Let's talk gemstore and what remains to be monetized

[hugo.4705]

The gemstore along the years saw a lot of differents things added:

-Weapons skins

-Armor skins

-Finishers

-Upgrades

-Toys

-Miniatures

-Outfits

-Gliders skins

-Mount skins

-Fishing rod skins

-Jade bot skins

-Skiff skins

 

The three items, in greatest amounts are currently Mount skins, Gliders skins and Outfit skins. And after if you want exclusive weapons skins.

 

But there is one thing, present still CORE 2013 that the gemstore team could monetize:

- Skill/Pet appearances.

What are the pros?

-> There are 9 professions, 27 specs in total, each with at least 10 skills (weapon-heal-utilities-elite) without counting the differents elites, different possibles weapons and the gimmicks (pets-turrets-elementals-clones-traps-spirit weapons-legends-minions-banners).

-> Skin designs possible are endless.

-> Like mounts or gliders, it is surely a safe bet, as it changes how you look and will be easily noticed by others, eventually convincing them to buy those skins too.

-> If anyone is scared/bothered to don't recognize the enemy skills and pets in pvp or wvw, this isn't an issue. Why? First, even if your lynx become a mecha terminator cat, over its head, it is still displayed lynx. Secondly, an option in settings can be added "show default skills skins for other players" . Thirdly, are you bothered to see a fluffy bear jumping on you instead of a regular warclaw in wvw? If not, it is the same here, it doesn't matter how look your death, you know the foe profession so you have an idea of its skills.

THIS IS THE ONLY THING TOUCHING MAIN APPEARANCE THAT CAN GENERATE BENEFITS.

I don't have the selling stats of the gemstore, but seing the producrion rate of mount skins it means those work well, but it worths nothing to try, things like learn to dance volumes or pet whistles exist, and they aren't a lot. It worths it to try the skill skin idea and see if it works. An engie turret reskin? A new skin for necro minions? Whatever: Asura like turrets and awakened minions for necro?

 

 

THERE IS A SECOND THING.

Almost as old, guilds date from 2014. 

No no no, I turn it in any way in my head, there is no way to generate long term stuff for guild on gemstore or let's say refund the investissement.

I will speak of something more moderate, upgrades.

The guilds are still stuck in 2013, lacking many services. Guild hall have been killed by lounges.

Let me explain:

A lounge is accessible without expansion, the mistlock sanctuary as example, in addition of letting you return where you where, have all commodities: travelling to cities, fractals, have a trading post, bank, even mystic forge.

There is no reason to go into a guikd hall now. Apart from scribing. As lounge do what the guild hall does apart scribing.

IT WAS AN ERROR TO CREATE LOUNGES.

Whereas the guild hall was a breath taking of HoT new feature adding the unique way to have housing and scribing and special services, it now feel like a chesp gimmick compared to lounge.

WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE RIGHT MOVE?

Selling on gemstore guild hall upgrade:

-Add asura gate to fractals.

-Add strike portals.

-Add LS4 and LS5 (icebrood saga) vendors .

-Add dungeon vendor.

-Add fast travel to main cities asura gate.

-Add trading post and bank.

IN SUM SELLING UPGRADES FOR GUILD HALL TO TURN IT INTO A LOUNGE, NOT CREATING 50 LOUNGES.

This way, the guild hall woukd have felt still relevant today, nevralgic point for launch of operations with the guild.

Today, you don't have to join a guild, you can simply go on LFG with the correct gear build and find peoples to do what you want. And it is sad for guilds. 

Spoiler

I will just tell you a tiny adventure of myself.

Recently I wanted to have my own housing, I put myself of LFG, in less than 30 mins, I found 5 very nice players happy to help me claim lost precipice guild hall. The same day I started restoring it, tavern I, then mine I and workshop I. I am now cozily installed, able to use the scribe station to decorate this house that is an entire map.

And what I noticed is that, this 10 years old content is sadly restrained to the guild hall, there is no decoration vendors in core tyria maps, nor in HoT ones, nor in Ls3 ones apart lake doric selling caudecus painting. In Ls4, there is only jahai bluffs gravedigger npc selling joko statues and in dragonfsll 3 quartermasters with respectively a flower, a fire fountain and a dead tree. But istan-sandswept-kourna have none.

Ls5 tried to bring them back: Charr heliplatform, charr cannon, charr tank, devourer monument for grothmar, raven and owl statues along shrines for bjora, trees and conversion machine for drizzlewood. Ls5 was awesome regarding scribing, I still return to those map today to get decos.

But cantha was a regression. Just a dragon head and jadebot worknench. Almost 0. Whereas HoT and PoF added ton of guild hall decoration.

Even the last map. Gyala delves. Added NOTHING. I'M suffering to not have jade brotherhood decorations, nor chinese styled one. Nothing. 

Frankly I dunno. What is better? Adding decorations with festivals, or creating a lounge that have scribing and have ton of npcs selling unique decos, covering all races and factions? I can dream.

