Guild Wars 2

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Can we please get at least an explanation as to why this change was done now? XP boosters are currently mostly useless… until the expansion anyway…. might be of more use when the expansion hits but why in the world wouldn’t this change wait until the expansion? The karma booster was the only thing of use in those… and they get rid of it for no apparent reason and replace it with things that are entirely useless at the moment. Brilliant job.

No, there is a reason. To slow people’s karma gain so it takes longer to farm it up for the upcoming new karma vendors.

i-forgot

Aug 17, 18:15

You have not explained that the items I received from Black Lion chests would be rendered non-existent. More importantly, you didn’t give me any warnings prior to my purchase of Black Lion Keys. I can verify that my request is not unwarranted by the fact that the forums have posts with replies reaching into the thousands, all of which agree that the removal of Karma Boosters is unfair. People feel ripped off; I feel ripped off. The right thing to do would be to refund me.

GM King (Guild Wars 2 Support)

Aug 17, 19:55

Hello,

Like we said in the previous ticket that was sent to you. Because of the last patch, many changes were made on the game like the karma boosters. To answer your query directly, the Customer Support Team cannot circumvent intended design from our developers. We cannot exchange the items for Karma boosters, as these were removed from the game and from being able to be used by other items

Regards,

GM King
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://help.guildwars2.com/

After several responses and an escalation, my ticket was closed with the receipt of this message.

Whatever the reason for removing the 50% Karma Bonus option from the Enchanted Reward Boost, The business tactics of ArenaNet, in this case, have so far proven to be unfair and deceptive. In the end-user license agreement, they have given themselves the right to be unfair and deceptive, but that doesn’t increase the fairness or ethical value of their actions.
I would like to see them offer a solution to having hurt many of their customers. ArenaNet is a very creative team, who wants WG2 to be a good experience for all of it’s customers. I hope they will show us continuity in this endeavor.

Pockets.3201:

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Can we please get at least an explanation as to why this change was done now? XP boosters are currently mostly useless… until the expansion anyway…. might be of more use when the expansion hits but why in the world wouldn’t this change wait until the expansion? The karma booster was the only thing of use in those… and they get rid of it for no apparent reason and replace it with things that are entirely useless at the moment. Brilliant job.

No, there is a reason. To slow people’s karma gain so it takes longer to farm it up for the upcoming new karma vendors.

That doesn’t explain why “now” … which was the basis of my post.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Pockets.3201:

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Can we please get at least an explanation as to why this change was done now? XP boosters are currently mostly useless… until the expansion anyway…. might be of more use when the expansion hits but why in the world wouldn’t this change wait until the expansion? The karma booster was the only thing of use in those… and they get rid of it for no apparent reason and replace it with things that are entirely useless at the moment. Brilliant job.

No, there is a reason. To slow people’s karma gain so it takes longer to farm it up for the upcoming new karma vendors.

That doesn’t explain why “now” … which was the basis of my post.

To get it over with.

If they waited until HoT came out this issue would take some of the shine off newly released expansion. The longer the wait the less prominent an issue it is, and this way they can try to distract everyone with this pretty meh anniversary sale.

Also as they release more and more details people would have started farming up more karma in advance for things they wanted, as we don’t have that much to do. Doing it now mitigates that a bit.

Its pretty clear they are probably moving karma boosters to HoT content to encourage you to keep playing it so you can get karma faster for the new vendors.

Pockets.3201:

To get it over with.

If they waited until HoT came out this issue would take some of the shine off newly released expansion. The longer the wait the less prominent an issue it is, and this way they can try to distract everyone with this pretty meh anniversary sale.

Also as they release more and more details people would have started farming up more karma in advance for things they wanted, as we don’t have that much to do. Doing it now mitigates that a bit.

Its pretty clear they are probably moving karma boosters to HoT content to encourage you to keep playing it so you can get karma faster for the new vendors.

Then they should have delayed the other changes… that are currently making most of the available boosters worthless. Even if what you are saying is true… it is ridiculous since they are piling one debilitating change on top of another.

Pockets.3201:

-snip-
Its pretty clear they are probably moving karma boosters to HoT content to encourage you to keep playing it so you can get karma faster for the new vendors.

I’m sorry… what.
Where is your source because it feels like you pulled this out of your rear.

How is it “pretty clear?” If it was pretty clear than this thread wouldn’t have 200 posts, a butt-load of angry players such as myself, and almost ten THOUSAND views.

We all must be morons for not knowing what you do and figuring it out for ourselves.

And if you have no source, then the "It is clear they are probably moving . . . " is you laying on some ridiculous hypothesis stating it as a fact when it’s not.

On topic, still waiting for ArenaNet to respond.

10k Views, new patch and silence…….

Happy birthday!

Yes. Happy…. Birthday…..

still no response? This is unacceptable! we paid for something with real money and they take it away!

