Guild Wars 2

Dreamthistle weapons have been reintroduced. Yay! Very beautiful, highly sought after weapons that haven’t been seen since the Tower of Nightmares over a year ago (maybe longer? Ya, longer.). But that isn’t the issue.

Those reintroduced Dreamthistle weapons cost 3 tickets to obtain. That is 30 scraps to which a minimum is at least 10 chest to open; if one was even lucky enough to get 3 scraps every chest (an impossible task).

~1 key is 125 gems ($1.56)

~5 keys is 450 gems ($5.62)

~25 keys is 2100 gems ($26.25)

But you cannot buy gems in individual, they must be bought in packs of …

~800 for $10

~1600 for $20

~2800 for $35

~4000 for $50

~8000 for $100

So for a player to purchase the largest key pack, they must get at least $30 worth of gems (1600+800), which would leave them with 300 gems extra to spend on whatever else in the store they’d like.

For the sake of trying to get scraps through investigating numbers, I went ahead and used 3000 gems of the 4k included in the HoT pre-purchase. That is $37.50 worth of gems used.

~2x Dye Packs (8 common, 4 uncommon. All duplicates of pre-owned. 0 Rare, even after forging them.)

~2x Crimson Dye Kits (2 common, pre-owned dyes. 0 Rare).

~4x minis (one rare Holographic Scarlet, one account bound Raven, 2 common).

~2x Total Makeover Kits.

~8 Teleport to Friend (how useless is this item anyways? It seems like a total padding of junk into the chest. This game has the most travel friendly system of Waypoints in any MMO ever. Why oh why would anyone need this item?!)

~1x Plush Tybalt Backpack skin

~1x Killer Whale Quaggan Backpack skin

~11x Boost Enchantment Powder

~3x Bank Access Express

~3x Trading Post Express

~2x Instant Repair Canisters (Why weren’t these removed with the change to the cost of repairs? I could understand their usefulness when repairing full armor sets cost 1-2g, but now? No, they should have been removed a long while ago.)

~1x Utility Primer

~1x Metabolic Primer

~10x Mystery Tonics (Had the Endless Mystery Tonic since Week-1, so kind of a pointless item to me personally. And with so many other transformation items, it again screams ‘padding’ for the chests.)

~A dozen or so (12+) Boosts (not sure which ones, banked them all with other boosts I already have in my bank)

~17 Black Lion Ticket Scraps

Saved the best for the last of the list, right? That totals in 1.7 tickets, not even a full 2 tickets for $37.50. And how many tickets are needed for the reintroduced Dreamthistle weapons? 3 Tickets. THREE! The cheapest weapons out of all available right now still cost a minimum of 2 tickets.

I do recall some patches ago that they [ArenaNet] said they were going to clean up the Black Lion Gem Store as well as improve the chests to make them better. Whatever happened to those changes? Well, the did remove a bunch of variety items from the Store, but also did the same to the chests (for the worse).

Remember when chests had Minis 3-Pack? Now those were removed here (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/daydreamers-weapons-snow-owl-mail-carrier-and-a-black-lion-chest-update-in-the-gem-store/) and replaced with an Egg here (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/white-feather-wings-gallant-weapon-set-and-black-lion-chest-update-in-the-gem-store/). That Egg only contains 1 mini, taking up the same rewards slot as the Mini 3-Pack used to. 1/3rd the prize for the same price.

The same day they added in two Mail Carriers to the circulation, although their rarity is probably up there as well. Having opened multiple chests between then and now, I have yet to see either of them.

(cont.)

So the issue remains that the BL Chests have been padded with a lot of useless things, while the more of the useful things have been pushed to an extreme rarity or removed altogether. And many of them have been made Account Bound only, thus removing any trade value at all (the Raven mini mentioned above is an example of this). I know “it’s RNG, man!”. But even with randomized odds, it should not be that bad when customers are spending money on your product. I realize I could have just as easily received some 371gold from just straight out exchanging the gems across the line, but not the point or reason.

