Guild Wars 2

Traditionally if there is a very popular item returning or there is a really good sale on items such as bank slots and keys (yes keys are popular when on sale), the rush to buy them leads to players cashing in gold for gems at a very high rate over a very short period of time. This leads to a surge in the exchange rate.

The times this happen are Tuesday and Friday, midnight Pacific Time when the store is updated. On patch Tuesday the update happens when the patch drops. There are occasionally special sales like the one we had Black Friday weekend. Now if nothing in demand comes out or go on sale, you won’t see the spike.

This chart, set to 3 days, updates every half an hour.

https://www.gw2tp.com/gems

Yep, supply has been dropping quite a bit. Pretty sure it finally exposed crusty old high price chests that have been there forever. Of course this means the price will be undercut with each seller while bidders will keep lowering the bid to entice players to think they can flip for profit.

I guess that between the key sale and the new “secret prize inside” the last patch (or was it the one before that?) might drive up demand. I have like 90 taking up a slot in my bank so I’m not looking to buy. Sell maybe.

First of all, selling to a NPC vendor should be your last choice, other than junk and stuff that has no buyers on or have a minimum price at the TP.

Rares above level 68 should be salvaged with a master/mystic/silver fed salvage kit as long as their current price on the TP is less than the price of an ecto. If they are worth more than the ecto and it isn’t because of the rune or sigil, sell it on the TP.

Exotics are tricky. If they contain a sigil or rune that can be sold more than the exotic, salvage it with a Black Lion Salvage Kit. They drop often enough for me that I nearly have a bank slot full of them after two years.

White/Blue/Green items. I salvage with a basic kit and hoard the mats. Others try to sell off the ones that have ready buyers or play promotion slots in the MF hoping for something worth it, or just for giggles. Each there own.

Lastly again, the NPC vendor is your last choice in selling. You will often get a lot more from selling it to another player on the TP. You can use gw2tp.com to check the history of prices for some items if you have no idea what a fair price is. Or you can simply sell it to a waiting buyer.

As for the daily/monthlies. I think the problem we all have is it’s going to force us to change our routine. A routine that’s been burned into us over the last year since the last QoL change to achievements. Now we are going to have to change our routine to go and do some new requirement from a limited choice. As it is now we have 8 PvE (usually), 2 PvP and 2 WvW to do 5 of to get our daily. If the screen shot is any indication we now only have to do three out of 12, choice of four in each play type, to get 10 APs. So as someone who does PvE exclusively, you’ve cut me down from 5 of 8, most that you can do anywhere, to 3 of 4 specific activities that could be all over Tyria.

Sure it’s a good deal for PvP and WvW exclusive players, perhaps because activities like gather, salvage and kills can be done anywhere, it’s going to take me a lot longer than the 30 minutes to get 5.

I understand. Before LS 1 shepherded players all over the world, dailies too, but LS 2 is rather compact, existing in it’s new zone. I’m sure you have a lot of maps that even the megaserver can’t fill right now. So why don’t you look at adding, tweaking, modifying the events in those zones to draw more players rather than set up a global version of Whack-a-Dredge nightly?

Lyssan.3768:

The blatant attempted money grab by totally kittening up the gem/gold exchange into 400 gem block purchase, same thing. Some of the improvements were actually improvements, but the single gem purchase needs to be the default, NOT total hassle to get to like how it is now.

So one extra click is a “total hassle” to get to the custom page? Now don’t get me wrong, making the exchange to be similar when buying gems with gold to buying gems with cash was, misguided and they did rectified it do a degree. Sure there is more work to be done on the Gem to Gold side, such as paying the exact amount back to the player rather than truncating off a few silver and an option to convert all gems to coin. I believe when players say gold they actually main in-game coin of whatever value, don’t take it so literally ANet. And the last round of tweaks on the TP UI has made it worse, not better, yet we’ve heard nothing about another round of fixes coming down the pike anytime soon.

I cash in laurels weekly for T6 bags which I sell the contents of. It’s a nice weekly kick in savings. Take this and the monthly 10 away that’s 40g of “free” coin a month.

Always thought the 5770 edged out the 260, even in it’s 216 shader version?

