Guild Wars 2

Vol.7601:

Why are sales up? It’s because Anet has started to release more and more novelty/convenience items in greater frequency that were actually useful to the playerbase.

I think you’re forgetting about the Great MMO Migration promotion and the free weekends. From what I saw in the Players Helping Players forums there was an influx of new players, who drive sales both through buying the game and buying the bread and butter items (bank slots) that the existing character base has already purchased.

The mining picks and salvage-o-matic type items did make a difference and I think that ANet should continue to push on both the gem store and box sales fronts. What they need to do is put in a skin wardrobe and set aside some time to count the money

Behellagh.1468:

The TP software is blind to the fact that you may be selling to a someone who already have an acceptable bid for you. What you are doing is selecting the sell price to be the same as the high bid that’s displayed when you first bring up the sell screen. That bid may no longer be there by the time you click the sell button. It isn’t making a connection to that bidder, just that bidder’s price.

That’s the clearest description of the technical issue so far I think. So what we really need is the ability to trade on margin

tolunart.2095:

Pandemoniac.4739:

That’s the way it is, but is that the way it should be?

It’s a technical issue, the program first posts the item as a sell order (charging listing fee), then looks for buy orders to match it with (charging selling fee, if applicable).

I understand there are reasons that it is the way it is, and that it might not be possible to change. I meant the question in a more abstract way. If the technical restrictions weren’t a consideration, is there an economic/game play reason for doing it that way? I can’t think of one, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.

John Smith.4610:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

When a player fills a Buy Order, he “lists” it at that price, and the order is filled FIFO. It’s not a matter of selling it directly to the other player. All transactions MUST go through the TP, so anything that gets sold first has to be “listed”.

This is the first and foremost reason (though there are others). Changing UI options doesn’t change what action you are taking. You simply state you are willing to sell an item for price X, the listing is created and either goes to the highest purchasers or persists visibly on the TP, but the either way it’s a list.

That’s the way it is, but is that the way it should be?

I don’t understand the economic purpose of requiring a certain amount of cash on hand to liquidate an asset. It wouldn’t be too onerous except that I can’t choose to list it for a price lower than the highest bid so that I can cover the fee.

Is it intended that players that don’t keep a lot of gold on hand aren’t able to sell high value lucky drops unless they go farm up the gold for the listing fee? I’m asking in the abstract- I’ve never had trouble coming up with the gold to sell something, so in practical terms I don’t know that it’s a huge issue.

Cormac.3871:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Yes, I have an unhealthy obsession with empirical data. Sexy is measured in petabytes and your sample size does matter in the circles I run in

My Asuran warrior’s name is Empirical Data, and I am disturbed by the statement. Yes, I’m a little flattered and slightly curious, but mainly disturbed.

Soooo, what’s your p-value? Want to get together later and run some t-tests to see if we correlate?

Just joking – I don’t have the time or energy to be a stalker

Behellagh.1468:

It would be interesting seeing unique buyers. Might support or refute the few flippers controlling everything theory of the market.

I’d be interested also… I am dying to get a look at the data John has access to… the number of unique sellers/buyers, actual sale prices, daily/weekly volume cycles… I’d hand over a big stack of cash, sign the most draconian NDA in history, wear an ankle monitor, or whatever to get a chance to muck around with that data.

Yes, I have an unhealthy obsession with empirical data. Sexy is measured in petabytes and your sample size does matter in the circles I run in

Ashen.2907:

Seera.5916:

And how many people in the US go: that’s too much to pay to see a movie, I’ll just wait until it’s on tv or I can buy it, etc.

My wife and I will often look at each other after seeing a movie trailer and say, “Redbox.” We generally only make a point of seeing a movie in the theater if it seems likely to benefit from the huge screen.

We’ve got a 3D TV, so my husband and I take it one step further – it’s about the same cost for us to pre-order a 3D blu-ray from Amazon as it it for both of us to go see it in 3D at the theater. We can make our own popcorn, have espresso instead of soda, and pause the movie, so the trailer has to look really spectacular before we go see it in the theater.

So, yes, everyone’s situation different and we all have different things that are important to us. I play all sorts of games – F2P, B2P, subscription and what it really comes down to is whether the fun I’m having is worth what I’m paying. As soon as I get annoyed by an aggressive cash shop, or too many time sinks, or whatever, I go play another game until the company sorts it out (or doesn’t).

What I don’t get is folks that think a subscription model somehow will “fix” a game to be more to their liking (and I’m not directing that at anyone in particular – it’s just a common sentiment I’ve come across in a lot of the game forums I read). I look at the game as it exists and what it costs me at that moment when I’m deciding whether it’s “worth it”. I let the company publishing the game worry about whether they’re going to be profitable enough to continue providing me that experience at the price they’re charging. If they’re charging too much for what they’re offering and aren’t getting enough customers, they’ll either drop their price, or offer more, or go out of business. C’est la vie.

Mayra.1230:

As for “dodging” and avoiding attacks – This is going to sound REALLY stupid, but this sounds a bit hard for me as I am use to not moving around much at all. One HUGE reason that I avoid PvP at all costs and suck major kitten at it!!! So how hard is it to go from the stand and shoot to move and dodge?

