Guild Wars 2

Yeah right, They only made the statement its going to be fixed to silence the community. I look for the fix to take as long as it took to come out wit precursor crafting… Oh, wait.

Wetpaw.3487:

ipan.4356:

Where’s the apology on behalf of Anet for the attempt at a shameless money grab, eh Gaille?

And for your previous poor behavior?

……ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead……she has nothing to do with the decisions made by NCsoft or Anet, and nowhere near the top of that totem pole. Express concerns to the guys/gals that continue to lead this game…in the direction and state it’s in now (twitter is a good start, gaming sites, and NCsoft).

You don’t go after the mailman when your cell phone bill comes in wrong, go to the source.

No, you don’t go after the mailman. Some dogs do though…
Considering this issue has largely been addressed, beyond another issue that Gaile has already stated that she would look into tomorrow, I think its best that we just ignore the continued hatemongering efforts by some here.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s an update for you:

It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.

In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.

We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!

~~~~~

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but out of respect to our international community, we wanted to be able to post in several forums at once.

I’m sure others have already said it, but please pass along our gratitude for listening to the community. I mean, honestly, as much of a furor as this was, I’m sure it wouldn’t have hit your bottom line too hard to just tell us to deal with it. While I don’t necessarily agree with all the decisions y’all have made, gestures like this go a long way to giving me confidence that you guys aren’t going to run this game into the ground.

And Gaile, thanks for acting as a liaison. Even if it’s your job, you still have to take the brunt of the community’s frustration, and that can’t be easy. I doubt you hear enough how valuable you are to keeping things level-headed, so thanks.

JBDanger.2603:

Yeah right, They only made the statement its going to be fixed to silence the community. I look for the fix to take as long as it took to come out wit precursor crafting… Oh, wait.

Yeah, I’m a little bit wary of how long it’s going to take them to add the button.

It could take them months: all the research, development and then months of testing to ensure those pesky new players can understand it seeing as how it was those pesky new players that the change was made for in the first place.

Zengetsu Heyda.4598:

DarcShriek.5829:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Here’s my question.

Why can’t they just like I dunno, talk with us before making decisions. I would have thought they would have learned by now that every time they make these design choices without consulting their player base something like this pops up. Generally when a person accidentally sticks their hand on a hot stove top they pull back before serious burns happen. Its like they stick their hands on the hot stove top, get burned, don’t learn anything, and then stick their hand on it again.

Have you read this forum? Did you read the post where the devs were called kitten? If this forum wants civil discussion, then it needs to be civil. Instead the people here immediately go into barbarian mode at the slightest hint of an infraction.

People are upset because they implemented first. The appropriate time to ask for community feedback on upcoming changes in generally before you roll it out to production. If you roll something out to production and then ask for feedback afterwards, that means the player base is stuck with whatever the bad decision is until it is patched.

Just because something can always be fixed later doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get it right the first time, and in game development, that means at least having a bit of dialogue with your customer base. If they had come forward with a screenshot of the new system asking for any feedback or suggestions before roll out, I’m sure a ton of people would have commented about adding a custom amount feature.

And instead of blowing up, the entire thing would have been likely a complete and total non-issue.

I can’t hear you over the sound of overly rude, crude and totally unnecessary behavior in this forum. There is no excuse for some of the posts that were part of this thread.

It’s not just this thread. The horrible behavior on display during the last 24 hours is becoming more and more common here. Frankly it’s getting embarrassing.

GAILE MY FRAND YOU HAVE RESTORED MY FAITH!!!!!

I guess I can start downloading the patch then…

1) How come the price of gold to gems conversion went up so high right after the system is changed?

2) I want the option to buy small amount of gems, this is ridiculous.

SweetPotato.7456:

1) How come the price of gold to gems conversion went up so high right after the system is changed?

2) I want the option to buy small amount of gems, this is ridiculous.

1) Because those outfits are selling like hotcakes and because many people had to buy extra gems.

2) They have said it is being fixed.

DarcShriek.5829:

Zengetsu Heyda.4598:

DarcShriek.5829:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Here’s my question.

Why can’t they just like I dunno, talk with us before making decisions. I would have thought they would have learned by now that every time they make these design choices without consulting their player base something like this pops up. Generally when a person accidentally sticks their hand on a hot stove top they pull back before serious burns happen. Its like they stick their hands on the hot stove top, get burned, don’t learn anything, and then stick their hand on it again.

Have you read this forum? Did you read the post where the devs were called kitten? If this forum wants civil discussion, then it needs to be civil. Instead the people here immediately go into barbarian mode at the slightest hint of an infraction.

People are upset because they implemented first. The appropriate time to ask for community feedback on upcoming changes in generally before you roll it out to production. If you roll something out to production and then ask for feedback afterwards, that means the player base is stuck with whatever the bad decision is until it is patched.

