If Anet Sold Them, Would you Buy... ?

[Ray Of Light]

The very important distinction here is : if Anet sold the following, would you buy them.
It is the principle I am curious about, not the price ( so please do not respond with " yes if it cost less than x ", thank you ).

[ I was going to post a poll, but there are too many yes/no answers. ]

(A) Additional storage.
(B) Platinum.
(C) Sets of armour.
(C+) Sets of armour not otherwise acquirable.
(D) Sets of weapons not otherwise acquirable.
(E) Guild services e.g. guild vault.
(F) Character name reselection credits ( single use ).
(G) Character appearance reselection credits ( single use ).
(H) Guild name reselection credits ( single use ).
(I) Skill unlock credits ( as included in certain editions of GW ).
(J) Component unlock credits ( as included in certain editions of GW ).

I could see myself saying yes to some of these :
(A) It would be so much more convenient, even when I can buy extra characters to store on - have to keep track of who has what - plus I am a pack rat.
(B) Sometimes I am playing just to make some platinum, and would probably give in and buy money if it was officially & morally available.
(C) Only if I could not just buy the money instead : sets = a lot of play time. :D
(C+) I would think long and hard about it, but could be lured if they were spectacular.
(D) It would have to be some truly special gear, but I could say yes.
(E) Again, only if platinum unavailable - I would like these but do not see myself ever having the spare 400 platinum required to complete our set.
(F) A minor point, but two of my characters do stand out.
(G) In an instant ! :D
(H) I am sometimes tempted, as the current guild name is forever with the guild services already purchased.

So overall ; some definite yes responses and only (I) and (J) ruled out. I must have more money than patience. :D

[Tiny Killer]

Yes: A

No: The rest

Would also vote 'yes' to: Pet Kennel

[harbinger]

:D agreed with tiny killer. And the pet kennel has been mentionned before. I still believe it is a good idea to park your lvl20 pet and take another one for some time and be able to switch back to your former lvl20 pet...

I would pay for extra storage, but not for armor, or money.
:) If I could pay to buy money, there would be no fun in gathering it...

As for armor, the reward in having a vewy special armor is that you worked hard to obtain it. And no... I wouldn't buy weapons with real money :)

Changing one avatar look should be free. Other online game offer this for free... so why should we give a dime for such a feature? :)

:roll: Weapons, armors, skills, easily implementable feature who doesn't require disk space or bandwidth, they should not be sold for real money, never ever... :)

What I really think is worth giving real money...

- extra storage
- extra character slot (will be implemented this summer)
- customized cape (download your own emblem)
- customized face for avatar (put your picture here :p, although I am sure this feature will never exist)
- more pets (specialy unlockable pet kennel)
- a whole special city just for your guild :P
- multi-account fusion (if you have 2 accounts, make it one...)
- special tools to play further with avatars (cf. Gmod for HalfLife2 http://gmod.garry.tv/)

- nude female skin (did I say that aloud? oops my bad...)

I admit I have a sweet spot for :
- extra storage
- customized cape
- special tools to play further with avatars

Extra storage because I am scavenger...
Customized cape because it is worth the price :P
Special tools because it would allow people to make comics or joke about GW like these two hilarious sites... http://www.hlcomic.com/ and that http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/578/578734p1.html

Would give another dimension to the GW community (and guys like Photics would certainly be happy with that :P)

[elsalamandra]

I would like to see, and the sooner the better, more storage facility and perhaps, expanding a bit on this, a '2nd' storage facility that cold be used exclusively for one's different types of armour.

I use 2 different types of armour on my main char and this reduces my space on the bags etc.

Such facility, whether payable in real money or gp makes no difference to me but needed it is by me in the same way as many GW fanatics need it too.

Platinum: No, No,No. this will dull the game to an extent that it will erase the motivation to continue to work on those areas of difficulties to get the desired goals. This applies to armours as well.

Weapons: This to me is slightly different to the above. NPC weapons guys should be allowed to craft for you weapons to your requirements and to avoid scammers and profiteers, any weapon axquired through this medium should be automatically customised for that char only.

Guild Vault: Yes, Yes, Yes. The sooner the better.

Character Name Reselection: I'm 50/50 here

Character Appearance: Yes, but should be a more than once allowance.

Guild Name reselection: Yes, yes, yes

Skill unlocks & compenent unlocks: No, I prefer to unlock them in the present fashion.

[Ray Of Light]

I seem to be alone as a fan of ethical-platinum purchasing, but even with my many hours of Guild Wars gaming I barely close the gap between the funds I have and the funds I desire...

* I do not play the elite areas ( personally I do not count Grenth as elite ) because I find them - and the group forming process associated - funless.
* I have little patience for lucrative repetitive farming e.g. ettins ( I explore & progress & quest as I play ).
* I have stored some exceptional Gold items, but I have no tolerable means of turning them in to serious platinum.

