Guild Wars 2

Fernling.1729:

I just wanted to pop in here and thank Anet for listening to the players. I don’t like that it took an uprise of this size to make it happen, but overall i’m happy to see that you guys are willing to make changes where necessary.
Hopefully in the future we will see better communication in these type of matters.

Don’t kid yourself, they didn’t say they are going to adjust it (they haven’t done anything yet) because of the uprising on the forum.

They only said they’d fix it after major gaming sites caught onto it and called them out on their shenanigans.

Why did A-net take away features, instead of adding features and keeping the old ones. While the change to the gem store may have been intended to make it easier for new players, it is confusing, and slightly alienating, to your core players. Players who have been around for a while and liked the original gem conversion system, as evident by this thread.

I say keep the interface as it is, but put a tab in the window for the conversion that allows players who have been around for over 2 years, that have been funding your paychecks and populating your game, used and liked. There was no need to remove what people already know how to and actually use.

Please bring back the original functionality of the gem conversion, and if you must leave a more simple interface for newcomers.

Lexan.5930:

Why did A-net take away features, instead of adding features and keeping the old ones. While the change to the gem store may have been intended to make it easier for new players, it is confusing, and slightly alienating, to your core players. Players who have been around for a while and liked the original gem conversion system, as evident by this thread.

I say keep the interface as it is, but put a tab in the window for the conversion that allows players who have been around for over 2 years, that have been funding your paychecks and populating your game, used and liked. There was no need to remove what people already know how to and actually use.

Please bring back the original functionality of the gem conversion, and if you must leave a more simple interface for newcomers.

It’s just say what’s been said dozens of times already. It wasn’t to make it easier for new players. That’s a red herring.

The entire point is to get people to buy more gems either with real money or gold than they actually need. And it’s why a lot of stuff in the gem store have prices that aren’t divisible by 400 like the shiny new nobles outfit.

yea it would seem that way. i wish that the dev’s would make more content for dedicated players rather than trying to bring new players into a game that was easy to pick up when it was launched anyway. I’m wondering if the job posting for raid content is the end goal. Make the game even more inviting to new players to eventually put raid content on peoples minds to entice new players to keep playing while dragging back old ones that have left.

Why are people still going on about this ? If you looked around a bit Anet already said they will be changing it with a custom option soon just hang in there.

Because adding a “custom option” which had existed shouldn’t take more than 1 hour to hotfix (instead of 2 days for now).

Phoenixlin.8624:

Because adding a “custom option” which had existed shouldn’t take more than 1 hour to hotfix (instead of 2 days for now).

yes it might have existed on its own reverting with a a hotfix might be quick but integrating it and keeping the new system aswell might not be just a hotfix

Osculim.2983:

Why are people still going on about this ? If you looked around a bit Anet already said they will be changing it with a custom option soon just hang in there.

Because the WRONG thing is still there, so they’re still milking it. I wonder just how long “soon” will take. Probably a month or two until the next quarter earnings comes out.

fellyn.5083:

Fernling.1729:

I just wanted to pop in here and thank Anet for listening to the players. I don’t like that it took an uprise of this size to make it happen, but overall i’m happy to see that you guys are willing to make changes where necessary.
Hopefully in the future we will see better communication in these type of matters.

Don’t kid yourself, they didn’t say they are going to adjust it (they haven’t done anything yet) because of the uprising on the forum.

They only said they’d fix it after major gaming sites caught onto it and called them out on their shenanigans.

You’re right. I should wait until they actually fix it. I should also wait to see if they take their sweet time with it too. It’s a simple fix, surprised it wasn’t patched today.
The forums blowing up and gaming sites reporting the negativity is the uprise I was talking about. It is crazy that the players have to act like this to make something happen.

There’s many reasons I like Blizzard. Their ability to communicate through many facets is just one of them.

SkiTz.4590:

lordkrall.7241:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

They didn’t listen to player feedback. They listened to review sites likes kotaku and tentonhammer. If they hadn’t received such harsh reviews on those sites nothing would have changed. So if you want to praise anyone go praise the people running those sites.

This would make sense, IF they didn’t announce the changes so soon after the articles turned up.

