Guild Wars 2

TatsuKan.5412:

Gaile Gray.6029:

We are going to get this fixed very soon. It’s harmless, but we know it’s alarming.

Still not fixed ???

Tell me about it. You would think it easy to simply filter it.

But I’m willing to bet the Watchwork pick will never return to the Gem Shop due to the uproar.

Gems cost more gold not because gold is worth less, but because players keep buying gems with gold.

No reason other than never running out and not taking any inventory space. Oh and if you run a necro it can look cool. It’s entirely a convenience item.

Plus it’s $12.50. Never, ever try to equate the cost of on item in the Gem Shop to gold based on whatever the current exchange rate is because ANet doesn’t when pricing it.

I got squelched trying to list a wp for a champ event. This was a few minutes after the last champ event which I was able to announce and follow up with the wp.

Never noticed /say being squelched for TYs during the brawl.

This is the 2nd time in as many days where I’ve seen players pay into the Boss Bash and when it tips over to start, everyone leaves. Only one or two players beside me and that’s not enough even to do bronze level strength bosses.

Why put in the last few coins and leave?

Im Mudbone.1437:

Behellagh.1468:

nexxe.7081:

Lil Puppy.5216:

Well apparently it’s working cause the gold to gem market is dropping like rain right now.

I wouldn’t exaggerate that much. My quote above, from earlier, said 50g for 507 gems. I just checked right now, and it’s 50g for 548 gems. Not much of a difference. lol.

You keep using the wrong conversion rate. The Gold to Gem rate isn’t the same as the Gem to Gold rate. The Gem to Gold rate is only 72.25% of the Gold to Gem rate.

50g at this time is around 637 Gems.

And how much gold will 637 gems get you?

Ah, 50g. ???

At the point I’m writing this it will cost you 639 gems for 50g. About $8 USD.
50g will buy you 461 gems.

Rates at Jun 4th, 2014 23:18-19 EDT from GW2Spidy.

Xenon.4537:

Behellagh.1468:

…The only way something significant will change is if players stop buying gems…

Aaaand we’re right back to the whole point of this thread.

Aaaand you completely glossed over my point that that tactic could just as likely sink the game in it’s entirety. So you’re advocating “do what we want or everyone’s characters die”.

Xenon.4537:

Let me clarify my concern. Anet’s main revenue streams are the gem store and the initial purchase of the game (the box as it were). If we want to see substantial content added to the game, it would need to be part of Anet’s revenue stream in some way. But it isnt. Anet doesn’t need to really go out of their way to add content. They get money by sitting around and letting players convert gems to gold. How does cash -> gem -> gold incentivise Anet to produce an expansion pack? Again this has nothing to do with the state of the in-game economy.

Because if they don’t do anything the population will decrease at some point, even collapse, without new content. That’s their incentive.

Problem I see it like the loss of the trinity, the notion that box expansions is the only way to deliver content is a notion some in the player base aren’t willing to surrender lightly. And paid box expansions as a way to solely finance the continued development of the game. But that’s not what ANet chose to do. And they’ve been clear about it. Yet the insistence that they are wrong and only if they would just listen to “you” everything will be so much better is borderline delusional.

Some business and design decisions simply can’t be radically altered. We aren’t talking about the agility of a helicopter but the agility of a supertanker. They’ve committed to LS 2 and an endless stream of items coming and going from the Gem Shop. The only way something significant will change is if players stop buying gems. Maybe they have an expansion in their back pocket but I wouldn’t be surprised that they didn’t and a drop in Gem Shop purchases lead directly to a downward spiral in the game.

Twice nothing, still nothing.

Behellagh.1468:

Inflation is ONLY when currency loses it’s value. Everything becomes more expensive, not just luxury items and especially basic items.

Saylu.8271:

I don’t think you answered correctly when I ask about inflation. Someone pointed out "Inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. " which I think is more accurate.

Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to

Point being the term inflation is tossed around every time an item moves significantly.

But for dye speculation leading up to the April 15th patch affected dye prices very little. What happen on patch day wasn’t market speculation. Same is true with spikes caused by pump and dump schemes started on Reddit and linked to a post from here.

nexxe.7081:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Then why would people exchange the Gems they bought for Gold when the items they seek are in the Gem Store?

That’s my whole point. People are converting gold to gems, because only the valuable items are in the gem store, and cannot be obtained any other way, unless with real money.

Not enough people are buying gems to convert to gold, because gold isn’t as valuable as gems, and that’s why the conversion rate is so high. That’s why Anet keeps releasing updates begging players to buy gems and trade it in for gold.

TL;DR: Gold is pretty much useless. Gems are far more valuable. Imbalance ensues.

Funny. There’s a lot of players upset over prices of precursors and skins. And you can only get those with gold.

Devata.6589:

He is completely right with that, it’s where I am complaining about here on the forums for over a year. It’s also why I went for GW2 in the first place, this being a B2P game not a F2P game so to not have this. Sadly the game turned cash-shop focused anyway.

It didn’t turn into cash shop focused, GW2 was always cash shop focus. It was added well before the game’s launch. Nobody really noticed because the exchange rate was low enough that those who wanted Gem Shop items could afford them. But now we’ve reached the point where that’s no longer possible. So a segment of the game’s player population who had funded all their Gem Shop purchases with in-game coin are now shocked to see that the Gem Shop really isn’t really free.

nexxe.7081:

Lil Puppy.5216:

Well apparently it’s working cause the gold to gem market is dropping like rain right now.

I wouldn’t exaggerate that much. My quote above, from earlier, said 50g for 507 gems. I just checked right now, and it’s 50g for 548 gems. Not much of a difference. lol.

You keep using the wrong conversion rate. The Gold to Gem rate isn’t the same as the Gem to Gold rate. The Gem to Gold rate is only 72.25% of the Gold to Gem rate.

50g at this time is around 637 Gems.

This always seem to happen on patch day. Or at least there’s an uptick of posts on the forum.

Cutting and pasting

Try this.

Honestly needs to be a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Tabs-in-Gem-Store-not-loading/3739993

Try this.

Honestly needs to be a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Tabs-in-Gem-Store-not-loading/3739993

Dusty Moon.4382:

The original idea for WoW’s sub was to pay for the rental of their servers until theirs came up.

Wanderer.3248:

Behellagh.1468:

But you haven’t explained how market speculation affects price!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

I was asking Saylu specifically to explain relating to our TP. I was curious if he was just parroting a phrase he heard as a cause or if he was mislabeling one type of activity as another. Since he hadn’t replied to that question, I’ll finally elaborate.

In general an individual speculating should have no impact. If I price all my sell orders for mithal at 1s it has no bearing on the current price. Same is true if I start to accumulate, gradually, well below it’s supply rate, an item whose price I think will skyrocket at a later date.

The problem comes when it’s en masse. Your wiki link, which I referenced myself in a post months ago about the dye balloon, is an example of players in a market chasing a price up. It’s a “Look, the Dukes are trying to corner the market on frozen orange juice, they must know something” moment. That’s when it’s bad. When supply drops within an hour to 1/10th of it’s previous levels, which causes a price jump and makes it a self fulfilling prophesy.

The “real” speculators were buying dyes during the month before that with little movement on the price. They sold within the first day after supply plummeted and prices shot up. All of those players who bought on patch day weren’t speculators and what they were doing wasn’t speculating in any sense of the word. Mass hysteria may be a better term.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. " That describes the TP to a T.

Meh, this again. Guess it’ll be a weekly or bi-weekly topic.

First, Evon’s blog posts are always about what’s new, returned or on sale at the Gem Store. Don’t ever forget that Gems bought with cash is the only means of continuing income ArenaNet has after you bought the game. Converting Gems to Gold isn’t anything new, it’s just now starting to make sense since the price is so high.