The whole community is asking for a response, an explanation. AT LEAST SAY SOMETHING. You know about this problem. I’m sure you read this topic. Many ppl send mails.
You took the boosters away from people who paid for it!

usual ignore it and itl go away response from anet face it guys your karma boosts are gone

Their decision to change a product I purchased without notice and without recompense will effect what I buy in the future. I guess their ignore it and it will go away policy works or at least they think it does.

Orangensaft.7139:

that sucks :/

especially since they wrote:
“Previously purchased boosters will still work. "

and you even invested MORE money to convert them to the enchanted reward boosters… and now you lost them

i never converted any Karma boosters myself
because they needed TWO Karma boosters for ONE enchanted reward one…
would have been kind of stupid to delete 50% of my karma boosters… xD
so it was a bit stupid of you too in the first place to convert the karma boosters :P

still not fair from anet to remove the option to chose Karma Boosters now

Same here. I never converted Karma boosters because of that stupid 2:1 ratio.

Another person scouring the Internet trying to figure out why I couldn’t convert my booster back into Karma and arrived at this thread.

If this is a change they wanted, fine, going forward, make that change. But all of us who’ve been posting were blindsided by it, at least grandfather existing boosters in and spawn a different item going forward.

With no solution or acknowledgement of this bug, we’re moving from “really crappy move” into “asinine” territory.

Hate it when I’m wrong, but I’ll freely admit it when I am.

It’s disappointing, the update clearly states that purchased boosters should continue to work, it shouldn’t matter if they were consolidated into another form via enchantment powders. Removing karma boosts from the enchantment boosters is contradictory to the patch notes, given the lack of any warning everyone who bought karma boosters directly from the gem store and subsequently used enchantment powders on them are entitled to a refund.

Seriously considering requesting a refund for my pre purchase.

Really not that bad…

Really not that bad" says the players who didn’t lose 137 karma boosters that they paid 10 silver a pop to make. Boosters that were lost because ANet stealthed removed them.

“Really not that bad” says the players who have lots of karma that they haven’t been using to buy karma items, such as karma cultural weapons that cost millions of karma.

“Really not that bad” says the players who weren’t planning to replace the karma by doing the back to back events in the HOT.

Really not that bad, for those players who think because they don’t have a problem, there isn’t one.

Actually it is really “that bad”.

(And no, I and many others didn’t convert karma boosters. We converted other boosters to a booster that had a karma option so don’t try that argument).

Yeah, this is pretty crappy.

I am also consider requesting a pre-purchase refund… was giving them some more time to come to their senses and offer some sort of restitution… but it is looking more and more likely that is unlikely. Extremely disappointing…. especially since up to this point they had been very good about this sort of thing.

GrandHaven.1052:

Really not that bad…

I’m with you on this but to my knowledge we’ve still gotten no acknowledgement at all from official sources about the change. Enough people are obviously upset as to warrant it.
Come on guys.

I’m also not happy that the Karma boost is gone. I thought it was weird to begin with that it was a 2 for one trade for enchanted, but to remove that option entirely? Pretty lame.

Kashe.3089:

I’m also not happy that the Karma boost is gone. I thought it was weird to begin with that it was a 2 for one trade for enchanted, but to remove that option entirely? Pretty lame.

The 2:1 trade in value was due to karma boosters costing half the gem price of all the others. Without it, people could have bought karma boosters and traded them in to save 50% of the gem price (for just 10s per boost).

Sure am glad I made these instead. Not too smart to turn 2 karma into 1 Enchanted Booster. That would be like throwing away half your boosters.

I wasn’t even aware this was an issue until now (I’ve been saving my boosters until HoT so I know which ones are most useful there), but it’s somewhat upsetting to know that all these boosters had their functionality changed not only without mentioning it, but strongly implying they would function the same way. It’s not a disaster for me personally since I haven’t been saving them with the same sort of purpose, but it’s still not cool.

Buttercup.5871:

An additional post. This is Anet’s advertisement of “Boost enchantment powder” on 3 June 2014:

For the next two weeks, every Black Lion Chest will include an additional reward: Boost Enchantment Powder.

One armor, strength, speed, or rejuvenation booster can be converted to an Enchanted Combat Booster. This booster allows the player to choose from an armor, strength, speed, or rejuvenation buff.

One experience, gathering, crafting, or magic find booster (or two karma boosters) can be converted to an Enchanted Reward Booster. This booster allows the player to choose from an experience, gathering, crafting, magic find, or karma buff.

Source

So clearly, that is how it was advertised. Trusting Anet, I used them as such.

Additionally, then and now (still), the ingame description for boost enchantment powder reads: “Repackages boosts in your inventory to take up less space and allows you to change boosts to another similar type”.