Sounds more like, lets get players out of their routines and all over the available maps rather than spawn and then despawn the same series of maps every 15 minutes.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So to sum up the year:

We had a 6 week break from December 10th to January 21st

Then we had a 4 week break from March until April

Then we had a 12 week break From April to July

Then we had an 8 week break from September til November

And now we are having a 6 week break from December to January

Anet’s total break time for the year = 36 weeks of break out of a 52 week year…

Well I guess it is no wonder why people are complaining about the amount of content… Anet gets more breaks than congress…

I broke this down in a now closed thread.

We had LS 1 conclude between Jan 21 to Apr 1st if you grant the last chapter two weeks even though it lasted 4.

Then Feature Pack 1 on Apr 15th. Then 5 weeks until the Festival which lasted 6 weeks.

LS 2 Part 1 started on July 1st and ran 8 weeks. Then a four week gap until Feature Pack 2. Then six weeks to Halloween which lasted 2 weeks until LS 2 Part 2 which started on Nov 4th and ran 6 weeks.

Then Winterday 2014 starts on the 16th.

So overall we had:
36 days of Winterday between 2013’s and 2014’s.
14 days of Halloween
42 days of Festival of the Four Winds (which I admit is a bit much)
70 days of LS 1
98 days of LS 2

Which leaves 105 days, roughly 3 and 1/2 months of nothing besides adapting to Feature Packs which moved the cheese of many a vet players while on the carrot side did give us the wardrobe and better organization of the Hero screen. TP changes were a mixed bag at best. Traits were a disaster and the lack of a reasonable treatment of vet players in the NPE left a bad taste in a lot of mouths.

Also remember that Winterday likely covers a fair amount of dev vacation time. You really don’t want to see the kind of stuff that comes out of an eggnog/champagne haze so I grant them mid December to mid January as a reasonable downtime period.

Last year there was a six week break in the Living Story due to Winterday. This year it’s only four.

As the devs have pointed out, there is a schedule, set months in advance about when things are due so they can be released. The knowledge of when the Halloween and Winterday events are fixed to the calendar, other content has to be worked around them and their deliverable are scheduled accordingly.

It’s not like some guy is sitting in the server room with a pile of LS episodes ready to be released.

Guhracie.3419:

The exemplary and stickied thread, “I have a question about the economy” has now been archived with the unfortunate loss of the Black Lion Trading Company forum. Is there any chance of getting that thread fished out of the abyss?

But why? <said sarcastically>

Gaile Gray.6029:

Sorry that you don’t care for them. I think with time you will find things more efficient and easier to find in the reorganized format, which has reduced the number of forums while retaining all the content. There’s always a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we’ll be watching for feedback over the next few weeks.

It’s “better” now.

PS: Yes I’m mad as kitten about this pointless change. And while we’re at it lets take all those genre sections in a bookstore and eliminate them, letting books of similar genre be scattered hither and yon, you know, to make finding them more efficient.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Rip Van Winkle.4859:

Sorry but I don’t like the way the forums are laid out now. Really hard to read the way they are now. I don’t like having to weed through the garbage to see what I find relevent to what I need to read.

Sorry that you don’t care for them. I think with time you will find things more efficient and easier to find in the reorganized format, which has reduced the number of forums while retaining all the content. There’s always a bit of learning curve with anything new, but we’ll be watching for feedback over the next few weeks.

Speaking as a former member of the BLTC board, now cast adrift in GW2 Discussions …

The usual explanation is that unique, you can only have X of, items can’t be gifted because they don’t have a way to check if the recipient has it or the maximum number allowed.

To my knowledge NCSOFT games in NA/EU release are only in English, Spanish, French and German. However if a game is licensed to a third party to run in that region, they have been known to put out a localized version. So far I’m not aware of a Guild Wars 2 being licensed for Russian release.

Lordphantomhive.1256:

Bit back I made a Pyrrha Nikos from RWBY.

Very nicely done.

munkiman.3068:

pdavis.8031:

When is this program supposed to take off? I know that the forum restructuring is supposed to happen today. Is the forum specialists supposed to launch today as well?

I REALLY hope they kill 2 birds with one stone. New forums (not just structure, but software) and these new specialists. Otherwise we are looking at another chaotic nightmare.

