Guild Wars 2

https://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2/photos/a.135044094208.103264.114036714208/10152216840264209

“The Black Lion Weapon Specialists are clearing inventory–they will only be offering the Sclerite and Winter’s weapons for a few more weeks. Now’s the time to finish those Black Lion Claim Tickets and redeem them! ~RB2 #GW2 #GuildWars2”

Bought 50 keys, got 8 scraps (not tickets). Yai me. Hadn’t done it for a while, now I remember why.

At that rate you’d only need to buy 188 keys… for one skin. More if you wanted a winter’s day skin.

Also weren’t winters day skins originally sold via gem store? Why not sell them one last time via that way rather than only through keys if they are removing them.

And now I know why the exchange rate spiked again an hour or so ago.

I guess it’s time for the rich to get richer with discontinued skins which are obviously going to skyrocket…

Hermes.7014:

I guess it’s time for the rich to get richer with discontinued skins which are obviously going to skyrocket…

not rly

this skins are bad and noone buyd or used them and sure price will rise cause speculators – but you will sit on this skins for months when not years

not worth to invest

Romek.4201:

Hermes.7014:

I guess it’s time for the rich to get richer with discontinued skins which are obviously going to skyrocket…

not rly

this skins are bad and noone buyd or used them and sure price will rise cause speculators – but you will sit on this skins for months when not years

not worth to invest

Sets a nasty precedent, though e.g. don’t get comfortable thinking you can work toward cosmetic rewards at your own pace because we might remove them whenever we think we need a blc sales boost.

Faowri.4159:

Sets a nasty precedent, though e.g. don’t get comfortable thinking you can work toward cosmetic rewards at your own pace because we might remove them whenever we think we need a blc sales boost.

If you think that’s a precedent just being set now with this announcement you seriously haven’t been paying attention…

Sadly Nike is correct, some of us keep thinking they learned their lesson and won’t continue to remove items or content from the game. I keep getting proved wrong.

KOPPER.1458:

Sadly Nike is correct, some of us keep thinking they learned their lesson and won’t continue to remove items or content from the game. I keep getting proved wrong.

You have to consider the reason behind it from their point of view.

(Thinks hard about a possible reason)

(Thinks even harder for a possible reason)

The programming! That tab was filled up and they would have to make and put in another weapon tab! That would take up valuable time that could be used to work on other projects.

So, you see. If you consider the matter logically, they do have a good reason.

And that’s the truth. :P

Romek.4201:

Hermes.7014:

I guess it’s time for the rich to get richer with discontinued skins which are obviously going to skyrocket…

not rly

this skins are bad and noone buyd or used them and sure price will rise cause speculators – but you will sit on this skins for months when not years

not worth to invest

As ugly as they can be, skin hoarders will want them nonetheless. Just to have the skin.

Godverdomme Anet.
Happy15stinkinchars

Looks like someone bought out the 9 or so sclerite pistols that were at 90g each…and relisted much higher.

Was gonna do that myself but figured the risk was too high on such a low demand skin :P

I’m curious if Crystin Cox former employment (disney & nexon) constantly has her walking this edge of the line, by creating artificial demand within video game. Instead of making the customers happy with guaranteed scraps in the BLC. Trying to test tube sales numbers like a bean accountant is not going to help either. It’s why some of routine customers are not biting into the RNG weapon skin pyramid scheme. Heck, if they guarantee the scraps I would not mind buying them; even if they removed the key farm from the personal story.

Sindex.9520:

I’m curious if Crystin Cox former employment (disney & nexon) constantly has her walking this edge of the line, by creating artificial demand within video game. Instead of making the customers happy with guaranteed scraps in the BLC. Trying to test tube sales numbers like a bean accountant is not going to help either. It’s why some of routine customers are not biting into the RNG weapon skin pyramid scheme. Heck, if they guarantee the scraps I would not mind buying them; even if they removed the key farm from the personal story.

Just the thought of how many hours it would take doing the key farm atm for a single sclerite weapon makes me want to quit the game…and I had no plan on doing it(and I’m guessing noone else would either).

Sindex.9520:

I’m curious if Crystin Cox former employment (disney & nexon) constantly has her walking this edge of the line

Yeah since she joined the company they went very aggressive with the gemstore.

She joined the company six months before the game went live. It seems that ANet had already decided on a Gem Shop and simply hired someone with 3 years of experience from a company that’s only manages cash shop games.

I didn’t know this about that employee. Is she the person who sets the gem store prices? Just curious. Many of the item prices seem to be all over the place. Look at mini pets for example. Sometimes it’s 3 for 500, sometimes it’s 1 for 400 sometimes it’s 3 for 300. Etc…etc…

It’s interesting how people try to shift the blame to outside parties: “oh, they hired this one person from Nexon who’s doing XXX,” or: “it must be NCSoft who’s forcing them to do XXX.”