Note that it says “allows”, not “forces”. You pay for these powders, when these were introduced, you payed real money for them. So clearly the point of repackaging is “saving inventory space”. That’s how these were marketed.

I don’t think anyone disagrees about how they were introduced. What we don’t know yet is whether ANet intended to take away the ability to convert them into karma buffs, which was my primary reason for spending the coin to stack them.

Really still no official word? I’ve pretty much stopped playing since it seems like 1) they really don’t care and 2) my items aren’t safe. I mean why even play this game if you aren’t sure if your inventory will be the same from day to day. Sorry but I just really don’t want to feel like I’m playing the lottery every time I log in.

This could have all been avoided by simply communicating this change in advance. And it could all be fixed by simply adding the karma booster back to the selectable boosters on the enchantment powder.

At this point that doesn’t seem likely though so all that I really want now is an explanation/apology. Seriously though, complete silence on this issue and future controversial issues is NOT the way to go. Please learn how to communicate effectively and stop making the people who support your game feel like they don’t matter enough to respond.

Silence is law around here, unless it’s an announcement thread or some cutesie fluff thread. Those, red posts respond to. Real issues like this? Good luck. I’ve reached the point of trolling the forums in case something changes, but it never does. It just seems to get worse.

If you pre-ordered HoT, just get a refund. It’s not getting better and never will. Tell your friends and jump ship. I hear Landmark is fun if you can get in, waiting on EQ:N. Plenty of other games out there where the developers actually care enough to wade amongst we unclean masses.

Well looks like I’ve just picked an awkward time to start making my legendary.
I was under the impression that I could use all those boosters to farm some karma, guess not.

A month without any reply at all on this from Anet most likely means they’re not going to say anything and keep it under the rug until people stop posting. It saddens me to see this behaviour from them, but it’s not like it’s the first time either.

So how come with the enchantment booster I hover my cursor over it and it says “Activate to choose a reward boost that will last for one hour.” but yet it has the experience boost and item boost listed in there and they only last 20 min. Plus I’m not surprised the karma boosts vanished, they did it before with the 750+ glory boosters I had accumulated which I had no way to use them all before they removed it because that was well over a month of play time in PvP. Support never refunded me for the glory boosts I purchased either.

Zoda Slayer.4176:

So how come with the enchantment booster I hover my cursor over it and it says “Activate to choose a reward boost that will last for one hour.” but yet it has the experience boost and item boost listed in there and they only last 20 min. Plus I’m not surprised the karma boosts vanished, they did it before with the 750+ glory boosters I had accumulated which I had no way to use them all before they removed it because that was well over a month of play time in PvP. Support never refunded me for the glory boosts I purchased either.

The 20 minute Exp and Item boosters are the new improved versions the older ones are still 1 hour. I find it far more troubling that you can still exchange Karma boosters using the Enchantment powder with no notice that you can not chose Karma as 1 of the usable options, shady just shady.

Roundabout.1752:

Zoda Slayer.4176:

So how come with the enchantment booster I hover my cursor over it and it says “Activate to choose a reward boost that will last for one hour.” but yet it has the experience boost and item boost listed in there and they only last 20 min. Plus I’m not surprised the karma boosts vanished, they did it before with the 750+ glory boosters I had accumulated which I had no way to use them all before they removed it because that was well over a month of play time in PvP. Support never refunded me for the glory boosts I purchased either.

The 20 minute Exp and Item boosters are the new improved versions the older ones are still 1 hour. I find it far more troubling that you can still exchange Karma boosters using the Enchantment powder with no notice that you can not chose Karma as 1 of the usable options, shady just shady.

Then it should say just “Activate to choose a reward boost.” because it makes me wonder if the 20 minute boost is a screw up and was meant to be 1 hour to compensate for removing the karma boosts.

darksome.1697:

A month without any reply at all on this from Anet most likely means they’re not going to say anything and keep it under the rug until people stop posting. It saddens me to see this behaviour from them, but it’s not like it’s the first time either.

People will keep posting until Anet finds some other topic to combine it with to hide it. I know I’ll keep asking for answers every now and then.

Pockets.3201:

darksome.1697:

A month without any reply at all on this from Anet most likely means they’re not going to say anything and keep it under the rug until people stop posting. It saddens me to see this behaviour from them, but it’s not like it’s the first time either.

People will keep posting until Anet finds some other topic to combine it with to hide it. I know I’ll keep asking for answers every now and then.

Yup, there have been other topics that have gone unanswered for long periods of time and then eventually addressed, sometimes without a comment or even a patch note.

Etybagig.6012:

Really still no official word? I’ve pretty much stopped playing since it seems like 1) they really don’t care and 2) my items aren’t safe. I mean why even play this game if you aren’t sure if your inventory will be the same from day to day. Sorry but I just really don’t want to feel like I’m playing the lottery every time I log in.

