when does the greed stop?

[Obtena.7952]

5 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

We already went through this. I gave some examples, even you gave one. 

As far as direct/indirect.  Direct would be something like a tax on each transaction. Indirect is basically any other money gain that is impacted by the feature. And I am not economist, neither fluent enough in English especially when it come to economics so these might not be the correct terms.

I gave no example of how Anet generates revenues based on the gem/gold exchange. What I gave was an example of how Anet COULD generate interest in people purchasing GS items by renting them for a small gem fee. Those things are NOT the same. 

The application of a tax on the transaction is not something that exists in the game and therefore, Anet does not generate revenue from transactions based on a non-existent tax. They COULD make a tax ... but that's not relevant to the discussion here. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Obtena.7952]

11 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It is different. We are talking about an exchange of currencies here, not resale of tangible goods. It also ignores that it is a system by which a company scrapes back what would otherwise be revenue lost to a black market.

How is it different? Why can't my car be considered a currency as part of the trade example I give? It's no different than ingame gold or gems being a currency. I can label anything a currency as long as someone is willing to accept it as payment for something I want from them. 

Also, how is the conversion system a way for Anet to scrape back revenue lost to a black market if the conversion system doesn't give Anet revenues or prevent black market trading for the items the system controls? I mean, what black market is exists where gems are being traded? Unless I missed something, players can't trade gems. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Hold on ... the question here is what is the revenue that Anet make when someone converts gold to gems? I don't care where those gems come from because we know that they are infinitely available to purchase with RL money. People obtaining gems with gold can only result in a decrease in Anet revenues because the only other alternative to get gems is to spend RL money on them. 

 

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

No, people converting gold into gems does NOT make Anet revenue, PERIOD. The fact that the gold/gem trade exists must result in at BEST, no impact on revenue or at WORST, some negative impact on revenue. The BEST situation is that no one gets gems from gold and 100% of the gems people obtain are from RL money purchases. It's only down from there. 

There simply isn't a mechanism where Anet takes gems to some place to get money for them, just like there isn't one for engagement. 

 

 

42 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

We shouldn't deal in rhetorical questions with these deniers. Anet is most definitely maintaining some kind of control on the volume of gems available for conversion to maintain the attractiveness of the RL money gem purchasing. No one with any business acumen would allow such a critical and easy to eliminate risk to exist if that risk means having to answer to angry investors because of a significant drop in revenue (and consequently, value of the company). 

I think the problem here is that no one really wants to acknowledge GW2 is a business and it's designed to get money. So if people can 'invent' sources of revenue that aren't dipping into people's RL money, then it's easy for them to justify why Anet shouldn't be so 'greedy' by providing things for us to buy with RL money.  It's all very dishonest. 

There is no contradiction here I guess. You think this would hold water in a board meeting?

[Obtena.7952]

2 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

There is no contradiction here I guess. You think this would hold water in a board meeting?

I don't know what you're asking me buy simply quoting what I've already told you to argue with me. I see no contradiction in anything you've highlighted there. 

What I do know is that conversion doesn't generate revenue, but it does potentially lower it. There is no contradiction there. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Zok.4956]

25 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

But I dont understand why there is a need to find every possible excuse for Anet.

I'm not finding excuses for Anet. Why should I?

 

27 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

The game offers the option to buy power with cash and you can wrap it in as many excuses as you want that's still an option and until it will be there, the game is pay2win.

I'm not looking for excuses, I just don't share your (kind of) strange point of view with this. Is that so hard to grasp that there are other valid opinions?

 

30 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Hey they are even selling equipment and build templates.

Yes, they are. And when Anet communicated their final monetization of this convenience feature, I had a strong feeling, that it was over the top and greedy.  Just my opinion. At the time there were even internal discussions at Anet, that these should be free as a feature of IBS.

 

34 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Those could actually be considered as additional power in some wvw scenarios.

No.  That's really far fetched. And next you will want to tell that skins are P2W because they have a visual advantage? Or extra character slots? lol

 

[Gibson.4036]

3 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

How is it different? Why can't my car be considered a currency as part of the trade example I give? It's no different than ingame gold or gems being a currency. I can label anything a currency as long as someone is willing to accept it as payment for something I want from them. 