Changing things requires decision making and meetings, it is not just something taking 5 minutes and deciding to change it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that magazines that basically just work with sensationalist headlines in order to get a few extra clicks aren’t usually taken that serious by most smart people.

Again, this should have never happened in the first place if anet had any clue on how to communicate with its community…

They have been doing nonstop crap like this without getting thoughts from the community. Anet has smart ppl working for them, like all gaming companies.. so they obviously knew there would be backlash… yet they proceeded anyways with this horrific change…It’s just sad how often this company keeps shooting itself in the foot and then acting like “well, no big deal, nothing to see here folks! we will continue to look at our awful metrics and continue deciding whats best for you guys!”

Honestly, they shot themselves in the foot the moment they launched a currency conversion system that operated under a different…code of ethics?…than their cash to gems option. You just can’t look at the two and say they are supposed to be in the same cash shop system. They are from two different worlds. If they had launched with both systems using the same design principles, they probably wouldn’t have even considered this sort of change. One design scheme is saying, do what you want and the other is saying do what we want. Both are now still part of the same cash shop system. It’s nonsense, but the sort of nonsense we can take advantage of, so yeah.

lordkrall.7241:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

They didn’t listen to player feedback. They listened to review sites likes kotaku and tentonhammer. If they hadn’t received such harsh reviews on those sites nothing would have changed. So if you want to praise anyone go praise the people running those sites.

This would make sense, IF they didn’t announce the changes so soon after the articles turned up.

Changing things requires decision making and meetings, it is not just something taking 5 minutes and deciding to change it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that magazines that basically just work with sensationalist headlines in order to get a few extra clicks aren’t usually taken that serious by most smart people.

I have a bridge for sale. Would you like to buy it? Seriously I don’t get why you dismiss any complaint by the forums as not justified? Yes a lot of people take it way to far but you have to expect that because it’s the internet. What you fail to see is that this is another in a long line of bad decisions on the part of Anet since the China release (before that if you talk to some of the extremist). Go ahead and wear your blinders and defend every single decision they make. I for one will put my money where I am both entertained and don’t feel like I’m being exploited behind a wall of excuses about new players. BTW it was hours after it was announced on those sites that it was actually posted here.

Looks like Anet understood they(you) have to change the UI. Fine.
Did Anet also understood they (you) have to fix the collateral damages of this modification ?

I mean the huge price increase for the gold to gem conversion ?

Imarion

Anet are staging a parody of Waiting for Godot, with the playerbase performing the role of Vladimir and Estragon, Gaile acting as the boy, and the elusive and mysterious Anet handling the Godot part. But instead of ‘tomorrow’, the new buzz word is now ‘soon’.

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: (despairingly). Ah!

[…]

Boy: (in a rush). Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.

Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let’s go. (They do not move.)

—

I am most definitely enjoying the show, especially the tradicomical parts.
Also, here are two of my fav quotes which strongly remind one of loyal-vet part of the playerbase:

Estragon: (aphoristic for once). We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Pozzo: The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

No gem store for me until this is changed. I may add making Gaile our whipping girl was unfair by ANet, next time have the beast emerge from her cave and address the problems she causes. Yeah Cristin Cox, make her take the heat Anet not someone way down the ladder. Bad form.

Gaile Gray.6029:

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

I’m sorry, but this is downright outrageous and quite seriously an offensive excuse.

You generalize a game with this big of a player base?
Why not include a custom amount option?
Why hide the market statistics at all?

I have more, but you get where I am coming from. I am boycotting the store until you guys see reason and stop this ludicrousness.

Geee wonder who thought this up? Maybe the same people who brought you the new and improved trait system, and the simply wonderful NPE.

Suggestion: custom amount option and unhide the market statistics. PLUS stop doing this and fix the traits.

Suggestion 2: Improve your game so players will actually WANT to give money to support you.

ZilentNight.5089:

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 is why I have stuck with Anet for nearly 10 years! since Gw1 launch!
They listen to feedback and do the right thing.

Thank you Anet!

This Anet is far from the Anet that brought us GW1 dude.

They got money hungry and are looking to empty your wallet on every turn.

