The Gem Store and You

[Zaklex.6308]

I buy what ever I feel like, so there's no real specific items...I look at it like any other of my spending habits, I'm a consumer, I support the American economy by consuming (aka spending).

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I spent hundreds of Eur on the game.

Most storage options, (bag slots on my main char, all bank slots, all storage expanders and a bunch of shared inv slots.

Some crafting licenses, a few outfits and the Angel wings backpack/glider.

The endless salvage tools and a watchwork mining pick.

 

Almost everything on discount days. I'm just patient and wait for a decent discount.

[Devata.6589]

In GW2 I did not buy anything ever in the gem store with cash (well I got the Ult edition of HoT so basically that was extra cash for gems, but I never directly purchased gems to buy a specific item). This is because I did never approve of GW2’s cosmetics gem-store as in my eyes cosmetic items in an MMORPG is just as bad as P2W items in a shooter.

 

But if the questions is in general, what would I accept and then buy in a cash-shop of a B2P game. I would buy additional character slots, I would buy additional bag-space, maybe a total make-over-kid.

 

Basically I would buy extensions to the game, but not elements of the game (like skins or toys as those belong in the game imho).

[Torolan.5816]

I really like the skin of Bolt, but stopped making the precursor because i find the task to get it arduous at best and mindcrushing at worst. Still I would not buy it directly because I had close to no money for a long time and so I am quite stingy with things I don´t really need. Beside that I don´t really play fashion wars, I am primarily interested in the rather weak story(sigh) and not to look like a Versace nightmare.

 

When Anet one day signals me that my contribution through buying Core, HoT and PoF is not enough, I would quit immediately to not leech away at them.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @Torolan.5816 said:

> When Anet one day signals me that my contribution through buying Core, HoT and PoF is not enough, I would quit immediately to not leech away at them.

 

Ok, but you do understand that it's *not* enough, that the game cannot sustain itself over five years on only ~$150 per player, right? That ends up to only $2.50 per month per player. That's way less than something like Netflix. I mean, the GW2 model is not designed around each player only buying the game once and then maybe the expansions, it's designed on players buying the game, the expansions, and then also spending a reasonable amount in the Gem Store over the life of the game. The trick is in figuring out which products people will be willing to buy there and how to best distribute them. Their recent sin was not in expecting players to buy Mount skins from the Gem Store, it was in not *allowing* players to buy those skins except via a corrupt gambling box mechanism.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> What do you buy, what do you never buy, what makes you more likely or less likely to purchase something?

 

##### Storage Expansion

* I've paid full price for max bank tabs, max material storage density, & shared inventory.

* Bag slots: I buy a bunch every time it's discounted; haven't yet paid the full freight.

 

##### Altaholism

* Character slots, 2-4 whenever those are on sale.

* One name change contract.

 

##### Silliness

* Toys. I'd buy more, but I'm out of space for things like the carpet, gobbler, kites, chocolates

 

##### Style

* 4-5 outfits. I'd buy more, but the dye channels are ... unfortunate.

* 4-5 gliders. I buy the ones I like, typically waiting for a sale. (Exception: raven glider; too good to pass up) I'd buy more, but they don't dye well.

* 0 armors: never liked any, not even for half price

* 1 weapon: only liked the stormbow. The other: no thanks.

* Armor pieces: all the spectacles. Not much else

 

##### Utilities

* Copper-Fed, of course

* 2.5 sets of gathering tools, before shared inventory; 0 since. Tempted to buy others, but cost is too high for adding 0 new functionality, without a way to swap skins easily.

* Royal Terrace, superseded by the superior Mistlock Sanctuary

 

@"Ohoni.6057"

I'm sure ANet has this sort of data, but it is interesting to see how people respond. It's a good question.

I wonder if you would separate your response from your question. It makes the original post seem complicated idea requiring a tl;dr, even though it's a pretty simple idea.

 

 

[Chadramar.8156]

> @TheQuickFox.3826 said:

> Almost everything on discount days. I'm just patient and wait for a decent discount.

 

Good point, I forgot to mention that. Almost of all my purchases were on sale as well, and I am hoping that the winter sale will be a good one because I foolishly skipped some things I wanted during the anniversary sale (mainly more shared slots).

[Sarrs.4831]

I don't really buy gems using real money. It feels like cheating. The gemstore is basically my endgame and buying rewards from it using ingame gold is fun. The only times I'll get gems with real money is when I'll either buy the ultimate package of an expansion or when I get a gem card from a friend.

 

As far as what I buy:

 

- Account upgrades are no.1. More character slots, bank slots, storage capacity.

