Guild Wars 2

From facebook

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!

Why is this not announced here anywhere? They’re removing one of my favorite sets before I’ve had a chance to get them all….

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

^^^^^^^^ This

Though, I have to wonder if it works.

Porterhouse.6304:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

^^^^^^^^ This

Though, I have to wonder if it works.

It does, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. That’s not to say that it doesn’t tick off a portion of their player base though. It’s the same with the old RNG boxes that they had for Southsun/Molten weapons. Sure, they were profitable enough to continue for a few seasons, but eventually the profit that they were making was not worth the amount of backlash that they were receiving.

It’s the same here. By removing these from the merchant, it will cause people who want the skin, or who simply want to unlock it for their wardrobe, to (1) key farm to no end, which will become very dull, and then (2) buy a bunch of Black Lion keys and hope for the best. Black Lion keys in and of themselves are RNG boxes in disguise.

Zaoda.1653:

Nice of Anet to inform the masses on a photo page from a site that not everyone particularly uses or visits.

#thatlogic

Even better if you’re just browsing the page the announcement doesn’t even show that without you clicking “read more” and the first part doesn’t even give you a hint that they might be removing things, Just looks like “oh more stuff on sale in the gem store”

Edited to add the full “announcement”

If they’re going to remove skins they need to reduce the cost to 1 ticket or how about they don’t remove them at all….

Can you even get sclerite weapons with black lion tickets?

Becka Williams.4978:

Can you even get sclerite weapons with black lion tickets?

yes, they’re 3 tickets each

khani.4786:

Becka Williams.4978:

Can you even get sclerite weapons with black lion tickets?

yes, they’re 3 tickets each

Oh, allright then.

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Karizee.8076:

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Still seems like a silly reason to remove them. Anet has been criticized numerous times for all the temporary content that they have put out, and now they’re removing skin items too?

Jamin.6528:

Karizee.8076:

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Still seems like a silly reason to remove them. Anet has been criticized numerous times for all the temporary content that they have put out, and now they’re removing skin items too?

The items are not being removed, if you have them you can still use them. If you want them you can still buy them with gold on the trading post (where the same skins have been rotting for a year).

Karizee.8076:

Jamin.6528:

Karizee.8076:

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Still seems like a silly reason to remove them. Anet has been criticized numerous times for all the temporary content that they have put out, and now they’re removing skin items too?

The items are not being removed, if you have them you can still use them. If you want them you can still buy them with gold on the trading post (where the same skins have been rotting for a year).

Which totally explains why there are only 2-3 of some of them. There is a whole 1 sword and 1 shield….There are barely any on the trading post despite them being the cheapest in regards to black lion tickets.

I hated so much the crapshoot that was trying to get them during the event and keep trying to get the rest of them. I still need several of them and don’t even have enough gold to buy one off the trading post. I know I’m not alone in loving this set and the fact that they’re trying to “hide” getting rid of being able to get them kinda angers me.

Porterhouse.6304:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

^^^^^^^^ This

Though, I have to wonder if it works.

It works, until they do it so much that casual players start leaving. See every single game Nexon has ever owned. People can only take so much until they get sick of everything they are working toward being removed too quickly for them to get it.

Didn’t we already go through this once? They MADE the Black Lion tickets in the first place because limited edition RNG wasn’t working, and now they’re making them limited edition again! Does ANet ever learn from their mistakes?

Conncept.7638:

Seriously? Didn’t we already go through this once? They MADE the Black Lion tickets in the first place because players were so sickened by limited edition RNG, and now they’re making them limited edition again! Does ANet ever learn from their mistakes?

Hahahahaha!

….no. No, they do not.

Karizee.8076:

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Why would it be a good thing? They aren’t removing the skins, they’re just making them unavailable for future purchases; that means it’s not going to save us any hard drive space, not going to change how many models we have to load when the zerg rolls through, and does absolutely nothing for the server performance or maintenance costs.

For it to be a good thing there has to be a benefit, but there is none. It’s devoid of any redeeming feature that could even make it a shadow of a good thing.

