Why is there no option to buy a custom amount of gems for cash?

[Lawliet.4017]

I'm sure the question was around for all these years, but I've personally never seen it answered by ArenaNet.

I do understand it's more profitable for Anet when let's say, you wanna buy a total makeover kit for 350 gems and you don't wanna waste gold (especially considering the current exchange ratio), but minimal amount of gems to buy is 800. So you have no choice. But what if we actually had a choice?

I am no economist, and I know there is a whole lot of people managing the way gemstore should work. But is the profit actually worth inconvinience?

 

Please do post a link to a thread this question was answered in if there is such.

[sigur.9453]

i have no link to actual statisics, but this method creates more revenue. you buy more gems that you need, so you buy more stuff that you would have not bought otherwise. thats one of the reasons that they (and game companies in generall) do not label their ingame items with a "real world currency".

 

Edit: found a nice statment why its creating more revenue.

 

_We can look even deeper at why the “Premium Currency” formula works so well. It’s harnessing some well documented psychological patterns with it players. Everybody experienced loss aversion, we are afraid of waste and try hard to avoid it. Premium currency packs take advantage of this loss aversion through the “Sunk Cost” effect to encourage its players to pay more. The “Sunk Cost” effect is when not losing money in a losing proposition becomes the main reason to throw in more money. In this case leaving unspent Premium Currency is the “losing proposition” and the player, having already invested money into the game, is inclined to spend more to acquire additional premium currency and use the unspent currency sitting in their accounts effectively, thereby in their mind, nullifying the initial loss._

[Yargesh.4965]

There is a custom option, it is how I always buy gems. Look closer at bottom right corner.

[sigur.9453]

> @"Yargesh.4965" said:

> There is a custom option, it is how I always buy gems. Look closer at bottom right corner.

 

i think this does only work for gold -> gems. but please correct me if i am wrong.

[mercury ranique.2170]

short answer is cause it makes more revenue. It does annoy and this is actually used. Gems on a gemcard have the same value as gems purchased online, but the cards are only in a bigger bundle, meaning people will less likely buy them that way and prefer the online purchase method.

 

The two main reasons are:

1: people will buy the bundle anyways and they make more revenue.

2: When people have unspent gems in their wallet, they want to spent it, otherwise it is a waste and so they will sell more gems once more.

[Yargesh.4965]

> @"sigur.9453" said:

> > @"Yargesh.4965" said:

> > There is a custom option, it is how I always buy gems. Look closer at bottom right corner.

>

> i think this does only work for gold -> gems. but please correct me if i am wrong.

 

The op was talking about gold to gems, so that is what I thought they were talking about.

[sigur.9453]

> @"Yargesh.4965" said:

> > @"sigur.9453" said:

> > > @"Yargesh.4965" said:

> > > There is a custom option, it is how I always buy gems. Look closer at bottom right corner.

> >

> > i think this does only work for gold -> gems. but please correct me if i am wrong.

>

> The op was talking about gold to gems, so that is what I thought they were talking about.

 

oh damn, after reading it again you could be right. my apologies

Edit: thread title says cash, nvm

[Danikat.8537]

I think transaction charges might also have something to do with it. Vendors usually have to pay a fee to cover the cost of each transaction being processed by the banks involved (your bank and their bank) and below a certain amount that's just not worth doing - lots of small transactions produce less profit than 1 big one. This is why until relatively recently there was always a minimum price for paying on card in shops, and still is in some places. (I think that got dropped partially to accommodate contactless payments, but I'm not sure of the details because I wasn't working in retail at that point.)

 

It's definitely also because of the psychological effect too. How often have you heard someone say they'd never buy gems to get black lion keys, but if they have any "left over" gems they'll use them to buy keys? Or some other relatively cheap item?

 

Although my thinking is that only makes sense if you're certain you're never going to buy any more gems. Otherwise it's better to keep any 'left overs' so you can add them to the next lot you buy. On several occasions my left over gems have been enough to get me another item when it went on sale, or I only need to pay a small amount of gold to get it instead of having to buy more gems with real money.

[Yamazuki.6073]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> I think transaction charges might also have something to do with it. Vendors usually have to pay a fee to cover the cost of each transaction being processed by the banks involved (your bank and their bank) and below a certain amount that's just not worth doing - lots of small transactions produce less profit than 1 big one. This is why until relatively recently there was always a minimum price for paying on card in shops, and still is in some places. (I think that got dropped partially to accommodate contactless payments, but I'm not sure of the details because I wasn't working in retail at that point.)

>

> It's definitely also because of the psychological effect too. How often have you heard someone say they'd never buy gems to get black lion keys, but if they have any "left over" gems they'll use them to buy keys? Or some other relatively cheap item?

