Guild Wars 2

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/53o5mq/bling9009_merchant/d7ut7v7/

“Ascended weapons and armor were added to BLING because there are some players who do not want to do any crafting, but do want to play Fractals. BLING gives these players access to Ascended weapons and armor without forcing them to level up their crafting skills.
For players who are interested in crafting, crafting remains the most efficient way to obtain Ascended weapons and armor on-demand, which is intentional, as Ascended crafting is the big payoff for leveling your crafting skills.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-September-20-2016

“Added BLING-9009 to the merchant area. This vendor has many rare and exceptional items available…for a price.”

Why has Anet done a turnabout?
Really.. add a tab back to bling where we could buy it the old way. This isn’t “better” for the community as a whole. It’s not at all healthy, you could’ve given these tokens as an ADDITIONAL way to buy and nobody would be upset.

I severely don’t think the amount of people complaining that Bing was doing damage to the ascended crating market was very high (if any)… There were many people who
A) Got excited about Bling.
B) Didn’t think they’d use it.
C) Saw the benefits of this vendor even though they wouldn’t use it.

Most likely because, as you said, noone was really using it.
Not that’s going to change much now.

Not a lot of people used it… but those who did really loved it. Now might as well craft…
So many dreams of weapons just hit the floor.

Saurrec.6402:

Why has Anet done a turnabout?

If I had to guess, I’d guess that they did this because they thought it was better for the game overall to handle it this way.

Over the next six months they will find out if they were right, and if it doesn’t achieve their goals, try something different.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Saurrec.6402:

Why has Anet done a turnabout?

If I had to guess, I’d guess that they did this because they thought it was better for the game overall to handle it this way.

Over the next six months they will find out if they were right, and if it doesn’t achieve their goals, forget about it.

Fixed that for you, based on the usual Anet behaviour.

Astralporing.1957:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Saurrec.6402:

Why has Anet done a turnabout?

If I had to guess, I’d guess that they did this because they thought it was better for the game overall to handle it this way.

Over the next six months they will find out if they were right, and if it doesn’t achieve their goals, forget about it.

Fixed that for you, based on the usual Anet behaviour.

Which fits tight into their policy of “If it’s not broken, fix it until it is.”

If they are gonna go that way, they got to remove the time gates from crafting ascended armor…

…NOW!!!!

Endless Soul.5178:

Astralporing.1957:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Saurrec.6402:

Why has Anet done a turnabout?

If I had to guess, I’d guess that they did this because they thought it was better for the game overall to handle it this way.

Over the next six months they will find out if they were right, and if it doesn’t achieve their goals, forget about it.

Fixed that for you, based on the usual Anet behaviour.

Which fits tight into their policy of “If it’s not broken, fix it until it is.”

Wow! I have literally zero idea why either of you are, like, still playing this game. If you seriously believe that anet only make things worse and worse, wouldn’t this be the right time to, y’know, leave, before you hate it even more? O_o

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Wow! I have literally zero idea why either of you are, like, still playing this game. If you seriously believe that anet only make things worse and worse, wouldn’t this be the right time to, y’know, leave, before you hate it even more? O_o

you can only hate problems in things that you care about

They told us why they were doing it — to ensure that crafting mats, which drive the economy, remain in demand. It’s probably that they wanted to address the mat costs associated with the PvP vendor (i.e, from nothing or not much to something) and did it to the Fractal one also for consistency. I also believe they should do it to the raid vendor as well.

Well this was a horrid change but I’m not quiting over this.

Anet has done good in the past but this. Is a complete and utter illogical move.

Why couldn’t they fix the pvp gear (if that was the problem) without breaking a seldom used but loved vendor?

Ascended gear wasn’t a good value in Fractals but a great value in PvP. They wanted to fix that.

Now it’s costly in both places. Success!

Bling’s purpose was to provide the gear without crafting. So it made sense that it’d be overcharged. Now he is pointless…