So why this big monetary value debate? because through understanding monetary value, you find the real answer.
Anets product of monetary value, the core to their earning is gem store products. Every gem store product, whether directly or indirectly, will bring them profit. It is the desire for gem store products that drives their revenue.
(this assumes the gold→gem gem→gold trade is effecient)
The more people that desire, and purchase whether by real money, or through gold to gems, the more money will end up in anets pockets.
Their ultimte target for trading of gold→ gems, is not to increase the amount of gold→gem purchases, its to have the exchange rate, that most encourages people to buy gem store items (through gold, or cash) that still allows the gold-gem trading machine to still be working and effecient.
Essentially, if the gold→gem trading machine is effecient, by doubling the gem store sales(gold or cash), they will double thier earnings (actually they can get more if it has to go through the gem exchange machine)
Now this all assumes they have an effecient gem/gold exchange machine, and will consistently realize the potential of the gold/gems they have in stock.
Gold can only be traded for gems that have already been purchased though, which is why gold does not have a monetary value. If you could straight up buy gold from ArenaNet, then yes, gold would also have monetary value for them. It is because the only thing you can buy is gems that gems are the only thing that holds monetary value for ArenaNet. Things like gold and gem store items don’t have monetary value, but they do serve to induce more purchasing of gems, but it is still only the act of trading real money for gems that creates revenue for ArenaNet and thus only gems have an actual value to ArenaNet.
ok some things got deleted here through other people deletion, so for posterity, ill give the wrap up again. after i broach this point.
monetary value doesnt appear from no where, it still exists through transition. If i can trade A to get B and then i can sell B, A has monetary value, though B.
This is the real key to understanding how to use monetary value. The whole entire point of monetary value, is to allow business people to better understand what is really of value, and what is not of value. As well as to better track/record monetary value. If you think of monetary value as being immune to transition, it a weak tool, that gives you a very vague understanding of various things values to you as a business.
Monetary value exists, so that you dont get vague unquantifiable values like this
Things like gold and gem store items don’t have monetary value, but they do serve to induce more purchasing of gems,
As a business man you want to know what exactly the relationship is between the value of gold and gems . You want to know how they are related to making you money, because this allows you to make better informed business descions, You want to know, whether directly, or through transition, how valuable gold is, in terms of money earning.
By understanding monetary value, and applying it correctly, you can gain a much greater understanding of what is profitable, what is important and what your business is really about.
Your example perfectly shows how not understanding monetary value leads you to false conclusions that are not helpful to understanding your product. You say only gems give anet money. But i will tell you anets real product, the one they need to identify, and increase the value of, in order to make money is not gems. The one they need to market and promote, is not gems, the one that they need to monitor and ensure they have many transactions of, is not gems.
(edited by phys.7689)
Just a thought that occured to me… Smooth Penguin and a few others seem to have latched onto “The User Agreement” as if it were some Kind of trump card.
Cosidering Smooth penguins Legal education I would assume since I have said a few times " it’s a legal position" that would be enough for him to understand what I am saying.
I will assume he does. As for the others trumpeting the " The user agreement" card. All that is, is a defence for Anet..if anything happens to it’s servers that allows for the loss of your gem or gold holdings.
Example.
Player A spends $10,000 in cash to buy Gems. After receiving the gems there through no fault of his own… he loses the gems, whether because there was an ourage… there was a server issue…etc..etc..etc… the sky turned red and the moon rose in the west… the gems went, and are irretrievably lost.
The Player tells Anet.
Anet investigates and reserving the right to not compensate Player A tells him that there is nothing to be done, the gems are gone.
He can say " I Paid $10,000 I want either my gems, or my money."
Now.
Anet MIGHT decide it is best to just pay the guy. Or decide to add the equivalent in gems to his account… but…
The language " Gems have no monetary value and only have entertainment value." is there, so that it can reserve the right to deny Player A’s claim of having a RIGHT to a refund.
They MIGHT grant one, or NOT. That is entirely up to Anet.
THAT is why the User agreement says " Gems have no monetary value."
it’s a legal position, not an economic one. Purely added to the agreement to shield it from lawsuits.
PS: So what I am agreeing to, when I click on the User agreement is that ..Legally, I will Not sue Anet if anything happens to My gems and Gold in game.
I am Not agreeing to some economic nonsense that what has economic monetary value ceases to have it while In My possession even when it does have it in reality.
Now I know how my professors felt when I didn’t understand concepts in class.
The portion of the User Agreement that I quoted basically spells out that everything is property of Anet/NCSoft. We own nothing, but rather are granted the privilege to access the content. You’re paying for entertainment when you “buy Gems”. Even so, the agreement also spells out that Anet/NCSoft has the full legal rights to void any Gems you have, without refund.
This doesn’t mean they act in such a way, as we’ve seen already. When there are issues with Gem Store items, Customer Support works with the players to refund the Gems, or return missing items. That’s the morally right thing to do. However, should they decide not to do any of that, there is no legal recourse to complain otherwise. You agreed that Gems and in game items have no value, and that you also agree that Anet/NCSoft can’t be held responsible should they take them all away from you.
Again, I’m not discounting the fact that YOU find Gold and Gems and even Time to have personal value, or that an apple has nutritional value, or that Transformers 4 is bad but has a lot of entertainment value. I am discounting your opinions that they hold monetary value.
anything that you can sell has monetary value, anet sells gems, and they sell gold. Transformers 4 tickets have a monetary value, because the store sells it. orange salty cheesy sauce has monetary value because they sell it with movie nachos. an apple has monetary value because someone sold it.
so yes, to anet, the players who make gold give them something of monetary value. Unless of course the gem to gold exchange is all a sham, but we have to go by what they said, and they said the gem exchange does not create golds or gems, but trades them.
monetary value does not mean it is money, it means it is worth money through trade.
The User agreement could say you agree that the sun rises in the west before you log in, That doesn’t mean they Just changed How the earth rotates.
The User agreement is a legal position, and Not even an incontrovertible one since many Eula have come under attack in courts of law, that are considering the fairness of making people agree to something after paying for an item, that is then not refundable.
Just tossing that out there. It is Not " The law" it is simply a legal position.
The User Agreement cannot impose definitions on terms that already have meaning.
Value is value. And the User agreement can say " gems have no value" or " Gold has no value." that doesn’t mean neither gems nor gold has value. It just means that is How Anet wants it.
As I said..they can make you agree to anything to log in and play the game, Just because they made you agree to it before you can log in and play doesn’t change the reality of economics.
You first need to understand economics before you can debate it.
I can forgive you for not understanding how the Gem Exchange or microtransactions work though. This isn’t something that there’s in-game hint or explanations to guide you on the inner workings of such areas. Players like me who either studied business, or have a firm grasp on business practices love to understand unique sales methods such as MMO microtransactions. There’s a psychology involved that defies normal logic, in terms of what an individual values personally, and spending habits. But I digress, my expertise isn’t the reason for this debate. What matters here is that the Gem Store works, and that it helps players who want to exchange in-game Gold for Gem for free.
still trying another experiment in reality alteration through forum hypnosis?
Maybe if he says over and over " you don’t understand economics, you don’t understand economics,…" I’ll forget that I have a better grasp of it than he has.
I think the " I studied business" thing has him convinced that the Business he tudied actually made an impression when economics is discussed in new forms.
Personally, if the business he studied left him with the impression that a EULA can negate value where it exists… Like saying" if you agree to this then that tree that is outside your door is made of air as Long as you are logged in" and it becomes real.. because to play the game you need to agree to it. I Might look into getting my money back.
" The User agreement…the user agreement!!" Like it’s some magic phrase.
We are discussing if a Pentagon has 5 sides. it’s a basic fact of life, that has definitions. And what he fails to realize is that the user agreement can make you agree to it, before you can play the game you paid for…but it cannot re-define what already has a definition.
it cannot redefine Monetary value. And it cannot ipso-facto eliminate monetary value, and then re-assign the item value, Just because it made a person agree to it.
The real world has already defined a pentagon, and a million User agreements cannot redefine it. The real world already defined Monetary value, and Anet’s User agreement cannot redefine it.
PS Just because someone on the internet that is " an anonymous voice" says ’ My expertise." doesn’t mean I have to accept that there is expertise there. I mean..I can say " I am the queen of england." doesn’t make it so. So expertise can be claimed…. and claimed believably, until a person shows a lack of understanding of monetary value, what has it, and what lacks it, then they can say " I studied business…after I studied law." til they are blue in the face….
i doubt he is serious at this point
from the perspective of anet, yes you can.
this is about what makes anet money, anet can does in fact trade fake money for real money.like i said this is about what anet can profit off of, and what is of monetary value to anet.
the gold players trade to them is of monetary value to anet.
notice in all my explanations i told you how much money anet makes off these things, not how much i make.anet gets monetary value from players trading gold, and actual money from people who trade gems.
this is their business model.
