The gold price of items on the Trading Post have gone up for a number of reasons, but as you’ll note only the last one of the reasons the Gem price has gone up has anything to do with that. Item value inflation is almost entirely due to the convenient coincidence of there being hardly any bots to supply the market at a time in which a massive grind requiring a huge number of supplies was introduced. This by proxy contributes to increased Gem Value. (You’d almost think ANET made the Ascended back piece such a grind to make a dent in the supply left over from the bots. In which case it’s another example of them lying to cover their Kittens during the AMA)
I’m not saying inflation isn’t the right word, but it’s an artificial inflation brought on by direct manipulation by ANET, and not by natural growth of the market.
Look closely at http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 and note that there was no spike in demand (buy orders) with the introduction of ascended gear. There was a big drop in supply (sell listings) around November 1 and a small increase in demand around November 6 – 8.
It seems most likely that the only direct manipulation by ArenaNet was due the mass bot banning that removed a lot of supply from the market… in my view, this was a good thing despite what it has done to prices.
Basic necessities such as bank slots and equipment should be standardised even though the exchange rate is going up.
600 gems for 30 extra bank slots equates to about 8G at the moment. This, in my opinion , is not reasonable.
If the price isn’t worth it to you, then don’t spend the gold. The extra space isn’t strictly necessary, although I will admit that it’s a nice quality of life improvement. If you have spare character slots, you can create alts for extra storage.
Every item has a standardised gem cost and there is a fixed $ to gem rate. So the bank slots will always cost $7.50, it’s only the gold cost that will vary over time. Also 8g is cheaper than the cost of a 20 slot bag…
It wasn’t the only modification, but the increased chance of getting them from the forge has proved irrelevant since prices are now worse for the precursors than ever.
Also, I suspected what you just stated about the lack of supply relative to demand. But that’s a problem created by the fact that you guys added new recipes that require huge amounts of the same mats that everything else needed. The huge increase in prices was entirely precipitated by the Devs deciding that everything needs 250 ectos/tier 6 mats to be upgraded/created. It’s making the grid worse than ever, as someone stated very succinctly on the recent reddit AMA. Ascended items can’t act as an in-between for the legendaries when they use all the same items, drive up prices, and thus make getting the legendary even LONGER to take, especially if you try to work on the ascended gear.
Bolded the bit I’m responding to
This is not true. Look at http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 and you will see the price increase started long before the introduction of ascended gear roughly around 1 November. If you look closer you will see the drop in supply (sell listings) around that time that is probably associated with the mass bot banning, and you will also see a slight increase in demand (buy orders) around November 6th – 8th. There has been no spike in demand caused by the introduction of ascended gear.
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties, In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain. This is one hell of a gamble, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people involved in this complex in game economy are not students of economics nor do they understand the consequences of monopolization and their closest interpretation of Sherman would be a tank. You sir may gamble the future of this economy based on your machinations but at the end of the day many ordinary people could well be your undoing.
Some, no most are here to play the game not to play the market. To continue down this path will most assuredly cost your company many of their real life resources at which time an economist will be the last person they need. Consider that while you’re playing economic dungeon master.
I love this post and agree 100%. The out of control ego from most of the Devs who post on these forums is truly mind boggling.
What I find mind boggling is the amount of people who believe that ArenaNet is manipulating the economy to “force” people to spend real money on gems in order to buy gold…
There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.
If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.
The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.
Given it’s a virtual world where you don’t need to pay for food, housing, etc. just to survive, I’m not sure it’s such a big deal.
A lot of the costs you need to pay in order to do things in the game world are fixed (e.g. waypoint costs, repair costs, trait resets, etc.) and don’t depend on how much wealth is being generated by players.
The TP UI could certainly do a better job of displaying this information, but I’ve trained myself to think of them as two different fees whenever I list anything.
