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Skyscale mount skins on gemstore


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I can respect GW2 business model. I really do and that is why I buy stuff on the store where other online games want me to pay FOR THE PRIVILEGE of just playing. Nope, sorry, not gonna pay for that.

 

However, mount skins prices in GW 2 are not ok. It's not the price for the regular skins, though some are indeed, overpriced. It is the Skyscale skins that are problematic. 

 

I bought the Branded mount pack and was happy with my purchase. It looks very nice and FOUR skins with so much customization for 1600 gems seemed reasonable. However, 1200 gems for the option to pick a SINGLE skin for the Skyscale is NOT OK. Of course, there is the option to pay 400 gems to play casino, but that is very close to loot box level of greed. 

 

I am sorry Anet, but you can't ask THREE times the price of a single skin in regular skin pack for that thing.

 

 

Edited by EpicName.4523
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46 minutes ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I can respect GW2 business model. I really do and that is why I buy stuff on the store where other online games want me to pay FOR THE PRIVILEGE of just playing. Nope, sorry, not gonna pay for that.

 

However, mount skins prices in GW 2 are not ok. It's not the price for the regular skins, though some are indeed, overpriced. It is the Skyscale skins that are problematic. 

 

I bought the Branded mount pack and was happy with my purchase. It looks very nice and FOUR skins with so much customization for 1600 gems seemed reasonable. However, 1200 gems for the option to pick a SINGLE skin for the Skyscale is NOT OK. Of course, there is the option to pay 400 gems to play casino, but that is very close to loot box level of greed. 

 

I am sorry Anet, but you can't ask THREE times the price of a single skin in regular skin pack for that thing.

 

 

That are not only the skyscale skins. There are also other mount skins that cost 1600+. Not sure if EU and NA stores r the same but in EU gemstore there is atm a warclaw skin for 2k gems and 1 warclaw and jackal for 1600 gems each.

However you should note that they never put a single mount skin for 400 gems in the store. Also not 800 gems. Just for 1200 gems by buying the license (or whatever its called).

These packs are sth like a discount of multiple skins packed in one bundle.
You also should know that 400 gems are...around 110-120 gold. Which is pretty easy to get. Maybe 1 day if you farm 3-4h. Or 2 days if you farm less.

Things like mount skins are maybe one of the things where players spend most gems on. Reducing price of them would attract people to just exchange gold to gems. Which is done already a lot.

This could also be the reason why some items in the gemstore are expensive -> You can exchange gold to gems whenever you want.

A point you shouldnt forget too is that players have to buy expansions 1 time. I just bought pof like 2-3 years ago and got hot for free. I paid like 20€ for the expansions. I had the chance to not buying anything for 2-3 years until Eod drops.  And i would have ALL storys because they were free from time to time. Everyone couldve done this. Reducing all gemstore item prices to a point that players would like them to have would be a massive waste of money for them. At some point this game has to stay alive so we can actually play this.

I mean buy the skyscale or not. But we all are keeping this game alive by spending money. Its like that with every game or company. Consumers keeping alive the company.
They cant just make everything 5€ in gemstore while players could actually just play 1 day and get the skin without spending money. They are somehow forced to make some items expensive so players dont just ALWAYS exchange gold to gems.

Well all that for saying: Get over it. Buy 1 skyscale per month and u still pay nearly less for this game than for WoW...for just being able to play.

Edited by SeTect.5918
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1 hour ago, EpicName.4523 said:

I am sorry Anet, but you can't ask THREE times the price of a single skin in regular skin pack for that thing.

But... they obviously can? 

If they couldnt, it wouldnt happen. They probably have an entire team on just doing the gemstore economy.

Fun thing though, I completed world exploration on one of my characters the other day, got 6-7 keys or something like that in total... and the balthazar warclaw skin on the last key. That's 1600 gems.

Be it lucky RNG or farming gold for a fancy skin, yes you can actually play the game to get it.

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I think the select licences are too expensive too, so I only ever buy them when they're discounted (it's usually either 30% or 40% off, so either 840 or 720 gems). It can take a while for one to be discounted and it's often only for a short time, so if you want to do that it helps to have the gems ready (especially if you buy gems with gold as the price will go up).

Also there's a pack of 5 skyscale skins for 2,000 gems, the same as the branded pack. They're still the only ones I've got because I've found it to be a really good mix with something to fit each of my characters. Although if they ever bring out a primeval skyscale I'll get that too.

Edited by Danikat.8537
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The only warclaw skin I care for is the War Torn Marauder. And while I am not saying it’s never been on sale, I have never noticed it in store for less than the 2,000 gem price it is currently. Is it a bummer? I mean, kinda. 
 

these are cosmetic skins that have absolutely no effect on gameplay, in a game that, as mentioned, can cost nothing to play as a consumer despite having a massive cost to maintain as the developer. If you want a cool skin? Pay your artists.

 

Just to use the Marauder as an example- that likely took concept art, digital designers for the template, new coding for the additional movements it does (not all mount skins have new movements associated with them, which is probably factored into this particular one being 2,000 instead of 1,600), plus costs to maintain servers, retain those artists and programmers, AND still try and make a profit, on a game that has no guaranteed income from subscriptions. 
 

we are not entitled to this game. The terms of paying for the base game or the expansions or what have you say that you have access to certain content while it’s up. And if we don’t have enough people paying for these purely cosmetic skins (which is a WAAAAAAY more generous solution than pay-to-win things in the store, for example look at LOTRO), the servers shut down, and we have nothing. I am fine paying for gem cards when I have extra money burning a hole in my pocket for this entertainment venue.