Just because something can always be fixed later doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get it right the first time, and in game development, that means at least having a bit of dialogue with your customer base. If they had come forward with a screenshot of the new system asking for any feedback or suggestions before roll out, I’m sure a ton of people would have commented about adding a custom amount feature.

And instead of blowing up, the entire thing would have been likely a complete and total non-issue.

I can’t hear you over the sound of overly rude, crude and totally unnecessary behavior in this forum. There is no excuse for some of the posts that were part of this thread.

It’s not just this thread. The horrible behavior on display during the last 24 hours is becoming more and more common here. Frankly it’s getting embarrassing.

It wouldn’t be so bad if anet didn’t kitten everything up everytime a patch comes out.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the consumer base will approve of changes made with utmost integrity.

You are wrong.

The reason you are wrong is because different people want different things. Even the purest integrity will not avoid a situation where a change that benefits some will greatly harm the experience of others. This has already happened in GW2’s lifespan and will likely happen again.

JBDanger.2603:

DarcShriek.5829:

Zengetsu Heyda.4598:

DarcShriek.5829:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Here’s my question.

Why can’t they just like I dunno, talk with us before making decisions. I would have thought they would have learned by now that every time they make these design choices without consulting their player base something like this pops up. Generally when a person accidentally sticks their hand on a hot stove top they pull back before serious burns happen. Its like they stick their hands on the hot stove top, get burned, don’t learn anything, and then stick their hand on it again.

Have you read this forum? Did you read the post where the devs were called kitten? If this forum wants civil discussion, then it needs to be civil. Instead the people here immediately go into barbarian mode at the slightest hint of an infraction.

People are upset because they implemented first. The appropriate time to ask for community feedback on upcoming changes in generally before you roll it out to production. If you roll something out to production and then ask for feedback afterwards, that means the player base is stuck with whatever the bad decision is until it is patched.

Just because something can always be fixed later doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get it right the first time, and in game development, that means at least having a bit of dialogue with your customer base. If they had come forward with a screenshot of the new system asking for any feedback or suggestions before roll out, I’m sure a ton of people would have commented about adding a custom amount feature.

And instead of blowing up, the entire thing would have been likely a complete and total non-issue.

I can’t hear you over the sound of overly rude, crude and totally unnecessary behavior in this forum. There is no excuse for some of the posts that were part of this thread.

It’s not just this thread. The horrible behavior on display during the last 24 hours is becoming more and more common here. Frankly it’s getting embarrassing.

It wouldn’t be so bad if anet didn’t kitten everything up everytime a patch comes out.

I disagree. It’s get bad in here because people have decided that they don’t need to be responsible for their poor behavior. Anet didn’t force anyone to behave as poorly as people have.

Gaile and team,

While I hope you have the change up within the week, I strongly suggest that you make the restart of Season 2 your latest possible deadline. It’s a safe bet that you have new LS related items going up for sale then, so that’s when this will become an even larger problem for some people.

Along those lines, I strongly suggest that anything currently for sale be kept for sale for at least one week after the change is put in. Some people are basically “stuck” (willingly or not) and unable to buy some of the things they currently want. Not giving them time to buy them after the change will just result in lost sales and hurt feelings.

Finally, I think it’s clear that the graph needs to return. As I stated much earlier in this thread, the nature of its removal made it likely that there would be accusations of exchange rate manipulation, and it seems I was right. Restoring it will be another step towards regaining player trust and goodwill, though you’ll never be back to where you were before this.

With due respect,
Palador

Kotaku’s on it now..

http://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-players-angry-over-currency-exchange-chang-1649519173

nightwulf.1986:

So we are just dropping the minimum gem purchase issue now for cash to gem transactions? I remember someone mentioned that credit card sales have a minimum purchase requirement and I really didn’t know what they meant. I know a little about merchant transactions and card companies but not a lot and came across this http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-minimum-payment-purchases-law-1282.php

What I took from the article was that merchants like NCSOFT/ANET/SONY/etc. aren’t required to set minimum purchase amounts but do so to avoid all the transaction fees from numerous small transactions. So, unless I’m still missing something, Anet doesn’t have to set minimum gem purchase amounts to be 800 gems and we can have something similar to gold to gem conversion. But yeah, people don’t have the will to fight this particular industry standard. Again, unless I missed something about this minimum purchase requirement someone brought up, it doesn’t have to be this way and people could fight to change this as well.

Edit: Also, shock and awe that Anet is eating the loss by changing the system back (compromise really). Happy in a way. But still shocked.

Afaik no change is being made to the cash for gems system, just the gold for gems system. Further, there is difference between a minimum charge requirement and a virtual currency banding system. I’m not going to get on a company for deciding they don’t want to lose money on low-cost transactions.

Also, I was not aware that I was speaking for anyone but myself when I answered krall’s question.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s an update for you:

It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.

In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.

We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!

