Why do so many things end up behind a paywall?

[ReaverKane.7598]

I do agree that they have a large bias towards the gemstore in terms of new stuff being added to the game. But PoF has been a big exception to this, with a lot of new stuff being available in game.The thing is. The cost of those new weapons is ridiculous. Compared to HoT stuff, for example. But that's more a problem with PoF than the gemstore. Whoever designed the rewards for PoF was clearly not thinking right, since any PoF reward is ridiculously more expensive than comparable items elsewhere.

[dolcolax.1268]

@Crossaber.8934 said:

@dolcolax.1268 said:

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:

@dolcolax.1268 said:lel i dont really get the people who pay more attention to fashion wars than playing the game

Because there has to be a reward or justification for playing. In things like PvP and WvW its not so bad, you can play for the glory or your ego. PvE just isn't competitive outside of a dps metre.

Some people would happily map complete a zone for zero rewards other than the gameplay. In a game like Dark Souls, I could play that game purely for fun, because the combat system is

its just me and i used to play both pve and wvwbut i play the game coz i like it. not because i want this fancy looking stuff. dont get me wrong ive bought some gemstore skins before, but im not gona chase that stuff.

I play GW2 or every MMO for the RPG elements. What is RPG, i guess that come to personal preference.

My RPG preference is to create and play some pre designed character with their own theme. Therefore what weapon they use and how they dress like is the most important element to define who they are. I make a swordsman warrior, he will not or refuse to use axe, mace, hammer sort of weapon, he uses swords, greatsword and dagger etc. And i will always contents that other players required me to take certain weapon my character hated, for example RAID.

So yes, i play RPG with cosmetic in mind, seriously.

yeah sure. i do that as well. i have a charr in vigil armor my sylvaris are mostly in cultural armor. i use what i have and what i can get(i guess this depends on motivation). but welp to pay more to chase after a look i think would be cool is kinda regrettable at least for me. like some of the purchases ive made before from gemstore. welp thats probably why im not gona buy cosmetic stuff with real money anymore. well guess you people are lucky and dont play bdo. coz in bdo you look practically the same whatever armor you wear unless you buy from the cash shop

[Fallesafe.5932]

Because this game is a business, not an art project. On the other hand... I DO agree that this game gives you very little incentive to actually play it. The next thing, for me, would be raids. But I ask myself... why should I put myself through all that stress for the next year, and come out on the other side with the EXACT same stats, masteries, elite specs, skins, and QOL items I already have right now??

I remember when the mount adoption licenses came out... I just bought all 30-something the same night, and got practically no enjoyment out of them. It's very unrewarding to just BUY stuff. And I have no problem with the gem store (I'm one of its top patrons). But seriously anet... give us some reasons to actually SET GOALS and DO THINGS in the game.

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

Cosmetic items in the gem store are not pay-to-win. Sorry.

[miraude.2107]

I find more attractive armor skins available in game then I do in shop. My problem is when it comes to charr and asura. What looks good on the 'humanish' races looks like crap on them. I mean right now, after I finish up the PoF story, I'm going after the funerary set, the Crucible set, and the auric set. Then it's treasure hunter, no mask left behind, finish up Mawdrey and the legendary shield (I suck at fractals :'( ) and then either finish up bifrost or go after the tempered spinal backpack to make my thief look awesome. Hell, about the only time I get outfits is if they are in the wardrobe drop from the black lion chests.

[Ghos.1326]

@"Sepheiron.4918" said:One thing I really despise in GW2 is the shop. Don't get me wrong, a shop with special services like appearance/name change is okay and imo even needed but so many armor sets (outfits) and weapon skins end up as shop-only and get removed again after a few weeks. Yes, a game needs a revenue but didn't A-Net brag back in the GW1 days that you can also keep a MMO running without monthly subscriptions? And an ingame shop didn't exist back then. Yet you released 3 (!) addons for that game implying that it was more than profitable for you.

I remember back in GW1 the merchants sold you each piece of armor set vs 20 plat or so and some crafting materials. The challenge was not just to find the merchant but also to gather the money and mats, which were often ectos (kinda rare back then). That was part of the endgame content which does not seem to exist in GW2.

Sexy weapon skins? You had to farm bosses which COULD drop green weapons (highest quality) or farm the UW where mobs could also drop some nice skins. Now all the nice weapon skins are just being sold by merchants vs Black Lion Claim Tickets which again are only obtainable via the ingame shop. Surely you can also buy them vs gold if other players purchased them but these players also had to spend real cash to get them in the first place. Of course there are also some skins obtainable via grinding (like the legendaries and Claw of Jormag's axe) but let's be honest, the real sexy skins are the ones from the black lion merchants.