1) A 5% listing fee that is paid up front to list items for sale. This must be paid regardless of whether the item(s) sell or not. (This discourages me from cancelling listings if I’m undercut, and makes me think more carefully about what price I will list at, as it costs me to change my mind later)
2) A 10% tax on every sale that is actually made. This is the tax that is calculated in the projected profit. I believe it is labelled as projected because the actual tax paid may vary if you are selling multiples of the same item and they are sold in several separate transactions.
We are seeing across the board increase in prices. I think it probably has to do with the mass bot banning. But, you will see, it looks like the bots are back …
So, we might be at a peek right now. I think we will see prices return to the normal trend line. But, who knows.
Part of this may be related the recent increase in the official gem → gold rate and not necessarily to a surge in bot activity. I do know that there are still bots around, and of course eradicating bots will be an ongoing battle for ArenaNet, but I’m not sure that we’re anywhere near the point we were at before the mass banning occured.
I’m not sure where the prices will peak, but I do think that they will plateau at some point in the future…
The problem here is most normal people don’t play gw2 to play the virtual world stock market. People should be making the vast majority of their in game money wandering the world killing things, rescuing maidens, and killing dragons, not having a heroic battle speculating ectoplasm prices.
The game is supposed to be an escape from the real world, not a lesson in economics.
I can guarantee with certainty that there is no significant degree of speculation going on with Ecto pricing. It’s the fact that demand for ectos is greater than supply, so prices are going up.
Some people might be buying ectos and holding onto them in the hope that prices will continue to rise to a point where they can sell them for a profit after deducting fees, but that’s not what’s driving the price increase.
I’m buying ectos to use in crafting exotics and I can generally outbid the lowest bidder by a few copper and get the few ectos I require within a couple of minutes, so there are plenty of people willing to sell at the price buyers are prepared to pay. It’s just that there are a lot more buyers constantly outbidding each other and/or buying at the lowest sell price, so the price is going up.
For reasons covered in this thread my activity has drastically been reduced. My moderate 18g has been reduced to chump change, heck the gem prices have inflated to such astronomical levels I can’t even get boosters or a makeover kit without spending large amounts of gold so my solution has been to not play, if Anet (the government) doesn’t, can’t and won’t protect me from inflation then I’m going to move to another country (another game).
It’s akin to everyone having dual citizenship and GW2 is a country where there is no government control in a capitalist country where the interest rates have been unregulated which in turn devalues the currency so instead of continuing to see our currency devalue we simply go to the other country where we’re still moderately wealthy.
I’m sorry, I just can’t understand this mindset.
I have less than 18 gold yet I can buy ectos and T6 mats on the TP and craft exotics to sell on the TP for a profit.
I can go run dungeons, explore the world, do events, WvW without worrying about how much gold I have. If I can’t afford some of the non-essential items from the gem store, it doesn’t really affect my enjoyment from playing the game.
Right Astraea, that would be the best thing to do. That or invest in a high valued material that will always be high valued (more risky). However, again, these are casuals were talking about who just want to log on and get their cool exotic weapon (not even a legendary) or full exotics.
The problem is really the SPEED at which this happened. If I went on vacation for one week, I should not see ectos climb 10 silver. Which is what just happened: http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721
I’ve just linked that same graph in another post… lol. Ectos have been rising for the past month, and people have been talking about this issue for the past few weeks, so if I took a break now I would expect them to keep rising.
I can see your point however, not everyone is as informed as everyone else, and so some of these changes may have come as a surprise to the more casual players like your friends. Having said that, the game has only been going for just over 3 months, so it may have been somewhat optimistic of them to have expect the game’s economy to have fully stabilised in that time.
I think the problem isn’t that they were too cheap. What should have happened was a slower ban process to make it so people get “eased” into this. You couple this is the ascended item’s requirements and you get an aggravated market where a bunch of people who used to play literally 3 weeks ago, come back and see the price of ectos/materials/etc. double, triple, or go up even more than that and it really does make people feel like they’ve lost a lot of progress.