~~~~~

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but out of respect to our international community, we wanted to be able to post in several forums at once.

Gaile: thank you! This is a really good first step in the right direction of rebuilding some goodwill with your veteran/core playerbase!

Just knowing what your plan of action is and that you have heard us and understand us means a lot. I think many forum regulars can say that the phrase “In light of your feedback…” is rare but sweet music to our ears! Here’s to hoping this is the start of hearing that phrase more often!

I just wanted to add my voice to the choir of people requesting that the return of the graph be a part of putting these tools back into our hands.

Thank you again! This means more than you know to many of Guild Wars 2’s most dedicated fans! Keep it up!

lordkrall.7241:

enaz.3489:

I think it is ridiculous to have to buy 400 gems at a time! They should have left it the way it was.

To be fair I have been “forced” to buy at least 800 gems every time I have wanted to buy gems since release. And yet no one seems to have had any issue with that.

No one had an issue with that because if you were left with odd amount of gems you could sell them for gold or buy just the amount you needed to break even.
Now it’s impossible. The system is made to steal money from people and force them to get stuck with gems they cannot use. You can do absolutely nothing with odd amount of gems anymore. It’s money arenanet steals from us. Directly. Like dirty thieves.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

You are aware that they are a business right? I just want to make sure you know that.

Oh, I know they’re a business. Thanks for informing me of that (with links!). Now, shall I be clear what I mean? Let’s see, shall we . . . twice now we’ve had a case where the forum turned itself upside down, along with Reddit and elsewhere, until someone blinked. The Commander tags thing was easy, and simple, and it could almost be argued to have been a setup so we had the illusion we could change the course of events.

Now it’s worked with this, which is also a rather subdued change overall – just add a “custom” place. Simple enough change on the user-end and maybe even possibly one on the coding end.

So, what do you think will happen if their next big announcement isn’t liked by the forums? I predict we’ll see this all over again.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the consumer base will approve of changes made with utmost integrity. Actually now that I think of it I don’t ever recall a consumer backfire on any design that was made for the sake of the consumer pool when it is executed properly.

How about we try that?

I know its an outlandish concept for a lot of people but I honest to the six believe it is a working design!

“You’re wrong. You know how you can tell? I just corrected you.” (Thank you Rube, go back to the Waffle House now.)

See, I’ve been through more than a few games, and some fandoms, and changes made with “utmost integrity”? Yeah, sometimes they’re received just as hostile as changes made for the sake of the money.

Heck, why don’t you take a look over at Mojang and Notch, and basically how he claims to have received death threats over “a game”. If half of what I saw people say on Minecraft related forums . . .

No. I expect, no matter what, if a change is made and enough people decide they don’t like it? Torches and pitchforks, tar and feathers, and endless topic creations everywhere thinking it will work.

Who am I kidding, it probably will work.

Azhure.1857:

SRoode.7318:

To be honest, as a GW"1" player, I feel bad for Gaile. She seems to be forced in the position of a talking head. She is better than that…

Agreed. I wish it wasn’t Gaile who said what was said.

