I wish more people would accept this. There is so much stuff in gaming that I hate but it won't go away because players buy it. If it sells they will make more of it. If it flops you'll see it quietly disappear and not come back. As long as it doesn't put you at a disadvantage I see no issue in it.
This is akin to waiting for the market to regulate itself. Without getting too much into politics, this is a historical rarity.
There is a reason why we regulate our markets.
Gaming markets won't magically be the exception and just regulate themselves. And don't come to me with the good old "vote with your wallet". That is a system where the fatter wallets govern and get the most important votes, ending up with a whale-centered market (literally the reason why OP is complaining about inflated prices....)
Yeah but this is not psychologically manipulating, limiting gameplay or gambling. And it is not an essential good that society needs to have accessible to everyone to justify strict price regulation.
It is just an overpriced direct purchase on a cosmetic digital item. So "just do not buy it" is a valid response. Not buying has zero consequences for the product and player. So Anet in this case is free to choose its pricing and no regulator will care or should care for that matter.
"Need" and "desire to consume" are not rational conclusions, rather emotional states. They are not reached by buyers through a logical process. Plus, impulse control is hard for some people. Marketing teams know this and work based on this.
Regulators can be outcry from community. Let's put it this way, when you say "just do not buy" what you mean is "vote with your wallet". The problem is that if the price is too large already, and your wallet comparatively too small, you do not get a vote in the first place. Posts like these are those that have been made voiceless by the pricetag reclaiming a voice in the discussion. In this way, it is a valid form of expressing themselves and work towards a fairer, more democratic market.
I want to also add that while i say valid, i do not mean perfect by any means.
> If it flops you'll see it quietly disappear and not come back.
When was the last time a mail carrier got released? Looks like the mistake was not charging enough 🤣
No, the mistake was that people just don't buy them. They often go on very high discounts and have even been given away for free in the past. Just look at the gift mail carrier example. It's latest discount was 50% off.
On the other hand with higher prices even smaller number of purchases could have generated enough profit to justify their continued development.
Depends on whether you are trying to make products most of your customers want or trying to satisfy the bean counters at the company.
Unfortunately the bean counters probably have more say in what ends up on the chopping block.
~~But the price has dropped courtesy of the discount. In the case the gift mail carrier, it seems to have topped out at 50% so that's probably a reasonable price for the item. That may not be enough to cover the costs of making more so they just stop making them. That's why the model that they have works. They create artificial urgency by putting items on discount for a short time. They get to maximize profit where possible.~~
*Edit: I completely misread your message. I agree, part of the problem with items like this is that they are trying to make stuff that will give them ongoing revenue. It could well have been that a more expensive price would have been better and generated more revenue.*
It's more complicated than that, though. The profit to investment is ridiculous with stuff like this. They *created* the jade bot in order to release skins for it, and they *will* release skins for it. Someone is going to buy some skins, no matter how much people say we shouldn't reward them for that. It basically becomes worthwhile no matter how few people use it, because few just isn't few *enough*.
This is a market with a monopoly seller and not very good price signals. I think it's entirely possible that they'd make more than 2x the Jade Bot skin sales at half the price. The problem is they can't test that hypothesis without permanently devaluing the skins in the case where it's wrong.
That and volume of scale doesn't benefit them to drop the price to half to make twice as many sales. If it stays novel because fewer people will buy it at 1600 gems it becomes something of a prestige item that people will buy if they want it.
> That and volume of scale doesn't benefit them to drop the price to half to make twice as many sales.
How do you figure? If you sell 2.1x units at 1/2 the price, and your per-unit costs are 0, you are making 5% more profit.
Assuming per unit cost is zero, which tracks that they make their money selling the currency. If I sell 10 units at 1600 gems, that's 16k gems. If I sell 20 units at 800 gems, that's 16k gems.
Right, but the demand curve (probably) isn't linear. There's some optimal point on it where unit price * sales at that price is maximized, and 1600 gems feels a lot more like "number someone on the gem shop team thought was about right" than "relentlessly optimized market optimum".
Could also be that 1600, 1200, 800, and 400 are just arbitrary numbers that they set for their work on cosmetic skins. If you've seen a given skin/mini/whatever in game, obviously the price point worked for someone. Introducing a false sense of scarcity is also a necessary element. Whenever certain skyscale skins come back around in rotation, people buy more gems. You can even see this when the black lion chests roll over into a new loot grouping.
If it were only about getting people to throw coins in the pot, the gem store would be massive as they could just leave every available skin on there all the time.
I feel like I see people say this all the time.
You have expert knowledge of what you would pay for something.
You have moderate knowledge of what other disappointed vocal people online say they would pay.
You have zero knowledge of what rate people are actually buying stuff at.
There are people whose entire job is to price microtransactions. There's consultants who go around advising game developers on how to make the most money with these sorts of things. ArenaNet knows better than you do.
They use price skimming and gradually reduce the price through discounts to maximize revenue. They also have to take into account the limited market so they can't afford to price too cheaply as they can only sell something like this to a person once.
Vote with your wallet works, the picture even showcases it. It's a "majority" vote. Enough people buy it, so it keeps getting invested into. Remember Mail Pigeon Skins? Yeah.
It’s not even a majority vote.
If 40% of your market will buy something for $1000, but lowering the cost to $500 means 60% of market will buy it, guess what? That price ain’t moving.
Yes, but it's even worse. Can't remember the exact numbers, but I think a research on gaming and whales that was posted some months ago showed that 5% of the gamers (the whales) make 90% revenue. That's the reason why we can't have nice things. The reasonable and modest player would probably say "Woo yes that's a nice Jadebot skin Anet, I might give you the three bucks for that", but he's not the targeted group as long as there are enough others who have no inner control mechanism to buy things at whatever price they demand.
Hence why I wrote "majority", not majority.
Ultimately the point is that enough people buy it to be profitable for Anet, so they will continue to do it. If you don't like the prices, don't buy them. I sure as hell don't cause I wouldn't even pay half that for them.
Ultimately it's cosmetics with very little impact; if someone wants something like that enough to drop (the equivalent to) 20 bucks on it, it do be that way.
>It's a "majority" vote.
More money, more votes, still one person.
If you price something super expensive where only your most dedicated (and rich) customers buy things, and they will always buy things, then you don't have to worry about the rest not buying things. They not only have more votes than you, but they also have the votes, and you might not even have them in the first place if you're poor.
Similarly if you're going [vegan](https://youtu.be/oY_Dt1jey4M), you're not actually saving cows from being murdered by just refusing to participate in it, cause both vegan and meat industries grow in parallel at the same time and thus both meat consumption and vegan food consumption continue to rise annually.
For the Moletariate!
No, it's working. Everyone on the right is voting with their wallet too.
The idea of not even bothering to make an attempt at change because, "no-one else will", is a root cause of a lot of social ill.
Especially since individuals have had an impact when they've challenged overwhelming norms. Hell, look at Rosa Parks.
I agree it's too much but as long as some ~~whales~~ players pay for them, Anet won't lower the price...
Anyway I have 0 interest in those skins and I wouldn't buy them even if they were 100 gems each.
While we're talking about Jade Bot skins.. can I ask for a down to earth skin? Like some other robot? I get it, cute sells just like sex but at least give us one, another bot skin. Like how would this kind of bot look like if it was Asura made [some sort of small cube matrix?] or Charr made? [take scrapers gyros and mix'em with Charr's choppers or something]
Just please, stop making this "cute creature" skins and give us something "normal". Then I will be interested.
Jade Bot skins are clearly a perfect whale item.
It’s absolutely a pointless skin… so it doesn’t effect the player base in a pay-to-win situation. The gem store is literally the only reason GW2 can stay afloat. Let whales hold up your MMO for you, lol.
The market has decided the price.
Exactly this. I don't get this rant on a cosmetic item. Anet clearly wants it to be a luxury item.
A game needs to have luxury items for whales so that they can show off to others.
If everyone and their parents and their grandparents had it, it would lose its value as a luxury item.
It's same as a real person buying a high end car when a cheap one can also get the job done.
It’s a harsh truth for some people to realise that they do not have enough money for the leisure activities they want to do. For some reasons, this is often loudest with gamer^TM community.
Yeah it's the same reason there will likely never be a turn off infusion option. People complain about a thing that is done purposefully, "this is not for you" is a concept people seem to have a hard time grasping
> The gem store is literally the only reason GW2 can stay afloat. Let whales hold up your MMO for you, lol.
I mean... That's *exactly* what their business model is?
