Guild Wars 2

Protoavis.9107:

Valento.9852:

As long as we all have access to fair equipment, they’re going to put every endgame stuff such as skins in the GemStore. Quite sad, there are already a kittening kittening kitten bunch of skins blocked by cash shop. I could understand the clothes, but now… plenty of weapons already.

Given the latest NCSoft financial report, even with the inclusion of China, GW2 is made less money last quarter than it did without China the previous quarter….we’ll be seeing increasing focus on the gemstore as time goes on (although that was obvious given how almost every week has been a “sale” week for the last few months)

The break out of GW2 income excludes royalties which is how income from China is counted.

Soladewiz.8920:

When you press My Transactions it crashes the game

Not for everyone.

Celestial.4381:

Behellagh.1468:

I don’t have a problem selling.

Open TP
Click on Sell
See everything I can sell in my bags.
Click on item and get sell popup.

Now I have a problem with sell. Selling a universal upgrade Medallion of the Rabid, vendor price 1s10c yet it won’t let me sell it for less than 1s30c which is the high sale price, claiming it’s the minimum allowed. Interestingly it may be a problem simply because there are no bids in for any.

They changed it so that the minimum sale price that the TP will accept is vendor price + 15% (transaction fee).

Cool, about time.

No, I’m just dense at times.

I don’t have a problem selling.

Open TP
Click on Sell
See everything I can sell in my bags.
Click on item and get sell popup.

Now I have a problem with sell. Selling a universal upgrade Medallion of the Rabid, vendor price 1s10c yet it won’t let me sell it for less than 1s30c which is the high sale price, claiming it’s the minimum allowed. Interestingly it may be a problem simply because there are no bids in for any.

Care to share that insight. In case others are experiencing the same issue.

Click on the icon of the item in the transaction window to bring up a buy popup. Or did you want to sell more from your inventory?

Edit: Oh oh oh. I get what you want now. That does seem to be gone. Problem if you are selling multiple stacks at the same price that isn’t in the top 10 prices.

kitten that’s annoying.

Isn’t the number on the icon? Going to check.

Yep it’s on the icon. Would have been nice if the hover over listed the amount since sometimes it’s difficult to read.

Oops, misunderstood what you were asking. Thought you didn’t see the amount being traded.

That’s curious for sure.

Sort by price and scroll down to your price range.

Also I don’t remember the ability to set a price range.

pdavis.8031:

Yeah, saw it in the patch notes, and the home instance chest in wooden potatoes preview video.

But yeah, I’m at work also and won’t be able to log in utnil 8pm tonight

Seems as some systems are having a problem with the new Coherent UI stuff. If you are talking 8p PDT then there may be a patch by then.

Didn’t have the problem myself but I just poked at it a bit and it didn’t throw up at all.

You knew this was coming.

Why would you think that a change in an output device like a monitor would make any difference? That’s like putting VR rated tires on your minivan and expect it to go faster.

Paradox.1380:

1. They tested it in China. Works great for them.
2. Do NOT place your knowledge base/experience on others in shoddy “Everyone Knows” science.
3. ANet has more metrics and more information than you ever will about the over-all feeling of the start of the early game.
4. I am sorry you don’t like this change/idea but its already coming, adapt or move on is all I can tell ya.

Not just China.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

I’m going to paraphrase Colin on this topic. The decision to implement the New Player Experiment system came from tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China. It came as a surprise to us but it was an important for us to acknowledge that a number of systems, downed included, were difficult to understand for many players.

For the downed, system we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial and other ideas. After usability testing with numerous different groups, we found that the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away is that all of us (including a lot of people on the forums) probably know games (and Guild Wars 2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny percentage of them frequent game forums. Just because all of us learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm.

I hope this helps everyone here understand that this was a decision to improve the game for many people. Thanks for your understanding

Raising the level cap usually means gear treadmill. Since they got into enough trouble with ascended, probably not.

Makes those level to 20 scrolls a lot more valuable now.

Astral Projections.7320:

Behellagh.1468:

Well due to forum timeouts I’ve given up editing my previous post.

Main patch size for NA – English is 308MB.

