Guild Wars 2

I loved GW1 and played the game for many years, so naturally I got GW2 and also had a blast. I would consider myself a bit of a fan from the series so far and all thats been accomplished. That being said, what Im going to say is made so much harder. Its also an opinion and everyone is entitled to have their own! If you disagree please do post and explain. Now then,

I’ve noticed a slow decline in the apparent effort thats been put into actual “rewards” from living stories… a few skins here and there were always nice, some rare drops that might seem unreachable on a personal level. Yet it turned into a sort of “Farm” event style system, where Anet would do a update that would have a tremendous amount of potential, yet waste it on nothing more than go to A, kill stuff, then head to B, kill stuff, and eventually get a small reward and a lot of gold.

Yet with the recent Toxic story…its been just a farm, the reward is so minimal that I could care less, so was the Teq. revamp. Now I know that you all might not agree with this, but just look at whats in the gem store today…where as those shoulders and gloves might’ve been a reward for having done something in the past, they’ve been monetized to try and rake in a nice sum of cash.

Anet…I do hope you respond with an explanation of why you’d do something so seemingly lazy. The model of the two items is nice…but is it really justifiable to toss them in the gem store at 400 gems each? Just to put that in perspective thats roughly 30g currently, or $5 if you bought the gems with real money.

Please feel free to leave your opinion, I more than welcome it, just do not start to try and change my opinion since its been made up as soon as I logged in today.

I don’t get the “putting it in the gem store is lazy” argument. Since the system is already in place for it, attaching the gloves or shoulders to the Tower of Nightmares meta, or some other achievement, wouldn’t really be any more difficult than putting it in the gem store. It’s not a question of laziness—it’s a question of business. The gloves and shoulders will make money directly in the gem store, even if minor percentage of players buy them. That might sound terrible, but, dangit, it’s a business.

As for the “slow decline in the apparent effort that’s been put into rewards,” what is the peak it’s being compared to? Flame & Frost went on for four months, and the only non-gem skin I remember from that is the Fused Gauntlets for completing the dungeon, and the jetpack as a super rare drop. (Someone correct me if I’m forgetting something.)

Tower of Nightmares is two weeks.

When I do talk about laziness then I do intend exactly that. Adding them in as a reward takes much more work, there needs to be achievements that need completing that aren’t already in use. They need to make sense, and actually relate to the living story, not doing this = less effort. As for it being a “Business move” I agree, it certainly is, its there to see if people are willing to spend that kind of money, which I certainly wouldn’t, not $5 for one piece of armor skin, and I imagine you agree since you didn’t say otherwise?

And when I talk about the decline of rewards, I mean exactly that. Flame & Frost did last four weeks, it was also the start of it all, so wasn’t perfect, but the rewards none-the-less did contain some skins, so did the southsun story, and the dragon festival. The last two stories started to lack in this, and now the rewards that you would’ve seen in the LS are being put onto the gem store.

I just dont see a use in having a node of power in my home instance any value. Like I said we both have separate opinions and can probably sit here listing our reasons for each.

Bottom line is this, are you willing to pay $5 for a single piece of skin?

Asking if I’m willing to pay $5 for a skin is a bit like asking me if I, personally, buy snacks at the movie theatre. Whether or not I do doesn’t say anything meaningful about whether or not it’s a good business model. Even if I’m representative of the average customer, it’s not necessarily a business model that depends on the average customer.

TendererLemon.2450:

And when I talk about the decline of rewards, I mean exactly that. Flame & Frost did last four weeks, it was also the start of it all, so wasn’t perfect, but the rewards none-the-less did contain some skins, so did the southsun story, and the dragon festival. The last two stories started to lack in this, and now the rewards that you would’ve seen in the LS are being put onto the gem store.

I’m not sure if you misread me, or if you just mistyped it, but Flame & Frost didn’t last four weeks. It lasted four months, or eight times the current two-week release cycle. It was four separate releases, January through March, three of which didn’t contain any non-gem store skins. You could argue that it was the start of the Living Story, and so they were still sorting out good rewards, but that was coming off Shadow of the Mad King, The Lost Shores, and Wintersday 2012, so I’m not convinced that argument holds water.

Now, that would be like if we hadn’t gotten any new rewards since July, (or August, depending on how you want to count,) instead of four weeks of middling rewards. For me at least, it puts these past two releases into perspective. I think it’s a little early to start panicking, just because they added a couple of items to the gem store during a release that’s a little short on rewards.