Why has it become so "normal" to put every new skin behind a paywall?! Why not make it that you have to complete a specific achievement which then would unlock a merchant who sells you the skins vs INGAME GOLD and INGAME MATERIALS? At least then the achievement grinding would finally make some sense. Even the new addon did not bring many new skins. Instead everything ends up again at the black lion merchant. At least give us some consistent possibilities to farm the tickets e.g. by defeating world bosses (e.g. 1 ticket scrap drop per day for certain world bosses)

The shop in this game is glorified holy water compared to other games. Take Jade Dynasty, for example. You literally can NOT even PvE in the game without spending money. Large amounts of money. The gear refining system is so sickening, that if you fail the refinery once, unless you bought a cash shop item for refinery, the gear auto breaks. So all that money and effort you put into getting that gear to begin with? gone. Also, the full protection, 100% guarunteed upgrade items you get in that cash shop only go to a certain extent in game, then you have to pretty much rely on luck with the items that protect from breaking but will still allow your gear to be brought down a gear level after failed refine. People on said game have literally spent well over 50k dollars just to get their players where they are now. Be thankful this game's shop is nowhere near as horrible as an in game shop such as the aforementioned game. GW2 is so much better than most games I have played.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:OP is right. There are not enough attractive cosmetic options available which can be earned through gameplay.There is no "right" because the definition of "attractive" is very much a personal opinion.

The OP is technically inaccurate when they state that the cash shop is a "paywall gate," because we can (and do) convert gold to gems. An 800 gem weapon skin would cost 200-220 gold today, which is cheaper than many weapon skins in the game. Many skins that I find attractive are far, far cheaper off the TP. In fact, one of my favorite skins in the game is the Fiery Dragon Sword, which is free to anyone with a linked GW1 account with only 10 HoM points (something that can be obtained without doing more than unlocking the Hall of Monuments and 'borrowing' assets from friends).

@"Sepheiron.4918" said:Yes, a game needs a revenue but didn't A-Net brag back in the GW1 days that you can also keep a MMO running without monthly subscriptions? And an ingame shop didn't exist back then. Yet you released 3 (!) addons for that game implying that it was more than profitable for you.

• The expansions helped pay for the lack of subscription in GW1; they don't do that now. In part because there are many, many, many more players. And the scope of GW2 is much, much bigger.
• An in-game shop did existing in GW1. It included outfits, customizable heroes, storage, and yes, weapon skins.
• Current estimates are that sales of gems provide 30-70% of the game's income in any given month (lower near the launch of the expacs)

I remember back in GW1 the merchants sold you each piece of armor set vs 20 plat or so and some crafting materials. The challenge was not just to find the merchant but also to gather the money and mats, which were often ectos (kinda rare back then). That was part of the endgame content which does not seem to exist in GW2.That exists in GW2 all over. They just introduced a new set for Halloween and previously added several such sets as part of PoF.

Sexy weapon skins? You had to farm bosses which COULD drop green weapons (highest quality) or farm the UW where mobs could also drop some nice skins. Now all the nice weapon skins are just being sold by merchants vs Black Lion Claim Tickets which again are only obtainable via the ingame shop.Also inaccurate. Tons of excellent skins and every single BL skin (except one) is available on the TP for gold, some below 20 gold. Of the 43 tradeable sets, 30 have an average TP price below 100 gold.

Surely you can also buy them vs gold if other players purchased them but these players also had to spend real cash to get them in the first place.While it's true that most people got them after spending cash, many people get them via the BL keys that drop from map completion or personal stories. Quite a lot of skins were farmed via key runs, back when you could do that multiple times per day.

Of course there are also some skins obtainable via grinding (like the legendaries and Claw of Jormag's axe) but let's be honest, the real sexy skins are the ones from the black lion merchants.Let's be honest: that's you opinion, one in which I strongly disagree. I mostly have preferred skins other than the BL weapon sets.

Why has it become so "normal" to put every new skin behind a paywall?!Because it's not true.

Why not make it that you have to complete a specific achievement which then would unlock a merchant who sells you the skins vs INGAME GOLD and INGAME MATERIALS?All new armor skins are released this way. Many, many new weapon skins are as well.

The system isn't perfect, but it isn't what you claim it to be either.

[Lonecap.4105]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:OP is right. There are not enough attractive cosmetic options available which can be earned through gameplay.There is no "right" because the definition of "attractive" is very much a personal opinion.

He IS right. In my opinion. I agree with him - we are of the same opinion that there are not enough attractive cosmetic options available in game. I shouldn't have to say "in my opinion" after EVERYTHING I say (it wouldn't even be realistic to constantly have to remember to say that), so you should assume it.