Nope, chaotic nightmare. Forum migration rather than consolidation isn’t a trivial matter.

Certain annual events have to be inserted so quite your crying over Halloween and Winterday as they always interrupted.

Last year Winterday lasted 6 weeks.

We had LS 1 conclude between Jan 21 to Apr 1st if you grant the last chapter two weeks even though it lasted 4.

Then Feature Pack 1 on Apr 15th. Then 5 weeks until the Festival which lasted 6 weeks.

LS 2 Part 1 started on July 1st and ran 8 weeks. Then a four week gap until Feature Pack 2. Then six weeks to Halloween which lasted 2 weeks until LS 2 Part 2 which started on Nov 4th and ran 6 weeks.

Then Winterday 2014 starts on the 16th.

So overall we had:

36 days of Winterday between 2013’s and 2014’s.
14 days of Halloween
72 days of Festival of the Four Winds (which I admit is a bit much)
70 days of LS 1
98 days of LS 2

Which leaves 75 days, roughly 2 and 1/2 months of nothing besides adapting to Feature Packs which moved the cheese of many a vet players while on the carrot side did give us the wardrobe and better organization of the Hero screen. TP changes were a mixed bag at best. Traits were a disaster and the lack of a reasonable treatment of vet players in the NPE left a bad taste in a lot of mouths.

Also remember that Winterday likely covers a fair amount of dev vacation time. You really don’t want to see the kind of stuff that comes out of an eggnog/champagne haze so I grant them mid December to mid January as a reasonable downtime period.

They make good drums.

Iason Evan.3806:

I would love a line to be dropped to us simply stating, “We agree. It’s broken as is. We are rectifying it.”

But first they would have to admit to themselves that it’s broken. In a game wide macro sense it isn’t. On a personal player level it can be.

You all don’t understand how this is setup do you. ANet is it’s own company. It has it’s own accounting department and pays it’s own bills. NCSOFT is the sole owner in stock of ANet. That lets NCSOFT fold ANet’s sales and profit/loss into NCSOFT’s quarterly and annual report. What ANet gets out of the deal is NCSOFT acts as their banker for while the game was under development and exclusive distributor when it’s done (via the NCWest and NCEurope companies). The payback/royalty setup between the two companies is fixed. NCSOFT can’t simply raid ANet’s like a sibling’s piggy bank.

Now since ANet has rebuffed previous suggestions of a paid expansion in the past from the mothership; hired their own PR firm to launch GW2; inked their own deal in China independent of NCSOFT’s; the notion that NCSOFT is holding ANet down by controlling how much income ANet keeps clearly shows that some simply don’t understand how a parent/subsidiary structure works in business.

Actually mooing would be even better.

Well the reorg is tomorrow and since there was no word on preserving this board other than tossing it into the miscellaneous drawer (aka GW2 Discussion), maybe we’ll catch each other if a BLTP thread pops up on the 1st page for 5 minutes before it gets scrolled off due to the dueling/mount/P2W threads/Zerk sucks/Zerk Rules daily threads.

Ja ne.

No, he wants more gems from achievements beside the 400 for every 5000 achievement points.

It’s another post against the “monetization” of the game via Gems and the perceived inflation of the gold to gem exchange.

Well is would reveal a better sense of “demand” by eliminating, in some cases, millions of unfillable bids.

There’s been many threads already on doing a Kickstarter to persuade ANet to add X to the game.

The game isn’t suffering financially except in comparison to WoW, in which case all MMOs are suffering. Trailing twelve months has the game’s income at $95 million US. That would have been equivalent to a subscription game with 1/2 a million players. No too many MMOs in the days of subscription based MMOs had that many. Even now EVE “recently” passed that figure.

NCSOFT’s fiscal year ends Dec 31 so as a wholly owned subsidiary, I assume ANet is as well.

tigirius.9014:

<snip>

I’m sure they are quaking in their boots. This kind of threat ranks up there with, “I shall right a strongly worded letter to my newspaper.”

Unless you are a “whale” and dropping loads of cash into the gem shop, you and I are equally important in their eyes. While they may feel sad at anyone’s departure, throwing down the gauntlet/giving them an ultimatum isn’t going to amount to anything.

