Getting too expensive?

[Obtena.7952]

@Tukaram.8256 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Animism.7530 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Animism.7530 said:

Yes, gem store sales of certain items and designs obviously influences the progression and future design work within the gem store.This is probably the most ignorant (meaning "uneducated") statement you have made thus far. If gem store items "obviously" influenced progression, then no one would be arguing that point. But gem store items do not influence progression or future design work. It's almost like you're saying that any mount skins that are released with the next expansion would be required to play the content.

Twisting the point... The progression in this game ends up as grinding for cosmetics. All the best cosmetics are now being sold and designed for the gem store.Honestly. What is so hard to understand.

... Probably the part where you claim these completely optional items has something to do with how expensive the game is for someone.

There is no longer any point to this thread. You cannot talk logically to someone who thinks optional shiny pixels are required, or predatory.(the progression of the game for me is monster bashing, not shiny useless junk)

OH there is a point ... if there is anything people should be taking from this thread, it's the fact that Anet isn't here to parent people who can't act in a financially responsible manner ... or on the other hand, shut down their business model punishing those of us that are financially responsible and wanting to patronize their services. No one should getting away with accusing Anet of being immoral, resulting in an 'expensive' game when people can play this game for free and obtain intended revenue purposed items with ingame currency. New lows have been reached by some people in this thread.

[Kichwas.7152]

Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

[Ashen.2907]

@Animism.7530 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Animism.7530 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Animism.7530 said:Tell this to those addictive personalities you hear in the news being allowed to spend ludicrous sums on these platforms.To quote... you just said there isn't anything immoral about it. I strongly disagree.

It's completely absurd to label a company immoral that makes goods or services available to purchase because a few people can't control their spending on things they don't need. That still has nothing to do with how expensive things are for someone. Do you need a bigger shovel to dig that hole you are in? Are you trying to say that the game is too expensive because people are irresponsible with their finances now? Nope ... still not going to work.

I mean, you just literally condemned most companies (many I'm sure you patronize as well) for being immoral simply because they sell things to financially irresponsible people. I'm going to let that tea steep for a bit until it permeates your mind.

Would I say that the game can be expensive because some people are 'irresponsible' and managing to pay thousands and thousands of real life currencies?Yes.... Yes I would.

That depends on the person, not what is available for purchase in the shop.

And yet the game is designed with gambling, with loot boxes, and with all the best flashy and prestigious looking items just one click away!This is almost becoming amusing to me, as people can likely tell with my responses turning slightly facetious.

Yep, the game is designed with all of the most flashy and/or prestigious items available at no real world money cost to anyone who wishes to get them by playing the game.

[Linken.6345]

@ASP.8093 said:

@Mortifera.6138 said:First of all, you need to pay sub money on mount skins, because the original ones are ugly.

Play around with dyes. I dyed the basic raptor Sand Shark Blue and it looks better than any fancy skin I've seen for it.

If you've got Skyscale, you're basically using that 95% of the time, so get yourself a nice Skyscale skin and call it a day.

@Mortifera.6138 said:After that, the character slots are just too expensive, costing $10 per slot. You realize there are people who want to play every race and sex combination? That's a lot of $10 bills.

10 slots? You start with 5, you get extras from expansions or "deluxe" editions, that leaves like 3 you have to buy separately.

@Mortifera.6138 said:And with the expansion coming out, we'll need to upgrade our PC hardware.

You probably won't

Oh OP changed their stance and want all race, sex and class combination thats 90 slots about 18-20 more slots then what you can possibly have as maximum atm.

[robertthebard.8150]

@"Kichwas.7152" said:Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

I don't know, the original Guild Wars is still up and running. I'm not even sure what's in their cash shop, if there even is one, despite actually playing it from time to time...

[Jailhouse.1395]

You won't be able to play every class/sex/race combo on one account that would be 72 combinations and you can only have 69 character slots per account. My guildie did that already, but without whining and with real cash + gold exchange + waiting for character slot promotions.