[mauried.5608]

The more attractive stuff thats available in game , ie not thru the gem store = less revenue for Anet, so how are they supposed to keep the game going, when everyone is effectively playing for free?

[Abelisk.4527]

You can use the Trading Post to purchase BL weapon skins.

[Despond.2174]

Lots of skins are purchasable with gold. Glacial skins were going for only 30g each while they were 1 token. You have a gazillion options to earn nice skins via gameplay/farmed gold. Take the new rifle skin, it works out to about 130g, which is about 7-8 hours of Istan farming. Easier to CC it up, but it's not out of reach if you REALLY want the skin.

My mistake in the past was rushing with skins and after a few weeks not even using them. If I could get back the gold on all the stuff I don't use I would have a decent amount.

[Stuccio.8963]

You can actually buy everything with gold, converting gold to gems. It's kinda grindy, but you can still have everything in the cash shop without spending a single irl coin.

[Etterwyn.5263]

@"Mourningcry.9428" said:Gold to gems also exists.... so, you can still "farm" to get those exclusive items.

So, no, no paywall except the the one you choose to put up for yourself.

Yep... you can pay with money or time. Other than expansion packs, nothing requires you to ever spend real money. Not many MMO's can say that.

[Jahroots.6791]

I'm actually pretty happy with the availability of the BLTC weapon skins, especially now that prices on specific sets drop significantly from time to time as supply increases. Dragon's Jade and Merciless weapons were cheap as chips a while ago, down from an average of 100g to about 20g each. You get to farm whatever you enjoy and buy them from the TP.

A lot of the POF sets, on the other hand, aren't really exciting to unlock. You need to complete map events and still do some crafting. Bleh.

[Chamelion.9536]

@Stuccio.8963 said:You can actually buy everything with gold, converting gold to gems. It's kinda grindy, but you can still have everything in the cash shop without spending a single irl coin.

This. The only thing preventing anyone from getting anything on the Gemstore is 'TIME'. If you have patience, and grind enough, you can get whatever you want.

[blambidy.3216]

Why? Because so many free games added those features. And people pay for them. So other businesses also need money, so they add those features to add money. I would speak and say sub mmos wouldn’t have it. However even with ffxiv and wow being subs, they still have things in a shop like that. Me personally I think it’s retarted too. However other people will pay for them and have.

I don’t think gw2 is pay 2 win. But I think there are unnecessary items that speed up the process. But games in general weren’t like that back then. Well console games that is. I’m not sure about pc. But ince you bought the game, that was it. You could unlock everything for the same price. I’m not saying you can’t however there was no option to buy things to speed up the process.

Being a old console gamer n64. GameCube. Ps2 etc. it would be nice if companies would just make the game and leave it there. Since gw2 has there own servers I’d rather pay monthly to support and get some type of monthly reward then them having things on the shop that speed up the process. But it won’t happen. I do wish games were still like that. That you didn’t have to buy those things and you had real long grinding.

[Game of Bones.8975]

I haven't read every post, but the one thing I didn't read is that Guild Wars has no monthly fees.

They have decided to allow people to play the entire game without paying (past buying the game and optional expansions) or buy Gems and translate them into gold or other thinks on "the market."

To make your "perfect looking" character is optional (but does make you feel better when playing).

I support ANET by buying BL Chest keys and allowing the RNG to select what skins pop up. Some are awesome for my characters, but most I'll never use.

I hope you don't turn into one of those people who threaten to quit over such a petty issue.

[Bakeneko.5826]

Comparing GW1,singleplayer game with online features, to GW2, full MMO. Really? Two totally different games with same lore

[Gehenna.3625]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:GW1 always had account upgrades to buy that cost real money. This was character slots, bank tabs, and yes, even outfits.

Well that's not entirely true. The cash shop came just over a year after the game was released and the outfits came much later. However, I am not saying it was a bad thing. GW1 already had a B2P model and to keep a game open online there are costs and for a company to keep a game open it also needs to make at least a certain amount of money.

There are a couple of differences though. First of all GW1 only had direct sale items, the items were available pretty much permanently and didn't use an in-between currency. Those 3 differences are significant.

GW2 used to have direct sale items only but with the mounts last year it introduced RNG into the rewards.Also the GW2 cash shop has limited sales meaning that the sales are presented as windows of opportunity to push sales in those periods.And with the gem system they are like other cash shops. There is a legal reason for them to do this but it also puts a currency between the items you're leasing and the real money currency you use. Since it is much easier to spend in game currency the idea is that you buy a certain amount of gems but you'll spend them faster than intended and then you buy gems again sooner.