- Heroic Boosters are my second pick at the moment. As a WvW player the impact they have on your reward track is actually appreciable.

- Skins are nice. There are a few skins that I will purchase as soon as they reappear (glint's gaze).

- I rarely buy outfits and will only usually buy them if they are in a good bundle. I've bought each of the Dragon's Watch bundle packs because they came with other stuff. I made my money back on Kasmeer pack because I rolled 3 Bloodstone dyes, which was neat.

- I have never bought glider skins (aside from as the member of a bundle) as I have Ascension. The big issue with glider and mount skins, for me, is that they aren't ingame rewards- you can make them as shiny as you like, but to me they'll never compare to something like Ascension/Ad Infinitum/Warbringer.

- I don't expect I will ever buy a mount skin. This isn't a moral stand or anything to boycott the adoption license lootbox, I am just not interested in these items from the gemstore. In regards to mounts, I am only interested in in-game rewards. I don't feel especially strongly about the mount adoption license *other than the fact that these are 4-channel mounts when the core mounts are only 1 channel*. I am a little perturbed that they didn't leave some *basic* variety of mount as an ingame reward as these could have easily been given a map-mastery collection. One mount for each map for completing the meta, map exploration, etc., give it four dye channels- it would've been a great reason to revisit the content.

- I occasionally splurge on keys and never get anything good.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> @"Ohoni.6057"

> I'm sure ANet has this sort of data, but it is interesting to see how people respond. It's a good question.

> I wonder if you would separate your response from your question. It makes the original post seem complicated idea requiring a tl;dr, even though it's a pretty simple idea.

 

Yeah, I was thinking about that, but it's too late to edit. There's a timeout on these forums.

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @"Ohoni.6057"

> > I'm sure ANet has this sort of data, but it is interesting to see how people respond. It's a good question.

> > I wonder if you would separate your response from your question. It makes the original post seem complicated idea requiring a tl;dr, even though it's a pretty simple idea.

>

> Yeah, I was thinking about that, but it's too late to edit. There's a timeout on these forums.

>

>

 

There's no time out anymore. (Or at least, there shouldn't be for someone with veteran status, as you have; I'm able to edit older posts.)

[Ohoni.6057]

Here are mine:

 

**Utilities:**

Over the years I've bought a few extra bank tabs when they were on sale, about a dozen character slots, a handful of shared inventory slots, one infinite pickaxe and infinite logging axe, one materials storage expansion, and that's about it. I have all the characters I'm likely to get at this point (I haven't even used the free character slot and free bump to level 80 that I get with PoF yet), the infinite tools are too expensive for me to buy more just for the cosmetic differences, and I don't buy bag slot expansions because they are character-bound and I won't spend cash money on anything locked to a single character or that is expendable, only on account-bound and permanent elements. I definitely have never bought any sort of booster or other single use item. I have also not bought "crafting licenses" because I just spread my crafts out two per character and never need to swap any of them around.

 

I have a TON of things that come out of the free "black lion items" thing we get from dailies, like merchant expresses, which I never use because I'm a real hoarder when it comes to single use items. I never want to spend them because then I won't have them anymore, so they never serve a purpose. ;)

 

I bought the Mistlock Sanctuary right before PoF came out, because 1. it looks cool and has some unique movement stuff, 2. everything's convenient there, 3. it has convenient exit travel. I hadn't bought any of the previous "santcuary" spaces because previously Lion's Arch and Rata Sum were "convenient enough" and I didn't feel like paying extra for any of the previous locations. To be honest, I think it's extremely unlikely I would ever buy a different one, since my basic needs are covered now, but to get me to buy one it would either need to be much cheaper, or offer everything Mistlock does plus some sort of seriously cool unique hooks to it, like jumping puzzles or something. I don't know how far that could be pushed without it counting as "pay to play" content.

 

**Skins:**

I've bought a few skins, mostly when they were on deep discounts. I got cat ears, glasses, devil horns, bunny ears, chaos gloves, black feather, wings of love, and batwing gliders, Hobotron glider, I mostly buy things that are extremely cheap, or very cool. I also bought Kasmeer's staff, Belinda's katana, the whip-sword, and perhaps a few other things along those lines. I have not bought and will never buy any "Outfits," not because they are not pretty, but because they are not armor skins. I absolutely require the ability to mix and match components with other armors for me to be even interested in a skin, much less to actually pay money for it. There are about a dozen outfits that I would have bought at the listed price had they been available as armor skins, but never as Outfits. I did buy one finisher, the Guild finisher, but I almost never play any PvP modes so I really have little use for these things.