It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it’s hard to play any game without it. There’s another big difference I forgot in my list – the vast majority of skills in GW2 don’t root you. My advice would be to just RP a hyperactive character who can’t sit still and constantly move even though you don’t have to just to get used to it In my opinion, standing still is the biggest mistake made by the folks that have trouble staying alive when they’re just starting out.

You can avoid a lot of attacks just by moving – you don’t have to use your endurance to dodge all the time. If you’re melee, you can step behind the mob and any front facing cone will miss you. If you’re ranged and you time it right, you can step out of the way of projectiles. It just takes practice.

Neural.1824:

Strange. I’d have thought “top demanded” would have been calculated based on unique buyers, not total number ordered, just to avoid this exact scenario. :/

Well that would under represent the demand for things like crafting materials. A 1000 people wanting 100 pieces each is not the same demand as 1000 people wanting 1 each.

Mayra.1230:

I would like some feedback from other SWTOR players that also play GW2. Mainly, will I like the gameplay or does the gameplay compare much more to WoW? I just bought GW2 and haven’t even installed the game yet.

I’m also a fan of SWTOR – I pre-ordered it and play it off and on. I’ve also played many hours of WoW (although not recently) GW2 doesn’t play anything like WoW, so no worries there. Big differences (and why I hop between the games):

SWTOR has a much deeper story and much more focus on role playing your character. The fully voiced content and the conversation choices are what I missed most when I play a different game.

GW2 has much more freedom in how you can move through different areas – if you aren’t enjoying the Asura lands, you are a few portals away from a different starting area with different scenery and enemies. You can’t outlevel an area in GW2 – if you are too high for the area, you will be downscaled to the high end of the area’s level range. You will get a mix of drops that are your real level and the level of the area, so you can experience other starting areas and still make progress.

In GW2, you don’t have to compete with other players in PvE – harvesting a node doesn’t make it disappear for other players, everyone who participates in an event gets rewarded, and anyone who does a significant amount of damage to a mob gets full xp and loot dropped for it. It can be hard to do a significant amount of damage if there are tons of players around, but in general, if you come across someone fighting something you can help kill it without having to worry that you’re messing up their XP or kill credit.

In GW2, your weapon affects what skills you have on your bar instead of your class. While you’re waiting for your game to download, I would head on over to the wiki and read up on professions. The way the skills are set up is different from SWTOR and WoW, even though it looks kind of the same. Similar to SWTOR, each class has a unique class mechanic, and for your first character I would chose your profession based off of which mechanic looks the most fun to you.

I would also recommend reading over OMG If you only knew this – tips for new players sticky. There’s a lot of nice features that aren’t obvious.

If we had information about actual sales instead of just asks and bids, this would be a non-issue. I know I harp on this particular point a lot, but I think is would solve so many problems.

If would could get last trade information, I would start looking at the API to see if I could calculate some indexes – that would be fun (well at least for a data junkie like me, I’m sure it would bore most folks to tears).

Dark Catalyst.1028:

I just find it funny that the first thing many GW2 players cite as the reason for playing is the lack of a sub fee. You’d think they would mention the fun aspects or the “awesome” living story, but nope.

I really don’t get some of these arguments. I pay $8 a month for Netflix. So, am I “throwing my money away” if I don’t use the service 24/7? No, because I’m paying for a service and I understand what that entails. And that applies to sub MMOs as well.

Not having to pay a monthly fee changes the value proposition. Which is a better value? A $60 game that you can play for free as long as the servers are up or a $60 game that you can play for one month for free? A game I’m paying money every month to play has a much higher bar than a game I just paid $60 for. If Diablo III had a subscription model, I would have deeply regretted that purchase, but as it stands, I got my $60 worth of fun out of it. Secret World – that purchase was in the “not a good value” column until they went subscriptionless.

Netflix is different – I’m not paying $8 a month to watch one TV series. I’m paying $8 a month to have access to their entire catalog of digital content. One night I might feel like a martial arts movie, another night I might want to see why people like this Veronica Mars series so much, and some days I just want to watch Evil Dead over and over. I’m paying for the service so I don’t have to rent the content when I want to watch it.

Netflix is better compared to Sony’s Station Pass where you got access to a bunch of games for one fee.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m not getting stomped by kitten. However I did pay for a game based on being able to play casually (as in not 24/7, not casual as in a baddie) and be able to fight in all parts of the game on an equal foot in a non-grindy environment with VERTICAL progression. These were selling points of the entire kitten game, the main reason GW2 got hype in the first place… What’s so hard about this to understand? It’s not that I’m getting wrecked, I can assure you, I’m not. But I didn’t buy this game to try to outgear others nor be outgeared by mouthbreathers who spend too much time on the game…

I’m guessing you meant horizontal and not vertical?

I’m just trying to understand why you think you have to grind for gear to play casually. I play casually, I’ve done all aspects of the game except sPvP, which doesn’t appeal to me, and I haven’t ever felt that I had no fighting chance because I was out-geared. So what you’re claiming doesn’t match my actual experience and I’m trying to figure out why. No need to start calling people names.