This is why the GW1 store always felt fairer to me. Particularly the RNG element with the mounts is a bad sign in my view, but even in GW2 the cash shop is a lot less nefarious than in other games. In fact if they hadn't added the RNG element, I wouldn't even have used the word nefarious to begin with.

What people don't understand though is that companies need to make money. They need to gain the costs back of development (usually the initial box sales should do this) and then they need to pay for the maintenance and further development of the game as it goes along. And lastly it needs to make enough money for the mother company, NcSoft in this case, to warrant having this game on their books.

PoF and undoubtedly the mount sales created a peak in revenue but it's worth noting that HoT did this also and aside from those peaks the revenue trend of GW2 has been consistently downward. That's a bad sign for the game as such. You want to be able to stabilize this before it gets too close to the point of the game not being worth continuing. I have no idea where that point is but what is clear is that they've only been able to stop the downward spiral temporarily with the expansions and that is unfortunate. One would hope that they would be able to stem the tide. So I think this year will be very interesting.

There have been rumours of a mobile version of GW2 and I don't know if that's the case (I guess we'll know with E3). I do not like mobile games at all myself but it's clearly a very profitable platform. So whether it's GW2 or something based on it, it seems like this could be a good move for ArenaNet to get something out there that could make them more profitable.

I prefer GW1 over GW2 still today and I find it ironic that they are reintroducing so many skins from GW1 into GW2 particularly via the cash shop. It seems to me that the current art team, though technically very capable, just aren't the artists/designers that the GW1 team had when they designed the world and armour sets. GW1 is graphically not as strong in a technical sense but it had much better design as far as I'm concerned.

But people really shouldn't be surprised that this game is trying to stay relevant and that it needs money to do so. I much prefer the sub model because of those reasons. GW1 wasn't a full MMO and didn't have a persistent world or crafting system, so the payment model was better suited to it. As a full MMO, GW2 might suffer from this approach and probably has already. I would've thought that having an optional sub model would've been a good idea. A sub where you get more standard character slots, more inventory and account storage, a veteran currency that can be spend on certain in-game rewards (like a veteran merchant) and some gems to spend in the cash shop would be something that might appeal to some players. It would give them only convenience elements and some cosmetics and that's it and Anet would get a more steady revenue.

All in all I think Anet made it difficult for themselves and the downward trend in revenue proves that. I mean all MMOs struggle these days especially in the West so GW2 still looks to be doing alright by comparison but that's because, well, the other games are all struggling as well.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Times change and I am fine with the cash shop (which you still can buy with in game gold!). But the discrepancy of some skins - especially gliders and mounts - is insane: there are like a shit ton of glider skins and not a single one - with exception of original glider and HoT deluxe edition glider and legendary back items - there is not one single skin which you can game via in game reward. This is a huge missed opportunity and it really feels totally off. Imagine you would get the soul river glider skin for killing Gorseval. It even fits thematically. Or you kill Dhuum and get or you have a chance for an epic cool mount.

In WoW were some cool reputation farming quests or other quests which gave you access for some cool mounts. And it was all in game. I understand that is a sub based game, but why does anet not give us at least something in game and not everything in cash shop (mount/glider-wise)?

[Kalibri.5861]

@Zedek.8932 said:In FF14 for example, it was impossible to dye something without proper crafter jobs. What the heck? If I, a 27-year old male, can do that with stuff from the supermarket, why can't my super duper hero without learning 500 levels of a crafting profession?

A little off-topic I'm afraid, but since this didn't seem like a joke... I wanted to note that FFXIV isn't chock full of supermarkets. Which is to say that someone had to actually produce the goods for every real-life supermarket, which took time for research and development long before getting to tooling and production and delivery and finally to the store. That's easily 500 levels of a crafting profession. Your purchasing things in a supermarket doesn't happen because they appeared there as an accident of physics.

Thread is about games and stuff, but please do consider all of the people and work required to produce the food and other goods we take for granted every day. We are extremely privileged to to live in a world where we don't have to worry about acquiring basic necessities, which is why you have time to play these games at all.

[Cobrakon.3108]

Luckily you can make all those purchases with in game gold that can be made at your leisure. If you devise a solid plan you can make a lot of gold. People make very little gold because they don't take the time to think of the best ways to make it and they don't utilize their time very well.

Secondly try to be picky in your personal taste if you desire things like a whale but can't spend like a whale, then start prioritizing things. Save up that gold and convert to gems when they are cheap (100g or less per 400 gems.)

The important thing with finite funds is to have a plan and don't be greedy.