So even with 250 platinum banked pre-Factions I only have :

* 1 suit of 15k, for my Ritualist.
* 3 suits of 1.5k, 2 of which required more than 15k of materials.
* 1 suit of collector armour.
* The 4 cheapest guild services.
* The minimum skills needed for expansion & experimentation.

And of the 150k I currently have :

* 100k is set aside for worst-case-scenario cost of guild vault keeper.
* When slots are available, I will be starting a Mesmer character who will require intermediate sets + runes + dye tests + many skills ( as my first Mesmer ).

So at my current rate of fund acquisition, to be in a prosperous situation by campaign 3 I will ( barring trade intervention ) have to avoid :

* 15k armour sets.
* Guild services other than guild vault keeper.
* Any more than a single 1.5k set of armour per character.
* Black dye. :)
* The temptation to buy & capture a full set of skills for my favourite attributes.

It is quite a reasonable set of rules to live by as a casual-money-making player... but I want the fancy content ! :(

[harbinger]

:D problem with ethical money purchasing is :
- unethical money retailer will still exist. Plus, the fact that ArenaNet sell platinum will give further justification for this shady business... And ArenaNet will do no profit at all because unethical money retailer will adjust their pricing to stay lower than ArenaNet. So IMO it is a dead end from every possible angle :)

:roll: You have 250 platinum?

Dwayna has been good to you. I, as a mere mortal player, I've only been able to gather 45 :P

And I heard that half of the player don't even own more than 10000Gp #gasp#

What I agree however is why does the skill should cost that much...

1 platinum is not that easy to earn. And it breaks my heart to give a platinum for a skill I might not even use :P

250Gp seems reasonable for me, but I must be the only one to think that :)

[Ray Of Light]

:D problem with ethical money purchasing is :
- unethical money retailer will still exist. Plus, the fact that ArenaNet sell platinum will give further justification for this shady business... And ArenaNet will do no profit at all because unethical money retailer will adjust their pricing to stay lower than ArenaNet. So IMO it is a dead end from every possible angle :)

Not that I believe Anet selling platinum is ever likely to happen, but I do not think that it is a dead end because :
* Ethical folk such as myself will not buy illicit funds.
* Less ethical people avoid illicit funds for fear of getting a EULA-breaking ban.

Same as, for instance, DVDs still sell even with DVD piracy.

Yep ; with a lot of effort ( and less spending temptations ), I did accumulate 250 platinum before Factions. And I never found a single Superior Absorption towards that figure !

I am pondering some suggestions for alternative skill acquisition, but overall I am in a similar situation to you that I do not want to squander money on skills unless I can see them clearly replacing one already in my skill bar ( possibly this will lead to stagnation, but who knows ).

[I C U]

(A) Yes
(B) No
(C) No
(D) No
(E) N/A Not in a Guild
(F) Yes
(G) Yes more than one time use, How about each time used and in game funds.
(H) N/A Not in a Guild
(I) I use the current way without problems.
(J) I like the luck of the draw or drop system as it is..... Don't PVP so having uber or all unlocks is not important to me.


On 2 accounts I have...
No sets of 15K armor.
5 sets of 1.5K, that I farmed the needed materials.
1 suit of collectors armor.
No Superior runes in any of my armor, 2 sets with majors, and the rest with minor or none.
And 54K in funds stored if I add the money on both accounts.

I do have dye stored for all of my characters armor, if they ever get special armor I will use it.. However it is not the super special black.

[Ray Of Light]

On 2 accounts I have...
No sets of 15K armor.
5 sets of 1.5K, that I farmed the needed materials.
1 suit of collectors armor.
No Superior runes in any of my armor, 2 sets with majors, and the rest with minor or none.
And 54K in funds stored if I add the money on both accounts.

I do have dye stored for all of my characters armor, if they ever get special armor I will use it.. However it is not the super special black.

:shock: I would not survive !
Must have pretty things.
15k Hydromancer armour /sigh. :lol:

[Rayham_PR]

I think Anet could learn a thing or two from Maplestory. They offer a free game, but allow tons of extra cash items. You have to buy the cash items with real money, although I think duering certain events they allow the in game char to obtain credits for the account to spend on cash items.

Anet could offer unique things for cash items, like unique armors, street clothes, unique weapons, ect. this would allow those players who are willing to donate more money to Anet a means to do so.

But if they do allow cash items, they shoul be like the mini pets so you can give them to friends.

And I vote yes on everything but the gold, I think gold should be farmed, if you buy it then it will eventually ruin the economy.

