Guild Wars 2

We’re just a few weeks away from the 4th Anniversary and I would like to ask that whatever Anet decides to do, please consider everyone.

The 3rd year gift was a very cool dye selection but it was also not able to be used by many of the most avid dye collectors who already had all the dyes available in the selection.

Many of us held out hope that new dye collections would be added and that we could use the gift in the future, but that has not happened.

I realize that it’s a small percentage of the community, but it was disappointing that many of the players who are most interested and focused on dye collecting found themselves excluded.

Please don’t let that happen again.

Thanks

I am pretty sure the last dye collection was awesome because it let me get like 6-7 100-300 gold dyes that I would have never bought. I’m confused where you got the impression that they made a mistake with birthday stuff and that they don’t consider the community?

Dreamslayer.7659:

We’re just a few weeks away from the 4th Anniversary and I would like to ask that whatever Anet decides to do, please consider everyone.

The 3rd year gift was a very cool dye selection but it was also not able to be used by many of the most avid dye collectors who already had all the dyes available in the selection.

Many of us held out hope that new dye collections would be added and that we could use the gift in the future, but that has not happened.

I realize that it’s a small percentage of the community, but it was disappointing that many of the players who are most interested and focused on dye collecting found themselves excluded.

Please don’t let that happen again.

Thanks

Some new dyes from those packages would’ve been nice, but the unopened ones I still have in storage would net me almost 2,000 gold if I were to just sell to highest bidder of the most expensive one of the moment. I consider that a very nice present.

It’s simple, if someone had bought those dyes just before that gift came out, they were out hundreds, possibly thousands of gold.

If someone else was just about to buy those dyes but then received their gift(s) then that’s a sale that someone didn’t make on the TP and an expensive dye that someone else received.

Those who already owned all the dyes available from the collection had no options other than salvage or forging.

If we had known in advance that “hey, your 3rd year gift is an account bound set of dyes”, we could have bought our dye collections more strategically and saved the last few, most expensive dyes to get with the gift.

You may not see it this way, but many of us feel left out and excluded because we were avid collectors – we feel like we should be given another option or a way to sell the dyes.

The current situation is not going to change, but I would like them to include other options or a gift that every player can use, regardless of progress in a specific area.

OP- I would’ve thought that the gifts for the 4th birthday gift have been finalised for a very long time now… (in fact, I remember an “insta-level-40” exp scroll being datamined around the time of last year’s birthday patch).

It would require a serious outcry from the community to change anything now- maybe suggest what they should do for 5th year birthday gifts instead?

Personally I really liked the free dye. I’m with Gendou here- it’s nice to get some dyes I like but would’ve never considered spending 100g+ on. A lot of the exclusive dyes have better “texture contrast” (for lack of a better phrase) than standard dyes- they really pick out the fine details in the patterns on armour and in some cases even create cool textures where I didn’t realise they existed… (See for example in the blue glowy parts of the armour. Also the grey parts I used “murky grey” and it has really picked out the details too).

At the end of the day, these items are freebies and I’m pretty happy with anything that is useable. Most people don’t have the thousands of gold (or real life money) to throw at exclusive dyes. Also, the birthday gifts for GW2 imo are miles better than the ones that were given in GW1.

If they give out something that is already gainable, there will be people that already have it. If they give out a new object that gives a benefit, there will be all sorts of balancing issues like when they had to disable the cake gun in some settings. If they give out a unique to the gift but purely amusing/cosmetic item, there will be complaints about it being lame.

I think it’s nice that they chose to give out something that likely almost every player still could use, and for those who have already gathered all those dyes, there are still some uses for the gift dye even if not worth a hundred gold.

This is the most entitled thing I’ve ever read.

And I read the raid forums…

I guess paying your own way is a form of entitlement now?

Here are some alternatives they could have considered:

1. Make the dyes unbound so you can sell or gift them.
2. Update the gift pack with new dyes as they are released.
3. Make an exclusive series of dyes only obtainable from this gift
4. Offer a couple of alternatives – like a minipet or a hat or even something useful like spirit shards.

