They are selling hero points in the gem store now

[Kandrax.1504]

People just don’t really know what ‘P2W’ means but like throwing cool words around. It literally means I pay & I beat you (if you do not also pay to keep up).

This is not the case, you get a bunch of points which are trivial to get in the first place, you don’t beat anyone unfairly with your money.

Yeah, there are people with disposable income who will buy it, same as there are people who inherited a couple millions of old money while you work your 9-5 to still struggle with your utility bill. What should we do now, remove them from life?

And as a PS, gold can be officially bought in unlimited quantities since day 1, which in turn can literally buy you everything in the game, up to account piloting for solo achievements. Has been like this in every MMO that ever existed. Gold/main currency will be bought either legally or illegally.

[Solvar.7953]

I'm just waiting for them to put Gifts of Battle in the gem store.  Based on the number of posts of people wanting other ways to get them, they would get a decent number of people buying them.  Some number of people would go apoplectic, some players might actually quit, but I suspect Anet would make more money from those buying them vs lost money from those who quit (probably same for this hero point change - I suspect the few players who really do quit the game because of this have not spent much money on the game recently, but rather have been unsatisified for quite a while, and this was just the final piece to make a tipping point).

Lets face it, Anet is in the business to make money, so they will sell whatever they can.  There is a minor balancing act of not annoying your players so much that they quit in large numbers - I don't think this crosses that line.

 

[Albadaran.1283]

8 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

Does it matter? Not sure why people are so bent out of shape over this. They've had the Waypoint unlocks since 2017 and I don't recall people fussing about it this much.

Has zero effect on PvP, and WvW/PvE literally every new player starts at a disadvantage until they level up, so it's nowhere near P2W.

Also..... who in their right mind thinks paying $157.00 USD (or 3773g) to save you maybe 10-12hrs of playtime to be a reasonable trade?

At best this is a convenience item for those who don't like WvW and can't seem to find a group to do the Group HP's in HoT. Literally everything else in the game is soloable while holding a slurpee in the other hand.

That is a very good question! I have the feeling that the game is becoming too easy just for the sake of: whenever everyone is level 80 they will spend real money to buy goodies for gems / gold to make more progress. No! you should earn it by playing the game! And I don't care if people like to buy stuff for easy leveling, but for me it takes away the challenge if everything is for sale.

[DeanBB.4268]

26 minutes ago, Geoff Fey.1035 said:

Also..... who in their right mind thinks paying $157.00 USD (or 3773g) to save you maybe 10-12hrs of playtime to be a reasonable trade?

Uh, no. A fully unlocked elite spec costs 1000 gems, just half a $25 gift card.

[Player.2475]

It's an absolute embarrassment. What were they thinking?

I will make sure to go out of the way to remind new players that they can play WvW for a week to unlock all skill points on any character without having to pony up €25.

[Geoff Fey.1035]

12 minutes ago, DeanBB.4268 said:

Uh, no. A fully unlocked elite spec costs 1000 gems, just half a $25 gift card.

The calc I put in was if someone wanted to unlock literally every single HP in the game (including Krait Obelisk, if these even unlock it).

If someone is already level 80, it takes maybe an hour to fully unlock an Elite Spec in the Expansions.

Still comes back to why would someone really bother with this unless they have wild levels of disposable income.

[Dopamine.6324]

ppl thinking hp unlocks are p2w are same ppl who want anet stop doing expansions cuz those are p2w too

[Wing.5819]

12 minutes ago, Dopamine.6324 said:

ppl thinking hp unlocks are p2w are same ppl who want anet stop doing expansions cuz those are p2w too

no, just no.

[Sugar Min.5834]

So they chose to sell power creep in the gem store instead of selling QoL stuff like fashions (swimsuit) and guild hall decorations. Now you can pay cash to get your elite skills? Well, GW2 is not Pay to Win.