Bots were a problem. Banning them was the correct thing to do. Banning them all and causing all supply to go away in 2-3 days then releasing ascended gear withint a small time period might not have been the best idea for returning players. I don’t mind this, but I can see why a lot of people (guildies of mine especially) come back after playing their CoD, Halo, and AC3 for a few weeks to a totally different TP game where they suddenly feel like their cash is worth a lot less.
I’ve posted this a few times now, but I’ll repeat it here one more time…
Look at the volumes of sell listings and buy orders for ectos and you will see that this is a supply-side issue more than a demand side issue. True, there has been increased demand, but this increase mostly happened a week before the introduction of ascended items and is relatively minor compared to the decrease in supply.
What’s funny is, people who took a break for 3-4 weeks and come back used to think 30-40g was a lot. Now 30-40g is nothing and what money they’ve gained has devalued so much in so little time instead of feeling rich, they feel and ARE much more poor. Coupled with the sudden decrease in supplies in a lot of items like lodestones and T5/T6 mats and thus increase in price, they feel even less rich.
Thankfully I’ve been playing the tradepost game for a couple of weeks and speculated on good price spikes, but my friends who took a small break werre not so lucky. Sucks to be them and I’m sure this is happening to more and more people, especially casuals. One of them even logged on for a day, saw the prices, nobody farming in Orr, and then logged off and never came back on. I was sad.
If I was to take a break from the game (and it will be a while before I do so) I would hedge against inflation by converting most of my gold into gems.
To use your example, 3 weeks ago the gold → gem rate was about 80s per 100 gems, so 30 gold would have bought 3750 gems. Today, the gem → gold rate is around 1g 20s per 100 gems, so those 3750 gems would convert back into 45 gold.
Doing this may not complete negate the effects of inflation, but it does give you some protection against your in-game wealth being completely devalued.
Who would buy a 20 slot bag? 2 slots for 10g is not worth it, you’re better of buying 50 slot guild banks.
I’m still running with at least one 8 slot bag on my main (I’m not running into inventory issues very often). If I were to upgrade that to a 20 slot bag, then I gain more than 2 slots and haven’t paid for the intermediate steps. That said, 10g is a lot of money to commit to inventory space, which is why I haven’t done it yet.
The profit of the crafter is the increase of his skill. For this goal (= higher skill level) he actually has to pay, and the payment is the difference between the materials he consume and the price he can achieve.
These require skill level 400 to craft, there is no “skill increase benefit” from crafting these.
Edit: I actually had to double-check this to confirm it was true after seeing the previous post.
I can understand your frustration, dealing with a similar situation in another crafting profession, but unfortunately you can’t eliminate human stupidity.
With respect to material costs, I do know a lot of people don’t necessarily value the mats they have gathered themselves at market value, but even then the minimum break even point would be on the cost of the rune. Assuming they were purchased below cost via the TP rather than from a vendor, this would be 9g 54s/0.85 = 11g 22s 35c
Perhaps they got them even cheaper, but sadly I think it’s more likely that people are making a loss (either unwittingly, or perhaps just to get some of their initial investment back – as you noted, it’s not a small sum to have tied up in one item).
I’m actually against this idea, at least in the short term… While I do think there’s a role that trading of ascended items could fill in the economy, it’s probably better for it to be available from a few more sources before it becomes tradeable.
I can understand that…. I can see some reaction of ‘I feel forced to do fractals because that’s the only place to get the things that sell for the most money on the TP.’
At the same time, making them tradable accomplishes exactly the goal of getting another source for the items….
I’m not familiar with the A-net code base and I don’t know if it would be more or less implementable to toggle a ‘tradeable’ flag (or toggle off an account bound flag?) on an item type than it would be to introduce systems for the item to be acquired through other methods / locations.