 

I believe that the Halloween mount skins were reasonably priced, but I wasn't a fan of the bundle, and mainly did not buy them because I wasn't into the faux-skeleton aesthetic. I probably would have bought it anyway at that price if I'd loved all five skins, but if I only wanted 2-3 of them then it would have been more of a tossup. The Warbeast skin is about 150-200% what its cost should be for a skin of that type, and I will never participate in the Mount Adoption system, which is a huge negative for me because I really do want several of those skins, but will never pay into an RNG system for them and $120 is just way too much to spend for a handful of mount skins.

 

**Black Lion Chests:**

I've bought maybe 5-10 keys over the past five years, mostly when discounted to like 1 gem or whatever. Other than that I've only used keys that dropped or came from farming (which I did casually for a few weeks just before that practice got nerfed). I've probably opened less than twenty chests in total, and got a few weapons tickets out of it and not much else. I will never spend any significant amount of money towards RNG offerings, regardless of the lure placed inside. I would prefer to spend ten times as much for a guarantee of a thing than to have a 10% chance of pulling it from a random source. I am willing to accept RNG elements when they are entirely free of purchase (including gold-to-gem transactions), but never when real money gambling is involved. There have been skins released via the BLCs that I've very much wanted, and would have paid good gems to purchase, but they were not available outside of this RNG method.

 

**Gems:**

I make my purchases 90% with directly purchased gems, only very occasionally topping off an amount with gold-to-gem conversions if it's a small amount needed to cover the cost of the thing I want. I never convert massive amounts of gold to gems, and never convert gems to gold, as I feel the latter is sort of "cheating."

 

Overall, I tend to spend money when I feel that the deal being offered is at a fair price (which is typically about 75% what the retail price is for most items), I tend to spend money when I am feeling good about the game and the developers (ie when things are going smoothly and there's no fiasco in play for a while), and when absolutely ZERO randomness is going to be involved in what I get from my purchase. Not even an unidentified dye. I will spend small amounts of money MUCH more casually than larger amounts, and if you can figure out ways to encourage me to spend a dollar here or there rather than ten dollars here and there, I'd be much more likely to play along. Maybe offer some sort of monthly or weekly gems discount or something so that small purchases can add up. There is really nothing in the game that I *need,* so my purchases come down to things that I *want* and from me wanting to help support the game. The more I *want* to spend, the more I will spend. The more I feel that I'm being held over a barrel and squeezed for my money, the tighter I hold on to my wallet.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > > @"Ohoni.6057"

> > > I'm sure ANet has this sort of data, but it is interesting to see how people respond. It's a good question.

> > > I wonder if you would separate your response from your question. It makes the original post seem complicated idea requiring a tl;dr, even though it's a pretty simple idea.

> >

> > Yeah, I was thinking about that, but it's too late to edit. There's a timeout on these forums.

> >

> >

>

> There's no time out anymore. (Or at least, there shouldn't be for someone with veteran status, as you have; I'm able to edit older posts.)

 

So you can. Good to know. ;)

[Mentor.4130]

I am not a whale but was regular buyer of gems with real money. Bought most of the armor skins, weapon skins, gliders, salvage tools, permanent passes and other stuff. Usually I rewarded Anet with gem purchases when they did something good or when some of the items were on sale.

But because of late mount skins fiasco I will spend my gaming budget elsewhere. Unless something drastically changes that I would see as positive from them.

[Torolan.5816]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> > @Torolan.5816 said:

> > When Anet one day signals me that my contribution through buying Core, HoT and PoF is not enough, I would quit immediately to not leech away at them.

>

> Ok, but you do understand that it's *not* enough, that the game cannot sustain itself over five years on only ~$150 per player, right? That ends up to only $2.50 per month per player. That's way less than something like Netflix. I mean, the GW2 model is not designed around each player only buying the game once and then maybe the expansions, it's designed on players buying the game, the expansions, and then also spending a reasonable amount in the Gem Store over the life of the game. The trick is in figuring out which products people will be willing to buy there and how to best distribute them. Their recent sin was not in expecting players to buy Mount skins from the Gem Store, it was in not *allowing* players to buy those skins except via a corrupt gambling box mechanism.

 

To be honest with that, I am kind of a take it as it is person. I am sincere in my word when I say that if Anet lets me know that my personal contribution is not enough, I won´t log in anymore. And it would not be in bad blood either, I can understand that you do not make good money with guys like me. But right now, it is a service Anet provides and I won´t let me guild trip in purchasing gems with real money if I don´t feel like it and even less so if the game goes in a direction I dislike. I bought all my additional banking and character slots with gold for gems. If that is not good enough, tough luck for both parties involved.