Edited November 29, 2023 by Sugar Min.5834

[Darklord Roy.2514]

Ehhhhh... not really sure I buy this argument. Now if you had said this was a noob trap, like essence of gold and obsidian shards in wizard's vault, I would agree with you. However, noob traps are pretty much the direct antithesis of P2W. They're asking you to spend real money on something that is already insanely easy for even a brand new level 80 player to get.

That isn't a power boost. You are not becoming inherently stronger than another random level 80 player by getting access to all of your specializations and abilities, you are literally just buying *the ability to play the game at max level, instantly.* Couple this with the fact that everyone has already had the ability to skip every expansion hero challenge in the game on multiple characters by playing an incredibly casual amount of WvW, while also not spending any gold to do so, and what you have is a waste of real money.

I would argue that being able to convert gems to gold is infinitely more P2W than buying hero challenges, and I don't particularly care about gem conversions either. You are not buying power, you're buying *convenience.* Huge difference.

[Darklord Roy.2514]

19 minutes ago, Sugar Min.5834 said:

So they chose to sell power creep in the gem store instead of selling QoL stuff like fashions (swimsuit) and guild hall decorations. Now you can pay cash to get your elite skills? Well, GW2 is not Pay to Win.

Every account who owns an expansion is able to get their elite spec in less than an hour of casual playtime after hitting level 80. People run hero point trains all the time. They're free, and insanely fast.

In what world is this power creep? How are you "stronger" by instantly getting the exact same thing that I can get in 30 minutes for free?

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

This item, waypoint unlockers not being account wide for how expensive it is, and how Lyhr's vendor works with the unnecessary ecto extra charge. They are all hostile noob traps. Decisions like these really take off full points from a game's overall score.

This is not pay to win at all. This is something almost as bad. Anet discovered that players are having trouble getting HPs, but instead of fixing it, they made a pay to skip.

So when do they add Gift of Battle to the gem store?

Edited November 29, 2023 by Eloc Freidon.5692

[Randulf.7614]

6 minutes ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

This item, waypoint unlockers not being account wide for how expensive it is, and how Lyhr's vendor works with the unnecessary ecto extra charge. They are all hostile noob traps. Decisions like these really take off full points from a game's overall score.

When do they add Gift of Battle to the gem store?

I am almost willing to bet either this or exploration gift will be either in the store if the vault by next expansion. Bookmark this prediction!

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

On 11/28/2023 at 1:11 PM, Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

Can we get Heart unlocks for WvW currency next?

Or better yet, Tomes from PvE to grant WvW levels.

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

I am affraid this is a bit a New Player trap. I mean Random Complete any Hero in an expansion map. Knowing how long hero's take and how some are communes, I would feel cheated if it was a commune, or a PoF or even worse the super easy EoD ones. 

For 50 gems, you should give control in my humble oppinion. 

Just my 2 cents, I understand they need to make money, but for a seasoned player it is not worth it

[Darklord Roy.2514]

On 11/28/2023 at 12:28 PM, SpyderArachnid.5619 said:

They removed the power boosters from the gem store when people complained about those, back in the beginning of GW2.

Power boosters were also legitimate P2W though. They were almost exclusively acquirable via paid methods (BL chests and gems) and essentially could be thought of as an extra piece of gear that just gave you 5% bonus damage at all times, that you would otherwise *never* have without getting that item.

Hero points, conversely, are something that every single character on every account will *always* unlock with hundreds of extras to spare after finishing all specializations. Nobody is playing GW2 without training specializations unless they're doing some weird meme run through the game.

Paying for convenience and paying for power are two completely different things.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

55 minutes ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

Or better yet, Tomes from PvE to grant WvW levels.

Nah, just let me unlock hearts with WvW currency. Those are the worst part of the game to me. I don't mind doing hero points.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

That's a great idea tbh. When I create a new alt (24 so far) I'm inspired, I have an idea and I want to try it out. It kind of sucks using all my leveling scrolls to get to 80 and then still having to do hero points for hours before I can get my build done. I'm the sucker who will pay for the ability to skip doing HPs for the 20th time.

