Guild Wars 2

After reading and contributing to a few threads on the “chests issue” (Black Lion Trading and Mad King ones), I realised there probably is a more general question to be asked, hence the creation of this new topic.

People who spent a significant amount of real money in gems and didn’t get any rare item (weapon skin, endless tonic, etc.) complain about the drop rate. Fair enough, it’s understandable – they were expecting something, they didn’t get it, they’re disappointed. Pretty clear.

Whether or not they should have expected what they were expecting is not the question. Some players will say “yes” (= you spend real money, you should get premium exclusive rewards), some say “no” (= rare drops must remain rare, you cannot simply buy these easily). This is irrelevant to thread.

Looking at the big picture, there is a very thin line between spending a large amount of money on RNG items to get a “good” chance of getting what you want, and buying that same item at a very expensive price.
If someone spends $100 on chests to get a rare drop, would they have bought that item directly from the gem store for $100 ? I hope not, and I believe people who bought lots of chests actually expected “more” (i.e. what they wanted, plus all the other small consummables as well)

Nevertheless, stepping back a bit, I believe that spending $100 on chests to get a rare reward is only asking for vanity items.

So the real question is… Is it really what people actually want, vanity items ?

Vanity items serve only one purpose: show others what you can afford. That’s it ; a copy of your bank statement as a forum signature would achieve pretty much the same thing. Except you can “hide” the true motivation behind the vanity items, because they’re “fun”, and “cool”, but also “nice”, and “fun”. And “cool” as well. Not to forget “nice”. Allegedly…
It can only escalate, because whatever someone is willing to pay, there will always be someone else to pay more.

$£5€ for a Witch costume sounds like a nice yet affordable purchase (debatable, I’ll use this as an example in terms of “scale”)
$£100€ for a staff skin sounds a bit extreme… But apparently that’s what the “community” is willing to pay. So what would be next ?
“Get the Festival Hat for only $200” ?
“Don’t forget your Exclusive Party Outfit for just $500” ?
“Limited edition Halloween 2012 Souvenir for a mere $1000” ?
“Special BLT chest for only $10000, and get a chance at a Unique Uber-skin !” ?
…

I seriously hope this is NOT what people are asking for, but I think not everybody realises this is what is currently happening with the BLT/MK chests. That is definitely the way it would sound from a publisher point of view ; if we ever get that kind of stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised. The best thing is that the community “asked” for it…

Any contribution to this idea would be greatly appreciated

Thank you for reading.

Vanity items were big in the original GW. The difference though was that casual players could afford them if they were fickle about which ones. Devoted players had the luxury of amassing collections.
In GW2 the presence of vanity items is clearly more to pique an appetite for something very specific, and then time/money sink them as far as the game can push it.

Redfeather.6401:

Vanity items were big in the original GW. The difference though was that casual players could afford them if they were fickle about which ones. Devoted players had the luxury of amassing collections.

True ; and I must say I did like that. With the big difference that there was no concept of “gem” in GW1, and everything that was in the store you would buy on a “what you see is what you get” basis. The real vanity items from GW1 were obtained with dedication and game time, not with a credit card.

I could have been more specific in my initial post, i.e. vanity items in the context of a cash-shop/gem store.

Thank you for pointing that out.

While I am certainly by no means Mr. Moneybags, if something really, really appealed to me in the gem shop I might save up and buy it. I’m used to paying 15 bucks a month for a game, so to me, I suddenly have 15 dollars free now that I’m playing GW2. That said, it would have to be something that really fit my character RP-wise that I planned to use for months and months to spend real money on it. As an Rper, I spend enough time in town clothes to invest in them, but not if I’ll only use it for a week or so.

Yeah, cosmetics are something that appeal to the RPer the most. I remember in original GW a lot of RPers I knew from the fansites had crazy amounts of storage through buying extra storage panels, and buying extra character slots to act as mules. They liked their bling.

Why are people spending real money on these items??? The skins are already on sale for gold on the market. Just farm gold kitten

Cloud.2178:

Why are people spending real money on these items??? The skins are already on sale for gold on the market. Just farm gold kitten

Because nothing in how ArenaNet originally marketed the Black Lion chest update for Halloween indicated that these were extremely rare skins that would be absurdly difficult to obtain from a chest.