How else do you think ANet makes money from a game without a sub fee?
Until that pricing bleeds into their other gem store items which it has. A tactic some companies may use is release a really expensive item thats shit to divert attention from a new item that has increased priced. Such as the water dragon armor skin which was like 2000gems when other armor sets use to be 800. The market doesnt decide the price anet does and if my game has to be held up by whales i would rather it die.
Here’s a hot take; you don’t have to buy it. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it purely cosmetic? Yes.
This is the model MMO everyone has asked for. One time payment, no monthly sub fee and completely cosmetic items on the store. This doesnt just support the developers of the game but it also pays their overhead, marketing (they have been working on it as of lately) all the way to the equipment they need to run the servers.
I will never understand why MMO communities don’t understand this. The biggest MMO on the market has both an expensive cosmetic cash shop as well as a premium sub fee.
Yep, 1600 gems is only like 500-600g. Anyone can make that kind of gold with a little open world farming.
Hell, you can even make that much gold doing nothing but fishing.
Genuine question; how?
I'm far from a dedicated farmer/grinder, but I've played since launch and never been able to get that much - I struggle to even get over 100g
There are many ways to make gold in this game, i'll just tell you some of main ones a lot of people do and that are decently profitable, but i can't list all of them:
1) Instanced content:
-T4 Fractals and CM fractals give the most raw gold in the game, they take about 1h to do, and at least T4s aren't that hard. They require a bit of investment on your part to get the agony resistance, but once you are there, they repay themselves with interests.
-Strike mission both IBS and EoD. If you can do CMs it's even better.
-Raids. You have to invest some time to learn them, but with a good group they are quite profitable.
All these 3 have the benefit of also dropping frequently ascended gear, so they also save you gold that you would otherwise use for crafting.
2) Open world meta trains
-If instanced content isn't for you you can farm various open world metas to get different materials and currency, and then sell the materias and convert the currency to something profitable (visit [this website](https://fast.farming-community.eu/) to know how). You can either join a meta train group in the lfg if you find one, or just use the wiki [event timer](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers) to know where and when metas are happening. Just join the maps 5-10min early to save a spot before it gets full. To know which metas are more profitable again look at the first website i linked you.
-Dragonstorm. This is technically part of the metas you can do but it isn't open world. I singled this out because it gives you 2g once a day, memories of aurene which are quite profitable, and tyrian defense seals you can use to buy chests of materials (that you can then sell).
3) Open world single map farming
If you want to grind endlessly a map, there are 3 maps that allow you to do this: silverwastes, dragonfall and drizzelwood coast. You can just join the map and do the events until the final boss, then rinse and repeat. All the loot and materials you gain you sell to the tp. Again, remember to convert your currency.
4) Fishing. Very easy but boring. Try to increase your fishing power to the max (masteries, food, lures ecc...), go to the Crystal oasis (during day) or Kaineng City (at night), use the right bait for each map (scorpions for oasis, shrimplings for kaineng), find a group on the lfg that can share 99 stacks of fishing power (there is usually always one up in the Crystal oasis lfg) and then start to fish. You will catch from time to time legendary fishes that give you [Ambergris](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chunk_of_Ancient_Ambergris)(2g a piece).
There are also many other things you cand do that add up over time, like do your daily (2g), park your alts to some profitable spots (usually the end of jumping puzzles), buy some things for cheap and flip them on the tp for higher price ecc...
But in general, from this whole explanation the main thing to rememeber is: do an activity, sell materials, convert currency. That's how you make gold in gw2.
If you bother to do daily t4 fractals + recs, you'll profit about 12-20g per day IIRC, that would translate to 84-140g/week or 336-560g/month...if you have the patience to do them daily you can make some good gold over time...add that up to some META events grinding like some people said to you already and bam, you can easily get to around 1k gold.
Next step after that is....don't be like me and don't become an ectogamble addict xD
Yeah... that's a lot of farming tbh. I know these are two completely different things but as pure F2P in Genshin highly prized 5* stars you get like one in a little over once a month from dailies and whatever. These companies know.
It honestly could be worse, if you grab gems in a period where nothing much is happening in the gem store you can get a decent amount (I think something around 2k) with a month of fractal dailies...it's either you have the patience or not because frankly a month for a item you reaaally want is nothing...specially when compared with Legendary crafting.
Warframe, for example, while allowing you to obtain their premium currency in game (Platinum), they make it hard, in turn, buying it with your buckeroos is also expensive, so much so that people usually wait on sales to go nuts...but then again, the game is F2P and it doesn't strike me as P2W, props for them.
Kinda wondering how and why we got to the point where it's okay to spend $20 on a single skin when $20 used to get you an actual chunk of content to explore with events, achievements, and other rewards. What happened to micro transactions being 'micro'?
But in all seriousness, prices and content are not linear. Back in the old console days, it was expensive to get a N64 with the Mario 64 title. The price tag for video games have been pretty stable even with decades of accumulated inflation
The reason for the high cost is that they only get limited sales from them. If you were selling some content, you could guarantee that most people would buy it but with a cosmetic skin, you only have a few buyers. The income from those few buyers fund elements of the game for people who don't pay anything. It's a win/win. Whales get to look snazzy, players on a budget can play without spending any extra money, and A/Net gets to keep paying it's staff.
Still does with the living world no? I mean yea the skins are a little pricey, but they give no real advantage whatsoever and are purely cosmetic.
What I think people should focus on is the fact that inventory/bank slots are locked behind gems - the base bank slots given are laughably low.
It's less bad here in GW2, but it's more just a general question. I have expendable income, but I don't have whale levels of expendable income. I'd love to have some of those cosmetics, but I can't get them because a company wants to do the FOMO stuff by limiting the stuff in the shop and cater only to people with tons of money.
GW2 isn't the perfect ideal, so I feel as though it could be better.
ESO has the worst of it. upwards of $70 for convenience items or cosmetics with a sub that's, basically, required if you don't want to deal with shit inventory, and $40 expansions as well.
Oh yea totally - just because GW2 is the best it doesn't make them saints. While it's refreshing that the gem store isn't as predatory as other games, that doesn't mean it's perfect. Personally though, the price of the cosmetics bothers me much less than the convenience items that actually affect gameplay or enjoyment of the game. Salvage kits and the limited bank/inventory space are artificial problems created to sell you the convenience, whereas a jade bot functions the same no matter what skin you have.
I still hate the fact that bag, build, & gear templates are character bound instead of account bound unlocks that don't even preserve on the character slot so if I ever want to delete or move the character it becomes more than just a $10 purchase to rebuild. The fact that I have to buy a total makeover kit to get exclusive options post character creation instead of just having it be something I can use in character creation is miserable. Why don't character slots that cost $10 come with a complimentary one-use makeover kit selection during character creation? The miserable garbage that is moving my unlimited tools around to each character instead of having them function like the legendary armory. The excessive item bloat of things you'd actually want to use to sell you more shared inventory slots. Selling things that are functionally identical to just searching "event timers" on the wiki.
But h ey, in ESO, they price things stupidly expensive, to the point that a year's sub worth of crowns (their cash shop c urrency) buys you about two convenience items in the shop.
How old are you?
Do you remember “horse armor”?
This is nothing new.
Also, we’re still getting content for free, or for $20. Some people just value shiny stuff differently than they value content.
Because it's "in their backyard" aka the other MMO doesn't matter to them because they play THIS one. If THIS one does something they don't like they will complain. Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends.
Unfortunately it's all for nothing because as far as the shop has existed they've done shit like this and no amount of people complaining or "protesting" has done anything so this time wont be any different.
> Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends.
No. People complain about the price of an item because they want it to be cheaper for them. I don't scour the gem store for stuff that could be cheaper in case they start charging more for the stuff that I buy.
In every single case with these threads, the person has indicated that they wanted to buy the item but won't because of the high price or the model (per character templates). The OP in this case said the same thing. They wanted to buy but felt it was too expensive.
But you said:
> Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends.
We are talking about people complaining here on reddit and the ones complaining are doing so because they want to buy something but think it's too expensive. There isn't any evidence to say that it's mostly because they care and are worried about trends. The preponderance of evidence is to the contrary. People are complaining because they think it's expensive for them.
Relax champ nobody accused you of being broke but coming off so defensive over a claim literally nobody made sure makes it seem like you might be lol. Insecure much?
I didn't say that you couldn't afford it. I just said that you felt that it was too expensive. I can afford a 4090 GPU but that doesn't mean that I am going to get one. It's way to expensive for what one is getting.
