Gem store hurts PVE rewards？

n the past year, the number of active users of FF14 has increased rapidly in Asia. One of the key reasons is that 90% of the mounts, props and pets in the FF14 are obtained through PVE content.The GW2 gem store has severely curbed the content that PVE can get rewards, resulting in a decrease in players.

I agree that it hurts pve rewards. I don't agree that it hurts the number of active users.Ff14 gets huge advertising every release. Gw2 gets almost nothing at all. That's your difference.

Pve rewards are terrible though. Just think, when was the last time you even bothered to open one of those random armor drops to see if it was useful? Probably not since you reached Orr and bought your first exotic set of armor. Ever since, you salvage everything.Even when you make a new character, doesn't everyone just jump to level 80, and run to the Grenth temple in cursed Shore and by bezerker armor immediately?

But you can technically earn everything in the gemstore by doing whatever content you want.

you're not pigeon holed into grinding the same dungeon or boss, you can do whatever metas you wnat or fractals or dungeons and change gokd to gems.

I prefer this way.Do you really need to be told go here go there, fight this boss for a lucky drop or craft these things to enjoy playing the game/the reward?

@alberte.2685 said:n the past year, the number of active users of FF14 has increased rapidly in Asia. One of the key reasons is that 90% of the mounts, props and pets in the FF14 are obtained through PVE content.The GW2 gem store has severely curbed the content that PVE can get rewards, resulting in a decrease in players.

These threads are getting real old real fast.

A lot of GW2's playerbase are folks who would quit if they had to pay a subscription but also contribute to the gold/gem exchange or will periodically buy from the gem store. It's a very indirect method of monetization as far the player->cash route.And it does make some of the complaints valid in that there are few "big" rewards to chase though gameplay. If ANet wants to insist on this monetization method, it needs to keep players engaged through additional goals. That's where having things like mount skins could be a big bonus to the game. Or anything, really. Realizing how much content I've plowed through in XIV just to get a skin or emote is actually kinda ridiculous, but it kept me playing. So it doesn't have to just be skins (which might be expensive on design cost), but also make use of the novelties section. Maybe use the mount/seat system to add some unlockable dances and have them be earnable in game.

I prefer non-subscription games cause I don't want to play a lot. Subscription model requires you to constantly play a lot - to not waste the subscription money. Also I like the idea of not having to grind through a item/gear treadmill. This is nice in GW2. The earnable rewards are fun as well. There is a lot of content for new players or players returning after a lon break.

I don't care about the gem store skins. Most earnable skins in game are fine as well. (The one from gem store look too fancy for my taste.) Achievements and getting completion are rewards itself.

The only thing that is hurt is the concenienve/QoL (quality of life) stuff which might come for free with subscription based model. (Okay not really free ... you pay the subscription to play.) But it is possible to play without them. Just a bit more inconvenient.

@"alberte.2685" said:n the past year, the number of active users of FF14 has increased rapidly in Asia. One of the key reasons is that 90% of the mounts, props and pets in the FF14 are obtained through PVE content.The GW2 gem store has severely curbed the content that PVE can get rewards, resulting in a decrease in players.

Iirc FF players are charged a monthly user fee. Do you want Anet to do the same for gw2? Is that the way we can stop the complaints about non pay-to-win gemstone items by putting more skins in the game and forcing players to pay each month?

Edit- I’ll post more, but look at this cool stuff SE sells, on top of a monthly subscription!

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/option_service/

“Select from a range of optional items including fantasia, minions, mounts, and seasonal event items to enhance your adventures in Eorzea!”

Ohh you even get Veteran Rewards for how long you’ve been subscribed! Sweet!

"Accumulated subscription days" refers to the total number of days subscribed to your service account, rather than actual play time.”

So let’s follow this monetization plan for GW2...

-Pay for game.

-Pay monthly subscription fee.

-Cash shop stuff that includes mounts too! With some “free” (included in your subscription fee) stuff earned in game.

Edit 2- https://mogsales.com/index.php/mounts Amazing! I can buy a witch broom mount for $7 for 1 single character! What a great sale to get ready for Halloween! Anet should make most mounts single character and charge us $7 bucks per mount per character too! Even cooler! We could have Anet make ascended and legendary gear character bound and charge us $7 per character to gain access to using that gear! That would be a super service!

Edit 3- I’m honestly all for Anet charging us more to play and making more money. This way I can get all the profession updates I dream of and some of you can get more “free” skins in-game!

the high end pve rewards/stuff should work to increase gems revenue, like when someone buy gems to convert to gold to buy legendaries, infusions etc, so by this way exclusive pve rewards are health for bussness. But i didnt know if the company view this way....

While I'm a proponent of having reskins of Gemstore stuff available in PvE, even if the quality is a bit lower, like the Hexed outfit vs Witch's outfit, there's nothing in the gemstore that was taken from PvE. Most of the time, either it's in the gemstore or we wouldn't get it at all.

They should reuse way more of their assets, and not being afraid of reskins. Reskins are not bad and anyone who says otherwise can't appreciate how hard it is to make new assets, and how there's people with less disk space.
Reskins allows having more stuff without adding much more models and animations.