Gold can only be traded for gems that have already been purchased though, which is why gold does not have a monetary value. If you could straight up buy gold from ArenaNet, then yes, gold would also have monetary value for them. It is because the only thing you can buy is gems that gems are the only thing that holds monetary value for ArenaNet. Things like gold and gem store items don’t have monetary value, but they do serve to induce more purchasing of gems, but it is still only the act of trading real money for gems that creates revenue for ArenaNet and thus only gems have an actual value to ArenaNet.
I actually see it a bit differently MT. With Gems, I say they have no monetary value, but rather Entertainment Value. I’m paying Anet for a service that entertains me. So the monetary value of the transaction ends once I paid Anet for the privilege to access the entertainment.
I think we see them the same way. My post here was exclusively focused on gems as from the perspective of ArenaNet (where they are like movie tickets, worth $10 to the theater but $0 to the moviegoer). We are completely in agreement that once the transaction occurs, the gems have no value to the buyer as they are purely for entertainment.
if you want to think of it as movie tickets, for arena net, you must consider that how much money a theater makes depends on what movies they are showing, and how much people like each movie.
you must also realize that if people want to buy tickets for girls they want to take on dates, the girl who wants to go to the movies, is actually making you money. The guy who wants to go to the movie, and is willing to do Richie Riches homework to get a ticket, is making you money.
Anet is doubly smart, because they essentially set up a situation where Richie Rich gives them more money to get the homework guy to work for richie rich, than if richie rich had set up the deal himself.
so yes, you can sell tickets, and still you make money off a bunch of people who didnt buy the tickets.(gold to gem traders)
yes, what movies you choose matter (what you can buy with gems)
yes, if you can get in the middle succesfully, you can profit of people who seek to use your tickets as a grey market to trade other things of value to them specifically (gem to gold trade)
And if you think a movie ticket is just a movie ticket and the movies you select, and the people who dont pay for movies themselves(think almost every child) are not relevant to your profits, you wont be in business too long.
from the perspective of anet, yes you can.
this is about what makes anet money, anet can does in fact trade fake money for real money.like i said this is about what anet can profit off of, and what is of monetary value to anet.
the gold players trade to them is of monetary value to anet.
notice in all my explanations i told you how much money anet makes off these things, not how much i make.anet gets monetary value from players trading gold, and actual money from people who trade gems.
this is their business model.
Gold can only be traded for gems that have already been purchased though, which is why gold does not have a monetary value. If you could straight up buy gold from ArenaNet, then yes, gold would also have monetary value for them. It is because the only thing you can buy is gems that gems are the only thing that holds monetary value for ArenaNet. Things like gold and gem store items don’t have monetary value, but they do serve to induce more purchasing of gems, but it is still only the act of trading real money for gems that creates revenue for ArenaNet and thus only gems have an actual value to ArenaNet.
monetary value still works through transition.
if you can trade one apple for one orange, and you can sell apples for 2 dollars, oranges still have a monetary value through apples.
monetary value is the worth of the money you can obtain by trading the item. even if there is a step inbetween, it still has monetary value.
this is the premise of use of currencies between different countries.
The User agreement could say you agree that the sun rises in the west before you log in, That doesn’t mean they Just changed How the earth rotates.
The User agreement is a legal position, and Not even an incontrovertible one since many Eula have come under attack in courts of law, that are considering the fairness of making people agree to something after paying for an item, that is then not refundable.
Just tossing that out there. It is Not " The law" it is simply a legal position.
The User Agreement cannot impose definitions on terms that already have meaning.
Value is value. And the User agreement can say " gems have no value" or " Gold has no value." that doesn’t mean neither gems nor gold has value. It just means that is How Anet wants it.
As I said..they can make you agree to anything to log in and play the game, Just because they made you agree to it before you can log in and play doesn’t change the reality of economics.
You first need to understand economics before you can debate it.
I can forgive you for not understanding how the Gem Exchange or microtransactions work though. This isn’t something that there’s in-game hint or explanations to guide you on the inner workings of such areas. Players like me who either studied business, or have a firm grasp on business practices love to understand unique sales methods such as MMO microtransactions. There’s a psychology involved that defies normal logic, in terms of what an individual values personally, and spending habits. But I digress, my expertise isn’t the reason for this debate. What matters here is that the Gem Store works, and that it helps players who want to exchange in-game Gold for Gem for free.
still trying another experiment in reality alteration through forum hypnosis?
Um, Anet drafted that User Agreement … it’s hardly irrelevant or they wouldn’t make you sign it EVERY time you log in ><
This is just getting ridiculous. At this point, people are just lying. Anet doesn’t sell gold and ;the EULA is taken very seriously and is completely relevant.
anet didnt sign a user agreement, in fact anet lets you know the rules they put forth do not apply to them in the agreement in the user agreement.
yes anet has put a monetary value on gold, and anet allows players to buy the gold they get from players, via gems.
Anet doesn’t need to sign it. The fact it’s included in the game implies it’s something they agree with as an … agreement. I mean, your just being silly … Anet just puts an agreement up … but they don’t agree to it because they don’t sign it? Seriously, try something else. That’s just stupid.
no, they agree, that YOU agree to what you signed. The very begining they tell you what YOU the user is, and ANET the company is.
the rules for YOU the user, and ANET the company are very different.
you the user agree that you will not sell your gold, and that you will not try get money for gems (even though this is not actually legal in many states, and essentially is ignored due to return policies)
Anet agrees that it has the right to sell, give out, create or destroy gems at any time. Anet agrees that they are not repsonsible for your gold, and agrees they can sell your gold for real money.
if you are going to bring up legal documents, try to understand that there is two parties, and they are agreeing to very different things.
How can you possibly say gems have no monetary value when it’s in writing that they are sold 800 for 10 dollars? After they are purchased by the player they might not retain that original value, but that does not nullify that they had it at one point.
Gems have a monetary value to ArenaNet prior to their sale. Once they are sold, they no longer have a monetary value (just a monetary cost) since they can no longer be used to acquire anything of value.
this whole converstation is about who and what pays anets money, so the monetary value in anets hands, is the important value.
gems in a players hand still have potential value to anet, because it can then be turned to gold. which has monetary value for anet through gems.
if i can trade fake money, for faker money for real money, then fake money has monetary value.
anet knows this, thats why they can still be in business.Except you cannot trade fake money for real money. It’s a one way trade (real money into fake money) which opens up two other options:
1. Fake money for other fake money.
2. Fake money for fake items.The only way ArenaNet makes money is when people trade away real money for fake money. All of the fake trades after that point do not generate any real money, it is only the initial transfer of real money to fake money that generates revenue.
from the perspective of anet, yes you can.
this is about what makes anet money, anet can does in fact trade fake money for real money.
like i said this is about what anet can profit off of, and what is of monetary value to anet.
the gold players trade to them is of monetary value to anet.
notice in all my explanations i told you how much money anet makes off these things, not how much i make.
anet gets monetary value from players trading gold, and actual money from people who trade gems.
this is their business model.
Um, Anet drafted that User Agreement … it’s hardly irrelevant or they wouldn’t make you sign it EVERY time you log in ><
This is just getting ridiculous. At this point, people are just lying. Anet doesn’t sell gold and ;the EULA is taken very seriously and is completely relevant.
anet didnt sign a user agreement, in fact anet lets you know the rules they put forth do not apply to them in the agreement in the user agreement.
yes anet has put a monetary value on gold, and anet allows players to buy the gold they get from players, via gems.
How can you possibly say gems have no monetary value when it’s in writing that they are sold 800 for 10 dollars? After they are purchased by the player they might not retain that original value, but that does not nullify that they had it at one point.
Gems have a monetary value to ArenaNet prior to their sale. Once they are sold, they no longer have a monetary value (just a monetary cost) since they can no longer be used to acquire anything of value.
this whole converstation is about who and what pays anets money, so the monetary value in anets hands, is the important value.
gems in a players hand still have potential value to anet, because it can then be turned to gold. which has monetary value for anet through gems.
if i can trade fake money, for faker money for real money, then fake money has monetary value.
anet knows this, thats why they can still be in business.
~~~ snip ~~~
Before you go off and make claims, you need to be sure you fully understand what you’re talking about. Gems have no monetary value. Gold as no monetary value. We all agree on this, because you can’t dispute facts with your options.
Regarding Gems. There are two types of Gems, per se. The ones that players like me purchase, and the ones non-paying players exchange in-game Gold for. The Gems that I purchase never existed before. They’re created out of thin air, thus brand new to the economy. Gems non-paying customers exchange for already existed when Anet first opened their servers. The Gem Exchange had a finite amount of Gems already in the pot for players to exchange for. Over time, the amount in the pot goes up and down, depending on the transactions made by players (note – Gem Store purchases destroy Gems. They don’t go into the pot). If I exchange my Gems for Gold, my Gems go into the pot. So now the pot has a mix of newly created Gems, and existing Gems from the beginning of the game.
With that said, non-paying players do not generate any revenue for Anet/NCSoft. The money comes from players like me. In business, paying customers drive the economy. Sure Anet finds all the players to be important, or there wouldn’t be a game to begin with. There would be a lot less players in game if only the microtransaction players were in there. We all get to enjoy the “free” content Anet provides, and the paying players help to sustain the status quo.