Yes, I mainly want them because they are souvenirs/mementos of being there at that event. Like having all the hats in GW1. I don’t want to have to gamble for them though. Doing a quest to get them is fine, or crafting (as long as its accessible to all players, new and old/rich, not just the top ~10%).

Hopefully the finale of the event gives something like those hats from GW1.
Then next halloween we’ll have something to dress up with for the occasion.

I gotta say I was sad that the costumes we can purchase from the gem store cannot be shown while in combat :/. I don’t usually spend all my time in town clothes.

Redfeather.6401:

Yeah, cosmetics are something that appeal to the RPer the most. I remember in original GW a lot of RPers I knew from the fansites had crazy amounts of storage through buying extra storage panels, and buying extra character slots to act as mules. They liked their bling.

Correct, and I was one of these (4 accounts, 32 characters, lots of level 20 in Prestige armors, etc.)

Nevertheless I think this is different from “vanity” items ; hoarding nice collectables is part of the core mechanics of MMOs for dedicated players. But vanity items are different ; vanity item in the context of a cash shop is about parading with things just to show you can afford them. You don’t want them because they’re nice, because they fit nicely in your RP background, because they’re hard to get with in-game mechanics, but because they’re expensive to buy with real $£€.

And as far as I am concerned, that is the bane of multiplayer games. Unfortunately, it seems to me that people who spent $100s on chests and want their rare skin is exactly that, vanity item.

In a game where vanity is the only marker for progression there isn’t much of a option is there? GW1 had a set of standards in term of quality/rarity that I personally had no problems with, and now comes GW2…

IF the company keeps their MO as they did with this holiday event, they don’t leave players with much choice but to either pay the exorbitant price (most of the time for a chance only!) to actually have things, otherwise its practically a boycott to the game where we (farm which is the endgame) but can’t buy anything or barely anything.

I’m waiting for the other acts but I’m not having much fun tbh because the game for me ends up with having things i like and gw2 is making it extremely difficult currently, hopefully this will change…I surely don’t hope to see at every holiday near legendary-item intensive vanity goodies

I don’t like the “souvenir” argument. You have the horns and the book. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you also need the uber-rare weapon skins? To the people referencing the GW1 event hats, it’s not like those were difficult to get, you only had to be logged in at the correct time. The book requires you to actually do something and participate in the event, and rewards you with a cool “backpack” skin for any character to use. And of course the horns fill the role of GW1’s hats.

But apparently that’s not good enough.

szthesquid.9576:

I don’t like the “souvenir” argument. You have the horns and the book. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you also need the uber-rare weapon skins? To the people referencing the GW1 event hats, it’s not like those were difficult to get, you only had to be logged in at the correct time. The book requires you to actually do something and participate in the event, and rewards you with a cool “backpack” skin for any character to use. And of course the horns fill the role of GW1’s hats.

But apparently that’s not good enough.

The event so far has been awesome. The handling of the cash shop skins has been objectionable. They’re not mutually exclusive positions to hold.

At this point I hope the backlash 1) doesn’t get ArenaNet down too much but 2) does makes them re-examine how they implement and market holiday items in the cash shop for future events, particularly if they involve RNGs.

True, there are a fair amount of “souvenir” items already ; and it’s only Act I. I guess the fact there are rarer/more expensive ones make people feel the standard “souvenir” items are worthless :-?

Malaprop.1794:

The event so far has been awesome. The handling of the cash shop skins has been objectionable. They’re not mutually exclusive positions to hold.

I’m specifically referring to people who are upset because they claim they got no permanent rewards AT ALL. The weapon skins have no bearing on my previous argument.

I don’t care about rarity. If everyone in the game had that scythe skin I’d still want it because it looks great and fits my necro. If it were just a rarity issue people would want all of the weapon skins instead of just the scythe and chainsaw greatsword. The high demand for those two specific items is keeping the prices on them high.

