Why do we buy mount skins? What is the meaning of gw2?

[The Ace.9105]

I have started to question the business model of anet after hearing what the old blizzard devs are now explaining about the failing gaming industry. Why are we buying mount skins? What are the skins for? Sure, they look cool but does nobody care if someone has a cool mount skin? Everytime someone has something cool you are like "wow, let me buy that too" and then everyone has it and it's not that cool anymore and that is the endgame of gw2. Skins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5wv1kF9Gqg

I think in this video the ex blizzard dev explains everything pretty well. Yes, it's a reaction video but it's very unlikely for ppl to watch 2 hour video and hear the explanation instead of 10 minute video.

Explaining the video:

The gaming industry uses analytics to determine what is fun in a way that time spent on doing something = fun. Devs do something and doesn't know if it's good or bad and they let the analytics tell them how much time ppl spend on the new content to determine fun. The Dev uses an egg timer problem from ultima online as an example where every 15 minutes the first time you use a skill you gain a skill point. The system used to be kinda random before but they reworked it which resulted in a player behavior where every 15 minutes when the egg timer rings a player would log in and use a skill and log off.

"When your play cycle is built around refreshable timed reward structures it's the end of enjoyment of experience. You are not playing anymore, all you do is maximize the reward for time."

The sure way to see if a player has stopped playing the game for fun is to look at the log in statistics and see how many players have logged in, completed they daily/ weekly stuff and logged out till the timer on those things has reset.

"These ppl are just maximizing rewards and in some cases hoping that the game would turn around and the investment would pay out. As things are going that investment will never pay out cause the game won't never be fun at any point in the future so the collection of rewards in this environment is essentially pointless. You are never gonna leverage that in a game you actually enjoy in playing again. You are never gonna even be on the servers longer than it takes you to fulfill your egg timer requirements."

Analytics defining fun sounds is like trying to make an sentient AI that tries to determine the emotional quality based on data. Instead of doing that, you should get devs and have them "talk about why things are fun and game design systems that create engagement and an emotional experience that would essentially constitute fun. Describe that. Describe how challenge is important for engagement cause you have to be present and how failure is an important part of the process of learning and becoming the master of the thing you are doing which creates engagement, long time reward. Interactions with another ppl, the social aspect, create emotional bonds and emotional experiences that create sticky moments in games that require ppl be online a lot of times in order to create more fun. Talk about things like that, don't talk about how we've run the numbers and we see people are doing this and therefore that's the funnest thing in the game."

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

tl;dr:

The gaming industry uses analytics to determine what is fun in a way that time spent on doing something = fun. Devs do something and doesn't know if it's good or bad and they let the analytics tell them how much time ppl spend on the new content to determine fun.

in reality: "When your play cycle is built around refreshable timed reward structures it's the end of enjoyment of experience. You are not playing anymore, all you do is maximize the reward for time." The sure way to see if a player has stopped playing the game for fun is to look at the log in statistics and see how many players have logged in, completed they daily/ weekly stuff and logged out till the timer on those things has reset.

"These ppl are just maximizing rewards and in some cases hoping that the game would turn around and the investment would pay out. As things are going that investment will never pay out cause the game won't never be fun at any point in the future so the collection of rewards in this environment is essentially pointless.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

So back to the topic. Why are we buying mount skins? Why are we buying things from the gemstore in general? What are they for in the end when everybody has them and ppl just log in to do dailies and log off and the most coolest skins are from the gemstore while the content you clear doesn't really give that cool stuff?

For now it's pretty clear that anet is still working on the side projects seeing that nothing has really changed in the game and the silence about development continues probably because there's nothing to talk about yet. The fact that we have new extra balance team etc. but we still lack frequent balance patches indicates that the gemstore support is still not going into gw2 in the form of content.

The skin market surely works tho but what is the point of it when the game doesn't matter and all this game has is to play for reward maximization aka weekly/daily/timegated content?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

You may just log in for Daily rewards, but I play for fun.Also, the ArenaNet Devs have said, and I quote, "The community does a great job of telling us what their problems are. Often player input can be more useful than pulling stats or looking at metrics." Thus, it isn't just about metrics.You really can't lump every studio and their approach to game development all together.

I acquire skins because I am the person that looks most often at my character/mounts. I acquire them because it pleases me. I don't really care if others have, or do not have, certain skins.

[BunjiKugashira.9754]

I don't know about other players, but I buy skins because I like them. Actually, let me rephrase that. I have a character that the skin fits thematically and I feel that the skin would bring my character's aesthetic one step closer to what I originally envisioned. It's a multi-player dress-up game called Fashionwars.

For the same reason I barely buy any outfits. They are just too restrictive when designing my character.