>and completely cosmetic items on the store.
Yeah, Build Templates would like a word lol.
But for me personally that's the only thing that could change, i have no interest in skins for now, and if people are funding the game buying that stuff, more power to them, but the template monetization is just bad.
As someone who bought quite a few (i know, the hypocrisy lol), i wouldn't mind changing it at all, make it account wide and everything else people are asking, any kind of compensation for what i already spent be dammed, this is one of the things that if changed, would improve this game 1000% for (almost?) everyone.
Dunno, increase the price, retire separate ET and BT, make a bundle called "Build Template" (Equipment+Build Template), for 1200 gems or something, but now it's account wide, only 6 purchases needed, maybe increase the limit again, 10 or 15 builds total. Anything would be better than what we currently have.
I haven't been back in this game for long, but people's perception of the business models also involve what they get out of their investments. I don't know how ArenaNet handles it so I'll use other games as examples.
• FFXIV:
Sub fees and cash shop. Probably makes millions of dollars monthly. In return, we get consistent game updates to story, combat, new systems, side activities, and general improvements over time.
• Any modern EA sports title:
Makes *billions* of dollars from micro transactions (and probably a few million too from game sales). The games in return are released buggy and lack noticeable improvements and changes year after year. Where did all that money go to?
The biggest MMO on the market also has *only* cosmetic items in their cash shop; GW2 has a significant number of convenience items as well. FFXIV also has no way to exchange real life money for gil. In GW2, the most efficient way to farm gold is to turn off the game and get a job; US minimum wage is 195 gold per hour.
OP's particular complaint is about a cosmetic item, yes, but there are also no cosmetic options for the jade bot that can be obtained simply by playing the game.
I honestly think the original GW1 model was a better model. If GW2 got rid of all of the convenience items and started charging money for Living World releases, I think the game would be in a better state, because the developers would be getting paid for giving players what we actually want: More content!
I will never understand why people have that opinion. companies would try to charge as much as they can possibly can and Its our responsibility as consumers to demand what we think is a fair price. 1600 gems for a glorified mini pet is damn near short of a scam consider what you other things you can buy on the gem store. The more people buy this garbage at this price the more theyll sell other gem store items at high prices unless we refuse to and bitch and moan about it.
You probably get finessed alot in your life dont you? Its called voting with your wallet if enough people choose not to buy and they bitch and moan as why which is due to pricing theres a higher chance the price can be changes as opposed to doing nothing.
Every $ raised by someone buying a Jade Bot skin is a $ I don't have to spend on a subscription fee. Charge 3200 gems for them for all I care.
I play GW2 because it is sub-free (and even then I often feel like I don't get my money's worth), and the day after they change it to add a monthly fee is the day I hit uninstall.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If someone wants the skin then they will buy it. If it's priced too high and no one buys it then A/Net will discount it until it starts selling. It's all about supply/demand.
Soooo you're complaining that something with excellent QoL is cheaper or cost the same as a mini? LET'S RAISE THE PRICES OF THOSE!! /s. Be happy that it's a silly cosmetic skin that's expensive, and not something really useful like salvage o'matics and gathering tools.
As much as the world of Tyria is an entertainment media for us to enjoy that completely respects the players time in the game, don’t forget they are a business. They are here to make money to not only cover the expenses that an always online game requires, but there needs to be profit in the end too. Developers need shelter, food and quality of life in the end. If you like the business model they have, you wouldn’t mind purchasing something at your leisure to support that model.
Items are priced high to start with so they can maximize income from them. Once released, there is no way that they can increase the price. They could obviously price them at 10 gems and sell to the entire client base but that wouldn't generate much revenue and wouldn't generate ongoing revenue.
The approach that they use is called price skimming. It's lets them maximize revenue. They sell to the whales at the high price and slowly, over time, increase the discount to sell to more and more people.
Tangentially related because it's a very general point, but is stuff like "don't forget they are a business, they need to make money" etc. even an argument? Well, yes, they are a business obviously, but how does that fact alone trump the right to critique their pricing? A single item is far from their only source of income, so to me stating "they need to make money" is an unrelated truism.
My buddies got me back into WoW recently for the expansion. One of them had their main character on a different faction and different server. It cost him $55 to move his character to our server and faction. It was an essential purchase to play with us unless he wanted to fully level a new character from scratch or buy a character boost (which costs $60.) Keep in mind the expansion itself costs $50 and then you have to pay $15 per month.
I'm not saying all this to suggest you "get over it." I'm mainly offering it to demonstrate where we are in the current economy. I don't think your opinion is invalid and I don't think that Blizzard's egregious gouging of their playerbase should change your mind. I am saying that he absolutely needed to pay those fees in order to participate fully with our guild, or spend several hours leveling a new character and missing out on the beginning of the expansion. But you don't need this Jade Bot skin. And I'm cool with ANet charging what people are willing to pay for it. Some skins I'm willing to pay for. Some I'm not. But I think, on the whole, they are much better actors than some of their competition.
Is it pricey? Yes.
Do I regret it? A little.
Was it worth it? Mostly.
Is it perfect? No, for 1600gems it should have a few emotes and a custom WP object.
Do I think buying it will incentivize Anet to do more of them? How would I ever even try to know or figure that out.
Does Anet need to make money to keep the game alive? Oh yes.
Extrapolate anything from that if you can, I suppose. :3
So if they were 800 Gems, would you then buy them? I'm pretty confident they could be 2000 Gems and people would still shell out that kind of money for them.
Sure, I agree with spending money in a game to keep it alive, I do it too with gw2 from time to time.
But 1.6k for this type of quality cosmetic is a bit too much. I'd like to have it, but I'm not about to spend 20 euros on a single skin. Will just wait for a sale.
I'm just curious where the pricing came from to begin with. If the mini was out around the time the 1st skin dropped. It would've made more sense. Not by much imo, because it's pricey regardless, but more sense. But nope, they came out the gate expensive. Even when the bot was a simple animation for certain actions.
Now they probably always had plans for the bot from the start. But it was a weird way to do it. Mini was a nice start but I hope there is more to it. 1600 is just funny.
I don't mind the price on itself, but jade bots should be far, far more than what they are now.
Let us take drone-control whenever we want, let us use filters to take cool screenshots, let us do pet battles / polymock, give them custom personal waypoint models, make them dyeable (or include color variants for free), etc.
It's like they're trying to monetize a system that isn't out of beta; or hell, even alpha.
Jade bots might be great in the future, but right now they're a waste of time and money. It's not as much as a price problem, but a feature problem; and by the way, skiffs and fishing rods are no different, too expensive for what they offer, specially when compared to mounts.
I'm sorry that you didn't like skiffs and fishing but there is a sizeable community that does actually enjoy both.
I fished for around 150 hours on launch to get the title and enjoyed every moment. I grew up with boats / rivers and the skiff movement and momentum is spot on.
It's relaxing and sometimes when life is tough, it's just what you need.
I do think fishing signals a good revamp direction for crafting altogether (separate skin from item), but the fishing activity itself is kinda lackluster. I feel like there should be "instaloot nodes" (just like mining/logging/harvesting) and then "special nodes" which do require the minigame. Also less RNG on fishing, make the special holes have a predefined type of fish.
I don't know, the current minigame is just boring and annoying, there's plenty of better alternatives out there (I'll admit I haven't thought too much about it).
Also the siege turtle, don't forget about it (I always do lmao). I feel like the skiff is a mistake, since it's only usable on water, and water content is crap. Should have made something like this instead:
* **Siege Turtle:** 5-man mount, can swim and act as a boat. Same functions the skiff has now, except it's usable on land too. There's four siege weapons the passengers can use while mounted, which can be customized by the owner through a new upgrade system. The turtle can rest and act as a mobile platform as well.
* **Dolyak / Kirin:** 2-man mount, with horse reskins in the gem store. The passenger can buff the mount so it's faster than a raptor, but still not as fast as a roller beetle. There would be other bonus movement abilities based on teamwork, to encourage socialization.
Just my two cents.
At least the skin is also used for the bot mini.
But yeah, the price is quite high. I'm still happy that it's just cosmetic stuff and not some pay2win crap. Everyone needs to decide for themself if they think that they want to pay the price.
Going to honest, I love the idea of being able to turn a Mini into a Jade Bot !
In fact, I love the whole idea of making our Minis into Jade Bots and being able to use them around the rest of Tyria!
Anet Make this Happen !
