Is transmutation shard really required to apply cosmetics bought from cash shop?

[Gehenna.3625]

On 7/21/2022 at 1:46 AM, angrymouse.2340 said:

WoW huge disapointment, curious that ppl are ok buying even so you can got to a point that you cannot use a paid item.

 I do a fair amount of map completion but mostly I do WvW so I get Skirmish Chests that you can use to get transmutation charges. I currently easily have over 200 transmutation charges at the ready and over 500 skirmish chests still available. 

So I never buy transmutation charges.

Word of advice: If you buy stuff from the gem store for leveling characters, buy outfits (which don't use transmutation charges but have an on/off check mark. And don't worry about weapon skins until you're level 80. And if you really do want to change something, just complete a map/zone and you'll get one. I think even completing a city gives you one. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by Gehenna.3625

[Khisanth.2948]

5 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

What?  I would be willing to wager that a significant number of GW2 players have paid a lot less for their game experience by not having to pay a sub fee.  With the ability to convert gold to gems, GW2 is even more consumer friendly.

It depends. If someone cares more about quantity than quality then a subscription is potentially better but that also ignores the fact that these days games with subscriptions also have a shop on top.

I for one am glad I didn't have to subsidize someone else's ugly eye kitten via a subscription. If they like it then they can pay for all of it themself.

[Labjax.2465]

18 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

It depends. If someone cares more about quantity than quality then a subscription is potentially better but that also ignores the fact that these days games with subscriptions also have a shop on top.

I for one am glad I didn't have to subsidize someone else's ugly eye kitten via a subscription. If they like it then they can pay for all of it themself.

In general, the old subscription days were vastly superior for reasons like:

1) everything released for the game apart from expansions is something you can get at no extra charge

2) studio is incentivized to make the experience as enjoyable as possible and release content on a regular cycle so you'll want to keep paying sub

3) there are hard limits on what you can spend on the game overall, which is a much safer and healthier deal for you financially

Compared to "F2P" experience, which is like:

1) anything and everything might be cut out of the game and repackaged as MTX purchase, or worse, part of a lootbox

2) if you're lucky, you can get cash shop stuff with enough in-game currency (like gold to gems exchange) but your ability to do this depends on others being exploited and you will be pressured/tempted to pull out the wallet the entire time

3) studio is incentivized to make large chunks of the game a worse experience, so they can sell you the solution as MTX and devote more resources to getting people in the cash shop buying than releasing game content on a regular cycle

4) if you are at all vulnerable to compulsive spending or other like issues with purchasing, you are a prime target for exploitation every time you open up the game

5) even if you aren't vulnerable to those things, you're going to spend half your game experience being psychologically manipulated in one way or another, as they try to needle you to pull out your wallet and rationalize it to yourself in whatever way is necessary to make it happen

6) even if you are somehow immune to all of this manipulation, you are benefiting off of other players being exploited

Possible other things I'm forgetting as well. And yeah, nowadays sub model doesn't mean the same, cause it's usually sub + cash shop, which is the worst of both worlds.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[Khisanth.2948]

29 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

1) everything released for the game apart from expansions is something you can get at no extra charge

 "subscription" but "no extra charge", was your subscription somehow free?

 

[Labjax.2465]

16 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

 "subscription" but "no extra charge", was your subscription somehow free?

 

Are you for real? "No extra charge" meaning no extra cost on top of the subscription, whereas F2P has hidden costs everywhere. Thus the word "extra" as opposed to "no charge."

[Danikat.8537]

1 hour ago, Labjax.2465 said:

2) studio is incentivized to make the experience as enjoyable as possible and release content on a regular cycle so you'll want to keep paying sub

This one isn't necessarily true. They're incentivised to keep you logging in frequently, but there are plenty of very effective ways to do that which are not fun for players.

One common one is to have a level and/or gear treadmill where new levels or better equipment are added periodically and getting them is time-gated. Often there's an element of RNG added as well, so you have a limited number of attempts per day/week/month and you're not guarenteed to get what you need within that. So you have to keep logging in and trying for the new stuff even if you're not currently doing anything else, because if you don't you'll fall behind your friends and will be unable to play with them when you want to.

(And yes there may be people who enjoy doing that, or at least don't mind it and think it's something to do, but the point is the driving force behind their decision isn't "I feel like running that dungeon again today" but "I should make another attempt to get that drop I need before the reset".)