Second, players are finally noticing that their isn’t enough hours in the day to acquire enough in-game coin to convert to gems to buy all this new stuff for free from the Gem Shop. The exchange rate has tripled over the last year and ArenaNet isn’t going to open the reward faucets to match it. The exchange rate going up is solely due to players converting gold to gems, en masse, every time something desirable pops up at the Gem Shop. The only way the exchange rate goes down is from converting Gems to Gold. Better for ArenaNet if it’s bought Gems.

TANSTAAFL. We’ve now reached a point where players are forced to confront the choice of paying for stuff from the Gem Shop with real money or go without. You could still reduce your final cost with some gold to gem conversion but we’ve reached the point where those who’ve enjoyed the bounty of the Gem Shop for free is over.

Hey, you still get to play for free.

If you hover the mouse over a trait, it will say what quest you will have to do to unlock it for free. Remember you don’t get trait points until level 30.

Your Guild Wars 2 account isn’t under the NCSOFT account management site’s umbrella.

It was a Reddit post referencing what an anonymous dev said off the record at a game conference. That has all the authenticity of JFK’s being patched up, dyed black and left in a nursing home in East Texas (Bubba Ho Tep reference).

So the rich buys them all to raise the price so only they can sell them to other rich players but for more?

Puzzled and confused.

It’s alive! It’s alive!

The purpose of the Gem to Gold aspect of the exchange is to provide players with an approved way to buy gold with cash. There are always players who want to do that and it’s better to provide them with a safe way to do this than have them deal with someone who likely used questionable means to collect that much gold.

It’s financed by the Gold to Gem side of the exchange. This way any gold paid out was first gold that was paid in, gold that only came from game activities. This doesn’t sink the gold permanently but does lock it up in kind of a gold permafrost. It’s part of the economy, just not active at this time. Like gold in inactive player’s accounts.

I don’t think ANet is shutting down sources of rewards to promote Cash to Gem to Gold. I think they know exactly how much gold is entering the game daily/weekly/monthly and know exactly how much is permanently removed in the same time period and they try to keep that reasonably balanced. They also track how much is currently on active players as well as how much is tied up in escrow on the TP.

Now if the average rate of acquisition is higher than normal, and this extra isn’t being removed by one of the gold sinks, something has to be done and reward drops adjusted. Just as item drops are adjusted and new uses introduced to remove excess supply.

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Of course they were planning to go into China. Likely rest of Asia as well (Korea and Japan) since GW did. They may be using the money from China to do the ports for other regions.

Upgrade extractor at the gem store I believe will do the trick.

NewTrain.7549:

“Ben Miller: The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us. We’re blown away by the success of the first game. We were three guys with an idea and now we’re a 130 person company supporting one of the biggest online role-playing games in the market. The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us.

But the fundamental business model is not going to change. You buy the game once, you can play it for as long as you want. And the new content we introduce in the future you can choose to buy or not to buy."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/the-best-things-in-life-are-free-interview?page=2

Can we stop with the whole “expansion business model doesn’t work” nonsense?

What other conclusions could I draw from the text you bolded other that showing that they implied that GW2 would also be financed via expansions. Let me list those to be clear.

The Guild Wars business model has worked really, really well for us.
But the fundamental business model is not going to change.

What was their business model again? Oh yes, paid expansions.

Now if your intention was just to show that it worked once you could have proceeded the quotes with a “see, this is what they said about how well it worked in Guild Wars” if your just wanted to say it had worked in the past. But since posters were saying it wouldn’t work in GW2 your post seem to state that it would and the highlighted quotes show that it was their original plan.

See why I “misunderstood” your post. Why it looked as if you were saying that they stated that was how GW2 would be marketed as well.

Honestly we are picking nits here.