[Ashen.2907]

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"Kichwas.7152" said:Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

I don't know, the original Guild Wars is still up and running. I'm not even sure what's in their cash shop, if there even is one, despite actually playing it from time to time...

They do have a cash shop, but gw1 is essentially funded by gw2.

[robertthebard.8150]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"Kichwas.7152" said:Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

I don't know, the original Guild Wars is still up and running. I'm not even sure what's in their cash shop, if there even is one, despite actually playing it from time to time...

They do have a cash shop, but gw1 is essentially funded by gw2.

Good thing people are buying things here then, eh?

[Donutdude.9582]

1.) This is not a subscription business model. The studio need to have a reliable cash flow in order to continue development and support.2.) You are under no obligation to spend any money on this game.

Please jump out of your box and attempt to understand business.

Thank you.

[Ashen.2907]

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"Kichwas.7152" said:Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

I don't know, the original Guild Wars is still up and running. I'm not even sure what's in their cash shop, if there even is one, despite actually playing it from time to time...

They do have a cash shop, but gw1 is essentially funded by gw2.

Good thing people are buying things here then, eh?

Exactly so.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

@robertthebard.8150 said:

@"Kichwas.7152" said:Here I am thinking Guild Wars 2 doesn't have ENOUGH things in it to charge me money for...

I keep wondering... how do these people make any money when there's nothing good in the cash shop?

Too expensive?

What?

How many buttflap outfits do you need?(answer: 0)

How many recolors of the same mounts do you need?(answer: 0)

How many random loot box keys do you need?(answer: 0)

They did get me on character slots - but really... I have 3 more than you need... all you really "need" is 1 if you really like playing the same thing all the time. But to play each profession? 9 and done. What game can survive off of $30 in sales past base expansion costs over a span of 8 years?(answer: none).

There are things that I have bought beyond this... but... how many did I need?(answer: none)

I don't know, the original Guild Wars is still up and running. I'm not even sure what's in their cash shop, if there even is one, despite actually playing it from time to time...

They have a cash shop. It has cosmetics (Outfits) and what I consider pay to win purchases. As an example of the pay to win, when you go into Guild Wars 1 PvP you can either play PvP long enough to earn the weapon upgrades, runes and insignias or you can purchase the weapon upgrades, runes and insignias and go into your first PvP fight fully suited up. You can also buy Mercenary Heroes, skill unlocks and ranger pet unlocks, instead of playing the game to unlock these items.

[Linken.6345]

@Jailhouse.1395 said:You won't be able to play every class/sex/race combo on one account that would be 72 combinations and you can only have 69 character slots per account. My guildie did that already, but without whining and with real cash + gold exchange + waiting for character slot promotions.

Uhm its actually 90.9 classes 2 sexes 5 races 9x10(5x2)=90

And you can have 72 slots if you pre purchased heart of thorns deluxe/ultimate+1, veteran bonus any edition pre purchase hot +1 and pof deluxe/ultimate +1

So base 69 +3=72

[Saydee.5367]

How about: farm gold, buy gems with gold, buy stuff with gems. Stop complaining?

[Obtena.7952]

The best part ... someone wants dozens of character slots .... but doesn't have time to play the game to make gold to buy them since they don't want to spend the RL cash to do so. Think about why that doesn't make sense. What is someone going to do with all these character slots if they don't have time to play enough to even buy them?

[Ashen.2907]

@Obtena.7952 said:The best part ... someone wants dozens of character slots .... but doesn't have time to play the game to make gold to buy them since they don't want to spend the RL cash to do so. Think about why that doesn't make sense. What is someone going to do with all these character slots if they don't have time to play enough to even buy them?

Come on, they don't want to actually play them, just have the option to look at them on their character select screen. /s

That said, even if that were why they wanted so many character slots...there is no hard limit (that I am aware of) to how many free accounts you can have. So, yeah, they can have their 90 character slots, for free.