No point in discussing a lot of the past comments here, I just want too see a simple question answered here:

Can I expect too buy the number of gems I want in game (not 400 gems or 400 increments) before the halloween patch is over? If yes, then I can somehow apologize this behavior from Arenanet. If not… then I surely know what too expect in the future from this company and I can be sure I move my money too better “dry waters”

Condutas.3580:

No point in discussing a lot of the past comments here, I just want too see a simple question answered here:

Can I expect too buy the number of gems I want in game (not 400 gems or 400 increments) before the halloween patch is over? If yes, then I can somehow apologize this behavior from Arenanet. If not… then I surely know what too expect in the future from this company and I can be sure I move my money too better “dry waters”

Buy a nice bottle of whiskey instead. Anet does not deserve your money

We’re going back to the old system, this is the best thing to do.

zzzzaaa.2016:

We’re going back to the old system, this is the best thing to do.

let them increase the amount of gold per gem while their at it

Condutas.3580:

No point in discussing a lot of the past comments here, I just want too see a simple question answered here:

Can I expect too buy the number of gems I want in game (not 400 gems or 400 increments) before the halloween patch is over? If yes, then I can somehow apologize this behavior from Arenanet. If not… then I surely know what too expect in the future from this company and I can be sure I move my money too better “dry waters”

First this has nothing to do with money unless you are saying you don’t have enough gold to buy 400 gems and your only recourse is buying even more gems with cash when you only need very few.

Second, considering that the next phase of LS2 is starting November 4th, less than two weeks away, I doubt any fix will be coming by then. Most people don’t understand that software development takes time, especially if there’s a proper Q&A component to it. I wouldn’t even expect it on November 4th because you don’t drop a small change into a much larger release at the last minute. Even though this is isolated to the Gem Shop/TP portion of the game and doesn’t interact with the rest of the game directly, I can see the build team be hesitant.

It doesn’t mean I can’t be pleasantly surprised and see this sooner than later but my experience in software development tells me I would doubt it will be released before the Halloween event is over. My opinion, hope I’m wrong.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Anet are staging a parody of Waiting for Godot, with the playerbase performing the role of Vladimir and Estragon, Gaile acting as the boy, and the elusive and mysterious Anet handling the Godot part. But instead of ‘tomorrow’, the new buzz word is now ‘soon’.

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: (despairingly). Ah!

[…]

Boy: (in a rush). Mr. Godot told me to tell you he won’t come this evening but surely tomorrow.

Estragon: Well, shall we go?
Vladimir: Yes, let’s go. (They do not move.)

—

I am most definitely enjoying the show, especially the tradicomical parts.
Also, here are two of my fav quotes which strongly remind one of loyal-vet part of the playerbase:

Estragon: (aphoristic for once). We are all born mad. Some remain so.

Pozzo: The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.

I love you SO MUCH right now. So much. My adoration for you knows no bounds.

I miss the old Gem to Coin exchange. I want to exchange 200 Gems for Coins. Everything I can buy on the Trading Post is generally increments of 5, 25, 50, 450 or 700 etc.. Now I have leftover Gems I can’t do anything with. Bring back the exchange in increments of my choice.

If it’s not in game it’s not in work. I don’t believe a single word from arenanet anymore, only what’s in game count.

theres problems with the conversion. just as an example
you need 10 gems, to get them all at once you pay say 400 gold. that’s 40 gold a gem
but if you got the gems one at a time, you could get them for 36 gold per gem

I once got almost double the gems that entering in 80 gold could get me by buying them 3 at a time.

it works something like this for example. 5 gold gets you 1 gem, 6 gold gets you 1 gem as well, but 6 gold and a few silver gets you two….and so on

To be fair, until this is actually implemented in the game, I see no reason for this thread to go away. Far too many things, including things that were used as selling points for releases have quietly never been put in the game.

As long as I don’t see a changed gem exchange in the game, nothing has happened. I read some intentions, but 2 years of Guild Wars 2 taught me that intentions often don’t come to reality. So I will wait. But I doubt that I will ever buy from the shop again. I don’t like it that Arenanet tried to cheat me with the recent change. I did not give them any reason to try to cheat me. I didn’t cheat them. I played the game as it was meant to be played, and I used the shop as it was meant to be used. If feels like betrayal, and I don’t continue business with people who tried to betray me.