Key sale… black lion claim ticket scraps… skins going out of sale…

Well, to be fair, the BL weapon traders will look pretty stupid with tons of bags on their merchant popup. They’re probably removing weapons that aren’t very popular. I mean, you had a long time to get them, and does anyone like the scelerite weapons so much that they’re willing to waste 3 tickets or 30 scraps on them? (the trading post says no)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/05/09/working-as-intended-what-guild-wars-2-got-wrong/

The gear and lockbox situation is frustrating

Collecting armor and weapon skins in classic Guild Wars was what I lived for, but Guild Wars 2 has trapped way too much of that metagame behind a pay wall and a grind wall, which has more than once stifled my desire to play or pay for anything. The armor available in the current gem store commits the cardinal sin of being infrequent and ugly, and the nicest in-game armor skins require specific dungeon tokens (and associated grinding) in a dramatic departure from Guild Wars, which simply required you to procure the money however you preferred, acquire the materials, and complete the requisite campaigns or maps. The weapon skins are even worse; those you can find dropped or buyable normally within the game aren’t much in the eyecandy department, and the most beautiful skins require extreme grinding or the purchase of lockboxes from the cash shop — lottery tickets that give you a chance at a drop that you can trade for something worth wielding. I know the game needs to make money somehow, but this is a huge turn-off for such a cosmetic-centric game.

The cash shop offerings themselves continue to stump me. I can understand buying gold, but I don’t know who buys llama finishers (see the top image) or weak consumables or overpriced eternal harvesting tools or chef hats or lockbox lottery tickets for weapons and dyes and minipets. Yuck. I am never even tempted by these things. I want to support the game, and when I open up the cash shop, I am there to buy beautiful armor and stunning skins directly. Even better, I’d love to buy new classes, new weapon types, new skins for my minions and pets, new animations, new particle effects, new dailies options, and new explorable maps! Please let me give you my money. And let’s pass on the llama finishers.

Think this is very relevant.

Pandaman.4758:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/05/09/working-as-intended-what-guild-wars-2-got-wrong/

The gear and lockbox situation is frustrating

Collecting armor and weapon skins in classic Guild Wars was what I lived for, but Guild Wars 2 has trapped way too much of that metagame behind a pay wall and a grind wall, which has more than once stifled my desire to play or pay for anything. The armor available in the current gem store commits the cardinal sin of being infrequent and ugly, and the nicest in-game armor skins require specific dungeon tokens (and associated grinding) in a dramatic departure from Guild Wars, which simply required you to procure the money however you preferred, acquire the materials, and complete the requisite campaigns or maps. The weapon skins are even worse; those you can find dropped or buyable normally within the game aren’t much in the eyecandy department, and the most beautiful skins require extreme grinding or the purchase of lockboxes from the cash shop — lottery tickets that give you a chance at a drop that you can trade for something worth wielding. I know the game needs to make money somehow, but this is a huge turn-off for such a cosmetic-centric game.

The cash shop offerings themselves continue to stump me. I can understand buying gold, but I don’t know who buys llama finishers (see the top image) or weak consumables or overpriced eternal harvesting tools or chef hats or lockbox lottery tickets for weapons and dyes and minipets. Yuck. I am never even tempted by these things. I want to support the game, and when I open up the cash shop, I am there to buy beautiful armor and stunning skins directly. Even better, I’d love to buy new classes, new weapon types, new skins for my minions and pets, new animations, new particle effects, new dailies options, and new explorable maps! Please let me give you my money. And let’s pass on the llama finishers.

Think this is very relevant.

I think this is the opposite of what I expect or want to see in the Gem Store. Weapons? Professions? Dailies? Maps? No, thank you. Finishers and Harvesting Tools, etc? Yes, please.

I think they are removing some of the less popular weapon sets (really, Sclerite?) to make room for more weapon sets we might find more appealing. There have been comments about the menus being bloated, and scrolling through several pages aren’t welcomed by some.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think this is the opposite of what I expect or want to see in the Gem Store. Weapons? Professions? Dailies? Maps? No, thank you. Finishers and Harvesting Tools, etc? Yes, please.

I think they are removing some of the less popular weapon sets (really, Sclerite?) to make room for more weapon sets we might find more appealing. There have been comments about the menus being bloated, and scrolling through several pages aren’t welcomed by some.

To each their own on what they would like to see in the Gem Store, really.

However removing weapon skins is just dumb, particularly when they’ve introduced the wardrobe system that displays all possible skins right there in a single window. Instead of removing them from the vendors, they should just make those skins directly purchasable in three easy steps:

1) Open wardrobe.
2) Right click locked skin.
3) Select “Buy with <x> Black Lion Tickets” or “Buy with <y> Gems”.