 

No, you can't. A currency exists solely for it's exchange value.

You can use the Toyota for ten years, then sell it to someone else, having extracted ten years of value for it. It's value to you is the first ten years, and you sell off whatever value is left in the rest of its life when you resell it.

Those gems you bought to sell for gold do you no good until you sell them for gold. And you wouldn't have bought them to sell for gold if there wasn't a demand to buy them. That's their entire value.

[Obtena.7952]

32 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

No, you can't. A currency exists solely for it's exchange value.

You can use the Toyota for ten years, then sell it to someone else, having extracted ten years of value for it. It's value to you is the first ten years, and you sell off whatever value is left in the rest of its life when you resell it.

Those gems you bought to sell for gold do you no good until you sell them for gold. And you wouldn't have bought them to sell for gold if there wasn't a demand to buy them. That's their entire value.

I'm not going to argue with you over the what you consider or not as a currency (and there are OTHER reasons to buy gems other than to convert them to gold so ... they have OTHER value streams than just gold, just like the example of the car). It's sort of irrelevant because the fact is that Anet does not get revenues from players exchanging gold to gems and vice versa. There is simply no money entering Anet's bank account in that exchange, regardless of what you label a currency or not. 

As for this black market clawback ... that makes no sense. What is the black market you are talking about? People selling Gold for RL money? How does the gem exchange prevent that AND generate a 'clawback' revenue for Anet? The problems with that 'theory'

1. Anet needs the conversion to be competitive with their own RL money gem purchasing option otherwise they lose revenues.
2. People that want gold sales are going to compete with Anet in a currency they can actually take to the bank, much less the fact IIRC you can't even trade gems with people ingame. 

The conversion just isn't relevant to whatever black market consideration you are making here. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Okay, so hypothetically, all the players buying gems with gold decide to stop. The lack of demand for gems devalues them to the point where players wanting to convert gems to gold can only get 1 gold for 1000 gems, compared to today's price, which is about 250 gold for 1000 gems.

This is unrealistic and will never happen. Because Anet will always make sure that enough customers have an incentive to buy gems with real money. Because gem sales (with real money) and expansions(seasons) sales (with real money) are the only revenue sources of Anet.

[Cuks.8241]

5 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

I'm not finding excuses for Anet. Why should I?

 

I'm not looking for excuses, I just don't share your (kind of) strange point of view with this. Is that so hard to grasp that there are other valid opinions?

 

Yes, they are. And when Anet communicated their final monetization of this convenience feature, I had a strong feeling, that it was over the top and greedy.  Just my opinion. At the time there were even internal discussions at Anet, that these should be free as a feature of IBS.

 

No.  That's really far fetched. And next you will want to tell that skins are P2W because they have a visual advantage? Or extra character slots? lol

 

I actually fully agree with most of your opinions and had the same premise at the start of this discussion. I am completely fine with gw2's monetisation and would not play the game otherwise.

But I still think the game is pay2win and as long as they are selling power (lets forget about QOL here because those are borderline) it will be for me. I don't see any reason not calling it like that just because its more user friendly than some other game which is again more user friendly than some third game...

I would not say skins in this game are p2w. The impact is to low. But in some fast fps games skins can be p2w and often the competitive scene will run standard model for everyone for that reason.

[Gravitron.7982]

22 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I actually fully agree with most of your opinions and had the same premise at the start of this discussion. I am completely fine with gw2's monetisation and would not play the game otherwise.

But I still think the game is pay2win and as long as they are selling power (lets forget about QOL here because those are borderline) it will be for me. I don't see any reason not calling it like that just because its more user friendly than some other game which is again more user friendly than some third game...

I would not say skins in this game are p2w. The impact is to low. But in some fast fps games skins can be p2w and often the competitive scene will run standard model for everyone for that reason.

Don't forget elite specs are locked behind paywalls, and they are more powerful than core specs.