As for jumping ship for another contender on the horizon, I hope it doesn’t disappoint you as other “contenders” have to other players. Just remember you’re account and characters will always be here, unless you are planning scorch the earth with your account upon leaving.

Who knows, maybe that will be the utopia you will have been looking for and in which case, best of luck.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

A little part of me cringes whenever I read somebody says “just ignore/block them”, “get over it”, “stop being a kitten” etc. I can’t help but think that these people are defending/excusing poor behaviour.

I’d totally understand “just ignore them” it if this was a very occassional problem, but most players know that PvP is riddled with awful language and behaviour. It puts a lot of people off PvP and it’s a shame.

Telling someone to “Go kill yourself” is absolutely terrible and shouldn’t be allowed, no matter if the receiver is “thick-skinned” or not. Just a couple of people throwing around insults in a match leaves a sour taste in most peoples’ mouths and ruins the ambience and fun (unless you enjoy people verbally attacking each other…)

Anyway, just blocking/not reporting these people just lets them get away with behaviour that we all would rather not see or be subjected to. A lot of them probably feel they are untouchable either because they aren’t being reported, or the report system is flawed (or, perhaps they are lying about being reported and not being punished just for added venom).

For poor behaviour like this, I definitely think they should be resonably punished, from a 3 day suspension or a permaban. However, I think what would be more fitting would be for people reported in PvP to be specifically banned from PvP as a lot of this behaviour is brought on by competitive play and hormones (these offenders are probably OK in PvE).

Since their ego seems to be bound up tight with PvP, the penalty should be a stack or three of dishonor while in PvE/WvW/Fractal, a suspension.

RoseofGilead.8907:

I’d love it if all the trolls who hide behind their computer screens would stop being jerks for funsies; I’ll never understand how being cruel or mean is a fun activity. But, just like in all other parts of life, some people are just always going to be jerks, and we can’t change that. The best thing you can do is block them, and move on with your life.

That’s because if they said it to someone in real life they would be beaten to a pulp and/or become a social pariah (if they aren’t already) to their peers.

We don’t have one of those.

I have a simple rule for civility on the net. If you aren’t willing to say those things to someone’s face in the real world, then don’t say it in the virtual.

Is that so hard?

The sexual connotation that phrase has in English has been around for at least 50 years and a quick look at Dictionary.com says since the 1940s.

True in England it can also mean stopping off for a quick pint at the pub but since the game is NA based, our interpretation rules.

GW had “costumes” in their cash shop, same as GW2.

Evon’s weekly blog about the BLTC has been there forever and since, if you agree with it or not, the game’s operational income is dependent on Gem sales with cash so it makes sense to do so. Nobody really got all that upset until it mentioned using gems to buy gold even though that was always an option.

I don’t even notice the “Get More Gold” button on the TP screens. I do notice the “Buy More Gems” button simply because I occasionally press it other than buy when I’m converting Gold to Gems on the custom screen. Nether of these are “intrusive” IMO. Intrusive is having a button on screen, all the time that will send you to the buy gems screen, in game, while doing content. “Having problem soloing that boss? For 100 Gems buy the one shot Boss Buster. Buy Yes/No”

There are much more intrusive ways to monetize a game. I assume you all have played “free” mobile/tablet games. Some bash you over the head every time the game starts and pester you with notifications if you hadn’t played today. Some have a buy button along side other buttons on the interface where fat fingers can bring up the buy screen. Some are well behaved, but some are downright annoying (see what EA did with Dungeon Keeper). This game has none of that.

Majority of new skins are on at the Gem Shop or the ticket/scraps needed for one are.

This is the crux of their problem as I see it.

By eliminating the link between doing an event for specific reward, it may allow players who aren’t good at that event to still get the item from some random kill. Making those items non-character or account bound means a player can simply buy one from another player. And if you can buy one and since you can buy gold with cash, some see it as pay to win if your goal is to get that item.

So where is the incentive to get good at the game?

It’s not there because not everyone have quick reflexes. Not everyone have oodles of free time. So to cater to these players which out number skilled players, just about any item can drop anywhere. If your character has the gold, someone else may be selling one on the TP. If you don’t have the gold but you have a nice bit of spare cash, you can buy the gold you need to buy the item off the TP that you don’t have the skill to get if it was locked up behind specific content.

