when does the greed stop?

[Cuks.8241]

2 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

What are you playing? PvE? No you dont have advantage over him. sPvP? Gear is normalized to create equal sitation. WvW? If you are on the same server, of course not.

Full exotic BIS gear costs only a few gold. Every player could have the required gold for exotic gear just from playing the game after a few days.

The stat difference between exotics and ascended gear is only a few percent.  The stat difference between ascended and legendary is zero. The DPS differenced between a bad and a good players is around 1000% (can be 10 times, or more).

Gear is not unimportant in GW2 but skill matters most, not gear.

This was addressed in my first post in this topic and I agree. The hurdle you can pay to overcome is very small. Its still there and its technically still pay2win though. 

[Bladestrom.6425]

Just now, Cuks.8241 said:

This was addressed in my first post in this topic and I agree. The hurdle you can pay to overcome is very small. Its still there and its technically still pay2win though. 

again, Pay to Win is an established term, this is not it.

[Cuks.8241]

Just now, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

He doesn't understand the term Pay to Win as it is understood for this genre.  To fit his argument hew has picked a temporary moment in time where 2 played both under the 10 year old gear ceiling are 'racing' in some way or another, which has nothing to do with the core gameplay of GW2.

So have you reached the ceiling in this game? You are at max bis equipment and you will never need anything else? And this took you a few days? Ok, I concede, if thats true.

I'm playing for 5 years and I doubt I can reach that even if I spend all my gold and materials.

[Bladestrom.6425]

if you want an example of Pay to Win

https://mmorpg.gg/archeage-review/#:~:text=Yes%2C ArcheAge is considered to,significant advantages over other players.

Is ArcheAge Pay-to-Win?

Yes, ArcheAge is considered to be pay-to-win. The game has a Cash Shop that sells items that give players significant advantages over other players.

These advantages can make the game much less enjoyable for non-paying players. ArcheAge Unchained is less pay-to-win, but it is still possible to indirectly buy power in the game.

[Cuks.8241]

3 minutes ago, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

again, Pay to Win is an established term, this is not it.

Show me your established term please. For me pay2win is easy. Ability to buy power with credit card.

[Cuks.8241]

Just now, vesica tempestas.1563 said:

if you want an example of Pay to Win

https://mmorpg.gg/archeage-review/#:~:text=Yes%2C ArcheAge is considered to,significant advantages over other players.

Is ArcheAge Pay-to-Win?

Yes, ArcheAge is considered to be pay-to-win. The game has a Cash Shop that sells items that give players significant advantages over other players.

These advantages can make the game much less enjoyable for non-paying players. ArcheAge Unchained is less pay-to-win, but it is still possible to indirectly buy power in the game.

So basically GW2. You can buy power and you can also get significant QOL advantages.

Thank you.

[Bladestrom.6425]

 

4 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Show me your established term please. For me pay2win is easy. Ability to buy power with credit card.

Google is free, go for it. I gave an example above, Archeage is notorious for it.

Ask yourself why GW2 is not and you will understand why it is not Pay to Win.

Edited June 1, 2023 by vesica tempestas.1563

[Obtena.7952]

14 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

"Gold conversion of gems in NO WAY makes Anet revenue." The act itself not.

Right ... and that's what we are talking about.

14 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

But it opens additional market in the game. The gold market which brings additional different type of customer. Customers that want gold. That was my point. 

Whether it opens up 'additional market' to the game is debatable and highly speculative. It's weird to me to think that there's a whole market of player that would be attracted to the game because they can convert gold to get gems who wouldn't actually do that because they want gold. I mean, if you want gold, there are two ways to get it ... RL money or spending time in game getting it. Playing the conversion market is a VERY ineffective, long term strategy way to make gold. 

14 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

But you actually make a great point in first paragraph. That might actually be the best argument how this makes money for Anet. Hooking people with a little bit of "free" gems that they buy with gold. That is a common tactic, just get them to spend a few gems and the chance they will want more increases. 

That might be true (I think Anet did that before) but lets be clear ... giving people a 'taste' of gems to entice people to spend money to buy more is not relevant to the discussion of how gold conversion doesn't make Anet money.

But on that topic ... if Anet wants to entice people to buy gems, they should enable players to 'rent' GS items to use for a limited time, using a small gem fee of course. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Linken.6345]

43 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That's not true at all because the gems that are purchased with gold conversion are recycled/traded. Some portion of those gems would be making Anet revenue if gold conversion was not available. Probably not all ... but definitely SOME. 

So again, the answer to the question of 'How does Anet make revenues from gold conversion" is that ... THEY DON'T and the difference for Anet is not zero. The existence of gold conversion does lead to a loss of some revenue for Anet. Gold conversion most definitely doesn't MAKE them money. 