1 and 2 were not considered because they would impact the price of dyes on the TP and the value of the new dyes in the gem store.

3 would probably be too controversial and besides, how many exclusive colors can you make? Some people have dozens of characters.

Don’t forget you also got 2 birthday boosters, a level 30 scroll, 5 teleport to friend items, a finisher and a title.

I doubt they’ll ever be able to come up with a single item which everyone wants and/or finds useful because players are so different.

I think the dye pack was a good choice for the majority of people but I agree it would be much better if it could be updated periodically to include new dye packs (maybe once they’re out of the gem store so it’s not losing Anet money). But then there would probably be an outcry every time from people who had just used one just before the update, demanding that Anet refund it.

One way to look at it is at least disappointing a small part of the playerbase is better than disappointing the majority, which I think was the reaction to the mini Queen Jennah. I collect minis so I thought the first one was nice, but the other 9 I’ve gotten since are completely useless. For people who don’t like minis even the first one was useless.

But if you can think of ideas that everyone (or at least the majority) would like it couldn’t hurt to suggest them – they might end up being used.

I really liked the dyes. I used mine to acquire the specific colors I wouldn’t normally be able to afford. And I would have never bought them because there are other things in game I’d prefer to spend several hundred gold on, so no one lost a sale by me. So, worked out great!

I really like the dye packs too. It enabled me to get Electro Blue which I use a lot but only on tiny parts of my armour (it’s a bit much to use as a main colour), which means I’d never have been able to justify buying it.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Dreamslayer.7659:

We’re just a few weeks away from the 4th Anniversary and I would like to ask that whatever Anet decides to do, please consider everyone.

The 3rd year gift was a very cool dye selection but it was also not able to be used by many of the most avid dye collectors who already had all the dyes available in the selection.

Many of us held out hope that new dye collections would be added and that we could use the gift in the future, but that has not happened.

I realize that it’s a small percentage of the community, but it was disappointing that many of the players who are most interested and focused on dye collecting found themselves excluded.

Please don’t let that happen again.

Thanks

Some new dyes from those packages would’ve been nice, but the unopened ones I still have in storage would net me almost 2,000 gold if I were to just sell to highest bidder of the most expensive one of the moment. I consider that a very nice present.

You can’t sell them. They’re account bound. Hence the reason they’re worthless for those of us that have all the dyes already.

@Thelgar

But you can’t have it both ways:

-DON’T make them tradeable. The people who have the dyes already unlocked will complain that they can’t even sell the birthday presents for a few gold.

-DO make them tradeable. The people who have already unlocked the dyes and investors will complain that the market has crashed because suddenly they’re abundant and tradeable…

Sure, I’m sure market prices have decreased a bit because unless you’ve used up all of your birthday dye kits for now/have very limited characters/are impatient you can easily get any expensive dye you want (except the exclusive kits released after the 3rd birthday, I hasten to add). But there are plenty of people who would’ve opened their kits for the most expensive dye to sell if they were tradeable, devaluing any expensive dye available from the kit…

A-net just can’t win, really…

I am also hoping they don’t give us something we barely use once again such as, in my case, Birthday Blaster. But a dye collector being given a dye is just opposite of exclusion. If there’s nothing to use it for do what I do and store it in your bank. Perhaps, in the future, they will update the gift? I haven’t read if they say would NOT do that but I may be wrong. Haven’t looked into it.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

-DO make them tradeable. The people who have already unlocked the dyes and investors will complain that the market has crashed because suddenly they’re abundant and tradeable…

Um.. boohoo? That’s the risk/reward of the market. Just because someone speculated on dyes and they are now worth thousands of gold in profit to them, does not mean they have a right to that profit.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

@Thelgar

But you can’t have it both ways:

-DON’T make them tradeable. The people who have the dyes already unlocked will complain that they can’t even sell the birthday presents for a few gold.