One way to look at it is that anything sold in the gem store could otherwise be a PvE reward, so the gem store results in less PvE rewards. Another way to look at it is that it's a game with no subscription where they give away the majority of content to anyone who logs in during the first few months after release, so if they're not selling cosmetics they'd get far less money and they'd be unable to hire as many staff and would end up making less stuff overall...resulting in less PvE rewards (and less PvE content and less for all the other game modes too).

Of course there's a possible middle ground where they're making enough money without diverting too many rewards to the gem store. I don't have enough information on Anet's finances and internal workings to know how much flexibility there might be there though.

For what it's worth I don't feel like all the good skins go into the gem store, there's still a lot of in-game rewards I want, and spend a lot of time persuing. Maybe it could be more evenly split between types of skins though - when players complained that all the armour sets were going into the gem store instead of stopping making any new gem store armour sets they could have reduced it, and then balanced it out by putting some mount skins and more gliders into the game.

@Danikat.8537 said:Maybe it could be more evenly split between types of skins though - when players complained that all the armour sets were going into the gem store instead of stopping making any new gem store armour sets they could have reduced it, and then balanced it out by putting some mount skins and more gliders into the game.

I think this would be the ideal scenario - having a more even split, so there wouldn't be entire categories of skins almost exclusive to the Gem Store.

@alberte.2685 said:One of the key reasons is that 90% of the mounts, props and pets in the FF14 are obtained through PVE content.

Unless you've got a reputable citation for that claim, I'm going to say that's false.

People don't start playing a game because they can get free skins for playing. Especially when they're not actually free. That can improve retention, but you need something more interesting to get new subscribers.

In FFXIV you pay real money to rent all rewards. Every single reward is gated behind real money expenditure.

They have to make money somehow in order to pay the bills; of course the shinnies are going on the gem store.I'm OK with that versus the alternative.

@alberte.2685 said:n the past year, the number of active users of FF14 has increased rapidly in Asia. One of the key reasons is that 90% of the mounts, props and pets in the FF14 are obtained through PVE content.The GW2 gem store has severely curbed the content that PVE can get rewards, resulting in a decrease in players.Correlation does not imply causation. There are plenty of variables and factors which lead to an increase/decrease of community populations.

@"Taygus.4571" said:But you can technically earn everything in the gemstore by doing whatever content you want.

you're not pigeon holed into grinding the same dungeon or boss, you can do whatever metas you wnat or fractals or dungeons and change gokd to gems.

I prefer this way.Do you really need to be told go here go there, fight this boss for a lucky drop or craft these things to enjoy playing the game/the reward?

That doesn't hold as much weight as it used it, given how most of pre-outfit era Gem Store items were Convenience based..... and that itself was essentially Anet Racketeering the game design around it. Once Outfits hit, the Gem store has become increasingly aggressive over time. Not "Antagonistic", but highly aggressive in how its its been restructured from offering Finite upgrades (has a max cap per character/account), and its new direction almost entirely "Reoccurring spending opportunities". In fact, their so confident in this new model, they've almost directly marginalized every aspect of the original business model's key money makers, and spun it as "making the game better for players"... despite the fact they refused to do a lot of things previously, BECAUSE it was core to what the Gem store offered.

My gripe is the new gemstore is trying to motivate you to spend more, at an increasing frequency, because the new paradigm has no upper limit on a per character basis. You can only sell 4 bag slots per character, only 2 crafting slots per account, only 16 bank tabs per account, and maybe a set of unbreakable tools per character..... but you can sell an endless amount of Outfits, glider and mount skins, and the Glyphs just added a whole new dimension of how many times they can get you to buy more unbreakable tools, despite having more sets then you have characters for.

I've also have growing concerns about the incremental nature of the bypass items, that not only used to be connected to in-game rewards and events, but also pushing toward allowing players to be less engaged at a higher pace, rather then more engaged at a comfortable pace, and still parting with their money at whats almost an effective loss. This is a side effect of most of the Player's focus being centered around Wealth and Item Value, and general devaluing of effort. Like how there was another thread earlier complaining about the cost of Mystic coins and Clovers, yet proactively denounces the multiple ways to get additional coins & clovers, almost of all of them more cost efficient, simply because he refuses to invest the surprisingly low effort to start doing a daily routine of Fractals, Leyline, Teq and AP. Which I find hypocritical more on the fact that the gold yield for Dailies and Farms are so high for such little effort, yet tries to make a case that MC are too expensive to afford, when his goal is a Legendary weapon, which is a gold sink by its nature. And then tries to close his opening post as the project not being a big deal, and he'll abandon it.... yet opened on a rant about how he got bad RNG while rolling x10s on the clover recipe, claimed the its well below "the promised %", based on a sample size of 10 rolls.