Yep, tossed under the bus.

Bellizare.5816:

Azhure.1857:

SRoode.7318:

To be honest, as a GW"1" player, I feel bad for Gaile. She seems to be forced in the position of a talking head. She is better than that…

Agreed. I wish it wasn’t Gaile who said what was said.

Yep, tossed under the bus.

That is the unfortunate job of the person who has to talk to the public with bad news or things they won’t like hearing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s an update for you:

It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.

In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.

We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!

~~~~~

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but out of respect to our international community, we wanted to be able to post in several forums at once.

This would of been better done the other way around, roll the new system on top of the “previous”. Now we gotta wait for what we already had lol

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I mean, I can illustrate it right now:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

We had to make our point clear with a 1000+ post and countless locked threads and negative PR on various gaming websites that would scare away any potential consumers in the feature while damaging the image of the company.

It’s go loud or go home I guess. If that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.

. . . any major changes your developers make to the game from now on? Expect to do it under siege.

But you say it as if it’s the players fault rather than ANet’s astounding lack of communication during the spring and summer of 2014. I’m one of ANet’s biggest fan boys and I really dislike forum ragers (especially the precursor scavenger hunt people who got us into this situation in the first place!) but even I know ANet has put themselves in this situation. They’re taking steps to fix things, but it takes a lot longer to climb out of a hole than it does to dig it. And they keep making really obvious mistakes that could be easily avoided if we ever got a chance to leave feedback on upcoming changes.

It’s becoming painfully apparent we really need a PTS server for a wider testing of new features and UI changes (not story updates).

However, where it comes to this particular situation, all is well. There WERE indeed problems with the old gem exchange, so hopefully we’ll get the best of both worlds now.

DragonWhimsy.6489:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I mean, I can illustrate it right now:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

We had to make our point clear with a 1000+ post and countless locked threads and negative PR on various gaming websites that would scare away any potential consumers in the feature while damaging the image of the company.

It’s go loud or go home I guess. If that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.

. . . any major changes your developers make to the game from now on? Expect to do it under siege.

But you say it as if it’s the players fault rather than ANet’s astounding lack of communication during the spring and summer of 2014. I’m one of ANet’s biggest fan boys and I really dislike forum ragers (especially the precursor scavenger hunt people who got us into this situation in the first place!) but even I know ANet has put themselves in this situation. They’re taking steps to fix things, but it takes a lot longer to climb out of a hole than it does to dig it. And they keep making really obvious mistakes that could be easily avoided if we ever got a chance to leave feedback on upcoming changes.

It’s becoming painfully apparent we really need a PTS server for a wider testing of new features and UI changes (not story updates).

However, where it comes to this particular situation, all is well. There WERE indeed problems with the old gem exchange, so hopefully we’ll get the best of both worlds now.

Yes. what a wonderful idea to test and gain feedback from people that actually play the game.

PTS Server is a MUST for this game, You would have a happier Player Base.

Personally, I don’t believe this was communication issue.

It’s a brain storming issue.
The question is why no one thought of these simple questions before rolling it out:

Are there any items costing less than 400 gems? Yes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
Are there currently people with odd number of gems? Yes, due to the old system.
Will people with end up with an odd number of gems under the new system? Yes, gem → gold.
Is having an odd number of gems a bad idea? … … C’mon, son!

The only good idea out of the whole system is that old system was bad because players wanted to know how much gold it costs to purchase X gems, rather than how much gems will X amount of gold will give me, and vice versa.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . any major changes your developers make to the game from now on? Expect to do it under siege.

You make it sound like that hasn’t been the Standard Operating Procedure for the gaming community for years.