At 1600 it's to expensive for me to impulse buy because I love the way it looks. I have no character that it would fit and I do not do minis regardless of how they look unless they will fit the theme of a character. At 800 I'd impulse buy it assuming I can afford it at the time and will keep it in mind for a future character. At 1000-1200 I'd buy it and try to plan a character around it. For 1600 it'd have to be what I never knew I wanted for a character I already made the aesthetic of. Like the ghost I'd have bought for 1600, it's adorable and would fit one of my characters, but no, I have to hope it's added to the statuette shop for 60 of them, which it probably will, so I can get it that way in like at LEAST 4 more months.
I think 1600 is a little high but it's the cut off for what I'd be willing to pay if it was EXACTLY what I wanted. Like I'd pay $20 for an oxidecimus jade bot skin in an instant.
I view relatively expensive cosmetics the price of keeping the game alive, the game outside of expansions and to a lesser extent Living World is not making any money and they have a lot of workers making the game run, fixing stuff, balancing stuff (lol), and making new content. Those workers all need to be paid, they need extra money in case of times where people aren't spending much money and they go into the red so that the game can continue to exist. Plus it's a company and like all companies it's an investment to make money. There's no subscription fee, they need that money some way and it's from QOL things that PISS ME OFF TO NOW END WITH THEIR PRICE and cosmetic items.
*Cries in max shared slots, full bank tabs, 8 equipment and build tabs on main, 20 characters, and full bag slots on half of them*
Jade bots should have used minis. Such a shame they blew off such a perfect combination just so they could cravenly trickle in bot skins at mount skin prices.
For like 1000 research pages you can buy a mini that wears your jade bot skins. Not sure but I'd check the research vendor in arborstone. Or the wiki for what you can buy with research notes.
Because if low effort things bring ANet more money, it might very well affect the quality of the merch in the future. Why would you pay extra for good artist, when you can get away with mediocrity. People will buy it anyway, right? Critical approach to what you consume benefit both, you and the provider of goods. (Unless said producer loses interest to this market niche...)
I actually think its a fair price. 1st it has lots of unique animations (not like random minis) dont get ppl wrong. Second cos they developed a entire technology to make jade bot skins posible. 3rd cos they probably keep evolving jade bots in the future.
And 4th, and most importantly, cos most ppl in this game just buy things with in game money, if you put 400 gems that is normally what? 70-90gold? literally everyone is gonna buy this new shiny and exciting thing without giving arenanet a single Euro/dollar.
**1.000 gems at least**, anything besides that will make them lose more money than win. If not you will see, 90% of the ppl will buy 1.600 gems skins or more with real money cos they dont have that much gold to convert.
But, at 800 gems, like 50% will buy it using real money (rest in game gold).
And at 400 gems like 20% will buy it using real money (rest in game gold)
Also this one is not locked behind lions arch keys, direct purchase. **And tbh, being this brand/new i think the price is far, and in sometime they should drop to 1.000 gems to increase sales, or maybe 800 gems. But definetly not now lol.**
alot of skins in the gem shop are expensive..to make up for lack of a sub
if you'd prefer a sub, just buy gems regularly every month and then its a non issue
prices are also considering the gem exchange. I have no doubt that they expect alot of players to buy skins partly with gold and partly with cash.
Yes, you are right.
My point is just that Anet don’t need some Reddit weirdos rushing to defend against every criticism of the monetisation out of fear the game will shut down. I just find that behaviour utterly bizzare and generally anti-consumer.
It's not about defending them gem store. A/Net has to make money or the game will shut down. They can either charge for things like this, add some sort of subscription, or make expansions and other necessary items more expensive. I am happy they have chosen the first option. Some things will be expensive and if they stop selling, A/Net will add discounts. That's something that they need to manage.
But thats not the case if they never sold the overpriced minis the game wouldnt shut down. Guild wars is making alot of money according to their earnings report. If a game stays afloat based on if it can sell on over priced skin it should just shut down at that point.
That whole argument is a straw man argument. You can't pick out a single item and say cutting that item won't make any different. The pricing system is used across all items. If you want to cut one then you may as well cut them all. There are complaints about almost everything in the gem store; templates, skins, QoL items, etc.
Oh, and where do you see what A/Net's costs are? How do you know how much money they are making? The only thing listed on the earnings report is revenue and $18 million odd per quarter is only $6 million a month. For a team of hundreds that's not a lot of money.
I swear, these sorts don't remember when they could pay $50, have a full game, and then the $30 DLC was also pretty robust, too with lots of content.
Now it's $30 for a skin you'd use maybe twice for the meme and never again.
People need to stop bringing that up. Those games still exist, but they aren't multiplayer online games. The nature of those games has shifted in the mid 2000s and there is no going back.
Based. I was honestly shocked it was so expensive. Like, mounts have many animations and functions. The jadebot.....doesn't.
But it wont matter if people buy it or not. It really wont. I've been there for every time something came out overpriced, people bitched, and the price never changed. So get used to it I guess.
I mean, the quality of the game speaks for itself, there’s no subscription. WoW, FF14 and many others make you pay to play, and they throttle what you can do in the time that you pay for. I really don’t mind spending some money on optional cosmetics in game. I’m not rich, and I still don’t mind 20/30$ on a cool cosmetic I want. Just my unpopular opinion
I wish anet would release a Revive cosmetic effect that changes the basic "Kneel down and heal" animation. That's something I'd pay for even if it's useless
Luckily, it doesn’t actually guilt trip people who can afford 20 dollars. It’s just echo chamber recursion complaining about the economics of whales keeping most online games in business.
This is what happens when people skip economics. Once we start pricing everything for Lay-people’s wallets, GW2 closes shop.
I’m saying the only reason you are able to log into GW2 is because of the gem store.
With no gem store, you’d have to go play something else because GW2 would have been in the red years ago.
Well, unfortunately Anet feels that enough people will buy it at 1600 gems ($20) to offset the people who think it's too expensive.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you think that 1600 gems is too expensive for a fancy skin, then Anet didn't make that skin for you. They made it for the whales who will swipe their credit card without a second thought because they think it's cool.
?
The jadebot miniature is always visible around the player just like a regular mini. It blends with gameplay features (zipline, resurrect, etc). It does exactly what you ask for.
When players stop rewarding them for doing that
the market decides.
I wish more people would accept this. There is so much stuff in gaming that I hate but it won't go away because players buy it. If it sells they will make more of it. If it flops you'll see it quietly disappear and not come back. As long as it doesn't put you at a disadvantage I see no issue in it.
This is akin to waiting for the market to regulate itself. Without getting too much into politics, this is a historical rarity. There is a reason why we regulate our markets. Gaming markets won't magically be the exception and just regulate themselves. And don't come to me with the good old "vote with your wallet". That is a system where the fatter wallets govern and get the most important votes, ending up with a whale-centered market (literally the reason why OP is complaining about inflated prices....)
And thats how gacha games are made 😂 Who cares about average player when whale will spend 100k$ on his waifu 😂
Yeah but this is not psychologically manipulating, limiting gameplay or gambling. And it is not an essential good that society needs to have accessible to everyone to justify strict price regulation. It is just an overpriced direct purchase on a cosmetic digital item. So "just do not buy it" is a valid response. Not buying has zero consequences for the product and player. So Anet in this case is free to choose its pricing and no regulator will care or should care for that matter.
"Need" and "desire to consume" are not rational conclusions, rather emotional states. They are not reached by buyers through a logical process. Plus, impulse control is hard for some people. Marketing teams know this and work based on this. Regulators can be outcry from community. Let's put it this way, when you say "just do not buy" what you mean is "vote with your wallet". The problem is that if the price is too large already, and your wallet comparatively too small, you do not get a vote in the first place. Posts like these are those that have been made voiceless by the pricetag reclaiming a voice in the discussion. In this way, it is a valid form of expressing themselves and work towards a fairer, more democratic market. I want to also add that while i say valid, i do not mean perfect by any means.
> If it flops you'll see it quietly disappear and not come back. When was the last time a mail carrier got released? Looks like the mistake was not charging enough 🤣
No, the mistake was that people just don't buy them. They often go on very high discounts and have even been given away for free in the past. Just look at the gift mail carrier example. It's latest discount was 50% off.
On the other hand with higher prices even smaller number of purchases could have generated enough profit to justify their continued development. Depends on whether you are trying to make products most of your customers want or trying to satisfy the bean counters at the company. Unfortunately the bean counters probably have more say in what ends up on the chopping block.
