only buy stuff from the cash shop with real money, unless I want to be left pennyless.
This is a nice excuse to discuss the content from the cash shop that you think is mandatory, aka the content that any player will be left with no other choice but to buy it.

My vote goes to bank space. The existing given by the game is not nearly enough, and all players will eventually be forced to spend real money, or find a good gem deal to increase it. It doesn’t help the fact that all characters in your account are using the same space.

Nothing is mandatory unless you’re a hoarder and then yes, bank/storage space will be necessary.

From what I’ve seen, none of it is mandatory.
It’s fluff or “quality of life” things.

Myself, right at launch I got some for quality of life — expanded inventory and character slots.

In my experience, my own in-game wealth has risen substantially faster than the gem exchange rate.

Mostly the fluff is what’s seemed to increase the gems price. Increases come when there’s Mad King chests and the like. Plan ahead for Wintersday.

I haven’t been gathering gems for some time now, how did those go up in price?

Oh OOPS wrong gems LOL I really should wake up from naps before posting. HA, sorry!

Actually if you want anything worthwhile to drop the mandatory thing (which is why many of us think that their loot changes were on purpose rather then accidental, is the requirement for the MF to be above 250%.) So far I’ve gotten my MF to 226 maximum with food, gear, luck sigil buff. The only thing to push you over the 250% is getting the guild buffs or getting one of those items from the store, the ones that cost 350 gems for just one boost for an hour. yeah those.

Only reason gems are going up now, is cause of Wintersday. People are stocking up for whatever will be in the store for the holidays.

About the same thing happened for Shadow of the Mad King. People want to make sure they are prepared ahead of time before prices go up even more during the events.

But as of currently, there is nothing in the store that is mandatory. Everything is fluff or convenience. The only thing some people might consider mandatory, is bank space. Just cause bank space is rather limited on its own, especially with all your characters sharing the same bank. But that is also only if you hoard a bunch of things.

Or you could just do what I did and make your own personal guild. Then just buy the guild bank to use as extra storage. No need to use the gem store for that.

I really don’t think there’s anything in gems that’s mandatory. Nice, convenient, good to have, yeah.

Just wait until after Wintersday and the gem ratio will be more reasonable. If you want Wintersday items though, you’re basically going to need to use real money. Anet’s got to pay the server bills somehow.

I’ll be frank; I wouldn’t survive in this game without 8 bank slots and enough character slots to use as mules for my items. Those are the only things I consider mandatory from the gem store.

Gilosean.3805:

I really don’t think there’s anything in gems that’s mandatory. Nice, convenient, good to have, yeah.

Just wait until after Wintersday and the gem ratio will be more reasonable. If you want Wintersday items though, you’re basically going to need to use real money. Anet’s got to pay the server bills somehow.

I don’t think reasonably active players ever need to spend real money on gems. There’s not that much to spend your gold on that could qualify as “mandatory.”

Fine transmutation stones.

That’s about it.

Absolutely nothing is mandatory from the gem store. Bank and bag slots are nice though, but totally affordable through playing. If anything just do bank slots. With 4 cheap 15 slot bags your characters will have 80 slots.

I find bank slots (I’m up to 7) and character slots are mandatory (I’m up to 7 too).

The rest? Not at all (though I look forwards to a christmas outfit for my christmas character like the halloween ones).

Seriously?

Nothing is mandatory. Bank slots are nice, but you don’t need them.