Any minor change in any game is generally met with savage pushback, and it really doesn’t matter what genre it’s in. Changing the firing rate of a gun by one-tenth of a second was met with death threats in the Call of Duty series. I knew a developer at Take Two back when they made NFL games who had a customer threaten to send a pipe bomb to his house because a favorite player had a 79 overall rating instead of an 80.

Gamers, as far as I can tell, are just very, very angry people, and it doesn’t take much to set them off. And when it’s something that actually could impact their wallet (like this could have), I don’t know how Arena.net could have expected anything less than walls of fire.

All in all, I think we are kind of mighty as a community.

Even if that means kicking and screaming when we don’t like something, we show the same enthusiasm when we do like something.

Now is time to calm down, and help them fix this in the best possible way.

I don’t know if my comment can draw the Dev’s attention,
but still, this update is totally unacceptable for me.

The entire feeling about GW2 is it makes me feel free.
I like the idea that the game offers not only a lot, but freer offers.
For example, allowing us to enjoy the playing, not bound by it.
The feeling is about you can either play it today, tomorrow, or a month later, you never miss anything substantial, but most likely some events, some experiences, some karma, some gold or some skins.

HOWEVER, this update totally went on the contrary.
I know the point of making the gem selling more profitable,
since people will start getting extra gems and then golds,
so facilitating spending on the TP or gem store.

I don’t feel like ArenaNet is a company squashing players in this way.
There are lots of way making money far better than this.

IF this update wasn’t for making MORE money,
then sorry for the misunderstanding.
The appearance improvement or functionality, didn’t go well…

Ok guys, you tried something and it failed (miserably). Let’s move forward and bring the old system back.

/signed

DragonWhimsy.6489:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I mean, I can illustrate it right now:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

We had to make our point clear with a 1000+ post and countless locked threads and negative PR on various gaming websites that would scare away any potential consumers in the feature while damaging the image of the company.

It’s go loud or go home I guess. If that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.

. . . any major changes your developers make to the game from now on? Expect to do it under siege.

But you say it as if it’s the players fault rather than ANet’s astounding lack of communication during the spring and summer of 2014.

It’s a little of column A, a little of column B, and a little of column C. It’s the astounding lack of good communication, sure, we can both agree that didn’t help much. But you think the players don’t have some fault at all? That they don’t hold any responsibility for their behavior? I don’t agree with that – there is nothing to totally absolve people of the behavior where they shoot the messengers rather than raging over the message. (Which has happened . . .)

And then there’s column C – which is basic psychology. Reinforcing a behavior by responding to it. This is why I am just thinking it’s a smarter idea to just walk away from the game before it becomes more common . . . “SAB or Riot” wasn’t all that long ago, and I really don’t feel it’s all that out of the question to expect similar things now that players here have been conditioned.

Basically? I’ve said it before, and I continue to say it. Just because you:

- Don’t like a policy.
- Don’t care for what you heard.
- Want something different than what was offered.

None of that gives you a right to get nasty. Not just protesting . . . which isn’t so much the issue . . . but being abusive, dismissive, and treating staff like garbage. They’re people, so you talk to them as people. Calm, reasonable, and trying to curb your passions before you hit “post”. Do all the threads and posts you like. But do them with some minimal respect for the other person . . . even if you don’t respect what they have to say.

The forum will be so much nicer for it.

Lets not forget these guys.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Tulki.1458:

Immediately before this patch: 10g = 70 gems.

Immediately after this patch: 10g = 57 gems (going off the 400 gem exchange rate).

They tampered with prices to make gems more expensive at exactly the same time as they removed the price history and made 400 gems the lowest increment you can buy in. Did anyone else see this? No other holiday event has had that big a fluctuation before.

Hey Tulki,

I wanted you to know I went immediately to see if I could get an answer on this, and don’t worry, there was no “stealth nerfing” of gem costs. What happened is a common occurrence with new builds: A whole lot of people made exchanges when the new build went live. And as you know the conversions are market driven.

So that’s why you saw the seeming discrepancy in the exchange rate. All is well, and it will continue to ebb and flow according to the volume of exchanges, as always.

I know its answered but im sincerely not buying it.