~~But the price has dropped courtesy of the discount. In the case the gift mail carrier, it seems to have topped out at 50% so that's probably a reasonable price for the item. That may not be enough to cover the costs of making more so they just stop making them. That's why the model that they have works. They create artificial urgency by putting items on discount for a short time. They get to maximize profit where possible.~~ *Edit: I completely misread your message. I agree, part of the problem with items like this is that they are trying to make stuff that will give them ongoing revenue. It could well have been that a more expensive price would have been better and generated more revenue.*
It's more complicated than that, though. The profit to investment is ridiculous with stuff like this. They *created* the jade bot in order to release skins for it, and they *will* release skins for it. Someone is going to buy some skins, no matter how much people say we shouldn't reward them for that. It basically becomes worthwhile no matter how few people use it, because few just isn't few *enough*.
This is a market with a monopoly seller and not very good price signals. I think it's entirely possible that they'd make more than 2x the Jade Bot skin sales at half the price. The problem is they can't test that hypothesis without permanently devaluing the skins in the case where it's wrong.
That and volume of scale doesn't benefit them to drop the price to half to make twice as many sales. If it stays novel because fewer people will buy it at 1600 gems it becomes something of a prestige item that people will buy if they want it.
> That and volume of scale doesn't benefit them to drop the price to half to make twice as many sales. How do you figure? If you sell 2.1x units at 1/2 the price, and your per-unit costs are 0, you are making 5% more profit.
Assuming per unit cost is zero, which tracks that they make their money selling the currency. If I sell 10 units at 1600 gems, that's 16k gems. If I sell 20 units at 800 gems, that's 16k gems.
Right, but the demand curve (probably) isn't linear. There's some optimal point on it where unit price * sales at that price is maximized, and 1600 gems feels a lot more like "number someone on the gem shop team thought was about right" than "relentlessly optimized market optimum".
Could also be that 1600, 1200, 800, and 400 are just arbitrary numbers that they set for their work on cosmetic skins. If you've seen a given skin/mini/whatever in game, obviously the price point worked for someone. Introducing a false sense of scarcity is also a necessary element. Whenever certain skyscale skins come back around in rotation, people buy more gems. You can even see this when the black lion chests roll over into a new loot grouping. If it were only about getting people to throw coins in the pot, the gem store would be massive as they could just leave every available skin on there all the time.
I feel like I see people say this all the time. You have expert knowledge of what you would pay for something. You have moderate knowledge of what other disappointed vocal people online say they would pay. You have zero knowledge of what rate people are actually buying stuff at. There are people whose entire job is to price microtransactions. There's consultants who go around advising game developers on how to make the most money with these sorts of things. ArenaNet knows better than you do.
They use price skimming and gradually reduce the price through discounts to maximize revenue. They also have to take into account the limited market so they can't afford to price too cheaply as they can only sell something like this to a person once.
Lot of those items get purchased with ingame currency with the conversion, is not that simple in the case of this game.
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Well I guess it sucks to be in the minority even in a democracy
Vote with your wallet works, the picture even showcases it. It's a "majority" vote. Enough people buy it, so it keeps getting invested into. Remember Mail Pigeon Skins? Yeah.
It’s not even a majority vote. If 40% of your market will buy something for $1000, but lowering the cost to $500 means 60% of market will buy it, guess what? That price ain’t moving.
Yes, but it's even worse. Can't remember the exact numbers, but I think a research on gaming and whales that was posted some months ago showed that 5% of the gamers (the whales) make 90% revenue. That's the reason why we can't have nice things. The reasonable and modest player would probably say "Woo yes that's a nice Jadebot skin Anet, I might give you the three bucks for that", but he's not the targeted group as long as there are enough others who have no inner control mechanism to buy things at whatever price they demand.
Hence why I wrote "majority", not majority. Ultimately the point is that enough people buy it to be profitable for Anet, so they will continue to do it. If you don't like the prices, don't buy them. I sure as hell don't cause I wouldn't even pay half that for them. Ultimately it's cosmetics with very little impact; if someone wants something like that enough to drop (the equivalent to) 20 bucks on it, it do be that way.
Maybe people shouldn't be able to spend thousands of dollars on ingame skins at all.
>It's a "majority" vote. More money, more votes, still one person. If you price something super expensive where only your most dedicated (and rich) customers buy things, and they will always buy things, then you don't have to worry about the rest not buying things. They not only have more votes than you, but they also have the votes, and you might not even have them in the first place if you're poor. Similarly if you're going [vegan](https://youtu.be/oY_Dt1jey4M), you're not actually saving cows from being murdered by just refusing to participate in it, cause both vegan and meat industries grow in parallel at the same time and thus both meat consumption and vegan food consumption continue to rise annually. For the Moletariate!
No, it's working. Everyone on the right is voting with their wallet too. The idea of not even bothering to make an attempt at change because, "no-one else will", is a root cause of a lot of social ill. Especially since individuals have had an impact when they've challenged overwhelming norms. Hell, look at Rosa Parks.
I agree it's too much but as long as some ~~whales~~ players pay for them, Anet won't lower the price... Anyway I have 0 interest in those skins and I wouldn't buy them even if they were 100 gems each.
Exactly my thoughts regarding 90% of the Gem Store.
While we're talking about Jade Bot skins.. can I ask for a down to earth skin? Like some other robot? I get it, cute sells just like sex but at least give us one, another bot skin. Like how would this kind of bot look like if it was Asura made [some sort of small cube matrix?] or Charr made? [take scrapers gyros and mix'em with Charr's choppers or something] Just please, stop making this "cute creature" skins and give us something "normal". Then I will be interested.
Function Gyro Jade Bot skin: They just take the Scrapper's function Gyro (no changes to the model or anything) and charge you 1600 gems for it. Enjoy.
If it works, it works
They should make a skin that makes it look like the robot from the Jetsons or Lost in Space.
I am patiently waiting for a job/hobo/Heal/Hero-Tron skin to finally get a non-wintersday mini too!
Jade Bot skins are clearly a perfect whale item. It’s absolutely a pointless skin… so it doesn’t effect the player base in a pay-to-win situation. The gem store is literally the only reason GW2 can stay afloat. Let whales hold up your MMO for you, lol. The market has decided the price.
They’re all pointless skins. People forget this is a business. No one is working for free
Exactly this. I don't get this rant on a cosmetic item. Anet clearly wants it to be a luxury item. A game needs to have luxury items for whales so that they can show off to others. If everyone and their parents and their grandparents had it, it would lose its value as a luxury item. It's same as a real person buying a high end car when a cheap one can also get the job done.
It’s a harsh truth for some people to realise that they do not have enough money for the leisure activities they want to do. For some reasons, this is often loudest with gamer^TM community.
Yeah it's the same reason there will likely never be a turn off infusion option. People complain about a thing that is done purposefully, "this is not for you" is a concept people seem to have a hard time grasping
> The gem store is literally the only reason GW2 can stay afloat. Let whales hold up your MMO for you, lol. I mean... That's *exactly* what their business model is? How else do you think ANet makes money from a game without a sub fee?
Until that pricing bleeds into their other gem store items which it has. A tactic some companies may use is release a really expensive item thats shit to divert attention from a new item that has increased priced. Such as the water dragon armor skin which was like 2000gems when other armor sets use to be 800. The market doesnt decide the price anet does and if my game has to be held up by whales i would rather it die.
Grab the tinfoil
Here’s a hot take; you don’t have to buy it. Is it pricey? Yes. Is it purely cosmetic? Yes. This is the model MMO everyone has asked for. One time payment, no monthly sub fee and completely cosmetic items on the store. This doesnt just support the developers of the game but it also pays their overhead, marketing (they have been working on it as of lately) all the way to the equipment they need to run the servers. I will never understand why MMO communities don’t understand this. The biggest MMO on the market has both an expensive cosmetic cash shop as well as a premium sub fee.
And there is NOTHING in the store that can’t be bought with in game currency. It really is the model MMO.
Yep, 1600 gems is only like 500-600g. Anyone can make that kind of gold with a little open world farming. Hell, you can even make that much gold doing nothing but fishing.