In your post however you asked a second question: Why do we play the game? What makes the game fun?One thing is for sure, it's not the rewards. For me there's a sense of accomplishment when we finally manage to defeat a raid boss after many failed attempts. Or when we successfully defeat triple trouble knowing that it would've been impossible without our planning and organization.

[Danikat.8537]

Why do I buy mount skins? Because I like them. When I make a character I do it based around a 'theme' - a personality, backstory (beyond what the game gives them), colour scheme and other ideas about who they are and what they look like and then I use the games customisation options to bring that theme to life, and that includes their mounts. I buy different skins because I want my characters mounts to look as different as they do (although I do restrict it to skins I personally like as well).

I'm not going to buy a skin just because I see someone else using it, even if I think it looks cool on their character because the chances are their character looks nothing like mine. And how many other people are using the same skins is largely irrelevant to me. It's nice to know someone else likes the same one/s I do, and I like to see how they've dyed it, but I don't feel like it makes mine any more or less special, because what's important to me is getting the ones I like best.

As for the rest of your post I think you need to bear in mind that in a lot of ways WoW and GW2 have very different game design. Most importantly WoW is built around the idea of constant, vertical progression - that you should always be working towards the next thing you need and that it will be fun for players to be doing that. It's also a subscription based game: they rely on keeping players logging in regularly (or at least paying to have the option to log in regularly) to keep the game going. So yes, for them it is very important to have those mechanics to keep players working on their goals in regular increments. But that's not true of all games, or even all MMOs, and it's certainly not what all players want, so I think it would be a mistake to try and analyse them all the same way because otherwise you run the risk of homogenizing everything and losing all those players which don't enjoy the model you're focusing on.

Also in any type of statistical analysis it's a bad idea to use just one measurement to draw a conclusion. Especially when you're trying to use quantitative data to assess a qualitative metric. I'd be very surprised if Blizzard genuinely only looked at how much time players spent doing something to determine what's fun and what kind of content they should make, I suspect that was just one of the major factors.

One of the big differences with GW2 is that it was built for a more casual audience, and one of the ways they did that is to make sure you don't have to keep doing those repetitive tasks. If you don't do the dailies all you miss out on is a few achievement points (and that's if you haven't reached the cap), 2g and a bit of karma and XP - all things you can get much more quickly from other sources.

So if you've reached a point where you're just logging in to do a few repetitive tasks because you feel like you have to my advice is to stop - take a break from the game and come back when you actually feel like playing it for whatever reason (and then do the stuff you want to do, not the dailies) or when there's something new. And when you get bored again you can stop again and come back later - that's how this game is designed to be played.

[Gop.8713]

I play for fun, but otoh I never buy anything, so I'm guessing anet would rather I didn't . . ?

[Vayne.8563]

I play about many hours every day. Occassionally I spend money at the gem store. It's still the cheapest form of entertainment I have.

[Danikat.8537]

@Gop.8713 said:I play for fun, but otoh I never buy anything, so I'm guessing anet would rather I didn't . . ?

I can't speak for Anet of course but I think it would be a mistake for them to think like that. This is a multi-player game and unusual even among the MMOs I've played in that the focus is on open-world content which needs a lot of people instead of instances for small groups. Which means players need other players around to enjoy the game, and since they've done a reasonably good job of keeping the gem store restricted to cosmetic and convenience items it doesn't matter if those other players spend money or not. (It matters if they buy the expansions, because there's a lot of group content in those maps, but that's all.)

So players, even those who don't spend money themselves, are important because simply by playing the game they make it better for other people, which means the ones who can afford to spend more are more likely to be enjoying themselves and more likely to feel inclined to spend their money on GW2.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

I acquire skins because I am the person that looks most often at my character/mounts. I acquire them because it pleases me. I don't really care if others have, or do not have, certain skins.

^^^ This. I get skins, outfits, and so on because I like looking at them on my characters. I don't care what others have and wear, nor does my enjoyment of the game wax and wane based on what others do with their characters.

[ArmoredVehicle.2849]

Never bought a single mount skin, in fact I never spent a penny on anything in the gem store since the game's release. To me the point of buying a game is to play it and obtain the items through gameplay, not spend more money unlocking content. I would have much preferred if ANet released more expansion packs with more content in them and we obtain the skins by playing rather than RNG black lion chests. Sometimes they throw a weapon set our way but they always make sure to keep the best looking sets for the gem store and that's not very fun.

In my opinion GW1 did it better buy having players buy the expansions and mini adventures and then they'd obtain the content by playing.

[b k.1648]

I suspect that mount skins are rather unrelated to that criticism of analytics - because people wouldn't buy them if they weren't enjoying the game.

The argument is missing something that I believe is rather important: game developers are not unaware of what might be fun. Most of them have been playing games for longer than the majority of their audience - they'll usually be aware of the pros and cons of their design well before the players are, unless something completely unexpected happens.