Every gem in the game except the ones from each 5k chests are bought by players for cold hard cash.

If gems are used in the store directly it goes poof.

If noone bought gems for gold the people wanting gold for their gems would stop buying gems for real cash since the market would crash.

That is how Anet make money from people turning their gold into gems.

Same thing if to many people buy gems with their gold the price for it go up making people hold onto their gold instead.

This happens when ever new shiny gets into the story pretty often btw.

It is not rocket sience.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Linken.6345

[Obtena.7952]

5 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Every gem in the game except the ones from each 5k chests are bought by players for cold hard cash.

If gems are used in the store directly it goes poof.

If noone bought gems for gold the people wanting gold for their gems would stop buying gems for real cash since the market would crash.

That is how Anet make money from people turning their gold into gems.

Same thing if to many people buy gems with their gold the price for it go up making people hold onto their gold instead.

This happens when ever new shiny gets into the story pretty often btw.

It is not rocket sience.

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. 

 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gibson.4036]

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.

Now how many people are going to sink $12.50 for 1 gold?

People still buy gems for their shiny skins and to remove designed pain points like inventory space, but they stop buying gems to convert to gold, leading to an overall loss of revenue.

Why? Because those "freeloaders" stopped buying gems with their in game gold.

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.

[Obtena.7952]

3 minutes 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.

Now how many people are going to sink $12.50 for 1 gold?

People still buy gems for their shiny skins and to remove designed pain points like inventory space, but they stop buying gems to convert to gold, leading to an overall loss of revenue.

Why? Because those "freeloaders" stopped buying gems with their in game gold.

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.

... and you think this theoretical scenario would even happen? I would LOVE to be in the board room when Anet explains to investors that some mechanic in the game that they didn't control caused a no revenue event. 

Make NO mistake .. you couldn't be more wrong if you think there isn't some kind of check and balance in place on the gold/gem market to create a situation where Anet would have to face angry investors for giving up the farm because of uncontrolled ingame markets affecting their revenues. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gibson.4036]

2 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

... and you think this theoretical scenario would even happen? I would LOVE to be in the board room when Anet explains to investors that some mechanic in the game caused them to have no revenues. 

My word. Of course I don't think this scenario would happen.

But it demonstrates that ArenaNet makes no money off of someone participating in half of an exchange. The fewer people there are buying gems with gold, the less appealing it is for people to pay real money for gems to exchange for gold. ArenaNet makes money off of the fact that there is a seller and a buyer in the gem/gold transaction. You can't isolate one side and say, "Hey, that's the person who swiped the credit card, therefore ArenaNet is making no revenue from the other person's involvement."

Edited June 1, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Gravitron.7982]

Just now, Gibson.4036 said:

My word. Of course I don't think this scenario would happen. But it demonstrates that ArenaNet makes no money off of someone participating in half of an exchange. The fewer people there are buying gems with gold, the less appealing it is for people to pay real money for gems to exchange for gold. ArenaNet makes money off of the fact that there is a seller and a buyer in the gem/gold transaction. You can't isolate one side and say, "Hey, that's the person who swiped the credit card, therefore ArenaNet is making no revenue from the other person's involvement."

Yeah, you can't have one without the other. 

[Obtena.7952]

36 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

 ArenaNet makes money off of the fact that there is a seller and a buyer in the gem/gold transaction. 

That makes no sense. Anet gets NO MONEY when people trade gold for gems. If I trade my Toyota car to someone for another car, Toyota is not making money from that. If anything, the person I trade my car to is not buying a new one, so it's a missed opportunity for Toyota to make revenue from new car sale. This is no different. 

But the interesting thing is that your scenario proves by extrapolation to the most extreme scenario where gems cost is so low that no one purchases gems with RL money ... that Anet can't make money from gold/gem exchange. The best scenario for Anet revenue is people ONLY obtain their gems from RL money purchases. Once people start taking advantage of conversion, some amount of revenue is lost. Certainly, none is made. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Zok.4956]

15 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

The hurdle you can pay to overcome is very small. Its still there and its technically still pay2win though. 

No, the hurdle, as you call it, is so small and without any real (dis-)advantage, that there is no real "win" you would "pay" for.

 

13 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

So have you reached the ceiling in this game? You are at max bis equipment and you will never need anything else?

I reached level 80 with full ascended gear a lof of years ago and never wanted or needed gear with better stats than ascended or a higher level than 80.  And stat-wise there are no better stats than ascended and no higher level than 80, so I have max BiS gear since then and reached the ceiling stat wise.

Did I needed or wanted other things since then? of course. I have three sets of legy armor, legy trinkets and few legy weapons. Do they give me any advantage over other players? No, they are just cosmetics and convenience.