It’s a number of things that make me feel this might be a bad move if it isn’t handled right. Partly, it reinforces the (wrongly held IMO) view from some of the community that the introduction of ascended gear was a “cash grab” introducing more “pay to win” elements. (Reasoning being, I need a truck-load of mats to craft ascended, which equals a lot of gold, which means ArenaNet wants me to buy gems to get the gold needed to craft them…)
So I could then see those who make this sort of argument complaining that it’s now a case of either farm Fractals or buy gems to convert to gold, and it’s all just a big “cash grab” ad nauseum…
There are probably other flow on effects too… for instance, by making it more rewarding to run those fractal levels with higher chances of dropping (tradable) ascended gear, players are disincentivised (more than they currently are) from running other fractal levels.
I just think there are a few implications of such a move, and it’s probably better to be careful before doing something like this.
I’m actually against this idea, at least in the short term… While I do think there’s a role that trading of ascended items could fill in the economy, it’s probably better for it to be available from a few more sources before it becomes tradeable.
I for one would not be happy if they introduced ectos as a map completion reward since I just finished the high level areas.
Technically the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough supply, but more that there is too much demand since the Ancient Karka precursor boom (more people now working on legendaries) and since they introduced the ascended back pieces (300 ectos for an infused one). You could argue that not enough supply is the same as too much demand, but it makes more sense for Anet to change the latter since I imagine changing drop rates is more likely to have unpredictable repercussions.
I don’t have time to link all the details (about to leave for work), but if you check the volume of buy orders for ectos on gw2spidy, you’ll notice that there hasn’t been a massive shift in demand since the release of ascended gear. There was a rise in demand about a week prior to the lost shores patch, but it’s been pretty constant since then.
From looking at the graph, at the highest point of the spike the gem → gold rate was 1g 66s 34c per 100 gems (at around 15:11 GMT if my time conversion is accurate – the graphs display local time for me).
To make a profit buying gems with gold and then reselling them, the latest time they could have purchased gems was around 10:25 GMT when the gold → gem rate was 1g 65s 88c per 100 gems.
The actual spike looks to have started at about 11:09 GMT, so in order to profit, any potential “manipulators” would have had to purchase gems with gold at least two and a half hours before the spike even occured (and then managed to sell at the peak rate).
Because of the time delay between these two “points of profitability” and the actual spike itself, it’s extremely unlikely the spike was caused by people trying to manipulate the exchange for profit. If it was, then they would in fact have lost gold in the attempt.
I replied in another thread about this, and I don’t have time to find the specific numbers, but if you look at the data for ectos on gw2spidy you will note that the prices started rising around 1 November.
From about that point the number of sell listings dropped by a significant amount, while the number of buy orders has increased by a much smaller margin. It’s also worth noting that the increase in demand occured about a week prior to the Lost Shores patch and the introduction of ascended gear.
My 2 copper? The price increase is mostly due to the decreased supply caused by mass ban waves of bots, while the slight increase in demand is probably due to factors other than the introduction of ascended gear.
I don’t know why people keep falling for these pump and dump schemes…
The first rule of trading in GW2 should be, if an opportunity is being talked about on the forums, then it’s already too late for you to take advantage of it (if it even existed in the first place)
You guys got me thinking about potential investments. It seems that Powerful Venom Sacs don’t have a great deal of use/value at the moment. Do you think they are worth banking in the hope that more recipes/uses come out for them?
I know they’re used for the Rampager’s exotics… other than that… /shrug.
Something similar happened after the initial rate surge when the halloween items were released. Some of it may be people speculating in gems, but it’s also just as likely that a bunch of players decided to convert gems bought with real money at the favourable rate of 1.5 -1.6 gold per 100 gems.
Don’t worry you are wrong on it, they added it about a month or so after. A monopoly develops when you have less sources, aka adding a DR diminishes sources.
That is nothing like the definition of a monopoly… you are defining scarcity. If you look at the graph I linked in a previous post, you will see the scarcity of ectos in the TP kicks in around 1 November, long after DR had been implemented. This is probably the effect of mass banning of bots that happened around this time, and the only relationship to DR is that players are still affected by it.