This. Tuesday afternoons have become increasingly stressful as of late and I see no reason to purchase items with real money when they can be modified for any reason and without a concrete explanation.

Still would like to hear from ANet about the reason for removing karma boosts and whether or not they could put them back in for a month so we could use them up, like ANet did for the glory boosters.

Just sad story to keep the topic bumped:

I used my very last bonfire (karma selected) at teq last week and then was disconnected 2 minutes before he spawned. The map organized so nicely, defenses filled quickly, then poof! there go my karma boosts!

Karma booster was the main one I used -.-

If they gave us a heads up I could converted a bunch of boosters into Karma and actually USED some of these useless boosters.

The new boosters aren’t any better. Just a different dog with different fleas.

Dont see why they dont adress this honestly.
Its not like its a big deal to just explain the decision..

Todd.6573:

Dont see why they dont adress this honestly.
Its not like its a big deal to just explain the decision..

It is a little puzzling, yeah.

Todd.6573:

Dont see why they dont adress this honestly.
Its not like its a big deal to just explain the decision..

It could be that higher-ups don’t allow anyone to explain it. It happened few times in the past.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Todd.6573:

Dont see why they dont adress this honestly.
Its not like its a big deal to just explain the decision..

It could be that higher-ups don’t allow anyone to explain it. It happened few times in the past.

People are using words like “disgusting” and “egregious” in this thread, do you think “the booster evolution has been an iterative project and with change people will lose out, we wanted to remove Karma Boosters from the collective booster for reason X” will mean anything to these crazies?

The best course of action is to ignore this thread – because Karma Boosters are insignificant and frankly people acting like this is a big deal need to get some perspective.

Coulter.2315:

acting like this is a big deal

I dunno if its a big deal but after my glory boosters were deleted and my FotM level reset you start to see a trend. ANet a few times now deciding its ok to simply remove or delete things.

So I dunno if its a big deal but its certainly a problem that they delete things with impunity.

Then again if your new to the game ‘one type of booster’ is not a big deal.

FearedbytheGods.8617:

Coulter.2315:

acting like this is a big deal

I dunno if its a big deal but after my glory boosters were deleted and my FotM level reset you start to see a trend. ANet a few times now deciding its ok to simply remove or delete things.

So I dunno if its a big deal but its certainly a problem that they delete things with impunity.

Then again if your new to the game ‘one type of booster’ is not a big deal.

Well your Glory Booster removal is a joke right?

Glory was removed as a reward with the March 18, 2014 game update, making this item (Glory Booster) and the effect it grants useless. Players who bought glory boosters with gems and didn’t use them before the update can get a refund.
Glory Boosters stopped being being sold in the Gem Store on February 11, 2014.

^ from Wiki

The currency was retired – of course they removed the boosters… With Months of notice btw…

Coulter.2315:

your a joke right?

You could note my observations.

Or you can do what you did and copy wiki then talk a side point I didn’t bring up while ignoring points I did make, while also changing vocabulary I used.

Retired, deleted, removed call it what you want didn’t help fotm any. I’m glad you had time to prepare with your glory boosters tho….

Back on point, its not a good precedence they’re setting.

FearedbytheGods.8617:

Coulter.2315:

your a joke right?

You could note my observations.

Or you can do what you did and copy wiki then talk a side point I didn’t bring up while ignoring points I did make, while also changing vocabulary I used.

Retired, deleted, removed call it what you want didn’t help fotm any. I’m glad you had time to prepare with your glory boosters tho….

Back on point, its not a good precedence they’re setting.

Incredible! “while also changing vocabulary I used.” when I quoted your entire post and in return you selectively quote me to make it look like I wrote “your a joke right?” (which should be ’you’re’ unless you also wanted to make me appear stupid – I’ll assume you aren’t that devious, this time).

You cried your glory boosters were deleted – you were warned to use them Months in advance. They were USELESS after a point in time and you still wanted them? (or just didn’t use them all in time – either way it makes no difference). This was a WORTHLESS example of Anet taking an item from you, thats what I showed with the quotes..

Devildoc.6721:

Orangensaft.7139:

that sucks :/

especially since they wrote:
“Previously purchased boosters will still work. "

and you even invested MORE money to convert them to the enchanted reward boosters… and now you lost them

i never converted any Karma boosters myself
because they needed TWO Karma boosters for ONE enchanted reward one…
would have been kind of stupid to delete 50% of my karma boosters… xD
so it was a bit stupid of you too in the first place to convert the karma boosters :P

still not fair from anet to remove the option to chose Karma Boosters now

Same here. I never converted Karma boosters because of that stupid 2:1 ratio.

Dito. Best part is, you can still convert them at 2:1 and endup with no ability to select the karma boost after conversion. O_O

Well, the whole point there, is why would you convert something you wanted at a 50% loss?