-DO make them tradeable. The people who have already unlocked the dyes and investors will complain that the market has crashed because suddenly they’re abundant and tradeable…

Sure, I’m sure market prices have decreased a bit because unless you’ve used up all of your birthday dye kits for now/have very limited characters/are impatient you can easily get any expensive dye you want (except the exclusive kits released after the 3rd birthday, I hasten to add). But there are plenty of people who would’ve opened their kits for the most expensive dye to sell if they were tradeable, devaluing any expensive dye available from the kit…

A-net just can’t win, really…

There is no both ways issue. If you have all the dyes unlocked, trade the celebratory dye kit to a Black Lion merchant for a ticket, make the ticket trade-able for an account bound version of future dyes. Or make the celebratory dye kit tradeable straight up for the new dye if you have all previous dyes unlocked.

Chuck.8196:

I am also hoping they don’t give us something we barely use once again such as, in my case, Birthday Blaster. But a dye collector being given a dye is just opposite of exclusion. If there’s nothing to use it for do what I do and store it in your bank. Perhaps, in the future, they will update the gift? I haven’t read if they say would NOT do that but I may be wrong. Haven’t looked into it.

Giving you a dye kit you can’t use is pretty much the definition of exclusion in regard to consideration in putting together the birthday package. They haven’t updated the kit in a year despite new dyes being released. Parking them in the bank and hoping isn’t a solution. I tried…

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

They don’t need to be tradable to affect TP prices.

The day the dye packs came out Electro Blue dye was the most expensive one on the TP, with a lowest sell value of about 1,000g. A few weeks later it had dropped to about 200g even though it was still unavailable outside of the birthday dye packs. (Taimi’s Dye Pack has since come back in various forms, currently it’s in black lion chests, so the price has dropped even further.)

I suspect a lot of that was panic selling – people who had been holding onto it (and other high value dyes) found out about the birthday kits and dumped their dyes on the TP before the price dropped even more, and causing it to drop further in the process.

But however it happened the kits still had an impact. I don’t think making the dyes tradable would have done much more.

I want mermaid stuff c8

We’ll probably get a glider this go around, achievement points, xp scroll and a title- not bad Imo. I’d like crushed bone dye but that was exclusive to the dye set but it won’t kill me.

I just want mermaid

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

I think Flesh Wound has got it spot on.

At the end of the day, reception is subjective and there are always going to be people who are unhappy (even when it seems unreasonable by other peoples’ standards… as demonstrated in this thread and plenty of other ones about other topics). There are bound to be times where you receive content/a reward/a gift that you are happy with and some people won’t be. I guess you just can’t please all of the people all of the time, amirite?

I just hope that the 4th gift is to your liking (but I’ll also bet my bottom dollar that there will be people who won’t like it :P)

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The way you speak about already having everything they give is quite the reason of why you will never be happy with anything Anet does. How many selections would they need to give to cover all the bases of players who are collection obsessed players who own all the dyes? And if they give a selection you are suggesting they give items worth in game value? What then? Then you have another group of players who will say Anet ruined the economy and that the items should have been account bound.

You speak as if they targeted you specifically and intentionally left you out because of what you have achieved, which apparently is to the point of owning all of the expensive dyes. The real problem here is this— you need to accept that you received a gift that may not be what you want, and also accept the fact that Anet wanted to treat long time players without harming the ingame economy. Dyes are the best reward for this because they- A.Give unlimited account wide uses, and B. Is the best cosmetic reward gift to give without creating a situation of unappealing looks from maybe a bad outfit or weapon skin.

You claim they didn’t give us a selection but that was your first major mistake with your apparent biased negativity. They gave us a selection of 60 different RARE dyes that we can select from, and if we have those also can choose from the 100+ dyes from the 4 color swatch packs. On top of that if you can’t choose from the lot of dyes because you want too many, every character that has a birthday gets one! They very easily could have made it an account birthday, but they instead made each character get one, I’d say this is pretty generous. It isn’t Anet’s fault you own 1000’s of gold in dyes, maybe you need to be more accepting of gifts with a positive attitude and that will bring even better ones in the future? Just a thought.