Never, EVER, in another patch the increase of the gem->gold conversion was this high.

Tulki also said on reddit this:

“Gem prices suspiciously increased 22% immediately after the patch was applied, despite it becoming much more difficult to exchange gold for gems.

Right before the patch, it was 10g for 70 gems. Now, it’s 75g for 400 gems. 400 / 70 = 5.7143 * 10g => Given prior prices, it would have been 57g to get 400 gems. Yeah, sorry but I’m calling foul play on this one.

Something kitteny happened to the exchange rate along with this change. This is way bigger than any holiday patch has done to exchange rates in this past, and that’s without factoring in the interface that discourages gold -> gem trade.

They also decided to hide the past exchange rates which makes this REALLY, REALLY suspect. And for anyone who’s curious, they also shut off the web service that provides gem price data as soon as they released the patch, so the price spike is hidden on gw2spidy as well. That never happened for any patch in the past, and judging by the fact that every other market API call is working perfectly fine, I’m almost certain they deliberately shut off that service to hide the exchange rate switch."

If you wanna see the discussion go to here :http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2jxnrk/they_changed_the_way_you_buy_gems_with_gold/ and look for Tulki.

EDIT: Another person saying this is rather strange is Ten Ton Hammer. He says and I quote:

“On top of all this, Tracking data on the Gem shows a huge spike due to this change. While some of it could be attributed to Halloween, what we’ve always seen pre-holiday season is a slow increase. This however, was a huge spike. Perhaps I’m misinterpreting the data, but it looks to me as though they’ve artificially bumped up the cost of exchanging Gold for Gems.”

Heres the graph and the website: http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/guild-wars-2-gemgate

As a customer, you can tell them that you want nothing with it by not buying an gemstore items.

There’s nothing strange about the gem conversion increase.

A holiday event coupled with people being required to convert 400 gems at a time. There ya go.

Wasn’t that fun, Gaile?

Better keep your eye on future updates, especially the stuff that slips in under the “to make things easier for new players” category. The community has gotten a little grumpy since the build up to the China expansion and the lack of communication during that time period. Expect push back for any more changes that seem counter intuitive, even if there was good reasoning behind them.

Wish you the best, and hope the Frog makes a return someday.

Lévis.5489:

As a customer, you can tell them that you want nothing with it by not buying an gemstore items.

You make it sound like it’s easy. 1 person not buying things? No problem. 10 people not buying things? Doable. 100? 1000? 10,000? Boycotting is an art that requires serious coordination, self control, and a sufficient amount of like minded people. It works…but only if you get the required participation and a means to enforce/encourage it. Really, it seems like people were telling Anet that they didn’t like buying gems with cash in large numbers (pseudo boycotting) and that helped to spawn this change. Seems like they are going to have to approach this issue from a different direction now.

chemiclord.3978:

There’s nothing strange about the gem conversion increase.

A holiday event coupled with people being required to convert 400 gems at a time. There ya go.

Right after the patch?
Right when you update the game?

Patch comes out, 1min later prices go up this much and its cause of people converted gold → gems 1min after the patch from the new system?

Yea, right.

whiteflower.9425:

chemiclord.3978:

There’s nothing strange about the gem conversion increase.

A holiday event coupled with people being required to convert 400 gems at a time. There ya go.

Right after the patch?
Right when you update the game?

Patch comes out, 1min later prices go up this much and its cause of people converted gold -> gems 1min after the patch from the new system?

Yea, right.

Dont forget the chart being removed also…

BlueZone.4236:

Personally, I don’t believe this was communication issue.

It’s a brain storming issue.
The question is why no one thought of these simple questions before rolling it out:

Are there any items costing less than 400 gems? Yes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
Are there currently people with odd number of gems? Yes, due to the old system.
Will people with end up with an odd number of gems under the new system? Yes, gem -> gold.
Is having an odd number of gems a bad idea? … … C’mon, son!

The only good idea out of the whole system is that old system was bad because players wanted to know how much gold it costs to purchase X gems, rather than how much gems will X amount of gold will give me, and vice versa.

It was deliberate. The entire thing was to get people to buy more gems than they need/want.

With that simple thought in mind all your questions become moot. They knew what they were doing.

whiteflower.9425:

They also decided to hide the past exchange rates which makes this REALLY, REALLY suspect. And for anyone who’s curious, they also shut off the web service that provides gem price data as soon as they released the patch, so the price spike is hidden on gw2spidy as well. That never happened for any patch in the past, and judging by the fact that every other market API call is working perfectly fine, I’m almost certain they deliberately shut off that service to hide the exchange rate switch."

As I think has been posted before, the API is fine — Spidy is broke. He’s BEEN broke for months. I don’t think he even plays anymore to update it – it took over 2 weeks to get the Chaos Weapons added to the tracking database.

http://www.gw2tp.com/gems is working correctly if you need a graph.

I just wish they had a small monthly fee to go along side the store so they could focus the funds from monthly towards content and not be so fixated on the gem store.

Wetpaw.3487:

……ArenaNet Forum Communications Team Lead……she has nothing to do with the decisions made by NCsoft or Anet, and nowhere near the top of that totem pole. Express concerns to the guys/gals that continue to lead this game…in the direction and state it’s in now (twitter is a good start, gaming sites, and NCsoft).

You don’t go after the mailman when your cell phone bill comes in wrong, go to the source.

Not to go super cynical on the bit (ok, I’m going to) but this is how it is with a lot of companies these days, at least in America (not talking about game companies specifically). The “customer support” types often get to take the brunt of complaints and get verbally abused like mad, while the corporate suits who are making the calls – the calls that cause the complaints in the first place – are sitting in their plush chairs, completely inaccessible to customers.

Which is why, as a consumer, I virtually never get belligerent with lower echelon employees, just on principle. I know that 99% of the time, the problems are not within their power to fix and most of the time they would love to be able to help you, despite having very little power to actually do so.

Southern.8973:

whiteflower.9425:

They also decided to hide the past exchange rates which makes this REALLY, REALLY suspect. And for anyone who’s curious, they also shut off the web service that provides gem price data as soon as they released the patch, so the price spike is hidden on gw2spidy as well. That never happened for any patch in the past, and judging by the fact that every other market API call is working perfectly fine, I’m almost certain they deliberately shut off that service to hide the exchange rate switch."

As I think has been posted before, the API is fine — Spidy is broke. He’s BEEN broke for months. I don’t think he even plays anymore to update it – it took over 2 weeks to get the Chaos Weapons added to the tracking database.

http://www.gw2tp.com/gems is working correctly if you need a graph.

This was a quote from someone else that i took from reddit.

I already knew that website and got there today and have seen the graph and what i concluded is that its similar, if not equal, to the one I posted from Ton’s Website.

But thank you anyway for the website

I’m not sure that the gem price spike is anything particularly suspicious. It underwent a similar spike back during the 2nd Anniversary sale, and reached similar peaks. This time around, ANet has announced:

1. Chance to get the super rare (and expensive) 2012 Halloween skins again. You can get Foil Wrappers from ToT bags, but if you really, REALLY want to pad your chances, buying Foil Candy in bulk from the gem store is the way to go.

2. New Noble Count outfit, which is almost universally loved, plus the old outfits are back. There is usually a surge of returning players during festivals, who may only now be seeing the Mad King/Witch/Executioner etc. outfits and thus are only buying now.

3. Lovestruck/Fused etc. weapons have been announced to be retiring soon. This may cause a surge in people buying gems for a last chance to gamble for scraps/tickets before they disappear.

Taken altogether, it’s logical that demand for gems would be up.

EDIT: Although, I just checked gw2tp, and wow, it actually shot up to 20g! That IS pretty remarkable, and could indeed be attributed to the currency exchange change.

Zaxares.5419:

I’m not sure that the gem price spike is anything particularly suspicious. It underwent a similar spike back during the 2nd Anniversary sale, and reached similar peaks. This time around, ANet has announced:

1. Chance to get the super rare (and expensive) 2012 Halloween skins again. You can get Foil Wrappers from ToT bags, but if you really, REALLY want to pad your chances, buying Foil Candy in bulk from the gem store is the way to go.

2. New Noble Count outfit, which is almost universally loved, plus the old outfits are back. There is usually a surge of returning players during festivals, who may only now be seeing the Mad King/Witch/Executioner etc. outfits and thus are only buying now.

3. Lovestruck/Fused etc. weapons have been announced to be retiring soon. This may cause a surge in people buying gems for a last chance to gamble for scraps/tickets before they disappear.

Taken altogether, it’s logical that demand for gems would be up.