In order to sustain corporate profits, you must continue to bring in new monies. That’s the purpose of a for-profit organization. My money goes to employee salaries, overhead, R&D, dividends for shareholders, etc. This is how a business works.
How can you possibly say gems have no monetary value when it’s in writing that they are sold 800 for 10 dollars? After they are purchased by the player they might not retain that original value, but that does not nullify that they had it at one point.
As per the User Agreement, Gems have no value. When you’re buying Gems, you’re not buying something physical, nor are you buying something of value. You paid Anet for the privilege of accessing exclusive content that has Entertainment Value. Once the Gems are in your account, you have no rights to them, and Anet has every right to take it away from you at their discretion.
The User Agreement means that you cannot trade gems back into cash. That does not negate the initial monetary value Anet has placed on them of 800 for $10. Just b/c the value can fluctuate doesn’t mean it never exists.
I think you are lumping all monetary value into one circumstance and ignoring the rest.
Once you purchase the Gems, they no longer hold any value. You’re paying for the rights to acquire exclusive content, and Anet gives you these virtual credits to limit you on now much you can access. I could buy 4,000 Gems right now, and Anet would have every right to take it away without giving me a refund. Not to say that they would, but rather that they can.
You said and I quote:
You did not say “after initial purchase or beside rl cash purchases”.
The definition:
Noun 1. monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)
In this case the material worth is the 10 dollars traded for 800 gems, thus assigning a value to gems of said ratio.
What part of this is opinion?
The fact that Gems have no material worth, as per the User Agreement.
anet didnt sign a user agreement. this whole discussion is from the point of view of anet, what has monetary value to them.
What monetary value does anet place on gold
what monetary value do players who sell them gold provide
What monetary value does gems have for anet.
ANET IS THE SUBJECT, anet didnt sign a user agreement, therefore the user agreement is completely and totally irrelevant.
gems are just a conversion of money, people only buy gems to get some other good or service.
If the grocery store you go to tommorow makes you buy Shoprite dollars, which you trade for anything in the store, do you think that means they are no longer selling groceries?really?
no troll?
you really think they are no longer selling groceries?what if i go to jamaica, am i no longer buying anything after i convert my US dollars to jamaican dollars.
“I just bought jamaican dollars” anything i got in jamaica was free?seriously?
this is your economics?wow people are truely living in a haze.
even with your reasoning, did it ever occur to you that the products you can buy with gems will determine how much money you can get for gems/and how much gems you sell as arena net?
people dont buy gems cause gems are cool, they buy it to get specific items from anet store.I dont sell items, i sell store credit. wtf
actually you must be trying very hard not to see at this point, there is no other explanationI really can’t make it any plainer why you are dead wrong. Fake money that is traded for other fake money or used to buy fake things does not make me any real money. Only by selling the fake money in the first place do I make any real money.
If someone else wants to attempt to break this concept down further so that you can understand it, I welcome them to try.
For my part, being called a troll for trying to educate you signals the end of my endeavor to rectify your ignorance.
fake money that can be traded for fake money that can be traded for real money. Is as good as real money.
thats all.
the fact anet can sell people monopoly money, means monoply money has value. If you cant understand that concept, then you will never be able to understand what the business model is all about, and why it actually works.
~~~ snip ~~~
Before you go off and make claims, you need to be sure you fully understand what you’re talking about. Gems have no monetary value. Gold as no monetary value. We all agree on this, because you can’t dispute facts with your options.
Regarding Gems. There are two types of Gems, per se. The ones that players like me purchase, and the ones non-paying players exchange in-game Gold for. The Gems that I purchase never existed before. They’re created out of thin air, thus brand new to the economy. Gems non-paying customers exchange for already existed when Anet first opened their servers. The Gem Exchange had a finite amount of Gems already in the pot for players to exchange for. Over time, the amount in the pot goes up and down, depending on the transactions made by players (note – Gem Store purchases destroy Gems. They don’t go into the pot). If I exchange my Gems for Gold, my Gems go into the pot. So now the pot has a mix of newly created Gems, and existing Gems from the beginning of the game.
With that said, non-paying players do not generate any revenue for Anet/NCSoft. The money comes from players like me. In business, paying customers drive the economy. Sure Anet finds all the players to be important, or there wouldn’t be a game to begin with. There would be a lot less players in game if only the microtransaction players were in there. We all get to enjoy the “free” content Anet provides, and the paying players help to sustain the status quo.
In order to sustain corporate profits, you must continue to bring in new monies. That’s the purpose of a for-profit organization. My money goes to employee salaries, overhead, R&D, dividends for shareholders, etc. This is how a business works.
sorry penguin, i know longer believe you are for real, i hope you are just trolling, because otherwise it means that humanity is really has no hope when up against business savy people.
ok i got trolled again, good show mtpelion.
for anyone (if there really is anyone) who is still confused.
gems are store credit.
gold players create is an item anet can sell for real money
players trade in their gold at a reduced value in store credit as compared to what anet sells that gold for to other players.
nothing is wrong with this, its business, but it is.
this means, as long as gold is selling, anyone who gets any gemstore item, by any means, is essentially bringing value to anet.
as, well every gem to gold transaction brings anet a % of the amount exchanged.
first remove gems from your whole mental model, gems are store credit, you may as well think of them as dollars in store credit.
now according to your example, it would only be a good analogy if the store also sells staples.
Wrong. It is a good analogy as it stands because ArenaNet DOES NOT sell gold (staples). ArenaNet ONLY sells gems (paperclips) and nothing else at all.
let me put this to you without gems, gems are irrelevant.
arena net sells items in their store
some people dont want the items in their store, they want paperclips
arenanet tells people they will accept paperclips as payment for the items in their store, at a trade in value of 10 cents for store credit.
arenanet sells paperclips to people who didnt want their other items for 14 cents.every item a paperclip buyer buys, is giving anet more money overall, than if the normal cash buying customer had bought it.
forget the gems, it messes with peoples minds, its just a conversion factor for money, and a way of saying store credit.
Gems are the ONLY relevant item because gems are the ONLY thing ArenaNet sells.
All gem/gold trades in either direction make ArenaNet $0.00.
All items bought from the gem store make ArenaNet $0.00.The only transaction of any kind that makes money for ArenaNet is when people buy gems. What they do with the gems does not in any way affect how much money ArenaNet makes.
gems are just a conversion of money, people only buy gems to get some other good or service.
If the grocery store you go to tommorow makes you buy Shoprite dollars, which you trade for anything in the store, do you think that means they are no longer selling groceries?
really?
no troll?
you really think they are no longer selling groceries?
what if i go to jamaica, am i no longer buying anything after i convert my US dollars to jamaican dollars.
“I just bought jamaican dollars” anything i got in jamaica was free?
seriously?
this is your economics?
wow people are truely living in a haze.
even with your reasoning, did it ever occur to you that the products you can buy with gems will determine how much money you can get for gems/and how much gems you sell as arena net?
people dont buy gems cause gems are cool, they buy it to get specific items from anet store.
I dont sell items, i sell store credit. wtf
actually you must be trying very hard not to see at this point, there is no other explanation
(edited by phys.7689)
Wow. you guys. really dont get it.
it doesnt matter if gems or gold is real or fake pretend, all that matters is that people are willing to pay money for it.
thats all that matters, people are willing to pay money for it.
if a company can sell paper clips for 14 cents, that means every paperclip is worth 14 cents.anet is essentially giving players store credit in exchange for paper clips at a value of 10 cents, and selling the paper clips to customers at a value of 14 cents.
it doesnt matter if paper clips arent real money, all that matters is someone is willing to pay for it.
kitten , now i see why so many people get ripped off, you throw some pointless conversion factors, and they can no longer see what prices mean.
If I sell 100 paperclips at $0.14 each to customer A, I make $14.00.
If customer A trades 10 of his paperclips with customer B for 6 staples, I make no additional money. Ergo, the conversion rate of staples to paperclips (gold to gems) does not change the amount of money I make.
Now, if the conversion rate of staples to paperclips gets really high, it may incentivize people to buy more paperclips from me, but I still only make money when people BUY paperclips with real money and NEVER when people trade staples and paperclips back and forth.
first remove gems from your whole mental model, gems are store credit, you may as well think of them as dollars in store credit.
now according to your example, it would only be a good analogy if the store also sells staples.
let me put this to you without gems, gems are irrelevant.
arena net sells items in their store
some people dont want the items in their store, they want paperclips
arenanet tells people they will accept paperclips as payment for the items in their store, at a trade in value of 10 cents for store credit.
arenanet sells paperclips to people who didnt want their other items for 14 cents.
every item a paperclip buyer buys, is giving anet more money overall, than if the normal cash buying customer had bought it.
forget the gems, it messes with peoples minds, its just a conversion factor for money, and a way of saying store credit.