There needs to be a serious revamp of the drop rate of items within the BL Chests as well as a hard look at the items contained within and whether or not they hold any value to the customer. Repair Canisters and Friend Teleports are two items that just hold no value at all and need to be removed completely from the loot table. Boost dust just the same (considering there’s a vendor that sells it for cheap right next to the Black Lion trading post person). (TL:DR part) The excessive padding of these Chests has to change for the better, for the consideration of the player (i.e. customer).

Arena Time Tokens should be removed too. Thankfully didn’t get any -this time-, but have also seen them as a complete waste of loot table, especially for those PvEers who do not interact at all with the PvP arenas. They too are account bound, so we cannot even sell them to PvPers, who -thanks to the rewards system- earn quite a bit of gold to buy said Arena Time Tokens directly.

Also, lastly I’ll again mention the 3-ticket cost. Really? The item used to cost 5 tickets (when even available) and to drop it to 3 is only a 40% discount for whatever limited time frame for their reintroduction. These weapons celebrate the history of Scarlet Briar and Living World Season #1, yet this is the cheapest they become? When Balthazar weapons were introduced, not only were they 1 Ticket each, but the Chaos and Torment weapons were also reduced to 1 Ticket each (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/balthazars-weapons-mini-piglet-and-mini-orange-kitten-in-the-gem-store/).

This keeping of artificial expense for a reintroduction feels less like a reintroduction and more like a way to get players to purchase more chests with a far less than courteous drop rate. I really don’t want to say “cash grab” because I I don’t want to believe in that sort of thing with this company. This latest change and the evidence kind of disagrees with that, though.

Gambling sucks, you could have just received 5 tickets and we would have never heard a thing about it. Some win, some lose. The best value would be to convert that money to gold then just buy the weapon you want.

As someone who doesn’t have the dreamthistle weapons and could not afford them before this patch… I still don’t think they should be reintroducing old skins that are worth 1,000+ gold on the market at all. Sure, fix the rates and acquisition on new stuff that comes out but don’t do things to tank the value of limited time items that some people have already sunk a fortune into buying. I’m sure as hell glad i didn’t spend 1,400 g on an exclusive skin just for Anet to artificially make it worth something like 300 g after the fact.

You must be new to the whole TF2 Mann Co crate concept. Every single one of your complaints is the entire purpose of the business model….. you buy keys in bulk to gamble on a small chance of something really cool. And then increase the base cost over time so the trade value (thus interest in them) only goes up. This then drives the speculation side of the market to invest huge amounts of money on a regular basis.

Its also the basis of the Mystic Toilet, except it uses objects in-game rather then externally, and intended to function as a wealth sink.

If it was even remotely cost effective, you’d have enough people with the resources to control the market. At least this way its completely unfavorable for everyone involved. :P

Should have converted the 3k gems to gold and bought a skin off the tp.

If these had to come back, I admit I would have preferred to see them come back at 7-10 full tickets. Don’t have any, but to retain their value it would have been better to see them value them closer to their market value so that people that did have them would not feel like their value was decreased. I like that there are limited time items in game even when I don’t have them either. It shows value over time.

Its all Evon Gnashblade’s fault

And that is why I only do key runs to get scraps/tickets. It doesn’t burn near as bad to get a crafting booster, a repair kit and a dye I already have.

panzer.6034:

As someone who doesn’t have the dreamthistle weapons and could not afford them before this patch… I still don’t think they should be reintroducing old skins that are worth 1,000+ gold on the market at all. Sure, fix the rates and acquisition on new stuff that comes out but don’t do things to tank the value of limited time items that some people have already sunk a fortune into buying. I’m sure as hell glad i didn’t spend 1,400 g on an exclusive skin just for Anet to artificially make it worth something like 300 g after the fact.

