Guild Wars 2

These are just idle thoughts really, I’ve been thinking what possible incentive someone could have to spend gems if all they did was spvp. It just feels like a completely separate and cut-off part of the game right now, and while I think it’s great that we start off with every skill and piece of kit unlocked I just wish there was something besides rank that we could work for. I’m personally not too concerned with looks in pvp, because the game is just too fast-paced for anyone to notice it, so the cosmetic armour skins aren’t something worth striving for.

However, I DO care what my PvE characters look like, so the thought occurred to me: PvP transmutation stones, sold only on the gem store, by which you can convert a pvp armour skin into a normal armour skin (which can then be applied to pve armour)?

Just a thought! It would also be nice if there was a way to earn some gold in spvp.

Any other ideas?

specialty finishers (like cow)

They could license the engine and put the development costs etc into the hands of others. They won’t make money on PvP with the current design team and pace of development.

Make Heart of the Mists free to play (like League of Legends). In order for players to exit the lobby and enter PvE or WvW, they must purchase the game.

Expand the gem store with custom outfits and skins for PvP. Add in purchasable graphic effects to weapon attacks, purchasable taunts, purchasable emotes, customized finishers. Add in premium glory boosters that give even faster accelerations than the free versions. Etc.

There are so many ways to make profit from PvP. The first and most important step is to make PvP even more accessible, though.

zone.1073:

Make Heart of the Mists free to play (like League of Legends). In order for players to exit the lobby and enter PvE or WvW, they must purchase the game.

Expand the gem store with custom outfits and skins for PvP. Add in purchasable graphic effects to weapon attacks, purchasable taunts, purchasable emotes, customized finishers. Add in premium glory boosters that give even faster accelerations than the free versions. Etc.

There are so many ways to make profit from PvP. The first and most important step is to make PvP even more accessible, though.

That would be a really interesting idea actually, and it would probably benefit the game as a whole as well as fuel a lot of sales. I mean, who can possibly try spvp without wondering what this game would be like on a massive scale and wanting to try wvw?

However the problem remains: for people like me who don’t care about cosmetic stuff, what would make us spend money on gems? Weapon effects and finishers still fall under the cosmetic angle (although I could see myself spend a couple bucks on an entertaining finisher!), but apart from intentory bags most of the stuff you buy using glory are also cosmetic, so premium glory boosters wouldn’t interest me either.

They could possibly lock some of the more obscure pieces of equipment for free-to-play punters and make them unlockable with Glory, which would make glory boosts something worth spending on. Not all of them obviously, maybe let them start with 1/3 of them unlocked. Possibly even lock some skills?

Of course, I think running spvp servers must be pretty cheap bandwidth wise (max 16 players so not a lot of data to shift about compared to wvw), so it’s possible that making the mists f2p would pay for itself from added sales alone. On the other hand, it could also hurt them, as every MMO that goes f2p is basically putting out an announcement that “well, we tried, but not enough people thought we were worth paying for…”

That idea of f2p spvp is a pretty neat one.

it is a nice idea,
however it requires anet to take spvp seriously and work on features first.
imagine going f2p as it is now, what a joke that would be

Make mists F2P (will never happen GG ncsoft) would be amazing for pvp in general.
Best thing they can do to monetize pvp would just be to add more cash shop skins with a bunch of particle effects and huge shoulders ect..
And capes. Lots of capes.
But yeah, best way to monetize is through custom skins.

More finishers
More backpacks.
More helmet pieces.
Def would love that cross pvp-pve transmutation stone since I had tried to transmute pvp armor before.
Pvp-Race change. If changing race is problematic for PvE, lol make it possible for PvP?
inb4 everyone is an Asura.

Add exp gain to pvp, so pve-pvp play is more encouraging.
For both sides to mix, which on one hand then gives reason for lazy pvp players (read me) to buy gems to trade for gold to quick outfit themselves once they reach 80.

Are mystic forge stones even usable in pvp? Lol.

~ Make all Pve equipment double as pvp equipment and change accordingly when it is brought in. Removing the separation for PvE, which in term increases their ability to be revenue sources for pvp. If you can make an “infusion slot” you can make a “pvp” slot.
With no identity loss + pvp transmute stones. Pvp becomes an interesting alternative to grabbing skins you want. Especially if that changing of how Rank scales happens Sharp mentioned.

manveruppd.7601:

On the other hand, it could also hurt them, as every MMO that goes f2p is basically putting out an announcement that “well, we tried, but not enough people thought we were worth paying for…”

The thing about Guild Wars 2 is that it is three games rolled into one. If PvP was opened up to be free to play, it would not affect the other two areas of the game.