I agree that some suggestions, no matter how well thought they might be at first glance, are a bit too complex when put in a real case scenario.
I’ll simplify my suggestion to the following:
Everytime a boss is CC’d, he gains stacks. At X stacks, he gains defiant for Y seconds.
There. Basically, a temporary and cycling defiant buff after getting CC’d several times.
Now that I think of it, my intentions to reward skill and create more climatic situations still exist in this simplified solution. Gaining less stacks on successful interrupts is a cool idea, but an interrupt is already, by itself, a reward. In such mechanic, where players will probably want to slow down the stacks as much as possible, a non-interrupting CC can be… well, suboptimal, and that will have an impact on more unforgiving fights. Likewise, my intention to make each stack give a buff to the boss for a rising climax within the fight is not needed: if the boss is already strong enough to be worth interrupting, it is expected for said boss to be crazy dangerous when he can’t be interrupted.
In the end, less stacks on interrupts and buffs on stacks are just redudant. They might still exist, as slight variants for specific (and less forgiving) fights, but ultimately, my idea can still function as it was intended to be in a simpler manner. To repeat it:
Everytime a boss is CC’d, he gains stacks. At X stacks, he gains defiant for Y seconds.
And finally, as I’ve said before, for this to work, the boss will require a very diverse skill set, so that for every interrupted skill, they can reply back with another skill. And of course, some strippable stability here and then (or other punishing boons), some stun breaking here and then, but ultimately, it needs to be designed so that support builds, by themselves, are not enough to sustain the party. And, if the boss is meant to be this dangerous while interrupting, then he’ll become a crazy beast when he can no longer be CC’d, at which time… players will wish that their support skills are not under a cooldown!
Auto-attacks are another good way to make sure the boss remains dangerous during the CC window. Interrupted AAs do not go under a cooldown, and if they’re persistent and frequent enough (toughness needs to be useful in pve!), wasting all CCs on them should be deadly for every time the boss uses a much stronger attack.
Here’s a basic boss template for this mechanic to work: Persistent auto attacks, and a diverse skillset loaded with strong skills (meant to be interrupted or reacted to) AND with skills that give counterplay to the boss itself (stun breaks, stability, retaliation, confusion, stealth, clones, teleport, leaps, etc, etc). This trio of AAs/ strong skills/ counterplay skills should keep the boss engaging enough while defiant isn’t up, while also promote more build diversity beyond control builds. Healing skills, confusion, retaliation, “tank” pets, toughness, protection and the like will be a lot more valued when the boss can have persistent DPS through AAs.
And like I’ve said before, this mechanic is intended to create a dance between preserving support skills while CC skills work, and frontloading support skills while CCs do not work (most of the time). The boss will have to be designed to be incredibly strong even when CC’d, so by the very nature of it, sturdy support will be demanded every time defiant triggers to nullify CC.
EDIT: I’m also against any idea that suggests that defiant should stay as it is. It’s a very boring mechanic even when you make use of it. That’s why my suggestion is thought around the idea that defiant is only temporary and triggered at times: so that at any other time, you are free to use your CCs how you want and when you want.
some things are hard to explain but easy to see.
http://jsfiddle.net/phyicus/N3WCk/
is mockup of what i was talking about,
you can click the buttons to see how it effects the meter progression.
the speed of drain could be adjusted, and values for different strength Cc could be adjusted, this is just to give an idea
major thing its missing is the flat cc reduction, essentially making them immune to short duration CC the higher they go.
Also when it hits 100, they would have full defiant, and different behavior
(edited by phys.7689)
Great news. Hopefully those players are spending money in the cash shop. Their box was very cheap. I think 4 million Chinese box sales is about equivalent to 300,000 US/EU box sales.
less than that probably, they just get royalties, not sale profits, but more money , is more money.
So some of you actually believe that GEMS are some sort of commodity that is traded like RL gold? How quaint…..(and seriously delusional).
gems, are just a conversion factor, and means of saying store credit.
you could totally remove gems from the entire process, and call gold to gems gold to store credit.
people need to forget about gems as something special, gems is store credit.
dude, it has nothing to do with real or fake currency.
its has to do with conversions and the tax withing the conversion.let me illustrate this more carefully.
the only way in which gems are created, is via someone trading cash for gems.
every single gem store item must be obtained with gems.
gold->gem traders are not creating gems, they are trading for them.
gem->gold buyers are trading for gold, not creating gold.there is a tax on this trade.
so. lets look at the item that is purchased with gems, and trace the paper trail to see how much money must be paid to anet, to bring this item into existence.
i will use all the current actual values for this illustration as cited here
http://www.gw2spidy.com/gemfor sake of simplicity, lets assume the item is 100 gems in cost, its a top hat.
playerA wants a top hat, he trades in his gold for gems.
“100 gems costs 12 g 61 s to buy.”
so he trades 12 gold and 61s to AnettradeBankerMan for 100 gems he gets top hat
but, now AnettradeBankerMan now has 12 gold 61 silver in he can now sell to Player B who wants gold. (note without player A trading, he wouldnt have this gold to sell)So how much money can he get from Player B for his newly stocked gold?
“1 g costs 0.14 USD to buy through gems.”
he can get 14 cents for every gold, by multiplication we can now see how much was paid to anet corporation in order for this top hat to come into existence..14 times 12.61 = 1.76$
so yes the item is paid for by player B, but player B is essentially paying more to bring the same item into existence compared to if he had bought it direct, for 1.25 because of the taxes on gold/gem conversion.
realize that the player who buys gold, is actually trading with another player (through anet currnency exchange) since anet takes a tax, the items created through this trade actually cost more.
just follow the money if you dont believe me.
pick any item, see how much gold must be traded to anet to bring the item into existence, then see how much anet can sell that gold to a different player for. that shows you how much money anet made off that item.The amount of money ArenaNet makes is exclusively based on the number of gems purchased, not on what was spent in the gem store.
Every single gem store transaction is 100% irrelevant because they are made with currencies that have no value.
Only the initial purchase of gems nets ArenaNet any actual currency, how you use those gems once they are purchased is of no concern whatsoever.
You’re doing a bunch of math that means nothing because you’ve missed the main point. Anything times gold or anything times gems is always equal to 0 because they have no value, just as everything you can purchase in the gem store has no value.
Wow. you guys. really dont get it.
it doesnt matter if gems or gold is real or fake pretend, all that matters is that people are willing to pay money for it.
thats all that matters, people are willing to pay money for it.
if a company can sell paper clips for 14 cents, that means every paperclip is worth 14 cents.
anet is essentially giving players store credit in exchange for paper clips at a value of 10 cents, and selling the paper clips to customers at a value of 14 cents.
it doesnt matter if paper clips arent real money, all that matters is someone is willing to pay for it.
kitten , now i see why so many people get ripped off, you throw some pointless conversion factors, and they can no longer see what prices mean.
(edited by phys.7689)
incorrect, they charge a tax.
so in fact lets say item costs 100 gems to come into creation in the game.
100 gems costs 11 g 82 s to buy.
but the market value of gold is
1 g costs 0.15 USD to buy through gems.
so if you multiply 11.82 × .15 you get
1.77
so that item you buy with gold->gems-> gives anet 1.77 $
the item you buy with cash gives anet 1.25$
so essentially you would spend 1.77 to buy gold then turn it to gems, then buy the item
versus spending 1.25 to buy the item.Gems are only purchased once. In your example, you are double counting the purchase of the gems to reach an incorrect higher price for gem store items. The gem store item price in REAL dollars NEVER CHANGES no matter how many times you trade your fake currencies back and forth. Someone paid for the gems with real cash, and that amount of real money does not go up no matter how far down the amount of fake money you have goes.
All you are doing is trading a larger and larger amount of fake currency for a smaller and smaller amount of another fake currency that was already paid for by someone else.
So no, ArenaNet does not make more money off of gold to gem people because the gems the gold to gem people are getting were already paid for by someone else. No new real world money is given to ArenaNet as the result of each exchange.
dude, it has nothing to do with real or fake currency.
its has to do with conversions and the tax withing the conversion.
let me illustrate this more carefully.
the only way in which gems are created, is via someone trading cash for gems.
every single gem store item must be obtained with gems.
gold→gem traders are not creating gems, they are trading for them.
gem→gold buyers are trading for gold, not creating gold.
there is a tax on this trade.
so. lets look at the item that is purchased with gems, and trace the paper trail to see how much money must be paid to anet, to bring this item into existence.
i will use all the current actual values for this illustration as cited here
http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem
for sake of simplicity, lets assume the item is 100 gems in cost, its a top hat.
playerA wants a top hat, he trades in his gold for gems.
“100 gems costs 12 g 61 s to buy.”
so he trades 12 gold and 61s to AnettradeBankerMan for 100 gems he gets top hat
but, now AnettradeBankerMan now has 12 gold 61 silver in he can now sell to Player B who wants gold. (note without player A trading, he wouldnt have this gold to sell)
So how much money can he get from Player B for his newly stocked gold?