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Labjax.2465 said:

2) studio is incentivized to make the experience as enjoyable as possible and release content on a regular cycle so you'll want to keep paying sub

 

Tell this to the folks over at SW:ToR

[akipappi.3917]

i think its a fair system because you will instantly know what kind of game you are getting into. fun fact for your friend: all mount skins are also in the gemstore and all the good armor and weapon skins are in the shop too. hope you enjoy tyria

[Labjax.2465]

26 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

This one isn't necessarily true. They're incentivised to keep you logging in frequently, but there are plenty of very effective ways to do that which are not fun for players.

One common one is to have a level and/or gear treadmill where new levels or better equipment are added periodically and getting them is time-gated. Often there's an element of RNG added as well, so you have a limited number of attempts per day/week/month and you're not guarenteed to get what you need within that. So you have to keep logging in and trying for the new stuff even if you're not currently doing anything else, because if you don't you'll fall behind your friends and will be unable to play with them when you want to.

(And yes there may be people who enjoy doing that, or at least don't mind it and think it's something to do, but the point is the driving force behind their decision isn't "I feel like running that dungeon again today" but "I should make another attempt to get that drop I need before the reset".)

That's a fair point. I think there are still plenty of reasons to characterize the sub model as vastly superior for the customer, but I will admit that particular characterization was romanticizing sub games on my part.

And it's worth noting that when I say it's vastly superior, I'm not wanting to say it's inherently a great experience for the customer without problems of its own. For example, renting a game is, in itself, a pretty awful concept for the customer and that's more or less what a subscription game is. I left that part out as I wanted to focus on why F2P is worse and F2P shares that attribute.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Map completion is important in so many ways. You get charges or keys.

[DeanBB.4268]

4 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

That's a fair point. I think there are still plenty of reasons to characterize the sub model as vastly superior for the customer, but I will admit that particular characterization was romanticizing sub games on my part.

I don't have much experience with a sub-game. I tried ESO for a while, and the "optional sub" wasn't really optional, and there was still an extensive "gem shop," and I really didn't like the feeling of "crap, I gotta play since I'm paying for it." I would not call that "vastly superior" to GW2's model.

I've accumulated stuff from the gem store over the years, with no idea how much I've spent (no gold > gems), but lately the only purchases have been a bag slot here and there as I've pulled an inactive toon out of retirement for active play. In other words, you can get to a point where you don't really want or need anything from the gem store, and thus there is no monthly cost occurring. That never happens in a sub-game.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Its a 100% fair system:

- The first transmute of Gemstore items are free, as well as BLTC goods bought off the TP.

- You can buy Transmutation Charges from the gemstore with gold. This is a bit restrictive for new players but high-level farming in the end-game gets you enough gold to buy an entire pack every day.

- You get charges from PvE map completion, and the competitive modes dump them on you like candy. It only takes a single day in PvP or WvW to make 20+ Transmutation  Charges, just by playing the game.

- They want you to go for Legendary gear, which makes transmutations infinite and free.

- Basically, they want you to play the game.

 

Honestly I doubt they even sell many charges for actual gems bought with real money. For ArenaNet the item is probably seen as being sold at a net loss overall.

 

I don't know how players can call their (usually) very fair practices exploitative when other games make it so you can literally buy the ability to win from the cash shop. In many games, its even required to spend cash to play the game on a competitive level with others.

Edited July 22, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[voltaicbore.8012]

55 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

That never happens in a sub-game.

I would also like to not that this never happens in most poorly designed F2P games as well. Usually, the moment you decide you don't want to buy anything in an F2P game is not too far removed from the moment you decide to stop playing altogether. It's a testament to GW2's overall package that so many of us still find the game fun and highly playable even though the necessity of gem store shinies is long gone,

5 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Tell this to the folks over at SW:ToR

TLDR; all those sweet, sweet subscription dollars don't magically prevent studios from making bad decisions. In fact, steady money seems to insulate and subsidize the same bad decisions any studio can make.

I was about to bring up SWTOR as well. For anyone unaware, SWTOR has 3 levels of sub: (1) never subbed, (2) had a sub but it lapsed, and (3) active sub.

Without getting into the details, suffice it to say that the levels (1) and (2) experience is incredibly crippled, and for even a minimally reasonable endgame experience you really do need to have an active sub.

However, the value of that sub has been dubious at best. For as long as I can remember, the vast majority of subscribers I talked to were all doing the same thing:

1. farming credits to
2. buy account upgrades from the cash shop that other players listed on the auction house, so
3. their accounts could retain at least a somewhat diluted version of their subscriber perks after the let their sub lapse.