By stating that you are implying it could work here. The whole gist of this thread is that ANet gave up on an income model that worked in GW to focus on a cash shop for GW2 and it’s somehow China’s fault. The players who are talking about paid expansion not working are talking about not working in this game, not the income model in general. It worked in single player games for years.

But I never said expansion model doesn’t work, it obviously worked for GW.

It’s a 7 year old article and it was an answer to the question about income models and all that it was stated that they liked how it worked out in Guild Wars and they’ll look into it for GW2. Not that they would absolutely use it. That’s what I got from New Train’s first post. That they promised to use that means to finance GW2’s free to play after purchase. See, here’s the quotes.

But it’s equally obvious that sometime between then and now that they decided that method wouldn’t/couldn’t work in GW2. (Waiting for the Nexon conspiracy post.) Me including that left out quote is to show that even back then they were unsure what would work or how they would deliver expansions.

I understand where the OP is coming from and what he’s suggesting.

Imagine a hot dog street vendor. You dislike the notion of paying $10 for a dog when you know the ingredients cost the guy less than a buck. You want to open your own food cart and sell hot dogs for $3 each. No reason to be greedy. Except you find out there is some regulation (enacted to prevent another hot dog vendor massacre due to price wars) that you can’t sell them for $3 each unless you are 100 yards away from the nearest hot dog vendor, if you’re closer you have to sell them at the same price.

There isn’t a way to intentionally manipulate the price lower on the TP by setting up a “$3 hot dog cart” as long as there are players willing to pay $10. The only way to do so is to flood the TP with enough supply first satisfy all the existing higher price bids above your target price. That means you have to be sitting on a hoard of items and only then you can start listing your sell orders at your lower price.

It’s the opposite of buying up the current supply to spike the price. In this case you are satisfying all the higher bids. Problem is there’s a reason the price was high to begin with and that has to do with lack of supply relative to demand.

NewTrain.7549:

Behellagh.1468:

NewTrain.7549:

Behellagh.1468:

NewTrain.7549:

I’m sorry. Where in that rambling post did you prove that the expansion business model was unsuccessful? You know, the point I was making, which you completely ignored.

Never said the expansion business model was unsuccessful.

Then why on earth are you responding to a post where the ONLY point being made was that the expansion model was successful and people claiming otherwise are mistaken?

Because you cherry picked quotes from that article. The rest was a general post about the thread.

Cherry-picked? The quotes are not taken out of context in the least and fully support my point that the expansion model is successful.

This is the problem with forum white knights (whether or not you are one). They immediately jump on the defensive when there is any perceived criticism of their beloved game. In many cases, they wind up arguing against things ANet has directly stated to be true, such as in this case.

And you left out the paragraph that was between the two you used, the one I included that talked about the size and frequency of the expansion, why? Is it because it could be used to support the notion of Living Story content? “… or mini-expansions on a more frequent cycle …” could easily mean what was delivered to us as the Living Story. But lets not include that, it disagrees with your assertion that they promised paid expansions as a means to generate income.

NewTrain.7549:

Behellagh.1468:

NewTrain.7549:

I’m sorry. Where in that rambling post did you prove that the expansion business model was unsuccessful? You know, the point I was making, which you completely ignored.

Never said the expansion business model was unsuccessful.

Then why on earth are you responding to a post where the ONLY point being made was that the expansion model was successful and people claiming otherwise are mistaken?

Because you cherry picked quotes from that article so you could call ANet an oath breaker. Plans change, income modeling done and something between then and now told them it wouldn’t work. But they didn’t give up the notion that it would be free to play once purchased or that new content would be added while the game was live.

But who sells PC games in stores anymore? BestBuy? Target is down to half a display shelf. Walmart displays tend to be disorganized piles in lock boxes. GameStop may have a rack of old, dusty boxes of outdated games.