 

To return to the main subject:

What characterize a player, what a player mostly show to others, and what others notices the most about other players? In order:

1- If they wear a legendary or not. Infusion or not.

2- If they are wearing an outfit or not.

3- If they are using basic mount skins or not.

4- If they are using basic glider or not.

Skiffs? Jade bots? No. Those are too niches, indeed skiff is on water, when doing metas or world bosses there is generally no water. A jade bot skin is hardly seen in melee or during a meta.

So what would be another great stuff to customize? I re say it, our skills.

On a world boss, a meta, or events, what you see the most is that eye burning mayhem of used skill. I bet that most of the time, it is skill effects thay is seen on screen. So it make sense to be interested to custonize those.

 

And really there is lirerally nothing else yoi could make benefits on.  I hope skiffs sell well. But if gaining more is on the table, skills may be the idea.

Gliders - Mounts - Skiff, aka Air - Earth - Water already cover movrments.

Outfits - Armors - Weapons already cover the character in itself along makeover kit.

Miniatures - Finishers - Instruments - Chairs already cover the gizmo/fun part.

The only aspect remaining is rendering:

-How skills renders. (Weapons, utility, elite...)

-Profession gimmicks appearance (pets, clones ...)

-The voice our character have. (Deep, high, scary...)

 

It is hard to project ourselves in the next expansion or next big features, but it is hard to see what could be added. A mercenary sysyem? Housing not requiring guild? Surely no for both.

Vehicles? Nope.

Grappling hook, digger? Useless.

It felt like icebrood saga main feature was eye if the north, but it is pretty meh. Let's say it is a free lounge just like arborstone. 

 

I will confess. When skiffs were announced, I expected them to be like in zelda phantom houglass, a cannon to shoot at distance, an anchor attached grzppling hook to catch inderwater chest and recover them and the possibility to enter in the boat to see our little cabin.

The commander don't have a real house, after 10 years of adventure.

[Randulf.7614]

Skills will be off the table I would think. We are talking a monstrous amount of work to gain next to nothing. What do you change a fireball to? It has to stay a fireball, so do you change its colour? That feels utterly pointless.

Minions I get. I don’t have any issue there. But, skills in general? I think the artists have enough on their plate without such a trivial addition. I’m also unconvinced micro transacting down to such a level is a positive look for the game.

Voices will also be ruled out. VA does not come cheap and takes up a lot of studio time. More options is apparently quite resource intensive.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[DarcShriek.5829]

TLDR.  try to stay focused.

[Zebulous.2934]

I mean, I would love for my mesmer skills to generate butterflies of other colors.  Clones exploding into amber or cerulean butterflies would be nice.
 Truly though, I want different skins for those jade mechs.  Even just recolor skins.  I just don't like the sight of the default Jade Mech.  I don't even have a mechanist.  The novelty of seeing those faceless monstrosities everywhere has warn-off for me.   Just two other versions of the jade mech would provide variety and visual relief.

[Shuzuru.3651]

Didn't read everything, too messy. 

 

But here is one point fondamentaly wrong in your text :

Guild Hall were never meant to remplace city or lounge, so no, lounge didn't kill Guild Hall, as the two have function fondamentaly different so are not even on competition. 

[Zephire.8049]

Guild hall perks would never have been added (and should never be added). Someone could spend money to deck out a hall with various things only to find themself kicked and not be able to benefit from the real money they put in. Do they contact support? Do a chargeback? Let it be? Contact the media? Take legal action? It would open a huge can of worms to allow people to buy guild hall upgrades with real money.

And voice packs are another no as the costs to that add up fast between coding it to work, hiring more VAs, studio time, the audio team's time, and the cleanup. Even if you run through what's currently available through filters, that's thousands of individual lines that would need to be done times 10 and filters only do so much (and MMOs are typically well over 100k lines of script, though not all that is the player character). It's something that really needs to be done from the start otherwise it builds up to be too big and expensive a task to bother with.

Pet/mech/turret skins wouldn't be bad provided they're disabled in PvP, though there's the issue of how it would favour some professions more than others. Engies, necros, and rangers would be easy but what would you do for warriors, revenants, and guardians? Bag slots and build templates already garner complaints for being restricted to one character, what happens if something is only applied to one class? To be fair, it would have to be sold as a bundle or have something for every profession in each theme, but then there will be accusations of favouritism if, say, engie gets a skin for every turret they have while revenant gets a different coloured trail (can't change the tablet or charr spirits to anything else due to how closely they're tied to their respective legends).

It's a lot more complicated than saying a company should do X or monetize Y.

It's also weird pitching more ways a company could hit players with "micro" transactions. Wanting options is fine, but why would you go with "micro" transactions first when it could be tied to in-game content like if you do a questline or do a meta achievement, you get said options? Help out with sylvari, get sylvari-themed skill/minion skins or if a guild does X missions they unlock a mystic forge, ya know?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

lounge didn't kill Guild Hall

In addition, Lounges preceded Guild Halls by 2 years. 

