Guild Wars 2

Why don’t Anet get rid of those lovestruck skins? I don’t think anyone even uses them. Time to remove them since it looks as if they were temporary just for Valentine’s day.

khani.4786:

From facebook

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….

Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll come back one day. :p

i have a different question, why do they remove stuff when they barely have any stuff at all…..let alone gain-able without any gems/farming.
i can get quite allot of weapons from the TP and most of then are often dropped from high level enemies, yet it takes allot of farming.
the weapon skins they removed are already difficult enough to get at all, removing them only shows that Anet added weapons in the most inconvenient way possible.

they first need to add enough stuff for them to afford removing stuff, it’s like removing the sail of a ship before the mast is even added.

Faowri.4159:

Implying that there is no other possible, less exploitative way to make money? I mean, off the very top of my head, if they wanted to sell more keys/make money then they could make black lion chests more rewarding, or guarantee at least a ticket scrap per chest, or sell the skins directly in the gemstore – ANYTHING other than this “Key sale! ohbtwifyoudon’tbuynowyouloseaccesstotheseskinsindefinitelylol”

I don’t think I implied there are not other ways, just that RL $ Gem purchases is one of their VERY few ways to earn revenue….and that the Marketing (that is often borderline sleazy) is quite brilliant at times.

holds up microphone

Curtis, is the fact that there are no cantha themed weapons yet a sign that there will be a cantha expansion soon?

(just poking fun)

Cantha?

Don’t let the door hit them on their way out!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

why not just have a living story season 1 npc and then living story season 2 npc for the new weapons?

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

Thank you for the official announcement and date for when they’re going away….but why post it several days earlier on facebook? I only saw it because a guildmate pointed it out.

Also, I’m glad that they’re not (probably) going away forever, but still sad they’re going away for now.

Still wish that the cost would go down to 1 ticket per each for now until the removal date so that there would be more than 1-2 of each on the trading post…

Zesbeer.8365:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

why not just have a living story season 1 npc and then living story season 2 npc for the new weapons?

Because the change is not made for a lack of NPCs or dialog tabs but for convenience.
Those weapon sets seem to have had a low turnover, so why maintain them, if only a couple people exchange tickets for them per month? Maybe supply was even higher than demand, you have to keep in mind that Anet has better ways to determine supply and demand than us. Maybe only 10 people traded in tickets for sclerite weapons per month, maybe 100 got traded over the tp in the same time span but from those 100 skins, only 5 got consumed, the other 95 just got traded by speculators/flippers. So the actual demand is just 5 per month and Anet decided to stop maintaining them.

Personally, i dont like the change as well, as i just decided a week ago, that i might want to go for a sclerite/karka/island look, which got more expensive with this announcement. But from a corporate point of view, i can fully understand this move.

khani.4786:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

Thank you for the official announcement and date for when they’re going away….but why post it several days earlier on facebook? I only saw it because a guildmate pointed it out.

It doesnt matter where they announce it, some people will always get the news before other players due to reasons Anet cant control. Cant log in on patch day? Not Anets fault. Directly logging in after posting your password on the launcher and dont see the newsfeed ever? Your fault.
Dont visit the forums regularly or check the dev tracker? Clearly Ellen Kiel´s fault.
Not connected and up to date to the most popular social media websites while playing an online game with millions of other people around the blobe? Well, i guess you get the drift…

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

Thanks for the update Curtis, feedback is always appreciated and i am sure you know that swings both ways. I am pretty sure that your post will be quoted quite a bit in the future.

A little off topic:
In the last month or 2 I have seen posts from you in topics im interested in and apart from John Smith and his evil twin John (Wang) Smith, who both hold the position of Game Economist In NDA Chains, you posted quite regularly in the BLTC Forums.

I would just like to know, which position you are filling at Anet. As you know, its always a pleasure for us to see a red tag next to a topic but it would also be great to know, how the position you are holding relates to the topic. You know, all the kool kidz at Anet have a Job Title under their forum accounts and for me it makes a difference in interpretation, if a post is from the Spanish Community Liason, the Head Security Lead, a member of the PvP Balance programmers or Evon Gnashblade himself (please report any posts by Ellen Kiel immediately as troll posts or scams right away).

Well, after inspecting your post history, i am fairly certain you are a member of the gem store team. But it would still be nice, if you could clarify your current position at Anet, if you wont get bullwhipped by John´s and John Wang´s NDA shackles for it.

And is there any reason, why some Anet Employees have a job title under their Forum account names on the red tag and some have not? Is there a policy in place about who can have job titles visible and who is not or can every Anet employee add those titles, if s/he wants to?

Well, anyways, i think it would be an improvement, if we would know, what position a red tag on the forums holds within Anet. If there are company policies about who is allowed to show it and who is not, that is perfectly understandable for me but if that is something you can change on your own on your forum account settings, just like your signature, i think its worth taking the 20 seconds to change it. Not only for you but for your collegues as well that havent done so.