Cheap strategy to boost their sales. Luckily I dont give a crap about gem store skins. Also lucky I am not trying to get a complete wardrobe or the costs would raise another few thousand golds soon.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It’s interesting how people try to shift the blame to outside parties: “oh, they hired this one person from Nexon who’s doing XXX,” or: “it must be NCSoft who’s forcing them to do XXX.”

A person or individual is always shaped by their individual experiences, and it’s that experience which usually lands them that particular job. It’s been well known that for awhile the former employment history that Ms. Cox held. Furthermore she is the Monetization Lead at Arena Net, to which she makes conscious decisions how the gem store should be handled. She has not given a single new interview (that I am aware of) since the game has launch. Which of course was about making the dye system non-account bound originally just before launch. So what happened to have that change occur within this new system in the last feature patch? Probably because they make more money off those exclusive gem store RNG dyes then the actual dyes in game.

So these are some of the business decisions went passed her:
1. Rich Dragon Coffer that contained a stat alerting food recipe: Dragon’s Revelry Starcake.
2. The Infinite Coin for Super Adventure Box.
3. The human culture tier 3 Flamekissed armor which was latter turned into Feathered armor.
4. The Watchwork mining pick.

Some of these decisions including this recent one can and have been alleviated before. However they are never discussed by the one person who can easily put their foot down on these business proposition.

On a side note do you remember the trouble Eve Online got into with that leaked e-mail. It was basically about how the company does not listen to their player base negative feedback when it comes to their cash shop. Instead they watch the sales numbers first. While Arena Net has gone back and fixed a few of these mistakes. Nevertheless this recent decision to get rid of these weapons seems to be a conscious decision to create artificial scarcity for no reason at all. It’s certainly not what any of the GW2 players have asked for. These weapon skins will always exist in the games code. So why get rid of the one of the only ways to generate new skins? Only because they are not driving a huge profit with key sales. Once everyone has used all those skins currently out there, there will be no other way to get them. Unless they decide to reintroduce them again. Probably for 10 tickets and then proceed to call it a temporary sale.

I am not asking for Ms. Cox to stand down, but actually stand up. There are ways to make your customer base feel blissful and satisfied while increasing your profit margins. A person who did not feel jaded over their purchase is going to keep coming back to you. As well as tell other people that your company is fair and honest, with their microtransaction system compared to the competition. Arena Net already does a decent job at it but there is always room for improvement.

Astral Projections.7320:

You have to consider the reason behind it from their point of view.

(Thinks hard about a possible reason)

(Thinks even harder for a possible reason)

The programming! That tab was filled up and they would have to make and put in another weapon tab! That would take up valuable time that could be used to work on other projects.

So, you see. If you consider the matter logically, they do have a good reason.

And that’s the truth. :P

I know your post was half (all?) sarcastic, although that is actually a potential issue down the line if they keep releasing new weapon sets every 2 months or so. But as my solution, I’d instead change each of the BL weapons skins to a Weapon Chest. Like other weapon chests, once you open it, you get to pick which skin you want. That cuts down 19 weapons to one, and the skins can be organised in tabs according to either year (2013/2014 etc.) or by theme (festival = Winter/Halloween/Dragon Bash etc.)

My preference would be for by Year. If GW2 is still going by 2020, I think at that stage ANet wouldn’t be making any more new weapon/armor skins for the game.

Zaxares.5419:

Astral Projections.7320:

You have to consider the reason behind it from their point of view.

(Thinks hard about a possible reason)

(Thinks even harder for a possible reason)

The programming! That tab was filled up and they would have to make and put in another weapon tab! That would take up valuable time that could be used to work on other projects.

So, you see. If you consider the matter logically, they do have a good reason.

And that’s the truth. :P

I know your post was half (all?) sarcastic, although that is actually a potential issue down the line if they keep releasing new weapon sets every 2 months or so. But as my solution, I’d instead change each of the BL weapons skins to a Weapon Chest. Like other weapon chests, once you open it, you get to pick which skin you want. That cuts down 19 weapons to one, and the skins can be organised in tabs according to either year (2013/2014 etc.) or by theme (festival = Winter/Halloween/Dragon Bash etc.)

My preference would be for by Year. If GW2 is still going by 2020, I think at that stage ANet wouldn’t be making any more new weapon/armor skins for the game.

I’d be all for that Zax. I know I’m in the minority but Sclerite is my favorite weapon set so far and I wanted to have them all but now it looks like I won’t get the full set I still need the hammer, pistol, rifle and the bows….the mace doesn’t blink so that was probably never going to be gotten.

I don’t like the precedent they’re setting by not telling us here on the official website and hiding it in a facebook post. :/

Yes, that’s something I found rather sneaky and disappointing as well. Not everybody follows Facebook/Twitter/reddit/the forums, and I wince at how many other players might be slowly saving up for the Winter/Sclerite weapons and not know that this is coming.

For the record, I’m in favour of the BLWeapons staying too. (OR… If they must go, then at least bring them back seasonally. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the Winter weapons came back on sale every Wintersday, or the Sclerite weapons on sale during October on the anniversary of the karka attack on LA.)

