Guild Wars 2

i dont know why but it seems like people dislike the ley line skins. i wonder why, the design is very unique and the effects are nice and two-colored.

why did you prefer other skin series over them?
why do you like the ley line skins?

do you think they will fail like the lovestruck skins?

How do you determine that people dont like the Ley Line Skins?

around this time some of the phoenix skins (gs, sword, shield) already had around a 100 item supply on the tp. the only ley item with a 114 supply is the staff. ofc tp supply doesnt indicate total game supply.

some skins like the mace are already at 50g.

and there aren’t that many buy orders either.

I have two but I’m not going to sell them. I’m pretty much out of tickets and scraps so they’re worth a lot more to me as skins for myself.

They look good but don’t fit with many styles.
They are not flashy enough for the ‘christmas tree’ players
and for players who want a cohesive look where weapons fit with armor
color are limited to a rather bland color scheme – grey/blue/green looks great
on those weapons because they are mossy stone but would look fugly on metal/leather/cloth.
Aside from that there are not many armor sets that have a similar aesthetic.

Could be completely wrong though but that’s the main reason why i personally won’t get one even though they look great on their own.

Jekkt.6045:

around this time some of the phoenix skins (gs, sword, shield) already had around a 100 item supply on the tp. the only ley item with a 114 supply is the staff. ofc tp supply doesnt indicate total game supply.

some skins like the mace are already at 50g.

and there aren’t that many buy orders either.

If less people sell them on the TP, couldnt that mean that more people throw them into their wardrobe, which would mean that they are more popular than pheanix weapons?

The biggest thing is as someone said earlier, they don’t match a lot of looks at all and they aren’t flashiest for the people who only want to stand out.

Though tbh, considering the high price still I have to imagine people like them.

Ehhhhm. If there are so few buy orders, why are prices on buy orders all hovering around the 70g mark and sell orders at the 90g mark? That’s the highest we’ve seen thus far; only tormented weapons came close to these averages.

They are, therefore, insanely popular. This is mostly due to the spacy sound effect when ley line weapons are unsheathed. It sets them apart from all other black lion weapons.

I really don’t think these are not popular. If that would be the case, there would not be so many players buying this. The fact that people unlock these skinks, means these skins are being sold, and therefore popular. In my opinion these will keep on selling as players gather more gold.
Don’t forget, these are still on offer with just 1 ticket.

Because they look like swiss cheese.

That’s the only thing holding m back from buying the pistol, personally.

Kain Francois.4328:

Because they look like swiss cheese.

That’s the only thing holding m back from buying the pistol, personally.

moldy swiss cheese bc some of them have a greenish tint

Got the staff for my guard with the ticket i had, and bought the warhorn since fits perfectly with the bolt for my warr, some of the skins are actualy really cool..

maybe cause I don’t want to use rotten swiss cheese textures

I got the Staff for my Guard, but that’s more out of it being the only staff to fit thematically with my guardian and even then it’s a loose fit. There’s really not a lot of choice for a yellow and blue sylvari with the current options.

Protoavis.9107:

I got the Staff for my Guard, but that’s more out of it being the only staff to fit thematically with my guardian and even then it’s a loose fit. There’s really not a lot of choice for a yellow and blue sylvari with the current options.

I wouldn’t say that was too loose a fit. Looks fine.

I simply am not a fan of this archaic weapon design that looks just like something that was carved from stone. I prefer much more the design of a weapon that is forged from metal.

I have a feeling people are more excited about the other weapon skins so they are just focusing on getting those since imo they look better.

It’s all subjective, but I have to say that for me it’s not a sword if it doesn’t have a cutting edge and decent proportions. I like the ley weapons that are sticks with something on the end (staff, scepter, mace), but the rest look like odd decorations for a tropical resort.

I hope we’re finally reaching the point where people have had enough of the rng Black Lion Scrap system, but I suspect people either don’t like them that much or they’re saving their gems for the inevitable release of Belinda’s Sword.

Honestly I just think they’re ugly. They’re just corroded rock and magic. The magic part is cool and all, but the rest of it is hardly impressive in the slightest. Personally I found the Phoenix and Lovestruck Skins to be more my speed. They looked like proper weapons for the most part with acceptable magical enchantments/additions. My only complaint is that they don’t come with Gold instead of the Grey/Silver we got.

