Guild Wars 2

I’m happy to read that Anet have decided to lower the cost of scribing/guildhall decorations.

But,
What about those who spent way too much money on this already?

Idea:
Give the guildhall double-up on all decorations crafted before this was announce (1st April).

Alternative, players like me who have supported you in this journey and bought 30.000+ gems and converted them to gold over the past months to be able to level scribe and fill guildhall up, – maybe give some of those gems back as compensation?

Nuggi.7861:

I’m happy to read that Anet have decided to lower the cost of scribing/guildhall decorations.

But,
What about those who spent way too much money on this already?

Idea:
Give the guildhall double-up on all decorations crafted before this was announce (1st April).

Alternative, players like me who have supported you in this journey and bought 30.000+ gems and converted them to gold over the past months to be able to level scribe and fill guildhall up, – maybe give some of those gems back as compensation?

Maybe not. Your choice to spend cash to buff your guild hall, your choice to not to wait for ANet to address the numerous complaints about the costs.

We’ve known for ages that ANet will change supply, demand, and direct costs of items|currency used for various functions. They have never provided refunds (with a tiny number of exceptions for when there was a specific price error on their part). When ecto drop rates were bugged too low, they didn’t offer up ectos to people who missed out (or even those doing research for science).

tl;dr I wouldn’t expect compensation because ANet chose to renormalize prices, supply, or demand of any function…including scribing and/or decorations.

Nuggi.7861:

I’m happy to read that Anet have decided to lower the cost of scribing/guildhall decorations.

But,
What about those who spent way too much money on this already?

Idea:
Give the guildhall double-up on all decorations crafted before this was announce (1st April).

Alternative, players like me who have supported you in this journey and bought 30.000+ gems and converted them to gold over the past months to be able to level scribe and fill guildhall up, – maybe give some of those gems back as compensation?

You wont get anything. The only time, that I’m aware of, they gave something in return to an announced change, was when they removed MF from gear stats. It’s like"waa~ waa~ they changed something, I must demand compensation" has become the community’s slogan or something.

I think this request makes sense. Saying that we all knew the price nerf was coming it could be in 1 month, or 1 year from the first announcement. Meaning you’d either wait and have an empty guildhall until it’s fixed or not. Sounds totally reasonable (both fairness and code wise (I guess)) to either give everyone double up of the currently owned decorations or give people back half the mats spent. Either way those who spent a lot gets a lot back as well.

If people get back half the mats they spent, do others get back half the mats they donated to the guild scribe?

If you go to the store and buy a product, or buy the materials to make something, then make it. When the price on the item or materials goes down, do you go to the store and demand “compensation”?

Aidan Savage.2078:

Nuggi.7861:

I’m happy to read that Anet have decided to lower the cost of scribing/guildhall decorations.

But,
What about those who spent way too much money on this already?

Idea:
Give the guildhall double-up on all decorations crafted before this was announce (1st April).

Alternative, players like me who have supported you in this journey and bought 30.000+ gems and converted them to gold over the past months to be able to level scribe and fill guildhall up, – maybe give some of those gems back as compensation?

You wont get anything. The only time, that I’m aware of, they gave something in return to an announced change, was when they removed MF from gear stats. It’s like"waa~ waa~ they changed something, I must demand compensation" has become the community’s slogan or something.

Actually, with the removal of MF from gear, they let people turn that gear into whatever stat combo they wanted. Because the gear became useless, it was missing a stat, and Anet couldn’t just change it to a certain one, since they didn’t know what people had before. It’s not like I got anything for free, I just got what I had already earned.

I completely agree with what you have said. Even if Anet has been telling us that they are looking into the prices of scribing they have made no changes what so ever during the last 5 months. Players should not miss out on tons of gold if they decide to participate in one of the expansions features. Now if Anet decides to lower the cost of scribing materials, some kind of compensation to players who have spent alot of gold needs to be given out. It’s just more than fair.

If you think that there should be some compensation for them reducing the costs, then by the same logic if they were to raise the cost they should somehow charge everyone who had gotten it cheaper.

Cost adjustments for nearly everything in existence are almost never retroactively applied (in any form, including other compensations). It’s almost always from the point of time of the change going forward. There’s nothing unfair about that. The cost is what it is when you paid it, not the lowest cost at all points in the timeline.

~EW

I think the logic goes you’ve technically benefited either through a fancy guildhall or through selling your wares during this period that you shouldn’t need compensation.

