Guild Wars 2

Setz.9675:

Kicking down the difficulty to the generic open world content and turning raids into a weekly faceroll farm isn’t going to bring value to either the casual player or tryhard raider.

The entire problem with this game is that after 3 years of receiving handout content where you run braindead in a zerg to claim loot has created the most lazy and entitled crowd I’ve ever seen in a video game to date.

The real laziness on these forums comes in the form of hyperbolic, bull-kitten reasoning and weak, reductive arguments.

Case in point:

Setz.9675:

This entire discussion of different difficulty scales boils down to:
*Add infantile mode so braindead people with no class comprehension can clear raids.
*Players need to start being dedicated towards the goals they wish to achieve in the game.

Look, each type of game content is enjoyed in a myriad of ways for just as many reasons. You can’t say adding tiered difficulty isn’t going to bring value, because it certainly will to at least some players. The real bottom line is whether there are enough of them to warrant the time and resources needed. The frequency of this topic popping up does suggest that this is the case.

And there is absolutely no inherent value in a particular approach to gaming. Trying to put down players as lazy and entitled is silly. Video games, particularly MMOs, are essentially fun ways of passing time. This is also arguably one of the laziest hobbies ever. Barring a few exceptions (E-Sports and Pro Streamers) whether you take gaming seriously or not, makes no difference. All that matters is individual enjoyment.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

-snip-

tl:dr ’I’m bored of these old fractals. We need new, better ones.’

Most of the design issues you identify are a result of running fractals ad nauseum. I still remember the first time I ran fractals, and in each instance was blown away. I absolutely loved the atmosphere of the woods in Snowblind, the funky bongo drums at the boss in Uncategorized and countless other little bits that added flavour to the experience.

To be fair, I also find a lot of this stuff frustrating, boring and annoying as well now. As vets, we’re pretty much burned out. Just doing the dailies and praying for good drops. But hopefully there are still many, many newbies to come who will enjoy the content in it’s entirety – even the parts we feel like we’ve outgrown.

The day dabs became a thing was when I got my old man card. Kept hearing about ’em, had no clue. Googled it and I found the results utterly ridiculous.

This’ll be forgotten by 2017. I guarantee it. Emotes need to be expressions that stand the test of time.

Seabreeze.8437:

*reads thread title

No festivals for you! Come back, one year.

Nah, I think raids are in a decent place. A mix of relatively simple and straightforward encounters, and a few with more complex mechanics. Players have just gotten better and there are fewer ‘bads’ in the community.

This is mostly a matter of perception. Anything that can be beaten consistently by a skilled and experienced group will seem easy after a while.

This is actually one of the easiest fractals to learn. It’s not particularly enjoyable for sure, because underwater combat is rubbish, but it can be learned in two or three successful runs.

Like Illconceived says, just use the buddy system, look out for downed members and use skills appropriately and it is smooth sailing right up to the boss (and that fight is a cakewalk).

There isn’t enough fractal content to warrant removing one, no matter how dreadful you find it.

Instanced PvE – dungeons, fractals and to a lesser extent….raids

TheNecrosanct.4028:

I hope ANet won’t cater to this. People just want to put in as little effort for the maximum benefit. In my opinion that is just indolence. Shared inventory slots are more than good enough for infinite gathering tools. Also, with all the different kinds of infinite gathering tools they keep releasing, fat chance they’ll ever let us copy the ones we already own to more than one character at the same time. This is revenue. This idleness just means more work for ANet with nothing in it for them. Unrealistic expectations.

I’m surprised people are defending the current implementation. Convenience items, especially at this cost, should be as convenient as possible. Not just less inconvenient than the alternative.

Anet is pretty inconsistent with some of these gem store items, tbh. It’s puzzling and a little frustrating. High cost items (gathering tools, armour and weapon skins) are less convenient to use than the cheaper ones (outfits and glider skins). Makes no sense to me.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

In other words, it looks like you are asking to get something for nothing, in order to solve an issue which doesn’t really exist.

No, there is definitely an issue. A lot of the endgame involves cosmetics, and the cost involved is a bit prohibitive for some players. Doesn’t help that they nerfed one of the main sources by 50% on HoT’s release. That really wasn’t cool.

I honestly don’t think transmutation should have been monetized to this extent. By all means, make skins to sell in the gem store.. but we really should be able to just, you know, use them whenever.

