A Note on Microtransactions

Hey look, if Anet can get someone to pay $9.99 to change how fat their character is in a 4 year old game that one day will be shut down, then more power to them.

I personally think it's pretty ridiculous, but as JR put it in his original post - if it makes Guild Wars 2 that much better developmentally......YEAH!

JR, thanks for articulating the views I've been trying to formulate into something that I'd feel happy posting. My concerns are the same - as long as these transactions are restricted to cosmetic and/or convenience and/or other content not directly affecting gameplay then I'm all in support of them. So far no one has been at a disadvantage to their ability to have be competative, skilled player because of an optional item available only through microtransaction. Lets hope the designers and developers have the sense to continue this.

I would like to see improvements to the store so that the optional packages can be made available to more people by payment being able to be made in other forms, which has already been discussed to death.

The thing is you are not paying for extra content with these microtransactions.

If you were to start 2 people at the same time with all 4 GWs one with unlimited real life money and the other with no extra money the only true advantage in the begining would be PvP unlocks. This was and is the only microtransaction that gives you an actual in game advantage over someone else.

As pointed out in a well though out post, GW is a business and if they don't make money it will cease to exist and cease to grow. Look at these microtransaction as an investment in your future GW enjoyment.

Indeed, and GW2 should be UAX from the start, so even that one wont be an issue.

Uh, what? Your comment makes no sense, seeing as the rest of that character-changing utility costs real life money. If you're already paying $15 a month, why do they charge extra for name changes or server transfers? :/

Just as there are people who will buy the tiny 20 slot panes for whole $10 each, there are people who would pay $10 to get a new dungeon or a region of a few explorables with quests added. Or another $10 for a new unique looking armor set...

And here comes the main problem and a great danger - just imagine them not releasing big fairly priced boxed chapters/expansions but instead dividing all the new content into small $10 'microtransaction' packages. Take for example Nightfall:

access to new Dervish profession: $10
access to new Paragon profession: $10
Istan - $10
Kourna land - $10
Vabbi - $10
the Desolation - $10
Realm of Torment (excluding DoA) - $10
Domain of Anguish - $10
2 additional character slots: $10 each
1 additional xunlai pane: $10

instead of $40-50 it's $110 - but they're all optional, right? - how not to love microtransactions?

And it's a very light vision of how they could do it, it could be much worse, divided into even more even smaller pieces, all priced at the same $10... And there would still be people who would buy that, telling others "stfu, don't QQ, it's all optional"...

There's a real danger GW2 may work like that... or even worse.

If it's build from the grounds up with the microtransaction model in mind, it may be a big pain to play for those who will want to ignore buying the small $10 addons and upgrades. Easiest example to imagine would be storage - they may provide very little inventory space for those who will just buy the base game, barely enough to play through the basic storyline once, but if a player gets hooked up, he'll discover that in order to play more he'll need to buy storage increase packs, very small and very pricy...
Adding small content updates where each gives you unique advantages, this may turn into a monthly-fee system in disguise, while you'll be able to play for free forever, they will make your game pointless if you won't keep buying the small extras.

A horror.

Are the days of great value for the amount of $$ spent (all 4 GW full products) are a thing of the past, never to return?
If players with their purchases will support changes going this way, it will be the nightmare come true, coming soon.

Pure far-fetched speculation your part. F2P Micro-transaction games do not sell the content, they sell items.

I have no problem with the microtransactions as long as they are optional and do not affect the playability of the game. All the stuff in the store is candy and not essential to the gameplay but for some it makes the game more enjoyable and I applaud A-net/NCsoft for giving people the choice and actually listening to the community on changes that could be made and then following-up with a solution. Are they always perfect? No but at least there is some effort. Heck they could have said screw it and left everything the same with no updates or anything, but I know that is the one thing that has brought me back for the past 4 years is the expansion and willingness to improve the game. Even if it is something I may not want now it is an option I can do down the road and I thank them.

You make it sound as if ANet's on the verge of releasing GW2, that this game is essentially over and all that's left to is RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it up as much as possible in order to squeeze every possible penny out of it so that we can fund a game that most players may or may not be transferring over to, and one that will come out in no sooner than 2 years. You then defend it by comparing it to WoW, and how if this game had subscriptions you would have already spent 1500$ on it. But the thing is you wouldn't have, most players I know wouldn't have. Why? Simply because we'd all be playing WoW.

This update wasn't that much of a big deal, but if it's a sign of things to come there really won't be a reason to play GW over any other rpg.

I agree with a few points JR, like Anet not going for selling game-affecting features or something for everyone in this "update" (I'd rather say "product" at this point).

About the "buying actual game content" topic: the menagerie is new content, in the weakest form of the sense of course. But I though that creating such a zone required a lot of efforts on Anet's part, as Linsey once explained on her wiki journal. So the question for me would be: why not creating actually a zone where we can play?