All these people with “small fortunes” earned them by farming before the DR was put into place.
All DR does is burn the bridge the rest of them used to get to their “1-percenter” ivory tower.
Because we don’t have the ability to gather our own mats, we’re forced to buy from these de-facto monopolies produced by the imposition of DR.
They get richer, we get poorer, and we, unlike them, are forced to the cash shop to fill their coffers.
I believe DR has been in place since the game launched and it just took time for people to advance far enough to notice it (but I could be wrong on this).
There can be no de-facto monopoly on ectos (or T6 mats) because they are quite heavily traded. I’m often buying ectos to use in crafting exotics, and I can place a buy order for the ones I need above the current buy price but below the current sell price and have if filled in less than 2 minutes. It’s a similar situation when I buy T6 mats from the TP.
Prior to this date, the volume supplied (sell listings) seems to be ranging between 15k-22k, and the volume demanded (buy orders) seems to be averaging around 64k-66k.
Since then, supply has dropped to an average between 4k-6k (occasionally peaking at 10k), while demand increased to average between 72k-75k.
Note however, that this increase in demand started to happen about a week prior to the November 15 patch.
Why can’t we just have a game with no gear grind?
I thought this was what GW2 was all about.
As did many of us that took the manifesto literally.
Actually, nowhere does the manifesto literally state “no gear grind”, but that hasn’t stopped people interpreting it that way.
There was already vertical progression in the game at launch (levels and different grades of gear) as well as horizontal progression. The vertical progression that existed did not block anyone from enjoying the content on offer (i.e. you don’t need full rares/exotics to be able to do an event or dungeon or WvW or what ever you enjoy).
The implementation of the ascended tier has been badly done, but ArenaNet have admitted that and are working on making it available from multiple sources (PvP, crafting, and other existing content). Ascended gear is supposed to take more time to acquire compared to exotics, but not as long as it takes to acquire legendaries, and will be as mandatory to experience the game content as exotics are currently (i.e. not at all).
dude if anet introduced night elves they would say they were meant to always be there LOL
Just like trolls…
Seriously tho, if the OP is truly unhappy and feels lied to, then it’s up to him to decide whether to continue to play the game or not. This endless back-and-forth between different posters is somewhat tiresome and just going over old ground.
ArenaNet have clarified the position with respect to ascended gear and vertical progression. It will be in the game, it will be a low power curve, and they don’t intend for it to be “grindy” (ofc, individual definitions of grind will vary), and you will be able to achieve it via multiple methods (ideally doing the things you enjoy).
From my perspective, none of this breaks the manifesto, if I can get the gear from doing the things I enjoy doing and I’m not locked out from content because I don’t have the best gear, then I will be satisfied. YMMV however.
Absolutely. I’ll sure give them the gear back. I can buy MF yellows until I get the Ascended gear.
ANET has said that there will be a shallow power curve over the next year. As I’m stuck on Fractal lvl 2, I can’t even compete even if I wanted to.
Who are you competing with? Since the patch I’ve only done the fractals once and run quite a few dungeons. I don’t even have exotics, but I’m able to play the content I enjoy without worrying that my gear isn’t good enough. That’s what the manifesto is about, it’s not a mandatory grind to get the best gear, because you don’t need it to access the content (with the exception of higher difficulty levels in the fractals).
Besides, any gear progression is not what I expected when I purchased this game, purchased my gems, and began playing. This is a material change that adversely influences my ability to enjoy the game. I don’t want to have to grind to stay ‘in the game’.
I’m sorry that you feel this way, but my only suggestion would be to not grind for ascended if you don’t want to. Other methods of acquiring ascended are in the works, so don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to do. Play for fun, that’s what I do.
Edit: I just saw your follow-up post about enjoying WvW. I can see the point with being competitively geared there, but at this stage you can probably make do without ascended gear until it’s obtainable via PvP if you really don’t want to grind for it.