There is no such thing as a value guarantee, you chose to spend that much money on it, anet is under no obligation to keep it that high so you can feel like a special snowflake.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

And that is why I only do key runs to get scraps/tickets. It doesn’t burn near as bad to get a crafting booster, a repair kit and a dye I already have.

A wiser person then most of us….

Course the account bound mini that you already have 10 of is another ouch. Remember if you plan on gambling plan on losing and you can only be pleasantly surprised.

It’s how RNG works I’m afraid. I bought the same thing, got 20 scraps and 1 full ticket.

So many skins I’d have bought out right, but I refuse to gamble.
And sadly enough people are outright stupid enough to do so they can afford to lose my money.
Sorry, people aren’t going to like hearing that, but the truth hurts sometimes.

A reduction to 1 ticket would be hugely unfair to those people who paid gazillions for it.

Having said that, it is always better and cheaper to buy off the TP, than gamble with tickets.

I’d rather have them come back at 1 ticket. Their value is how they look, that’s it. Giving players more outfit and gear appearance options is a good thing. I don’t care what they’re selling for on the gemstore yesterday vs today.

Actually, what I’d really like to see is scraps turned into tickets, and current tickets turned into stacks of 10 tickets. Keep the ticket prices the same, then, and just let more of the items flow into our wardrobes. I’d be far more tempted to buy chests instead of just farming for them if that was done, because progress towards the skins I want would be much more reasonable.

This argument and analysis comes up all the time.

• Some skins are going to be low supply at times and the market price will reflect that.
• You never have to gamble to obtain a BL skin; they can always be bought on the TP.
• Even coveted skins will not rise in price “much” after they stop being available for 1 ticket. At times, I’ve gotten 3-ticket & 5-ticket skins for less than the market price of equivalent “current” skins.
• The biggest price increase only happens after the skin is entirely removed from acquisition-via-ticket, which is usually 12-18 months after the original introduction.

tl;dr this only costs real-world money for those that insist that they only want to acquire the skins via tickets. It is always more efficient and economical to pay the market price on the TP, while the skins are available for tickets.

Even if ticket scraps were guaranteed with each chest, you would still be paying over US$30 for one weapon skin. $10 per weapon skin if you caught it early when the weapons were 1 ticket each.

Keys aren’t worth it if you’re just trying to get skins, even moreso when the scraps are locked behind RNG.

You can always get scraps/tickets at no cost whatsoever; key runs allow any player to bypass cost.

Good luck.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

panzer.6034:

As someone who doesn’t have the dreamthistle weapons and could not afford them before this patch… I still don’t think they should be reintroducing old skins that are worth 1,000+ gold on the market at all. Sure, fix the rates and acquisition on new stuff that comes out but don’t do things to tank the value of limited time items that some people have already sunk a fortune into buying. I’m sure as hell glad i didn’t spend 1,400 g on an exclusive skin just for Anet to artificially make it worth something like 300 g after the fact.

There is no such thing as a value guarantee, you chose to spend that much money on it, anet is under no obligation to keep it that high so you can feel like a special snowflake.

So I’m a “special snowflake” despite saying i didn’t have the skins? lol.

Right, anet is under no obligation to not to tank market values of expensive items or screw up player confidence in any mechanical aspect of their game. They could give out precursors for 5g or turn all current dyes to pink next update if they really wanted to, but that doesn’t mean these are good ideas just because they have the ability to go through with them.

panzer.6034:

Right, anet is under no obligation to not to tank market values of expensive items or screw up player confidence in any mechanical aspect of their game. They could give out precursors for 5g or turn all current dyes to pink next update if they really wanted to, but that doesn’t mean these are good ideas just because they have the ability to go through with them.

To be fair, when BL skins started getting removed ANet did clarify it wasn’t permanent and that they would be rotating them back into the game, the only thing they weren’t clear about was the schedule of the rotation. The prices became inflated despite buyers and sellers knowing it would be undermined at any moment, ANet is not liable to support the price after having given fair warning.