Every time a new series of skins is introduced it won’t clutter up the various windows any more than they’ll already be cluttered (since part of the wardrobe’s purpose is to remind us of all the skins we don’t have anyway) without having to sacrifice an older series because of limited vendor UI design.

Add a wardrobe system to encourage people to collect skins
Put blkeys on sale
Announce the removal of certain skins that you can get for tickets

That’s like really smart but kinda evil aswell.

So you release the wardrobe and many players now flock to collect skins. Now you remove skins from the game. Sure they will still be on the TP for a while with an inflated price to match. I don’t understand why you feel the need to remove them at all.

Is this simply a cash grab? Even if it was, how many players are going to spend or afford 30 scraps per skin? And that is for scelerite only. Why remove these items, I just don’t understand AN’s thinking some times.

great, take even MORE STUFF OUT OF THE GAME… what is wrong with making NEW CONTENT instead of removing content? Most game companies ADD things, not take things away…

Add wardrobe, remove skins… makes complete sense to me. Removed pretty much the only other reason to go to southsun in the process… I want to use words that will get me an infraction here. STOP REMOVING CONTENT or maybe one day we’ll stop supporting such behavior!

Is the southsun merchant for these skins going away too or is this just the black lion weapons guy cause the interface sucks for merchants?

molehill becomes a mountain.

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

Exactly that yeah, thought the exact same thing reading it.

They probably need new tab space for the merchant for new skins to come. And taking the least popular ones out.

Just like real life vendors do. Or do you see H&M selling clothes from 2 years ago?

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

I agree as if the prices weren’t high enough already.

Guess all those people who supported how they did the D3 style RMTAH can eat their words right?

Kuess.1842:

They probably need new tab space for the merchant for new skins to come. And taking the least popular ones out.

Just like real life vendors do. Or do you see H&M selling clothes from 2 years ago?

Uh, the reason why real life stores don’t sell clothing from two years ago is because 1) styles are seasonal, 2) unsold inventory is considered a liability because it costs money to store, and 3) you need to streamline the merchandise in stores to facilitate customer flow. None of these are concerns in a digital store with digital products.

tigirius.9014:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

I agree as if the prices weren’t high enough already.

Guess all those people who supported how they did the D3 style RMTAH can eat their words right?

The assumption seems to be ANET will profit from the skin going from say 50g to maybe 500g in 3 or 4 years. ANET will get nothing, the player that buys now will get the gold. The tax just vanishes, someone in the company does not have a bag of gold sitting on their desk that is magically created by the game.

Yargesh.4965:

tigirius.9014:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

I agree as if the prices weren’t high enough already.

Guess all those people who supported how they did the D3 style RMTAH can eat their words right?

The assumption seems to be ANET will profit from the skin going from say 50g to maybe 500g in 3 or 4 years. ANET will get nothing, the player that buys now will get the gold. The tax just vanishes, someone in the company does not have a bag of gold sitting on their desk that is magically created by the game.

Riiight like nobody buys gems for the express use of the gems to gold system. You do realize how wrong you are right?

Jamin.6528:

It does, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. That’s not to say that it doesn’t tick off a portion of their player base though.

Yes, like me. Oh come one, I can sort of understand LW skins and items, since you do sort of earn them, but removing RND items? How many chests have I opened only to get a couple of boosters? This feels like punishing me for not being luck.
Yeah yeah just had to get that rant out of the way. I’d always though that Black Lions weapon skins where the sort of think you could slowly earn over a long time given their RND nature.

khani.4786:

Becka Williams.4978:

Can you even get sclerite weapons with black lion tickets?

yes, they’re 3 tickets each

And how many black lion chests is that?

Jamin.6528:

Karizee.8076:

Probably a good thing they are being removed, they never were very popular.

They’ve been out for a year and still only cost 3 tickets, most weapons go to 5 or 7 tickets within a couple months. Never see anyone using them.

Still seems like a silly reason to remove them. Anet has been criticized numerous times for all the temporary content that they have put out, and now they’re removing skin items too?

Yeah, I was kinda hoping after Season 1, that they’d realise that players don’t like temporary content…

Pandaman.4758:

However removing weapon skins is just dumb, particularly when they’ve introduced the wardrobe system that displays all possible skins right there in a single window. Instead of removing them from the vendors, they should just make those skins directly purchasable in three easy steps:

1) Open wardrobe.
2) Right click locked skin.
3) Select “Buy with <x> Black Lion Tickets” or “Buy with <y> Gems”.

