Guild Wars 2

I understand that you added a custom option to the gem exchange but its beyond annoying for anyone that’s trying to convert from gems to gold. I have no idea what the current rate is per 100 gems like I used to, there’s no graph letting me know if stuff is on an upswing or a downswing. When I look at it, I have to do the math myself and it never matches up with any of the other websites that supposedly use the gem exchange API (and those websites never seem to match each other either.)

At this point I don’t want to spend any money on converting gems to gold cause I feel like I’m going to get ripped off. Are you adding anymore of the old functionality back? or should I just save my money?

Yeeeah, I was wondering about this “fix”. It’s kinda screwing over the people who buy gems to sell for gold. The gold→gem interface got the necessary fix, but the gem→gold side leaves sellers open to some rather sharp rounding errors. Or so I am to believe. I didn’t want to risk having up to a 99 silver truncated on a transaction due to rounding error.

Can anyone confirm or refute how it currently works?

You lose at most the price of a single gem when converting gems to gold.

For instance 100 gold is currently 868 gems. 868 gems according to the commerce API is worth 100 gold and 11.38 silver which makes gems worth 11.53 silver each when converting to gold.

Behellagh.1468:

You lose at most the price of a single gem when converting gems to gold.

For instance 100 gold is currently 868 gems. 868 gems according to the commerce API is worth 100 gold and 11.38 silver which makes gems worth 11.53 silver each when converting to gold.

K, and that still doesn’t take care of any of my complaints, I don’t have a way of getting the 11.53 silver info unless I do the math myself which before I didn’t have to. I don’t have a way of knowing the previous movement of the market in any manner. And I find it funny “You lose at most the cost of a single gem” well there were people screaming on these forums the fact that they lost the value of 4 gems when doing gold to gems conversion yet their complaints were apparently acceptable.

It’s simple, I won’t do gem to gold conversion till I can trust I’m making a good choice, it just means I wont spend nearly as much money on the gem store as I used to.

Graka.9457:

When I look at it, I have to do the math myself and it never matches up with any of the other websites that supposedly use the gem exchange API (and those websites never seem to match each other either.)

This is because the API is… Inconsistent.
It’s set up such that you have to ask it how many, not just a rate.
So you have to ask it: “how much gold can I get for 10 gems?”, and it’ll answer “11365” (it’s in coppers)
Then another website might ask it: “how much gold can I get for 100 gems?”, and it’ll answer, “126791”
Then another: 1000 gems = “1251849”
So every website uses a different number to sample it, so every website differs.
What’s funny is how the low numbers change as the amount goes up. 5s for 1 gem, 23s for 2 gems, 24s for 3 gems, 30s for 4 gems…
One of these days I want to graph every value from like 1-100 just for giggles

Also the exchange rate is in constant flux, not inconsistent. Yes there’s a non-linear aspect to the exchange but it’s felt most when dealing with less than 100 gems or over 2000 gems.

I just polled the exchange via the API within a second for selling 10, 100 and 1000 gems. I got 1.1188 gold, 11.8816 gold and 118.8162 gold.

The thing is in reply to the last two posts. Before all I had to type in was 100gems and it give me the answer to how much that was worth, I could also look down below at the graph to see if gems had gone up or down during the last little while. Now I have to sit there and do the math myself which changes, and on top of it you only get the premium rate if you buy a large amount of gold anything below that and you take rounding errors that completly screw you. Hell even on the custom exchange its completely worthless and tries to shaft you as hard as possible. Anet needs to give people that do gems to gold back the original way of doing it, where we type in what gems we want to do and decide whether or not its worth it, not this crap where we close our eyes and roll the dice that were not getting the shaft.

Cause in many ways this new system seems like its just a way of tricking new players into converting gems to gold and not realizing whether they are getting a good rate or not compared to the old system. Compared to the old system even with the custom option the new system is a complete travesty of epic proportions. But I’m sure the standard fallback will be that somehow it was too difficult to understand which if in anyway that was remotely true these people should not be allowed to use a computer for fear of sticking salami into the dvd drive for the difficulty of not understanding that it isn’t a toaster.

Graka.9457:

The thing is in reply to the last two posts. Before all I had to type in was 100gems and it give me the answer to how much that was worth, I could also look down below at the graph to see if gems had gone up or down during the last little while. Now I have to sit there and do the math myself which changes, and on top of it you only get the premium rate if you buy a large amount of gold anything below that and you take rounding errors that completly screw you. Hell even on the custom exchange its completely worthless and tries to shaft you as hard as possible. Anet needs to give people that do gems to gold back the original way of doing it, where we type in what gems we want to do and decide whether or not its worth it, not this crap where we close our eyes and roll the dice that were not getting the shaft.