Why are they removing these weps….

Everyone who tells me they dint have enough space….I would understand if this was a closet in my room and i had to throw away old clothes but this is a virtual world….

Add a new tab and call the previous one Season 1 LS, then 2nd tab can house all new weps….why go back and remove them? that makes no sense.

Or, if they are “running out of space”, they could just add a new vendor.

Keep the old stuff on one vendor and start adding new skins to a new vendor, problem solved.

EDIT: Of course, we are all still waiting for the blade shard vendor, so who knows how long it would take them to add another BL weapon vendor… 2016?

Why can’t they just put the items in a ‘bag’ and let the users choose which skin they want from the ‘bag’? Kind of like how the ascended formulas work? That way the items can still stay, but the vendor won’t be so clutterkittened.

lol this thread quickly declined into an “i hate gemstore” thread….i personaly love it, its there when i want it, its out of my way when i dont, you people who feel it is “forced” on you just dont kno how to turn away and go about your buisnesss

I’m more concerned with the singling out of Anet employees in a thread I created. If there’s going to be more of that I would ask the moderators to please close my thread or purge it.

Buttercup.5871:

I’m more concerned with the singling out of Anet employees in a thread I created. If there’s going to be more of that I would ask the moderators to please close my thread or purge it.

This comes from the Nexon controlling NCSOFT who told ArenaNet to hire the employee in question conspiracy theory.

Of course it’s all Tin Foil hat territory simply because someone wants something for free and it isn’t.

the whole blacklion weaponskins thing has been vile since the start.

Buy into these random chests to get the skins you like, better get a ticket soon or we’ll just arbitrarily make the skins costs 300-500% more.
Then, scraps, come on, you got 7 scraps, just buy some more chests you are so close to a full ticket! No guarenteed drop, just more rng.

Now suddenly, for no reason that benefits the player, theyre just going to remove entire sets. So better buy some chests now, the clock is ticking and you are running out of time.

And they started selling you full sets in individual pieces. instead of the 800 for a full set (10 euro’s already), you now pay 300 per piece. A total of 1800 for a full set. More then 22 euro’s, or 225% of the original price.

These are fairly aggressive, consumer unfriendly, practises. But since a lot of people dont care and take the bait like a starving mouse, arenanet doesnt even have to care all that much about good bussiness practise.
Big companies have learned a while ago that they can kitten all over their consumers, not goodwill but psychological marketing tricks get sales.

Behellagh.1468:

Buttercup.5871:

I’m more concerned with the singling out of Anet employees in a thread I created. If there’s going to be more of that I would ask the moderators to please close my thread or purge it.

This comes from the Nexon controlling NCSOFT who told ArenaNet to hire the employee in question conspiracy theory.

Of course it’s all Tin Foil hat territory simply because someone wants something for free and it isn’t.

Actually that conspiracy theory I could care less about, because it was a rather “minute” stock exchange between those two companies. NCsoft has not merged with Nexon in any way shape or form. Hence why I never cited it. I mentioned Nexon and Disney Interactive because they both have been known for their questionable business practices in the past. Arena Net has not crossed a major threshold yet of constantly selling pure pay to win items. However small disreputable business practices tend to snowball if they continued to be ignored by the consumers. Especially as the company in question grows exponentially with new hire ins and looses some of it’s original employs. EA games believe it or not used to be a fantastic company until they lost their sense of direction and diluted their fair business practices.

As for talking about one person within a company for conducting unhinged business practices compared to objectifying the entire company. We have a few bad apples in the game industry that still mentioned every now and then by the news media. CEO Robert Kotick from Activation gets singled out all the time for not knowing his products and being ruthless business tyrant (see: controversies). Or how about a developer like Richard Garriott, known for his beloved MMO franchise Ultima Online. He worked on a little project called Tabula Rasa for NCsoft, and stated in an interview that “Guild Wars has a failed business model.” Though he denies ever making that comment; even if he latter stated “most video game designers suck!.” Back in 2009 he sued NCsoft over falsifying the reasons why he left the company. He did end up winning that case. Eventually Richard supposedly went into “talks” with EA, but of course one of their executives said that never happened. That’s why his newest game was done through a Kickstarter program. No conspiracy theories there.

Not to mention we talk about certain people within Arena Net all the time. A majority of them have been in the public spotlight before and still are. Or even talk to us here on the forums. So why would you think talking about an employ from A-net, that leads a specific team would be taboo? I can understand if it was on the grounds of personal threats or borderline sexual harassment. However why is it wrong to criticize someone business practices or design principles? In stark contrast to just constantly praising the company/person for everything they accomplish. That sounds more like biased censorship to me.

Anyways that is as far as I will go with that. Going any further will throw off the entire thread completely. Also going back to the topic at hand. It seems both facebook and reddit top comments on the subject seem to concur that taking these weapons skins off is a dreadful idea. Not to mention the feedback seems to echo in favor of them changing the black lion scarps/tickets system into something that is a bit more obtainable then it currently stands. It would probably drive better key sales.