I really wish we could dye weapons.

I would gladly buy one off the gem store as a skin, but yet again, they decided to put it behind a BLC. So I am not bothering with it.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

I would gladly buy one off the gem store as a skin, but yet again, they decided to put it behind a BLC. So I am not bothering with it.

What a wonderfully useless complaint.
Buy gems, exchange gems for gold, use gold to buy from tp.

Wanze.8410:

TheMagickDoll.7594:

I would gladly buy one off the gem store as a skin, but yet again, they decided to put it behind a BLC. So I am not bothering with it.

What a wonderfully useless complaint.
Buy gems, exchange gems for gold, use gold to buy from tp.

or use 400 gems for the skin, a price that is not influenced by players.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

I would gladly buy one off the gem store as a skin, but yet again, they decided to put it behind a BLC. So I am not bothering with it.

They did release a set of skins in the gem store back in the Wintersday Holliday of 2012, the Winter’s weapon skins. The whole set was for sale on the gemstore for 500 gems per skin. My guess is, the sales through the gem store were lower than their expectations, thus the change to RNG sales.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter's_weapon_skins
When first introduced, these weapons could be bought in the Gem Store for 500 each.

It appears they tried direct sales and then tried RNG sales. Since they continued with RNG sales then that must mean RNG brings in more money than direct sales.

The problem is that was just a few months into the game. People hadn’t yet gotten tired of the “standard” skins, they had just tossed a lot of money buying the box in the first place, and the skins were interesting but not very weapon-looking. They also hadn’t gotten into the mindset of buying gems with gold, or even having a lot of gold to spare for it anyway.

I think the dynamic is different now and gem store skins will sell a lot better.

Crovax.7854:

They look good but don’t fit with many styles . . . For players who want a cohesive look where weapons fit with armor
color are limited to a rather bland color scheme – grey/blue/green looks great
on those weapons because they are mossy stone but would look fugly on metal/leather/cloth.
Aside from that there are not many armor sets that have a similar aesthetic.

Completely agree with this statement. I also just don’t really like the flat stone chunk look much. Its kinda boring and the blades aren’t sharp on any of them. They don’t look like weapons and they don’t look like much of anything else.

Yeah, I dislike the crude stone appearance of the actual weapon. When choosing skins for myself, the actual intricacy and detail of the weapon plays a big role for me; particle effects are a distant second consideration, and that’s only if their effects enhance the weapon’s look rather than overshadow it completely.

The rifle interested me, because it supposedly has a unique sound when being drawn/firing. Other than that though, the weapons just don’t match well with any of my gear, and I’m not wasting gold on keys or building up enough to buy them off the Trading Post.

Nilkemia.8507:

The rifle interested me, because it supposedly has a unique sound when being drawn/firing. Other than that though, the weapons just don’t match well with any of my gear, and I’m not wasting gold on keys or building up enough to buy them off the Trading Post.

From what I hear, all of them have unique sounds when drawn and swung / fired except the shortbow (probably a bug there). Though I could be mistaken, I don’t have any myself.

My biggest “problem” with the weapons is that they don’t really look like weapons. They’re pieces of stone vaguely shaped like the weapon they’re meant to be, but most of them don’t really look like actual weapons at all. Bladed weapons don’t actually have blades, firearms don’t even have holes for projectiles to fire out of, ect.

That said, I do still plan on getting one or two of the skins because I do actually like the stone appearance and the particle effects. But only for my Mesmer who uses the weapons as magical tools anyway, so the fact that they don’t really look like weapons doesn’t really matter for him.

Donari.5237:

The problem is that was just a few months into the game. People hadn’t yet gotten tired of the “standard” skins, they had just tossed a lot of money buying the box in the first place, and the skins were interesting but not very weapon-looking. They also hadn’t gotten into the mindset of buying gems with gold, or even having a lot of gold to spare for it anyway.

I think the dynamic is different now and gem store skins will sell a lot better.

All that is true, but I’m not sure it’s enough to change the market.

Look at how much ANet gains by selling weapon skin directly vs key sales. With direct sales, ANet will get a set amount, I’m going to assume 500 gems. With the chests, research has shown that it takes ~50 keys, on average, to get one ticket. ANet sells 50 keys for 4,200 gems. That’s a big increase and in spite of the complaints on the forums about the chests and RNG, I get the feeling that ANet sells large numbers of keys.