Almost every complaint can be boiled down to the reward system, which is fair to the general population but “unfair” to the elite skilled population. The fact that nearly every bit of desirable swag in this game can by bought directly or indirectly with gold has created a culture where efficient gold production is more important than simply having fun beating a boss. When beating a high level boss gives you yet another rare speargun while someone else bonks a level 12 critter on the head while passing through a low level map gets a precursor, I can understand the rage.

Now I’m someone more likely to bonk level 12 critters on their heads than run the boss train and it’s nice to know that I have as much of a chance to get X as someone on the train, they feel quite differently on the matter.

Zaklex.6308:

Behellagh.1468:

~Snip~
Now it’s obvious due to the rabid delivery of the two GW campaigns, only 18 months, that they were being developed at the same time as the original and that was the plan from the start. It’s also equally obvious that a rapidly released expansion was never the plan with GW2.

First off, I can guarantee you 100% that this a false assumption on your part, Factions and Nightfall were not being worked on at the same time as Prophecies. You have to remember that GW1 was mostly instanced game with only cities for hubs, all the big missions were instanced, the ‘persistent’ lands weren’t all that persistent, they were just bigger instances.

I call BS on that notion. There is no way they could have churned out essentially two additional games of similar size in 18 months. Assuming they were running their development teams like they did at Blizzard (Diablo/WarCraft/StarCraft) then the first new campaign was already being worked on before the first game shipped and likely the second was in development as well, or do you think the team was so well oiled that they cut development time down from several years to 12 months and then to 6 months? Some of that development had to be concurrent. I’ve worked on too many software projects where feature development is planned several releases in advance and is staged.

And I’ve pointed out several times in this thread that hub/instance is much easier to code than a true MMO only to be shouted down as spouting fantasy. Sure once you create the infrastructure and basic 3D assets it’s quicker since you can reuse rather than create from scratch but considering the look/environment of the three campaigns were so different that some of that had to have started before hand, perhaps as assets for the first game that were planned and cut to get the original game out of the door and generating income. The original game may have been more encompassing and the plan changed to release it in stages.

Behellagh.1468:

~Snip~
And that’s where all of the GW fans painted themselves into a position where GW2 could never actually achieve. You heard what you wanted to hear and discard any info that contradicted your notions. You all blame Nexon for the cash shop, even though Nexon didn’t acquire any stock until after ANet hired Ms Cox which seems to me that the cash shop was already decided as the income source rather than paid expansions.

~Snip~

I’m not sure where this fallacy came from, Arena.net is 100% owned by NCSoft, it’s an operating subsidiary, now if Nexon owns some NCSoft stock, that’s fine, but so do many other people as it’s a publicly traded company in Korea. The cash-shop was going to be in the game from release, it was designed with that financing model in mind.

Not my theory and one when reported as “fact” I reply with one of my tin foil hat pictures (Weird Al from Foil is currently my favorite). But it doesn’t stop those claiming NCSOFT for forcing the cash shop that was dictated by their Nexon masters onto the game and if it wasn’t for them we would be seeing an paid expansion version of income generation like GW.

And that is the thrust in this thread. That quick paid expansions were a viable option for an MMO of this size. An MMO that focused on co-op PvE play rather than a complex trait based PvP system that most players who complain about GW2 claim is missing from GW. That it’s too easy and no “mature” content for the GW hardcore.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Behellagh.1468:

fireflyry.7023:

Consensus.2785:

Does a micro-transactional model promote an even spread of content as well as set a platform for longevity?

Nope.

This game NEEDS an expansion.

LS is killing this game. As a 10+ year fan and supporter of the franchise I doubt I will play much longer if LS is the future. It’s a poor excuse for any semblance of relevant or long-term content and player/supporters of the franchise should not be at fault for saying so.

If all of the current and future LS 2 content was packaged and dropped all at once, for 1/2 the cost of the original GW2 game (reasonable price point for an expansion IMO) would you have thought differently about LS 2? Is it the serial nature of the content forcing you to wait rather than binging through it at your own pace affecting your attitude about it?