I do the same with WoW or Eve online. When I subscribe, I only do/did it with game cards when I know I absolutely want to play right now and not with some subscription over a longer time. I also have never bought something else in the WoW gamestore either.

 

In the light of that you will probably also have guessed that I also don´t really have an expensive mobile or a netflix subscription. My money is primarily used for the family including rent, food, electricity, water and a car to get to work. What is left goes either to the bank or goes out for projects I really like.

 

And to be even more honest, I have never accepted the x costs y, so z has to cost a argument. If the model of Anet is not sufficient for them, they have to change it.

[Kiza.5630]

Things I buy with money:

After you've played a game for a while, account upgrades. Like bank tabs, storage expansions, bag slots and convenience things like the salvage tools and unlimited gathering tools. From the later though I only ever bought the no-frills tools. I don't want giant flashy animations just because I chopped down a tree. ;) Whatever else catches my eye in the store, I bought the pirate outfit, but I will most likely not spend more than 10€ a month.

 

Things I buy with gold converted gems:

I think I bought like 20 BL keys over all the years since the game launched. I would never consider gambling with real money, but what the heck, it's not my money! I will also gamble exactly one mount skin... maybe two... argh! Really anything that is RNG I only buy with gold.

 

Things I will never buy:

Level 80 boosts, waypoint packages, etc.. I see no point in spending money to skip playing the game. I also never buy one-time consumables.

[Silmar Alech.4305]

I bought many account upgrades such as bank tab expansion, character slots, everlasting harvesting tools, etc.

I did not buy any skins, because they are way too expensive. Would very much like to buy, but no way with current prices.

I did not buy any blacklion keys, because they are a money grab.

I did not buy any consumables like XP-booster, revival orbs, etc.

 

According to my accounting, I bought 29037 gems. 8000 of these are from ultimate editions of HoT and PoF, 12400 gems were bought with real money, and 6237 gems with 315 ingame gold. With gold mainly in 2012. Current gold-to-gem prices are too expensive. The rest were free (5000 AP chests) or won (yeah, once I won a fan site raffle). All together, I spent 405 Euro over 5.25 years for the game, which makes 77 Euro per year or 6,47 Euro per month.

 

In general, I find the shop way too expensive. Before release 2012, I set a budget of about 5 euro per month for the gem shop to support the game, and I intended to buy skins for that. I found myself forced into wasting the budget on utilities like bank space and everlasting tools, because the game was explicitly made inconvenient to require these upgrades for convenient play. So I completely dumped the intention to ever buy a skin. In the end, I spent only half of my budget, but due to the money grab-like appearance of the shop it will stay that way.

 

Usually, I buy gems with real money and ingame stuff with ingame gold, because that's the way the currencies are intended to be used. The only time I use ingame gold for gems is for filling up leftover gems to spend for a sale. And the gem price in the first months of the game was too good to not convert gold into gems. I spent my first ~10 gold for ~2400 gems.

It also takes fun away if I always convert the game currency to its real-world equivalent in gems. A game currency should have no real-world currency equivalent - it should be completely worthless to be free to spend or waste without remorse. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the GW2 gold.

[Rauderi.8706]

I can generally justify a $10 price point. For a *really* good deal, I'll go up to $20, but that's it for a month. Basically, if I was okay with WoW's monthly subscription, I tend not to have an issue supporting GW2 at 10/month.

 

I mention this specifically in the case of the $25 Jackal. Even if I were in love with that skin, it's not a good deal. When WoW charged $25 for a mount, it was billed as "the last mount you'd ever need." It had utility in addition to the skin. For me, the Warforged Jackal is barely 1/5 the utility, because I use raptor and griffon almost exclusively, unless terrain demands require otherwise. $25 for a skin I'd barely see just isn't worth it to me, even if it well done.

 

But most of what I've gotten are cosmetics. No boosters, unless ill-fated, ill-advised, "aww what the heck let's be dumb and try it anyway" forays into keys dropped them into my lap. 90% regret (about on par with trying to farm Mystic Clovers). But I've grabbed outfits, skin sets, some gliders that caught my fancy. I dipped my toes into the RNG mounts, didn't get anything fantastic. I'd really rather have gotten a random skin from a mount *type*, if RNG had to be a part of it.

 

I also have a bunch of infrastructure improvements: bank, storage, copper-fed, some shared slots. I gloss over them because the utility I get is well worth their cost.

[Lambent.6375]

> @troops.8276 said:

> And then using the justifications associated with actual f2p games when its not.

 

Not an excuse for rng, but even compared to other b2p, gw2 is still has one of the cheaper cash shops when compared to games like black desert. ($30+ outfits for a single character, with very little skin variety in game.)