Did I buy Hot, PoF and EoD? Of course. Are they P2W (pay to win)? No. They are B2P (buy to play).

[Zok.4956]

23 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Every gem in the game except the ones from each 5k chests are bought by players for cold hard cash.

Do you have proof for that? 

I know, as Anet explained back in the days with an analogy, how they calculate the gem/gold and gold/gem conversion prices depending on the demand on both sides.

But do you have proof that there is an exact amount/count of  "total free gems" that are available for gold->gem conversion and that could (in theory) run empty? Or could't it just be that Anet could modifiy the gem count (like a country could print bank notes), if it benefits the game economy?

[Obtena.7952]

9 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Do you have proof for that? 

I know, as Anet explained back in the days with an analogy, how they calculate the gem/gold and gold/gem conversion prices depending on the demand on both sides.

But do you have proof that there is an exact amount/count of  "total free gems" that are available for gold->gem conversion and that could (in theory) run empty? Or could't it just be that Anet could modifiy the gem count (like a country could print bank notes), if it benefits the game economy?

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. 

[Cuks.8241]

25 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

No, the hurdle, as you call it, is so small and without any real (dis-)advantage, that there is no real "win" you would "pay" for.

 

I reached level 80 with full ascended gear a lof of years ago and never wanted or needed gear with better stats than ascended or a higher level than 80.  And stat-wise there are no better stats than ascended and no higher level than 80, so I have max BiS gear since then and reached the ceiling stat wise.

Did I needed or wanted other things since then? of course. I have three sets of legy armor, legy trinkets and few legy weapons. Do they give me any advantage over other players? No, they are just cosmetics and convenience.

Did I buy Hot, PoF and EoD? Of course. Are they P2W (pay to win)? No. They are B2P (buy to play).

Thats all fine and well and true. Also saying you were full ascended years ago doesn't tell  how long it took you. And for some years is acceptable, for some it's days. Also stat wise ascended tier is only one portion of bis, you also need the correct stats and these can also change over time.

I'm completely fine with the monetisation system the game has, for me it's fair. But I dont understand why there is a need to find every possible excuse for Anet. 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.

Hey they are even selling equipment and build templates. Those could actually be considered as additional power in some wvw scenarios. Ability to adapt to the enemy with a press of button before the engagement starts can be huge. But I guess this will be nitpicked again because its just another small thing with barely any advantage (until it is).  

[Cuks.8241]

9 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). 

Why would they answer to investors and why would their revenue suffer if you claim they dont make any money from it? Actually according to you they are losing money on this so making the feature unattractive would benefit the investors.

[Obtena.7952]

9 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Why would they answer to investors and why would their revenue suffer if you claim they dont make any money from it? Actually according to you they are losing money on this so making the feature unattractive would benefit the investors.

Because gem to gold conversion has the potential to impact revenues in a negative way; it provides people an option to get things that would normally require RL money through alternative route. There is no contradiction there with the fact that conversion doesn't make Anet money. 

Again, it's seems highly unlikely that Anet's Revenue will increase because an option exists for people to obtain gems without spending RL money. 

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Cuks.8241]

2 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Because gem to gold conversion has the potential to impact revenues in a negative way. There is no contradiction there with the fact that conversion doesn't make Anet money. 

So it's a feature that can "critically" impact revenue but doesn't make them any money. And you don't see any contradiction here? Shaky. And I think it was quite clearly implied by several posters here we are talking about indirect revenue. 

[Obtena.7952]

7 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

So it's a feature that can "critically" impact revenue but doesn't make them any money. And you don't see any contradiction here? Shaky. And I think it was quite clearly implied by several posters here we are talking about indirect revenue. 

Yes, that's completely possible that a feature doesn't make them money and impacts their revenues critically. That's not a contradiction in any way. 

Define 'indirect' revenue? How is any money generated for Anet for a transaction between players where no money is involved and where there is missed opportunity for Anet to sell gems? Like, where does this money come from? You're trying to claim there are positive indirect effects to Anet's revenue from that exchange? How could you in good faith make that claim? 

How about y'all just stop re-inventing what revenues means to argue with people?

Edited June 1, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That makes no sense. Anet gets NO MONEY when people trade gold for gems. If I trade my Toyota car to someone for another car, Toyota is not making money from that. If anything, the person I trade my car to is not buying a new one, so it's a missed opportunity for Toyota to make revenue from new car sale. This is no different. 

 

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.

[Cuks.8241]

Just now, Obtena.7952 said:

Yes, that's completely possible that a feature doesn't make them money and impacts their revenues critically. That's not a contradiction in any way. 

Define 'indirect' revenue? How is any money generated for Anet for a transaction between players where no money is involved and where there is missed opportunity for Anet to sell gems?

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.