Fashion wars is becoming unblanced.

[Dante.1763]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:If 'whales' buy Gems to convert to Gold, and this drives Gem Store rewards, why didn't the 'whales' just use the Gems to acquire the Gem Store rewards instead of the lackluster in-game rewards?

Ran out of things to buy. Im a "whale" i guess and i do end up converting gems to gold after im done buying the new items on the trading post.

[Daishi.6027]

@Nerox.8731 said:

@"Daishi.6027" said:snip

Making money in game really isn't that hard and is fairly effortless. Grinding is a component, but for the most part just playing normal end game content without any particular drive to farm, and just "enjoying" and "living" in the world- so long as you aren't simply Semi-afking in towns, or ONLY pvping in the FFA arena (which I'd argue should have some rewards); you will turn a reasonable profit.

Sure' if you only do festivals and open world content inefficiently, so you aren't spending your resources to gain value gold turning rewards; you're in for a big farm.

As someone who flips on the trade post, I make gold even when not logged in. I'm not as crazy as some people who really go hard on PvPing the trade post, but as a player who has his hands in everything except WvW, and even don't play as much as I used to; Only every so often do I feel I need to drop a bit of money on gems. And when I do it's with the intention to either:A. Support the game and the current direction. (Like I will not give the game money if I do not like the balance changes, or for example: After listening to concerns regarding skyscale timegate I gave them a large sum, not because I got any benefit since I still had to wait; but because it showed that they understood it couldn't be set as a precedent).or B. Treat myself to something from the gem store without drawing down my gold capital.

Yet I still make more than enough gold, even if at times it's mostly in assets or waiting to sell, plus we do get regular story and content updates that we didn't have a to pay a sub for...So...

I don't think the "gems can be bought with gold" arguments is in any way dismiss-able simply as 'invalid' or 'bad'.

A casual may struggle if they realllllly don't know what they are doing, but anyone who gets to endgame should be able to buy out a 700 gem glider + back pack glider every now and then. So unless you want to buy EVERYTHING on the gem store, I hardly see an issue.

inb4: "But not everyone uses the trade post" Maybe, but you only need about 30-60 gold to start growing capital. If people aren't doing that, or don't know how that's on them. (Some people never learn to dodge and then say content is to hard. lol)

All that said. I do think there needs to be more rewards to incentivize skillful content. However, and understandably; casuals do make up the majority of the market, and for things like PvP armor, and Raid chairs, etc, they risk devaluing prestige items if they are over saturated. I do dislike getting "mediocre at best" weapons out of Living world like the Boreal weapons, which I'm sure some people are really into. However, when we get capes and things like the Mythic weapons in the trade post in turn, I think my bold statement above is all the more relevant.

Sorry, but playing the TP is not an argument. The only reason TP flipping and to an extent investing works, is because the majority of the playerbase doesn't care about the TP. They prefer safe, instant return when selling something. If everyone wanted to Profit as much as possible, flipping wouldn't exist. Doesn't matter if people only need 50g to start flipping, it simply wouldn't work if everyone tried it.

Generally people have a hard time generating gold in this game. Casuals don't invest enough time to properly build up disposable income, and more experienced players rather invest it in new gear, characters or legendaries.

I've been playing the TP myself for about a year now, on average I generate thousands of gold a month with it. I can pretty much buy every Skin and craft every legendary I want at this point.But I remember crafting my first legendary, Bifrost, when I just started out. Finally getting that weapon felt amazing, a true accomplishment. That Feeling remains today, but recently started to really fade when I realize that the weapon I worked my kitten off for is a worse version of the mythic staff that was recently introduced into the gemstore for $25.

If you think that's how the in game economy works then you are sorely mistaken and fairly ignorant. I suggest you do your research instead of making claims on your assumptions. You'd realize then why some of the richest players in the game have even stated they want more people to get invested, because the more people involved, the more people there are to trade, and do bushiness with. It would be beneficial for EVERYONE if more people got involved with the TP. For every individual trade you may not "profit as much as possible" however, you'd make more than enough to get stuff off the gem store via gold.

Simply dismissing it saying "It's not an argument because people don't use/care about it" is like saying how "People can't dodge, or Eles only use one element, therefore; Content is too hard." If they aren't going to put in the (frankly low effort, and time efficient) methods of making gold then who cares what they can and cannot access without IRL money? It's not unfair for them to either flounder, or "pay to skip". Those people don't need to be catered to.Some people like to afk in towns or RP and don't care about anything else; should they get 100g a day because they want shiny gemstore stuff too, yet refuse to do content? If your answer is no, then people who want to make gold should start caring about ways to make gold.

As for weapon to weapon, that is 100% subjective. I do find Mystic staff to be better than Biforst; but that's because since release, and maybe I'm overly picky about my staves; but I always thought Bifrost was pretty crummy legendary and I wouldn't have ever "worked my butt off" for it. If you did, or if you bought it, cool; The prestige of obtaining it is not lost. Plus their will always be the difference between: "That player payed x irl money for that, or spent x gold!" vs "That person must have put a lot of effort into that legendary"... (this is a bit more accurate for the new ones since you can't just buy them, or their precursor.)Personally I always thought Bolt was an awful sword, and Infinite Light was superior in every way; and even though I made the Shining Blade I still use Infinite Light for my main hand. Also I only made Twilight because Sunrise is a mango blade, and Eternity is a mango blade during the day, and although some nice GS have come along and I've added quite a few to my collection... I'd only ever use Twilight on my main because of the inherent value I attribute to it. (or cobalt, because it is literally the best flashlight/torch in the entire game... To bad A-net wont make more dark rooms.)Point being that just because one item may subjectively look better than another doesn't diminish the value of another, especially ones you put effort into creating.