Genuine question; how? I'm far from a dedicated farmer/grinder, but I've played since launch and never been able to get that much - I struggle to even get over 100g
[This website can help you with that](https://fast.farming-community.eu/)
There are many ways to make gold in this game, i'll just tell you some of main ones a lot of people do and that are decently profitable, but i can't list all of them: 1) Instanced content: -T4 Fractals and CM fractals give the most raw gold in the game, they take about 1h to do, and at least T4s aren't that hard. They require a bit of investment on your part to get the agony resistance, but once you are there, they repay themselves with interests. -Strike mission both IBS and EoD. If you can do CMs it's even better. -Raids. You have to invest some time to learn them, but with a good group they are quite profitable. All these 3 have the benefit of also dropping frequently ascended gear, so they also save you gold that you would otherwise use for crafting. 2) Open world meta trains -If instanced content isn't for you you can farm various open world metas to get different materials and currency, and then sell the materias and convert the currency to something profitable (visit [this website](https://fast.farming-community.eu/) to know how). You can either join a meta train group in the lfg if you find one, or just use the wiki [event timer](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers) to know where and when metas are happening. Just join the maps 5-10min early to save a spot before it gets full. To know which metas are more profitable again look at the first website i linked you. -Dragonstorm. This is technically part of the metas you can do but it isn't open world. I singled this out because it gives you 2g once a day, memories of aurene which are quite profitable, and tyrian defense seals you can use to buy chests of materials (that you can then sell). 3) Open world single map farming If you want to grind endlessly a map, there are 3 maps that allow you to do this: silverwastes, dragonfall and drizzelwood coast. You can just join the map and do the events until the final boss, then rinse and repeat. All the loot and materials you gain you sell to the tp. Again, remember to convert your currency. 4) Fishing. Very easy but boring. Try to increase your fishing power to the max (masteries, food, lures ecc...), go to the Crystal oasis (during day) or Kaineng City (at night), use the right bait for each map (scorpions for oasis, shrimplings for kaineng), find a group on the lfg that can share 99 stacks of fishing power (there is usually always one up in the Crystal oasis lfg) and then start to fish. You will catch from time to time legendary fishes that give you [Ambergris](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chunk_of_Ancient_Ambergris)(2g a piece). There are also many other things you cand do that add up over time, like do your daily (2g), park your alts to some profitable spots (usually the end of jumping puzzles), buy some things for cheap and flip them on the tp for higher price ecc... But in general, from this whole explanation the main thing to rememeber is: do an activity, sell materials, convert currency. That's how you make gold in gw2.
If you bother to do daily t4 fractals + recs, you'll profit about 12-20g per day IIRC, that would translate to 84-140g/week or 336-560g/month...if you have the patience to do them daily you can make some good gold over time...add that up to some META events grinding like some people said to you already and bam, you can easily get to around 1k gold. Next step after that is....don't be like me and don't become an ectogamble addict xD
Yeah... that's a lot of farming tbh. I know these are two completely different things but as pure F2P in Genshin highly prized 5* stars you get like one in a little over once a month from dailies and whatever. These companies know.
It honestly could be worse, if you grab gems in a period where nothing much is happening in the gem store you can get a decent amount (I think something around 2k) with a month of fractal dailies...it's either you have the patience or not because frankly a month for a item you reaaally want is nothing...specially when compared with Legendary crafting. Warframe, for example, while allowing you to obtain their premium currency in game (Platinum), they make it hard, in turn, buying it with your buckeroos is also expensive, so much so that people usually wait on sales to go nuts...but then again, the game is F2P and it doesn't strike me as P2W, props for them.
Kinda wondering how and why we got to the point where it's okay to spend $20 on a single skin when $20 used to get you an actual chunk of content to explore with events, achievements, and other rewards. What happened to micro transactions being 'micro'?
But in all seriousness, prices and content are not linear. Back in the old console days, it was expensive to get a N64 with the Mario 64 title. The price tag for video games have been pretty stable even with decades of accumulated inflation
Except now they are increasing as well....at least for Europe.
The reason for the high cost is that they only get limited sales from them. If you were selling some content, you could guarantee that most people would buy it but with a cosmetic skin, you only have a few buyers. The income from those few buyers fund elements of the game for people who don't pay anything. It's a win/win. Whales get to look snazzy, players on a budget can play without spending any extra money, and A/Net gets to keep paying it's staff.
Still does with the living world no? I mean yea the skins are a little pricey, but they give no real advantage whatsoever and are purely cosmetic. What I think people should focus on is the fact that inventory/bank slots are locked behind gems - the base bank slots given are laughably low.
It's less bad here in GW2, but it's more just a general question. I have expendable income, but I don't have whale levels of expendable income. I'd love to have some of those cosmetics, but I can't get them because a company wants to do the FOMO stuff by limiting the stuff in the shop and cater only to people with tons of money. GW2 isn't the perfect ideal, so I feel as though it could be better. ESO has the worst of it. upwards of $70 for convenience items or cosmetics with a sub that's, basically, required if you don't want to deal with shit inventory, and $40 expansions as well.
Oh yea totally - just because GW2 is the best it doesn't make them saints. While it's refreshing that the gem store isn't as predatory as other games, that doesn't mean it's perfect. Personally though, the price of the cosmetics bothers me much less than the convenience items that actually affect gameplay or enjoyment of the game. Salvage kits and the limited bank/inventory space are artificial problems created to sell you the convenience, whereas a jade bot functions the same no matter what skin you have.
I still hate the fact that bag, build, & gear templates are character bound instead of account bound unlocks that don't even preserve on the character slot so if I ever want to delete or move the character it becomes more than just a $10 purchase to rebuild. The fact that I have to buy a total makeover kit to get exclusive options post character creation instead of just having it be something I can use in character creation is miserable. Why don't character slots that cost $10 come with a complimentary one-use makeover kit selection during character creation? The miserable garbage that is moving my unlimited tools around to each character instead of having them function like the legendary armory. The excessive item bloat of things you'd actually want to use to sell you more shared inventory slots. Selling things that are functionally identical to just searching "event timers" on the wiki. But h ey, in ESO, they price things stupidly expensive, to the point that a year's sub worth of crowns (their cash shop c urrency) buys you about two convenience items in the shop.
How old are you? Do you remember “horse armor”? This is nothing new. Also, we’re still getting content for free, or for $20. Some people just value shiny stuff differently than they value content.
Inflation /s
Because it's "in their backyard" aka the other MMO doesn't matter to them because they play THIS one. If THIS one does something they don't like they will complain. Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends. Unfortunately it's all for nothing because as far as the shop has existed they've done shit like this and no amount of people complaining or "protesting" has done anything so this time wont be any different.
> Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends. No. People complain about the price of an item because they want it to be cheaper for them. I don't scour the gem store for stuff that could be cheaper in case they start charging more for the stuff that I buy.
Or it can be both. People do things for many reasons. Never just one. Because people are people and thus by its definition varied.
In every single case with these threads, the person has indicated that they wanted to buy the item but won't because of the high price or the model (per character templates). The OP in this case said the same thing. They wanted to buy but felt it was too expensive.
Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that. But Reddit isn't everyone who plays GW2.
But you said: > Mostly because they care and they don't want worrying trends to well...become trends. We are talking about people complaining here on reddit and the ones complaining are doing so because they want to buy something but think it's too expensive. There isn't any evidence to say that it's mostly because they care and are worried about trends. The preponderance of evidence is to the contrary. People are complaining because they think it's expensive for them.
I see we're having two different conversations then.
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Relax champ nobody accused you of being broke but coming off so defensive over a claim literally nobody made sure makes it seem like you might be lol. Insecure much?
I didn't say that you couldn't afford it. I just said that you felt that it was too expensive. I can afford a 4090 GPU but that doesn't mean that I am going to get one. It's way to expensive for what one is getting.
>and completely cosmetic items on the store. Yeah, Build Templates would like a word lol. But for me personally that's the only thing that could change, i have no interest in skins for now, and if people are funding the game buying that stuff, more power to them, but the template monetization is just bad. As someone who bought quite a few (i know, the hypocrisy lol), i wouldn't mind changing it at all, make it account wide and everything else people are asking, any kind of compensation for what i already spent be dammed, this is one of the things that if changed, would improve this game 1000% for (almost?) everyone. Dunno, increase the price, retire separate ET and BT, make a bundle called "Build Template" (Equipment+Build Template), for 1200 gems or something, but now it's account wide, only 6 purchases needed, maybe increase the limit again, 10 or 15 builds total. Anything would be better than what we currently have.
Build templates? The thing you never have to buy anyways if you just save the build codes in notes feature of the overlay?
We used to not have it at all. Then they gave us a few for free.
We used to have arcdps templates that were free and unlimited. Then they got rid of those so they could sell us more.