Making PvP free to play would not be equivalent to a white flag surrender. Instead, it would be a progressive business strategy of becoming more like League of Legends: appealing to the most casual of the casual gamers, and reaping in the profits and popularity as a result. Wherever there is a crowd, there is money.

zone.1073:

manveruppd.7601:

On the other hand, it could also hurt them, as every MMO that goes f2p is basically putting out an announcement that “well, we tried, but not enough people thought we were worth paying for…”

The thing about Guild Wars 2 is that it is three games rolled into one. If PvP was opened up to be free to play, it would not affect the other two areas of the game.

Making PvP free to play would not be equivalent to a white flag surrender. Instead, it would be a progressive business strategy of becoming more like League of Legends: appealing to the most casual of the casual gamers, and reaping in the profits and popularity as a result. Wherever there is a crowd, there is money.

Exactly.

There isn’t enough in the gem store to rack up money on a f2p pvp split.
It’s not like GW2 is gaining e-sports revenue, nor is it that the game is p2w or that most relevant gem-store purchases expire. F2p doesn’t necessarily equate to people using your gem store. There is a lack of cosmetics and with town-clothes some of them only apply outside of battle to begin with. Those that you can take with you are what 3 armor sets.

If they can’t make money off it now, they won’t be making much more if not less by going f2p at this stage. Gotta have something to buy first.

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

waka.9826:

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

Yeah it’s like they don’t want money :p

Vuh.1328:

waka.9826:

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

Yeah it’s like they don’t want money :p

I can’t even begin to explain to ANET how bad I want to kill people in PVP while wearing a top hat and monocle.

1 – Add Ranking (one for solo que, other for guilds), Spectator and Custom Arena (make so people can play deathmatches on them if they want).
2 – Announce a Big Tournament with $ prize that will occur in 2 months time.
3 – Make Mists F2P with the possibility to make 2 chars.
4 – Make a Tutorial in game so that a new player knows where to buy sigils, runes, weapon sets and stuff.
5 – Allow players to make templates for their builds, maybe have like 3 beginners templates that new players can choose from at first.

These steps will make GW 2 popular in no time.

Then:

4 – Add cosmetic armor on cash shop
5 – Add finishers

Profit.

waka.9826:

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

They say they want u to be able to recognize enemys by their armor light/medium/heavy.
I respect them for that but they should find some other ways to profit from gem store then.

guza.6170:

waka.9826:

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

They say they want u to be able to recognize enemys by their armor light/medium/heavy.

Still possible with additional armors…but…

Not like being able to i.d them by armor class helps AT ALL.

In gw1 you could recognize them by profession, not armor type, still gotta click them to see what they are anyways this way. So it really doesn’t help at all.

Didn’t even have problems in gw1 recognizing teammates from enemies without the colors taking up your dyes.

I recognize professions by animation, weapons, and when I select them.
By armor? Lol wot.
If you have 3 casters next to you, it’s not the armor telling you who is who unless you’ve already previously seen their animations/weapons and recognize them by their individual look. At a face value the armor doesn’t say much at all.

Go get a Mesmer, Ele, Necro all in same armor, same dyes, wielding staff.
Armor isn’t telling you jack squat.

Rune of magic have a a <<orb>> from the cash shop , that u can <<store>> half the Exp u get from mobs and quest and give it to ur alts , later on .
We could use it to store glory (10 uses)(1 day internal cd) > by storing 1000 glory u can give 1 lvl to a character or 1 PvE dungeon token)
Its better to have an extremly low amount of glory needed , so we dont have an massive influxe of bots
Motivation for PvE guys to try daily PvP also :P

Well its a better look to see a heavy armor guardian instead of some tophat thing, and making a new gemstore armor takes alot of work because they have to make it for light/medium/heavy and for diffrent races.

An option that change all the enemies in to norn or human or evrything else than asura. Like the team color that is already inside the game.

What’s the point of monetizing something that is already clearly struggling to retain a player base?

Sort out key needed features first, the. Look at making an income. So far it’s the other way around. Sure, if they could make money off it they could invest more resources into it, but as it is, no one wa TS to spend money in a game that doesn’t even have the core infrastructure of any of the other E SPORTS games out there.

All you have to do as a Dev for Anet is incorporate positive mentions, or “POS-MENS” of GE products into your program. For example you could create a game mode where one of your character purchases, and is satisfied with one of GE’s direct current drilling motors for off-shore or land-based projects.

