Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one horribly turned off by this idea? I was looking around and couldn’t find anything on this topic.

When Custom Arenas were announced I thought; “wow cool! Finally a way for me to host and have friendly fights with a few close friends of mine. Or to have a few fun duels!”. However, you buy a Custom Arena and then must pay to keep it alive…

Worst part is each time token only adds one day, so unless you’re playing every single day, it’s really not worth it. I really like PvP but I only play it a couple times a week when I’m able to play GW2, so this which was supposed to be a great addition for me just became completely pointless (of course we’ll have to see how much it costs to keep an arena alive, however since each token adds only one day, that’s 30 tokens per month, every month…)

I understand and agree with the idea that Anet needs to get a stable income from the game and I myself always put some money in every now and again when there’s something I wanna buy, I want to support the game I love. However this forces me to almost practically pay a subscription fee each month if I wanna keep a custom arena.

I would understand if the Custom Arena Starter Kit only had the basic stuff an arena should have, and then down the road you could buy upgrades for your arena with gems, for me that would be a much better solution for the issue of the game making money and my issue of being forced to pay to play.

Here are some arguments I might find, and my response to them;

-“But Custom Arenas are meant to be used for more competitive play and thus big guilds should be fine keeping an arena of theirs alive for everyone to enjoy!”
My Reply: Well, that’s what Tournaments are for, and honestly there are a lot of aspects to the custom arena which adds to a more non competitive environment. I’d like to have a password on it and just duel with some friends, or play some fun quirky match styles with a few close friends. Unless I pay a subscription fee that’s not gonna happen.

-“Well you can just get your friends who enjoy playing with you to help keep the arena alive.”
My Reply: We still have to pay a subscription fee, one way or another. And honestly I don’t expect to have that many people playing with me, so it’d be a lot on my friend’s back to keep it alive. Also I would never actually go up to them and tell them ‘hey spend money on the arena’, I know a lot of them are against putting money in the game and I respect that, so in the end at least 90% of it would still fall on me.

-“Just don’t use it, if it’s such a big burden on you don’t get it.”
My Reply: If there were other methods of dueling, or to have some private matches between a few friends; a way for you to have an isolated friendly game, I wouldn’t buy it. Currently as it stands the only way to achieve many of the things I look for in PvP is through the custom arena, however to exploit that with an obligation to pay a constant fee to keep using something you bought, I don’t like that.

Lastly, there are a few concerns I have. They said that if your arena stays unpaid for too long, it’ll be deleted. That was the icing on the cake for me, I would even eventually be oki with paying whenever I felt like playing, but it’s an entirely new problem if I’m forced to pay it frequently or else the money I put in to buy the arena is gone, and I’d have to buy another one just to have it possibly get deleted again.

It happens that I may stop playing GW2 for a few weeks, maybe even a month or more and then come back later and start playing again as feverishly as before, but if every single time I take a little break or have some other life concerns to take care of I have to re-buy my arena… that’s sad.

Of course as it stands we don’t know enough (such as prices, time limit on inactivity etc) to come to any solid conclusion, but so far what we do know made me sad :C

The way I see it, Anet has a great way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone: Glory.
If Glory was the currency used to buy Time Tokens (the price of each token would have to be appropriately balanced) then people who have loads of it with nothing to do (the people who have been loyally playing this game’s sPvP for awhile) can finally get rid of it. Once theirs is all gone and the Glory market starts to balance out, then people will be “forced” to play hotjoin or tPvP in order to get these tokens, making a healthy circle of forever lasting goodness.

Arena tokens are going to be in the area of 100-200 gems. That is around 10 gold max. Play PvE all you want, when you want to PvP you buy gems, buy your token reactivate your arena and enjoy. Tokens make it so you can only have it active when you want it active and not waste money paying to keep it up on days you dont want it.

I would also like a source for your “they will delete unactive arenas” as I have never seen any indication of that.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Arena tokens are going to be in the area of 100-200 gems. That is around 10 gold max. Play PvE all you want, when you want to PvP you buy gems, buy your token reactivate your arena and enjoy. Tokens make it so you can only have it active when you want it active and not waste money paying to keep it up on days you dont want it.

I would also like a source for your “they will delete unactive arenas” as I have never seen any indication of that.

What is the projection for the original cost of a Custom Arena?

Pentalic.5409:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Arena tokens are going to be in the area of 100-200 gems. That is around 10 gold max. Play PvE all you want, when you want to PvP you buy gems, buy your token reactivate your arena and enjoy. Tokens make it so you can only have it active when you want it active and not waste money paying to keep it up on days you dont want it.