This. I’d actually be willing to spend some gems rather then play the lotto for some of those skins. Removing them… feels wrong. Besides the currently the store is a bit, low on content.

KOPPER.1458:

Is this simply a cash grab? Even if it was, how many players are going to spend or afford 30 scraps per skin? And that is for scelerite only. Why remove these items, I just don’t understand AN’s thinking some times.

It’s very very bad business strategy. They’re hoping to cash in on the impulse buyers, the OCD collectors etc. To get these items you need to play the lotto, this could mean 10 Dollars or a 100 Dollars thanks to the RND. With a bit of sunk cost fallacy, you’d see a short term bump in sales. Too bad they’re also kinda screwing us players who only occasionally but a couple of keys and who slowly collect scraps to one day in the future spend them on weapon skins.

Lil Puppy.5216:

great, take even MORE STUFF OUT OF THE GAME… what is wrong with making NEW CONTENT instead of removing content? Most game companies ADD things, not take things away…

Add wardrobe, remove skins… makes complete sense to me. Removed pretty much the only other reason to go to southsun in the process… I want to use words that will get me an infraction here. STOP REMOVING CONTENT or maybe one day we’ll stop supporting such behavior!

Is the southsun merchant for these skins going away too or is this just the black lion weapons guy cause the interface sucks for merchants?

That sir is not the attitude we want right now but it’s the attitude we need right now.

tigirius.9014:

Yargesh.4965:

tigirius.9014:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

I agree as if the prices weren’t high enough already.

Guess all those people who supported how they did the D3 style RMTAH can eat their words right?

The assumption seems to be ANET will profit from the skin going from say 50g to maybe 500g in 3 or 4 years. ANET will get nothing, the player that buys now will get the gold. The tax just vanishes, someone in the company does not have a bag of gold sitting on their desk that is magically created by the game.

Riiight like nobody buys gems for the express use of the gems to gold system. You do realize how wrong you are right?

Ok, I am sure a huge number of people will buy gems to buy an ugly skin that they will never use so they can in several years make a profit of gold in a game. There are people who will do this, just not a lot and I personally don’t believe ANET is basing their future income on it.

Winter weapons did not make much sense outside of Wintersday, but I liked the Sclerite weapons for their blinking eyes and dripping goo; never used any, but still was happy to know they’re there and I can use them someday.

Kuess.1842:

They probably need new tab space for the merchant for new skins to come. And taking the least popular ones out.

I have a general feeling that at this moment the “new ANet guys” do not have the tools to fix the systems built by the “old ANet guys”, so they have to build new things atop of old things – daily/monthly achievements merge with non-existent dailies being rewarded, inconsistent contested waypoints, broken teleport skills, 50 player loot limit per champ, and town clothes being examples, so I tend to agree that “we need more tabs so we have to remove old ones” sounds really plausible.

Another workaround could’ve been used though: just add another dialog option for “let me take a look at older skins”.

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

It’s a vile sales tactic and a horrible precedent to set.

Do not remove content from the game, Anet. Do not remove content from the game. Especially not to plug those scam-in-a-box blcs.

I do not spend my hard-earned RL money on a chance to get a scrap that can be exchanged in multitude for a token of which I need up to 10 to get a thing that I want. I mean, jesus. We were promised some ethics in the gemstore if I remember rightly.

:(

Stop giving me reasons to stop caring about the game.

Yargesh.4965:

tigirius.9014:

Yargesh.4965:

tigirius.9014:

Jamin.6528:

Sounds like they’re artificially creating scarcity in an attempt to get more sales. I hate it when they do that.

I agree as if the prices weren’t high enough already.

Guess all those people who supported how they did the D3 style RMTAH can eat their words right?

The assumption seems to be ANET will profit from the skin going from say 50g to maybe 500g in 3 or 4 years. ANET will get nothing, the player that buys now will get the gold. The tax just vanishes, someone in the company does not have a bag of gold sitting on their desk that is magically created by the game.

Riiight like nobody buys gems for the express use of the gems to gold system. You do realize how wrong you are right?

Ok, I am sure a huge number of people will buy gems to buy an ugly skin that they will never use so they can in several years make a profit of gold in a game. There are people who will do this, just not a lot and I personally don’t believe ANET is basing their future income on it.