“1 g costs 0.14 USD to buy through gems.”
he can get 14 cents for every gold, by multiplication we can now see how much was paid to anet corporation in order for this top hat to come into existence.
.14 times 12.61 = 1.76$
so yes the item is paid for by player B, but player B is essentially paying more to bring the same item into existence compared to if he had bought it direct, for 1.25 because of the taxes on gold/gem conversion.
realize that the player who buys gold, is actually trading with another player (through anet currnency exchange) since anet takes a tax, the items created through this trade actually cost more.
just follow the money if you dont believe me.
pick any item, see how much gold must be traded to anet to bring the item into existence, then see how much anet can sell that gold to a different player for. that shows you how much money anet made off that item.
i see some comments here that seem to be misunderstanding a couple things.
China servers are seperate, whether it lives or dies there, isnt excatly that direct a correlation to us.
I see people mentioning megaservers and empty servers, they arent on our servers.
As far as the sales, yeah its nice, but dont assume they made as much money there as here, far as i have seen they get royalties, not direct sales profits. It should be sizable, but the 3.8 mil in china isnt gonna give the same money as 3.8 here.
Regardless, its totally possible they could be a hit in china, and suffering here.
that said, i doubt they are doing that bad, but i do think, purely based on my own guess, that they are at a low in the NA/EU market right now, hopefully they can bring somethings to revitalize those markets.
regardless the q2 reports will show the full picture of whats going on now/recently.
i said the best way for them to make money would be for you to do gems, but if all of you stop buying gems with real money it would solve itself, because then the exchange would be bankrupt, and no items would be generated except by cash.
the system is designed well, it corrects itself. Anet will be paid for every single gem store item that comes into the game one way or another, and they will be paid a premium for those that choose the gold route
Wrong again. If you purchase a Gem Store item with Gems converted from in-game Gold, Anet makes no money. The revenue is generated from Gem sales. If I buy 10,000 Gems with my creditcard, and MT converts 10,000 Gems with his Gold, I’m the one the stockholders will be happy with. Why? Because I deposited real money into a real business with real costs and real investors. MT spent his own Time to farm the Gold for 10,000 Gems. His Time, while very valuable to him and him alone, has no monetary value.
As long as you don’t understand monetary values, it will continue to elude you.
Just trust that anet gets paid for every gem store item created in the game one way or the other.
i said the best way for them to make money would be for you to do gems, but if all of you stop buying gems with real money it would solve itself, because then the exchange would be bankrupt, and no items would be generated except by cash.
the system is designed well, it corrects itself.
There is a “finite” amount of gems (edit: available for the exchange as per John a long time ago) and according to that the price will vary. If we stop buying gems with real money AND then exchanging them for gold the system would not go bankrupt, the price in gold for gems would rise astronomically so that no one is able to buy the last remaining gems.
In the case of a currency exchange bankruptcy can happen if either currency runs out. Aka when the gems run out people can’t buy them with gold. Which means anet gotta get paid for every gem store item one way or another
(…)
like anet who actually get more money for the same product when gold->gem seller buys a costume, than when a cash buyer buys a costume.(…)
Hold it … you are saying I should stop buying gems with real hard digital cash and instead use the in-game currency because this is better for Anet?
as long as you dont mind working a lot harder for the same benefit(if you are going to earn the gold yourself.)
if you really want them to get the most money per purchase, without slaving away for days, buy gems, turn it to gold, then turn the gold to gems and buy the gem store item.or you could just by tons of gems and do nothing with them.
but if you want them to get the most money per item produced, yeah buy gold, sell gold for gems.
That doesn’t even make sense. You do know the exchange is different. So you are really saying the best for Anet would be if I spend double the money on gems and then destroy half of them? (edit: I know it’s not 50%)
You really think if ALL of us would stop paying and instead playing more so we can exchange gold to gems they would miraculously make real world money?
No, it’s a feature. An OPTION! So people can say “well you don’t have to spend cash, you can play totally free and exchange your gold”.
i said the best way for them to make money would be for you to do gems, but if all of you stop buying gems with real money it would solve itself, because then the exchange would be bankrupt, and no items would be generated except by cash.
the system is designed well, it corrects itself. Anet will be paid for every single gem store item that comes into the game one way or another, and they will be paid a premium for those that choose the gold route
(edited by phys.7689)
~~~ snip ~~~
I’m getting you didn’t bother to read the User Agreement. Here’s the part that supports my arguments:
4. ACCOUNT AND PAYMENTS TO NCSOFT
(d) Gems
(vii) You acknowledge that Gems are digital material with no cash value, that no interest is paid or earned with respect to Gems, that Gems are not personal property, that the quantity of Gems in Your Account may be increased or decreased by NCSOFT in its sole and absolute discretion for any reason or no reason whatsoever, that You have no right to a refund related to Gems, that there is no right to transfer or exchange Gems, and that NCSOFT may limit Your license to use Gems with respect to any Item, service, Content or time period related thereto. You further acknowledge that additional restrictions related to Gems, as determined in the sole and absolute discretion of NCSOFT, may be applicable if, and when, Gems are made available to You or thereafter. NCSOFT may restrict the award or use of Gems based on Your country of residence or other factors.You agreed to these terms as well. So in essence, you’re arguing with yourself.
go to legal school and find out what a user agreement actually means.
I did! Though I changed my degree from law to business. So are we now comparing educational backgrounds to determine if your opinions are more reliable than my facts?
no im just hoping you realize that contracts dont change reality, and dont even guarantee you will win a case. but even more of that you would hopefully realize that a contract is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
if you really want them to get the most money per purchase, without slaving away for days, buy gems, turn it to gold, then turn the gold to gems and buy the gem store item.
Except ArenaNet makes the exact same amount of money.
If I pay $10 for gems, convert those gems into gold, convert that gold into gems, and then buy a gem store item, ArenaNet made $10.
If I pay $10 for gems and then buy a gem store item, ArenaNet made $10.
It doesn’t matter if you buy gems yourself or use gold to buy gems, ArenaNet makes the same amount of money because SOMEONE had to buy the gems with real money before you could buy those gems with gold.
incorrect, they charge a tax.
so in fact lets say item costs 100 gems to come into creation in the game.
100 gems costs 11 g 82 s to buy.
but the market value of gold is
1 g costs 0.15 USD to buy through gems.
so if you multiply 11.82 × .15 you get
1.77
so that item you buy with gold→gems→ gives anet 1.77 $
the item you buy with cash gives anet 1.25$
so essentially you would spend 1.77 to buy gold then turn it to gems, then buy the item
versus spending 1.25 to buy the item.
(…)
like anet who actually get more money for the same product when gold->gem seller buys a costume, than when a cash buyer buys a costume.(…)
Hold it … you are saying I should stop buying gems with real hard digital cash and instead use the in-game currency because this is better for Anet?
as long as you dont mind working a lot harder for the same benefit(if you are going to earn the gold yourself.)
if you really want them to get the most money per purchase, without slaving away for days, buy gems, turn it to gold, then turn the gold to gems and buy the gem store item.
or you could just by tons of gems and do nothing with them.
but if you want them to get the most money per item produced, yeah buy gold, sell gold for gems.
(edited by phys.7689)
~~~ snip ~~~
I’m getting you didn’t bother to read the User Agreement. Here’s the part that supports my arguments:
4. ACCOUNT AND PAYMENTS TO NCSOFT
(d) Gems
(vii) You acknowledge that Gems are digital material with no cash value, that no interest is paid or earned with respect to Gems, that Gems are not personal property, that the quantity of Gems in Your Account may be increased or decreased by NCSOFT in its sole and absolute discretion for any reason or no reason whatsoever, that You have no right to a refund related to Gems, that there is no right to transfer or exchange Gems, and that NCSOFT may limit Your license to use Gems with respect to any Item, service, Content or time period related thereto. You further acknowledge that additional restrictions related to Gems, as determined in the sole and absolute discretion of NCSOFT, may be applicable if, and when, Gems are made available to You or thereafter. NCSOFT may restrict the award or use of Gems based on Your country of residence or other factors.You agreed to these terms as well. So in essence, you’re arguing with yourself.
go to legal school and find out what a user agreement actually means.
the user agreement is not an economic document it is a legal document.
the fact that i cannot legally sell my own gold does not mean anet cannot legally sell your gold. This means anet has secured the rights to cash in on golds monetary value. This is essentially to give them legal authority over gold sellers, and assure that it would be more difficult to sue them for gold losses.the fact that it can be sold for money is what defines something’s monetary value.
anet is selling gold as we speak, therefore it has monetary value. My agreement is totally irrelvant to the reality that it is being sold for money.there is no wiggle room, there is no debate.
a word has meaning, and right now this means gold has monetary value because anet is selling it for cash.Gold has no monetary value. Gems have no monetary value. When you purchase Gems with real money, you are given something which has no monetary value. Just like going to the movies. You buy a ticket to get in. The ticket has monetary value, because you can ask for a refund should you change your mind. The movie itself is what you paid to see, and the “Entertainment value” is given in exchange for your money. You can’t say that the movie has monetary value, just because you paid money to see it.