You could have easily waited till Anet took a look at scribing but instead knew the costs going in and spent those gems/gold/mats anyway. In doing so you made decorations other guildhalls didn’t have, or sold things for high costs that others who were waiting could not. You’ve in essence compensated yourself.

As someone who spent over 10000g, nah it’s fine. You can’t expect anet to compensate you every time they change something. Where does it start/stop? Those guys who made nevermore before soft wood plank changes? The scribes? etc

I demand that they give me lots and lots of stacks of soft wood planks. One stack for every stack I made while they cost 4 logs per plank.

Early adopters knew the risks and paid the price, that’s how it always works with new things.

Well, nothing were never announced or decided regarding lower the price on scribe/decorations. Rumors circulate about a lot in the game, but had I known this, i wouldn’t have used so many rl-money on this.
I have played this game since start, and I don’t complain about changes in prices (that’s just how the game is) – but this time I do feel I have been robbed, if Anet don’t give some sort of compensation in gems-return or double-up on already created decorations.
So stop compare this to changes in wood-planks and silly stuff.

Nothing was announced about soft wood changes either. I don’t see how an exact comparison is ‘silly’ just because it doesn’t fit with your rhetoric.

Nuggi.7861:

Well, nothing were never announced or decided regarding lower the price on scribe/decorations. Rumors circulate about a lot in the game, but had I known this, i wouldn’t have used so many rl-money on this.

ANet is under no obligation to let us know the changes they make until they’ve made them.

It’s polite if they do. It’s helpful if they do. But, it’s not mandatory they do.

~EW

I disagree with the OP too. If you buy a Dyson Vacuum Cleaner from a store at £200, and then six months later there’s a discount on that same model, you’re not entitled to a refund of the difference. And that’s real, not pretend money!!

penelopehannibal.8947:

And that’s real, not pretend money!!

My money is pretty real too. I bought many gems for real money and converted them into golds. If it was just ingame money I wouldn’t mind.

I was waiting for this thread. It was about a week late by my calculations.

No you should not get compensation.

@Nuggi Your money may be real but you had the choice to not spend real money to get the guild stuff. It wasn’t mandatory to spend real money to upgrade your guild

I don’t get why people react with hate towards my question to Anet. I have not at any point said I was forced to buy gems, or that Anet forced me to build in guildhall.
This forum is for questions, and my question were if Anet had considered any compensation regards such major changes. A simple question, and very fair in my opinion.

I don’t expect any compensation, not because I think we don’t deserve one for being “early adopters”, but because of the technical difficulty of giving us one.
e.g.
How do you refund? Who should get the refund? Does it appear in the guild bank – but what if the guild has every slot occupied? What gets refunded, coin, materials, slivers?

It would be a nice gesture, if we could get a free special decoration from Fion for each guild level we have achieved – I just don’t count on it.

Just make it simple as I suggested. Double-up everything crafted in guildhall.

As someone who spend way to much gold since HoT launch on scribing n guildhall. I do hope Anet will give this a look, double the already made deco’s seem fair enough. I really do not expect any gem/gold/craft mats refund, since itll require to much effort on their part.

Okay – perhaps a graph will better illustrate what is going on?

Costs also decrease over time (once the early adopters) have done there stuff..
Anet is just accelerating the process to enable more people to have this stuff.

You paid the price for adopting early.

Economics 101

Nuggi.7861:

penelopehannibal.8947:

And that’s real, not pretend money!!

My money is pretty real too. I bought many gems for real money and converted them into golds. If it was just ingame money I wouldn’t mind.

Your money was real, once you turned it into gems/gold it stopped being real money and became in game currency.

Just because the price on something decreases, it doesn’t mean you are entitled to the difference compared to what you paid.

I’m amazed by the intelligence from people in this thread. So bright and clever, and Miku could spot that once the real money are converted into gems → and then into gold = it’s not real-life money anymore.

But that was not the point
I guess I should stop reply to posts like this. Not worth the time.

Nuggi.7861:

I’m amazed by the intelligence from people in this thread. So bright and clever, and Miku could spot that once the real money are converted into gems -> and then into gold = it’s not real-life money anymore.

But that was not the point
I guess I should stop reply to posts like this. Not worth the time.

Yea I’m also amazed as well It’s not like you said:

Nuggi.7861:

My money is pretty real too. I bought many gems for real money and converted them into golds. If it was just ingame money I wouldn’t mind.

I’d suggest reading the posts but… That’s your own post I would think you know what it says.