The notion of a box release driving sales because it’s a form of advertising is long past. Other than Blizzard paying for shelf space to display their warchests and EA with Sims X expansions there isn’t a lot of box games on store shelves anymore, expansion or otherwise. PC Games are now primarily sold online through Steam, Origin or some other download service, and this includes expansions.

NewTrain.7549:

I’m sorry. Where in that rambling post did you prove that the expansion business model was unsuccessful? You know, the point I was making, which you completely ignored.

Never said the expansion business model was unsuccessful. As long as expansions are relatively quick to produce. Since the game was originally planned in 2009, then pushed back to a nebulous 2010/2011 and finally came out in 2012, it seems obvious that open world content creation for a true MMO was something the devs underestimated using their instanced content creation as a guide.

The first two GW campaigns were a year a part and like clockwork. Each time sales spiked as it was snapped up. A game like WoW can sell expansions with a much longer delay between releases because they are subscriber based. The question is could an expansion business model work with a longer time between expansions than the first game. At double plus the staff size I would be inclined to say no. You would either have to run with a smaller staff or seriously limit the amount of new content for the expansion. Which begs the question if enough players would buy a smaller expansion when the first game’s campaigns were essentially full games on their own.

VGmike is annoyed that while the TP does allow players to attempt to force prices up, there is no easy way to force prices down, other than selling tons of an item to a bidder until the high bid falls to the desired price range. In this case you are buying out bids and not sale orders and on high priced items there are a whole lot more bids than sale orders. And if you were able to hoard that many items to make a significant dent in the sale orders, the effect is temporary at best because it’s the rate supply is added that’s the most important factor in supply. Without a significant change in that, rises and dips in supply are temporary.

In the end it’s still supply and demand that sets price. You have to look at what factors are changing supply and demand to understand why the price moved that way.

Cormac.3871:

Megis.9264:

thaooo.5320:

Less LS, less gemstore, more expansions, more bug fixes, more QoL changes, more guild functions, more commander functions, more guild halls.

Don’t forget tengu, must have tengu.

I can just see it now, a dev coming to the forum saying “We’ve got some exciting plans. I can’t say too much, but let’s just say that if you’re fans of the Tengu you’ll be very pleased!” And then sure enough next Tuesday there it is. Three new Tengu minis in the gemstore.

Classic. It’s like using a new game console box to hold clothes for a gift. The joy of watching a child’s hopes dashed when they unwrap it.

Dual.8953:

I really don’t get this fixation people have with boxed expansions. Expansions, Living Story Updates and standard DLC are all the exact same thing on a fundamental level, data that is added onto a game to expand the player’s experience. As it is all just data, how it is distributed has no baring on the content itself and in this day and age, digital distribution has rendered physical media all but obsolete. I can see it everywhere; Nintendo and Sony placing emphasis on their online shops (at least in their handheld consoles), the popularity of services like Steam, companies like Gamestop looking into new specializations, Blockbuster all but closing down. Digital Distribution has won.

Back on topic, people seem to have this dillusion that the Living Story is incapable of providing new classes, races, modes, maps and anything else associated with a traditional expansion. I say, if their both data, then that’s simply not the case. It seem illogical to assume otherwise. I see free2play games doing it all the time, so there’s absolutely no reason that Guild Wars 2 can’t with their Living Story.

I think it relates to the perceived amount of added content. A box expansion that comes out after 18-24 months MUST contain a lot of content to warrant a box. It must take weeks or even months to explore all of it to death. DLC, that’s just one little thing. That’s horse armor. Free updates, mustn’t contain anything worthwhile if they are giving it away for free. It’s all psychological, it’s how PC gamers have been conditioned.

Yes it’ll run. But the CPU is a low end dual core when the game runs better with at least 3 cores.

5 years ago they said no GvG and instead we get WvW. Don’t know why you all are talking about it as if it was a possibility.

RemiRome.8495:

Behellagh.1468:

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

A long time ago when the TP was new and shiny.

