I just hope they aren't account bound again like the fused tickets were. I would have rather had the gold from selling my fused ticket than have a weapon skin I find 'meh'. Seems like Anet made a lot of money off of parting fools from their money with BLKs though. The fused skins weren't that nice, crazy people. >_<
I am hoping that they let us buy expansions with gems. That would make me very happy.
I can't say that the gem system makes me very happy. The inflation is too extreme, buying an expansion with gems could require hundreds of hours of event-farming if the trend goes on like this.
When I bought my bank expansion I paid like... 35 silver for 100 gems. Now 100 gems cost more than 3 gold!
Source: http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem
Everytime you see something nice in the gem-shop and think "Yes, I'm going to buy that, just let me farm some gold!" will only lead to the sobering that you need much more by the time you have the gold.
Now the idea behind it is that players should buy more gems with real money, and we would all have better gold-2-gem-ratios, but judging from the inflation rates so far the business-model hasn't been too successful... however, I don't have academical evidence here and this is just my gut instinct.
The trick is to buy the gems before you need anything because they are always going to get more expensive. I have now saved up 2000 gems. Going to get to about 5000 and then stop until i need them.
I agree, and it's only going to get worse when they put the infinite sickle and axe for sale. The main reason responsible for the outrageous gem exchange right now is that damned molten pick (and to a lesser extent BLKs for the fused weapon skins). Judging by how little the rate changed with the addition of the new items I'm guessing not enough people care about the current vanity selection or minis to alter the rate that much.
I hope that the exchange rate is going to see a hard cap from players soon because a lot of people are complaining about it. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of disposable wealth in the game from TP traders and CoF runners, possibly enough that rates could continue to rise, I don't know. I do think that the average player is definitely getting left in the dust in terms of buying much of anything with gold at this point.
The gold to gem ratio inflation is pretty important in keeping regular inflation in check though. It simply is the biggest gold sink in the game.
They don't need to put in a hard cap. It will come on it's own. There will be a point when it's more beneficial to players to buy gems with money rather than gold. It will even be beneficial to buy gold with gems. Supply and demand. Right now, not enough people are buying gems with real world money so there is not a lot on offer and that's pushing the price up.
I know that A/Net don't want to put mounts in the game. It's probably because the waypoints are an effective gold sink. That said, it would be really cool if they could add some mounts but instead of having them drop, etc. Make a town vendor sell the mounts. They could cost a fair amount (50g or 100g) to make up for any lost "gold sink". Have them not usable in WvW, break on combat and only give the top speed that people can get normally. Adding such a gold sink would increase the value of gold and encourage people to buy gems for gold.
I wonder if fused tickets had been TP-able how much of a difference it would have made in keeping the exchange in check. There were so many threads by people who'd spent $200+ on BLKs and not gotten one. Had that money been spent on gems and converted to gold to buy the ones players listed in the TP it would have kept the rate down possibly, especially since players wouldn't have been converting gold->gems->keys as well. Hard to say since I don't know how many people (other than myself) who got a fused ticket and would have preferred to sell it than keep it, nor do I know how rare those tickets were. I haven't seen many fused weapons, personally.
Really the trend of putting items such as that in the RNG boxes without any other way of obtaining them is probably my #1 grievance of the game. Certainly of the item shop at any rate.
I agree, I made a suggestion about this lately
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post1956507
RNG loot boxes are called "Gashas" in the eastern market. And they are one of the most lucrative items a cash shop can sell.
People will easily blow 300$ or more on them in a single sale. Nullifying any complaints from those who do not.
I remember a member of one game community who spent about $5k in one day to get a rare glow effect for his mage's staff. Then spent $2k more the following weekend for the same glow effect in blue.
1 whale > 100 free players, so to speak.
I don't and never will understand the gambling mentality. I hate gambling. Even when I do take a gamble on something I immediately regret it and anguish over it. It's just a generally adverse, unpleasant feeling to me in every possible way. Even if I "win" it's a sense of relief, not exhilaration.
I'm trying to collect the items needed for the "Secret Contact" and "Lost&Found" achievs but on my server (Desolation) and many others in EU the ones in Wayfarer Foothills seem to be bugged and don't show up at all (no, it's not a matter of not finding them , it's a known bug for some time now). The ones in Diessa show up just fine, already got all of those without any problem.
So, can someone playing in an EU server with non-bugged items in Wayfarer tell me which server you're playing on, so I can guest there and complete these achievs?
Thanks a lot in advance!