Then again the prohibitive cost actually will stop me from getting what I want, rather than convincing me to pull out my credit card. So maybe regarding the folks who will pay a huge amount of real money you’re right about showing off. But I really don’t care about that sort of thing at all. I wont get something I think is ugly or lame because it is exclusive.

szthesquid.9576:

I don’t like the “souvenir” argument. You have the horns and the book. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you also need the uber-rare weapon skins? To the people referencing the GW1 event hats, it’s not like those were difficult to get, you only had to be logged in at the correct time. The book requires you to actually do something and participate in the event, and rewards you with a cool “backpack” skin for any character to use. And of course the horns fill the role of GW1’s hats.

But apparently that’s not good enough.

The horns do NOT fill the role of GW1’s hats, because you will never wear them. And believe it or not, a lot of people don’t like to wear a floating book on the back of their character which also clips horribly with most armors.

And a lot of people didn’t like a lot of the GW1 holiday hats. Why does not liking them or not wanting to wear them suddenly mean they don’t count? If I didn’t like or wear the GW1 Halloween hats that wouldn’t let me get away with saying “there were no hats this year, WTF ANet”

in addition to gab’s response, you can only wear the horns out of combat, whereas the weapon skins can be used all the time.

I like vanity items. I like knowing what I’m paying for, deciding if it meets my criteria of value, and spending my money if I choose. I consider the OP’s stance that I would buy a costume or a weapon skin to show that I have money offensive. It isn’t about showing off wealth, it’s about having something I enjoy in the game. I don’t like the legs on the witch’s costume for female characters so I didn’t buy that. I don’t like the Mad King costume for female characters so I didn’t buy that. If the hood could be used with armor I would buy it, but it looks pretty stupid with a skirt and peasant blouse, so I didn’t buy that. Does it sound like I’m trying to show off how much money I have?

I love the staff skin. I would buy that. But, it isn’t for sale. I think that’s sad, and a poor choice on A-Net’s part.

I would play the RNG game and open tons of little bags looking for the staff skin if that were the option, the same way I did for the later versions of the Celestial Mini-Pets in Guild Wars 1, but that’s not how they’ve chosen to put these skins into the game. But I’m not playing RNG for skins with Black Lion Chests anymore… There are more skins that I don’t like than ones that I do and the drop rate for getting any of them, much less the one I want, is far too low. If I buy more gems, and that is a huge IF, it’ll be to exchange for gold so that I can buy the single skin that I really want.

So, after all is said, the answer to the OPs question is yes, I want some vanity items in the cash shop. Vanity items are the only reason the cash shop should even exist.

Edit to add: I love the way they’ve put the free commemorative items into the cash shop for free. People who have to work, or go to a funeral, or have a freak power outtage on the day of the event finale can still get the item. It’s to have an, “I was there when” item that everyone has access to for a reasonable amount of time. The only thing that would make me happier about the devil horns is if they had been a transmutable item like the shoulders that would allow me to wear them as armor instead of as town clothes, but without adding armor items to the game through the cash shop; even for free.

Azoetia.2183:

the prohibitive cost actually will stop me from getting what I want, rather than convincing me to pull out my credit card.

How do you feel about the current “solution” for “normal” players (i.e. not spending thousands $ on chests and not playing 25 hours a day 8 days a week), which would be :

- see the permanent Staff skin as a long terme goal (a bit like an armor set from a dungeon) that you will be able to craft when you’ll have gathered the resources

- use the very cheap 4h skins when you want to look cool during the event, in dungeons, etc.

Also, what’s your view on T3 racial armor. They’re very nice looking, but cost 120gp; how is it different from the newly introduced weapon skins for the Halloween event ?

Aye.8392:

So, after all is said, the answer to the OPs question is yes, I want some vanity items in the cash shop. Vanity items are the only reason the cash shop should even exist.

There are “some” vanity items in the cash shop, it’s just that you’ve chosen not to buy them.

Although I do agree with you that it would be nice to have some easily accessible permanent weapon skins.

I think you’re missing the point, GW1 was about vanity items late game, GW2 will be the exact same. Top exotic set isn’t expensive, eventually people will get to a point where money will stack up and what would they buy? vanity items. It solves multiple purposes and that is what GW1 fans liked.

Besides you’re acting as if you’re forced to gamble, you are not.