You’re right that there’s no wiggle room and no debate. So why do you insist that something has monetary value, when there isn’t any? Your opinions vs my facts.
ok, my bad, i see now, you are a troll testing your ability to either make people believe something that is obviously not correct, or perhaps just to see how long i will continue to try to explain something you already know to be true.
in either case, for those who are reading and pay attention, the truth is there, the definition is there, now you know.
I highly suggest the other people who seek knowlege/profit apply the true definitions of monetary value, so they can make money off the things that people think have no value, and get people to give you goods and services at better value, because they dont understand monetary value.
like anet who actually get more money for the same product when gold→gem seller buys a costume, than when a cash buyer buys a costume.
to those who want to be like smooth, keep going out of business.
Gold has value to ANet. That’s not what is being debated. It’s whether it has value to the player and it doesn’t because all virtual items have no value because you, the player, can’t sell them for cash, unlike the old D3 cash auction house.
actually the debate is wether gold has value, and whether anet is makes money off of gold->gem sales
the answer is they do, because those users are creating a product of monetary value for anet to sell.
short version is, they are not giving players items for free, they are giving the players items in exchange for services rendered by the player, that anet will then profit off of.
your time spent creating gold for gems has a monetary value to anet is the long and short of it.
it doesnt matter if i specifically can profit off of something, as long as it can be sold. The gold in my inventory can be sold, therefor, it has monetary value.
the fact that a horse cannot sell rides, does not mean that horse rides do not have a monetary value.
(edited by phys.7689)
point is, gold -> gem sellers are giving anet something of monetary value.
they create a product which anet sells.Gold has no monetary value. Gems have no monetary value. Gem sellers are giving Anet something of “in-game value” when they exchange them for Gold.
When you purchase Gems with real money, you’re paying for Gems, per se. You’re paying for Entertainment, which is a Service they provide. As soon as the Gems are deposited into your in-game account, they have $0 value.
I am talking about the value of gold.
and through gold the value of time spent trying to earn gold to sell to anet.anet sells the gold you give them, therefore gold has monetary value to anet by its very definition.
The gold that players trade to anet has monetary value, that anet realizes the moment they sell it to a player.
gold is product created by the player that anet sells.
any product you can sell has monetary value.this means the time you spend trying to get gold to get gems has a monetary value to anet.
they have reason to value the gold->gem sellers as well as the people who buy gems.
to put it short, gold->gem sellers are employees, creating a service/good of monetary value. The person who buys gems is the customer, who actually realizes that value.this is the monetary value of gold right now
1 g costs 0.13 USD to buy through gems.this exactly how much it is being sold for at this moment.
gold has monetary value by the very definition of monetary value, there is no debate, no question, no opinion.
“The amount of value an item or a service has in relation to if it were sold for cash to a willing buyer.
Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/monetary-value.html#ixzz3702JTcdb"
there is no wiggle room.
the fact gold is currently being sold by anet, means that gold has value in relation to “if it were sold for cash to a willing buyer”Gold has no monetary value. Gems have no monetary value. Please read the User Agreement for further clarification:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/
the user agreement is not an economic document it is a legal document.
the fact that i cannot legally sell my own gold does not mean anet cannot legally sell your gold. This means anet has secured the rights to cash in on golds monetary value. This is essentially to give them legal authority over gold sellers, and assure that it would be more difficult to sue them for gold losses.
the fact that it can be sold for money is what defines something’s monetary value.
anet is selling gold as we speak, therefore it has monetary value. My agreement is totally irrelvant to the reality that it is being sold for money.
there is no wiggle room, there is no debate.
a word has meaning, and right now this means gold has monetary value because anet is selling it for cash.
But for 5 man content I think defiance works well.
I completely disagree with that. Just because in theory it “rewards organization”, it does not means that in practice it leads to good gameplay. Because it does not. Defiance is boring and mostly an uninteractive mechanic most of the time, even in the very few exceptions that you make use of it.
I think that any system that would replace defiance should give freedom of playing and tactical choice to the players, but with consequences and with defiance itself triggering at times as a means of keeping the challenge there. For this reason, I (partially) disagree with anthony’s idea of a cc window: although it’s interesting by itself, and should certainly exist in some fights (like the moa’s fight in Dry Top), it’s also a very restricting mechanic to be applied to the game as a whole.
Here’s how I would rework the defiant system:
PART 1
(Assuming that higher stacks = more danger)
Each time you CC a boss, it gains 3 stacks of X. If you successfully interrupt a boss with your CC, it only gains 2 stacks of X instead.
- This is meant to reward well-timed CCs;
- This allows players to choice if they wish to use a CC or not, and when they want to use it or not;
PART 2
The higher the stacks of X, the stronger the boss becomes (probably statistically) and the harder they become to interrupt (faster animations).
- This gives consequences to cc spamming and serves to make the battle more climatic and dangerous as they go on.
PART 3 – THE CLIMAX
When the boss has Y stacks of X, he gains Defiance for Z seconds, and then their stacks of X are reset to 0.
- If players spam CC too much, the boss will get an absurd amount of stats and become uninterruptible early OR more often in a fight. At this point, bosses become highly dangerous. This is the climax, the last trial that puts to test the player’s skill to survive a fight.
- At this point of battle, control builds become useless until the stacks are resetted, and emphasis is given at the existence of support builds! Blocks, evades, aegis, healing and the like will become of extreme importance here, because CC is temporarely locked.
CONCLUSION
A system that allows players to play how they want, by incentivating player’s skill (successful interrupts are less severe than mindless CC) and tactical decisions (weaker skills should not be interrupted so that the stacks don’t grow as fast), and incentivates both control and support builds instead of the current DPS-only meta: control builds to keep the bosses’ skills in check; support builds to sustain the party when the boss becomes a stacked nightmare.So people would just avoid CC and keep boss at normal level?
i had a similar idea, but i wouldnt go with statistical increase, i would go with a different/skill sets. The main advantage the boss would get is essentially the defiance buff.
For some groups, and some bosses, they may even try to force him to his different playstyle because it works to their advantage.
the other major difference i had is that the resistances/stacks would fade over time on their own. (so its not a case of never using CC to avoid anything)
the last major difference is that mines is a meter, and the more powerful control effects fill up the meter faster.
I think overall this is the right direction,
it allows use of Control, and advantages to control builds
it discourages CC spam, but doesnt make the skills useless most of the time.
real choices come into play, like whether you weaker CC mostly for the interupt, or longer CC for the control effect.
point is, gold -> gem sellers are giving anet something of monetary value.
they create a product which anet sells.Gold has no monetary value. Gems have no monetary value. Gem sellers are giving Anet something of “in-game value” when they exchange them for Gold.
When you purchase Gems with real money, you’re paying for Gems, per se. You’re paying for Entertainment, which is a Service they provide. As soon as the Gems are deposited into your in-game account, they have $0 value.
I am talking about the value of gold.
and through gold the value of time spent trying to earn gold to sell to anet.
anet sells the gold you give them, therefore gold has monetary value to anet by its very definition.
The gold that players trade to anet has monetary value, that anet realizes the moment they sell it to a player.
gold is product created by the player that anet sells.
any product you can sell has monetary value.
this means the time you spend trying to get gold to get gems has a monetary value to anet.
they have reason to value the gold→gem sellers as well as the people who buy gems.
to put it short, gold→gem sellers are employees, creating a service/good of monetary value. The person who buys gems is the customer, who actually realizes that value.
this is the monetary value of gold right now
1 g costs 0.13 USD to buy through gems.
this exactly how much it is being sold for at this moment.
gold has monetary value by the very definition of monetary value, there is no debate, no question, no opinion.
“The amount of value an item or a service has in relation to if it were sold for cash to a willing buyer.
Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/monetary-value.html#ixzz3702JTcdb"
there is no wiggle room.
the fact gold is currently being sold by anet, means that gold has value in relation to “if it were sold for cash to a willing buyer”
point is, gold → gem sellers are giving anet something of monetary value.
they create a product which anet sells.
first of all it isnt about what one person can do with something, its about what it is worth.
look at the definitions. AND like i said, even by your definition, anet is selling the gold you trade to them, that means it still has an economic value. Just because i particularly cannot sell an item doesnt mean it has no monetary value.does the work of slaves have no monetary value, because they cannot specifically sell their own work? shocking because there was a lot of people who placed monetary value on their work and profited off of them.
how much someone is willing to pay for something is the monetary value of that item.
The monetary value of gems only exists when ArenaNet holds them. Once you buy them, the monetary value is gone as you are unable to ever recoup anything of value for them.
If you sell Beanie Babies for $10 each and people buy them for $10 each, then the Beanie Babies you have are worth $10. If I am stupid and offer you $1,000,000 for a $10 Beanie Baby and you make the deal, is my Beanie Baby worth the $1,000,000 that I paid for it, or is it worth the $10 that every other person on the planet is willing to pay me for it?