If you aren’t getting wrecked what does it matter if their gear is slightly better? For me, it would make my victories taste a little sweeter. It’s unrealistic to expect to play any game with gear in it casually and be able to have all the same things in the same time frame that someone who plays 10x as much. There’s nothing preventing you from getting ascended gear – it will just take a really long time, or it will take converting a whole bunch of gems into gold.

ronpierce.2760:

It’s not PVE, I want to not be out-geared in WvW due to ridiculous grinds. ANet advertised the game as a non-grindy vertical progression game, and that’s what I expected going in. I commended GW2 for making on the first truly fair PvP MMOs. And they ruined that.

sPvP is where you go head to head. WvW is supposed to be more tactical (not saying it is on every server, but it’s supposed to be).

Are you really saying that as a level 80 in exotic gear which anyone can afford you’re getting roflstomped by players in ascended gear and it has nothing to do with your skill level?

ronpierce.2760:

Casual, in those scanarios mean… bad players. A “casual” can’t do inferno in Diablo, not because of lack of time, it’s too hard. I’m fine with HARD content, just not long drawn out grinds. Yes, people with lives who are GOOD players, should be able to do the top level play.

This was before the difficulty nerf, so it had nothing to do with being skilled and everything to do with grinding out the proper gear, which comes down to how much time do you have to play to either get the drops you need or enough gold to buy them. The hardcore AH wasn’t tied to the RMAH, so you couldn’t just throw cash at the problem. You had to be a good player and have tons of time and energy to do it in that timeframe.

But let’s not get bogged down in details. What is the “top level of play” that you can’t do in GW2 even though you’re a good player because you don’t have enough time? I haven’t run into anything yet that I wasn’t able to do and I’m extremely casual. I’ve finished my personal story (including Arah), done some fractals, done some dungeons, done some WvW, participated in some of the temporary content, done world bosses – what exactly am I missing out on?

ronpierce.2760:

Casual (at least to me) means not spending my life to play at the top level of play. Some people have busy lives and don’t want to chase grinds forever to do the most fun stuff (best gear equal grounds pvp, wvw, some pve tossed in there). Casual doesn’t mean “I want to play poorly”, it means I don’t want to live in the game more than real life.

A game where a casual player can get to the “top level of play” is not going to have any longevity. The hard core players will run out of stuff to do in two weeks, the casual players will get it all done in a couple months, and it will be impossible for any development team to generate content faster than it is consumed.

May 15th, 2012 Diablo III was released – on June 19th, 2012 the ultimate feat – killing the final boss on Inferno difficulty with a hardcore character – was done. There is no way that those types of players would be engaged by a “top level of play” that a casual player like myself could achieve.

You can be casual in GW2 and see everything there is to see, unlike other games where if you don’t join a raiding guild you’re SOL. You can do “top level” sPvP and be casual, unlike a lot of other games that bring PvE gear into PvP. You just can’t have all of the BiS gear in a reasonable amount of time, and you may never own a legendary. Good thing there is no content gated behind owning those items.

Vol.7601:

Instead of casual players calling for everything to be handed to them, maybe they should change their expectations and not expect to get ascended gear in a day or legendary weapons in a week.

I agree with your post in toto, but as a self-identified casual player, I wish you wouldn’t lump me in with the folks that think ascended gear shouldn’t require some time and focus to get

It seems to me that the players that got ascended gear quickly did a lot of planning and investing ahead of time. You definitely get a discount if you’re ahead of the demand curve and if you spend some time figuring out what makes the most sense to farm on your own and what makes sense to buy.

I don’t really understand the “these things I want are too expensive” threads. If everything that players want is dirt cheap, how will the players actually generating the supply make any money? Maybe it’s just too much focus on gold drops per hour instead of selling things you find.

I don’t always farm, but when I do, I check the prices on the TP first.

Meehael.8240:

So, would you pay $10 a month for the game if the Gem Store ceases to exist, no need to buy bag and bank slots, expand this, expand that. Pay for boosters of various kind. Buy unlimited mining picks. What not…
That would probably also include less time gating, maybe a bit higher drop rates… You name it!

In short, you get a full service for $10 a month. I’d say if the game’s good, I’d pay that money.

I would rather only pay for the things I want. I hop between games a lot. so with subscriptions I end up paying for time I don’t use and spending a lot of time cancelling/re-activating the subscription. I like being able to hand over $10 and get something permanent instead of renting it.

For example, I’ve bought bank expansions and character slots, but I won’t pay for temporary access to the Royal Terrace. I like having the choice. It might be less expensive for me if I wanted every feature that would be offered by a subscription to pay for a month, then cancel, but I’d rather not have to get out my credit card every time I want to login and look around.

I also think in the long run a subscription would be less money in ANet’s pocket (from me at least) than if they add compelling items to the gem store. If there was a skin wardrobe for example, they could charge me a ridiculous amount of money for it and it would probably get me re-engaged with the game for a while.

I also think subscriptions put a lot of pressure on development to appeal to the lowest common denominator where cash shops (in general) encourage making lots of diverse things to encourage impulse buying. Of course cash shops can be done poorly and offer basic necessities to strong arm players into paying (Hellgate, I’m looking at you with your “rent inventory space” model)

With subscriptions, the goal is to get a many people playing for as long as you can, so it discourages the company from spending resources on risky stuff like SAB that doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone. It also encourages adding more time sinks into the game. The subscription model is all about time and making sure that too many players can’t accomplish whatever they’re after before their monthly subscription renews.