I spent a lot of time, effort, energy, and gems into acquiring my two and a half exotic sets. I understood this to be an investment because, like GW1, this gear wouldn’t become obsolete.
With the implementation of Ascended gear, I’ve realized that this wasn’t the case. All of the gear that I so painstakingly earned and bought is now obsolete. I’ve realy worked for nothing.
I love the idea of horizontal progression – like GW1, working towards extra skins and other non-combat ways to differentiate your character. I feel chated, lied to, and deceived.
I would like a refund for my gems and for my exotic gear. Or, I would like them transmuted into Ascended gear.
Given exotics are still the “best-in-slot” available for everything except rings and back, how is your current set obsolete? The new ascended tier will be released over time, so you will still get some use out of the gear you have worked hard to obtain before you need to think about upgrading.
Prices of gmes in gold are only affected buy buying and selling gems with gold: when you buy gems with gold, the price of gems in gold goes up.
And thus, according to the community, the amount of gems that people own has no influence whatsoever on the price.
If all players combined own 1,000,000 gems and someone buys 100 gems with gold, the price will go up with the exact same amount as when players own 25,000,000 gems and someone buys 100 gems with gold.
Yep… if it helps, think of the reverse situation. All other things being equal, if all players combined own 25,000,000 gold and someone sells 100 gems for gold, the price will go down with the exact same amount as when players own 1,000,000,000 gold and someone sells 100 gems for gold.
Just as an aside though. ANet appointed a “monetisation manager” earlier this year who is an-ex Nexon employee. I won’t mention her name because the mods don’t like it. But it is easily found via google.
Whilst the timing maybe coincidental and entirely unconnected… how long do you think the negotiations for a $685 million deal take to negotiate? I genuinely don’t know. But I would suspect that we can agree it wasn’t an impulse purchase by Nexon?
I don’t want to derail the OPs purpose with this thread any further, because I agree with his sentiments that worrying about the future is quite often pointless, but it may in fact be a coincidence.
NCSoft’s is a publically traded company and Nexon’s shares were purchased as part of a private transaction, so this wasn’t a case of NCSoft gaining extra capital as part of the deal, and they probably weren’t even involved in the negotions around this share purchase.
Just following up, basically it means, there are many people who want to buy gems with in game gold, to get various BLTC items.
But there are fewer people willing to buy gems with real life money and trade them for gold. ie. few people want to buy official gold.
This is presumably because third-party gold is so much cheaper.
So, lots of people buying gems with gold, few people selling gems for gold.
The internal gem stockpile in the TP goes down, the internal gold stockpile goes up.
—> Gem prices vs. gold rises via an automatic mechanism.
I think that’s roughly it, but it’s not necessarily a case of lots on one side and few on the other, but just that there is an imbalance between the two sides. The greater the imbalance, the faster the movement.
When 14.7% makes you the majority shareholder (i.e every other shareholder owns less than 14.7% of the shares) then you have a significant voice in the boardroom. You may still require 51% of shareholders to agree to major changes, but it does tend to make you the loudest voice in the room and when shareholders are after increased profits/dividends that counts for an awful lot!
14.7% may make them the largest shareholder, but they are still far short of a majority. They may get a seat or two in the boardroom of NCSoft, but it’s a stretch to imply from there that they get a direct say in operational matters of one of NCSoft’s subsidiaries.
Edit: and here’s the current board structure for NCSoft I’m unable to find a direct link between the board and Nexon without doing further research, but it seems to dispel any theories that Nexon have a direct influence on NCSoft’s activities beyond that of any other shareholder.
This is either (yet another) bug…which I doubt, or a rather thinly veiled attempt to steer the player to the cash shop in the form of a bug they decided NOT to fix or warn us about due to a monetary advantage to them. For the devs, this is one of those ‘gems from heaven’ bugs….they get to save time by not fixing it, they MAKE money when you have to replace the stone….its just the poor sap of a player that gets stuck with the gift of more grind.