^Its stuff like this that makes me worried that promoting a path of leaster resistance, when we're already optimized for it to begin with, is causing even more players to disconnect from the reality of the game, and making their bubbles smaller. "you can do whatever metas you wnat or fractals or dungeons and change gokd to gems."..... yet it seems like people to avoid expending effort that would otherwise facilitate that. And part of me wonders how intentional this is.......

the two games are working in completely different operating models

FF14 is subscription based, so in-game store for them is side revenue

while GW2 is buy to play model, so gem store is their main source of revenuethey give you the base function in-game, and the modifier on-top like skins are paid

sure, if GW2 is operating under subscription model, then they need to continuously pumping out in-game earnable rewards constantly because players are continuously giving them money

people really need to switch their mentality when approaching GW2, how the game is played and how you pay the developer is not the 2000s model

I play both gamesHonestly, people need to STOP comparing FFXIV to GW2, it's like comparing apples to oranges.The two games have VERY different business models like the poster above me has explained, and thus you cannot expect an apple to be an orange

Just know you are playing a F2P with B2P expansion game with no further subscription, meaning the devs don't get paid for their work after the initial purchase.The only way Anet can keep going is if they have money flowing in, and where does this money come from for ANET?Surprise - It's skins from the gemstore

I can agree to some point that they could improve a bit more on some of the PvE rewards which are valuable/meaningful, but your argument comparing this game with FFXIV is invalid

Apple and Orange

It does hurt PVE rewards, and this is expected. However I also think instead of making full set of weapons of a specific theme, they should make it sort of like legendaries. Instead of 16 of the same type of sometimes mediocre weapon skin released every time, just make 1 nice skin and rotate making each weapon. They do that with armor skins(not outfits) in the gemstore already.

From the 3rd season map and the activity of the 4th season map, it is obvious how important the “reward” is to PVE. In the fourth season map, players can collect armor and weapon skin, while the third season map has almost no players.Although I also made legendary jewelry, I have never used it. (Excessive effects and rotating spheres are light pollution for me)It can be considered that the third season map is almost a failure.

The biggest problem with GW2 is that there is almost nothing to do after the player goes online, unless you want to be a gold coin farmer.

While I vote they dont affect rewards, I do believe PvE rewards leave something to be desired overall.

For me most of the fun comes from "doing" in the game, not necessarily "having". There are so few items, equipment or not, that alter the "doing" aspect in any way that I rarely blink at the thought of spending my Karma and/or map currencies on an endless Kodan tonic or others of that nature.

I understand that for some that's a part of the game that allows for a novel feeling concerning appearance, but all of my characters look how I want them to look and I see no reason to use a combat tonic as a bear or shadow warrior or watchknight.

On the other hand it would be really nice to see profession-specific mount skins that are earnable through in-game achievements. I would care about this a little bit more simply because it reflects the achievement itself, not something that anyone could have spent money on.

I'll sum it up with this: I'm in it for the combat (all of it, PvE, PvP, WvW), the story, and the world because that's all GW2 has. I appreciate that it has... "fashion" but that's so far from what I boot the game up for it's a complete afterthought. I just don't know what else there is to offer as a reward that's meaningful.

In fact, GW2's earnings were very bad, and it still didn't improve after layoffs. The next DLC is still far away. I think the root cause is that the mall has destroyed the PVE reward. Another reason is that PVP and WVW have not introduced new models for many years. When the player has nothing to do, he will choose another game.

@SinisterSlay.6973 said:I agree that it hurts pve rewards. I don't agree that it hurts the number of active users.Ff14 gets huge advertising every release. Gw2 gets almost nothing at all. That's your difference.

Pve rewards are terrible though. Just think, when was the last time you even bothered to open one of those random armor drops to see if it was useful? Probably not since you reached Orr and bought your first exotic set of armor. Ever since, you salvage everything.Even when you make a new character, doesn't everyone just jump to level 80, and run to the Grenth temple in cursed Shore and by bezerker armor immediately?

Never been to Orr. Should I? I made it to the Straights of Devastation but there were no heart quests and I got bored. Never went any further that direction. I have exotic armor - is anything there significantly better?

There's a huge assumption in posts like this that -- if GW2 were to add a sub -- ANet would: ditch the store; and would put as much effort into skins as they are now.

Neither of those seem likely. Sub-based MMO's have stores. Also, those games put in rewards almost always only with new content, and so does ANet with no sub. A simple analysis of how businesses work says this is wishful thinking. I suspect this type of thinking is a helping of, "Never enough," seasoned with a touch of, "The grass is greener," and served on a, "What have you done for me lately?" roll.

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:There's a huge assumption in posts like this that -- if GW2 were to add a sub -- ANet would: ditch the store; and would put as much effort into skins as they are now.Neither of those seem likely. Sub-based MMO's have stores. Also, those games put in rewards almost always only with new content, and so does ANet with no sub. A simple analysis of how businesses work says this is wishful thinking. I suspect this type of thinking is a helping of, "Never enough," seasoned with a touch of, "The grass is greener," and served on a, "What have you done for me lately?" roll.

Agree completely. The store is not a big deal, and certainly not going away. I would rather have no sub fee, and just pay for expansions. Others can buy gems if they want. If there was a sub fee, we would still pay for expansions - and the gem store would have no reason to go away.

There is still plenty of pretty pixels to PvE for, and you are free to shop at the gem store if you want. I do not think one affects the other. :)