Chaos.5072:

This is the most entitled thing I’ve ever read.

And I read the raid forums…

Its a legit thought, but ya…
If someone has ALL of the dyes great for them.
But ya, anet should have chosen a better gift where this sort of oddity wouldn’t occur.

I don’t think it would be that hard to make them into a token you could exchange for a Black Lion Ticket.

Anet has a few reward systems in the game that are not designed to be open ended / on-going.

The first one is luck – there is virtually no use for luck once you max your magic find.

The second (and most egregious because it’s a direct purchase) was the account bound, single use items in BL Chests (mail birds and minis mostly) This may have been addressed, at least in part, by the new BL Mini tickets.

Third was the birthday gift dyes, but also the Queen Jennah minis and to some extent, the Mini-Gwynefyrdd

Fourth would be the weekly acquisition of single use bank access and repair kit items from the daily reward (the single use Merchant and TP consumables at least have a use that distinguishes them from the perm versions). Also – an alternative use for excess copper-fed-kits now that we have shared slots would not be a terrible idea (as long as we don’t trade them in for dyes!)

Most of these are narrow case issues and while they are not major problems, I point them out to draw attention to the concept of “acquired often, used once” rewards in hopes they will take a more long term outlook when designing reward systems.

Gendou.9620:

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The way you speak about already having everything they give is quite the reason of why you will never be happy with anything Anet does. How many selections would they need to give to cover all the bases of players who are collection obsessed players who own all the dyes? And if they give a selection you are suggesting they give items worth in game value? What then? Then you have another group of players who will say Anet ruined the economy and that the items should have been account bound.

You speak as if they targeted you specifically and intentionally left you out because of what you have achieved, which apparently is to the point of owning all of the expensive dyes. The real problem here is this— you need to accept that you received a gift that may not be what you want, and also accept the fact that Anet wanted to treat long time players without harming the ingame economy. Dyes are the best reward for this because they- A.Give unlimited account wide uses, and B. Is the best cosmetic reward gift to give without creating a situation of unappealing looks from maybe a bad outfit or weapon skin.

You claim they didn’t give us a selection but that was your first major mistake with your apparent biased negativity. They gave us a selection of 60 different RARE dyes that we can select from, and if we have those also can choose from the 100+ dyes from the 4 color swatch packs. On top of that if you can’t choose from the lot of dyes because you want too many, every character that has a birthday gets one! They very easily could have made it an account birthday, but they instead made each character get one, I’d say this is pretty generous. It isn’t Anet’s fault you own 1000’s of gold in dyes, maybe you need to be more accepting of gifts with a positive attitude and that will bring even better ones in the future? Just a thought.

Maybe you need to dial back the rage and taking this so personally that you’re attacking me over it. I couldn’t understand some of your post, but you’re getting pretty angry and aggressive about someone who has the current dyes unlocked asking that the dye pack enable them to unlock future dyes rather than being useless to them. I’m not sure why Anet or anyone would be at fault for me owning the current dyes, though you seem to be implying it is somehow bad of me to have them. As far as gifts and positive attitude, you’re creating a personal relationship with a company that doesn’t exist. this isn’t a personal gift, it is a marketing gimmick and customer loyalty award.

I could see this kind of emotional attack if I was complaining about the dyes being given away after I paid for them, which I’m not. But your willingness to attack me for asking the reward be fixed to reward everyone while you’re getting what makes you happy from it is the same kind of mean-spiritedness which that would be.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Fourth would be the weekly acquisition of single use bank access and repair kit items from the daily reward (the single use Merchant and TP consumables at least have a use that distinguishes them from the perm versions). Also – an alternative use for excess copper-fed-kits now that we have shared slots would not be a terrible idea (as long as we don’t trade them in for dyes!)

Let’s not go there…

Thelgar.7214:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Fourth would be the weekly acquisition of single use bank access and repair kit items from the daily reward (the single use Merchant and TP consumables at least have a use that distinguishes them from the perm versions). Also – an alternative use for excess copper-fed-kits now that we have shared slots would not be a terrible idea (as long as we don’t trade them in for dyes!)