Cause in many ways this new system seems like its just a way of tricking new players into converting gems to gold and not realizing whether they are getting a good rate or not compared to the old system. Compared to the old system even with the custom option the new system is a complete travesty of epic proportions. But I’m sure the standard fallback will be that somehow it was too difficult to understand which if in anyway that was remotely true these people should not be allowed to use a computer for fear of sticking salami into the dvd drive for the difficulty of not understanding that it isn’t a toaster.

I agree Graka. After nearly two years of training us to think in terms of Gold per 100 Gems, I see the decision to turn that on it’s head from selecting input to selecting output as jarring. But I do remember seeing posts asking for this type of exchange method. I just wished they didn’t throw out the previous ones.

Also if I didn’t make it clear, the exchange always had a non-linear scale nature to it. It’s as if there was an additional fee that gets deducted from the gold you want to convert before the exchange rate is applied but that fee only applies to small exchanges.

I would have loved an exchange where you could enter either outcome desired or amount willing to spend, pick a direction and press buy. Sadly working within a 3rd party’s UI standards likely precluded an entry field that can toggle to a display only field and vice versa. Standards. I missed the old days of coding when you could forge a unique UI element from the primordial bits instead of living within a predefined existence set forth by others whose limit vision have constrained us all.

But I digress.

You don’t get short changed, other than what the exchange had always done, when buying gems. Selling gems however does shortchange you by whatever amount of coin a fraction of one gem was worth. It’s like truncating to nickels when getting change with the retailer getting the advantage.

Behellagh.1468:

You don’t get short changed, other than what the exchange had always done, when buying gems. Selling gems however does shortchange you by whatever amount of coin a fraction of one gem was worth. It’s like truncating to nickels when getting change with the retailer getting the advantage.

It’s a bit more than that. If it shorts you 11s (for example) when you turn gems to gold, that’s still a few long range waypoints for a level 80, or several basic salvage kits.

I was using that as an example of short changing, not the relative usefulness of the coin that was short change.

Behellagh.1468:

You lose at most the price of a single gem when converting gems to gold.

For instance 100 gold is currently 868 gems. 868 gems according to the commerce API is worth 100 gold and 11.38 silver which makes gems worth 11.53 silver each when converting to gold.

Yeah, about that…

If I’m giving ANet money by using the gems I bought for real money, I shouldn’t be getting the shaft on the exchange rate.

I agree. We’ve tried to explain this but for some reason they think we are asking for something else other than all the coin we should be getting. So far there response has been, but it’s only a bit of silver.

But Gaile has stopped talking to us about this.

Behellagh.1468:

I agree. We’ve tried to explain this but for some reason they think we are asking for something else other than all the coin we should be getting. So far there response has been, but it’s only a bit of silver.

But Gaile has stopped talking to us about this.

I have to wonder what the reaction would be if the situation were reversed:
If gem→gold was very precise, “I sell these gems to get _ gold.” and
if gold→gem was “I’ll spend _ gold to get my allotment of gems.” but have that be subjected to gold-sinking rounding error.

But apparently that would be “too confusing”, so actual paying players get the shaft.

It’s not a rounding error, it’s the answer to the question of what is the fewest gems, Y, do I need to get X gold. The question isn’t how much coin, gold, silver and copper, can I get for Y gems. Which is what you can query with their published API.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:2/commerce/exchange/gems

So you ask it what’s the fewest gems for 40 gold and it says 344 gems. What it doesn’t say is 344 gems is worth 40 gold and 8 silver and 5 copper. You asked for 40 gold, you get 40 gold. Yes it’s 2/10ths of one percent you lose out on but why “confuse” players by giving them the true value rather than just what they asked for.

Even some of the players here are saying, well it’s close enough, we’ll take it. When we buy gems it cost is calculated down to the copper so why is it “fair” that we lose out going the other way. They don’t truncate going the other way. We can’t buy 300 gems for only 48 gold but 48 gold 37 silver and 91 copper. I don’t understand why they can’t see it’s a double standard. Admit to it or fix it.

Please give us that little bit of silver and copper. That’s what we got before the Sept exchange update. That’s what those gems are worth according to your own published API call to the exchange. Why truncate? WHY?