In GW2 at least there are many long term projects, or even just social activities to pursue when you've done most or all of the new content. In SWTOR, once you finished the next stage of gear treadmilling, the only reason to stick around was to prepare for your sub to lapse. SWTOR... made EA a billion dollars within about 7 years of live service. It apparently cost them $200M to launch and run, but $800M is still a lot of money. What is all this money doing for players? Most recently, an "expansion" that had maybe 3 story instances with maaaaybe 3 hours of content. And for all the draconian restrictions on level (1) accounts, RMT and spam is still pretty egregious. One of the first things I noticed about GW2 when I came over here was the absence of RMT bot spam in chat. In this day and age, a SWTOR sub is one of the purest expressions of sunk cost fallacy I can think of.

So yes, F2P games are generally inherently predatory, in that most of them are designed to drive players into making purchases just to have a reasonable gaming experience. But no, subscriptions aren't some magical antidote. Sub games do plenty of dumb, player-unfriendly things. They're just able to get away with poor direction for longer, imo, thanks to those sub dollars.

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by voltaicbore.8012

[daninumbers.4036]

In my first mmo you needed a cash only item and you'd fuse 2 items together, one for stats and another one for the look that would be lost in the process. I see it as a win here since, yeah, at first it's hard to get them and you feel like not wasting them changing looks often, but trust me, later you'll be swimming in them. Basically all cash items come as a skin that you can apply for free (once). Legendaries are a very long term goal but they allow free changes. Map completion will I'd say 75% of the time give you one charge instead of a way more valuable key. Pvp / wvw reward tracks also give some, and (no idea about pvp) wvw skirmish chests give you a selection of a charge and you can get several a week.

Since one of the perks they introduced for legendaries was free of charge skin swap it'd be quite unfair that an, in comparision, way cheaper item doing gold to gems, had the same property. At the same time it feels like just a way to sell gems introducing a pointless system, but since you get so many it's just a problem for very dedicated fashion wars people swapping almost everyday and not wearing legendary gear.

[angrymouse.2340]

23 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

The game, once purchased, is F2P.  For goodness sakes, toss the devs a few bucks every now and then!

Bro, I spend a lot on games, they dont need to LIE to me or introduce awfull systems to do so. I was even really inclined to buy lot of skins from store IF THEY WERE ACTUALLY SKINS AND NOT TRANSMOGS

[Batel.9206]

You can also get transmutation charges just by logging in with the daily log-in rewards. Those do add up over time, though it's slow. For the rest of them...yeah, just play the game. Do PVP or WVW, or convert gold to gems and buy them from the gemstore. Be patient, and soon you'll have more than enough.

[RazielTheUnborn.2189]

50 minutes ago, angrymouse.2340 said:

Bro, I spend a lot on games, they dont need to LIE to me or introduce awfull systems to do so. I was even really inclined to buy lot of skins from store IF THEY WERE ACTUALLY SKINS AND NOT TRANSMOGS

 

Please explain how a Skin and a Transmog are different things. A skin, you apply a look to gear., Transmog you... apply a look to gear. What are you trying to say here?

 

Look, people have mentioned multiple free solutions to this problem for your friend. The game did not lie to either of you. Yes, the skin is unlocked in the Wardrobe. Yes, it requires Transmutation charges, charges the game does indeed give out to you for free, and frequently at that. As another person stated, the game is primarily pushing you to play the game to earn resources. 

Transmutation Charge (item) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

 

List of the ways to earn the charges. 

[angrymouse.2340]

5 minutes ago, RazielTheUnborn.2189 said:

 

Please explain how a Skin and a Transmog are different things.

Skins are for toons, transmogs are for items.

 

 

5 minutes ago, RazielTheUnborn.2189 said:

Look, people have mentioned multiple free solutions to this problem for your friend.

So explain me how he can use the transmog he BOUGHT while leveling? without any burden because you know... he bought

Edited July 22, 2022 by angrymouse.2340

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, angrymouse.2340 said:

Skins are for toons, transmogs are for items.

 

 

So explain me how he can use the transmog he BOUGHT while leveling? without any burden because you know... he bought

Skins is what this game call transmogs this is not wow and there for have not adapted their terminology mate.

What your friend would call skins are in this case outfits and you can point them to that instead.

[Danikat.8537]

8 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

Honestly I doubt they even sell many charges for actual gems bought with real money. For ArenaNet the item is probably seen as being sold at a net loss overall.