If you pay attention to his “+10 years” experience point, you’ll know what his standards are of what an expansion is in his experience. That being said, if I was him I would say no because regardless of delivery method, the content does not suffice.

Had the LS delivered the level of content of say “Factions” or “Nightfall” within its performance timeline, I would imagine he would have a completely different perspective.

EDIT:

TLDR: look at the details.

And this is my problem. I have no frame of reference about how much content relative to the original GW that each of the two campaigns provided. But isn’t it also true that these campaigns were also stand alone games? If so then you are asking ANet to generate as much content as GW2 has, which took 5 years to develop, in only a year or two?

Now it’s obvious due to the rabid delivery of the two GW campaigns, only 18 months, that they were being developed at the same time as the original and that was the plan from the start. It’s also equally obvious that a rapidly released expansion was never the plan with GW2.

And that’s where all of the GW fans painted themselves into a position where GW2 could never actually achieve. You heard what you wanted to hear and discard any info that contradicted your notions. You all blame Nexon for the cash shop, even though Nexon didn’t acquire any stock until after ANet hired Ms Cox which seems to me that the cash shop was already decided as the income source rather than paid expansions.

Even after the game shipped you all clung to the notion that a paid expansion would be just around the corner, even after LS 1 started. You told yourselves that this couldn’t be the way ANet was going to run GW2. That they’re keeping an expansion in their back pocket to play any day now.

ANet decided they wanted a living world where it permanently change. Where events came and went and if you weren’t there you missed it. Just as if you missed some of the episodes of your favorite show in the era before DVRs, OnDemand and Bittorrent. LS 1 was designed to to encourage players to stop back every two weeks rather than binge and leave until the next expansion. It wasn’t accidental. LS and the gem shop was an intentional decision on their part and all the shouting isn’t going to alter that.

TP pigeons carry weapons and bits of armor. I think encumbrance isn’t a problem in this universe.

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

The only reason the gem shop is a grind is because we can convert in game coin into gems. So are you suggesting that they should eliminate the exchange because it’s obviously causing you “harm” because you can’t resist using the cash shop for “free”.

And because you can convert it the other way around. When people could work more directly for the items it would be less interesting to buy gold but because everything is a gold grind people are now more likely to buy gold for cash. So thats not likely a coincident.

It’s implied that if you remove one side of the exchange that you remove the other since buying gems with gold supplies the gold for the selling gems side and vice versa.

Problem is you can’t sustain a modern MMO on just yearly paid expansions. GW wasn’t a conventional MMO. And once the paid expansions stopped, so did content updates. And GW did have a cash shop, just one focused on account items and costumes.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_In-Game_Store

“Problem is you can’t sustain a modern MMO” Where do you base that on? It’s a myth. Looking at the numbers GW2 would have likely earned more if they had sold an expansion every year and no cash-shop compared to the current model. Also look at all the none-mmo’s out there. They use this exact same model (selling the game an expansion or the sequel) and manage to keep a franchise running for years. They to have to patch the game and keep servers running.

Everything points towards it working out, it’s just not a common used model in the MMO marked but then again, F2P wasn’t a common used model 5 years ago.

Yes GW1 did get a cash-shop but it did not have a focus on it. Thats the big difference. Look at your own link and see whats in it and compare that to the GW2 cash-shop.
You really wanna argue thats the same thing?

—

Oke one positive thing then about the cash-shop. After games as WoW and Minecraft and a few others where featured in South Park, thanks to the cash-shop, GW2 was also talked about in South Park. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CbWr0zO7Ac well sort of.

Okay. How can you say my analysis is based on a myth while in the next sentence you declare they would have been rolling in Scrooge McDuck mounds of money if they released an expansion? Do you have a window into a parallel universe where GW2 was expansion based? Do I call you Walter or Billy? (Fringe joke)

It is easier to develop stand alone instanced missions for limited party size and then stitch them together than create content that scales from 1 to 100 players depending on who’s passing by at the time. That’s not a myth.

fireflyry.7023:

Consensus.2785:

Does a micro-transactional model promote an even spread of content as well as set a platform for longevity?

Nope.

This game NEEDS an expansion.

LS is killing this game. As a 10+ year fan and supporter of the franchise I doubt I will play much longer if LS is the future. It’s a poor excuse for any semblance of relevant or long-term content and player/supporters of the franchise should not be at fault for saying so.