Product integration; setting a new standard in upward revenue-stream dynamics.

ensoriki.5789:

I recognize professions by animation, weapons, and when I select them.
By armor? Lol wot.
If you have 3 casters next to you, it’s not the armor telling you who is who unless you’ve already previously seen their animations/weapons and recognize them by their individual look. At a face value the armor doesn’t say much at all.

Go get a Mesmer, Ele, Necro all in same armor, same dyes, wielding staff.
Armor isn’t telling you jack squat.

In GW1 they were all recognisable by their armour though, that’s what he’s saying, because each profession had specific armour skins (even if they were wearing the same class of armour). Also they were EXTREMELY recognisable by their animations, much more so than now. Watch some gw1 vids on youtube, you’ll see what I mean, each profession’s casting animation was iconic.

Some very cool suggestions here, hope one of the devs takes a look at this!

felivear.1536:

All you have to do as a Dev for Anet is incorporate positive mentions, or “POS-MENS” of GE products into your program. For example you could create a game mode where one of your character purchases, and is satisfied with one of GE’s direct current drilling motors for off-shore or land-based projects.

Product integration; setting a new standard in upward revenue-stream dynamics.

Sir, you win the thread for your impeccable 30 Rock referencing! I think all other comments are superfluous, and if ANet know what’s good for them you’ll get a phone call from Mike O’Brian offering you a job as the head of their microwaves division tomorrow! :p

manveruppd.7601:

ensoriki.5789:

I recognize professions by animation, weapons, and when I select them.
By armor? Lol wot.
If you have 3 casters next to you, it’s not the armor telling you who is who unless you’ve already previously seen their animations/weapons and recognize them by their individual look. At a face value the armor doesn’t say much at all.

Go get a Mesmer, Ele, Necro all in same armor, same dyes, wielding staff.
Armor isn’t telling you jack squat.

In GW1 they were all recognisable by their armour though, that’s what he’s saying, because each profession had specific armour skins (even if they were wearing the same class of armour). Also they were EXTREMELY recognisable by their animations, much more so than now. Watch some gw1 vids on youtube, you’ll see what I mean, each profession’s casting animation was iconic.

Im talking GW2 context in that in that grouping profs by armor has made distinguishing them on armor alone a poor way of figuring the prof.

manveruppd.7601:

Some very cool suggestions here, hope one of the devs takes a look at this!

felivear.1536:

All you have to do as a Dev for Anet is incorporate positive mentions, or “POS-MENS” of GE products into your program. For example you could create a game mode where one of your character purchases, and is satisfied with one of GE’s direct current drilling motors for off-shore or land-based projects.

Product integration; setting a new standard in upward revenue-stream dynamics.

Sir, you win the thread for your impeccable 30 Rock referencing! I think all other comments are superfluous, and if ANet know what’s good for them you’ll get a phone call from Mike O’Brian offering you a job as the head of their microwaves division tomorrow! :p

Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming

I cannot express how much I love that you got my reference.

guza.6170:

waka.9826:

Skin that you can use in PVP combat is a easy one. Not sure why ANET hasn’t done this yet.

They say they want u to be able to recognize enemys by their armor light/medium/heavy.
I respect them for that but they should find some other ways to profit from gem store then.

Yet they are completely fine with asuras being midgets where you can’t even differentiate between all their animations. SEEMS LEGIT

Having read in another thread that both custom arenas and spectator mode are both coming it sounds to me that ANet are making headway in this themselves. They said custom arenas would be something you’d have to rent, though they haven’t made clear if that would be with gems, gold, glory, guild influence or anything else, and whether you’d rent them by the match, by the day, or if you’d have to take out a subscription-style monthly contract for one. But that would be an excellent way to monetise pvp, and it’s something that they would make money off even if the Mists were made f2p.

As for spectator mode, I assume that will be free, or at least I would hope so. I’m guessing you’ll be able to see the games of top-ranked teams automatically, possibly the last 1-3 games you were in (in GW1 you could see the last game your guild was in, but I assume since GW2 pvp isn’t guild-centered it’ll be on an individual basis). But there’s certainly ways I could think of to monetise this as well:
1. Have a “promoted matches” list, where people would be able to pay to make their matches publicly viewable to everyone for, say, a week, even if they wouldn’t normally be able to see them. You could use that as:
a. a recruitment tool (you were an amazing machine of death in that particular match and you want to leverage it to get top guilds to recruit you, or to get top players to join your guild – they’re much more likely to see it in GW2 than on youtube with all those cat videos distracting them after all!)
b. bragging rights for your buddies (hey look, we beat Team Legacy or whatever)
c. publicity material, if, say, you’re an independent promoter sponsoring a cash prize tournament (it’s not very good for publicity if nobody sees the games after all).