[Gibson.4036]

26 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

This is unrealistic and will never happen. Because Anet will always make sure that enough customers have an incentive to buy gems with real money. Because gem sales (with real money) and expansions(seasons) sales (with real money) are the only revenue sources of Anet.

Yeah, it was a hypothetical to try and demonstrate how people buying gems with gold make the system work.

Eventually, it's more likely that things will go the opposite way from my hypothetical. If the game ages to the point where it's not getting new players looking for quick gold, the population becomes tilted toward a bunch of veterans with gold to spare, and gems become more and more expensive.

[Gibson.4036]

41 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

 There is simply no money entering Anet's bank account in that exchange, regardless of what you label a currency or not. 

If you buy a $25.00 gem card to sell 2000 gems for 514 gold because I'll pay 760 gold to buy them, where did the $25.00 go?

[Obtena.7952]

42 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

If you buy a $25.00 gem card to sell 2000 gems for 514 gold because I'll pay 760 gold to buy them, where did the $25.00 go?

Easy ... "The $25 goes to whoever I bought the card from"

and that still doesn't change the fact that Anet doesn't make revenues from conversions. The revenue was generated when the person bought the card, once and that's it. It's irrelevant what that person did with the card after they bought it. They could have thrown it all for all Anet cares because they already got the money. 

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gravitron.7982]

10 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Yeah, it was a hypothetical to try and demonstrate how people buying gems with gold make the system work.

Eventually, it's more likely that things will go the opposite way from my hypothetical. If the game ages to the point where it's not getting new players looking for quick gold, the population becomes tilted toward a bunch of veterans with gold to spare, and gems become more and more expensive.

Yeah, Star Trek Online suffers from the opposite spectrum of the problem. There are tons and tons of players that have dilithium banked (in-game currency) that want to exchange it for Zen (cash shop currency), but not enough people are buying zen to sell, so dilithium orders just sit for weeks sometimes, and the F2P players end up getting way less zen because the value swings in favor of zen instead of diluthium. 

They both rely on each other to work, and when one side is suddenly not pulling their weight, the other side suffers and eventually the market collapses on itself. And it's not like game devs can force people to supply cash shop currency, they can only try to entice players to buy gems by making it worth their while in gold, but if no one is really buying gems, then people with gold won't want to sell their gold for the high exchange rates, so on and so forth. 

[AlCapwnd.7834]

On 5/24/2023 at 6:42 AM, Holmindeboks.3490 said:

the only ppl who get rewarded seems wvwers, pvpers,

As a WvW main this is a joke right? 🤣

[Zok.4956]

35 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Yeah, it was a hypothetical to try and demonstrate how people buying gems with gold make the system work.

Sure. The conversion prices are related to the demand of gem/gold and gold/gem conversions. But only within acceptable limits, or Anet will internally intervene and adjust their demand-price-function.

 

Quote

It takes both a buyer and seller of gems in the gold/gem exchange to earn ArenaNet the cost of those gems. ArenaNet is a business, and they don't offer the gold/gem conversion out of their overflowing kindness. It's a way of taking revenue that would otherwise be gained by RMTraders and bring it back home to NCSoft/ArenaNet.

There are a lof of reasons why Anet is allowing the gold-to-gem conversions. One is, because buying black-lion-keys (with gems) would be considered gambling in some countries (if you could get gems only with real money) and the game then could not have a pegi-12 rating. 

The fact remains, that Anet is ONLY earning money if someone is buying gems with real money or if someone is buying an expansion (or a season) with real money. 

 

39 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

If you buy a $25.00 gem card to sell 2000 gems for 514 gold because I'll pay 760 gold to buy them, where did the $25.00 go?

If I buy a $25 GEM card my money goes to Anet (minus the provision of the reseller, that money goes to the reseller). That's simplified, because the reseller already paid Anet for the card before I purchased it.

It doesn't matter for Anet's revenue what I do with the gem card. I could burn the card or throw it in a bin, I could enter the code in game and buy something with it (BL items or gold) or I could let the gems stay in my account until I retire.