I was extremely excited this morning to see dreamthistle weapons back… until I saw ‘3 tickets’. Anet lost me there.

:-( should be 1, considering how long we had to wait for them to come back, but it is what it is I guess >_<

Pandaman.4758:

panzer.6034:

Right, anet is under no obligation to not to tank market values of expensive items or screw up player confidence in any mechanical aspect of their game. They could give out precursors for 5g or turn all current dyes to pink next update if they really wanted to, but that doesn’t mean these are good ideas just because they have the ability to go through with them.

To be fair, when BL skins started getting removed ANet did clarify it wasn’t permanent and that they would be rotating them back into the game, the only thing they weren’t clear about was the schedule of the rotation. The prices became inflated despite buyers and sellers knowing it would be undermined at any moment, ANet is not liable to support the price after having given fair warning.

This is so very much true. The inflated price is because players hording them away while putting limited market listings in order to inflate the price (basically cornering the market). That and combined with how long they’ve been out of market production by being unlisted.

The price was insanely impossible to afford them even with just gem-to-gold transfer. The weapons range from 1100g for an axe to 1400+g for a greatsword. Although a fool I am to neglect to realize that with the reintroduction to the market that the price would tank to where now they’re around 300-500g each as of this posting (thanks GW2Spidy!). At the now current market I would have been able to afford a currency exchange and directly purchase a skin from the TP.

That is neither here nor there. The point of my post remains the highlighted aspect of it: BL Chest are overstuffed with ‘filler’ junk that serves no purpose or value to the player-customers that purchase them. I’m fully aware of what these things are, but even the lowest of items to come from these MYSTERY BOXES (no, they’re not gambling boxes, because that would be against US Federal gambling laws as well as many international ones too) should have value to the customers that purchase them. There are other game companies like Trion and cringe EA/Bioware that have boxes that serve a far better purpose and have far better odds for their customers than those of the BL Chests. How is it that A.Net cannot do the same?

Last night I did 100 keys.

• 45 BL ticket scraps
• 1 BL claim ticket

Nothing else worth mentioning other than getting dyes out of the dye kits of which I gave to friends because I already own all the dyes.

Of all my time spent gambling/buying + opening I’d say over 1000 keys or more at this current point in time (end of year-ish) I strongly believe the ‘rewards’ are at an all time low. Tombs of Knowledge used to drop like hot cakes around last year, I only got 13 ToKs out of those 100 keys as opposed to last year if getting around 30-40 in a batch of 100 keys. RNG is RNG though, whether they tweak the drops or not.

Even if you buy of the TP, the skins are going to be a good investment. Buy low and sell high.

Simply put, those players who spent over 1000+ golds to buy the skin are screwed terribly. (i am glad i havent) This is a warning and lesson to tell all of you that you shouldn’t spend 1000+ golds on a black lion weapons. Anet can reintroduced the skins back with just one click and you are screwed. I will guess the next weapon they reintroduced will be fused weapons.

Ice Blue Eyes.6420:

Simply put, those players who spent over 1000+ golds to buy the skin are screwed terribly. (i am glad i havent) This is a warning and lesson to tell all of you that you shouldn’t spend 1000+ golds on a black lion weapons. Anet can reintroduced the skins back with just one click and you are screwed. I will guess the next weapon they reintroduced will be fused weapons.

Well, yes and no.

If you are getting the weapon for yourself to complete a look, is it better to spend gold that you have or to hold back for months or even years and hope that what you want will be cheaper one day? You could wait, but then you don’t have the enjoyment of having exactly the weapon skin you want but have to use your second choice.

If the thought that it may one day be cheaper is more important to you than the enjoyment of using that weapon skin, then it is better to wait the months or years in hope of it coming back.

Why, do hot dogs come 10 to a package while the buns come in packages of 8?

And as others have pointed out, it’s better off to buy gems and convert them to gold and then use the gold to buy the skin you want. The chances of getting tickets and scraps of tickets are too low and not guaranteed.