It simply wouldn’t be fair to make these available by any other means, unfortunately. I do feel like the HoM rewards are a little too good in comparison to everything else, though. Some of ’em are incredible quality for free-to-apply skins, especially compared to the AP locked sets. Wonder why they got all the love.

OriOri.8724:

Why don’t you use the preview window to see how much you like an outfit before transmuting all of it? Personally between just the charges I get in the login gifts and from the reward tracks I have more than I could use. They drop pretty often truthfully, most if not all reward tracks give you 4 charges and its not that hard to finish an entire track, especially with boosters going and if you do the dailies to get the track exp potions

The preview gives a decent idea, but there can be unexpected clipping issues, or different textures in a mix and match set make the colour schemes a bit ‘off’ in different lighting. It’s nitpicky for sure, but something I consider important. Mostly though, I just put an outfit together and it’s solid, but then after a while come up with an idea to make it even better, and absolutely have to change.

Necro is the most fun class right now. All of their weapons and most of the skills are reasonably effective, fun and just satisfying to use.

Engineer is probably the most boring, at least in PvE. It’s a jack of all trades, master of none kind of deal. Lots of neat little abilities but nothing that really stands out or packs a punch.

OriOri.8724:

I never really saw the point in requiring transmutation charges to change your appearance since they are given out like candy.

I dunno man, they used to give the transmutation stones (good for level 1-79 items) out like candy, but since the wardrobe change you have to go out of your way to play the content that awards ’em. Some people just find a look they like and stick to it, but the real Fashion Wars elite have at least one of each profession and are constantly tweaking and updating character looks. I know I never have enough charges, ever.

The system could be a little friendlier, I think. Right now you have to really be sure about a look before transmuting it. I often go through at least two ‘drafts’ and a bunch of wasted charges before I am completely satisfied with an armour combination. I would suggest:

(a) All gem store skins are free to apply for the entire account.

(b) Any skin you transmute onto gear with a particular character then becomes free to apply for that character

Ellie.5913:

Jahroots.6791:

but my idea of sexy shows the character’s physique without an excessive or impractical amount of skin.

I love skin, skin is amazing, I came into this world in nothing but skin and I’ll probably leave it the same way, the more skin the better. Cloths just get in the way. I’ve always found cloths to be very annoying, especially in excessive amounts. ( unless it’s freezing cold weather then by all means bring on the layers)

Lol. That’s cool I guess, but there’s enough immersion breaking frippery in the game as is. As commanders of the pact we really ought to dress the part.

This could never be a free feature. And incidentally, despite all of the claims about how optional cosmetics are, let’s not kid ourselves – aesthetics make up at very least half of the appeal in an MMO.

I think a happy medium would involve Anet selling a cash only, account bound permanent stylist. (I actually support this system for all of the essential services)

Ellie.5913:

Some people just don’t want armor or outfits to be even remotely sexy, but that is most definitely the minority. I don’t understand why they don’t make more sexy, skin/fur/leaf showing sets for both male and female that the majority loves.

Count me among the ‘minority’ that isn’t particularly interested in sexy outfits. When choosing an outfit or skin combination, in order of importance I want my characters to look (1) stylish and (2) practical. The third criteria – (3)cool or sexy, is entirely optional.

I’m far more interested in lore appropriate armour (Elonia needs way more love), and sets that don’t clip or make my characters look like they’re one misstep away from toppling over while running. Furthermore, maybe I am old fashioned, but my idea of sexy shows the character’s physique without an excessive or impractical amount of skin.

Palador.2170:

If they want to make sexy and revealing looks for one, then make it for both. If they want to make a fully protective look for one, then make it for both. Is that really too much to ask?

It might be, actually.

For one thing, I don’t think the demand for ‘sexy/revealing’ armour is the same for both sexes. There’s always an extremely vocal group that challenges the status quo in these topics, but in-game you’ll see far more male characters of the tough, cool or stylish variety than anything else.

But the nature of the OP’s request and those of like mind isn’t really about fairness though, it’s about having their tastes catered to. It’s ‘fair’ that any character of any race or gender can wear level and class appropriate armour, barring cultural sets. Everything beyond that is really personal preference. There’s been a few discussions in the past where diligent folks examined just about every single armour set in detail and concluded that across the board the skimpy vs full cover ratio is actually pretty balanced.