I was posting on a thread a while back where one person (Wanze) said he put a some chests for sale. iirc there was ~100,000 chests listed before his and his chests sold in about 2 weeks. Currently demand for the chests is 1,317,319. That’s a lot of chests being wanted. Possibly people are flipping them but flippers can’t be continuously selling to each other. Someone has to be buying them for their own use.

It’s that difference in money, 500 gems versus 4,200 gems and the anecdotal information of 100,000 chests sold in 2 weeks that makes me think that they will never (or rarely) sell weapon skin sets directly.

I’ve obtained 4 and am keeping them all (because I DO like them).

+1 swiss cheese comment.

Buttercup.5871:

Ehhhhm. If there are so few buy orders, why are prices on buy orders all hovering around the 70g mark and sell orders at the 90g mark? That’s the highest we’ve seen thus far; only tormented weapons came close to these averages.

They are, therefore, insanely popular. This is mostly due to the spacy sound effect when ley line weapons are unsheathed. It sets them apart from all other black lion weapons.

How popular something is depends more on how many have/are being sold vs how much they fetch in the auction house. You can price the only remaining shiney bauble at 1,000,000 gold, but it doesn’t mean diddly if it’ll never sell.

Rauderi.8706:

+1 swiss cheese comment.

Agreed.

I liked them enough to get the staff, hammer and greatsword for my guardian. I don’t really need the rest and they don’t go with the themes I have set for my other toons.

If only the tormented skins would start selling. I want that gold lol

When I first saw these, I thought here are some skins worth spending 13 tickets on. However, after previewing them a few times on different toons, they lost some of their initial appeal.

The big problem for me are the bows and blades. Axe. dagger, sword, greatsword and both bows all need to be at least 1/3 to 1/2 reduced in size. I do not mind a ‘carved-from-rock’ look, since historically, the first blade weapons/tools were made this way, but I don’t like the way this has been implemented here.

The other Ley-line skins are quite nice and unique, but are difficult to match up with existing weapon skins.

Already got all my phoenix skins, don’t care much for this Leyline ones

Astral Projections.7320:

TheMagickDoll.7594:

I would gladly buy one off the gem store as a skin, but yet again, they decided to put it behind a BLC. So I am not bothering with it.

They did release a set of skins in the gem store back in the Wintersday Holliday of 2012, the Winter’s weapon skins. The whole set was for sale on the gemstore for 500 gems per skin. My guess is, the sales through the gem store were lower than their expectations, thus the change to RNG sales.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter's_weapon_skins
When first introduced, these weapons could be bought in the Gem Store for 500 each.

It appears they tried direct sales and then tried RNG sales. Since they continued with RNG sales then that must mean RNG brings in more money than direct sales.

Those Winter’s Day weapons were cute but not something I would buy. They had a few things working against them.
1) They were themed to a very specific season/in-game holiday, meaning people may not want to spend 500 gems per weapon skin (that’s more than half the cost of an entire armor set) on something they may not want year round.
2) At the time, a weapon skin meant dedicating an entire item to that skin. There was no wardrobe to feel like you could just sink money into a skin and figure out a time to use it later, or that if you deleted the item you spent real life dollars on it was fine because you could always skin something else in the future. So a single skin at the time was a big deal.
3) They were pretty basic/decorative looking with their wood and a frost effect. Again: they were cute, but when you’re asking for real life money the effects and details on the Ley Line, Halloween, Zodiac, Dreamthistle, Tormented etc weapons are a step toward making the price actually worth it.

Personally, I would buy basically all of the Ley Line weapons if I could/if the system were different. I have the staff and the scepter and one more ticket waiting to be spent once I make my final choice. I desperately want the shield, the focus, the warhorn and maybe the axe, hammer and torch. I don’t want to play the odds against all the other junk in the Black Lion Chests to get them, though, so I’ll have to think carefully about if/how much gold I want to spend and if I want to keep this last claim ticket just in case better weapons come around for next time. If I could buy the weapons in gems, I’d have also bought more zodiac (only got the rifle) and tormented weapons (which I passed completely on at the time) but as it is I don’t want to pour my money down into RNG so -shrug- It makes me wonder if they make more money off of people converting gems to gold to buy the weapons from the TP.

