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What Gems REALLY do...
grimm6th
Member Posts: 973
in Guild Wars 2
I really get the sense that some people don't really think about things too much, and the knee-jerk "this is P2W" reponse is a sign of this.
You know what gems REALLY do?
From a player perspective:
Everything is worth gold in one way or another.
The items/account services in the cash shop will be accessible to everyone, even those who usually don't like paying/can't pay for them
The gold value of cash shop items is NOT set by Anet, but is player-driven based on the supply of gems and the demand for cash shop services and items.
The real money value of gold is similarly determined by the supply of gems and the demand for gold in game.
Paying real money does not give you a real advantage in any sense, other than the time it takes to farm gold for gems. The game isn't a grind game anyways, so there is no P2W .
Therefore, assuming people want to buy gold in game to buy non-cash shop items (pretty safe assumption, I would say), no player will HAVE to pay real money to get things from the cash shop.
From Anet's perspective:
The money gold sellers would have gotten goes to Anet instead.
Any thoughts or opinions?
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Sorry for being nitpicky, but I don't think it will ruin GW2, but I also don't like the gem/gold trading. And I'm not sure if they get rid of goldsellers this way.
I really don't want anything to ruin GW2
EDIT : It is more that I fear that GW2 player trade will be mainly about those gems.
I really miss old p2p games: you pay a fee and you get a complete working service, with no excuses like "it is f2p if you don't like it don't play it" which is a too frequent leit motiv recently.
Also it is just a game and nothing else, putting in money too will make it seems more similar to a real job.
Basically it's putting the "free market" into a mmorpg.
I like it. I've never been good with economics but I'm sure those of you who are going to have fun playing the AH and currency values.
I think what they're really doing is bringing GW2 more into real life. Bascally they're going to get people more addicted because they feel the economics of the game actually matter.
Also if you're 18 and can play 16 hours a day then you can get what you want and if your 35 with kid's but can only play 16 hourse a week then you can get what you want. Sounds good to me.
I thought you all loved Capitalism?
Man, 15 years of playing MMOs, and all I needed to win at them was a floppy hat, and a new pair of knickers ? I am loving this game already.
Yeah, I agree with the first bit where some players will like to play the market now that it will have rl cash value.
But I dont agree with your last bit. You left out the players that can only play a few hours and lack the cash because of crazy exchange ratios and their country having lower wages. It only equalises for certain western countries in the way you describe.
If it were only about the vanity cash store stuff, it wouldnt matter that much. But my impression is that the gems will cause inflation and make ingame loot more difficult to obtain by trade for casual players. So ppl that lack money AND cash are basically fcked. That is too much rl to put in a game imo
Until I see it in action I really can't be sure how I feel about it.
But if they are selling automatic "I win buttons" count me in.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Nothing's going to ruin GW2, the people voting "it's going to P2W" are ignorant and the ignorants usually get swept under the rug within a few months of release. It matters to people now because they have no valid complaints so they're running around acting like the sky is falling.
If you are wondering how it would get rid of gold sellers...
Would you really pay a gold seller to sell you gold, which has risks (being scammed, being banned, etc.) when you could do with without those risks?
Anet has as much or more incentive to keep gold sellers out of GW2 as they did in GW1.
Imagine a situation where a gold seller was selling gold in GW2. say gems cost a dollar, or 1,000 gold (current market price). If the gold seller started selling 1,100 gold for a dollar in an attempt to undercut the market, the market would pretty much automatically adjust, forcing the price of gems to increase to 1,100, or 2,000, or 5,000...whatever the gold sellers gold per dollar ratio is. This is because if gold sellers could sell gold for cheaper than the gem cost of gold, the market would get gold saturated while the gem supply would fall (players using the gems). The demand for gems by players who don't pay real money for gems will definitely still exist, and if less people are buying gems, those gems will start to become worth more to players, who will pay more gold to get them. Gem sellers will naturally charge enough to match the gold seller's prices...anyways, the gold seller will never really be able to undercut the market in the long term, only inflate the gold value real money, which means that they really have no unique service to offer...
Dhuum.
As for not liking gold/gem trading, it seems like it would be easy enough to ignore a feature that you don't have to use.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
all hail the mighty gold sinks. Gold sinks will save us all.
Yeah, inflation sucks big time. It sucks for all games. All games deal with it by having gold sinks. This is why people would buy gold in the first place. Hopefully Anet finds a good way to keep inflation in check.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
I think its a fine system especially being that there's supposedly no P2W items in the cash shop. Correct me if Im wrong. If that's the case its a wonderful system.
Particularly because in most games with a cash shop there's no way to get any of those cash shop items by just playing the game. Here I can. So Im good with it all around.
In short, they were going to have a cash shop (anyone paying attention knew this a long time ago), they were not going to include anything but cosmetic and service cash shop items, and now they've introduced a system where people not necessarily paying cash for items can still get them too.
Am I mistaken here? Like I said correct me if I'm wrong. If this is the case, it certainly works for me. Its great news as far as I'm concerned and not bad news in any sense.
