Business model for digital expansions

[Mif]

Again, why would people have gems stockpiled for no reason.

As I said 2 posts ago:

When you buy $60 worth of gems for gold it won't all come from one player.

Whatever. This argument is obviously going to continue going in circles with us repeating things we've already said, so I'm going to stop replying now.

Bookah

[Delias]

As I said 2 posts ago:


Bookah

That doesn't disprove what I said, but okay. 70$ each from 6 people is the same as 60$ each from 7 people.

[StationaryHawk]

$60 or so expansions seems the most reasonable. I'd imagine they'd be cash only, too. Not that I don't see gems working, but because it's simply the most efficient way of doing it.

[Mif]

That doesn't disprove what I said, but okay. 70$ each from 6 people is the same as 60$ each from 7 people.

o.0

$60 = 60 gems (for the sake of simplicity)

Player 1 is selling 10 gems
Player 2 is selling 2 gems
Player 3 is selling 5 gems
Player 5 is selling 8 gems
Player 6 is selling 10 gems
Player 7 is selling 5 gems
Player 8 is selling 10 gems
Player 9 is selling 10 gems

No one is stockpiling gems. They had a few lying around, so they decided to sell them for a few gold. Someone needed to buy the xpac, so he bought some gems for gold and got his xpac from the gem store.

No one bought any gems they wouldn't of bought, but a player didn't pay cash for an xpac he otherwise would of had to buy, thus ArenaNet lost $60.

And now I truly give up....

[solidsheep]

I remember around the time arena net started talking about gem shop they said they might add content (Dungeons) to the shop. Anyone know if that will still happen?

[Delias]

Oh, so the 'money lost' would be the excess gems that lie around due to only being able to buy 20 gems at a time but everything costing 19 gems (just an example for simplicity)
Considering how much I hate that model, and how annoyed that I get that so many things do it, I honestly wouldn't have a huge amount of sympathy for that small amount of extra profit gained by tricking the consumer getting lost. Regardless of what company did it. By that logic, however, you shouldn't be allowed to sell gems at all. They're already losing that profit by allowing players to sell the excess gems they get for gold and other players using those extra gems to buy stuff from the cash shop.

[draykorinee]

I remember around the time arena net started talking about gem shop they said they might add content (Dungeons) to the shop. Anyone know if that will still happen?

nope noone knows right now, doesn't mean it won't happen we don't have any solid evidence surrounding content updates

[Smokinya]

Well sell them all together and with real money only. I mean seperating the playbase IS NEVER acceptable ESPCIALLY IN AN MMORPG...

[JayJay09]

I'd say "whole package" definitely wins. And some people even like gemming for them. But I, too, prefer the traditional way of having one rather big expansion than for instance 3 seperate releases. And in order to have it easier in the world of GW2, a one package release would probably be the best thing since some people might just not buy the WvWvW or SPvP parts and thus they couldn't participate on several new stuff. I think the world should stay the same for everyone and buying an expansion should be somewhat mandatory if you want to keep playing the game.

Nothing is more annoying than meeting people you'd like to play with, but they/you lack the content to do so. Had that quite some times in games that had released DLCs.

[Merendel]

No one is stockpiling gems. They had a few lying around, so they decided to sell them for a few gold. Someone needed to buy the xpac, so he bought some gems for gold and got his xpac from the gem store.

No one bought any gems they wouldn't of bought, but a player didn't pay cash for an xpac he otherwise would of had to buy, thus ArenaNet lost $60.

And now I truly give up....

The thing is Anet still got the money for those gems. Its no different than prepurchasing the game. If someone bought it in april or buys it a day before launch the same amount of money was payed for it. If anything its a better deal for Anet as they can reinvest the money sooner to get a bigger return off it.

Lets put it in other terms though, there are a number of game services that have some form of prepaid wallet option (Steam EA Microsoft points ect) you pay in money now to fill up your wallet and can use whats in that wallet to buy games/services. They have their money for their product regardless if you spend the whole balance at once, buy several smaller items over a period of time, or sit on it for a year and then make a purchase. The only difference between these systems and gems is with gems you have the option of trading your available balance with other players.

When you buy with gems one way or another you are trading money for a product. It does not mater if you payed for the gems or someone else did, either way someone paid for them. The idea that gems for XPacks takes away potential profit from other gemshop items is shortsighted. What happens when folks take a ton of gems out of the system to pay for Xpacs? the price of gems for gold goes up. Other people see a good exchange rate and need gold so they buy gems to sell. price drops back to normal as more gems enter the system and folks buy and spend those on cosmetics. It all normalizes in the end. Eventually similar amounts of money will be taken in, it will just be split between two sources. And like I sad in the first paragraph its in the companies advantage to be paid in advance through gems as they've been able to accrue interest over some amount of time longer than if they were paid on delivery.

[Prepared]

Being able to buy expansions with gems would increase their worth significantly. It's too much of a manipulation of the player economy.

I would have to see this happen to believe it would.

[Keldrath]

I like the gems idea, gives me a conceivable way to get it without having to drop any real money on it from my part, just through playing the game. I rather like that.

[drkn]

I can't really imagine how proper in-game content would be bought with gems.

[Barcasaur]

$60 expansions seems like the obvious choice. They'll have free content patches as well just like they did with GW1.
I'm sure they'll sell boxes as well as digital copies online as well.

This, I am already exited about what the possibilitys for future expansions will be like!

and I just have to have my boxed copy, so tasty.