[Urud.4925]

Please don't suggest to add skins to the current skills. It's already impossible to understand what's happening normally, I can't imagine what it'll be adding skins (and we know that to make them more appealing than the standard ones, ArenaNet must make them flashier). I remember Aion had some skins for few skills (a sorcerer could transform a target into a scarecrow instead of a standard tree) and no one bought them after few months.

Moreover, it's not unimportant to recognize the skills at glance, as you said. In PvP for example, it would be annoying to have to click on a pet to see from the portrait what kind of pet it is: recognizing threats at first glance is important.

Guild halls could receive some more love, I agree. They are not useless btw. They can be used to buy gathering tools, selling junk items or take something from the bank, and then come back to where you were. Sure, you can also do it from WvW. But I feel like they will be abandoned content and some personal player house will be added at some point. That would be a real new important way to monetize imo. For now, mounts are fine. It's not up to us, players, to suggest them ways to monetize their game.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

1. Introduce fully decoratable player housing with a GW1 style Hall of Monuments for displaying your achievements, weapons, armor, legendaries, miniatures, pets and ofc a place outside for your mounts.
2. Introduce all kinds of gemstore housing decorations, upgrades, vault storage, wallpaper, tiles, guards, services.
3. ????
4. Profit!

[Dibit.6259]

Tbh, with how many people ask, I'm surprised they don't make a tonic that turns into another race and can be used in combat (similar to the tonics that make you big or small.) Granted you won't be able to customize it like Character creation but it might somewhat itch a scratch people have.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Or scratch an itch! 

[Dibit.6259]

1 hour ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Or scratch an itch! 

When dyslexia strikes 😅

[Schimmi.6872]

4 hours ago, Dibit.6259 said:

Tbh, with how many people ask, I'm surprised they don't make a tonic that turns into another race and can be used in combat (similar to the tonics that make you big or small.) Granted you won't be able to customize it like Character creation but it might somewhat itch a scratch people have.

Afaik there is already at least one of each race and they are even available as ingame rewards.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

3 hours ago, Schimmi.6872 said:

Afaik there is already at least one of each race and they are even available as ingame rewards.

I, personally, have not seen a Tengu combat tonic; Tengu seems to be the most requested race.

[Urud.4925]

Skritt and quaggan also don't have a combat tonic, despite being among the most used non-combat tonics. I think a lot of people would use them for RP.

[Vavume.8065]

On 4/12/2023 at 12:19 AM, Randulf.7614 said:

Minions I get. I don’t have any issue there. But, skills in general?

If I could change mesmer skills from being pink then I would probably create a mesmer.

[Justforvisit.3709]

On 4/12/2023 at 1:10 AM, hugo.4705 said:

But there is one thing, present still CORE 2013 that the gemstore team could monetize:

- Skill/Pet appearances.

Completely ruled out due to PvP balancing. You have to be able to read the skills.

[Schimmi.6872]

15 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I, personally, have not seen a Tengu combat tonic; Tengu seems to be the most requested race.

I should have added that i meant the playable races, but as the post I quoted also was about character customisation I didn't thought about all the NPC-races.

[Wolfshade.9251]

I'd pay gems to reduce the visual clutter, not increase it.

[Freya.9075]

Ooo I would pay the big bucks to get some cute fluffy minion skins. However it wouldn’t make much sense for my male asura to call forth his brainless minions. And hearing him say “arise my cuties, arise” doesn’t have the same punch to it 👀 But temptation to get them would still be too great. Brainless cute fluffy pink minions? Yes please. Give them googly eyes and it would all make sense that they have no brain 😁

[Astralporing.1957]

On 4/12/2023 at 7:40 AM, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Didn't read everything, too messy. 

 

But here is one point fondamentaly wrong in your text :

Guild Hall were never meant to remplace city or lounge, so no, lounge didn't kill Guild Hall, as the two have function fondamentaly different so are not even on competition. 

The fact that guildhalls were never even close to be a competition did kill them.

For those confused - the primary purpose of a guildhall is to act as a lounge/utility for guildmembers. If a guildhall cannot fulfill that primary function, it is pretty much useless. And in GW2 they were designed from the get go to not have that function. This is what killed them (or, to be more precise, never allowed them to live from the very beginning). They simply lack a purpose that would make them important enough to matter.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Shuzuru.3651]

6 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The fact that guildhalls were never even close to be a competition did kill them.

For those confused - the primary purpose of a guildhall is to act as a lounge/utility for guildmembers. If a guildhall cannot fulfill that primary function, it is pretty much useless. And in GW2 they were designed from the get go to not have that function. This is what killed them (or, to be more precise, never allowed them to live from the very beginning). They simply lack a purpose that would make them important enough to matter.

Wrong, the primary purpose of a guildhall is to be a private place for guild members to regroup and appropriate it. 

And it fully fulfilled his role.

There is no point in having a private town/lounge.