I got error messages trying to access the forum when I started downloading the patch.

But I was getting it before I started to download the patch.

Well due to forum timeouts I’ve given up editing my previous post.

Main patch size for NA – English is 308MB.

Ooo, UI changed on the loader as well. Firewall popped up asking for Coherent UI. Wonder how many players will not know to OK that.

Also is anyone else getting timeouts on the forum. Started a bit before noon PDT.

Edit: Main patch NA/English – 308MB

pdavis.8031:

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

pdavis.8031:

They should have Ascended minis first. Then maybe a legendary mini. But then what would be a legendary mini? As far as I know all the Destinys Edge minis are exotic and the dragon minis are exotic. Maybe a Lazarus the Dire mini? Or The Six minis? That would be kinda cool.

The legendary mini should be the arenanet logo and a mini speech bubble should appear every few seconds above it saying “I’m sorry!”.

No, the speech buble should say “Soon”

With the little TM superscript.

Soon™

3. Those that think they can save money buy avoiding the fees and taxes.

“Psst. Buddy. I can get you a deal on some ectos that fell off the back of a Dolyak.”

Whales would buy gold anyway. With how ANet implemented it, buying gold with gems “helps” players who sell gold for gems by keeping the exchange rate from going ballistic.

Pretty sure it was cheaper than 5K. I’m thinking 2 1/2K.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Vault

The most annoying part is waiting for it to be built.

laokoko.7403:

It’s kind of a confusing topic. I don’t know much about business. I always thought the people with the most share have control. That being said a few party can join together and they’ll have more share than Nexon.

Anyhow, Nexon have 14.68% shares. I would say if they want to put their cash shop manager into NCSoft, they’ll probably be able to do so.

ANet is indeed some what independent to NCSoft, but I think everyone saw what they did to City of Heroes. NCSoft does have the final say, they can make changes anytime they want(if they wish so).

Stockholders elect the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors hire the people who run the company. Often founders or the CEO are also on the BoD.

What a large stockholder can do is stir up other stockholders until they have 50%+1 majority and tell the BoD to do X. But that hasn’t happen.

As of April 7th, from NCSOFT’s web site

Nexon – 14.68%
National Pension Service – 11.38%
Taek Jin Kim (CEO) – 9.98%
Treasury Shares – 8.99% (owned by NCSOFT)
Others – 54.98%

Also the Board of Directors have not changed one bit years before or any time after Nexon’s purchase. Since the time Nexon purchased their shares from Taek Jin Kim’s personal stake for 804.5 billion KrW, it’s value has dropped by 41.8% to 468.2 billion KrW. What Nexon got out of the deal was an agreement to work together on a number of new games jointly.

And you keep forgeting that ArenaNet’s somewhat independent nature from NCSOFT. They made their own license agreement to distribute GW2 in China. NCSOFT had gone with Tencent while ANet went with KongZhong. ANet hired it’s own marketing firm to promote the game before launch in NA/EU. ANet’s forum and accounts aren’t tied to PlayNC at all.

While it true ANet did hire someone from Nexon to handle the cash shop, it was months before the stock purchase. And before she worked for Nexon for three years, she worked at Walt Disney Interactive and before that … at NCSOFT. Plus if you were going to hire someone to run your cash shop, wouldn’t you want someone already experienced running cash shops?

ilr.9675:

laokoko.7403:

Rumors have GW2 hired a monetization manager, who previously worked for Nexon.

And the fact that Nexon has just bought controlling interest in NCsofts stocks at the time had nothing to do with that? …..have you ever heard the StockHolder term “protecting one’s interests”???

… sigh … They don’t have controlling interest. 15% is not controlling interest.

ilr.9675:

Gw2 is definitely Whale-based in their design decisions. Living story has been one long cleverly disguised cash-shop advertisement after another. Hence why E.C. did not give it any nods but instead listed 6 other companies as doing much better jobs with it (including SOE who used to be the “bad guys” 10 years ago). Any parts of Anet’s current designs that aren’t Whale-centered, such as “Skill” balance, are instead 100% Conquest based (based purely on the pvp minigame that’s roughly as popular as Codex was, and somehow less “deep” than Costume brawl). …which sounds like a massive contradiction but somehow it’s exactly what nearly all skill balance patches in the last 2 years has pointed directly to.