But on topic, real or game currency, it’s extremely rare to buy something, have the price drop and get the difference refunded. (how often does this actually happen?)

We aren’t reacting with hate, we are reacting toward the notion that a player is “owed” anything when a game system is revamped. It’s a can of worms no company wants to open because there is no stopping it. Were players reimbursed when many bought traits with SP and gold? Or when a crafting recipe is changed? Or a new source of materials is introduced so price plummets?

Very, very early on players realized the cost of scribe was seriously out of wack as a player crafting skill. I’m of the mind that scribe should have been a GH feature and not a crafting discipline but obviously it was a bone to throw at crafters for the expansion.

My main suggestion was not to get the money refunded, but for Anet to double-up all decorations already crafted in guildhall. I assume that is not that big of a deal to code that.
I know it may be too much of a work to start refund mats or gems to people.

Behellagh:
Well, since guild decorations is not owned by 1 player, but by the guild itself, no player will benefit from this if Anet decide to double all guildhalls already crafted decorations. So I can’t see how this can open up for all sort of cases where players want refund.

A player created the deco, even if it’s owned by the guild. Adding a second one is giving something out, technicly doubling the player who crafted the decos return. Being reimbursed with extra items or a “refund” on finances could both open up the issue.

I would love to have anything I made doubled if the price drops. That’s just not how economies usually work.

If any compensation happens it will probably be similar to the wardrobe change and how people had two of the same legendary. They added a title specially for that as a form of “compensation” or acknowledgment that those players crafted two of the same legendary before the wardrobe change by adding twice told legend. There were a lot of debates asking to have a process where a duplicate legendary owner could unbind a weapon one time to sell it but they did not go that route.

So I would not expect actual compensation.

Nuggi.7861:

Behellagh:
Well, since guild decorations is not owned by 1 player, but by the guild itself, no player will benefit from this if Anet decide to double all guildhalls already crafted decorations. So I can’t see how this can open up for all sort of cases where players want refund.

My comment wasn’t targeting your suggestion on GH decorations but others who want a kick back of gold to compensate leveling scribe.

Example – Intel releases a processor that is as good as mine but for half the price. Should Intel give me money back? Now think about what you are asking.

At least, the title “I have many leather bound books” for maxing scribing!

People refrence real life products because there is actually an in game economy. To be honest it’s just easier to use examples from real life because most people will have some familiarity with them. Let’s refrain from demeaning others intellect while making a statement, it adds nothing to the conversation.

Yes it’s a system design change. It’s still the same as in the example: Company sells product A, due to a change in the way product A is made, it’s now cheaper to produce, the producing company does not refund prior purchases, and they do not often hand out an extra product to consumers that purchased one for the higher price.

Note that we have had some heads up that costs would be changing:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Scribing-Costs/first posted a month ago as a followup to Guild Chat comments from 2 months ago as referenced in https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Anet-to-reduce-decoration-scribe-cost

So that further complicates any compensation considerations as we’ve known for two months that the costs would be coming down at some point — once one’s on notice that it will cost less later and one still spends one’s resources now, isn’t that a choice one made? How does ANet determine when the expenses happened?

Nuggi.7861:

This forum is for questions, and my question were if Anet had considered any compensation regards such major changes. A simple question, and very fair in my opinion.

How about if the OP considers the question of compensation first: how would ot even work?

Changes to Supply
If ANet increases the drop rate on an item, how should they determine compensation? For example, if flax fiber drops 50% more often resulting in prices dropping to 60% of their current value:

• Do they go through TP logs and refund everyone 40% of what they spent?
• Do they take 40% away from everyone who sold fiber?
• Is it really a 40% drop? What base price do they use? Today’s? the price at release (low, before anyone knew what it was)? the price at peak (when someone released a scribe-maxing guide)?

Changes to Demand
How does ANet compensate people if they reduce the crafting costs? For example, when soft wood planks went from 4 logs to 3, were they supposed to:

• Review the crafting records and find everyone who refined plans and refund one log per plank?
• How about people who sold those planks at a premium, are they supposed to lose the ‘extra’ coin they got from selling at peak prices?
• What about people who sold logs, not planks? What about people who bought logs to craft?

Nuggi.7861:

I don’t get why people react with hate towards my question to Anet. I have not at any point said I was forced to buy gems, or that Anet forced me to build in guildhall.

I don’t see anyone “reacting with hate” — it’s just hard to understand what you think should happen.