I never know, which John Smith is posting, when one of them does…
For reference about the John Smith duplicate exploit:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/About-China-the-Trading-Post/first#post4025276

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We at the Black Lion Trading Company agree it’s clearly Ellen Kiel’s fault.

Quoted for fact.

The only way Ellen Kiel could have been more useless to Tyria would have been, if she rode her flying mount towards the next Council Meeting, her cape flapping in the wind…

Vote for Evon…

Even though i completely agree with this, it would be nice to get some substantial feedback on my post. Ta,

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We at the Black Lion Trading Company agree it’s clearly Ellen Kiel’s fault.

^ I bet she forced Evon Gnashblade to remove them from his shops and give them all to her soldiers for free. Just like she threatened Evon with outright stealing his stock of supplies the first time in the guise of “confiscating” them and calling him a criminal, then threatening to have him killed if he refused to obey her. Thanks alot Ellen Kiel. See how underhanded your candidate was? I bet you wish you voted differently now.

A vote for Ellen Kiel was a vote casted wrong.

#Evon Gnashblade 2014 (The message brought to you by the committe to find a way to remove Ellen Kiel from the Captain’s Council and instate the candidate who should have been elected in the first place. #Evon Gnashblade)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Curtis_Johnson

Clearly Ellen has no “official” spokesperson on this BLTC run biased forum.

I for one shall vote for her again, for I love the underdog.

Torsailr.8456:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Curtis_Johnson

“Curtis Johnson is a Game Systems Designer for ArenaNet. Since joining the company in 2003, he’s worked on everything from story and creatures to guilds and skills – even the log-in screen! A longtime MMO and game player, Curtis’ passion is getting players to really interact with the game and making the simple stuff as good as the more flashy stuff. When he’s not thinking about work, Curtis is parenting, BBQing, and cheering for the underdog.”

I am not stupid and know how to use google. I did that research already and thought that the info on the wiki doesnt satisfy my needs because it doesnt disclose his position at Anet right now. Not sure how old his profile picture is but i hope it is closer to GW1 release than GW2 release, otherwise we would have to sue for child labour (that is meant as a compliment, Curtis, towards your Asuran Skin!)
Personally, i dont give a flying Kiel about Curtis´ BBQ or parenting skills (with all my respect towards his family), i want to know his relations towards me as forum user, gw2 player and general customer of his.

I worked for one of the most recognized culinary/entertainment brands in the world in a managing role before and I always hated having to update my email signature every 2 weeks to have a banner included that redirected you to the current promotions. Until Marketing told me, how much actual recipients of my emails (mostly suppliers) actually clicked on that banner and spent some money in our merchandise store. So from a professional point of view, i can surely understand the hesitation to put a job title under your forum tag or including it in your signature (a feature very few Anet utilize, its more common under employees that were recruited from the general player base).

Bottom line is, if I see Curtis Johnson or Ellen Kiel or whoever commenting on my post, i would like to know who they are, without having to digitally stalk them.

I am 100% sure that every Anet employee takes great pride in what they developed so far and they dont consider ovetime a waste of time but a way to improve the game.

Ashadow.6874:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We at the Black Lion Trading Company agree it’s clearly Ellen Kiel’s fault.

^ I bet she forced Evon Gnashblade to remove them from his shops and give them all to her soldiers for free. Just like she threatened Evon with outright stealing his stock of supplies the first time in the guise of “confiscating” them and calling him a criminal, then threatening to have him killed if he refused to obey her. Thanks alot Ellen Kiel. See how underhanded your candidate was? I bet you wish you voted differently now.

A vote for Ellen Kiel was a vote casted wrong.

#Evon Gnashblade 2014 (The message brought to you by the committe to find a way to remove Ellen Kiel from the Captain’s Council and instate the candidate who should have been elected in the first place. #Evon Gnashblade)

Ellen has balls for standing up to that capitalist catdog Evon. Most of my characters rejoice in her triumph, and the others are still grumbling.

Wanze.8410:

Zesbeer.8365:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

why not just have a living story season 1 npc and then living story season 2 npc for the new weapons?

Because the change is not made for a lack of NPCs or dialog tabs but for convenience.
Those weapon sets seem to have had a low turnover, so why maintain them, if only a couple people exchange tickets for them per month? Maybe supply was even higher than demand, you have to keep in mind that Anet has better ways to determine supply and demand than us. Maybe only 10 people traded in tickets for sclerite weapons per month, maybe 100 got traded over the tp in the same time span but from those 100 skins, only 5 got consumed, the other 95 just got traded by speculators/flippers. So the actual demand is just 5 per month and Anet decided to stop maintaining them.

and that is why the whole “chance of a token” crap doesn’t work, they’re not gonna waste it on something they only want if it’s easily achievable but rather buy something that is worth the tokens.
it’s simply way to expensive to buy the weapons (because you’re practically buying the keys and they drop as rare as an arkenstone), if they made tokens a guaranteed drop or at least a guaranteed scrap then ppl don’t mind it as much and the weapons sell a ton faster.