What else? Vanity items are what fits in this game, I don’t see enough content for ANet add other things to this kind of events. But I agree that alot of things in the Store are useless.

The game needs more content, mini.games, diferent things to do in engame, and then ANet can decide what more can they do with Gem Store.

Aye.8392:

I consider the OP’s stance that I would buy a costume or a weapon skin to show that I have money offensive.

Thank you for your reaction about this, it was a bit provocative on purpose.

Aye.8392:

It isn’t about showing off wealth, it’s about having something I enjoy in the game. I don’t like the legs on the witch’s costume for female characters so I didn’t buy that.

That sounds very sensible, i.e. as a responsible consumer would act. Now, the question is… :

Aye.8392:

I love the staff skin. I would buy that. But, it isn’t for sale.

Would you buy it for $100 ? $500 ?

Because that’s what vanity items are about and that’s what some people are trying to do, when throwing $100s in keys. And while that might sound ridiculous, at least to me, some games do do that.

In this context, vanity items are not simply about appearance, style or cosmetics ; it’s about pride, conceit, pretentiousness and self-importance.

Vanity items, in this case, are not about getting something nice and affordable ; everybody wants that. Cool costume to unlock for $5 ? I’ll have that, thanks. No, vanity items here are about boosting someone’s ego and being different, i.e. unique.

Another interesting question… Do most people want the staff skin because it’s nice, or because it’s expensive :-? …

I’m all for 100gp / $5 skins and unlocks ; I’m all against “the more expensive in real £$€ money the better”

Apologies ahead of time for my short reply, but you know there is a currency called “Gold” in this game as well….

Well different players have different opinions, but lets put i this way.

If Guild Wars 2 had you starting in tier 3 racial armor or epic dungeon armor and as you leveled up the armor got more and more basic like starting gear then what would you care about more? The stats of plain armor of the look of the starting armor? OR would you keep both so that when you were in town you would wear the better looking gear

Would you even have any motivation to play the game if you started out with your favorite looking gear?

No right or wrong answer, just some food for thought.

If you’re buying $100 in keys for this, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s an absurd amount of gold and many of the skins are pretty cheap in the AH.

Refeuh.8493:

How do you feel about the current “solution” for “normal” players (i.e. not spending thousands $ on chests and not playing 25 hours a day 8 days a week), which would be :

- see the permanent Staff skin as a long terme goal (a bit like an armor set from a dungeon) that you will be able to craft when you’ll have gathered the resources

Yeah, I’d go for that. Currently I have no interest in dungeons, but as a general concept, a crafting option, even a brutally demanding one, would be fine.

- use the very cheap 4h skins when you want to look cool during the event, in dungeons, etc.

No, not interested in rentals. I actually don’t want any of the clothes/ skins for participating in the event and being festive; I’ll participate and be festive anyway. However, I’m a Halloween junkie so I want these items year-round, especially because my main is a necro. I bought the witch costume and coloured it black. I don’t use the hat, but rather the free horns because, to my surprise, they actually look great on my character. That setup is going to be my necro’s permanent town clothes.

Also, what’s your view on T3 racial armor. They’re very nice looking, but cost 120gp; how is it different from the newly introduced weapon skins for the Halloween event ?

I will not pay 120gp for gear, period. I don’t really even like the way the racial armor looks. I’m transmuting the appearance of my dry bones karma set onto my exotics because I like the way it looks far more than any of the actual exotic gear. But if I did really like the T3 racial armor I still would not spend that kind of in-game currency on it, much less real money to buy the in-game currency. I’d do like I’m doing with that scythe: shake my head, say “that blows,” and let it go.

Last time I looked at what it was going for on the trading post was last night, and it was down to 19gp. That’s still brutal but if it were going to stay that way over the long term I might be willing to play my butt off and make enough money for it. But I know that before I raise the gold for it the event will end, making the supply of scythe skins finite and causing the price to skyrocket. Not to mention my character has other expenses at the moment. So nope, gotta let this one go.

I have never stated I was forced to gamble. I have always said that I was lead to believe…

I was lead to believe that there would be a reasonable chance for A SKIN not a specific skin to drop for my characters. When the company made advertisements they did not state the rarity.