2. Be able to pay a small amount of gems to make your own matches available for viewing for longer. This could have several levels, for instance you could pay a recurring monthly fee to make all your matches available for as long as you’re paying, or maybe you could pay a one-off fee to make a specific game available to you for re-viewing indefinitely. The audience for this would be fairly small of course as people normally FRAPS the matches they really want to keep, but I assume observer mode would allow you to switch between multiple perspectives so would be more useful as a training tool than a recording.

3. There’s also the possibility of sticking ads in there, though I’m not too crazy about the idea. Still, don’t think I’d mind a corporate logo in the corner of the screen, and it’s only fair if they were sponsoring a tournament.

ensoriki.5789:

Im talking GW2 context in that in that grouping profs by armor has made distinguishing them on armor alone a poor way of figuring the prof.

Yeah I know, was just clarifying what the guy you had replied to meant, in case you had misunderstood him I do prefer being able to tell what the other guy is just by his character model though rather than having to look at their status bar though, and GW1 was a lot better at that. Play the game not the interface and so forth. There might’ve been some red bar whackamole if you were playing a monk but GW1 was otherwise pretty good at that.

zone.1073:

Make Heart of the Mists free to play

I’m sure the Mists, with its amazing pvp mechanics, infrastructure and pvp modes, would most definitely and with no exception leave newcomers hooked for life, resulting in thousands of new purchases simply because the pvp (especially hotjoin!) is so godmeow amazing that everyone would purchase the game right off the bat after going through that incredible one-in-a-lifetime experience of what is normally considered an eyecancer-invoking cesspool of doom featuring a mix of tiny asuras hiding behind a gozillion of mesmer pets with giant norns moving around as if time flows differently for them (extra comedy effect on norn/asuran mesmers)! Oh and did I mention the norn male warrior downed state cry? Best thing eva, leaves no soul cold (no joke).

Well, it might work, who knows. It all depends on how they’d implement it and if they’d actually bump pvp into a release state by the time they’d do it.

At the post above, red-barring in GW1 normally didn’t get you very far (at least in the competitive scene), especially not on a prot monk, which is pretty much the best and most skill rewarding type of a ‘healer’ class ever to be implemented in an rpg.

KarlaGrey.5903:

zone.1073:

Make Heart of the Mists free to play

I’m sure the Mists, with its amazing pvp mechanics, infrastructure and pvp modes, would most definitely and with no exception leave newcomers hooked for life, resulting in thousands of new purchases simply because the pvp (especially hotjoin!) is so godmeow amazing that everyone would purchase the game right off the bat after going through that incredible one-in-a-lifetime experience of what is normally considered an eyecancer-invoking cesspool of doom featuring a mix of tiny asuras hiding behind a gozillion of mesmer pets with giant norns moving around as if time flows differently for them (extra comedy effect on norn/asuran mesmers)! Oh and did I mention the norn male warrior downed state cry? Best thing eva, leaves no soul cold (no joke).

Well, it might work, who knows. It all depends on how they’d implement it and if they’d actually bump pvp into a release state by the time they’d do it.

At the post above, red-barring in GW1 normally didn’t get you very far (at least in the competitive scene), especially not on a prot monk, which is pretty much the best and most skill rewarding type of a ‘healer’ class ever to be implemented in an rpg.

Agree with eyecancer part – people who suggest f2p mists do not take into consideration what kind of environment will the new players come. Crappy development at its finest, so I do not think there would be a lot of $$$ for anet if they choose this strategy.

Also lets not forget admitting that they created such a crappy place for pvp that they need to make it f2p is not really what they can do…

P.S. The f2p suggestion is not new, I have seen in in the second month of the game, so its probably even older than that.

With the Mists being a separate part of the entire game, I would’ve been happy being able to download a pvp-only version of the game for free and paying 5 bucks a month to have all of the features that the players want. That way, there would be development/maintenance money and it’s not so much per month that it would break anyone’s bank. If you want more offerings in the store, you can pay for those separately as well (just as long as it’s cosmetic). Everyone can pay their fair share and not have the game supported by those that spend more to have custom servers.

Sunglasses as pvp head’s armor not only for those crap town clothes noone uses. Done.

Want gw1 glasses back…

They could open up sPVP to the modding community and let players develop their own maps, game types, gear and setup dedicated servers with their own ruleset.

DOWNED STATE DISABLED. lulz