I forgot to add that that kind of mechanic gives you a revenue stream not in peril from jackpot game mechanics being ruled as illegal online gambling.
Additionally, I would not give VIP points for diamonds.
I would also consider revamping the VIP keys and VIP benefits. I’d drop being able to buy them with gems. I’d bump up the draw rate for good troops. Then maybe do something like give you one VIP key a week for every two levels of VIP, and then just straight up sell packs of 50 for $50 or something. Basically VIP keys would be a way for whales to buy a chance at getting lots of good stuff fast. VIP keys wouldn’t be pay to win, but it would be a way for cash whales to pay to catch up to experienced players quickly and have the accountants/economists determine the rates and prices to make it that.
No idea how complicated it would be, but there have been periods where I’d pay cash to get additional team slots rather than do manual maintenance and cleanup. In addition to being a VIP reward, Maybe sell them at $1-$2 a pop. I suspect it will appeal more to longer time players, and it is more or less independent from game mechanics. I can kind of pay to be lazy right now by buying to get VIP levels, but only so lazy and it costs a LOT of money. The new cut and paste mechanic limits the appeal of this, but even with it, I’d probably buy a few slots to avoid a hassle. Given how terse the encoding is, storing and syncing vast numbers of slots would probably cost about the same as logging some data on users, which I’m sure you do a ton of anyway.
Selling event sigils. I’m less sure of this one. Right now you can buy diamonds. Diamonds are priced kind of high relative to buying tiers of sigils. A cash buy to try to make a run at a leaderboard top slot is going to cost serious cash if buying gems to buy tiers in the event shops. Selling sigils directly would allow for a discounted way to do it without getting the added stuff you get with repeated top tier buys.
Perhaps on Faction Assault Tuesday, or any Event day/weekend, they could have a sigil offer at $1.99 to $2.99 and limit quantity to something like five (or make it unlimited), which gets you some event sigils, and other related to the event goodies, such as shards, bounty troops, etc.
Maybe even offer a full potion pack on those days or weekend, which would allow players to get a boost without spending gems.
Unfortunately it is a tender balance between helpful purchases and outright pay to win additions, but this post was made for suggestions for a shop rework, and I personally see nothing wrong with them adding things people are asking for, such as the above.
The only reason I bought up to VIP 5 was to be able to buy VIP chests with Gems as a backup method to try getting new Mythics.
If VIP 5 only included the ability to buy VIP chests with cash other than a couple “pity” keys a week (2.5 keys a week for a VIP 5 using your example) I’d probably have stopped at 3.
Slightly off-topic:
I do feel VIP perks should be improved. I get 2 Glory Keys and 1000 Gold per day in the mail for my VIP level (6).
I get 2500 Gold 4 days per week and one Gem Key 3 days per week from the Honor system, which is free for all players whether they pay or not. It takes time to build up to max Honor, but time is the only barrier.
VIP perk = 7,000 Gold and 14 Glory Keys per week. Both of these are already infinitely farmable, so there’s nothing special about them.
Honor = 10,000 Gold and 3 Gem Keys per week. Gems are the premium currency. While you could technically “farm” Gems with something like Treasure Maps, it’s incredibly time-inefficient to do so, as opposed to Glory, which can be grinded ad nauseum in PVP.
Yeah, VIP perks need love.
[edit] Clarified Honor rewards to reflect that you don’t get Gold all 7 days if you are also getting Keys. You get Gold OR a Key, not both on the same day.
There are times when its just really useful to be able to buy. For example: Diamonds should be available like gem packages [if they are and I’m blind to the shop let me know] because given the low % rate of legendary drops by keys etc and the luck factor , grinding diamonds for a couple of months at least allows the player to craft a mythic in the soul-forge if it meets their team formation needs. However once spent and typically the next month offers a frickin more useful card and you only have 2k diamonds , not 4. SO: SELL DIAMONDS in the shop in big lots for those who don’t have RNG key etc luck.
Before you post and say i can get them every day in the dungeon, I’m not writing about purchasing pissy amounts over and over or day after day - SELL DIAMONDS like the frickin mother-lode.
I was thinking a potion option (for gems or dollars) added to the guild wars tab strictly for offense would be wonderful. Nobody would be required to buy or use them, but it could go a long way in making the game mode more fun for someone like myself.
No. No no no. That is the one singular level playing field. Or as relatively level as rng will allow, may He live forever. No potions, extra blessings, free mana icepops, or gem-bought wheaties of strength. No hundred dolla bills winnerz either.
It was only a suggestion, since guild wars currently makes the devs nothing. I bet people would buy potions for Guild Wars, which wouldn’t hurt anyone. I know it’s controversial, but I’d really like the option to further support the game.
It would be nice to see the policy shifting form “one big purchase is better than 10 smaller ones” more towards the side of “10 smaller ones”.