>

> Although my thinking is that only makes sense if you're certain you're never going to buy any more gems. Otherwise it's better to keep any 'left overs' so you can add them to the next lot you buy. On several occasions my left over gems have been enough to get me another item when it went on sale, or I only need to pay a small amount of gold to get it instead of having to buy more gems with real money.

 

The transaction fee cost isn't why. Steam lets you enter any custom amount over 5$, as 5$ is their minimum. With weird numbers it actually encourages multiple transactions. Such as if you wanted 30$, you need 10$+20$ rather than 30$. If you wanted something between 50$ and 100$, you need multiple transactions too. It's purely to get you to spend more, as said above.

[Trise.2865]

It's a common monetization technique, trading real currency for fake currency. One can only buy the fake currency in fixed amounts, while the items they're used to buy don't quite add up perfectly to multiples of that. Payers feel compelled to use the "leftover" currency, so they must buy more to get "full value". Guild Wars 2 is a little better, because you can dump the "excess" Gems for in-game Gold (at a loss), but not by much.

[Asum.4960]

Same reason why 10€ = 800 Gems, or why the intermediate currency of gems exists in the first place.

 

It's all just little psychological tricks to get you to spend more money than you otherwise would if you saw that Staff skin or what have you for 9€ on the store and could buy it directly for that amount.

700 Gems looks better, and then you have 100 Gems left on top, urging you to buy more gems, to get "value" out of that left over by spending it on something else.

[Danikat.8537]

> @"Asum.4960" said:

> Same reason why 10€ = 800 Gems, or why the intermediate currency of gems exists in the first place.

>

> It's all just little psychological tricks to get you to spend more money than you otherwise would if you saw that Staff skin or what have you for 9€ on the store and could buy it directly for that amount.

> 700 Gems looks better, and then you have 100 Gems left on top, urging you to buy more gems, to get "value" out of that left over by spending it on something else.

 

I think I got lucky there. In the UK it's £8.50 for 800 gems, so it's relatively easy to estimate the price of gem store items - for example a 700 gem item is about £7.40.

 

Although it's also easy to work it out exactly with a calculator: Price of the currency pack divided by the amount of currency you get, then multiplied by the cost of the item. For example: (€10 ÷ 800) x 700 = €8.75

 

I always do that when considering buying items in games (or any other situation which uses a virtual currency), either a rough estimate if I'm confident that will be close enough or using a calculator if I think it's necessary, then ask myself if I think it's worth that much. Of course that's purely subjective, but that's why I only ask myself. (Occasionally I ask my husband, but just to wind him up. "Look at my obnoxiously sparkly space raptor, guess what that cost me?)

[Asum.4960]

> @"Danikat.8537" said:

> > @"Asum.4960" said:

> > Same reason why 10€ = 800 Gems, or why the intermediate currency of gems exists in the first place.

> >

> > It's all just little psychological tricks to get you to spend more money than you otherwise would if you saw that Staff skin or what have you for 9€ on the store and could buy it directly for that amount.

> > 700 Gems looks better, and then you have 100 Gems left on top, urging you to buy more gems, to get "value" out of that left over by spending it on something else.

>

> I think I got lucky there. In the UK it's £8.50 for 800 gems, so it's relatively easy to estimate the price of gem store items - for example a 700 gem item is about £7.40.

>

> Although it's also easy to work it out exactly with a calculator: Price of the currency pack divided by the amount of currency you get, then multiplied by the cost of the item. For example: (€10 ÷ 800) x 700 = €8.75

>

> I always do that when considering buying items in games (or any other situation which uses a virtual currency), either a rough estimate if I'm confident that will be close enough or using a calculator if I think it's necessary, then ask myself if I think it's worth that much. Of course that's purely subjective, but that's why I only ask myself. (Occasionally I ask my husband, but just to wind him up. "Look at my obnoxiously sparkly space raptor, guess what that cost me?)

 

Yea, I also try to calculate the actual price of things before making a purchase, but I'm also not the type of person who reads lets say 399.99€ as 300€ at a glance, but I know plenty of people who do so.

Still, I do find myself spending 800 Gems more freely than I would 10€. So I can say it's still working to some extend, even for me.

 

But a single endless gathering tool for one character being priced at 12.5€ still makes me shake my head at least, even if the abstracted 1000 Gems may not look that bad. The fact that you would need to spend at least 45€ on gems to buy 3 tools for a character because of the pricing options is pretty ridiculous, and hardly a Microtransaction.

Stuff like that is probably the main reason why I barely ever spend actual money on gems any more.