Since I stopped buying gems half a year ago and hardly play anymore I really couldn’t give a kitten what Anet does. Unlike GW1, the game got old fast.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

Perhaps tab space would not be an issue if the interface for the merchant were redesigned to one that is more organized and user-friendly, in addition to being designed with future releases in mind.

Here is one quick mock-up of an enhanced dialogue with the Black Lion Weapons Specialist.

• Selecting the ‘list’ icon goes to the next page where the skin sets are listed.
• Skins added in the future can be amended to the list as well as including a ‘Show me more…’ dialogue option when more skins are added than can fit on a single page.
• Selecting a weapon set opens up the usual merchant interface for just the selected weapon set.
  • Original dialogue window with skins listed does not get dismissed upon a selection.
  • Clicking another weapon set in the NPC dialogue window will replace an existing weapon set merchant window with the newly selected set’s merchant window.
• Tickets are scanned for when interaction with the NPC is initiated. If a ticket for a specific, discontinued item is detected then that specific weapon set will be listed on the weapon set list screen.

Not very much new code would be needed as there are areas where this code already exists – it would just need to be copied over. Graphics, UI and other teams/departments only have a few minutes of work to add their elements to the interface.

Look toward the future and plan for it, please.
Falling back on justifying their removal as there not being enough room for more tabs in the NPC interface does not solve the problem…unless there is no problem and you actually desire the weapon sets to be removed instead of correcting the interface to allow these and future sets to remain available.

There are ways to continue offering all released weapon sets forever, this one I depict is less than an hour of combined work for maybe 5 employees (programming, graphics, localization, other?). Please consider offering all released sets for the duration of the game’s life.

We all experience removal of temporary content far too often as it is, please do not extend this removal to once-permanent content as well.

Thank you for the update, Curtis. It’s comforting to know that this is not likely the last we’ll see of the Winter’s or Sclerite weapons.

Can I make a suggestion? If space on the NPC is a concern, why not look at condensing the weapons? Put all 19 weapons into a Weapon Box, and then arrange the Weapon Boxes by Year or Season. Of the 228 existing Black Lion Ticket weapons, you’d now have just 12 items, all easily stored in a single “Living Story Season 1” tab.

That would be my ideal solution, although I have to say I’m OK with weapons coming back on occasion, as long as we have a bit of heads-up so we can plan appropriately. For example, Winter’s weapons might come back every Wintersday, so players can start stockpiling tickets/scraps in preparation for it as December approaches.

Why not have like a Black Lion department store or something with various NPCs you can readily find and identify? Like a less annoying version of Embark Beach? >_>

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

You are not even sure they are gone forever?

I love the Sclerite skins and I am trying to collect them all.
Since the announcement the price has increased so much that I can barely afford any.
And with the removal they will only go up.
I don’t even want to spend real money on this game because it’s all RNG and everything I like keeps being taken away.
When I spend real money I want to be guaranteed on what I want to buy.
Not buy and hope I get something good.
If I want to buy it with gold I don’t want to farm gold for weeks for a single skin…

This game is more about the Gem store than actual fun.

Or why not just put the removed weapon sets somewhere else into the game as new permanent rewards to make old dead maps again interesting to be played on, like putting Sclerite Weapons into the World Boss Loot Chests of the KARKA QUEEN, so that this world boss gets its own special weapon set as rewards ??

Let us earn those things in the game, when you have no use of those sets anymore to keep them in the ticket sale npc’s.
You can add anyways whenever you want new weapon sets to make with the new sets more money, once an old set subsides in its profits too much that it isn#t worth it anymore to keep a weapon set as a ticket sale set.

By putting such removed weapon sets somewhere else in the game as permanent earnable content, you can make certain things in the game interestign again and revitalize maps in the game, that otherwisse no butt would play on, as long theres no world boss rampaging on it currently…

Come on, Anet, this can’t be true, that you just rather waste your content, only because it gives you no profits, than to permanently improve the game with what you have and keep it as permanent content, because thats actually ecatly, what we players want – permanent content.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/incredible-new-items-in-the-gem-store-4/

There’s your official announce.

They’re not permanently gone (probably) , but they will be off the vendor for quite a while. Long enough i wouldn’t even hazard a guess at a bring-back date.

Like any store, we’ll be regularly rotating out sets that are out of season or not popular to keep the vendor from overloading too many tabs.

It’s the probably there that’s kinda haunting me.
Although looking at the bio on the wiki (which is kinda short), wouldn’t you be someone who’s in a position to help make that probably go away