I would also like a source for your “they will delete unactive arenas” as I have never seen any indication of that.

What is the projection for the original cost of a Custom Arena?

If I had to take a guess it would be the same cost as ~30 days worth of tokens (Since you get 1 month of active time for buying). That in mind I would place it at 3000 gems.

We know daily tokens will be at or under 200 because of the bug that added the 2 items to the gem store. Both were placed up there for 200 gems. After being removed Anet released a statement saying that tokens could be less and arenas will most likely be more.

My guess. Tokens – 100 and Arenas – 3000.

This was mentioned somewhere. If the there is no time you need to add a token. If not there’ll be a grace period before the Arena gets deleted. Some dev mentioned it in some post in some thread.

Edit: It is in the FAQ. Scroll down there. Almost at the bottom of the post.

Luthan.5236:

This was mentioned somewhere. If the there is no time you need to add a token. If not there’ll be a grace period before the Arena gets deleted. Some dev mentioned it in some post in some thread.

Edit: It is in the FAQ. Scroll down there. Almost at the bottom of the post.

I still will hold judgement till we hear how long this grace period is. Unless they really dont know how to set up a system and inactive arena should take little resources to retain and thus the grace period SHOULD be more than a days. A month should suffice.

Parisalchuk.9230:

If I had to take a guess it would be the same cost as ~30 days worth of tokens (Since you get 1 month of active time for buying). That in mind I would place it at 3000 gems.

We know daily tokens will be at or under 200 because of the bug that added the 2 items to the gem store. Both were placed up there for 200 gems. After being removed Anet released a statement saying that tokens could be less and arenas will most likely be more.

My guess. Tokens – 100 and Arenas – 3000.

Since 2800 Gems = $35, would you say that Custom Arenas are appropriately priced? (this is, of course, assuming that your projections are what they go with)

I was about to post the link to the post where they said it’ll be deleted if it’s inactive, but Luthan beat me to it.

So yeah, I wouldn’t even mind it too much if I could not play it, then buy a token and play when I felt like it – but I’m forced to constantly add money on it or else it’s gone for ever, that’s not oki.

Also, tokens cost 100-200 gems? How many tokens cost 100-200 gems, one token? Fine, ten, fifteen? How many?

Pentalic.5409:

Parisalchuk.9230:

If I had to take a guess it would be the same cost as ~30 days worth of tokens (Since you get 1 month of active time for buying). That in mind I would place it at 3000 gems.

We know daily tokens will be at or under 200 because of the bug that added the 2 items to the gem store. Both were placed up there for 200 gems. After being removed Anet released a statement saying that tokens could be less and arenas will most likely be more.

My guess. Tokens – 100 and Arenas – 3000.

Since 2800 Gems = $35, would you say that Custom Arenas are appropriately priced? (this is, of course, assuming that your projections are what they go with)

Personally. Since custom arenas are intended to take the place of hot join servers I think it should have been $20 to get the rights to the arena and about $10/month to maintain it. However, with the token system, depending on the grace period they give you I think 100 gems a token is alright. That would be around 6 gold which for an individual should easily be attainable in a day of PvE.

This all is dependent on this grace period and I would really like a Dev to give a ballpark estimate on how long this grace period is. Paying $20-35 for a product and the being unable to connect to the game for a few days for whatever reason would be a terrible waste of money. Even for leagues or tournaments, they may not care to pay money to keep an arena open 24/7 if they are only running a tournament for a week once a month.

If they charge more than a couple bucks a month, they really screwed up imo. These “servers” will only cost them a few cents a month, so there is no need for them to get greedy.

If the custom arena costs about $35 then wow I don’t agree with that, the arena alone costs more than half what the entire game costs. However if the arena was a one time buy that stayed active for ever, I wouldn’t mind even paying some 40 dollars on it, as long as it’d last me for ever – but the fact I have to keep adding money on it again and again, that’s just unreasonable.

@Parisalchuk; I don’t agree with one month of inactivity being enough time to delete it. If I spend 35 dollars on it, then something shows up that I have to be away for a month or if I just plain old don’t feel like playing and stay away for a month, I don’t wanna come back to find my near 40 dollars gone, forcing me to pay another near 40 dollars.

I say anything less than an entire year of inactivity is just robbery.

One token for 100 gems is complete robbery. I play GW2 very often, and when I play it’s for some 3-4 hours and I don’t make 6 gold.

I run a dungeon or two, I run around, play with some low level characters, do some events. In a day of play I get maybe 1-2 gold at best, but I also spend gold with other things in the game, so no I can’t accumulate 6 gold per day to keep an arena alive.