Let’s not go there…

Why not?

We’re all getting them on a regular basis now and not everyone needs them or cares to use them. Having a secondary outlet for these items would be great – like put 4 in the mystic forge and get back a spirit shard or three.

As it is, a lot of people have them piling up but don’t necessarily want to delete them because they may have another use in the future.

If you have all the dyes. You can still salvage them for the scribe profession.

they’ll get their dye/ reward when their characters aged enough…. current system is fine.

azizul.8469:

they’ll get their dye/ reward when their characters aged enough…. current system is fine.

How? I’m not sure how characters aging affects this?

Azure Prower.8701:

If you have all the dyes. You can still salvage them for the scribe profession.

For less than 40 silver each…

Dreamslayer.7659:

Thelgar.7214:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Fourth would be the weekly acquisition of single use bank access and repair kit items from the daily reward (the single use Merchant and TP consumables at least have a use that distinguishes them from the perm versions). Also – an alternative use for excess copper-fed-kits now that we have shared slots would not be a terrible idea (as long as we don’t trade them in for dyes!)

Let’s not go there…

Why not?

We’re all getting them on a regular basis now and not everyone needs them or cares to use them. Having a secondary outlet for these items would be great – like put 4 in the mystic forge and get back a spirit shard or three.

As it is, a lot of people have them piling up but don’t necessarily want to delete them because they may have another use in the future.

Because asking for things you get in the game to be rewarding is bad and greedy and draws attacks or trolling statements like the one I quoted above. Happy Birthday, here’s 40 silver. Happy Birthday, here’s 74 gold. Same thing…

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The thing is no gift will please everyone. The best ANet can hope for is to do Gift A this year and Gift B next year. And have Groups 1, 2, & 3 love Gift A and Group 4 hates Gift A and have Groups 2, 3, & 4 love Gift B and Group 1 hates Gift B. Where Group 1 and Group 4 do not include the majority of players by themselves.

It would be nice if the gift for this year pleased the vast majority of players who did not like the gifts of last year.

I think there’s nothing wrong with hoping for something that might be good for everyone. Perhaps a choice from a few different items?

Gendou.9620:

I am pretty sure the last dye collection was awesome because it let me get like 6-7 100-300 gold dyes that I would have never bought. I’m confused where you got the impression that they made a mistake with birthday stuff and that they don’t consider the community?

He’s merely speaking up for people like myself who had collected all the dyes at very pricey sales only to have our 3rd birthday gift rendered useless by our own passionate playing of the game.

Or atleast thats how I read it… I still have 8 or so dye kits to use and nothing to use them on at the moment because I had already bought gems/gold to buy the dyes.

I think exclusive dyes (maybe fluorescent) or exclusive skins should be handed out, maybe an exclusive minipet? Something that’s only obtainable through recieving a birthday gift, something special.

Maybe it could even be something useful like a free shared inventory slot.

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The thing is no gift will please everyone. The best ANet can hope for is to do Gift A this year and Gift B next year. And have Groups 1, 2, & 3 love Gift A and Group 4 hates Gift A and have Groups 2, 3, & 4 love Gift B and Group 1 hates Gift B. Where Group 1 and Group 4 do not include the majority of players by themselves.

It would be nice if the gift for this year pleased the vast majority of players who did not like the gifts of last year.

It isn’t hard to make the gifts exchangeable if they aren’t useful for someone. Or to make a gift box with a choice like: 1) Celebratory Dye Pack, 2) Celebratory Skin Pack, 3) Celebratory Mini Pack or whatever.

I don’t get why this seems like an impossible thing…

Here’s the problem, no matter what they offer along the line of the dyes, there will be some segment who either doesn’t care or has all of X already. You choose your free gifts to benefit most of your playerbase, not the outliers.

Glancing at GW2Efficiency, the only source us players have about others, even players with over 5000 hours in the game, there is still 10% missing 70+ dyes. Even 1% have a few dyes unbought. Conversely there is also 10% that have less than half the dyes and 1% only having 120 dyes.