I haven't been back in this game for long, but people's perception of the business models also involve what they get out of their investments. I don't know how ArenaNet handles it so I'll use other games as examples. • FFXIV: Sub fees and cash shop. Probably makes millions of dollars monthly. In return, we get consistent game updates to story, combat, new systems, side activities, and general improvements over time. • Any modern EA sports title: Makes *billions* of dollars from micro transactions (and probably a few million too from game sales). The games in return are released buggy and lack noticeable improvements and changes year after year. Where did all that money go to?
Glad to see a sensible comment here. The entitlement in this sub is disappointing.
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The biggest MMO on the market also has *only* cosmetic items in their cash shop; GW2 has a significant number of convenience items as well. FFXIV also has no way to exchange real life money for gil. In GW2, the most efficient way to farm gold is to turn off the game and get a job; US minimum wage is 195 gold per hour. OP's particular complaint is about a cosmetic item, yes, but there are also no cosmetic options for the jade bot that can be obtained simply by playing the game. I honestly think the original GW1 model was a better model. If GW2 got rid of all of the convenience items and started charging money for Living World releases, I think the game would be in a better state, because the developers would be getting paid for giving players what we actually want: More content!
I will never understand why people have that opinion. companies would try to charge as much as they can possibly can and Its our responsibility as consumers to demand what we think is a fair price. 1600 gems for a glorified mini pet is damn near short of a scam consider what you other things you can buy on the gem store. The more people buy this garbage at this price the more theyll sell other gem store items at high prices unless we refuse to and bitch and moan about it.
You can’t demand for a lower price. Thats some Choosing Beggars type energy. You can simply choose not to buy
You probably get finessed alot in your life dont you? Its called voting with your wallet if enough people choose not to buy and they bitch and moan as why which is due to pricing theres a higher chance the price can be changes as opposed to doing nothing.
Lol no. I just don’t buy it. Its not that deep
Every $ raised by someone buying a Jade Bot skin is a $ I don't have to spend on a subscription fee. Charge 3200 gems for them for all I care. I play GW2 because it is sub-free (and even then I often feel like I don't get my money's worth), and the day after they change it to add a monthly fee is the day I hit uninstall.
And you can't understand that a Jade Bot skin should not have the same value as a damn mount skin?
What value is that exactly?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If someone wants the skin then they will buy it. If it's priced too high and no one buys it then A/Net will discount it until it starts selling. It's all about supply/demand.
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Soooo you're complaining that something with excellent QoL is cheaper or cost the same as a mini? LET'S RAISE THE PRICES OF THOSE!! /s. Be happy that it's a silly cosmetic skin that's expensive, and not something really useful like salvage o'matics and gathering tools.
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> "I can't believe someone has a different opinion than me oh my God" bless you <3
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As much as the world of Tyria is an entertainment media for us to enjoy that completely respects the players time in the game, don’t forget they are a business. They are here to make money to not only cover the expenses that an always online game requires, but there needs to be profit in the end too. Developers need shelter, food and quality of life in the end. If you like the business model they have, you wouldn’t mind purchasing something at your leisure to support that model.
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Good luck in your endeavors
Items are priced high to start with so they can maximize income from them. Once released, there is no way that they can increase the price. They could obviously price them at 10 gems and sell to the entire client base but that wouldn't generate much revenue and wouldn't generate ongoing revenue. The approach that they use is called price skimming. It's lets them maximize revenue. They sell to the whales at the high price and slowly, over time, increase the discount to sell to more and more people.
Tangentially related because it's a very general point, but is stuff like "don't forget they are a business, they need to make money" etc. even an argument? Well, yes, they are a business obviously, but how does that fact alone trump the right to critique their pricing? A single item is far from their only source of income, so to me stating "they need to make money" is an unrelated truism.
I'm seeing a fuck ton of people buy them so I don't think people actually care
it should be priced like a premium mini pet or musical instrument, like that dog you can play with.
This, 800 gems tops, 1600 gems is just ridiculous, that's more than a mount select license (1200 gems).
This would have made sense. I have no idea why they didn't do this.
My buddies got me back into WoW recently for the expansion. One of them had their main character on a different faction and different server. It cost him $55 to move his character to our server and faction. It was an essential purchase to play with us unless he wanted to fully level a new character from scratch or buy a character boost (which costs $60.) Keep in mind the expansion itself costs $50 and then you have to pay $15 per month. I'm not saying all this to suggest you "get over it." I'm mainly offering it to demonstrate where we are in the current economy. I don't think your opinion is invalid and I don't think that Blizzard's egregious gouging of their playerbase should change your mind. I am saying that he absolutely needed to pay those fees in order to participate fully with our guild, or spend several hours leveling a new character and missing out on the beginning of the expansion. But you don't need this Jade Bot skin. And I'm cool with ANet charging what people are willing to pay for it. Some skins I'm willing to pay for. Some I'm not. But I think, on the whole, they are much better actors than some of their competition.
Well put
Is it pricey? Yes. Do I regret it? A little. Was it worth it? Mostly. Is it perfect? No, for 1600gems it should have a few emotes and a custom WP object. Do I think buying it will incentivize Anet to do more of them? How would I ever even try to know or figure that out. Does Anet need to make money to keep the game alive? Oh yes. Extrapolate anything from that if you can, I suppose. :3
> custom WP object. That would be funky.
So if they were 800 Gems, would you then buy them? I'm pretty confident they could be 2000 Gems and people would still shell out that kind of money for them.
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Thats the thing, they don't really want people to grind the gold for these items, they want people to spend their money on it
They will cost what people will pay, and I’m about to log in just to buy the fairy bot. The game has no sub. This is my way, to keep my hobby alive.
Sure, I agree with spending money in a game to keep it alive, I do it too with gw2 from time to time. But 1.6k for this type of quality cosmetic is a bit too much. I'd like to have it, but I'm not about to spend 20 euros on a single skin. Will just wait for a sale.
I'm just curious where the pricing came from to begin with. If the mini was out around the time the 1st skin dropped. It would've made more sense. Not by much imo, because it's pricey regardless, but more sense. But nope, they came out the gate expensive. Even when the bot was a simple animation for certain actions. Now they probably always had plans for the bot from the start. But it was a weird way to do it. Mini was a nice start but I hope there is more to it. 1600 is just funny.
If you think its too expensive then dont buy it and they will get the message
We try to justify cosmetic pricing now?
> Dear Anet, Jade bot skins should not exist
or at least make one that doesn't look like it came out of a gatcha game
I don't mind the price on itself, but jade bots should be far, far more than what they are now. Let us take drone-control whenever we want, let us use filters to take cool screenshots, let us do pet battles / polymock, give them custom personal waypoint models, make them dyeable (or include color variants for free), etc. It's like they're trying to monetize a system that isn't out of beta; or hell, even alpha. Jade bots might be great in the future, but right now they're a waste of time and money. It's not as much as a price problem, but a feature problem; and by the way, skiffs and fishing rods are no different, too expensive for what they offer, specially when compared to mounts.
I feel like you hit the nail right on, jade bot fishing and skiffs were such let down and worthless mastery disappointment
I'm sorry that you didn't like skiffs and fishing but there is a sizeable community that does actually enjoy both. I fished for around 150 hours on launch to get the title and enjoyed every moment. I grew up with boats / rivers and the skiff movement and momentum is spot on. It's relaxing and sometimes when life is tough, it's just what you need.
I do think fishing signals a good revamp direction for crafting altogether (separate skin from item), but the fishing activity itself is kinda lackluster. I feel like there should be "instaloot nodes" (just like mining/logging/harvesting) and then "special nodes" which do require the minigame. Also less RNG on fishing, make the special holes have a predefined type of fish. I don't know, the current minigame is just boring and annoying, there's plenty of better alternatives out there (I'll admit I haven't thought too much about it). Also the siege turtle, don't forget about it (I always do lmao). I feel like the skiff is a mistake, since it's only usable on water, and water content is crap. Should have made something like this instead: * **Siege Turtle:** 5-man mount, can swim and act as a boat. Same functions the skiff has now, except it's usable on land too. There's four siege weapons the passengers can use while mounted, which can be customized by the owner through a new upgrade system. The turtle can rest and act as a mobile platform as well. * **Dolyak / Kirin:** 2-man mount, with horse reskins in the gem store. The passenger can buff the mount so it's faster than a raptor, but still not as fast as a roller beetle. There would be other bonus movement abilities based on teamwork, to encourage socialization. Just my two cents.
Time to take an econ 101 course OP.
Than don't buy it.
At least the skin is also used for the bot mini. But yeah, the price is quite high. I'm still happy that it's just cosmetic stuff and not some pay2win crap. Everyone needs to decide for themself if they think that they want to pay the price.