And I do get where you guys are coming from, (my pet peeve is having two choices of dreadlocks for my male humans but no female equivalent) but there just aren’t enough resources to create stuff to please everyone.

Razor.9872:

Jahroots.6791:

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

It would just be nice if there were also some revealing male armours. That’s something I’m completely behind. There’s nothing bloody “PC” about asking for something kewl and sexeh for the dudes.

The PC aspect is the ‘everything has to be completely equal between males and females or else hypocriseh!’.

That makes as much sense as saying that the races in Gw2 are “PC” because every race is just about as good at being any profession as any other race.

In my opinion, the term “Political Correctness” is just a blanket-statement that directs attention away from a genuine issues(? Or “improvable things”) of equality/balance and pushes them in to questions of needless ethics.

Sort of like calling someone a “whiteknight” or “troll/hater.” It just disregards reason and places the subject into a needless label.

Apples and oranges, mate. There’s a very clear distinction between the reasons for making all races equal and why some people believe male and female characters should have ‘equal’ cosmetic options.

The former is a question of simple game design – we have different races primarily for aesthetics and a bit of lore/roleplay. Giving all the races equal stats and skills allows the player to pick any one without losing out. Also makes balancing much easier. Calling for equality in skimpiness and coverage on the other hand, is largely (not entirely) a result of progressive real world attitudes and beliefs, imo. A lot of the content we’re seeing in MMOs today (androgynous and feminine outfits for male characters) wasn’t nearly as prominent in the genre a decade ago.

I could be wrong, of course, but I do believe that games today are intentionally more inclusive as a direct result of PC culture. It’s not dismissive to use this label where one can reasonable deem it applicable.

The real problem I see in making sexy or revealing armour for either gender is that it’s such a ‘hit or miss’ kind of deal. If they were pumping armour and outfits out as quickly as the weapons it’d be completely fine for the art team to go nuts with creativity. Unfortunately, we hardly get any sets at all, so it’s really best when they stick to safe semi-conservative options.

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

It would just be nice if there were also some revealing male armours. That’s something I’m completely behind. There’s nothing bloody “PC” about asking for something kewl and sexeh for the dudes.

The PC aspect is the ‘everything has to be completely equal between males and females or else hypocriseh!’.

I was being too simplistic there. I don’t mean loot only – rewards can be intrinsic or extrinsic (sometimes both). The reward I was referring to is basically what a player gets out of beating the same scripted content multiple times.

Raids are in the unique position of being a bit of a novelty still, making the challenge fun and rewarding. I don’t expect many people would be willing to clear each wing more than once weekly when they’re finally burned out.

As long as there’s a significant difference in the rewards earned in regular vs easier raids, there will always be people playing the harder option. Off the top of my head, I would expect something like 1/3 of the shards per encounter and maybe 20 – 30% of the current drop rates for minis, skins in any ‘easy mode’ implemented.

I rolled a Charr I had no intention of ever playing to unlock all three tiers of cultural armour for ‘The Emperor’ title.

Replay value has nothing to do with challenge at all, it’s about rewards.

Absurdo.8309:

Here’s a couple of reasons to oppose an easy mode, even if you never play it:

Easy and medium instanced group content already exists in dungeons and raids. This content is more amenable to easy modes than raids.

If you are the type of player that plays content at varying difficulties, it’s much better to have different content at an easier level than easy mode raids. I’d rather play fractals + dungeons + raids. I would never do raid + easy mode raid.

Pfffft. Old, stale and worn out content. Trust me, there’d be far less casual interest in raids if there were a couple of new dungeons and fractals as well.

I don’t think ‘I would not do this, therefore it is a bad idea’ is a good enough reason to oppose an easy mode.

Absurdo.8309:

Easy mode raids split the player base. As someone who raids, it’s preferable to have a larger player pool. I know some argue that they could learn in easy mode, but most/all are capable of learning in normal mode.

Not sure about this one. As long as there are better incentives for raiding at the current difficulty I doubt it’d draw any of the regulars away. As it is the player base is already hugely fragmented between those who raid and those you couldn’t pay to even try. I’d also counter this by saying that an option to run through on a more forgiving scale would allow more players to familiarise themselves with the mechanics, and develop enough confidence to have a go at the real thing. It’s worked pretty well for fractals. I imagine the player base for those would be far smaller if you had to jump in at T4 or not at all.