[Bursting.1976]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:The best part ... someone wants dozens of character slots .... but doesn't have time to play the game to make gold to buy them since they don't want to spend the RL cash to do so. Think about why that doesn't make sense. What is someone going to do with all these character slots if they don't have time to play enough to even buy them?

Come on, they don't want to actually play them, just have the option to look at them on their character select screen. /s

That said, even if that were why they wanted so many character slots...there is no hard limit (that I am aware of) to how many free accounts you can have. So, yeah, they can have their 90 character slots, for free.

True. An easy option to get around it if you think it's too expensive and don't care much about gameplay or having things on a single account, is to use free accounts to try out different professions and profession/race combinations.

[Zok.4956]

@Animism.7530 said:Every time Arenanet releases new content, I wonder what it costs us in aggressive gemstore sales.

In the early days/years of GW2 I defended Anets monetizing principle of the Gemstore. It was one of the better ones.Not anymore. They became too greedy and aggressive with this.

I do remember when Anet released expansions (if I remember correctly it happend with HoT/gliders and also with PoF/mounts), they released shortly after the expansion new skins for this new items in the gemstore and the price for the skins was much higher than the price for the complete expansion.

The skins should have been part of the expansion that we bought and this greediness of Anet was/is totally disgusting.

But as long as it works and they make money with this, I expect Anet will do so again in the future.

[Ashen.2907]

Yeah, people charging for the product they produce is terrible./S

[keenedge.9675]

@Animism.7530 said:Remind yourself of the gear progression system in this game, please.

Remind yourself, there is no gem store based gear progression in this game. Exotic is plenty for open PvE. Ascended IS needed for upper-tier Fractals and easy to craft. Legendary gear is more decorative (in some cases) but primarily only offers stat swapping at no cost and is earned by participating in top tier content and investing time after you have the personal skill.

Like any good RPG, you earn it by playing the game, not putting down $$$.

[keenedge.9675]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Animism.7530 said:And yet the game is designed with gambling, with loot boxes, ...OK ... but that doesn't make it expensive. I mean, I get you want to roll into an argument you think you have nailed ... but items being available online for purchase doesn't make the game expensive ... that's an issue of personal circumstance.

I've made it to the end-game and enjoy the game on 1 main account and 2 previously F2P accounts that each had about 400g before I converted them. I bought ZERO outfits and skins. It's easy to do. No one can see what you wear while being active in the game and it gives no advantage.

As said before, if you are low on cash IRL, don't spend it here and have fun.

[Teratus.2859]

You don't "have" to pay anything for gemstore skins..

Besides it's not sub money, you'll get two basic skins for the price of 800 gems.It's only the special or premium mount skins that actually cost the price of a subfee.. and you can compare those prices to other MMO's as well.

To give an example of that, What Gw2 charges for a premium 2000 gem mount skin (which is more than I care to pay for them as well).World of Warcraft charges you MORE! for a basic cash shop mount skin.. and WoW also forces you to pay a mandatory sub on top of that or they strip you of all access to your game account.

Character slots are far more irrelevant now since the addition of build/equipment templates were added to the game.They serve largely for cosmetic purposes if you want more characters, and the ability to replay the personal story is a benefit as well but other than those two reasons you don't need more characters.I prefer to make many myself though so a new character slot here and there is hardly a big deal to pay up for.. and if you really don't want to pay real money for a new slot you can always buy one with gold, just like the mount skins.

Where do you get the idea you'll need to upgrade your PC for the expansion?To my knowledge Gw2 still runs as poorly on old computers as it did years ago and that's not likely to change much if at all with End of Dragons.If you can play the current living world content then chances are you won't have any new issues with End of Dragons.