 

tldr- pay your artists

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I mean, yeah, they're extremely expensive, and someone in lower income countries might never justify the cost enough to buy one. Especially because you get practically nothing out of it, no new functionality like with account upgrades, it's just "pretty".

 

So i get it, they could adjust the price like Twitch does for lower income countries.

 

But they don't and probably never will, so it is what it is. You can wait for a sale like the rest of us, when it comes to your acceptable price, or you can convert gold to gems to compensate for the difference of what you can afford and think it should cost.

 

In the end, we DO get a lot of this game for basicaly nothing, so, i count all cosmetic items such as skins as "support the devs" kind of thing rather than the actual skin. 

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38 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

If you want it enough, you will pay the price.

If the price is too high, then you didn't want it enough.   🤷‍♂️

That is literally my thought process for gem store items. I start by asking myself if I want it, and if I do I move on to asking if I want it enough to pay what it costs. That's a bit more complicated because I could use real money, gold or a mix of the two, but the whole question is subjective anyway, unless I can't afford it with either method.

If I don't want it then I forget about it, if I do want it but not enough to pay what it costs then I'll wait for something to change, likely a discount, a significant drop in the price of gems bought with gold or another reason to want it. (And sometimes if I find I keep looking at it and hoping for an excuse to buy it I'll go back to the beginning and reevaluate how much I want it.)

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I bought the very first "generation" of mount skins by way of buying a pack of 30 mount adoption licenses for 9600 gems. That way a single license only cost me 320 gems and, using all, I unlocked all skins that were available at the time. That's six skins for each of the five mounts in the game after PoF was released. Even though I don't like every skin, I never felt it was money not well spent. And by money, I mean gold. I have never bought gems with real money.

 

The newer sets contain 15 skins. If you buy the pack of 15 licenses for 5100 gems, each skin will cost you 340 gems. That's a saving of 900gems, as opposed to buying one license at a time for 400 each.

 

If there are only four skins or less in the set that you want, though, a select license seems the more logical choice.

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I think if Anet no longer offered gold to gems conversions, then people might complain more about the price of the mount skins, which would be $5 for a random pick, $15 for a select mount, or in the case of the more expensive WvW mounts (why do we always pay more for stuff?) $20 to $25 per mount...$25 is darn near the price of a full expansion.

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TBH I don't mind to pay a high price for these item. This game have no sub-fee and no intrusive cash-shop AND if you play it on regular basis you get "dlc" for free, which leave only chapter to brought money to the studio, which is close to nothing let be honest.

GW2 is the cheapest mmorpg I've played and it's amazing for player but probably not always easy for studio.
So yeah, I don't mind than skin are a bit expensive. They're not necessary anyway.

The only thing I would like to see them do is finish skin collection. I mean, If I buy exo-suit skin pack, I can get all base mount skin, then with "scroll" I can get beetle and warmount, but Skyscale doesn't seem to exist which is sad, and it's the same, or worst, for all pack.

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4 hours ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

I think if Anet no longer offered gold to gems conversions, then people might complain more about the price of the mount skins, which would be $5 for a random pick, $15 for a select mount, or in the case of the more expensive WvW mounts (why do we always pay more for stuff?) $20 to $25 per mount...$25 is darn near the price of a full expansion.

Warclaw skins are the same price as the other mounts. There's a pack of 5 skins for 2,000 gems (same as the skyscale pack or the themed packs for the PoF mounts) and skins included in the 400/1,200 gem licences. The only ones which are more expensive are the ones sold directly in the gem store like the War-Torn Marauder, but all the mounts have those as well.

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22 hours ago, EpicName.4523 said:

Of course, there is the option to pay 400 gems to play casino, but that is very close to loot box level of greed.

It's not "close to" it. It's very much at that level. They've straight out explained, after all, that it was designed that way because they knew that otherwise some of the skins they included in those packs would never be able to pay for themselves because next to noone would want to buy them.

Edited by Astralporing.1957
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5 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Warclaw skins are the same price as the other mounts. There's a pack of 5 skins for 2,000 gems (same as the skyscale pack or the themed packs for the PoF mounts) and skins included in the 400/1,200 gem licences. The only ones which are more expensive are the ones sold directly in the gem store like the War-Torn Marauder, but all the mounts have those as well.

Ah, you're right...there are the one-off designs for other mounts that run that high as well...my bad!

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1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

25 bucks is too much for a skin that is account bound and can be used with no restrictions in a game with no sub fees.  Got it.

Sure, if they raised the price of each expansion to $250, then $25 is trivial...maybe I'll put that in their suggestion box...

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14 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

25 bucks is too much for a skin that is account bound and can be used with no restrictions in a game with no sub fees.  Got it.

Exactly. A single skin that costs as much as one whole decent game, or half of an AAA title. Because, obviously, designing a single skin takes as much effort and cost as designing a whole game...

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4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Because there's absolutely nothing in between "free" and "25 bucks", right? [/sarcasm]

That's kinda the point.  Any cost will be considered "too high" by someone, whether is it $2 or $25.  In a model without a subscription, the company has to make a profit.  Yes $25 is probably close to the cost of an expansion, but they can't churn out an expansion every month.  Heck, to think of it, $25 for an expansion is a steal.

Regardless, skins aren't required to play the game or complete content, so that $25 is completely optional.  Additionally, Anet has given players a method to purchase items without ever paying RL cash for them with the gold to gem conversion.

So, I ask, what price do you feel is appropriate that will ensure that the company can continue to profit?

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