EDIT: Although, I just checked gw2tp, and wow, it actually shot up to 20g! That IS pretty remarkable, and could indeed be attributed to the currency exchange change.

And people trying to sneak in before it exploded upwards.

Heh, I’m actually considering giving myself another gold infusion. I did promise myself that my next time I’d sell gems would be when I could get 15g per 100 gems. I didn’t expect it to be this soon though!

Zaxares.5419:

I’m not sure that the gem price spike is anything particularly suspicious. It underwent a similar spike back during the 2nd Anniversary sale, and reached similar peaks. This time around, ANet has announced:

1. Chance to get the super rare (and expensive) 2012 Halloween skins again. You can get Foil Wrappers from ToT bags, but if you really, REALLY want to pad your chances, buying Foil Candy in bulk from the gem store is the way to go.

2. New Noble Count outfit, which is almost universally loved, plus the old outfits are back. There is usually a surge of returning players during festivals, who may only now be seeing the Mad King/Witch/Executioner etc. outfits and thus are only buying now.

3. Lovestruck/Fused etc. weapons have been announced to be retiring soon. This may cause a surge in people buying gems for a last chance to gamble for scraps/tickets before they disappear.

Taken altogether, it’s logical that demand for gems would be up.

EDIT: Although, I just checked gw2tp, and wow, it actually shot up to 20g! That IS pretty remarkable, and could indeed be attributed to the currency exchange change.

I agree that it’s pretty explainable given the circumstances. What’s most problematic about no longer having the graph, in my opinion, is that it only fuels conspiracy theories like what we’ve seen in this thread concerning the spike.

Welp, I wake up, eat my breakfast, brush my teeth and check my Facebook, and a wild Kotaku article on GW2’s new gem conversion UI appears. And it doesn’t look pretty.
I’ll start with Gaile’s response to the entire drama: I don’t like being told, that by being in a minority that buys less than 400 gems at a time I am insignificant. This is how I felt when I read it. I always thought that ANet considers interests of all players, not only those who have million hours to play the game and earn piles of gems and make it rain.

Now I’ll move to my suggestions how to remedy the situation, because I don’t want to be accused of ranting…:

I’d keep both the old and the new exchange rate UIs. The first screen after opening the exchange might offer two options: to buy a fixed amount of gems/gold, or to buy a custom number of those. And I would bring back the grid showing how the rates are falling or rising. I want to have access to this type of information (power to the players!).

I’m done, thank you.

fellyn.5083:

BlueZone.4236:

Personally, I don’t believe this was communication issue.

It’s a brain storming issue.
The question is why no one thought of these simple questions before rolling it out:

Are there any items costing less than 400 gems? Yes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store
Are there currently people with odd number of gems? Yes, due to the old system.
Will people with end up with an odd number of gems under the new system? Yes, gem -> gold.
Is having an odd number of gems a bad idea? … … C’mon, son!

The only good idea out of the whole system is that old system was bad because players wanted to know how much gold it costs to purchase X gems, rather than how much gems will X amount of gold will give me, and vice versa.

It was deliberate. The entire thing was to get people to buy more gems than they need/want.

With that simple thought in mind all your questions become moot. They knew what they were doing.

Quite possibly true. No matter which way anyone tries to frames it, the fault lies on ANet.

ViolentMuffin.9573:

Now I’ll move to my suggestions how to remedy the situation, because I don’t want to be accused of ranting…:

Read the topic further, Gaile has already answered that the interface will indeed be changed, and will get a “custom amount” option. The graph is still up for discussion, but i hope that it will be brought back as well.

Zaxares.5419:

EDIT: Although, I just checked gw2tp, and wow, it actually shot up to 20g! That IS pretty remarkable, and could indeed be attributed to the currency exchange change.

I agree that the launch of the items you mention would make the market go up but go up to 20g? I think its too much and, just like you, I was surprised to see this drastic increase.

Like Tulki said before:

“Immediately before this patch: 10g = 70 gems.
Immediately after this patch: 10g = 57 gems (going off the 400 gem exchange rate)”

The key word here is “Immediately”.

Like i said to chemiclord.
How is it possible you log in and out of the game to download the patch and, suddenly, theres an increase of 5g+?

Even if you and many other players have an SDD and the best internet ever i think its impossible to change the market that much right after the patch goes live.
Right after
I found it hard to believe that in under 1 min after patch is launch the price goes up by this much.

How is it possible? People cant buy stuff when they are downloading the patch.