Because EC didn’t list GW2 out of all the “F2P” games out there as a good example they must therefore be targeting whales? The only game they mentioned was Hearthstone, a DCCG. The whales they are talking about spend thousands of dollars to feel superior, what can they spend that on here? RNG keys to get ticket skins? $5-10 armor skins and outfits? A handful of convenience items? If whales were converting that much cash to gold to buy legendaries we wouldn’t be seeing gem shop rates going up month after month after month after month.

This game doesn’t cater to whales.

Followed several hours later with an OOPS patch, as always.

Zanshin.5379:

If Anet didn’t put so much crap in the black lion chests, people would buy more keys.

Tickets were added because players weren’t buying them. They always were Gem Shop grab bags. Just now they occasionally have a part of a wining lottery ticket.

If players can’t discern the difference between a game feature/mechanic being reworked like the tutorial, TP or leveling system from a monetization feature for China in the Gem Shop then critical thinking has left the building.

China was ANet’s chance to revisit certain aspects of the game design. Even the PoI video on the new TP said that the Chinese one was built using these tools and they’ve been waiting to port it here. These are technical and game mechanic issues they are modifying and bringing over and that’s it.

Their statement on China was about the types of offerings that were in their Gem Shop during development.

Don’t assume that if you are a dev that you have a say in what gets done when. A lot of those decisions are above your pay grade and it’s up to you to implement them as best as you can.

SRoode.7318:

Key farming would have gone away if keys actually dropped while playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

As they once did before tickets and scraps were added.

IF on average you get 1 ticket from 50 chests and 50 keys cost 4200 gems or $52.50 or (at this time) 544g or if you convert those cash bought 4200 gems to 390g, it’s easy enough to see that since the most you get from 1 ticket skins is 235g that it’s not worth paying for keys if you are farming tickets. Just forget the cost of 5 and 7 ticket skins compared to sale price on the TP. Fused, a 7 ticket skin has a high price of only 500g.

I can’t find any info if Chaos skins are moving from 1 to 5 tickets tomorrow or not. Any insight would be appreciated.

I read that already. Where is the TP API because I don’t see it listed.

Look, finally an official one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/The-Commerce-APIs-are-now-live/first#post4376329

But the TP API was never “official” I thought as oppose to their other APIs that can fetch assets like their quagan art or WvW status.

MikaHR.1978:

You mean they do exactly like F2P games do.

The only sub based games left are WoW and EvE (and well ESO and WS but yeah well see about those also, they arent doing well atm). You dont have to like it but thats a fact.

Trying to redefine sub based, well, i guess most people know what it is and are laughing same as i am.

Its pretty simple:

Can you access/play game for free after initial purchase?
a) no -> P2P (sub based)(includes stuff like PLEX)
b) yes -> F2P

By that definition then GW2 is F2P.

Sorry you can’t ignore the freemium/hybrid MMO business model which is neither pure F2P or P2P but offers both to the player.

SWTOR
http://www.swtor.com/free/features

LOTRO
http://www.lotro.com/en/game/vip

RIFT
http://www.riftgame.com/en/store/#patron

TERA
https://store.enmasse.com/tera/elite-status

Here are some more:

Champions Online
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/champions-online/news/detail/3028173

Star Trek Online
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/3026713

Dungeons & Dragons Online
http://www.ddo.com/en/become-vip

EverQuest, EverQuest II, DCUO, Planetside 2
https://www.everquest.com/membership

All of these plans give the player the same access they had to the game’s features before the game went from P2P to freemium/hybrid. It’s different from say Nexon’s F2P MMOs where nobody was ever a subscribing player and everyone started with the same access.

As long as a F2P MMO was once a subscription only game and now offers an optional subscription plan to get access to the same things as before the game went F2P, at the same cost, it counts as a subscription game. You may not like that definition but that’s the definition the industry is using.

The true purpose is to have the F2P be an unlimited trial of an MMO with enough barriers that if a player truly like the game, they would be inclined to pay the $15 a month, less in bulk, than be nickeled and dimed the entire time.