Absurdo.8309:

It would be a waste of developer resources. It would either take away from raid development, or take away from dungeon/fractal/living world development. The latter content aligns more closely with the values of people who like easy mode.

It could slow down raid development. Certainly wouldn’t detract from anything else since the raid team is like 5 or 6 guys who Anet repeatedly assures us, work on raids only so that content doesn’t affect anything else.

I don’t agree with compartmentalising content like ‘LS is supposed to be easy etc’ is helpful. There is room for scaling across all types of content, imo.

It’s not about suspension of disbelief, but personal tastes. Most players have pretty vanilla interests, and Tyrian aesthetics generally reflect that. Even in a fantastical realm filled with magic and mystery, people (myself included) bring their real world views along with them.

I fully endorse light armour pants for all though. Actually, maybe I misinterpreted you. We seem to agree on most points. I can dig more revealing options for men as long as the majority of them are conventionally masculine. I’ve seen what passes for armour in a couple other titles… /shudders

Autumnmane.3574:

We don’t want to take anything away, we want there to be an equal amount of different options for both.

That’s not really practical, unfortunately. Mainstream fashion tastes don’t allow for it. Even the areas of the body that are typically revealed in men’s fashion are different.

But hell, don’t mind me. I’ve still got my fingers crossed for some proper light armour pants.

Cue: obligatory posting of GW1 armours I like and am disappointed I cannot have.

Zenith.7301:

This is not a complaint thread about revealing females, stop being stupid.

This is a thread complaining about utter imbalance. If the envoy armor has a revealing light female armor, the same should be the case for male armor. Same for the medium armor.

You know, just like how the heavy envoy armor is the same for both genders.

This is a fairly common line of reasoning among progressive folk these days, across various media.. but one I strongly disagree with.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a distinction between genders. Things would be pretty dull if the armour were identical for each race and gender.

We already have a middle ground, with reasonably skimpy options for both male and female characters spread across different armour sets and weight classes.

Vive la Difference!

Jaken.6801:

I don’t mind sexy armor.
It just feels weird if there is such an imbalance.

On another note, I actually like the disparity. It’s often like having two completely different sets, and allows for an even wider range of customization.

Ah, come on. Let’s be realistic. Most of the aesthetic choices reflect mainstream tastes. It’s why we’ve got a bunch of sidecuts and hipster hairdos in the gem store instead of perms and mullets, lol. Similarly, women’s clothing tends to be more revealing than men’s and this in turn influences armour and outfit designs.

Although, I can see the cause for concern. Envoy light armour isn’t even the sexy kind of revealing. It’s a tiny top and huge billowing skirt that don’t work well together at all. (I’m still low-key pleased that these sets are so lame tho)

I’m a little relieved that these are so underwhelming. I was never going to be able to craft these, at least now I don’t have to worry about losing out. Lol.

I have a very limited frame of reference for the old high level fractals, but I’m pretty happy with the new tiers. Cliffside is infinitely better since the change, imo.

My main interest is in new ones more than anything else.

ChartFish.1308:

Sure it’s not a huge issue if you’ve been playing for a long time and have a lot of resources to generate gold, but newer players are going to be forced to either grind day in and out for gold or pay actual money.

That’s kind of the point.

To be honest, veteran players were terribly spoiled. At the height of the dungeon farming era I used to exchange gold for gems every couple weeks and buy stuff I didn’t even want, lol. It was a huge part of the games appeal back then, but compared to the economic and micro-transaction systems in other MMOs we were very, very privileged.

I don’t like the way Anet let us get so comfortable, only to yank the rug out from under us, but I can look at this objectively enough to make peace with it.

OriOri.8724:

I actually think that they are in a good spot. You don’t need to do all of them, just most of them. You have almost 30 that you can skip for whatever reason (too difficult, can’t get to it at the right time etc…). I don’t think that it should be too easy to finish your mastery tracks, I do think that you should have to work for it

The number of times this topic comes up suggests otherwise, imo.

The effort:reward ratio for mastery points is a bit too high. Of course we don’t need everything handed to us for just showing up, but content shouldn’t be more frustrating than fun.

Meh, I’m o-k with this as long as it’s a once off thing like the Immortal set, and the next few BLTC skins are back to business as usual. Personally, I think this would have been better as a nice bundle with some other stuff and choice of a skin (or three).