[Exsul.5803]

I mostly focus on gliders, outfits, and tools

 

I don't like my characters to look the same for too long as it becomes immersion breaking for me.

 

And if I'm using gems I don't like RNG.

[Behellagh.1468]

I buy gems weekly with gold. I tend to buy items on sale, is an obvious convenience or have some added twist to them (watchwork mining pick for instance). I do buy keys but only when they are on sale, so maybe twice a year. Even so I still have over 12.5K gems. I'm fairly satisfied with what's for sale at the gem shop.

[Djinn.9245]

All with cash (I've never felt I had enough "extra" gold to convert to gems): I have mainly purchased Armor Skins and Inventory & Bank Tabs. I have probably purchased about half of the available Armor skins and a few Inventory & Bank tabs. I have also purchased a bit of this and that: 1 set of permanent harvest tools, Copper Salvage-o-matic, 1 glider skin, a couple Shared Inventory slots, a couple Character slots, 1 single dye pack (should have researched what it actually dropped) and a few BL keys. After using and researching the keys, I concluded that they were a waste of my cash and decided I would use gold-to-gems if I purchased any in the future.

 

What I would like to see is more glider skins and some reasonably priced mount skins AND ARMOR SKINS :)

 

What I do not want to see are any more gamble boxes of any kind, nor any more outfits.

[rdfaye.4368]

Bank tabs and storage upgrades, and now I'm eyeing the unbound magic tools. Mostly I convert gold to gems, but did use cash to get enough gems to buy LS2 when it was on sale, along with a character slot. As for skins, I really like the swaggering hat, since it has hair! It is on my list now.

 

I don't buy RNG items like blk, dye kits, or the adoption license. So mostly QoL items, but if a cosmetic item really suits me, I will buy it.

[costepj.5120]

I've never spent any real money to buy gems. Whenever my gold gets near 4000 and/or the exchange rate is particularly favourable, I'll exchange for a stack of gems. I've mostly bought useful stuff - character slots, bank tabs, Shared Inventory slots, unbreakable tools, Mistlock Sanctuary pass etc. I did buy some glider skins and plan to buy some mount skins, but only when the price is right and I'm not risking getting a skin I can't use (i.e. griffon).

[Feanor.2358]

> @Ohoni.6057 said:

> ANet has the metrics, they know what we buy and don't buy, but I thought it might be useful to discuss *why* we do or do not buy various options. What do you buy, what do you never buy, what makes you more likely or less likely to purchase something?

>

> I moved my own comments to a later post, to not distract form the topic. Basically just explain what sort of things you do buy, what sort of things you'd want to buy, but don't, and why that is, what will you never buy, and why?

 

I buy pretty much everything I like. A lot of upgrades and QoL (char slots, inventory slots for my main, shared slots, infinite gathering, etc.), and a lot of cosmetics too. I don't recall buying gems specifically for something. I often convert gold to gems, but I sometimes like to throw some money at ANet just to support the game. After all the hours of fun I had in the game, it's just money well spent.

[Carighan.6758]

My issues with the ingame store are varied. I'll try to just list the bigger ones:

 

* Outfits are just a very weak replacement for full armor sets. Sure, I understand they're far easier to make, but this isn't free content added to the game, this is premium stuff from the gem store. I'd expect a wee bit of work put into them. With many of these outfits I like some elements, but dislike others. I cannot pick and mix. Hence it's a no-buy.

* I value a perception of achievement and reward in my MMORPGs. Sure, I mostly play for the social interaction with the core gameplay loop serving only as a very very elaborate minigame we all play while chatting, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy a well-designed game reward system. With GW2 near-exclusively being based around shiny designs and fancy styles as its "endgame" rewards, and with **virtually all truly shiny things coming from the gem store**, the game factually has no reward other than to tell you that you should really go and spend money. There is a solution to this, see below.

* I universally think the dev design and work came out better in the subscription-based games I've played (EQ1, DAoC, WoW, FF14) than in the F2P/B2P ones (GW1, GW2). I suspect the stable and reliable income without having to constantly butcher your developed content to piecemeal it off in the gem store helps a lot with that feeling.

 

*Proposed solution to the second point*

Gem store items are "unlocked" in some cases. That is to say you need **both** an ingame achievement and real money to get something. Compare the WvW weapons, it could be something like that: Getting the ingame reward gives you a non-glowie version of something. Just buying it off the gem store also gives that non-glowie version. Have **both** the ingame credit **and** the bought component, and you get a really pretty version.

 

That way, gem store "exclusives" would still exclusively require money, but they'd also coerce the players to actually achieve something ingame at the same time.