Nope, you understand perfectly.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
so u cant use cash to buy stuff from cash shop? have to use cash to buy gem then trade for gold?
Correct. However, you can't get gold from the cash shop. It must come from other players.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
That's actually not true. ArenaNet will probably get a little bit more revenue from people who can't or won't pay real-life money (past the initial purchase) but will pay in-game gold to someone else to effectively have someone else buy stuff from the item mall for them. But much of the stuff that people buy that way will be stuff that they'd have bought directly if not for the gems system.
It's likely that the bigger advantage for ArenaNet will be that greatly reducing gold sellers means greatly reducing the problems that they cause--most notably credit card fraud.
Plus, when you sell gems on the market, I assume you'll be taxed for a nice gold sink. I wonder if they'll tax gems at a higher rate.
This somehow reminds me of EvE's model regarding Plex's (Pilot License Extension) that is 30 days game time you pay cash for, and sell in the game to other players, which is a really awesome system. This is just kind of an alternate method allowing people to sell gems for gold so that people get cash shop items that want them.
This type of system is a boon to players all around. Everyone benefits. Anet, the buyer, and the seller of the gems. Everyone wins. Its a good system. I'm hyped. Just another way Anet has innovated.
Which would automatically jump inflation in the game right from the start as people will charge more for their gems in order to offset the losses from the tax, effectively making the gap between the gem buyer and non gem buyer larger.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
I'm no expert, but I suppose it'll depend if it's a buyers or sellers market. If too many people are trying to sell gems, then the prices won't be that high. Even with a higher tax rate.
there wont be enough money in game for gems to sell for much >.< remember the game would just have come out.. no one will have much money.
That'sa hilarious response. So a game has "innovated" by copying a feature from another game? No wonder some people consider WoW the most innovative game ever (under this definition).
I find the Plex system quite interesting. It' a win win approach for both the developers and the people who want to spend RL money on a game. Which is of course the reason it's been copied lately by multiple games. So far GW2 and Tera are confirmed to have this system implemented. Not sure about TSW yet.
Try to think long term. This is not a system that will be utilised only at launch. In fact, it will see its more heavier usage when the population has stabilised and the achievers will start pushing the envelope. Inflation does not come when the game is fresh, but rather a long time down the line.
In any case, a game needs money sinks. Which in this case will need to account for credits coming from normal playing, gems and illegit cash shops (anyone believes they'll be extinct?). CCP is controlling the ingame economy as if it's an actual RL economy (which is a task made easy by the one server design). Will the same happen with GW2? Too early to tell.
Pretty creative to put such a huge contradiction in a single bullet point, topped off with such an impossible conclusion (at this time), grimm6th.
An ingame gold for gems exchanging system is in fact a huge incentive to grind gold.
They said as much too: They don't want Gem buyers to have a huge advantage over those who work for it. i.e. Those who grind for gold to support their Gem habbit.
They are clearly not saying that they don't want Gem buyers to have a huge advantage over those who don't even touch the Gem shop.
All, apart from the base mechanics is speculation at this time. With what they disclosed it could still go P2W.
What will they sell for Gems and for how much Gems?
What will Gems cost us in either cash or gold?
How time consuming is it to get the gold needed for a Gem at max level?
Untill we've answered those three questions it's better not to jump to conclusions.
My brand new bloggity blog.
they were speaking of at the beginning, long term the market will be kept in check by having a single AH for every single player. The ratio of gem buyers/sellers will not alter that much and since there are heavy gold sinks in game the economy should stay stable in the long term.
Generally i am against all kind of microtransaction stuff. I kind of miss the days, where i would have bought a game and be done with it/or just pay my 13 Euros per month.
BUT since this IS the trend, and an unstopable one, i actually prefer a system like this. Eve Online, PotBS and LotRO (kind of) have similar systems, and they work, are rather fair and give the players more flexibility.
Sorry about not being clear, what I was trying to say is that you don't need to grind to "win" (to me, a grind game is one where the leveling process is slow, repetitive, tedious, and is bearable only because of the great rewards at the end for doing so). With the flat leveling curve of about an hour to an hour and a half, you won't really need to grind to gain levels, especially since you can sidekick up to play with higher level friends...and getting to level 80 isn't really the end of anything and getting the "best" gear isn't looking like it will be a grind either.
That isn't to say that GW2 will lack activities like titles or grinding to get gold for the things you want to buy, which are probably cosmetic as much as anything. The difference is that this grind isn't going to do anything to make your character better than another character, hence my bold claim of "there is no P2W".
As for the red parts...
Has absolutely nothing to do with the game being P2W or not. they will be priced such that Anet makes money by selling them and Players are willing to buy them.
Player-driven...it means It depends on supply and demand. We don't know how much each gem will cost, or how many gems things will cost, but it is likely that microtransaction prices will be similar to that of other MMOs.
The only valid question of the 3, as this is likely to be what determines how much gold players will pay for gems.
all in all, I really don't see what is so contradictory about my assessment of things, or how those questions would effect my conclusions.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
But my experience from other games is that the price will settle at an equilibrium where one hour of efficient farming by a max level character will net roughly 50 cents worth of gems.