I’m confident the community will vote with their wallets though.

That experience seems pretty tame, under the circumstances. In tough content like this, I find things tend to go one of two ways – people either get scared off early, or stick around long enough to become monsters themselves.

I’ve found myself doing a lot of the same things that used to kitten me off when I was a newbie (dropping out of parties without a word if they seem unskilled, offering strongly worded ‘suggestions’, kicking people who don’t figure things out or respond quickly enough.. etc)

And to be fair, this applies to pretty much all of the endgame content, not just raids. I’ve seen people fly into paroxysms of rage at octovine. It just comes with the territory.

Yeah, I’m not so much disagreeing with you guys as pointing out that the AB multifarm isn’t as simple as ‘do AB a bunch of times and get 50g in an hour’. It requires a level of knowledge and dedication, as well as a little luck, which will likely make the average player’s gold income significantly lower.

People tend to exaggerate a lot on these forums, lol. 40g/hr isn’t typical at all. It’s possible with great drops and ideal circumstances (switching maps effortlessly and with no real downtime during peak hours), but the average player will probably make around 20-25g/hr, assuming they’re not bored after two runs through Tarir.

I don’t particularly oppose initiatives like this, but they’ve always seemed trite to me. Bordering on insulting even. A way for people to feel good without actually doing anything of consequence. Maybe I’m too much of a cynic, but tragedies like this deserve far more serious and meaningful responses.

Then there’s always the issue of ‘who’ and ‘what’ gets official recognition in game. Is it a first world countries only thing? Most media coverage? Would be tricky to start along this path without stepping on some toes in the process.

Thirdly, …..there’s no other way to put this – that time and effort would be better spent creating content that adds to Tyria, not to serve as a reminder of the horrible kitten out there in the real world.

This is best left in the players’ hands.

STIHL.2489:

Izithel.6853:

Can I have my Legendary backpiece then without having to bother doing Fractals/PVP?

The Difference between me, and every Stuck up Elitist on the Forum, is I believe you should, and I sincerely hope that Anet has plans in the future to make Legendary Back Items for all the other game modes.

Why other people can’t believe the same, seems that they miss this is a game. But by all means, shove that stick all the way up, and pretend that it’s pride.

Agreed, 100%. More options are always better.

I’d be happy if I could sport my PvP titles without the ‘Champion’ prefix. e.g. Magus, Genius, Illusionist etc.

I have no idea what I would choose if we had one custom title where we could write anything we wanted, with the usual restrictions.

Maybe something silly like ‘The Unlucky, Opener of Boxes and Father of Quaggans’

Would be cool, though.

Absurdo.8309:

Why does all content need to cater to all skill levels? The reverse is certainly not true — for example, world bosses usually do not require anything more than pressing 1.

And I’m ok with that. Because there’s other medium and hard tier content.

All content has unique rewards. There’s plenty of easy and medium tier content. Why do easy-moders have to complete these exact encounters?

The only answer I’ve seen is loot. There’s nothing stopping them from trying the bosses right now. And most of the lore can be seen from a completed raid instance.

It’s doesn’t have to, nobody has to do play this game at all. But it is a good thing to include people so that they don’t feel bored or completely left out.

We have had very little instanced content added since launch. A lot of people prefer this stuff over map-wide zergs. I still remember watching the twitch stream before HoT launched, and all the cries of ‘Dungeons???’ that flooded the chat after Colin finished his presentation. The newest fractal is what, two years old? And even those are just a rehash of old LS1 content.

We got raids, and while these are pretty cool…they are also a massive pain in the kitten for the average player to get into, especially compared to the previous tier of challenging content (T4 fracts). A lot of people are just not going to be able to hack it, one way or another, and that’s incredibly frustrating for them.

It’s more than just the loot. Everyone’s got different reasons for playing. Most people just want to raid because it’s a thing you can do in the game, full stop. Walking into a completed instance to see the lore just does not compare to beating it yourself at all. That’s like telling someone who wants to taste a meal that they can lick the plate after you’re done eating. Insulting af. Lol.

Bear in mind, difficulty scaling doesn’t need to affect the current raid difficulty. It would just offer a separate, less intense experience for a wider audience. Having hotjoin, EotM and T1 fractals hasn’t impacted on ranked, proper WvW or high level fractals at all – I’m yet to see an objectively sound reason why we can’t have easier raids added to the list of endgame activities.