 

[Gibson.4036]

12 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

 

 

If I buy a $25 GEM card my money goes to Anet (minus the provision of the reseller, that money goes to the reseller). That's simplified, because the reseller already paid Anet for the card before I purchased it.

It doesn't matter for Anet's revenue what I do with the gem card. I could burn the card or throw it in a bin, I could enter the code in game and buy something with it (BL items or gold) or I could let the gems stay in my account until I retire.

 

Except changes in the demand for gold -> gems changes how many people are buying gem cards. People aren't buying cards to throw them away. They're buying them for gem items, and more of them if it's worth it to get gold.

The gem exchange leads to more gem cards bought than if it didn't exist. That's why ArenaNet made it part of the game. They didn't put the exchange in the game for happy feels. They did it because there was a return to be had.

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Obtena.7952]

1 minute ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Except changes in the demand for gold -> gems changes how many people are buying gem cards. People aren't buying cards to throw them away. They're buying them for gem items, and more of them if it's worth it to get gold.

 

Sure ... but that doesn't change the fact that Anet doesn't generate revenue from gem to gold exchanges, legal or not. The discussion here isn't about the varying conditions that people are or are not willing to convert gold or buy gems or the value they have to Anet. The discussion here is simple. That Anet generates revenue selling gems and that it is nonsense for anyone to pretend that 'indirect revenues" of any other sort is somehow an indication that there is some baked in greed in this system. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gibson.4036]

 

1 minute ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Sure ... but that doesn't change the fact that Anet doesn't generate revenue from gem to gold exchanges, legal or not. 

Without the exchange, some of those cards wouldn't be sold. Therefore they earned money because of the exchange.

 

[Gibson.4036]

I own a bar. I offer free drinks to women because when they come, more men show up and buy drinks.

But I'm not making any money due to the women coming to my bar?

Edited June 1, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Obtena.7952]

3 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

 

Without the exchange, some of those cards wouldn't be sold. Therefore they earned money because of the exchange.

 

Sure, except why would you assume Anet wouldn't also make gemt o gold conversion available if the exchange didn't exist? That's a pretty contrived crystal ball kind of argument right there, especially considering Anet IS interested in selling gems. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gibson.4036]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

You don't know that. If the exchange didn't exist, you assume Anet wouldn't also make gemt o gold conversion available? That's a pretty contrived crystal ball kind of argument right there, especially considering Anet IS interested in selling gems. 

It's pretty clear, at least when they built the game, that ArenaNet felt they'd make more money with the exchange the way it is. Otherwise, they would have designed it differently.

They've also had a decade to rework it if it was a loss.

[Obtena.7952]

17 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

It's pretty clear, at least when they built the game, that ArenaNet felt they'd make more money with the exchange the way it is. Otherwise, they would have designed it differently.

They've also had a decade to rework it if it was a loss.

Sure ... but that's not what we are discussing. No one is suggesting they take anything away here or the exchange be modified. We are just establishing the fact that Anet doesn't make revenue when people exchange gold for gems or vice versa.  The revenue is generated when the gems are purchased.

That's not just pedantic either because people are wrongfully arguing that that exchange has value to Anet as a revenue generator. That's not accurate ... it's only valuable to Anet as a revenue generator if you exchange purchased gems for gold. 

If you want to make hypothetical arguments about what would happen to Anet's revenue if the exchange didn't exist or was different, I could ALSO make hypothetical arguments about what they could replace that exchange with to maintain those revenues.  

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Swagger.1459]

10 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

 

Without the exchange, some of those cards wouldn't be sold. Therefore they earned money because of the exchange.

 

.... Anet earns 0 amount of money from a gold to gems transaction. 

... ... Anet sells gems to make money with the b2p monetization model, they would never not be sold. 

...

 

[Gibson.4036]

10 minutes ago, Swagger.1459 said:

.... Anet earns 0 amount of money from a gold to gems transaction. 

... ... Anet sells gems to make money with the b2p monetization model, they would never not be sold. 

...

 

But the amount sold increases with the demand for gold->gems. Therefore the demand makes ANet money.