If all of the current and future LS 2 content was packaged and dropped all at once, for 1/2 the cost of the original GW2 game (reasonable price point for an expansion IMO) would you have thought differently about LS 2? Is it the serial nature of the content forcing you to wait rather than binging through it at your own pace affecting your attitude about it?

Jahroots.6791:

As intrusive as it is, the B2P/Cash Shop system worked a lot better last year. 5g->100 gems was reasonable, imo. Still required a bit of a grind, but it was attainable.

Since then we’ve seen massive inflation where almost everything costs more, but the typical amount of gold that can be earned through game play hasn’t increased to match rising prices.

Also, GW2 doesn’t really feature micro transactions. There’s nothing ‘micro’ about ten dollar+ purchases. The average weapon skin on the TP costs, if one were to buy gems and convert them to gold, approximately one quarter of the cost of the entire game.

There isn’t anything micro about any MMO’s cash shop.

The exchange wasn’t set up so most players can buy the majority of items they desired for free. Free doesn’t pay the bills. It was designed in a way, IMO, to ween players off of it while making the RMT side of the exchange increasingly attractive for those who don’t mind paying a bit to enjoy the game they’ve been playing for free, beyond the initial purchase price.

If the game didn’t have the exchange and only had the cash shop, it would be as disastrous to the population as having a monthly subscription. People don’t like it if they feel they are being nickle and dime for things they think should have been included. I think I can safely say that 80-90% of the stuff in the Gem Shop at any time were there at launch. It’s not like it got dumped on us recently.

And it’s not like the current batch of LS content doesn’t come with it’s own set of items you can earn in game. It’s not just the Gem Store that gets new stuff.

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

The only reason the gem shop is a grind is because we can convert in game coin into gems. So are you suggesting that they should eliminate the exchange because it’s obviously causing you “harm” because you can’t resist using the cash shop for “free”.

And because you can convert it the other way around. When people could work more directly for the items it would be less interesting to buy gold but because everything is a gold grind people are now more likely to buy gold for cash. So thats not likely a coincident.

It’s implied that if you remove one side of the exchange that you remove the other since buying gems with gold supplies the gold for the selling gems side and vice versa.

Problem is you can’t sustain a modern MMO on just yearly paid expansions. GW wasn’t a conventional MMO. And once the paid expansions stopped, so did content updates. And GW did have a cash shop, just one focused on account items and costumes.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_In-Game_Store

The only reason the gem shop is a grind is because we can convert in game coin into gems. So are you suggesting that they should eliminate the exchange because it’s obviously causing you “harm” because some players can’t resist using the cash shop for “free”.

It’s working here.

Yes! I can try out my new GIF.

And no, this has been discussed ad nauseam and mounts are for the most part a way to flaunt a players eliteness or wealth. WoW’s sparkle pony proves that point.

Of course there are workarounds but tabbing and typing should be at least as effective as hovering and using the scroll wheel or dragging the quantity bar or using the up/down arrows. The problem I discovered last night where it continuously validate and will alter the number you type in so it’s always greater than the minimum is a serious problem.

If you didn’t see my other post I was trying to enter a bid for an item in the teens of copper. But when I typed the 1, it got changed to the minimum value so when I typed the second number I was not longer bidding 17 copper but 57 copper which moved me to the buying from sellers side instead of entering a bid. I get it, someone was told to make sure the value would always be the minimum or higher but you do the validation at the time the player clicks buy, not on data entry, and pop up a message saying that their price was changed to the minimum if it was less, OK/Cancel.

Vix.6730:

Behellagh.1468:

saalle.4623:

Anet made some really big mistakes with NPE where they sort of declared us as kittens that dont know how to press 1 button and dodge.

NPE wasn’t for vets but newcomers. The problem is that they didn’t implement a way for vets to skip all the restrictions they set up for new players like they said they would. Other MMOs allowed you to skip the Tutorial. Here we didn’t have a tutorial at all until NPE dropped. It’s like going skiing and now everyone must first qualify on the bunny slopes before you get to go up to any of the trails every weekend.

The more frustrating aspect of the NPE is why they did it in the first place. All those resources dumped into the wrong bucket.