In the end, there will always be “free” gifts that are worthless to some segment of the population but if the vast majority benefits and likes it, then that’s a good gift.

Behellagh.1468:

Here’s the problem, no matter what they offer along the line of the dyes, there will be some segment who either doesn’t care or has all of X already. You choose your free gifts to benefit most of your playerbase, not the outliers.

Glancing at GW2Efficiency, the only source us players have about others, even players with over 5000 hours in the game, there is still 10% missing 70+ dyes. Even 1% have a few dyes unbought. Conversely there is also 10% that have less than half the dyes and 1% only having 120 dyes.

In the end, there will always be “free” gifts that are worthless to some segment of the population but if the vast majority benefits and likes it, then that’s a good gift.

Not for those who don’t benefit. And it is simple to fix.

Thelgar.7214:

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The thing is no gift will please everyone. The best ANet can hope for is to do Gift A this year and Gift B next year. And have Groups 1, 2, & 3 love Gift A and Group 4 hates Gift A and have Groups 2, 3, & 4 love Gift B and Group 1 hates Gift B. Where Group 1 and Group 4 do not include the majority of players by themselves.

It would be nice if the gift for this year pleased the vast majority of players who did not like the gifts of last year.

It isn’t hard to make the gifts exchangeable if they aren’t useful for someone. Or to make a gift box with a choice like: 1) Celebratory Dye Pack, 2) Celebratory Skin Pack, 3) Celebratory Mini Pack or whatever.

I don’t get why this seems like an impossible thing…

But some will always either have all of the dyes, skins and minis, have all they want of the categories, or not want any of them as they don’t care about collectables or how their character looks.

I’m not saying that can’t make the pool of dissatisfied smaller, but to have an expectation that there is an answer that will please everyone is unrealistic.

Thelgar.7214:

Behellagh.1468:

Here’s the problem, no matter what they offer along the line of the dyes, there will be some segment who either doesn’t care or has all of X already. You choose your free gifts to benefit most of your playerbase, not the outliers.

Glancing at GW2Efficiency, the only source us players have about others, even players with over 5000 hours in the game, there is still 10% missing 70+ dyes. Even 1% have a few dyes unbought. Conversely there is also 10% that have less than half the dyes and 1% only having 120 dyes.

In the end, there will always be “free” gifts that are worthless to some segment of the population but if the vast majority benefits and likes it, then that’s a good gift.

Not for those who don’t benefit. And it is simple to fix.

With what? An infinite list of possible gifts? Cause 1st they will not make a gift tradable cause that would unbalance the economy. If they give you a choice of 5 things, there will be players who already have or don’t care about any of the five. They will never have an option that’s just gold ($ or gift card birthday gift in RW) cause economy. Not gems cause most would likely be converted into gold, lowering the exchange rate and disincentivize buying additional gems to convert to gold and selling gems for cash is the life blood of the studio.

I have not seen a suggestion in this thread that could satisfy everyone while keeping the game’s economy from getting shocked or cut into ANet’s income stream.

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The thing is no gift will please everyone. The best ANet can hope for is to do Gift A this year and Gift B next year. And have Groups 1, 2, & 3 love Gift A and Group 4 hates Gift A and have Groups 2, 3, & 4 love Gift B and Group 1 hates Gift B. Where Group 1 and Group 4 do not include the majority of players by themselves.

It would be nice if the gift for this year pleased the vast majority of players who did not like the gifts of last year.

It isn’t hard to make the gifts exchangeable if they aren’t useful for someone. Or to make a gift box with a choice like: 1) Celebratory Dye Pack, 2) Celebratory Skin Pack, 3) Celebratory Mini Pack or whatever.

I don’t get why this seems like an impossible thing…

But some will always either have all of the dyes, skins and minis, have all they want of the categories, or not want any of them as they don’t care about collectables or how their character looks.

I’m not saying that can’t make the pool of dissatisfied smaller, but to have an expectation that there is an answer that will please everyone is unrealistic.