It requires 30 tokens to keep your arena alive a month, 30 tokens should not be more than 5 dollars. If you could buy 15 tokens for 200 gems, I’d be alright with that.

Also I agree with the fact tokens should be obtainable through glory, also you should be able to get tokens (or guaranteed them) in the daily pvp.

Delryn.7235:

If the custom arena costs about $35 then wow I don’t agree with that, the arena alone costs more than half what the entire game costs. However if the arena was a one time buy that stayed active for ever, I wouldn’t mind even paying some 40 dollars on it, as long as it’d last me for ever – but the fact I have to keep adding money on it again and again, that’s just unreasonable.

@Parisalchuk; I don’t agree with one month of inactivity being enough time to delete it. If I spend 35 dollars on it, then something shows up that I have to be away for a month or if I just plain old don’t feel like playing and stay away for a month, I don’t wanna come back to find my near 40 dollars gone, forcing me to pay another near 40 dollars.

I say anything less than an entire year of inactivity is just robbery.

To be honest I think deleting it at all is a terrible idea. It should be as easy as after 1 month of inactivity just removing the arena from the server but putting a note on your account that you have this unlocked so you can reactivate it at any time.

“There is a grace period before the Custom Arena is deleted”

Usually when someone says ‘grace period’ that period of time is not very long. That is why I am only hopeful that it will be a month. I think it should be longer… aka forever. And my cost projection of $35 is based purely on my speculation that a single token (day) will cost 100 gems. Because activating a new arena gives you 1 month free that means you essentially paying for 30 tokens… or 3000 total gems. No way will the arena purchase be cheaper then the cost of 30 tokens. If that were the case then no one would ever by tokens they would simply let the arena expire and purchase another one since the “Gems Per Day” cost would be lower.

Time Tokens being in day increments seems rather silly, and very tedious to manage.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Time Tokens being in day increments seems rather silly, and very tedious to manage.

It is very friendly to people who only pvp casually but still want an arena for their guild/friends. It saves them money since they wont have to pay money for days they dont use it.

For those that will use the arena daily you can purchase 100 tokens, activate them all at the same time and it will be active for 100 days. You dont have to wait for 1 token to expire.

Either way, deleting it at all isn’t right. It’s as if this game had a subscription fee (because in the end that’s what these custom arenas have), but if you didn’t play for a month or so you’d have to buy the game again.

I spent money on this game, I bought this game, I didn’t rent it. If arenas cost a lot (a lot being around half of the game’s price) I’ll be very upset if it gets deleted.

I think awarding 1 time token in the daily pvp is fair, if you play PvP enough to finish daily then you should be rewarded as such. Also daily PvP is way too easy, they really need to make it a bit harder.

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

Arenas are active for 1 month when you purchase the starter. After the month you are responsible for purchasing tokens for X amount of gems. Use of 1 token will add 1 day of use to the arena. You can use multiple tokens at the same time to add multiple days at once, or ration tokens over a period of time if you will not use the arena every day.

The question now is, how long is this grace period from when the arena goes inactive until the arena is deleted. As far as I know only ANet know this answer right now, but I would really like to hear a response on this point.

Parisalchuk.9230:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

Arenas are active for 1 month when you purchase the starter. After the month you are responsible for purchasing tokens for X amount of gems. Use of 1 token will add 1 day of use to the arena. You can use multiple tokens at the same time to add multiple days at once, or ration tokens over a period of time if you will not use the arena every day.

The question now is, how long is this grace period from when the arena goes inactive until the arena is deleted. As far as I know only ANet know this answer right now, but I would really like to hear a response on this point.

Also a big question in my mind is; how much are the tokens? I don’t care for the price of the arena (too much, it depends on how long it can stay inactive before being deleted) but I do care for the price of the token.

Delryn.7235:

Parisalchuk.9230:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

Arenas are active for 1 month when you purchase the starter. After the month you are responsible for purchasing tokens for X amount of gems. Use of 1 token will add 1 day of use to the arena. You can use multiple tokens at the same time to add multiple days at once, or ration tokens over a period of time if you will not use the arena every day.

The question now is, how long is this grace period from when the arena goes inactive until the arena is deleted. As far as I know only ANet know this answer right now, but I would really like to hear a response on this point.

Also a big question in my mind is; how much are the tokens? I don’t care for the price of the arena (too much, it depends on how long it can stay inactive before being deleted) but I do care for the price of the token.