The one thing I don’t understand is the mace skin. There’s loads on the trading post, second only to the staff, but the price of them doesn’t fit with all the other skins. Its the only one not around the 65-90g mark. Its as though everyone with a ticket just picked one up to sell and never looked at the price of any of the skins.

Masego.4850:

The one thing I don’t understand is the mace skin. There’s loads on the trading post, second only to the staff, but the price of them doesn’t fit with all the other skins. Its the only one not around the 65-90g mark. Its as though everyone with a ticket just picked one up to sell and never looked at the price of any of the skins.

Same thing happened with the Phoenix Torch when those were in their introductory phase. Every other weapon was hovering around the 60g mark, while there were a bunch of torches on the TP selling in the mid 30’s (think at one point they may have even dipped below 30g, but I’m not 100% sure on that). I actually bought one for around 31g just because I figured it was a good bargain and even if the prices didn’t rise that much it’d still be a cheapish investment.

my character’s appearances are finished and i have littleninterest in changing them … is this the case with anyone else?

Slither Shade.4782:

my character’s appearances are finished and i have littleninterest in changing them … is this the case with anyone else?

Many people, I’m sure with the game as mature as it is now. But there are new people coming in, people who are filling out their wardrobe, people who are tired of their old look or who see the a new weapon skin as better than what they already have.

There is always a market for new skins. .

There will always be demand for them, it’s just, I think there are a few reasons why these ones aren’t as popular as other black lion weapons:

1) They are difficult to match to armor (Cinder’s dye is probably one of the closest ‘cream’ colored dyes to match the ley line colors, and there’s a slight mossy green tint, as well as a pastel cobalt blue sort of color on the weapons themselves). The animations are fantastic, although not many (if any) armors have those effects too, so it’s hard to match them with anything

2) They are light weapons. From what I’ve seen, the more popular skins have been dark skins (like tormented). Notice how the lovestruck weapons aren’t as popular? The shield and hammer in particular are still hovering around 40g, and they’ve been around for a while now.

3) There are less golden tickets in circulation (as people spend them on new skins when they come out), so there will be less skins over time. Less skins doesn’t necessarily mean they’re generally popular either. We’ve had quite a few new skins now, and the more that come out, the less golden tickets there will be. If the next lot of black lion skins are dark, expect them to be a lot more popular, especially if they are easily matchable with armor, unlike these ones.

I myself have the ley line staff, but only because I like the special effects. I find it extremely hard to match the colors to anything, and that’s the reason why I’m not bothering with purchasing any other ley line skins.

Slither Shade.4782:

my character’s appearances are finished and i have littleninterest in changing them … is this the case with anyone else?

No, I’ve been waiting for a true earth-themed skin for my ele (not plant-ish) so I was very excited these came out. Since I run different armor sets for different things, and need multiples of some weapons (cleric staff for healbotting in WvW, zerker staff for when I’m the staff ele in dungeons etc.) I have plenty of use for more skins

Zaoda.1653:

1) They are difficult to match to armor (Cinder’s dye is probably one of the closest ‘cream’ colored dyes to match the ley line colors, …

.

Here is a link to a colour palette, including the complementary colours, that is pretty close to one used for the ley-line skins.

http://paletton.com/#uid=31e0u0kllllaFw0g0qFqFg0w0aF

This should help anyone looking for ideas on how to colour coordinate with these skins.

They make noise, and that’s enough for me personally. I want the rifle one to tide me over until I get The Predator.

The appearance of Ley Line weapons is very magical over practical, a selling point to some and a turn off for others.

It’s great that sounds are being used more often in weapon skin designs, one of my favorites is the SAB warhorn because of its unique sounds. Hope to see even more weapon skins with sounds in the future. Sound is a good addition to any weapon design that can often push something from ’that’s nice’ to ’that’s awesome!’

I’m not surprised, everyone will like different things but they basically look like rocks with some added lighting. I tried investing in skins I personally like and wouldn’t mind if I was stuck with. These new skins would make me feel bad if I was stuck with them.

I ended up picking up the rifle because of its unique firing/wield sounds. It’s not the prettiest rifle in the world, and the sounds would probably better suit something that looked more like a phase rifle from Star Trek, but it stands out and I actually think the magical FX are rather cool despite the bland moldy cheese design of the weapon itself.