That is the difference between cost and value. I paid a cost that was much higher than the value of the item. The cost I paid has no bearing on the value of the item once I acquire it as the value is determined by what I can get for it should I decide to sell it.
Since you aren’t allowed to sell any of your virtual goods, they have no value. They have a value to ArenaNet before they are sold to you, but that value vanishes the instant you acquire them.
even by your own theory you are still incorrect because anet can make money off my gold.
It still has a monetary value to anet even after i have it. When i go turn gold into gems, anet takes that gold i gave them, and sells it to someone else.
Still has monetary value, it can still be sold. just because i myself cant sell it, doesnt mean it doesnt have monetary value.
Anet sells the virtual goods you provide them. that means your service of providing goods has a monetary value to anet.
which means your time has value to anet, even if you arent giving them money by buying gems, you are still of monetary value to anet because they can sell your services.
btw this discussion comes from the monetary value of gold, and monetary value of time played earning gold to get gems. smooth brought up gems to make some point, but its not really the central premise.
(edited by phys.7689)
Both Cash, and In Game Gold can be used to Purchase Virtual Goods and Services which have real world value. Therefore Both In game Gold, and Real world cash have economic Monetary value.
Ah… here is the issue.
In game gold and virtual goods and services have a COST. You have conflated cost with value.
Virtual goods and services have no value, but they do have a cost. When you buy them, you are exchanging real world value for virtual items with no value.
I am going to leave this discussion be, since all I am doing is going around and around repeating myself, as you go round and round repeating yourselves.
You have your opinion, I have mine, let’s agree to disagree, as neither is going to convince the other at this point. We each have our own opinions.
Mine is that your opinions as mine are opinions, yours is that your opinions are facts.
Since neither is going to convince the other we may as well admit that this is just a waste of time as we argue in circles. I am sure I will again be told that your opinions are facts, but i am bowing out.
If it were a matter of opinion, I’d agree to disagree. It is a matter of you being factually incorrect on this point, however.
Virtual items have no value because they cannot be resold. Value is what you can acquire with them, not what they cost to acquire (this is “cost” which is completely independent of value). Since you can acquire NOTHING with virtual items, they have NO VALUE whatsoever.
This is the case in all situations where your right of first sale has been violated.
no petelion, they have value because they were sold to begin with, a cost is infact a monetary value.
that was the monetary value when you bought the item.
gold is sold by anet even after i have it, therefore even by your inccorrect stance, it still has monetary value.
this is why monetary value is about what people are willing to pay for something.
its a price.That is incredibly incorrect. The cost of acquisition plays no part in the value of something you hold. Even if your position was true and the acquisition cost determined the value of something, when you are prohibited from reselling the item you acquired (as with all virtual items), you’d STILL be incredibly incorrect.
first of all it isnt about what one person can do with something, its about what it is worth.
look at the definitions. AND like i said, even by your definition, anet is selling the gold you trade to them, that means it still has an economic value. Just because i particularly cannot sell an item doesnt mean it has no monetary value.
does the work of slaves have no monetary value, because they cannot specifically sell their own work? shocking because there was a lot of people who placed monetary value on their work and profited off of them.
how much someone is willing to pay for something is the monetary value of that item.
look it up man, every single definition supports what i am saying. Its monetary value isnt necessarily what you yourself can sell it for, its how much it can be sold for.
“The value or worth that a product or service would bring to someone if sold.”
the value that you would pay for an item is the monetary value of that item because, Any time anyone buys something, or pays for it, they are showing how much it can be sold for.
stop trying to be right, and start trying to understand what actually is. look it up, you will see it again and again.
(edited by phys.7689)
Instead of Defiant, bosses should have anti-CC skills they are programmed to pop in the event of CC. Give a boss “Stand Your Ground!” so it can stunbreak and stability. We can counterplay that by boon stripping. Balance it so that the boss can use anti-CC roughly 5 times more often than players, because 5x players applying CC should = 5x anti-CC skills for the boss.
Right now bosses are boring meat bags that you punch until dead. Give them some more skills!
Edit: Basically give the boss the same stunbreaks and stability skills that players have, and change Defiant to read: “This mob’s stunbreakers recharge 5 times faster than normal.”
hmmm nice
Both Cash, and In Game Gold can be used to Purchase Virtual Goods and Services which have real world value. Therefore Both In game Gold, and Real world cash have economic Monetary value.
Ah… here is the issue.
In game gold and virtual goods and services have a COST. You have conflated cost with value.
Virtual goods and services have no value, but they do have a cost. When you buy them, you are exchanging real world value for virtual items with no value.
I am going to leave this discussion be, since all I am doing is going around and around repeating myself, as you go round and round repeating yourselves.
You have your opinion, I have mine, let’s agree to disagree, as neither is going to convince the other at this point. We each have our own opinions.
Mine is that your opinions as mine are opinions, yours is that your opinions are facts.
Since neither is going to convince the other we may as well admit that this is just a waste of time as we argue in circles. I am sure I will again be told that your opinions are facts, but i am bowing out.
If it were a matter of opinion, I’d agree to disagree. It is a matter of you being factually incorrect on this point, however.
Virtual items have no value because they cannot be resold. Value is what you can acquire with them, not what they cost to acquire (this is “cost” which is completely independent of value). Since you can acquire NOTHING with virtual items, they have NO VALUE whatsoever.
This is the case in all situations where your right of first sale has been violated.
no petelion, they have value because they were sold to begin with, a cost is infact a monetary value.
that was the monetary value when you bought the item.
gold is sold by anet even after i have it, therefore even by your inccorrect stance, it still has monetary value.
this is why monetary value is about what people are willing to pay for something.
its a price.
Both Cash, and In Game Gold can be used to Purchase Virtual Goods and Services which have real world value. Therefore Both In game Gold, and Real world cash have economic Monetary value.
Ah… here is the issue.
In game gold and virtual goods and services have a COST. You have conflated cost with value.
Virtual goods and services have no value, but they do have a cost. When you buy them, you are exchanging real world value for virtual items with no value.
monetary value and cost are actually synonomous. Which makes sense, because by having a cost, it basically means it has a material worth.
“The amount of value an item or a service has in relation to if it were sold for cash to a The amount of value an item or a service has in relation to if it were sold for cash to a willing buyer.”
if you guys really want to look at economics, yalll need a better concept of what “price” and “currency” really are all about.
anything you are willing to pay for, has a monetary value, anything someone is willing to buy, has monetary value.
gold now has monetary value, because anet is selling it.
Nerelith is letting you guys off by saying its a matter of opinion, it really isnt. This is a matter of logic, and definitions.
“the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)
“the fluctuating monetary value of gold and silver”
Synonyms:
cost, price "
stop trying focusing on trying to prove people wrong, and actually try to understand/research what people are saying. Do yall have to agree with each other because yall are usually on the same side or something?
the opinions you guys are presenting here are 100% incorrect. by logic/theory/definition.
An intelligently designed boss fight should promote proper CC usage, not attempt to make it almost useless. I think every dungeon boss would be far more fun if there were reasons to use CC on them.
The boss don’t use any projectiles so my teams reflect capabilities are meaningless. Such a bad design! See, everyone can alter facts to blame developers.
For example:
Instead of having a boss who just stands in one spot throwing out attacks that we need to avoid, it should actively move around to different spots where it can activate additional buffs for itself, summon in more allies, or deal massive damage to players.
By allowing us to use CC abilities, we could then try to prevent it from activating these detriments, making the battle require more tactics than simply stacking and attacking. Allow us to pull it into areas where it becomes weaker and allows us to deal more damage, or make its attacks weaker.You aren’t familiar with Arah, aren’t you? Shoggroth does the same and it is annoying as skritt. I love when people make suggestions without know their game. =]
Now defiance isn’t completely bad, so I’m not saying it should be removed, but don’t have it stay up constantly. Allow it to go off when we weaken the boss enough or meet certain demands, turn it on when the boss gets angry and needs to deal a series of attacks that need to be avoided.
Arah again. Abomination.
It’s just really annoying when some of our most interesting skills are rendered useless so much in boss fights.
See my snarky example above. Have a nice day!
My, my, my. I’m not sure what i did to you to deserve such a rude response, but this is my opinion, not yours.
Yes, we have reflect skills, yes they work to reflect projectiles, but i don’t really consider that in the same vein at all. Reflect is basically just another attack, especially when the AI is dumb enough to just stand there and take it. I don’t consider it a true CC skill at all. Not to mention, it works regardless of defiant does it not? And defiant is supposed to prevent CC? By matter of dedudction, would you not conclude that according to the game rules, it isn’t really a CC?
We have skills that push, pull, fear, and knock enemies around; should those be almost useless? Should they not have some use?
Also, I’m sorry i want to try and come up with ideas to better the game, while you would rather it just stay stagnant and maintain a hold on lousy mechanics, at least I’m trying instead of just getting sarcastic and rude for no apparent reason.
