“Skins” for cards as suggested by @Mariox, or even different looks for the hero (as mentioned in another thread) I think would be good options. A number of other F2P games have gone this route with decent success (League of Legends being the prime example). It’s surprising how many people are willing to fork over for visual changes (Not saying it’s wrong, just that a lot of people actually do do it.) Though I’d agree with the suggestion that they should be available for gems as well (albeit a high cost) to give non-paying players a chance to get them eventually.
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Everything @Ozball just mentioned. Skins, Hero options (armor or features), any cosmetic changes, really.
Cosmetics are probably the only thing I’d be willing to spend any RL money on. As of now I’ve yet to have boughten anything, and the main reason is to assure others there’s no P2W features. (This, in turn, encourages others to spend as they’ll be more apt to play the game longer, meaning it’s a worthy investment. As a level 500+ not having spent even a dollar, this is some promising assurance.)
Cosmetics, however, only change appearance. Meaning there’s no possible way it could even give a player a boost, let alone be considered a P2W feature. So if the devs ever consider adding something just to pretty up my troops/hero/HUD, just know I’d be interested. 
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If they ever want to make money shamelessly, I have a Marketing degree I could dust off…
If you’re thinking time-limited (“30 day” kinda crap) appearance items, I swear I’ll rip a kids stuffed animal.
Anything that enhances gameplay experience (resources, boosts, troops, etc.) holds no interest to me and I’ll immediately skip over. Only enhanced personal experience (skins, cosmetics, etc.) I’ll willingly pay for.
I’m stingy like that. 
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I’m thinking cosmetics could be a great way to go. Maybe new races, or different options for the existing races? Not terribly thrilled with the current Hero art personally.
Is there other cosmetic-type stuff though? Seems like it would be hard to do much since it has to apply across all the races.
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That’s the great thing about having both, you can do whatever you want with your money!
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I don’t think every cosmetic has to apply for every race. They could have a variety like beards, horns, fangs, makeup etc. I think skins for armor would be a great idea as well. I’m thinking along the lines of Guild Wars. Basically, the only thing I buy there are armor skins.
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I would buy arcane traitstones if they were cheaper and if I could refund them whenever I want to use them on another troop. As it is right now, the packs are very expensive for what you get, and completely inflexible if the troop/team you want to use it on fails to live up to expectations.
I’ll never buy gems as the price is far too high for the small amount you get.
Please devs, don’t interpret that as ‘arcanes are scarce, gems are common, therefore we must make gems less common to encourage purchases’.
Personally I think games like Path of Exile got microtransactions right. The game is free and everything you buy is either quality of life improvement (stash space) or e-peen (like glowing armour).
If Gems of War could operate entirely on cosmetic microtransactions, I’d be a very happy camper. There are people who will pay silly money to make their Great Maw purple coloured or Jarl’s fire to glow blue instead of red. Hell, people would pay to have different animations.
Now that I’ve said that, I’ve gone and made myself want a Blue Fire Jarl.
I’ve spent very little on this game, maybe $15 AUD, because I don’t feel I get any sort of value for what I buy. The transactions available are massively overpriced for the product you get. I would pay $5 for a ‘cosmetic pack’ that made some nice colour or graphic changes. Hell, charge $100 for an ‘alternate art pack’. Every card gets an alternate art version, and the pack gets you all of them plus future ones. I don’t know how much it’d cost you to get an artist to do a whole bunch of alternates, but I reckon you’d make the money back easily.
Also, being an Aussie playing an Aussie game, it makes me sad when I see the cards spell ‘armour’ without the ‘u’. Don’t give in to the 'Mericans!
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For me, up until now I haven’t seen anything to draw me to spend in terms of value per dollar.
$10 gets me 110 gems, so what can I do with that?
110 gems is about 600 souls. Not even enough to take a legendary from level 19 to 20, certainly not worth $10
110 gems is about 13,000 gold. Not enough to complete a guild task (except the one for just tokens), enough for about 40 gold keys, but really 13,000 gold is about 10 pvp battles (not counting the souls and stones!) so doesn’t feel worth $10
110 gems is 11 gem keys. This is probably the best use, get 8-9 UR, 1-2 epic and 0-1 legendary. But still, only a 50/50 chance at a legendary for $10? Nah…
To me the only things that are worth spending money on are either big time savers (a lot more than 1 pvp battle per dollar value), things that can’t be acquired elsewhere (which runs the risk of P2W issues), or for certainty instead of randomness (like $10 for 5x of a specific legendary)
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All great points. I feel like Gems should always be kept as main currency of economy. The higher you VIP level the more gems you get with purchases so that helps a lot, but maybe more could be done.
agreed just too little bang for your buck for me to even consider buyin gems…
The main thing that seems worth buying money wise is the daily gems/souls/gold.
Gems: 616 yen for 15 gems a day for 15 days, so in total you’re getting 225 gems for 616 yen (roughly $6.16). Buying gems outright for this price (618 yen) only nets you 50 gems (before VIP bonus).
Gold: 2,251 yen for 8000 gold daily for 15 days, so in total 120,000 for essentially $23. Using the base of 10 gems gives you 1000 gold (yes you can get them cheaper, but base line is easier) this is worth about 120 gems. Which would net you only 15,000 gold if you payed 130 gems outright (which would cost you around $15, even doubling that to get closer to the $23 of the daily only gets you 30,000 gold)
Souls: 563 yen for 150 souls for 15 days, total 2,250 for $6. Using the base of 30 gems gets you 150 souls: this is worth 30 gems a day, or 450 gems. 450 Gems costs around $30.
That’s generally what I spend money on if I do. I’d consider skins for cards or different spell effects if I liked them enough and the price wasn’t prohibitive.
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I want toys of my favorite troops.
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May be will good idea to improve comunication is add trade system with fixed price. For example - i wanna buy arcana triatstone and pay 100k gold for each one. Or wanna sell usless low level triatstone for 5k each. and etc.
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Oh that would be a cool economy change.
With the new patch you will be able to ask different opponent 22 times!
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How about the option to spend gems to buy specific cards? There is already a system in place to buy cards for gems after an arena match. This would be a good way for players who have not been blessed by RNGesus to obtain the Legendaries they have been missing out on.
If you want to make it fair, make it so that you can only purchase the FIRST instance of a troop with gems, after that all subsequent have to be random pulls (to prevent spending $$$ to go right to Mythic).
There IS?! O.o I don’t remember seeing this… I might be blind though. What platform are you on?
I’m on PS4. After an Arena match it asks if I want to keep the 3 troops I was playing with at level 10 for $gems.
Hmm not sure if we have this on PC/Mobile… Anyone more knowledgeable than me want to confirm/deny? @.@
Buying cards with Gems would be nice, but the prices would have to be QUITE high to discourage that from being the main method of obtaining cards.