Look at say Mc Donalds when they have a promotion they let you know the chance you have on getting an item. That is called upfront.

This company stated it would be upfront. Were they in this… no.

It’s a complaint and it’s an opinion. When a company does something that I do not feel is right. I use my right to voice my opinion. Some people mistake that as entitlement. They are wrong. I am simply stating that companies should be upfront about how they are running a lottery.

To tout something and then have a 1/100 chance or 1/1000 chance or even 1/10,000 which one would you put your money into? The point is we don’t know the numbers but we know they weren’t reasonable.

Those that got an item were lucky and happy. They are lucky and happy it’s rare because a. they got it and b. they can either keep it or make a profit.

I’m happy for them.

Cloud.2178:

Why are people spending real money on these items??? The skins are already on sale for gold on the market. Just farm gold kitten

Probably because 30g takes what about 20+ hours to farm (at least for a normal person) and for a lot of people that’s maybe 1-2 hours wage to buy with real money.

If there is something I REALLY want and I can spend one hours wage to buy or grind for 10+ hours then I will seriously consider buying it and using my time to play more enjoyable/challenging aspects of the game.

I realize not everyone has the disposable income to do this, but you need to realize that not everyone has the disposable time to farm.

@Refeuh
Vanity items are big. This is a game and you want to look the way you want to look whether for RP or just because you “think” you are impressing others.

My daughter spends hours just customizing the look of her char.

One game that does it well (even though it is now a horrible P2W game) is PW. You can get skins which are almost all tradable even after use from the cash shop, they are usable in combat. Some of the super rare ones come from events or gambling items. But they all turn up in the Trading Post and after you get tired of it you can resell it. Invariably they are only cool and rare in the beginning, then later everyone has them, then it just becomes how you combine the look to suit your tastes.

The OP is, of course, wrong.

The quote:

Vanity items serve only one purpose: show others what you can afford. That’s it ; a copy of your bank statement as a forum signature would achieve pretty much the same thing.

…Is wrong. There is the meaning mentioned above: people want a skin because they like how it looks, regardless of what others think about it or how rare it is. For example, I like how Sunrise looks. I’m going to get it, and I would still get it even if every character in the game got one for free, or even if no one else ever saw me using it – I don’t want external validation, I want a skin I think is beautiful on my character.

And, there is the matter the OP is forgetting about. The players who have spent $100 on chests were not thinking they had a big chance to get a Halloween skin, or they would not have spent that much (if they thought the skins were not rare, they would not have the idea of buying so many keys in order to get said skins). Rather, they knew the skins would be rare, and that they would be thus capable of selling the skins on the TP for a lot of gold. More gold than they would have earned by simply using real life money to buy gems and convert those to gold.

In other words, do the Halloween skins serve only to show others how much you can afford? No. They are also a source of gold, since they can be sold at the Trading Post. Which points the hipocrisy in many of the complaints about the entire chest thing: the players who have bought hundreds of keys are not against a RNG system based on real life gambling, since, if they were, they would not have bought those keys in the first place. They are also not against such RNG system delivering rare items, or they wouldn’t have bought so many keys in the first place, either. Rather, they are complaining since they thought they would be among the few players who would get a very rare drop, sell it on the TP and become rich in game with very little effort. They are complaining because they have failed in exploting the system, not because they don’t agree with the system in the first place.

Yes and no.

I like the festival costumes but vanity items aren’t really what I’m in to. Occasionally I will see something likes the scythe and think, wow that would be great for my necromancer. I might have bought one from the trade post but I would have to pay cash for the gems but with the way ANet handled the gambling for skins thing I am hesitant to support them financially.

Well , to me GW2 is about skins.

Getting max stats is really easy , now Anet is giving free karma around it will become even faster. Getting pretty items? Not really.

Ask yourself , what is a legendary if not a pretty skin over a normal weapon.

So yeah , vanity items would strike big … really big. But RNG? No , never.