They won't be losing money on people buying transmutation charges (or anything else) with gold, because all gems bought with gold start off as gems bought with real money and traded for gold. (Someone described it as two boxes - you pay into one and take from the other, but you can only take what someone else has put in.)

However I doubt they make much money from transmutation charges because there's so many ways to get them for free. But then there's no on-going cost to stocking them in the gem store either so if they get the odd sale from someone it's still an overall profit.
 

5 hours ago, angrymouse.2340 said:

Skins are for toons, transmogs are for items.

 

 

So explain me how he can use the transmog he BOUGHT while leveling? without any burden because you know... he bought

As other people have explained all gem store skins give you 1 free use. If I remember correctly you just have to double click the item in your inventory and it will open the hero panel, show you the skin on your character and then you can confirm you want to use it at no cost.

After that you can keep using it because the skin will be permanently unlocked in the wardrobe, but using it that way costs transmutation charges. If your friend has a paid account (any type, doesn't matter which expansions) they'll get 3 transmutation charges every 28 days from login rewards. (Those don't reset if you miss a day, it will continue through the cycle from where you left off.) You can get more by doing map completion on any city and a chance from map completing any other map (I think it's approximately 66% chance of transmutation charges, 33% chance of a black lion key), or from playing WvW and PvP. Which means you'll get them regularly while levelling up because those are the main ways of doing it.

There are other ways to get them as well, but they're one-off, less reliable or more complicated like achievements (and the achievement point rewards) or buying them from festival vendors. There's a full list here.

[Gehenna.3625]

15 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Tell this to the folks over at SW:ToR

No kidding. They make just enough content to keep people playing, but just the bare minimum. Their "expansions" lately have the same amount of content as a decent size LW patch here. They just put endgame behind the sub so if you want to raid you have to be subbed etc. And then there is the restriction on how much currency you can have available if you're not subbed. Their version of gold is called credits. I think that F2P accounts can have 1 million credits, which sounds like a lot until you see the GTN (their version of the TP) and anything remotely interesting costs 100 million credits, up to 1 billion credits per item.

The main reason I quit is because of the lack of (new) content. I used to love the game, but it's grown stale over the years. They bring out the bare minimum of new content. They haven't come out with new explorable zones in years, for example. And the new story content with an expansion can be played through in about an hour. So no, they don't create an as enjoyable as possible experience, but rather they create the bare minimum to ensure that not too many people leave and enough come back just because there's a new expansion.

There's been a new expansion though that came out since I left. I didn't bite. Also the reports of the many bugs that came with that expansion is just hilarious if it wasn't sad. I think the expansion came out in February and they're still fixing a number of those bugs apparently.

[The Boz.2038]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

They won't be losing money on people buying transmutation charges (or anything else) with gold, because all gems bought with gold start off as gems bought with real money and traded for gold. (Someone described it as two boxes - you pay into one and take from the other, but you can only take what someone else has put in.)

what in the entire...

[Gehenna.3625]

58 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

what in the entire...

yep, the gold people use to buy gems, is the gold you can buy with gems and vice versa. And in both directions you pay a 15% fee so it's even a gold sink.

But all the gems you can buy with gold is from people who bought gold with gems and so they are indeed paid for by players. That's why there's an exchange rate that goes up and down, which serves to keep the balance between the two. If people buy a lot of gems with gold, you will get less and less making it less attactive and buying gold with gems becomes more attractive so that people who buy gold with gems will buy more gems to get gold with.

It's really quite ingenious when you think about it.

[The Boz.2038]

2 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

yep, the gold people use to buy gems, is the gold you can buy with gems and vice versa. And in both directions you pay a 15% fee so it's even a gold sink.

But all the gems you can buy with gold is from people who bought gold with gems and so they are indeed paid for by players. That's why there's an exchange rate that goes up and down, which serves to keep the balance between the two. If people buy a lot of gems with gold, you will get less and less making it less attactive and buying gold with gems becomes more attractive so that people who buy gold with gems will buy more gems to get gold with.

It's really quite ingenious when you think about it.

In that case, you worded it wrong. 
Gems bought in either method are created ex nihilo. Gold bought for gems is """"extracted"""" from the pile of gold spent on gems. 

[Gehenna.3625]

1 minute ago, The Boz.2038 said:

In that case, you worded it wrong. 
Gems bought in either method are created ex nihilo. Gold bought for gems is """"extracted"""" from the pile of gold spent on gems. 

 

You are wrong about gems being create ex nihilo; they are generated  with real money. The gems that players use for buying in game gold are the other pile and the gems people buy with gold are therefore also "extracted from that pile of gems.