Below 200. We know that much. At that price it will cost around 10 gold to convert from gold to gems to token. In my mind I am preparing myself for 200, but logically I am thinking it will be more like 100. I just cant imagine them charging people the cost of 6,000 gems a month to have an arena, especially when they will not allow you to make money off of casting, and expect people to be happy with that.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Delryn.7235:

Parisalchuk.9230:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

Arenas are active for 1 month when you purchase the starter. After the month you are responsible for purchasing tokens for X amount of gems. Use of 1 token will add 1 day of use to the arena. You can use multiple tokens at the same time to add multiple days at once, or ration tokens over a period of time if you will not use the arena every day.

The question now is, how long is this grace period from when the arena goes inactive until the arena is deleted. As far as I know only ANet know this answer right now, but I would really like to hear a response on this point.

Also a big question in my mind is; how much are the tokens? I don’t care for the price of the arena (too much, it depends on how long it can stay inactive before being deleted) but I do care for the price of the token.

Below 200. We know that much. At that price it will cost around 10 gold to convert from gold to gems to token. In my mind I am preparing myself for 200, but logically I am thinking it will be more like 100. I just cant imagine them charging people the cost of 6,000 gems a month to have an arena, especially when they will not allow you to make money off of casting, and expect people to be happy with that.

At one token for 100 gems, I can’t imagine them charging people 3000 gems a month to have an arena. That’s about 40 dollars a month just to keep an arena alive? WoW’s monthly subscription fee for the entire game isn’t that much, to pay so much for one aspect of the game is just ridiculous.

Really, that is just completely illogical and unreasonable and I honestly can’t imagine they would actually do that, it just plain old makes literally no sense to do that.

Delryn.7235:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Delryn.7235:

Parisalchuk.9230:

GrandmaFunk.3052:

hum, i had assumed it would be active continuously, not something you turn on for a day once or twice a week.

Arenas are active for 1 month when you purchase the starter. After the month you are responsible for purchasing tokens for X amount of gems. Use of 1 token will add 1 day of use to the arena. You can use multiple tokens at the same time to add multiple days at once, or ration tokens over a period of time if you will not use the arena every day.

The question now is, how long is this grace period from when the arena goes inactive until the arena is deleted. As far as I know only ANet know this answer right now, but I would really like to hear a response on this point.

Also a big question in my mind is; how much are the tokens? I don’t care for the price of the arena (too much, it depends on how long it can stay inactive before being deleted) but I do care for the price of the token.

Below 200. We know that much. At that price it will cost around 10 gold to convert from gold to gems to token. In my mind I am preparing myself for 200, but logically I am thinking it will be more like 100. I just cant imagine them charging people the cost of 6,000 gems a month to have an arena, especially when they will not allow you to make money off of casting, and expect people to be happy with that.

At one token for 100 gems, I can’t imagine them charging people 3000 gems a month to have an arena. That’s about 40 dollars a month just to keep an arena alive? WoW’s monthly subscription fee for the entire game isn’t that much, to pay so much for one aspect of the game is just ridiculous.

Really, that is just completely illogical and unreasonable and I honestly can’t imagine they would actually do that, it just plain old makes literally no sense to do that.

I think they honestly expecting guilds and leagues to be the main owner of arenas. With that then a guild of 30 people can easily maintain an arena for about 5 gold a person per month. People running leagues would either cover the costs themselves, find sponsors, or accept donations which would keep the arenas open. Teams looking to practice and individuals who want arenas wouldnt have their arena active 24/7 and thus would not be paying the full 3000 cost per month. I agree with you though, arenas really should be between 0 and $5 a month.

I agree with you though, arenas really should be between 0 and $5 a month.

I don’t think that’s realistic. There’s a lot of games out there with dedicated servers (kind of what CA are) and the pricing for them is usually between 10-20$/mo for 20 slot servers, with more leaning towards the 20$ mark.

I feel that’s the pricing range that’d be fair when comparing to what other companies hosting dedicated space charge.

For those wondering, I googled the pricing for hosting a dedicated server for games like COD, BF, L4D, Minecraft and a couple of random games.

obverkid.5432:

I agree with you though, arenas really should be between 0 and $5 a month.

I don’t think that’s realistic. There’s a lot of games out there with dedicated servers (kind of what CA are) and the pricing for them is usually between 10-20$/mo for 20 slot servers, with more leaning towards the 20$ mark.

I feel that’s the pricing range that’d be fair when comparing to what other companies hosting dedicated space charge.

For those wondering, I googled the pricing for hosting a dedicated server for games like COD, BF, L4D, Minecraft and a couple of random games.

You cannot compare the host of a FPS server which gives endless customization, is serviced by a 3rd party and have very different requirements compared to an MMO arena. I can also pay for interent and buy a dedicated server and host those games myself without paying anything per month. Not going to be able to do that in GW2.