Analytics seldom tell developers a story they don't already understand - what they usually help with is putting actual numbers to them, and deciding what to prioritise. Anyone who relies on analytics to understand their players probably shouldn't be working in that particular role.

[Tarlonniel.6534]

@The Ace.9105 said:Describe how challenge is important for engagement cause you have to be present and how failure is an important part of the process of learning and becoming the master of the thing you are doing which creates engagement, long time reward. Interactions with another ppl, the social aspect, create emotional bonds and emotional experiences that create sticky moments in games that require ppl be online a lot of times in order to create more fun.

Hmmm. If I had to choose between a sentient AI trying to define fun and these guys defining fun, I'd take the AI. Because none of that is relevant to how I have fun in video games.

Anyway, as others have said, I buy cosmetic items because I like the way they look and fit a particular character (or might fit a character I make in the future). How many other people also have those items is irrelevant.

[casualkenny.9817]

i want mount (and other) skins not because others will look at them, but because i like the skin - provided i like the skin.

i pay (for the skins) a price that i feel is subjectively commensurate to my enjoyment in using the skin - which is heavily contingent on continued development of content (that appeals to me) for me to use the skins in.

i am willing to pay, only because i like the game, the developers' passion for the game, their demonstrated, applied genius, and their account-based free-to-apply cash shop design

provided all these continue, i'm okay with continuing to buy skins.

[Warlord.9082]

I would like to see a reduced effort in skins and up the effort in actual content. Especially in open world content. There is very little content in the open world that is actually interesting to repeat. Mostly because rewards are absolutely worthless. It is a better idea to just gather the hell out of maps and sell that and buy it off the trading post as that is infinitely faster than to actually play the game. As for an example of what open world content I would like to see: solo instances made up out of jumpiiing puzzles WITH combat and an end boss to beat the hell out off. Should be hard, should reward WELL. Not this 2 uncommons items 3 silver and 4 junk items nonsense you do even for world bosses. That is not worth replaying.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Gop.8713 said:I play for fun, but otoh I never buy anything, so I'm guessing anet would rather I didn't . . ?

I can't speak for Anet of course but I think it would be a mistake for them to think like that.I suspect friend @Gop.8713 was having a poke at the idea that ANet only cares about having people who play to be on the "wardrobe treadmill."

[VDAC.2137]

I totally agree with others who have posted here about buying mount skins (and goes for all other skins and wardrobe options too): I get it because I like it and it fits the theme / look of my character. I don’t care how many others are using it, and with many cool skins available, different people with have different preferences anyway. Having these options available to all, including the many dyes we can use and reuse on everything, is how it should be! =) Use what pleases you, not to flaunt “I’m rich, you know.” It is hilarious to me that in order to visually flaunt their wealth, people now have to resort to infusions and look like biohazards — it costs serious gold to look that ugly! :lol: (Of course, infusions like everything else are a matter of taste and I am not saying that everyone who uses one does so purely because they are expensive.)

[Ashen.2907]

People buy things from the gemstore, including mount skins, because they want them. Because they value them more than the gold or real world money they cost. A purchased skin does not loses its cool factor because many buy it. Rather a select group with a fairly shallow mindset lose interest in the skin. The distinction is important.

[borgs.6103]

It's the skritt within us taking over. You have to resist it. If you fail to resist even for a split second, they got you and boom! You just bought that new shiny that will lose its "cool factor" within hours.

[Cuks.8241]

Well I play for fun. And I have never ever bought a skin in any game yet unless it came from playing. And dont really care about skins anyway.But I guess I am old school. We didnt try to get our characters look good, we modded games to have the best visual clarity for competitive edge. So all characters look alike, good contrasts between chars and environment, minimum useless details that do not give competitive information...

[Psientist.6437]

Try to measure what players think is fun without analytics. Want to interpret cost signaling as revealed preference, collect data and analyze. The two in the video come across as Dunning-Kruger specialists who are unwilling to accept that players are always cost signaling, whether it is to themselves, other players or the studio. If a studio doesn't apply time spent doing something as a general equivalent for fun, they are simply telling players what is fun and never listening. Their example from Ultima is silly, analytics would reveal that players logging in every 15 minutes aren't having much fun.

[Knuckle Joe.7408]

I feel you. It''s mayve because some people are just tired of the game. Been playing since closed beta and I've done pretty much everything in the game that I consider fun.

Timegated stuff and grindy stuff I don't consider fun, which is the majority of the new stuff that Anet implements. I considered fun back in the day Dungeons, Fractals, story paths, world bosses, and PvP, but that was because they were new, the fun lasted for 3-4 years, until they all became stale, and I found myself wondering the same as you. "What's the point for me to come back each day and grind the same stuff for money? So I can have enough money to buy skins off the gemstore/TP and do the same thing all over again, this time with a different, flashy weapon?"