Meteoric.4531:

Hey folks, returning player here. Hopefully a straightforward question…

My thief in her 40s once had a coat like this:
http://i.imgur.com/KehZlLO.jpg
It was a reward from a level 6 story quest. (Ran a new thief up to level 6 to get the picture.) I used transmutation stones to keep the look for a while, but somewhere along the way I salvaged it or something. I’d like to go back to that look, but can’t find another chest with the same appearance. Are there any, and if so how/where could I get them?

I really like the Argos Soft Galleries when I’m trying to find a particular piece. It lists all the possible names of the armor that carries a particular look, so you can find the cheapest one to transmute on to something else. The in game preview links are nice too so you can see how a piece dyes before you go try to acquire it.

(Edit – Didn’t realize Khisanth’s shortened link points to Argos Soft too)

Behellagh.1468:

Lothirieth.3408:

Also what Behellagh is forgetting is that you mainly get on-level drops. They changed that at some point. At the time it may have been a good change, but now it would seem it’s created another problem. A level 80 can’t go and smell the roses in a lower area as Behellagh thinks we all should and expect to come out with a decent amount of that tier cloth.

Except I have with my 80. Of course your definition of “decent” might be different.

Don’t the mobs drop T4 bags regardless of the player’s real level even though the gear scales? I had good luck with miner’s bags IIRC – the Dredge are so plentiful across Dredgehaunt and Timberline. My impression was that Timberline was worth doing a circuit around but I wasn’t particularly looking for linen. Between bags from the Dredge, Risen, and Grawl, the mature herbs, and the gold nodes, I thought I did pretty well there. I think the Iron Marches was fairly good too with all the Flame Legion and their ritual bags, but I didn’t enjoy running around there much – at the time, a lot of the events were regularly stuck and I liked the scenery in Timberline better.

I do remember having to actively go seek T4 leather and cloth. I had more than I could use of all the other tiers of of cloth and leather, so maybe there is something that needs looking at.

Dunecoon.5134:

Ranger
Pros: Seems like the easiest with a pet tank. Good survivabiltiy from what I’ve seen. “Cool factor”
Cons: I would think pet dying in WvW would get old after a while. Heard they’re not welcome in groups often

Don’t think of your pet as a tank – the AI isn’t good, and they aren’t durable. You have to really leverage swapping pets, choose the right pets to complement your build and the situation, and micro-manage their targeting in boss fights. The cool thing about them though is that you can swap them out any time you’re out of combat, so you get a lot of flexibility there.

I love my ranger, but there is a lot of ranger hate out there, so you might not want to choose it if you’re looking to PUG dungeons. It would be my vote – it’s really survivable and if you can get into a decent guild, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting teams.

Engineer:
Pros: Seems just like the engineer from warhammer online, which was my favorite class of that game. Loved the point blank grenade aoe skills and turret system
Cons: I’ve heard its very hard to learn

I loved my engineer in WHO too! I’ve got an engineer up to 45 and enjoy it. I think the reason some say it’s hard is because between the kits and the tool belt there are tons and tons of skills to keep track of if you use more than one kit. I haven’t found it too hard so far, but it is my fifth character so I’ve been around the block a couple times. I’m also not doing much WvW with her, so I don’t have a good feel for how effective an engineer would be.

Dunecoon.5134:

Elementalist
I’m not really sure how this profession works. Not sure how attunements work or what they are really but it looks like an interesting prof and I heard theyre really good if you get past the learning curve

Elementalists are challenging at the start and really powerful as they get higher level. You do have to do a lot of attunement switching to get the most out of your damage though. I didn’t get mine very far, so I can’t say much more than that.

Every profession in GW2 has the ability to be ranged. Guardian has scepter and staff that are ranged, Thief has shortbow and pistol, Mesmers have scepters and staffs and their greatsword skills are almost all ranged even though you would think it’s a melee weapon.

I assume you’ve looked over the information on the wiki? I would dig in there and examine the skills, traits and class mechanics, because the professions aren’t really that pigeonholed into melee/ranged/AOE/single target unless you only focus on the “best” build. There are many viable builds that are fun to play even though they’ll get you kicked out of dungeon speed run teams. There’s more to life than grinding dungeons though

Jeroen PwN.9601:

I had this plan in the beginning as well. Getting more gems for your 25 euro. That seems a pretty simple thing but to change all the gem cards in the ‘whole’ world is i think a bit harder. And isnt just this ( gold to gems depens on people that buy gems with money) that shows that less and less people buy gems with money and more and more buy it with gold.)

The price of converting gold to gems depends on how many gems are converted to gold, not how many gems are purchased. The solution if you think the gold to gem conversion is too expensive is to encourage more players to convert their gems to gold either by increasing the amount of gold they get, or making gold more desirable by adding more desirable things that can only be purchased with gold, like cultural items.

I’ve bought lots of gems and never converted them into gold because everything I was willing to pay the equivalent dollar price for was easy enough to obtain just by playing. Changing the cost of gems would just irritate the people that paid full price for them to buy gem store items and would do very little to change the conversion rate.

mtpelion.4562:

To clarify: I said the number of gems in the game, not the number of gems available for exchange. That is a subset of gems in the game.