They did it because they had data that players left the game shortly after starting and saying it was because it was to confusing and or frustrating. And since churn will always cause players to leave, for a while at least, ANet need to make the game easier to keep newcomers. Not all newcomers are MMO vets or even RPG vets. Here is a game that costs the same as The Sims X, has not monthly fee, I’m going to try it out, it’s cheaper than WoW and being relatively new you aren’t as much of a newbie as someone starting WoW for the first time. They just have to get them over the learning hump.

After all if they stay, there’s a chance they will also drop some money toward the cash shop from time to time. If they don’t, ANet gets nothing.

Players in an MMO are an asset to the game. Players like seeing other players running about even if they never interact with them. Therefore you need a way to attract and retain players. Not having a monthly fee helps that greatly as it gets players who only have free time infrequently to play without feeling like they are tossing away $15 a month for something they may play 10 hours or less a month.

Now that’s a well and good but no subscription means no income to run the game and continue content development. Therefore we get an optional cash shop. Now unlike a true F2P MMO, you do have to buy an account and that repays any advance/loan taken during the game’s initial development. Also this means the cash shop doesn’t have to be extremely predatory because it’s only there for continuing development and doesn’t also have to pull in funds to pay off it’s original development costs.

But just putting out a static set of items in the shop isn’t going to provide a steady stream of income. Items need to be cycled in and out as well as being added. Even limits are raised when we are talking about collection expanders and bank tabs.

Lastly RMT isn’t something any MMO can prevent. It’s going to happen so why not regulate it. So they provide a means to covert cash into gold. The clever way they did it is something to note. By use of the exchange as oppose to an open trade like found in EVE with PLEX, they were able to let players acquire items from the cash shop early in the game’s life for cheap and as the game matured, the price naturally went up until now it’s attractive to buy gold with cash. Two years ago it was $1 for 1 gold, a year ago 5 gold per $1 and now 9 gold per $1.

The fact is you can’t run a modern MMO indefinitely on the initial box sale anymore. And since in NA/EU subscriptions are no longer a sole viable option to finance a game that leaves the cash shop and necessitates promoting the cash shop at every opportunity.

The problem that some have that since there was a time when you could play a modest amount and be able to afford new items off the cash shop for free and now you can’t. That was also a desired outcome from the way the exchange work, IMO. It hooked and then weened players away from paying nothing to actually through some cash ANet’s way. You all had a couple of years getting your free donut in the morning at the office, time to pony up a buck or two to the donut fund.

You mean like the three times (if not more) they’ve brought it back so far this year?

sorudo.9054:

a sub cost doesn’t mean anything, it’s an illusion brought out to whine about a game.
i had this discussion about ESO ones, i think it would benefit from going freemium or B2P.
all i get is “F2P dooms the game” this and “i don’t want to lower the quality of the game” that, all BS arguments.

it seems like ppl think paying a sub makes a game better and that if something go’s free it has to be because the game is doomed, if it’s going freemium it could just as much be because the devs simply want more customers.
the reason the majority of F2P and freemium players only play games like that when they have free access is no other reason then not being able to pay for a sub, a sub is quite a big wall allot of players can not cross.

quite deluding your self, a sub is a business plan, not a mark of quality.

I think that’s a rationalization brought on by years of paying for WoW. WoW is subscription based. WoW has millions of players. Therefore it’s success is tied to it having a subscription. And that’s partially true.

Thing is WoW came out when subscription was THE way to charge for MMOs. It’s eventual success and growth, drawing in millions of players provided them with a huge amount of development funds that then allowed them to steamroll the competition in terms of content updates. It’s so much easier to revamp a game engine or character models or textures if you, for a time, was pulling in a BILLION dollars USD annually in subscriptions. That pays for a lot of extra staff to do projects that can take a while to finish.

MMOs need a constant stream of new content (even if it is only temporary) and if your income stream is only big enough to pay for those developing content, they you don’t have the money to invest in better infrastructure (forums, game engine, etc). That’s not because of cash shop Vs subscription but simply size of your paying playerbase.

One of the biggest problems with changing forum software is porting the enormous database of posts and how they link to each other. Even upgrading to a new version can be a monumental task.