Since Turbine demonstrated that this works, just about every MMO that was once subscription in NA has gone this route. None to my knowledge has gone from subscription to pure F2P, it would simply alienate their original paying customers. That’s why people are counting the days until ESO and WildStar does the same. I think SWTOR has the record at 9 months.

Just imagine how much it costs for a 7 ticket skin.

And 50 keys, you still have a 44.4% chance of getting 9 scraps or less.

MikaHR.1978:

Behellagh.1468:

MikaHR.1978:

Note that “experts” didnt even notice half of those games arent even sub based. Thats ought to tell you their “expertise”

And no, youre wrong, Wildstar had preorders and reelase in 1 quarter, so if you add 45+119 and the deduce like 40ish for 1 extra month you end up with 119-ish for GW2 (preorders+release month). Anyway, WS is not even in ballpark to GW2. It actually has to survive to 2 years mark yet

Apples to apples please.

I don’t know how you get more Apples to Apples than the quarterly statements. GW2 went live Aug 28th, 2012 so 34 days for 3rd quarter sales ending Sept 30th. WildStar went live June 3rd, 2014 so 28 days for 2nd quarter sales ending June 30th. Both had just as much time for preorders.

As for some of those games aren’t sub-based. They are all, just not everywhere and they include games with a Hybrid business model (ie optional subscription).

Actual sales werent reported until next quarter and 45m is just for preorders.

SWTOR is F2P
LOTRO is F2P
RIFT is F2P
TERA is F2P
Aion is F2P in the west and P2P in the east
L2 is F2P in the west and P2P in the east
B&S is F2P or B2P in china afaik
Even WoW is not sub based in China heh, but thats another story alltogether (and why they are allowed to lump it with total subs)

game having some sort of alternate (optional) “subscription plan” doesnt make it sub based. What, now GW2 is sub based because it has “vip” option in China?

The only sub based games on that list are WoW, L1 and EvE. 3/10 for a “list of sub based games” lol

Ah, no they were reported in the 3Q12 and 2Q14 quarterly reports for GW2 and WildStar respectively. You can look it up yourself at NCSOFT’s corporate website under IR earnings release.

SWTOR is hybrid and was subscription only once
LOTOR is hybrid and was subscription only once
RIFT is hybrid and was subscription only once
TERA is hybrid and was subscription only once
B&S like Lineage I, Lineage II and AION is subscription based in South Korea and several other areas in Asia.
Lineage II and AION were subscription based when they first came to the NA market and also embrace the hybrid model now in NA.

Like I said, if they offer a subscription VIP level and were once subscription or they are subscription somewhere else other than NA, it counts as a subscription game.

I’m sorry “hot” has been used to advertise decades before “hipsters” were a thing.

Vayne.8563:

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

Except that plenty of minis in this game are not from the cash shop at all but are obtained in game. You’re simply ignoring them to try to prove a point. Want a mini liadri…beat liadri and you get one. Want a mini clockheart. Do all the aetherpath achievements and you get one. I remember making minis associated with Christmas through the mystic forge. I remember getting a mini queen Jennah (or twelve) for my first year birthday). I remember mini reef riders, mini captain magnuses, mini clockwork knights…there have been plenty of minis in game. Why do you ignore that?

I think most people are okay with the cash shop or have at most minor concerns. I think that you’re in a very small minority.

Tough to say with out going through each and every one to see what was only available from an event. 174 are tradeable out of the 263 or so minis. The ones tied to a LS achievement I believe are account bound. But neither are ones that were special mini sets at the Gem Shop like the mini hippo or ones you purchased with alternate currency like the SAB ones.

I’m not sure how this response applies to what I said.

Devata says that we can’t have nice minis or hunts for minis because so many minis are in the gem store. We can STILL have minis for rewards even though minis are in the gem store. That’s all I’m saying.

I feel this is a piece of information being ignored.