Sorry, the way I quoted made it look like I was trying to correct you when I really meant to agree and expand on your post. The total number of gems in the game isn’t as interesting IMO as the gems in the conversion pool, so that’s what I focused on.

mtpelion.4562:

Flissy.4093:

Totally not true, people paying real money decreases the cost in gold only. They would still be purchaseable with gold if nobody bought gems -> gold unless ArenaNet changed how it works.

The gems available for purchase with gold are a FINITE supply, made available ONLY by players BUYING gems with real money and then trading them for GOLD.

The number of gems in the game is always equal to [gems put into exchange at launch] + [gems bought with gold] – [gems spent in store]

And they would become so expensive as to be practically unpurchasable before the pool of gems ran out if the algorithm works as expected. I’m sure I would be converting my gems into gold well before that point was reached though.

I think it’s a fairly common misconception that all purchased gems go into the pool instead of only the gems that are converted to gold.

Behellagh.1468:

That’s true and all but ANet reported 3 million sales in the first 4 months and 1/2 million over the next 8 months. That’s quite the drop off. Understandable since the game is neither “new” and post holiday gift season.
(snip)
As for your word of mouth is more important a simple read on the boards, a minor representation of the playerbase I know, includes a lot of players and former players who seem to make it their mission to discourage new players at every turn.

I wasn’t arguing that GW2 was successful and profitable, I was arguing that existing gem buyers alone aren’t solely responsible for keeping the game alive and healthy. You have to have new players coming in.

COH didn’t survive even though a lot of us bought everything their cash shop had to offer. Final Fantasy had to do a complete restart after it became impossible for completely new players with no in-game friends to give them a hand up to get anywhere. The size of the player base is really important to the success of online games, and there is an inevitable attrition of players due to life changes, other games coming out etc.

My impression is that the current situation can’t be resolved by gem store sales to existing customers. There are still players really excited by the game, especially with the marketing push last quarter bringing new players to the game. I’ve seen a number of “this game is awesome” threads in General and Players helping Players. That said, I think the GW2 “client promoter score” is probably not where they want it to be, and a lot of the changes we’re seeing are trying to address that.

Behellagh.1468:

Would you at least grant me that the game can’t survive indefinitely just on the original game sale. That attitude is what I was trying to counter in my original post.

I think you have a misconception of how many potential game sales there are left out there for GW2. WoW didn’t hit its peak subscribers for years after its initial release. GW2 is not going to survive indefinitely regardless, and it won’t last long at all if its only source of revenue is the cash shop, at least in the Western markets. I don’t understand how Lineage is still a money printing machine after a decade, so the Asian markets are probably different.

The company I work for spends a lot of money and effort making sure our clients are promoters (as opposed to just satisfied customers) because that’s where the real money comes from. I won’t say that the clients with lots of money aren’t valuable to us, but how much a client spends with us is usually dwarfed by how much they can bring in by being enthusiastic about doing business with us.

If you kept bumping into people talking about how awesome some game you never heard of was, how long would it take you to at least go see what all the fuss was about? In my experience, the people that spend hard cash aren’t more valuable customers than the people who bring in new customers. They aren’t necessarily less valuable, but how much money they spend isn’t the only factor.

Behellagh.1468:

Another point. I consider the price of the game as the means to “payoff” the five year development cost because in those 5 years GW wasn’t really bringing in the kind of income that would support a 5 year development process, especially the last two years. Factor in that retail sales means the actual income is greatly reduced that goes into ANet’s coffers and that’s why I don’t really include game sales towards offsetting the game’s monthly costs.

Because you don’t know the development costs, the ongoing costs, the amount of sales, nor the gem sales revenues, I still think there’s no reason to believe that those of us that buy gems are singlehandedly keeping the game going. I vaguely remember ANet saying shortly after release that they had plenty of money from game sales to keep on for a while and that the gem store sales would support extra development. Sorry I can’t come up with any verification, but I’ve got just as many facts behind my opinion as you do yours

I’m not saying that we aren’t supporting the game by buying gems, just that players that convince other people to buy a copy or get involved enough with the game to become a gem buyer are supporting the game also. Folks that are friendly to new players and engage them, for example, also contribute to the bottom line although it’s difficult to quantify.

Behellagh.1468:

On that note I was surprised to see GW2 19th on last week’s UK PC sales chart. So either it’s a steep curve from 1 to 19 in terms of overall sales or I’ve underestimated the popularity of a 1+ year old game.

Then again it’s the UK. How many PC gamers are there to begin with? :p

http://tinyurl.com/dlfx38

Sorry fir the tiny url, GW2 forum’s redirector scrambles the raw link.

It would be nice to see some sales numbers next to the rankings to have a better idea of what they really mean.

A game doesn’t have to be in the top part of the chart to have enough on-going sales to support it, especially if the company manages the expenses and resources well. The rankings do tell you what’s popular this week, but they don’t really tell you much about what’s profitable. We don’t find that out until the NCSoft publishes their quarterly reports. Even then I don’t think we get a breakout of game client versus gem store revenue.