[Ray Of Light]

I would be fine without Anet selling platinum if they sold the armour & services I want the platinum for. :D

Personally I have no problem with the Maple Story and Silk Road model ( are they called Mall games or something similar ? ), but I can see the biggest obstruction being that as soon as Anet were to real-money sell something...
" OMG ; Anet nerfed all the drops ! "
" Yeah, now they want you to buy everything. "
" #@%& Anet, I am switching to WoW. "
Etc. :D

I suppose that at it's core the issue is evolution :

[1st] Guild Wars releases - no subscription fee and casual style is a perfect fit for players regardless of if they are time-rich or money-rich.

[2nd] Factions releases - exclusive areas, farmed armour and prestige services are introduced to satisfy 'elite' players ; the game turns in favour of time-rich players ( kids, people with few commitments, gaming-addicts :) ).

[3rd] The money-rich players start to grumble, as they are missing out on content ( regardless of if that content is substantial or superficial ). Anet are concerned by this as money-rich people = good customers.

But it is very unlikely that Anet can do anything about Factions now, as prices cannot be lowered after the time-rich players have already spent masses of platinum. Leading to one of the following directions.

[4th A] The current direction continues - by campaign 4 the time-rich players soar overhead on winged steeds, wearing their reflective golden Angelic armour, to fight in their exclusive Super Rift Overworld while money-rich players shuffle around Dunce Island in their sackcloths. :lol:

[4th B] The current direction continues but Anet introduce lottery elements - Green armour dropped by monsters, items that can be redeemed for Guild Services, etc. The introduction of Green weapons was a step in this direction, but uber weapons are very much a niche interest compared to armour enthusiasm.

[4th C] Campaign 3 reverses the trend by returning to a Prophecies situation in which any player can expect to access / acquire almost all content.

[4th D] Anet introduces real-money purchase options that enable money-rich players to also enjoy content that time-rich players cannot. With the scales balanced this leads to either universal harmony or a big jagged divide... :?

[harbinger]

what about the time-money-rich (a.k.a. spoiled brat)?

[Ray Of Light]

Rich spoiled brats are the mother lode of online gaming ! :)

[harbinger]

8) blizzard understood that with WoW...

:twisted: pay the game, pay the network, pay the items yay !

:twisted: how 3vil...

[Adul]

Hmm, very interesting discussion.

Well, I have 2 accounts and still I have all my character slots filled at all times. I usually start a new char, get to lvl 20, get bored with it, and delete it to start a new one. Now that habit costs a LOT of money, as I just deleted an elementalist with a full 15K armor set. I bought him the armor some months ago, because I thought I'd like to play with him, but I got bored with him really soon. So I started salvaging my 80K worths of armor. :cry:

However, I'm not complaining, because I know it's my fault. :roll: And I still have a lot I've earned so far: 5 sets of 15k armor, about 10 sets of 1.5k, and some cool weapons too, mostly got them from collectors and boosted with some components I found. But now I have about 14k money which I will soon get rid of when my ritualist gets off from Shing Yea island.

If Anet offered money for sale for a REASONABLE price, I'd buy. And my reasons are the same as Ray Of Light's: I don't like the usual money making methods, I like questing and teamplay. But guys like us also like the fancy content. :D

[malak di asana]

i am kind of torn on the money issue. I will admit, I have been tempted to buy gold. Just so I could have pretty nice things for my characters. Over two accounts I have made many characters, and as mentioned in anothers post, I sometimes take advanced characters that are not played, delelte them, and try out new things. Add this to the early gaming experience of constant upgrading armor, weapons, skills, etc that sucked up all my cash, and I am just becoming able to purchase 1 set of 15k armor. Now I have the six characters in one account all with 1.5k, and three of the four in the other account have 1.5k. And I have amassed a sum of 60k in total gold, which is pretty good. But, I have played for 8 mos straight, and a couple characters had to spend hours and hours before factions building up the money. Add to this guild hall upgrades, which I do not really need, except additional storage, which I am saving for, and it is going to take me quite awhile to have 80k just sitting around to spend.
Now I get that if you do not spend the time and earn the items, gold, weapons, armor, you will not be as satisfied with it. My favorite weapon in the one chaos axe i found in FOW, the one time i went in. It is max, but plain, no upgrades, no additional %, but I found it, and I like it. Additionally, so with my ele, whose staff I saved for, had crafted, and have spent the time getting the upgrades for it.
So part of the game is playing long enough to earn the cash to buy the pretty toys, but once you have done the content of the game, several times, and explored looking at scenery with a couple, and tried different skill sets, combos, weapons, secondaries, you may just want to make your character look cool, and need cash.
So once you have the content, if you want to be legitmate(non farm) you go back and help people in quests and try to raise money, but this is just low level farming anyway, so eventually you start farming, and that is not whay Anet wants to happen. So without farming, how can you earn cash to buy the goodies and extras of the game?
As for the others, weapons, armor, etc do not interest me as something extra to buy, I can craft them, or find them. Guild vault is coming, and pet stable has been mentioned. I would like to rename things though, and I would pay to have that. I would like to be able to change the look, name of characters, and guild, so those would be a definite yes.