When ancient bones dropped more than all other mats combined*

Before my time. I started December 4th, 2012.

Tossing major ones into the forge has a 20% chance to give you superior. The type is totally random and has no relation to the type the raw material were. And it’s likely not even an evenly weighted random distribution. Plus there’s a handful that soulbound on acquire. You can’t even sell them on the TP. Use them or sell them for 4s to an NPC vendor.

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

A long time ago when the TP was new and shiny.

Exactly. Playing the MF slots in hope to get one of the better Superior Sigils. It’s that or ripping apart an exotic that has one with a BLSK. It’ll cost you 80s on average for a Superior to pop out.

As for the unholy prices of rares with the major sigil, who knows. I’m just glad I can sell it guaranteed for a price higher than an average salvage outcome could get.

Harper.4173:

GW2 has been out for almost two years and we still haven’t gotten enough:

1)New weapons skins.
2)New armor skins.
3)New titles
4)New areas
5)New Legendary weapons
6)New skills ( Normal and elite)
7)New traits.

1) Most are available indirectly from the Gem Store and a few by achievement completion.
2) Same as 1.
3) Meh. But key LS events do award special titles.
4) True enough. But a reasonable sized area needs permanent content. What level range should it be? Only available to high level characters or an alternative to some existing lower level ones?
5) Just what we need, more virtually unattainable items to complain about not being able to get.
6) We did get an extra healing…
7) What part of a simplified Trait system did you miss. Why do we need more choices that we can’t use? We get 14 points and 5 trait lines that can take up to 6 points each with a choice of three to six traits per pair of points on a trait line that we can choose one of. Well they did add a new grandmaster one for every trait line for every profession.

How old is that? 7 years. Plans change. The original rumors had GW2 in 2009 and later 2010 or 11. Something went into a hand basket to ship estimates that badly. Maybe they found it’s more difficult to build open world content than instanced and realized that a proper expansion, meaning large enough with enough activities, would take too long to do so they switched to plan B.

I’ve been rereading some of the earliest articles about the game on a number of sites. The one noticeable thing lost was the Hero system. But they stuck to their guns with B2P, no subscription model for a full blown MMO. They just needed a way to pay for continuing development and make it optional. So we have a totally optional gem shop selling cosmetic and minor convenience items as well as the standard character slots and account bank expansions. They even talked about way back then doing away with guild vs guild and going world vs world PvP play. But gee what a surprise that’s what they delivered. How dare they.

Oh BTW, you left out a paragraph between those two.

Whether that means Guild Wars 2 will have expansions, or the same kind of release cycle as Guild Wars, or mini-expansions on a more frequent cycle – I don’t know the exact answer. But I think we have time here to really find out what works best for the game and for the community.

Can’t get much more mini or frequent than every two weeks. And guess what, they’re free.

During one of the patches, during the original Queen’s Jubilee, they removed Traveler armor and introduce Dire armor to take it’s place. While seemingly everyone was farming Scarlet’s invasion events, many didn’t noticed the new Dire drops. And with no history prices were much lower than the other standard armors (Berserker, Carrion, Cleric, Rampage, Shaman’s) which made salvaging them highly profitable. In the 30-40% range. Eventually enough players noticed and the price gap closed. But for several weeks I was salvaging 50-150 pieces of rare armor a day and selling off the ectos major runes and basic mats. Went from under 70g, which was painstakingly earned and saved, to over 200g in that time. It was horrible grunt work.

Now I sell my daily and monthly laurels for T6 bags which I sell on the TP. That’s about 40g a month. The rest of time it’s doing loads of events, some champs and a few bosses a night and sell off the dropped loot and salvage any rares. Ectos are still priced well. Major runes are up.

Yes, it’s a useful as the forum’s search function. I think it even looks at substrings so “ore” will give you oregano leaf.

The Tx IP is NC Interactive. No concern for that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Account-login-from-TX-US