So because there are some people (theoretically) that would not be happy with anything, there should be no attempt to improve the current system which is broken for people in reality? So really, don’t bother doing anything at all, ever, because of these people who aren’t going to want anything? Increasing the pool to more than one type of item drastically increases the possibility for someone to get something they like and allows people who only have one category, such as dyes, to get something more than 39 silver and 96 coppers or inventory clutter.

Thelgar.7214:

Azure Prower.8701:

If you have all the dyes. You can still salvage them for the scribe profession.

For less than 40 silver each…

And?

The dyes are account bound. Not like you could sell them any way.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Behellagh.1468:

Thelgar.7214:

Behellagh.1468:

Here’s the problem, no matter what they offer along the line of the dyes, there will be some segment who either doesn’t care or has all of X already. You choose your free gifts to benefit most of your playerbase, not the outliers.

Glancing at GW2Efficiency, the only source us players have about others, even players with over 5000 hours in the game, there is still 10% missing 70+ dyes. Even 1% have a few dyes unbought. Conversely there is also 10% that have less than half the dyes and 1% only having 120 dyes.

In the end, there will always be “free” gifts that are worthless to some segment of the population but if the vast majority benefits and likes it, then that’s a good gift.

Not for those who don’t benefit. And it is simple to fix.

With what? An infinite list of possible gifts? Cause 1st they will not make a gift tradable cause that would unbalance the economy. If they give you a choice of 5 things, there will be players who already have or don’t care about any of the five. They will never have an option that’s just gold ($ or gift card birthday gift in RW) cause economy. Not gems cause most would likely be converted into gold, lowering the exchange rate and disincentivize buying additional gems to convert to gold and selling gems for cash is the life blood of the studio.

I have not seen a suggestion in this thread that could satisfy everyone while keeping the game’s economy from getting shocked or cut into ANet’s income stream.

This is a garbage argument. Increase the choices to five categories and you’ll drastically increase the opportunity for people to get something they like, or at least something better than inventory clutter or 39 silver and 96 copper. The “everyone” argument is nonsense, taking the issue to a level of absurdity because you can’t come up with a coherent argument why adding a couple more categories to the selection wouldn’t be a drastic improvement.

Azure Prower.8701:

Thelgar.7214:

Azure Prower.8701:

If you have all the dyes. You can still salvage them for the scribe profession.

For less than 40 silver each…

And?

The dyes are account bound. Not like you could sell them any way.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

I’m sorry you can’t pick up the distinction of the birthday gift being something the player who gets it should enjoy. I bet you give kids one pair of socks for Christmas.

Let’s recognize the distinction between a birthday gift that you can’t use because you already have it and one that is new, but perhaps not something you care for.

What if, for the 4th birthday, they pass out Karmic Converters (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karmic_Converter) to everyone.

Great gift – lots of people have excess Karma and a daily exchange is really handy.

It wouldn’t be exciting for people who collected all the exotic skins and earned the converter the hard way.

“It’s not like they gave everyone the title!” (Exotic Hunter)

“It’s not like they passed out all the exotic skins – you still have all those!”

In one sense, what Anet gave us for year 3 was a shortcut (or a head start) toward dye completion. If you have a lot of characters, they have potentially lowered the bar by a few thousand gold.

My only point in making this thread was to ask Anet to think about their reward systems and consider all players when coming up with special rewards.

I would feel the same way if they gave us any choice of the Series 1,2 or 3 minis (some people have all those) or “any fractal weapon”, etc.

Thelgar.7214:

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Seera.5916:

Thelgar.7214:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The thing is, you’re not getting gifts from someone you know. You’re getting gifts from a corporation. Unlike real life birthdays gifts that are carefully chosen with you in mind, gifts to players have to be designed for the maximum number of happy players that can be achieved with the minimum amount of work and cost by ANet. Which means that gifts can’t be tweaked to satisfy everyone.