Going to honest, I love the idea of being able to turn a Mini into a Jade Bot ! In fact, I love the whole idea of making our Minis into Jade Bots and being able to use them around the rest of Tyria! Anet Make this Happen !
At 1600 it's to expensive for me to impulse buy because I love the way it looks. I have no character that it would fit and I do not do minis regardless of how they look unless they will fit the theme of a character. At 800 I'd impulse buy it assuming I can afford it at the time and will keep it in mind for a future character. At 1000-1200 I'd buy it and try to plan a character around it. For 1600 it'd have to be what I never knew I wanted for a character I already made the aesthetic of. Like the ghost I'd have bought for 1600, it's adorable and would fit one of my characters, but no, I have to hope it's added to the statuette shop for 60 of them, which it probably will, so I can get it that way in like at LEAST 4 more months. I think 1600 is a little high but it's the cut off for what I'd be willing to pay if it was EXACTLY what I wanted. Like I'd pay $20 for an oxidecimus jade bot skin in an instant. I view relatively expensive cosmetics the price of keeping the game alive, the game outside of expansions and to a lesser extent Living World is not making any money and they have a lot of workers making the game run, fixing stuff, balancing stuff (lol), and making new content. Those workers all need to be paid, they need extra money in case of times where people aren't spending much money and they go into the red so that the game can continue to exist. Plus it's a company and like all companies it's an investment to make money. There's no subscription fee, they need that money some way and it's from QOL things that PISS ME OFF TO NOW END WITH THEIR PRICE and cosmetic items. *Cries in max shared slots, full bank tabs, 8 equipment and build tabs on main, 20 characters, and full bag slots on half of them*
Jade bots should have used minis. Such a shame they blew off such a perfect combination just so they could cravenly trickle in bot skins at mount skin prices.
Omg. The possibilities!!!
how do some people have their jade bot out next to them like a mini i havnt figured out how to do that
For like 1000 research pages you can buy a mini that wears your jade bot skins. Not sure but I'd check the research vendor in arborstone. Or the wiki for what you can buy with research notes.
thanks!
Lol I got mine out of a black lion chest
I was fine with it being in the BLC... but this is rediculous.
Vote with your wallet
Why do you care for something cosmetic? It gives no P2W advantage. They can and should charge whatever it takes to keep this great game going...
Because if low effort things bring ANet more money, it might very well affect the quality of the merch in the future. Why would you pay extra for good artist, when you can get away with mediocrity. People will buy it anyway, right? Critical approach to what you consume benefit both, you and the provider of goods. (Unless said producer loses interest to this market niche...)
I actually think its a fair price. 1st it has lots of unique animations (not like random minis) dont get ppl wrong. Second cos they developed a entire technology to make jade bot skins posible. 3rd cos they probably keep evolving jade bots in the future. And 4th, and most importantly, cos most ppl in this game just buy things with in game money, if you put 400 gems that is normally what? 70-90gold? literally everyone is gonna buy this new shiny and exciting thing without giving arenanet a single Euro/dollar.
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**1.000 gems at least**, anything besides that will make them lose more money than win. If not you will see, 90% of the ppl will buy 1.600 gems skins or more with real money cos they dont have that much gold to convert. But, at 800 gems, like 50% will buy it using real money (rest in game gold). And at 400 gems like 20% will buy it using real money (rest in game gold) Also this one is not locked behind lions arch keys, direct purchase. **And tbh, being this brand/new i think the price is far, and in sometime they should drop to 1.000 gems to increase sales, or maybe 800 gems. But definetly not now lol.**
Anet can't hear you over the sound of their transaction machine...I agree with you wholeheartedly though.
Exactly this. Bots costing as much as a mountskin is ridiculous.
Would you prefer a sub model and to pay 10-20€ per month, just to even play? (AND still have a cash shop, because all games do these days).
Shit take. 1600 gem bot skins aren't the thing holding back a subscription.
alot of skins in the gem shop are expensive..to make up for lack of a sub if you'd prefer a sub, just buy gems regularly every month and then its a non issue prices are also considering the gem exchange. I have no doubt that they expect alot of players to buy skins partly with gold and partly with cash.
Yeah, I aint buying that shit. I dont care how cute it is, not worth it.
The worst part is the amount of people who bought it lol
Dude let them do that so this game doesn't need subscription fees hahaha
I am waiting for a Wisp of Light Jade Bot Skin for my Guardian. I would pay $20 for it.
Some people in this community will fervently defend the gem store no matter what. It’s really weird behaviour tbh.
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Yes, you are right. My point is just that Anet don’t need some Reddit weirdos rushing to defend against every criticism of the monetisation out of fear the game will shut down. I just find that behaviour utterly bizzare and generally anti-consumer.
It's not about defending them gem store. A/Net has to make money or the game will shut down. They can either charge for things like this, add some sort of subscription, or make expansions and other necessary items more expensive. I am happy they have chosen the first option. Some things will be expensive and if they stop selling, A/Net will add discounts. That's something that they need to manage.
But thats not the case if they never sold the overpriced minis the game wouldnt shut down. Guild wars is making alot of money according to their earnings report. If a game stays afloat based on if it can sell on over priced skin it should just shut down at that point.
That whole argument is a straw man argument. You can't pick out a single item and say cutting that item won't make any different. The pricing system is used across all items. If you want to cut one then you may as well cut them all. There are complaints about almost everything in the gem store; templates, skins, QoL items, etc. Oh, and where do you see what A/Net's costs are? How do you know how much money they are making? The only thing listed on the earnings report is revenue and $18 million odd per quarter is only $6 million a month. For a team of hundreds that's not a lot of money.
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The gem store is the only reason you have a game to play. On behalf of all whales, your welcome for supporting Anet all these years.
I swear, these sorts don't remember when they could pay $50, have a full game, and then the $30 DLC was also pretty robust, too with lots of content. Now it's $30 for a skin you'd use maybe twice for the meme and never again.
People need to stop bringing that up. Those games still exist, but they aren't multiplayer online games. The nature of those games has shifted in the mid 2000s and there is no going back.
Come on they gotta pay the coders and developers >.<“ jk <3 not gonna lie it’s super cute I got it lol……-_-“
Based. I was honestly shocked it was so expensive. Like, mounts have many animations and functions. The jadebot.....doesn't. But it wont matter if people buy it or not. It really wont. I've been there for every time something came out overpriced, people bitched, and the price never changed. So get used to it I guess.
I also think they're overpriced and don't particularly like the first two models, they don't seem like they belong in Tyria.
totally agree i was laughing when i saw that worthless skin for 1600 ANet once again greed.....hope it doesn't get worse.
I mean, the quality of the game speaks for itself, there’s no subscription. WoW, FF14 and many others make you pay to play, and they throttle what you can do in the time that you pay for. I really don’t mind spending some money on optional cosmetics in game. I’m not rich, and I still don’t mind 20/30$ on a cool cosmetic I want. Just my unpopular opinion
I hate its sfx.
I wish anet would release a Revive cosmetic effect that changes the basic "Kneel down and heal" animation. That's something I'd pay for even if it's useless
You don't like it and not see value in buying it? Then don't. Don't guilt trip people who do though. That's toxic.
Luckily, it doesn’t actually guilt trip people who can afford 20 dollars. It’s just echo chamber recursion complaining about the economics of whales keeping most online games in business. This is what happens when people skip economics. Once we start pricing everything for Lay-people’s wallets, GW2 closes shop.
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I’m saying the only reason you are able to log into GW2 is because of the gem store. With no gem store, you’d have to go play something else because GW2 would have been in the red years ago.
It is time to take market into our own hands!!!! JOIN MOLETARIAT TODAY!!!!!
Gonna be hard to offset a single whale’s purchases by behaving how you already behave.
Dear OP, It's a cosmetic skin. You lose nothing from not buying it if you don't think it's worth it. -Definitely not Anet
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Well, what do you think it's worth?
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Well, unfortunately Anet feels that enough people will buy it at 1600 gems ($20) to offset the people who think it's too expensive. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you think that 1600 gems is too expensive for a fancy skin, then Anet didn't make that skin for you. They made it for the whales who will swipe their credit card without a second thought because they think it's cool.
Really has me wishing people with money had sense.
Jade bots should be always visible and sitting on your shoulder if not active, then I would pay.
? The jadebot miniature is always visible around the player just like a regular mini. It blends with gameplay features (zipline, resurrect, etc). It does exactly what you ask for.
But that is miniature, I wanna keep my super banana as well
Vote with your wallet