Basically I wasn’t going to go through every 200+ mini to determine if they were Gem Shop or not. But the 150 from the Mini sets definitely and some of the remainder are from special gem shop sets. So some of the 89 minis you can’t trade are not from the Gem Shop. Is it a lot, a little, I don’t know. But as a whole, most minis are not earned but are purchased initially from the gem shop. That’s his point. They could have tied them to standard in game content but instead made them Gem Shop fodder, and Gem Shop fodder that went away, return for a few days, go away again, etc. to keep demand up and to drive sales.

Deveta hates with a burning passion of a thousand suns the cash shop model. He longs for the days of GW style expansions to pay ANet’s bills. That’s not going to happen ever. Not there won’t be an expansion but that the cash shop isn’t ever going to go away. And it will be full of minis and skins and special dyes that he will always look at as a cash grab. Boosters in his mind is pay to win. He is always going to come in and label the game as P2W. Always. But through all of that he does have a point or two.

MikaHR.1978:

Note that “experts” didnt even notice half of those games arent even sub based. Thats ought to tell you their “expertise”

And no, youre wrong, Wildstar had preorders and reelase in 1 quarter, so if you add 45+119 and the deduce like 40ish for 1 extra month you end up with 119-ish for GW2 (preorders+release month). Anyway, WS is not even in ballpark to GW2. It actually has to survive to 2 years mark yet

Apples to apples please.

I don’t know how you get more Apples to Apples than the quarterly statements. GW2 went live Aug 28th, 2012 so 34 days for 3rd quarter sales ending Sept 30th. WildStar went live June 3rd, 2014 so 28 days for 2nd quarter sales ending June 30th. Both had just as much time for preorders.

As for some of those games aren’t sub-based. They are all, just not everywhere and they include games with a Hybrid business model (ie optional subscription).

No idea what you are seeing. Wait you are talking gem shop. Gem Shop isn’t TP.

It’s called hyping/advertising. It may also be recent or long time best sellers. Let’s see

Bank Slots (popular)
Shadow Assassin Outfit (popular)
Keys (yes lots of people buy keys)
Ceremonial Plated Outfit (I know people like it)
Home Portal Stone
Wreath of Cooperation
Utility Primer (I can see why players may buy it)
Transmutation Charges (they wish if they weren’t so easy to farm)
Total Makeover Kit (one of the ways to get new hair styles and additional hair/eye colors)
Permanent Ley Line Finisher
Booster Multipack

Honestly I think that line is always “hot” when it’s not showing items vanishing soon.

Honestly it’s the wardrobe and achievements. Who has a lot of minis and finishers, newbies or vets? Who are running out of achievements to earn, newbies or vets? Sure newbies become vets eventually but when the patch drops, those favor the vets.

THERE IS NO OPTIMIZATION FOR INTEL EITHER!

By the six gods that phrase is getting on my nerves. AMD simply makes CPUs that take more cycles to execute the same code as Intel. Period. And we are talking a quad Athlon II here and not the newer even slower per cycle FX family of CPUs.

And GW2 doesn’t use two cores. It uses all the cores but in most cases only has enough work to max out two to three cores, if you pushed all the work into the fewest number of cores, regardless the number of cores you have.

Vayne.8563:

Except that plenty of minis in this game are not from the cash shop at all but are obtained in game. You’re simply ignoring them to try to prove a point. Want a mini liadri…beat liadri and you get one. Want a mini clockheart. Do all the aetherpath achievements and you get one. I remember making minis associated with Christmas through the mystic forge. I remember getting a mini queen Jennah (or twelve) for my first year birthday). I remember mini reef riders, mini captain magnuses, mini clockwork knights…there have been plenty of minis in game. Why do you ignore that?

I think most people are okay with the cash shop or have at most minor concerns. I think that you’re in a very small minority.

Tough to say with out going through each and every one to see what was only available from an event. 174 are tradeable out of the 263 or so minis. The ones tied to a LS achievement I believe are account bound. But so are ones that were special mini sets at the Gem Shop like the mini hippo or ones you purchased with alternate currency like the SAB ones.

Dang, bought one for the anniversary sale two weeks ago.

Well WoW numbers can be guessed at since Act-Bliz does publish income from PC subscription income in their quarterly and annual reports.

And no. GW2 had one month in 3Q12 and Wildstar had one month 2Q14. So you compare our 45,841 to their 28,048 (in million KrW).