Behellagh.1468:

Yes, buying the game allows you to play the game. However the monthly cost of the servers, bandwidth, support, CS and continued development are supported buy the gems that some players pay cash for. If that money dries up, nobody will get to play including you.

I think you’re making a huge presumption that sales of new copies of the game are insignificant. Both sources of income are important, and player population and sentiment are drivers of box sales. My speculation is that the game could survive long enough with no gem sales for ANet to correct any problems and that the release in Asia will bring a nice chunk of operating capital.

Of course NCSoft could look at flat gem sales and cancel the game because it’s not profitable enough, but that’s a risk with any online game. Still I don’t think it’s accurate to say folks buying gems are singlehandedly keeping the game alive.

morrolan.9608:

Anet has tokens but it is very inconsistent with the way it uses them, I’ve taken it as a sign of a lack of overall vision in relation to the reward systems and probably in terms of the way the game is project managed at the top level.

I don’t think it was the tokens that was the interesting part of how Marvel handles balancing RNG with earning rewards. It was the twist of being assured of getting a token every 10 minutes regardless of what you were fighting or where you were fighting it.

In GW2, every token that you can get without relying on RNG requires the successful completion of a particular task. In my opinion, that makes it more grindy because in most cases you can’t earn tokens during the course of doing whatever it is you’re in the mood for. Specialized tokens have a place, and I think more general tokens earned just by fighting enemies for account bound items could be added to fill in some gaps.

The devil’s in the details though, and I can see a few interactions with existing systems that could cause problems when trying to implement something similar in GW2.

Rouven.7409:

Yay, I’ll take twenty!

Seriously, are you saying I should buy for 185 and sell for 195?

scratches head

Yeah it’s an awesome deal, until you remember the listing fee.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Kuzzi.2198:

This blatant destruction of an entire market begs two question:
1. If you want the dyes to remain at a price equivalent to their gem price, why not just make them account bound from the start?
2. Does the profit you make from re-releasing the dyes for 3 days outweigh the potential loss of players, or was this just a spontaneous decision that was not ran by the game’s economists?

1) Anet never said anything about never re-releasing Gem Store items.
2) Speculating on certain items for profit is just that… speculation. You assume prices were go up or remain at a high value. There’s no guarantee an item will retain value. Just look at Gossamer or even Quartz.

So, in summary, making a lot of money on the TP isn’t as easy and risk free and some folks would have you believe.

Even if you research your markets there is always the chance with each new patch that something will be introduced that changes the desirability of whatever it is you’re speculating on. It doesn’t have to be the re-introduction of gem store items. It could be changes to the game mechanics or the addition of new items that are more desirable substitutes for whatever you’re speculating on.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Pandemoniac.4739:

My husband and I play a lot of games together, and I’ll tell you aesthetics just aren’t for girls. He spends way more time making sure he likes the look of his characters (and their names) than I do :P

That’s why I said later that aesthetics are important to me cause I’m somewhat girly… But that a girl who doesn’t care… Blah blah.

I meant it sort of tongue in cheek, which doesn’t come across well in a forum post. I like teasing him sometimes about how much effort he puts into it

Lilith Ajit.6173:

As a girl who got into the game when my hubby got it, I found that I was far mire into aesthetics….

My husband and I play a lot of games together, and I’ll tell you aesthetics just aren’t for girls. He spends way more time making sure he likes the look of his characters (and their names) than I do :P

I agree though that for a first time gamer that’s playing with someone experienced, the focus should be on what they like and not necessarily what’s easy. At the lower levels with someone to help you, GW2 really isn’t that difficult, so I think the best route would be for her to spend some time in the character creation screens going through the different races and professions and see what appeals to her.

Once she’s exposed to the game, she’s got plenty of additional character slots to try something different if she doesn’t like her choice.

Zaxares.5419:

I personally feel that the SAB loot system got it right. You can play the content and get lucky with a rare drop, or you can earn tokens and trade them in for an account bound version of the same skin. And for players who are just too lazy or dislike the content to do it themselves, they can buy skins from the players who were lucky enough to get a sellable skin version.

Marvel Heroes has an interesting twist on this – they have tokens that you can turn in for various special things – new hero unlocks, random rolls on epic gear, etc. These tokens can drop randomly from mobs and are affected by their version of magic find, but if you don’t find a token after 10 minutes of playing (I think, it might be 8 minutes) you get one dropped from the next mob you kill.

That lets players earn them faster with magic find, but doesn’t completely leave them to to the mercy of RNG. It also allows the developers to balance the costs of different items by thinking about the most time it would take a player to earn that item. For hero unlocks, they decided that even if every drop roll didn’t go your way, it would take about 20 hours of playing to earn one. Tokens can’t be traded, but you can spend cash to unlock the heroes if you don’t want to put in the 20 hours.

On the other hand, that game has no player driven economy at all, so a system like that might not translate directly into GW2. Still I thought it was an interesting approach to balance the thrill of getting a lucky drop with the frustration of streaks of bad luck.

I would have her choose among warrior, guardian, or ranger for her first character. They are the classes with the easiest to understand class mechanics, and with you watching her back, she won’t need to have the best build so she can take the weapons and skills that appeal to her.