But if your computer is an old hunk of junk then you should probably think about getting a new one if you do have an interest in PC gaming.You don't need to go nuts like some people do and invest thousands in a top of the line machine.Search for some cheap gaming PC's and see what you can find..I just did and there's plenty of Gw2 capable gaming PC's you can buy that are around or less than $300.That's cheaper than the new consoles will be and they'll play a good range of PC games on them too, obviously not at their max settings but they'll run a decent bunch of them on low-mid settings.But most importantly of all, if you do go for one of these cheap PC's you'll be investing in a machine you can build up and upgrade into a better Pc over time.That's one of the best things about being a PC gamer after all.

[Animism.7530]

@Zok.4956 said:

@Animism.7530 said:Every time Arenanet releases new content, I wonder what it costs us in aggressive gemstore sales.

In the early days/years of GW2 I defended Anets monetizing principle of the Gemstore. It was one of the better ones.Not anymore. They became too greedy and aggressive with this.

I do remember when Anet released expansions (if I remember correctly it happend with HoT/gliders and also with PoF/mounts), they released shortly after the expansion new skins for this new items in the gemstore and the price for the skins was much higher than the price for the complete expansion.

The skins should have been part of the expansion that we bought and this greediness of Anet was/is totally disgusting.

But as long as it works and they make money with this, I expect Anet will do so again in the future.

It's really easy money - and if I'm honest, I already didn't like that the Living World segments in-between were not free, unless you play consistently or happened to log in at the right time. It was irritating to spend gems on segments of story that were for the most part, very underwhelming in the earlier seasons. For a casual player, I imagine this was generally viewed as extremely poor and may have put off many.

The story has vastly improved now, thankfully. Though... I feel in a way there's a lot of time to make up for...

Recently, I keep veering off at this point in a discussion over game lore and cinematics and find myself in awe of some of WoW's latest cinematics and trailers... though I barely touched the game and am fully adjusted to the modern combat system in GW2.

The main thing I would contrast the MTX to would be Runescape/OS, though a handful of other titles of lesser hours or seriousness.I hope I can get the message across sincerely to Anet even though it may be unpleasant - but I personally consider GW2 to be the 'worst' out of all for MTX design..

[Makion.3457]

Eveytime I see a post about someone whinning about stupid shit the op is always Mortifera, farm for gold if you need gems or not, no one is making you buy anything.

[Omega.6801]

@"Altion.9576" said:Eveytime I see a post about someone whinning about stupid kitten the op is always Mortifera, farm for gold if you need gems or not, no one is making you buy anything.

OP "feels inferior" if he/she's not as shiny as the next character. Obviously a serious ingame issue that ANet needs to solve ASAP by either handing everything out for free or a subscription fee which, of course, would solve all problems in exactly the way OP wants to see them solved.

[Obtena.7952]

@Animism.7530 said:

@keenedge.9675 said:

@Animism.7530 said:Remind yourself of the gear progression system in this game, please.

Remind yourself, there is no gem store based gear progression in this game. Exotic is plenty for open PvE. Ascended IS needed for upper-tier Fractals and easy to craft. Legendary gear is more decorative (in some cases) but primarily only offers stat swapping at no cost and is earned by participating in top tier content and investing time after you have the personal skill.

Like any good RPG, you earn it by playing the game, not putting down $$$.

You can obtain all of that stuff with gem->gold purchases, and save lots of time.You could in theory, pay for 800 gems, convert to gold, and pay for a team to complete your T4 daily fractals. It could easily be more efficient than actually playing the game.

OK ... But none of those things indicates the game is expensive. Whether you can get something with in-game or RL currency is irrelevant to how you can progress; the paths are the same and benefit players ability to make choices based on their RL circumstatnces ... but that's a different thread.

You know, I've had some time to think about it .. it's pretty weird that you have a big problem with the current game business model because of how financially irresponsible addicts would spend money in it, making it 'expensive' for them ... but you have absolutely no problem with a subscription-based business model that makes the game expensive to a much wider, more responsible segment of players. Sounds like you have an agenda for change ... based on an invalid argument of reducing overall game expense to players. Don't worry, we will point these little discrepancies out as they are made.