Also, just because a boss moves around doesn’t mean it has to be annoying. There are numerous ways to implement movement and positioning to make a fight more fun, but apparently you would rather have boring boss fights where you can just stack in one spot and have your rewards handed to you on a silver platter. I would rather have a fight that relies on strategy than just pure outright dps.
And yes, I will have a nice day, thank you!
yep, if having to move is always “annoying” they basically are saying they want every boss to be a turret, pretty lame imo.
^^ Yeah I know .. I just decided because I made this post that the last few minutes had monetary value of … $1000. Just have to wait for someone acknowledge it and send me the cash …. just like Van Gogh and his art.
BTW, didn’t he die poor like most artists?
yes, thats the point.
the value of his time wasnt not realized until after he died.
this is why you cannot simply say your time is worthless.
anything you can sell has monetary value. thats what it boils down to. If you actually can sell your forum posts to someone for 1000, then it has a monetary value of 1000 dollars
The way i see it anything that can be sold for money has a monetary value.
monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)
Anet sells my gold
therefore my gold must have a monetary value.case closed.
Anet doesn’t sell Gold, it sells Gems. And per the User Agreement, Gems have no monetary value. You agreed to this when you first made your account.
Appeals Court opens case, and vacates the lower court’s findings.
they sell gold, your assertion that gems is somehow something different is like saying xboxlive doesnt sell games, they sell microsft points.
I agree. Time has no monetary value, unless it is time in which monetary value is assigned.
The difference is, that I believe that based on future decisions, and actions past time can be assigned monetary value.
I can’t respond to this because it makes no sense to me. so depending on what you decide to do in the future, your time may or may not be worth money? You’re going to have to explain it.
It sounds to me like you’re confusing potential to make money because you have free time with an actual amount of time you set aside to make money; a job. Those aren’t the same thing and that’s not a realistic view. At this point, I think the whole argument is just academic so I will get back to the real point.
Anet doesn’t care if your time has value or not. That’s not how the rewards in the game are determined. Value or not, the player decides how their time is spent and what value it has. In either case where the time may or not be valuable, there are equivalent methods to achieve the same rewards in GW2 because you can buy gems with RL money or IG Gold, so whatever way an individual player falls on the spectrum of ‘time=money’, it’s fair and equivalent.
yes, depending on what you decide to do in the future your time may be worth money.
this is why even though you may think it is arbitrary you cant tell until the item is sold.
For example, van gogh made a lot of painting which never sold during his lifetime. At the time, the assumed monetary value of his time was very low.
but right now?
that value is huge.
Essentially, you dont know the value of your time till some one figures out how to sell it. Many recreational activities have had huge economic value. Business men are rich because they figure out how much money you, and other peoples time is worth, especially the time you guys think is worthless.
The way i see it anything that can be sold for money has a monetary value.
monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)monetary value – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)
Anet sells my gold
therefore my gold must have a monetary value.
case closed.
You guys argue about concepts, not facts.
I feel transported back into philosophy class, if a tree falls in the woods and no one heard it, did it make a noise?
The Geico commercial I saw last week had the tree screaming for help. So yes, the tree does make a noise. Tree falling
Side note – my arguments are actually based on the fact that an individual’s time has no monetary value. There are only a few exception to this rule, as has been debated in this thread.
your time in this game, that you use to get gems does have a monetary value, i can tell you right now.
right now, if you can make 10 gold an hour, the value of your time, as defined by anets money machine is. $1.50 an hour
1 gold cost 15 cents.every person who can make 10 gold an hour, and changes that 1 hours worth of gold to gems gets anet 1.50 cents. Thats money they only get because people are willing to sell their time to anet.
so yeah, your time making gold isnt worth very much, unless you are a tp overlord, but it is worth something.
Point is, anet has already monetized your time, this is not a case of your time has no value unless you are at work. You are at work, you just didnt know it. You are on the videogame “toilet” making money for anet when you sell gold.
its not indirect, its as direct as a gold selling company making money off people they make farm money for them (back in the day before it was all bots)
Huge flaw to your argument. Time & Gold does not equal money. Anet isn’t paid when you exchange your Gold for Gems. That’s not how microtransactions work with MMOs. If no one spent any additional money outside of box sales of the game, this game would slowly die, as new box sales cannot be expected to remain constant. The revenue NCSoft gets is from players who pay for extras via Gem purchases. What they do with the Gems after the purchase doesn’t matter. The transaction was completed, and Gems delivered to the player who paid for them. Once the Gems are sold, they have no value to them, as per the User Agreement:
4. ACCOUNT AND PAYMENTS TO NCSOFT
(d) Gems
(vii) You acknowledge that Gems are digital material with no cash value
they would not have bought the product if they could not get something they wanted, thats like saying back in the day streetfighter game wasnt making more money in arcades, because people changed dollars into tokens.
its irrelevant if your tokens have no cash value in the arcade, the point is, what did they turn their dollars into tokens to do?
yes the streetfighter machine is making you money if people are spending their tokens on streetfighter.
It’s actually very relevant statement because that assignment is completely arbitrary; You can choose whatever value you want to support your case. Even if you assign a monetary value to an amount of time, you will NEVER agree what that value should be, so it’s a stupid metric to use.
the value that you or others have succesfully applied to the same task, is good enough. In this case anet has already determined they can make at this very moment 14 cents off of every gold traded in.
how much value your gold earning time is worth is already determined based on that. If you make 10 gold an hour, and sell it, the value of your time, to someone buying gold, is 1.40 $ an hour.
people agree what that value should be every day, multiple times a day, and they already have an agreement for what its worth right now. This is the real time value of your gold earning time right now, that anet is making money on at this rate right now.
You are so far behind , you think you’re ahead. Racing metaphor, to match your Tennis metaphor.
You are entrenched in your opinion. That does not make your opinion true.
When an individual is engaged in an activity, whether that activity is done for fun, or to earn cash, if the fruits of that activity can be exchanged for goods and Services that have a real world value, then whether or not they intended to earn money for that activity is irrelevant.
The fact that they can put X number of hours into Activity A, get compensated for the activity by some virtual currency B, and then exchange the currency for Virtual Item or Service C, that someone else could have obtained by paying $Y dollars USD, means that in the time that the player spent just involvd in an activity, recreational or otherwise,…. had value = to $Y.
Imagine you enjoy painting. And you get some oils, and start doing your paint thing simply out of pure pleasure. You hang the painting on your wall. And a friend comes by, says " WoW I really like that painting…I’ll pay you $10,000 for it." You sell the painting for $10,000. you did not get $10,000 for free. You earned it by painting the painting. That you did not believe at the time you were involved in work, does not matter. That it was done for recreation does not matter.
The ONLY way that the $10,000 you recieved would have been free is if the guy had just GIVEN you $10,000 as a gift.
I can understand that you are entrenched in your position, I can also understand that you are sincere in your beliefs. But You being entrenched and repeating yourself endlessly, does not make you right, and doesn’t turn your opinions to fact.
BTW if A=B and B=C, then A=C. IS a mathematical law. Nothing fallacious about it.
As Phys said, my position may or may not be an adequate representation of If A = B, and B=C, then A=C, but that doesn’t turn a law of mathematics into " fallacy."
The issue is that you are not using it correctly. It’s More Like….
“If the Note that eminating from my Guitar = High C, and the note emanating from my voice = High C, then The note emanating from my guitar = the note emanating from my voice.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130216123245AA1bCCU
PS: I used Castronova’s paper because castronova has assigned a GNP to Norrath, which is hard to do if players playing lacks monetary value.
PPS: It’s She, Not He.
/sigh
Again, your points are based on a fallacy: Affirming the consequent
Time has no monetary value, unless it’s the time in which monetary value is assigned. To simplify this, the 8 hours you spend working on a job is now assigned a monetary value. 8 hours playing on your computer at home has none.
Now you could make the argument that you’re self-employed, and therefore you work at home. But in that case, your income doesn’t come from a video game. It comes from something that others pay you for, be it as an at-home stock trader, or an entrepreneur who makes stuff animals for sale at the local flea market. Your time now has value added.
It’s interesting that you’re trying to use musical notes as a way to support your argument. Do realize that the notes that come from your guitar, piano, or even flute, are all the same as the notes you sing. Should I decide to go and sing my tenor part of Ave Maria, and play the same parts on my guitar, there would be harmony. The time you spent farming for Gold is not the same as the time you spent working your day job. So again, Time spent has no monetary value, but rather a perceived personal one. Would you have better spent it read a book? Or perhaps cooking dinner? Maybe it would have been better to wash the car on that beautiful sunny day. That is the true value of your Time.
One more thing, Dr. Castronova’s work is all theory, using assumptions to support his findings. My arguments are based on reality, so you can’t dispute these facts.
Your opinions are not facts. Let’s Just agree to disagree?
By the way, you are misunderstanding my point it’s
If P-> Q, P, ->Q.
Basic Logic.
His ’statement’s is not an opinion. It IS a fact that:
“Time has no monetary value, unless it’s the time in which monetary value is assigned. "
that statement means nothing. monetary value can be assigned after the fact, so its pretty useless statement.