Corpus Christi.2057:

MikaHR.1978:

Corpus Christi.2057:

CureForLiving.5360:

Steakface.3781:

The game is declining and will continue to do so.

So far we don’t have too much in the way of evidence (beyond the anecdotal) for this. I guess based on the opinions voiced on the forums, personally not sure how reliable it is (although this discussion has been had more than once).

Windsagio.1340:

I’m used to forums being all armchair designers, but now they’re all armchair buisness development specialists too?

Jip. We’re master designers, developers, marketing gurus, captains of industries and world level intelligences :P

Serophous.9085:

Secondly, while pve is getting a story, the rest of the game is practically still where it was two years ago. The dungeon system needs updating (too many currencies, not very rewarding), karma needs a new purpose, and spvp needs a new mode.

WvW has at least gotten some map updates, orb mechanic brought back in a new way, seasons, updated achieves and rewards, a new (though fail) map, but the core issue of points and organizing (albeit getting COLORS now, but no improved functionality) still remains.

Well I will agree that some parts of the game have been somewhat neglected. Although in the case of WvW the solution is a bit more tricky, adding more maps would only disadvantage smaller servers who barely have the player base to fight WvW on four fronts. Adding more things to capture to present maps provides the same issue of disadvantaging smaller servers.
The fix some of the issues with WvW isn’t as simply has adding a new map or tweaking a few things here and there.

Dungeons however could do with a few more tweaks (no more stacking! no more stacking!).

We have evidence, you just fail to acknowledge it.

Just google financial reports for NCSoft company for 2013 and 2014. You will see that the revenue of GW2 in the West ( EU + NA ) is steadily declining. There was even a period when the revenue for EU fell for over 40%.

Stop denying the fact, people, that GW2 indeed has got some major trouble in the EU and NA.

China is a separate thing.

Write here revenues of all quarters since GW2 released and THEN you might have the case, or not.

China is completely separate thing. But what it DOES is ADDING unknown amount of money to reported revenues.

The burden of proof rests on the disproving party, i.e. you.

I won’t be digging it up for people who willingly deny something that has been posted on these forums on numerous occasions, which is the very reason why the majority writes what the person above stated, i.e. that the game has troubles.

PS As I am a kind person, I decided to google something for you. As you can see, the decline of GW2 is stronger in EU than it is in NA. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-02-14-guild-wars-2-in-steep-decline-in-weak-q4-for-ncsoft

That entire article doesn’t revolve around GW2. EU sales for NCSOFT as a whole was down. Sure the bulk of that was due to GW2 moving to it’s “subscription-free model” and the decline was greater percentage wise in the EU than NA but that’s more to do with NCSOFT’s EU’s reported income being just GW and GW2 for that quarter. They’ve licensed both AION and Lineage 2 in EU to third parties long before then and their income is booked as royalties. In NA, NCSOFT still runs AION and Lineage 2 themselves so GW2 isn’t as big of a piece of pie as it is in the EU.

GW2 income in millions of South Korean Won.

3Q12 – 45,841
4Q12 – 119,013
1Q13 – 36,382
2Q13 – 28,899
3Q13 – 24,481
4Q13 – 33,555
1Q14 – 25,142
2Q14 – 22,214

Note that changes in income may not be as bad if converted to USD. The exchange rate to KrW has fluctuated 15.9% during that time.

Are the earnings going down? Yes.

Is it at a point that they are terrible? No. Still #3 at NCSOFT after Lineage and WildStar.

Do we have any idea how much income ANet is getting from China for GW2? No.

Am I surprised this is hitting the fan 3+ weeks since those numbers came out and first talked about here? Yep.

If this game was a subscription based game then the $20.96 – $22.21 million USD for 2Q14 would be equivalent to 465,000 to 493,000 monthly subscribers at $15 a month which is not shabby with the exception of comparing it to WoW. And it won’t have the numbers of a true F2P because of the up front cost, even in China where B2P was unheard of until GW2.

In 2013 the game earned roughly $113 million USD. If it was a subscription based game that would put us at #5 between SWTOR and LOTRO. That’s not shabby at all.