While you’re right that the OP has a legitimate complaint, I fail to see how this part of your response has any validity. I know a lot of people don’t have much faith in ArenaNet right now, but to argue that devs are intentionally concealing bugs and delaying fixes in order to increase cash shop revenue is laughable.
Report the bug, post it widely to make the community aware, and move on.
Having just levelled one of my craft skills to 400, I have found it easy to make a profit with a little bit of research.
I don’t think anything needs to change with custom buy orders. Taxing buy orders would be a mistake (IMO), as it would lead to people being less likely to up their bid price if they get overbid for an item, so it would probably keep the buy prices lower than they would otherwise be.
Happy Birthday! And welcome to the game and the forums…
Nothing in the deluxe edition is really required, so please don’t let not having it ruin what should be a great experience for you as you go out and explore Tyria.
This may just be an oversight and potentially removed once they catch up with it…
If not, then it’s still not too much of a worry for now. Until more content is added to the new zone, there isn’t a lot of reason for people to go there, and even those that do would have a very slim chance of getting a Consortium chest. So this isn’t going to increase the supply of minis and skins by a significant amount.
The problem is that corporations do use metrics to determine this stuff. It’s the easiest way to do it. Just like when the police profile people based on race or clothing or whatever. Is it the right way to do it? No. Is it the easiest way to do it? Yes.
Can it turn around a bite you in the butt – hell yes.
I agree, metrics are important, but they aren’t everything. When combined with other qualitative data such as surveys or direct customer feedback, then they become more useful…
Given the recent survey on the lost shores content (not to mention the amount of feedback given on the forums about the patch) I’m sure ArenaNet won’t be looking solely at the metrics.
At 2000 gems the Digiatal Upgrade isn’t all that cheap so will Anet refund any players who have already bought the Digital version? Answer No.
Having upgraded to it myself Asyraea is right in saying people won’t feel any better, in fact I’m even more peeved that it is now being given away free even if it is for only a limited time as I could have made far better use of those 2000 gems.
I paid for mine with cash as part of the pre-purchase deal months before the game even launched. It’s been so long that I’m okay with some people getting a good deal for it over the weekend, especially if it entices more people to buy the game. Again, I can understand how people who may have bought it recently may feel upset, but this is equivalent to buying something a week before it goes on sale… you got the item you were after, just not at the best price possible due to bad timing.
I believe the free upgrade to digital deluxe is limited to sales made this weekend, and is not a permanent price reduction. This may not make those who have recently purchased the game feel any better, but I really can’t fault ArenaNet for doing this as part of the weekend’s sales promotion.
When this event launched I was at work. Really pisses me off that I’m punished for putting food on my table.
I was also at work… but I don’t feel punished, so much as disappointed that the opportunity to get the rewards was so limited (i.e. while I didn’t get anything from the event, I haven’t actually lost any of my in-game progress). I’m hoping that the limited timespan of events is something that will be addressed with future events however.
“We don’t think it’s ok for players who didn’t like doing dungeons before to, suddenly, once you get to the max level, you’re forced into dungeons.” – Eric Flannum
So here I was, at my max level with my max level gear, having a jolly old time, when suddenly, new, better gear comes along and I have to do a dungeon to get it.
Developers: I’m not upset with what you did, I’m upset that you had the nerve to tell me you wouldn’t.
And it is planned that you will be able to obtain this gear without running dungeons. That may not help you right now, but as there isn’t a lot of “new and better” gear to be obtained at this point in time, you could always wait if you prefer to avoid dungeons.
Actually, this is key to the perpetual gear treadmill. Only the existing top tier (or maybe few tiers) is really hard to grind for because otherwise new players would be turned away when they realize they are years behind the curve. So at the appropriate time, Ascended gear will become more readily available… in order to allow a near tier to arrive!
This type of treadmill is only relevant if new content is gated such that the most recent tiers of gear are required to complete it. I don’t see this happening with GW2, in fact, they made the new content available to players of all levels during the lost shores event.