They handed out a range of different items to be useful to as many types of players as possible, but to think they can or should modify the gifts so that every single player is completely happy with every single thing they got is not a realistic expectation. It’s a matter of how much scarce dev hours and money they’re willing to put into a optional gift. Considering every single thing they give could be useless to someone it’s best to be happy with the things you can use and accept that you’re not the consumer targeted for the ones you can’t.

As consumers, those left out should be pointing that out to the companies we buy from. The “gift” is a loyalty reward and marketing gimmick. If it isn’t hitting the mark on some customers that are loyal, the company should be aware of that and adjust the mark. Anet has proven perfectly capable of producing reward boxes that give a choice of items, as well as producing tickets and other methods of allowing people to swap things. I can’t see how it’s best to be happy to be left out of a quarter of the birthday gift rather than speak up about it. That’s just bad advice.

The thing is no gift will please everyone. The best ANet can hope for is to do Gift A this year and Gift B next year. And have Groups 1, 2, & 3 love Gift A and Group 4 hates Gift A and have Groups 2, 3, & 4 love Gift B and Group 1 hates Gift B. Where Group 1 and Group 4 do not include the majority of players by themselves.

It would be nice if the gift for this year pleased the vast majority of players who did not like the gifts of last year.

It isn’t hard to make the gifts exchangeable if they aren’t useful for someone. Or to make a gift box with a choice like: 1) Celebratory Dye Pack, 2) Celebratory Skin Pack, 3) Celebratory Mini Pack or whatever.

I don’t get why this seems like an impossible thing…

But some will always either have all of the dyes, skins and minis, have all they want of the categories, or not want any of them as they don’t care about collectables or how their character looks.

I’m not saying that can’t make the pool of dissatisfied smaller, but to have an expectation that there is an answer that will please everyone is unrealistic.

So because there are some people (theoretically) that would not be happy with anything, there should be no attempt to improve the current system which is broken for people in reality? So really, don’t bother doing anything at all, ever, because of these people who aren’t going to want anything? Increasing the pool to more than one type of item drastically increases the possibility for someone to get something they like and allows people who only have one category, such as dyes, to get something more than 39 silver and 96 coppers or inventory clutter.

Did you miss the part where I said I wasn’t for not making the pool of unhappy player smaller?

All my point is expecting there to be a gift where everyone will be happy with it is unrealistic.

Shadow dyes or we riot!

Thelgar.7214:

This is a garbage argument. Increase the choices to five categories and you’ll drastically increase the opportunity for people to get something they like, or at least something better than inventory clutter or 39 silver and 96 copper. The “everyone” argument is nonsense, taking the issue to a level of absurdity because you can’t come up with a coherent argument why adding a couple more categories to the selection wouldn’t be a drastic improvement.

No, the “everybody” comment is appropriate because the percentage of players affected by this is rather small and that there will always be complainers about a free gift short of an legendary weapon and even then there will bound to be someone who got them all already.

So what are your suggestions, taking into account it would likely have to be a gem shop item in the 400 to 500 gem range, but not just gems due to the reasons I stated in my previous post?

Will.9785:

Shadow dyes or we riot!

No kidding. 749 gold….

The blackest black being in a limited time box hurts. I hope it ends up in something that brings it down so people can afford it reasonably.

Thelgar.7214:

Azure Prower.8701:

Thelgar.7214:

Azure Prower.8701:

If you have all the dyes. You can still salvage them for the scribe profession.

For less than 40 silver each…

And?

The dyes are account bound. Not like you could sell them any way.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

I’m sorry you can’t pick up the distinction of the birthday gift being something the player who gets it should enjoy. I bet you give kids one pair of socks for Christmas.

Some kids would be delighted to even receive a pair of socks for Christmas.

I guess the ones that aren’t happy are spoiled children and throw tantrums when ever they get some thing given to them.

I just don’t want another experience scroll item. It was cool to have the instantly-to-level-20 item at first, but the instantly-to-level-30 seemed a bit redundant. I really don’t need a level-to-40 scroll this year, and I’m not sure the point except maybe key farming?