Yes, I want vanity items, but on my terms.
I haven’t played any MMO’s before and I don’t really care what other games do for events. I played Guild Wars. Guild Wars offered costumes for real money in the cash shop for $9.99. These were account based so any and all of your characters (each character could dye them any color) could wear them at anytime, anywhere (your current armor stats were maintained regardless of attire. The “event” weapons were available as quest rewards and were very low level so were not viable as actual combat weapons but still were “festive looking”.

I was “expecting” Arenanet to provide the same type of offerings in GW2 events as they did in their original game. Costumes as Cash shop items and weapon skins as event rewards. I am disappointed that they chose to go a different route. I will not “rage quit” the game though. I will just play the game as I normally do. If an item drops for me in an explorable area, great, wonderful fantastic, I will use it. If not, no biggie. I have no intention of “farming for gold or materials” nor do I intend to purchase items in the cash shop unless they are account wide available and are permanent keepsakes.

I don’t like to pay too much for in game stuff, but good options to enhance RP’ing is what makes me love a game over just liking it. I like vanity items, but I am also glad ANet established the 2 way system got changing gold to gems/gems to gold. I don’t see it as broken, but I hope the store grows.

szthesquid.9576:

And a lot of people didn’t like a lot of the GW1 holiday hats. Why does not liking them or not wanting to wear them suddenly mean they don’t count? If I didn’t like or wear the GW1 Halloween hats that wouldn’t let me get away with saying “there were no hats this year, WTF ANet”

I meant you can’t wear them in combat. I personally have equipped town clothes about 3 times since GW2 was released.

Vanity items serve only one purpose: show others what you can afford.

I disagree with that completely. While it may be the motivation for others, (I don’t presume to know why people do what they do), it is not my motivation. I’d guess that most people look at my character about as much as I look at their character, which is just enough to tell what race they are if that. My main is currently an asura, and I seriously doubt most people check to see which pistol model I have in my hand.

I like cool skins on my character because I like looking at it, not because I think about all the other people looking at it. I would be just as inclined reskin items in Skyrim. The amount of money I spent on keys really had nothing to do with anticipating that I would get something more rare than the next guy. I was simply excited by the halloween BLC advertisement and decided to drop $50 to open a bunch of halloween goodies… which turned out to not have any halloween items at all.

It’s simple. Halloween advertisement. Buy stuff for halloween. Expect stuff for halloween.

All i ask from Anet is this…

More actual in game costumes less of the useless town costumes..

I want something i can wear permanently not only in the town rarely…

It may have worked in Guildwars 1 but now its an open world i really would prefer stuff i can use, not look at on rare occasions..

I spent over 50g in game to buy gems to get keys to open chests and I managed to open over 50 of them since I already had some keys and chests gave me some back as well. I received nothing of use but tonics and boosters I will not use, I then spent another 30g to get the one skin I wanted which was a scythe staff skin for my necro since no legendary weapon to me says necro so I have no reason to get one.

Now I knew the items would be rare from the chests and that was fine, I expected more ways to get items then just chests and crafting though. I wanted events since they got ride of quests with ether loot or chances at it, something. I wanted just more then LA to have decorations, etc, I wanted more and sadly I hopped into GW1 and it had more.

gamefreak.5673:

I wanted just more then LA to have decorations, etc, I wanted more and sadly I hopped into GW1 and it had more.

Not to derail the thread, but just out of curiosity what does GW1 have going on for halloween right now?

Malaprop.1794:

szthesquid.9576:

I don’t like the “souvenir” argument. You have the horns and the book. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you also need the uber-rare weapon skins? To the people referencing the GW1 event hats, it’s not like those were difficult to get, you only had to be logged in at the correct time. The book requires you to actually do something and participate in the event, and rewards you with a cool “backpack” skin for any character to use. And of course the horns fill the role of GW1’s hats.

But apparently that’s not good enough.

The event so far has been awesome. The handling of the cash shop skins has been objectionable. They’re not mutually exclusive positions to hold.

At this point I hope the backlash 1) doesn’t get ArenaNet down too much but 2) does makes them re-examine how they implement and market holiday items in the cash shop for future events, particularly if they involve RNGs.

Yes the event has been very fun and I thought they have done a great job with the Halloween event and I look forward to the rest.

The cash shop was incredibly poorly handled. That is the bare and simple truth.