I found no sense in that, and stopped playing. Now I just log in when there's a new living world story update, because that's the only thing that brings me fun like the old times, NEW, FRESH CONTENT. A pity it lasts about 30 minutes tops and comes loaded with more stuff to grind for. That skyscale thing was horrid, as soon as I looked at the disgusting timegating, I forgot about it, closed the game and am patiently waiting the next living world story, hopefully an expansion, but don't have my hopes up.

[Donari.5237]

I doubt that time spent is the only measure of fun. I think ESO is a lot of fun and I almost never do more than login for the daily reward unless they have an event going on. It's too big a game and getting anything done is too big a time investment when I have GW2's siren song calling me. There are days I only barely do my GW2 login, too, when I have RL things to do instead. GW2 gets more of my time when a friend needs company or aid, since that's what makes it most fun.

I had a lot of fun in single players like Obduction, DA:I, and PoE2, but have yet to complete the story in any of them due to my MMOs holding the lion's share of my gaming time.

As to why buy mount skins and other gemstore items, it's because I like them, I like customizing my many alts, and I can afford to buy them. Gone are the days when I could afford to buy everything from the gem store (though even then I never bothered with things like the boxing gloves that I simply didn't like, and the Slayer Outfit cured me of collecting every single outfit). But I can still get the ones that tickle my fancy, so I do. I don't care if every other player in sight has the exact same thing as me, good for them, they're enjoying it too. I don't see anyone complaining they hate playing any of the professions because someone else might be playing the same thing, why worry about shared skins? Especially with dye options letting you express yourself with them.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

I haven't bought any skins myself, but I do enjoy seeing what others have and appreciate the variety that it brings to the game. For now any gem purchases I make go toward things like character and bank slots, to make my gameplay time more efficient.

I play to have fun and to challenge myself to keep trying when something seems difficult.

I can appreciate that people who have been here since beta or close to it may feel like there isn't anything more for them to do; I'm only been back for a little over a year so there's a lot for me to still get to.

[Cerioth.7062]

Why do I buy mount skins? Because they look awesome, and I can dye them, and I want to.

[Naxos.2503]

As far as getting Something "everybody has" on the gemstore, it doesn't bother me at all personally. When I play, I mostly focus on my own character, and my friends'. It is not a large breach of immersion for me to see 5 players with the same mount skin. Dye colors help make everything a lot more unique as well.

I spent on the gemstore purely because I see Something that I feel might fit my character. As a rule of thumb, I avoid things that are random (I like to get what I want and paid for) and I also avoid buying anything temporary (my money wasn't temporary to the company, and neither should what I bought be). The one thing I find unreasonable with their skins practices are the prices. No matter what argument is thrown at me, Nothing will convince me that 2000 gems : more than 20€, is the correct price for -1- mount skin, as detailed as it may be. Not gonna happen.

On the other hand, what does the gemstore has to do with the actual content to play in game ? Does it influence PvE, PvP, WvW ? I dont think so. It doesn't influence story either. The difference is quite notable. What the devs develop may influence gemstore purchases yes, but the opposite argument is not quite as solid. Will the devs go out of their way to monetize what they develop ? Yes, and I'd expect them to, provided they do it in clever way. The way they put warclaw skins merely days after the warclaw was made available was -not- clever. The way they made skyscale skins available weeks after the mount was available -was-. It's quite obvious that right now, mounts are their go-to money makers. One has to remember that for a long period time, the episodes to get those mounts from are completely free of charge, and the maps they come from involve interesting content of their own. We're a far cry from companies who monetize à l'outrance : Paying for the right to pay, is a practice that exist, and rightly should not.In my mind, Anet is doing a lot of things right that other companies do not, nor care to. I'd still rather have them release expansion packs rather than skins, but I'd prefer that expansion pack to be well planned, as opposed to an empty shell that brings Nothing new to the table. Until that's possible, money need to keep coming in, and if skins allow them to, I suppose that's fine on my account, I dont indulge in it personally, but let others who want do so.

Ultimately, skins are not what I play the game for. I like the combat system, because I enjoy being tactically challenged (part of the reason why I dont like PvP but tolerate WvW), I enjoy the world they built, which in my own words has always felt like a work of love. And I enjoy the storyline and it's characters.

[Zaklex.6308]

FUN is what every individual person thinks it is...analytics can not tell anyone or any company what people find fun, some find it fun to bling themselves out with the latest styles, some find it fun to just log in daily and do the dailies(yes, that can be fun). Personally I think the ex-Blizzard dev is jaded, his work is not fun anymore...there fore no one has fun. What I find fun you may not, nor may another person and visa versa. Skins can be fun for some people, the different looks or kitting out your character and it's accoutrements so that they're somewhat matching can be fun...you know, creating a theme and you thematically include your mount and outfits in that theme(and the dyes you use). I just like variety that's why I buy skins, if I don't get them for free.