Sure you didn’t say you were forced to buy gems with RL cash. What you said was:

players like me who have …bought 30.000+ gems and converted them to gold …to be able to level scribe and fill guildhall up, – maybe give some of those gems back as compensation?

That states plainly that you believe that ANet should treat you differently because you spent RL cash. Do you really think that’s fair to the community as a whole?

tl;dr it’s not “hate” to disagree with the assumption that there’s something to compensate or that it’s even practical to do so.

Doubling up already made decs (or something similar depending on price scaling) seems a good solution to me.

A lot of scribes levelled through spamming WvW upgrades etc. so they still be losing out a bit, but it would take a lot of the sting out of the reduction. Also a lot of scribes got donations from their guilds, so giving stuff to the guilds rather than the scribe seems nice.

Either that or a title or something, like they did with legendary doubles.

If you get compensation for that I would like the same treatment regarding all the Gems bought to upgrade guild halls before HoT where they stripped it all from us.

Some people had solo bank guilds that were completely maxed out so they could apply +5 buffs, various banners and access to certain guild siege.

From me, it’s an absolute “No No No” to any form of compensation and not just in this case.
If the compensation culture gets hold then the devs will end up being unable or unwilling to make changes or introduce new stuff because of the burden of having to compensate half the players for stuff they already had. We saw the same thing with the shared bag slots. If you buy something today, you pay today’s price for it. What happens to the price tomorrow is not relevant.

And to anyone who spent RL cash on guild decorations, you are free to make that choice but always be aware of the sequence:
RL Cash → Pixels → No residual value

DoctorDing.5890:

From me, it’s an absolute “No No No” to any form of compensation and not just in this case.
If the compensation culture gets hold then the devs will end up being unable or unwilling to make changes or introduce new stuff because of the burden of having to compensate half the players for stuff they already had. We saw the same thing with the shared bag slots. If you buy something today, you pay today’s price for it. What happens to the price tomorrow is not relevant.

And to anyone who spent RL cash on guild decorations, you are free to make that choice but always be aware of the sequence:
RL Cash -> Pixels -> No residual value

Sure, but the flip side of that is that players become afraid to invest in high cost things because the rules can change. People get frustrated and (in worst case scenarios) leave when they feel like their hard work has been invalidated, it just isn’t fun to play in that sort of environment. However the bigger issue, and the one most directly relevant to ANet, is why would anyone who bought gems to make decs this time buy them again in future?

We aren’t talking about common occurrence changes here. We’re talking about individual players spending thousands of gold. That sort of change doesn’t happen often so there’s no reason to suggest the devs need to be scared of making other changes.

This also doesn’t need to be anything complicated or game breaking. Double the amount of individual decs in a guild’s account where significant cost changes were made. Give a title and some AP to already earned scribing levels (heck, just retire the current achievements and introduce a second set that add AP on to the old ones, like with minis). Just, something.

Early adopter prestige.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

Sure, but the flip side of that is that players become afraid to invest in high cost things because the rules can change. People get frustrated and (in worst case scenarios) leave when they feel like their hard work has been invalidated, it just isn’t fun to play in that sort of environment.

That sort of frustration isn’t something that ANet can prevent — they are always going to be adjusting the game — including crafting and acquisition costs — based on ensuring the best game they can. The simple solution to “becom[ing] afraid to invest in high cost things” is to avoid being an early adopter, which is when the demand is typically the highest and the supply is the lowest, meaning incredibly high costs.

The OP chose to accelerate their guild’s push towards certain upgrades and the OP further chose to fund that partly through RL cash. I don’t think any gaming company can be expected to protect folks from making those decisions.

tl;dr the OP wanted something fast and chose to invest RL funds to do so. They have already received what they wanted and therefore there’s nothing to compensate.

the day when they change commander tag to 300g
instead of refunding all existing tag and remove tags from everyone’s account, they chose to refund selectively (only to those who buy more than 3 tags, worth more than 300g) and give free upgrades to those who bought less

base on that trend, no, u not gonna be refunded.

If Anet refunds guilds then I want a refund for all of the soft wood logs I refined when you still needed four.

And the patch arrived.
Double up everything in guildhall will not even compensate this. You can now scribe 25-50 pieces of the same cost as 1 old.

We want our gold/gems back.

I have been waiting three years for them to start compensating me for all these awesome forum posts I make, so the line starts behind me (and no, all the infraction points don’t count as compensation).

this is hilarious. thanks op.