But you forgot the law of the market. We came here because it was not only "free", but there was a whole package with it. We still have these great events and updates. The quality of the game is not going down any more than it was. BUT, IMHO there's a slight problem with this update. It doesn't feel like an update to me, although I perfectly appreciate how and why it does feel like it to many, including Guru-ers as the various threads can show. It feels a slight change of attitude in business.

They've invested in the GW1 Live Team to produce these game elements. Honestly I won't be unfair to them, I'm getting my fair share of the update. I won't blame people for wanting to pay for name or appearance change, or storage tab convenience. But if Anet enters this world of features-to-pay, this has 3 practical consequences:
1) they're in competition with other MMOs; although they're still very far from the greediness of many of these companies, there's the beginning of a trend; one can even venture to say they may start targetting the average WoW player who is already used to pay for realm transfer, hair change or whatever else is to come;
2) they may invest more time/effort to satisfy those players rather than me, not I actually require a lot, but I'm also a potential GW2 customer (like you or many others); as such, the way they handle these "updates" has an impact on their future business. I'm not too worried about the business model at this point, more about CR/M and marketing;
3) directly in relation with the previous point, Anet becomes more dependent on the people who're going to pay; they delimit better their "business target", while as you said a lot of players will continue to enjoy free the game. What happens if an MMO comes later this year that proposes a better offer? Or if this population simply go to the next level and moves to WoW?

GW is not only the game itself, it's a community. The daily quest will hopefully remind us of that, in the best way I hope. But then there's going to be grind for bags? I was suggesting that we'd pay bags with "zoins" (we can still have 5 slots for very little, but I'm going to go for 20 if I can enjoy the daily quests). But one may even take the extreme view that the CR/Ms should pay more attention, read more and answer more to people who pay for the game.

I guess my questions may have simple and obvious answers. But I'm not seeing them atm. Or I'm simply seeing too much behing all this. Or as you said it's going to gradually come back to a more "approachable offer" as prices are lowered with time (similarly to the campaigns, but at that point these features may be useless since GW2 will be quite close to be released?).

The question is, where do they draw the line?

How many char slots for free are reasonable/acceptable, one for each profession or less?
Is the ability to buy more storage really only cosmetic and not affecting gameplay? It is already borderline IMO.

The problem is that micro-transaction based games actually do not just sell "cosmetic" upgrades. And GW is slowly pushing the line towards more and more items for sale.

Runes of Magic sells mounts - only for real money.
Navy Field sells better ships and crew - I doubt ANet will go so far.
I do not know what they sell in Rappelz and Silkroad.

A lot of people are standing around the hair dresser in the Temple of Balthazar right now. Many already hate to register to the store to get the free storage tab. And many would like a haircut, but are definitely not going to pay the price and feel NOT so happy about it.

Dunno, this is somehow not making me trust and believe in ArenaNet.

Changing the way your character looks using old models and colours already available in the game is far from revolutionary and does in no way excuse charging the fans IRL dollars. This would have been acceptable had the option to use "in game currency" were available as well, just like the way elite/skills packs are available in the online store as well as from a priest of Balthazar.

Charging for additional storage is expected as it does physically effect the servers on which the game runs.

Do you think ANET can pay their bills with in game money?

It's an excellent question, and one that is VERY hard to answer.

At what point are you selling people extra content, and at what point are you removing content from the game to sell it back to people?

Guild Wars doesn't really have this dilemma, because it was designed without microtransactions in mind. The game released the way it released, and that was that. For GW2 they will have to think very carefully about it.

Again, I have enough faith in ArenaNet that they will make the right decisions to get this right, and not let the additional microtransactions hurt the basic game.

So this is how they will pay the bills from now on? Well good luck to them. Giving us a weak "major" update and expecting everyone to pay for it is a poor economic strategy. There is very little keeping people in this game right now. It WILL take another expansion to keep people online. Tedious and cheap updates like the Nick and Yakkington will not stop people form going to other games that are releasing proper content.

Guild Wars is a 4 year old game from a developer that has now mostly shifted focus to the sequel, people leaving is pretty much inevitable.

So this justifies charging people for old content?

I am fine with paying extra for upgrades to what we already get for free (such as the free storage tab - everyone can get it but if you want more you can pay). I haven't paid anything for this game except the campaigns and expansion in 4 years. Even if the OPTIONAL extras are $10-$15, it's still not a bad deal. TINSTAAFL.

How is it old content? People have been asking for the ability to change names, appearances and genders for four years. It's a shame that it took them until now to do it, but it's not old content.

I'd agree that the prices need adjusting in some cases, but as I explained in the first post, I think the idea has a lot of merit for everyone if it is well executed.

A 4 year old game that is still their bread-and-butter, unless NCSoft is subsidizing it with their other games. If ANet is on its own and it semi-abandoned GW to work on GW2 before it had the all resources to devote, that was a risky decision that bit them (thus creation of the live team). It's a common cause of death among software development companies.

If the F2P model of Silkroad/Maple Story is sufficient to keep them afloat and in development of GW2, I'll be surprised, honestly.