In my opinion, your first time out should be more about liking how your character looks and how the skills work than about being really good. After she’s hooked, her second character will be more about progressing and being effective

Lord Kuru.3685:

Errant:

People were talking about having a special slot where you could drop stacks of food and they would be automatically consumed. This is basically that, but an expensive gem store version. (Which means, of course we’ll never get the special slot as a free QoL update.)

I think that’s a pretty kittenumption. (lol at the kitten filter) There’s a difference between automatically consuming a stack of food and making one normally short duration food last an entire day. A small one perhaps given how inexpensive most food is right now, but it may not be in the future especially if they introduce time gated food recipes.

There are some nice foods available from NPC vendors for cheap, but they only last 15 minutes. Being able to round them up to a few hours is useful, but like almost every gem store item, it’s very situational and is balanced more against how you value real money and not gold.

Gold is a lot more annoying for me to accumulate than cash. When I look at an item in the gem store I never try to value it in gold. For me having to be aware of when my food is expiring and renew it is a hassle if it’s 30 minutes or less, so the primers would be worthwhile to me in cash if I was planning on a long play session. There is no equivalent item for me that can be bought for gold.

Folks that aren’t as annoyed by having to refresh their food or who have better things to spend that gold or cash on would value it differently.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Pandemoniac.4739:

CrossedHorse.4261:

The Asuras are really cute (and best race for jumping puzzles – Norn and Charr are too big to see anything!).

Well someone else pointed out in another thread, you can always use a tonic to shrink yourself down for the puzzles where it’s a problem, so there’s a workaround. But after using an Asura for jumping puzzles, I’m really having a hard time doing them with any other race

Huh, I didn’t know about those … what tonics are they?

There’s an Asura tonic that’s available from the COE dungeon apparently, bandit ones, and others that turn you into human figures. Some allow you to keep your utility skills so you can use any speed buffs, but I think there’s only one (Potion of Ascalonian Mages) that lets you keep weapon and utility skills.

Some of them are quite inexpensive on the TP.

There’s a complete (as far as I know) list on the wiki http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Tonics

Mochann.5298:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Personally, I think having WvWvW maps as part of map completion is a good idea. The problem is that your server has to be winning or have drawn a particular color for folks to get the map completion, and that’s a bad idea. Would it be so terrible if the the POIs were accessible regardless of who owns the keeps in a particular area? It would still be dangerous to get close to an owned keep.

Personally, I he doing Reknown Hearts. They are slow to do, boring, take so long, grindy, and by far the most time consuming portion of map completion. They’re not even about exploitation! They’re about stupid fetch quests or stupid kill this quests. What’s the Exploration value of doing that?

If I was advocating making players invulnerable in the WvW areas so they could get their world completion without having to PvP, that might be relevant. You didn’t need help from anyone to complete those hearts, and you didn’t have to wait for them to become accessible, so you could do them whenever and at whatever pace you could stomach.

Players must go into WvW and make themselves available to get confronted by enemy players to get their world completion, which I think is good exposure to PvP. Requiring that players organize a group on their server and be successful at WvW I think sets the bar too high if the goal is to encourage players to get exposed to the entire game (well outside of sPvP – I think they should have added at least the POI in the lobby as part of the achievement too).

I consider world completion separate from creating a legendary, which requires badges you can only get from PvPing. I’m against removing the POIs in the WvW maps from the achievement, but I think that they should be accessible even if you are on the worst server for WvW. Players would still have to go to places where enemy players are likely to be, so it’s not going to be completely risk free. I’m sure there will still be some players unhappy with it, but I think it would be less frustrating for most.

I’m not however going to be allowing any enemy players to walk past me unmolested so they can get their world completion without a fight – I’m not a complete care bear Who knows, they might actually like a fight that requires some skill instead of fighting mobs with predictable AI…

CrossedHorse.4261:

The Asuras are really cute (and best race for jumping puzzles – Norn and Charr are too big to see anything!).

Well someone else pointed out in another thread, you can always use a tonic to shrink yourself down for the puzzles where it’s a problem, so there’s a workaround. But after using an Asura for jumping puzzles, I’m really having a hard time doing them with any other race

LordByron.8369:

This because we totally need a non biased point of view….its quite understandable an economist would push his favourite part of the game to central even if not supposed to.

That is why we need really a discussion in general section with Smith AND other devs.

Well looking over the thread, I see a pretty good diversity of opinion, so I don’t think this thread suffered too much from being moved to the BLTC forum. There’s no such thing as a non-biased point of view when you don’t have all the facts, and we don’t. There might have been more folks willing to commiserate with the OP in the General forum, but that I think would have been a far less constructive discussion.

Player economies are central parts of any MMO, no pushing required. Any game that has random drops is going to need a marketplace. I think accusing John of damaging the game to push his personal agenda is petty. I don’t give much credence to a position that can’t be argued without casting aspersions on other people’s character.

The Asura racial skills work well with some of the Engineer abilities based on how you build them. Pain inverter and radiation field add even more conditions an Engineer can generate.

It’s not a huge difference, but other than looks, the racial abilities are the only objective way to choose a race.

LordByron.8369:

a good point that explains how for one year fractal 79 gave you less reward than cutting a tree.
Economy at its finest….
What about making prestigious items tied to skill rather than gold and tp flipping?