Because they don’t. They count on people buying gems and exchanging them for keys in order to play black lion scrap lotto now. It’s a very short-term cash grab, without any thought about the future.

And the fact that they don’t inform about it on their own site seems to suggest that even they aren’t very proud of that action.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone but myself use a sclerite skin so no great loss there. There’s nothing to suggest these skins won’t be back at a later date, though to be fair nothing to suggest they will either. As they add more they can always cycle them around. And the Wintersday stuff is likely to come back in december, you’d think.

I’m getting tired of this game. All what I’m doing there – it’s trying to save money in time to buy something that will soon be removed from the game. And hastily make achievements until they decided to remove too. It no longer brings pleasure. A game in which nothing is permanent. Everything is not for sure.

Funny how the most unpopular weapon skin suddenly becomes a hot item that everyone doesn’t want to see gone when they announce that they’ll be removing it.

Where were you when I was selling my sclerite skins?

For people who don’t like loads of tabs on npcs, how about a second npc?

Also this is targeted directly at impulse buyers and collectors because they know they will spend hundreds of pounds on these now and normal people won’t.

Shifu.4321:

Funny how the most unpopular weapon skin suddenly becomes a hot item that everyone doesn’t want to see gone when they announce that they’ll be removing it.

Where were you when I was selling my sclerite skins?

Ain’t it the truth. I’ve seen maybe 2 people using those skins since that content was released a year ago. Anet probably looked at it and said, "Well, since only one sclerite skin was purchased in the last 3 months, we should remove it since players obviously don’t want these skins’.

And now the game is doooooomed since they are taking it out lol.

For those saying they are unpopular. I am sure this is the reason they were always 3 tickets to begin with. You hardly see them being used in game, and to see a winters day skin is also rare.

However, why remove them? Is saving vendor space that important to them? They will still be there in the database, still there on the TP.

For wintersday skins. Why not sell them on the TP one last time or at least this last time before they remove them from BL ticket guy. This is how you originally got them.

For most people I think it’s more about removing anything from the game. Why remove this? Personally I’ve been saving for the war horn since I got a super lucky ticket drop when these were items in the patch for 1 of those tickets. I bought the dagger first and have been working towards the war horn since. 30 ticket scraps is a lot when the drop rate is terrible.

I think the reason why people actually are critical about that is very simple: there haven’t been any fresh updates recently, just warmed up skins from the past. And yet, they decide to withdraw something from the game.
That’s how I understand it – the game is becoming stagnant.

Skins will be available for a long time on the tradepost. There will always be people selling them. I don’t understand what is the issue. I agree with Anet that skins should be removed, there are way too many of them right now.

Rezz.8019:

Skins will be available for a long time on the tradepost. There will always be people selling them. I don’t understand what is the issue. I agree with Anet that skins should be removed, there are way too many of them right now.

They will become 1000g+

Doggie.3184:

Rezz.8019:

Skins will be available for a long time on the tradepost. There will always be people selling them. I don’t understand what is the issue. I agree with Anet that skins should be removed, there are way too many of them right now.

They will become 1000g+

Which will force the depserate ones to buy gems with real money instead of using the unfavourable gold-gem ratio. The game has to earn, somehow. This is how things work in b2p unlike in p2p games.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Doggie.3184:

Rezz.8019:

Skins will be available for a long time on the tradepost. There will always be people selling them. I don’t understand what is the issue. I agree with Anet that skins should be removed, there are way too many of them right now.

They will become 1000g+

Which will force the depserate ones to buy gems with real money instead of using the unfavourable gold-gem ratio. The game has to earn, somehow. This is how things work in b2p unlike in p2p games.

I don’t really care about that, just helping him “understand the issue.” XD No one is going to be happy about spending 1000g for a skin just cuz Mr. Gnashblade gave them the boot so you can’t really brush it off as nothing~

As for them being unpopular, it’s a shame since they were one of my fav sword/dagger skins. But I had horrible luck when farming for them for as long as I did and I’ve only ever found 1 BL ticket throughout my GW2 life. RIP little guiz~ hopefully one day they add another set of living weapons I can adopt as pets.

Shifu.4321:

Funny how the most unpopular weapon skin suddenly becomes a hot item that everyone doesn’t want to see gone when they announce that they’ll be removing it.

Where were you when I was selling my sclerite skins?

I couldn’t care less for sclerite skins. What i do care about is the precedent. What other skins will they remove next?

Wow that is a cheap move.

Never buying any more gems.