The OP definitely didn’t create a very productive topic, but the discussion has moved past his list of grievances.

Don’t try to dismiss objections by oversimplifying things. ‘Easy mode’ raiders want to be able to play through the kitten raid at a level they personally find challenging without a hassle, see the story and yes, get some of the goodies. Accept that while you are comfortable with things as they are, lots of people are not, and their views are also valid.

All of the other endgame content is accessible or scaled in some way after all.

Vince, I think your skill level has put you a bit out of touch with the ability of the average fractal player. Thaumanova has encounters that are harder than many fractals’ end bosses.

The boss is definitely one of the more challenging fractal encounters. I’ve never pugged this one without at least two party members dying halfway through. The main issue is that when you’re downed, you usually fall from the platform and that’s it. No one can save you, and if the rest of the team isn’t skilled and dedicated enough they’ve got to wipe and start over. Not so much hopeless as infuriating, imo.

/15 forum bugs.

Beldin.5498:

From my pov it started sying short after the end of LS1 when we got the wardrobe.
After that they stopped giving us new armorsets, which are imho very important
for this game, and they started with longer and longer breaks between new content.

Yeah, I recall this being around the time things started to feel a little stale.

GW2 always had two strong selling points, imo: (1) Relatively easy access to premium items (both BiS gear and the gold→ gem exchange) and (2) Frequent content updates.

For sure the devs did a lot of things right, and created a wonderful little game – but by far I think what really gave this game lasting appeal was the ease with which you could get the goodies without grinding too hard or even spending a dime. And there was always some new content to play through or shiny to grind for.

Now, we go months at a time without seeing significant changes. There’s far fewer festivals and seasonal events. Transient and uninspired fluff in the gem store… and worst of all, inflation has reached the point where the amount of gold you’d need to exchange for a makeover kit and full armour set barely gets an outfit while gold income is more or less the same (I suspect most people, like me, play enough to earn around 400 – 500g a month).

Now, this isn’t an ‘entitled’ and lazy cheapskate’s complaint about the state of the game. Always knew that the free ride would come to an end someday, but it is an observation on how these changes could have driven some of the player base away.

I don’t care much about the aesthetics or design (although I do prefer the look of the old LA), it’s the convenience of the various services that matters. In that regard, this city is an abysmal failure. Far too much space and nothing going on in it.

The shabbily rebuilt LA with those little hubs of crafting stations, banking and the TP situated near the fractal portal, mystic forge and guild services was far better than what we have now.

Rata Sum has the best layout, imo. Trust the Asura to get things done right.

Canach is one of the few NPCs I can stand, he’d definitely make a good addition to the team. Loved his dry humor in the HoT story.

Female human dreadlocks please.

Would be a great feature but not one we’ll ever see. Apart from the obvious (wouldn’t be in the company’s best interests) people would storm the forum complaining about the money they spent and how it is a ‘slap in the face’ or something.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Again, I don’t care if you have done it 3 times already. Woppy do! You want a legendary? Do all the work for it. They are cheapened enough that you can get them from the TP, take away the need to do things for it, then they might as well just be any other skin. Next thing you know people will want a box they can open and get everything, before long people will want games that play them self’s so they don’t have to.

Lol.

What is it with these leaps in logic? I see this time and time again on the forums. People ask for one thing to be made easier and suddenly we’re on a slippery slope where no one actually wants to play the game, just collect loot and log off.

Is this all a bit tongue in cheek, a way of showing contempt for the OP’s view? Or are you guys genuinely unable to view these issues objectively.

I think enough people have expressed a distaste for repeat mapping that suggests this is an area that could be refined a little.

Miku.6297:

How is spending 15$ a month making you someone willing to spend “a bunch of money at once”?

I have a feeling A-net makes more then 15$ a month from some players on stones, and make over kits. (yes some don’t buy many, others do)

It’s a year-long commitment, therefore $180.

And well, I dunno. It’s just speculation at this point. Personally, I think all of the gem store single-use items are grossly overpriced to begin with and this game would have floundered long ago if not for the gold exchange.

I think the number of people who would be willing to spend $15 would more than cover the ‘losses’ of those who spend $50 or so on these items (who might then be tempted to spend the rest of that money on gem store items they otherwise would not).