[kharmin.7683]

@DiogoAfonso.2136 said:... if they put that merchandising advertised in game in the place of Gemstore, a LOT more players would buy real products)On what facts do you base this?

[crepuscular.9047]

only valid statement if this game is a subscription based game to keep the servers running, and it would need to be RNG based

so there is nothing wrong with the current model through gems

[kratan.4619]

Stopped reading after "prestige". There is no need for any "prestige" items in a game, the only people who care about that are the ones pathetically standing around town praying that some newbie will ask them about their cool armor so that they can have some way to attempt to say how much better at a video game they are than others.

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

Only problem with this kinda thing, is that it kills maps, i don't mind getting tons of skins, for mounts, gliders, weapons, etc, that's not my "end game", but the problems is, other people do, and if they don't fell like going to these maps cause they are not profitable, that end up hurting the way i and many others play the game.

Hell, it's been 2 months i'm trying to get Thunderhead Peaks meta related achievements and Wintergust but i can't, nobody does it, yeah i don't play on prime time, but still, you have people, those bonus boxes events are proof of that, even on non prime time you saw a lot of different squads doing the metas/world bosses, this means that people are willing to do all the content this game has to offer, even old ones, if they can get good rewards from it.

They could make something related to meta events and world bosses that are on the 2 hour timer and requires organized groups, have some options.

1- Make all of these events give 1 or 2 gold after a sucessfull completion, like Tequatl and TT does, some of the "dead events" are way harder than these two (VB and Thunderhead Peaks comes to mind), of course, would have to see the impact that would have on the economy.

2- Create a new currency for these events (this one is kinda bad, another currency when we already have a toon), and put some good items that players could buy with these, you could get one currency per event per day (this way people won't just stay on Dragonfall and Silverwastes all day hehe), and could buy some other currencies, some new skins, etc, hell even BL statues at a somewhat high price.

3- Another solution, but not likely to happen at all, is to just put BL statues to drop, once per day per event, and maybe with a limit of 10 per day, remove some rewards (like the trash item that gives gold), and increase the price of everything, specially the items that cost less than 10 statues, this way players have a way of getting Gem Store stuff by just playing the game.And i would say this could even increase the sale of Black Lion Keys, some people would be like "oh man, only 10 statues left to buy this outfit, but i already reached my daily limit, gonna buy 10 keys real quick so i can finally get it".

[kharmin.7683]

@Syrus.2174 said:

We all heard and know about the gold to gems way, it works, it can be done ... and it is about as rewarding as watching paint dry, considering that the best way to get gold is also the most mind numbing grind, not something people usually play a game for on long term. At some point everyone will start to ask themselves what they are doing with their time and why.Apparently, it is very easy to get gold in this game, or so I've read multiple times on these forums. If it is a grind, and is mind-numbing, the option to open one's wallet and simply pay cash for gems is a viable avenue. When I value my time against the current gold -> gems conversion rate, I sometimes find it more acceptable to buy gems outright rather than play the additional hours to get gold to convert.

[Anemone.5320]

I think it's nice to have the flashier skins on gemstore, but I'd like some kind of armor/skin as a reward for some achievements. It makes me feel important wearing a special hat that not everyone can get easily. I have to admit I like the regular armor more than most gemstore ones though, so maybe my aesthetics aren't as high lol.

[Fueki.4753]

@Anemone.5320 said:I think it's nice to have the flashier skins on gemstore, but I'd like some kind of armor/skin as a reward for some achievements. It makes me feel important wearing a special hat that not everyone can get easily. I have to admit I like the regular armor more than most gemstore ones though, so maybe my aesthetics aren't as high lol.

Unless I use the Monk outfit, I use normal armour as well.I'd love to have the Kurzick Monk Elite armour in higher resolution (and without shoes) though.

[sniperman.1738]

Fashion actually in other mmorpgs means nothing, in other mmorpgs its all about the irating or item level that matters, like in WoW no one cares about your fashion but only your item level, ToR people only care about your irating, same with FFxiv, the list goes on. Fashion is a small part in many other mmos where gw2 is the rarity where it plays a large part.

[KerryTT.4792]

I thinking nerfing red and giving blue a slight buff might help the balance issues.....

[XatraZaytrax.2601]

@KerryTT.4792 said:I thinking nerfing red and giving blue a slight buff might help the balance issues.....

Are you kidding? Blue is op!

[Fueki.4753]

@sniperman.1738 said:Fashion actually in other mmorpgs means nothing, in other mmorpgs its all about the irating or item level that matters, like in WoW no one cares about your fashion but only your item level, ToR people only care about your irating, same with FFxiv, the list goes on. Fashion is a small part in many other mmos where gw2 is the rarity where it plays a large part.

Fashion has the same value everywhere.Item level in other games is the counterpart to builds in GW2.Both those define your characters theoretical effectiveness, fashion does not (unless your character is so shiny that it hurts people's eyes).