It doesn't feel like a noob trap at all to me. A new player has very little reason to pay for HP unlocks when they don't even really understand elite specs yet and they find out they can accrue HP very easily. It feels very much geared toward open-world players who just don't want to spend all night farming HPs to build a new alt.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Elricht Kaltwind.8796

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Much of this thread hinges on the definition of Pay to Win (P2W) but really I think the issue is freemium type gameplay in general. The freemium model essentially boils down to making game progression difficult enough, or usually, time consuming enough (your time is usually what freemium games abuse, rather than skill) that the player is constantly fighting the urge to pay money to progress to avoid wasting too much time. For this to work well progression needs to slow to an absolute crawl and that's what most effective (aka evil) freemium games will do once they have got players sufficiently hooked.

GW2 generally doesn't have this problem. And as many people have said, Hero Points are not an example of this problem. Yes, some of them can be hard, but it's hard in a way that makes for a good challenge and fun gameplay, rather than a freemium "you will grind for 20 hours straight to unlock the next 10 hero points" way. Furthermore, if they are still too hard (and hence not fun gameplay) for some people then the Hero Point Trains mean that anyone who can logon during vaguely peak times can bypass this challenge and unlock HPs in easy mode.

So yeah. I can see the concern and the concept of selling hero points for real world money could be the start of a slippery slope depending on what else Anet sell in future, but I don't see this step as embodying any of what makes freemium/P2W games abusive.

[EphemeralWallaby.7643]

2 hours ago, Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

So when do they add Gift of Battle to the gem store?

They did earlier this year (in late March) indirectly and temporarily.  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potion_of_Mist_Rewards came back for a bit as guaranteed in black lion chests... 80 keys got peeps 80 potions which got 'em a Gift of Battle if they wanted one, plus all the rest of the stuff in the reward track, and everything from whatever PvP reward track they chose.

I kept a stock of keys bought from sales over the years for the eventuality of those potions returning.  It was a very happy day for me. 

~EpWa

Edited November 30, 2023 by EphemeralWallaby.7643

[Sugar Min.5834]

I wonder will we see legendary relics in the gem store...

[Darklord Roy.2514]

On 11/28/2023 at 12:21 PM, Wing.5819 said:

I know how to feel about it....

I'll be quitting if that isn't promptly removed.

I will absolutely not play any Pay to Win game. I don't give a kitten that I have 10+ years in this game. 

I'm not gonna tell you not to feel annoyed or anything, but let's not spread ignorance.

Buying hero points is *not* pay to win. It's a convenience noob trap at worst. It is not giving you any form of actual gameplay advantage over another player in any game mode whatsoever, it is literally just doing something that you would be doing on any character anyway, but faster. No character is in any way stronger than anyone else because of this.

If you have been fine with people being able to spend money to buy gold directly inside the game client via gem conversion for the past 11 years, I don't see why people buying hero points is suddenly the end of the world. It is not going to affect your gameplay in any way, shape, or form.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm just wondering about the reason why they've done it.  Well, to make money, but the other reason.  Is player retention dropping off so fast that they're selling hero points in the hopes that whales will stick around longer?  21 gold for a hero point is not a fair trade by any standard, so I'm wonder exactly who the clientele for this will be.  

[BumboJumbo.1308]

Lol to the people now saying this game has pay to win.

You can literally buy gold by converting gems to gold

You can literally buy level 80 boost

You can literally buy storage space.

You can literally buy character slots

You can literally buy infinite gathering tools

You can literally buy infinite fishing lure

You can literally buy infinite salvage kits

You can literally buy waypoint unlocks...

But people all of a sudden care about being able to literally buy Hero points.

[Bunny.9834]

This looks very desperate ngl. 

To stoop this low prolly means the finances are not doing well. 

yikes.