And if we add that of those “big purchases” only Deathknight Armor is really worth anything…when I look at the shop I don’t see anything else above $5 (okay, hero avatar maybe, if there was one I would like more than naga I use now) that I would ever consider spending money on - all of them are massively overpriced and “random legendary/mythic” one would get at the end of “path to…” - why would anyone pay money for a - quite likely - troop they’ll never use?
Long story short - current big offer prices need to be cut and cut once again; also - more low-priced offers. I think I’m not the only one to likely spend small sums on an impulse (and not be sorry afterwards) than buy something huge.
(Flash offers look like a somewhat step in right direction, although quite a few of them are still ridiculous.)
And big thumbs up for cheaper free scouting (as @Jonathan says)! If it took only VIP1 instead of VIP3, a lot more people, I suspect, would chip in a buck.
Yes, more people would spend a dollar, but a dollar once in a blue moon isn’t going to keep the devs employed — that’s why having only very cheap offers is unappealing to the devs.
The game needs to make money in order for the team to stay employed.
Think of all the support tickets they get from free to play players, hundreds of man hours answering support requests, perhaps thousands over five years, yet they have to help people that don’t even help keep them employed.
A lot of folks mention buying full games for 5 to 50 bucks, yet those games don’t have a team working full time on them on a weekly basis. Gems of War is an always online game, with full customer support, and a dedicated team working on new content, new art, and new quality of life features… yet, they are told constantly that the prices they charge are outrageous, crazy, and stupendously overpriced. Some of those same people write support tickets, and expect support, yet they don’t care one iota that the customer service they are being afforded is all but complimentary if they are free to play…
I can understand the team working on Gems of War wanting to continue to stay employed, but a dollar once in a blue moon isn’t going to help keep the staff employed for long. However, I can’t disagree the reduced offers are more appealing, because they are, and I hope they can figure out a way to stay employed, and make extremely cheap offers more widely available, since that seems to be what most of the responders to this post want.
Let’s get real here, shall we? You keep saying that a dollar once in a blue moon won’t keep devs employed, so if I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that players should spend much more than a dollar or two.
First, micro transaction are called micro because they are 1-5 dollars. Not 50-60 bucks,and what you get for that money is pretty underwhelming.
Second, devs should use their brains, it would do them good actually. They would make much more money if they had ratio of, let’s say, 70:30 of cheap stuff to expensive stuff. I work for my money too, you know, and I am certainly not going to spend 50 bucks for an item that I don’t think is worth it. But I will spend 1-2 dollars on a thing in the game, and quite more often. Because it’s not a big deal. And I guarantee that a lot of other players feel like that. And my personal opinion is that it’s better to have a lot of small purchases from loyal player base than small number of whales who will spend a lot until they find another game they fancy and leave GoW.
Third, please don’t make it sound like poor devs, doing all that for us and we don’t even want to throw money at them. They are competing in the market with their product, and if the product wasn’t profitable, they wouldn’t be here for years now. Of course they could always use more money, but they are not exactly destitute,
What they need is find a way to entice players to willingly part with their money. Constantly introducing changes that make gameplay worse and slower and grindier so that people would give up and just buy stuff is not that. They should pay a little more attention to what their player base is telling them, because there are some really good ideas our there that would also help shop working better than it does now.
Paying full time salaries to an entire team with benefits, is not cheap. I was simply saying the developers need to make enough to continue to pay their employees. If you feel paying multiple individuals a living wage is sustainable on one to five buck purchases, I’m not going to argue with you.
I’m 100% convinced the devs would make more money with cheaper prices. This weeks’ slight discount on guild elite packs is a good example. A few members in my guild bought it this week ($12) but in the past when they would have it for $5 we would have 20 or so members buy it. At its regular ridiculous price nobody in our guild ever buys it so they make nothing from us. I’m sure if it was $5 all the time we would have maybe half our guild buy it every week.
I understand what you’re saying, but you have to understand that they are already doing it. They are making money. They are in a very competitive field and if they weren’t able to sustain themselves AND profit, they wouldn’t still be here. It’s just the fact of the market. I don’t get why is it so hard to understand. Would you go and work in a place where you don’t get the salary? Would you keep having company that is not making you money? I don’t think so.
Don’t get me wrong, but they don’t need a champion. They need a better shop model if they want to make even more money. When you sell a product, you can focus on mass appeal or exclusivity. They have a product intended for mass consumption, therefore you need to have prices that will attract as many customers as possible. And I very much do think that paying multiple persons a living wage is sustainable on one to five dollar purchases, because the number of people buying and frequency of purchases would be much greater than now.
Also, please note that I didn’t say everything needs to be cheap. I said 70% cheap, 30% for whales. They already have that with flash offers. I think those are reasonable. It’s just that the most of the shop should be redesigned into something like that, maybe with tiers. Also possibility to choose what you will buy. When you go to the store you don’t just give money and say "give me a phone " and then get a random phone that the clerk brings. You choose what you want for the money you’re paying.
Devs would probably have to implement a “random mythic you don’t have as long as you’re missing at least 5” clause for that idea, but I like the way it sounds