Trust me, they already stated that time tokens will be atleast 200 gems or less so we know where the price is capped at. “Custom Arena Time Tokens will likely be cheaper than they were today”.

Delryn.7235:

Worst part is each time token only adds one day, so unless you’re playing every single day, it’s really not worth it. I really like PvP but I only play it a couple times a week when I’m able to play GW2

Wait, what?! Wouldn’t you rather have a token you can slot in when you want to play for 1 day, rather than one for a month and it’s just being wasted if you only play a couple times a month?

shockwave.1764:

Delryn.7235:

Worst part is each time token only adds one day, so unless you’re playing every single day, it’s really not worth it. I really like PvP but I only play it a couple times a week when I’m able to play GW2

Wait, what?! Wouldn’t you rather have a token you can slot in when you want to play for 1 day, rather than one for a month and it’s just being wasted if you only play a couple times a month?

My thoughts exactly – tho more tedious to manage, paying on a day to day basis circumvents you getting screwed; if for some reason you don’t have time to play for 5 days straight, you didn’t lose 5 days out of a month.

Anything more than your standard MMO monthly subscription cost (12-15 bucks) to rent a server for a month will be full on lunacy. It should probably be a little less, but anything more and they’ll be showing an extreme lack of business acumen.

evilapprentice.6379:

shockwave.1764:

Delryn.7235:

Worst part is each time token only adds one day, so unless you’re playing every single day, it’s really not worth it. I really like PvP but I only play it a couple times a week when I’m able to play GW2

Wait, what?! Wouldn’t you rather have a token you can slot in when you want to play for 1 day, rather than one for a month and it’s just being wasted if you only play a couple times a month?

My thoughts exactly – tho more tedious to manage, paying on a day to day basis circumvents you getting screwed; if for some reason you don’t have time to play for 5 days straight, you didn’t lose 5 days out of a month.

Oops my bad, that came out wrong. What I meant with that was that having to pay to keep an arena you purchased is bull, instead of having to pay to buy an arena and then having to pay to keep the arena you already bought, I imagine it’d be better if instead of having to pay to keep your arena, they charge us with paying in buying expansions and upgrades for your arena.

I was also thinking how it’d be sad if for whatever reason you haven’t played PvP in a while and one day you realize your arena is deleted because you forgot to add a day here or there.

Either way, I didn’t think about two things when opposing paying for your arena.

One; that they’d actually have to pay for a server to host the arenas in.

Two; imagine if you could buy an arena, keep it for ever and end. I imagine a huge number of people would be willing to buy the arena and just play for themselves in their own arena. This would make the original PvP servers of the game an empty barren wasteland since everyone could just buy their own private arenas. And since everyone could just for ever have their own private arenas, why play in anyone else’s?

However that being said, though I’m not as against time tokens as I previously was, I think to avoid any sort of commotion Anet needs to address the details of both why exactly they decided to go with time tokens, and how they’ll work – soon.

I’m willing to buy a couple tokens here and there to play when I feel like it, and then just leave it unpaid for a while until I feel like playing again. However only if time tokens are at a reasonable price and if the grace period before it gets deleted is at least a year (I feel like that’s a bit too much to ask for, but if the grace period is only a month or two that’s way too little).

Honestly how frustrating would it be to buy something to only later find out it got deleted and you have to buy it again. I’m completely against that idea.

Edit; @Evilapprentice – that’s exactly my thoughts on it. If paying a subscription which gives you access to an entire game is on average 12-15 dollars, anything more than that to keep one single aspect of a game is ridiculous.

In fact charging it exactly that is already ridiculous, reasonably to keep a private PvP arena I imagine charging some 5 dollars a month should be decent. That’s 15 time tokens for 200 gems.

Anything beyond 10 dollars a month is ridiculous though.

Let’s just wait for the pricing. I’m 100 percent sure it will be some fail pricing model and then after a lot of whining be changed to something better a few weeks later.

Luthan.5236:

Let’s just wait for the pricing. I’m 100 percent sure it will be some fail pricing model and then after a lot of whining be changed to something better a few weeks later.

Right? I mean that’s what happened with guild missions, small guilds were completely excluded from guild missions and there was an uproar in the community – and then they released the guild training missions to help get you to guild missions… couldn’t they have done that from the start?

I’m usually very skeptical with the constant uproars of the community; Anet’s not dumb, they’re a decent and intelligent company. I’m sure when they make a decision they have their reasons and motives, thoughts and plans.

However some decisions they make really should be a bit more clear as to why they made them. I don’t doubt there’s a reason behind it, but keeping us in the dark with the why to their decisions isn’t a cool thing to do.

It only sparks controversy and mistrust.