I think there should be more desirable items that are outside of the TP – that’s the real solution in my opinion, not trying to adjust the TP so players can’t get rich.

Shakkara.2641:

But let me tell you the cold hard reality. The reality in this example is, that this year, there are only enough precursors in circulation for 10% of the players. So 90% WILL NOT GET ANY THIS YEAR, no matter how hard they try. Only the richest 10% of the people will be able to purchase them off the trading post.

Throughout the year, the average income of players likely went up, as players learned to play more effectively and earn more gold per hour. But this increase in income is global. So if you’re joe average, it will not be enough. To have enough gold for the precursor, you need to be in the top 10%. So either you have to farm 80 hours per week or you need to adopt clever ways of making gold. Playing the game the way that 90% of the people do, is simply not good enough.

I think this makes a good point and snipped it out from the rest of your post for the tl;dr folks

Gray Fox.9178:

Metallic Primer
Best Value Cost: 7.69 Gold or $1.31
A food that costs more than 7.69 gold per 12 hours must be found to justify cost.

Basic Ore Node Pack
Cost: 58.56 Gold or $10
Justifiable cost is unthinkable. Waypoint cost alone makes the mind boggle.

Your first mistake is trying to equate the dollar cost with the gold cost. Your second mistake is not taking into account the time cost associated with acquiring gold and factoring in whether it is more efficient for someone to “farm” $10 rather than 60 gold. You’ll never be able to come up with a real answer to that however, because everyone values their time and money differently.

If an item in the Gem store doesn’t have a good value proposition for you, don’t buy it. If it’s overpriced for what it is, no one will buy it and maybe the price will drop.

I see some really stupid and overpriced products that I would never buy when I’m shopping IRL. I don’t understand why it would make me angry that they exist. It has absolutely no negative impact on me if other people like and buy them, but it could have a positive impact by keeping the shop in business.

Nat.4029:

The last time I played was when Southsun Cove was fairly new. I haven’t really kept up with the game aside from a few Living Story articles. Basically, Anet has been adding content and taking it away. Am I correct? Have any new zones been added besides Southsun? The Living Story sounds like a cool concept, but for someone like myself who doesn’t dedicate playtime to one game for more than a few months at a time, it doesn’t seem very appealing.

I have the same experience. I really love GW2, but after a long break, I’m having trouble getting back into the game. There have been several posts from ANet developers indicating that they’re going to be making some changes to the Living Story stuff, so I’m hopeful.

My problem is not that the content is temporary, it’s that it is some temporary content and some permanent changes, it’s very frequent, and it is connected to pseudo-temporary content that happened earlier. So the game world changes permanently, but I have only a very vague idea of why it changed and I feel disconnected.

Temporary content that was really temporary, like the holiday events, wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I can ignore unobtainable achievements, and no longer available skins. I just hate feeling like I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with the previous pace of the changes.

Here’s the dev answer from a previous thread

Jeremiah Lee.2764:

Hi. There are many factors that can cause problems with the Trading Post and/or Gem Store. In order to diagnose your specific problem, we’ll need you to submit a customer support ticket, please. Also, please include any relevant information, such as your operating system, your PC specs, and firewall info.
We’re sorry that you’re experiencing this issue and hope we can help you.
Before you submit your ticket, you can try clearing your cache. To do this, you will want to close GW2 and:
1. Click the Windows start button.
2. Search for temp
3. Find any gw2cache folders and delete them.
Relaunch the game.
I hope this fixes it for you, but if it doesn’t, please follow my initial instructions.

Looks like there’s some cache files that can get into a bad state. You shouldn’t need to delete characters or change servers.

CoRtex.2157:

Anet should just bann them automaticly, it really easy to find bots/warpers (=cheat, not hack) with some simple coding.

Lol, if it’s so easy why don’t you just code that up and send it to them. I’m sure they’ll be very grateful as long as your code doesn’t accidentally automatically ban bunches of innocent players and cost them a fortune in support costs.

It’s really easy to solve most programming problems if you completely ignore requirements and edge cases.

Behellagh.1468:

Bunda.2691:

A couple comments:

1. Decreasing the number of entries necessarily means that there will be fewer bids and asks for every item. This will slow the narrowing of the spread.

That implies that the majority of bids and asks are from a minority of players. I disagree with that notion.

Actually I don’t think that’s what it implies at all – I think it implies that it’s typical for players to have more than the arbitrary cap you tossed out of bids and asks out at one time.

I have had a lot of items up for sale at one time, mostly because I put things up and let them sit until the price comes back around to what I think it’s worth. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find a threshold where the typical player will rarely bump up against it, but the higher you set the threshold, the less effect it has.

Also I’d have to be a lot more careful about my pricing, so it would probably slow down my posting as I got closer to my cap. I’d hate to lose my listing fee because I had to pull something down to free up a spot. I guess that would affect supply, but then again it might incentivize more players to price things to sell instead of doing like I do and letting things sit, so the spread may narrow faster.

I never really can tell what the total end effect will be with economics. Too much human behavior involved and there’s no telling if it will be entirely rational. I do know that the very limited auction slots in the D3 auction house didn’t seem to do much good. With all the other economic problems that game had though, it’s hard to draw any conclusions from that.