An explanation and apology would make me reconsidering. The claim “make it easier for new players” is not credible. If Arenanet really wants to make it easier for new players, they would produce tutorials and rework the whole complicated skill/trait/equip/combat system.

Logically, I should quit the game upon this, but since it runs nicely without shop at the moment and I have some guild friends who I like very much (we know each others for years since the time of GW1), leaving would be somewhat painful at the moment.

Behellagh.1468:

Condutas.3580:

No point in discussing a lot of the past comments here, I just want too see a simple question answered here:

Can I expect too buy the number of gems I want in game (not 400 gems or 400 increments) before the halloween patch is over? If yes, then I can somehow apologize this behavior from Arenanet. If not… then I surely know what too expect in the future from this company and I can be sure I move my money too better “dry waters”

First this has nothing to do with money unless you are saying you don’t have enough gold to buy 400 gems and your only recourse is buying even more gems with cash when you only need very few.

Second, considering that the next phase of LS2 is starting November 4th, less than two weeks away, I doubt any fix will be coming by then. Most people don’t understand that software development takes time, especially if there’s a proper Q&A component to it. I wouldn’t even expect it on November 4th because you don’t drop a small change into a much larger release at the last minute. Even though this is isolated to the Gem Shop/TP portion of the game and doesn’t interact with the rest of the game directly, I can see the build team be hesitant.

It doesn’t mean I can’t be pleasantly surprised and see this sooner than later but my experience in software development tells me I would doubt it will be released before the Halloween event is over. My opinion, hope I’m wrong.

It has everything to do with money.

Iason Evan.3806:

To be fair, until this is actually implemented in the game, I see no reason for this thread to go away. Far too many things, including things that were used as selling points for releases have quietly never been put in the game.

I would love to hear examples of all those things used as selling points for releases that were never put in the game.

I am honestly scared that one day I’m going to wake up and update notes are going to include the lines:

“Because new players, we have made some changes to the combat system. It will now be fully tab-targeted with no action-based mechanics.”

or

“Because new players, we have decided that there should only be one form of currency. This form of currency will be gems. Everything now costs gems. Oh, by the way, because new players like rounded numbers, you can only buy gems in 500 or 1000 volumes.”

lordkrall.7241:

Iason Evan.3806:

To be fair, until this is actually implemented in the game, I see no reason for this thread to go away. Far too many things, including things that were used as selling points for releases have quietly never been put in the game.

I would love to hear examples of all those things used as selling points for releases that were never put in the game.

Left out of the game is wrong, but there are some things they hyped massively that barely had any use at all, i.e. the Personality system.

Also “you can wear any armour you see an NPC in.” – Nope.

Mini games too. Where’y my Polymock?

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Left out of the game is wrong, but there are some things they hyped massively that barely had any use at all, i.e. the Personality system.

Also “you can wear any armour you see an NPC in.” – Nope.

Mini games too. Where’y my Polymock?

But were those actual selling points for releases (which would suggest pre-release additions)?

lordkrall.7241:

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Left out of the game is wrong, but there are some things they hyped massively that barely had any use at all, i.e. the Personality system.

Also “you can wear any armour you see an NPC in.” – Nope.

Mini games too. Where’y my Polymock?

But were those actual selling points for releases (which would suggest pre-release additions)?

They were both absolutely used in the hype material and pre-release videos, yes.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

They were both absolutely used in the hype material and pre-release videos, yes.

Hm? I only really heard them talk a bit about it in one video or something like that, which was YEARS before the game was released.

Are we really going to claim that every single thing ever mentioned in connection to a game should be considered a selling point?

And I still want to hear about all those things used as selling points for releaseS that never made it into the game.

Years? No. They were both detailed in the run up to release.

But sure, keep ignoring anything that counters your preconceived idea.

The perfect solution… Nothing more to add… If the dear team doesnt change that i must say its all about the MONEY…

But with so much things costing under 400 gems i think thats absurd.

Please spread that image…

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Years? No. They were both detailed in the run up to release.

But sure, keep ignoring anything that counters your preconceived idea.

Oh, feel free to link it then, because I might have missed it.

And I am still waiting for example of post-release releases selling points that have not been added to the game.

Lorrainder.6053:

The perfect solution… Nothing more to add… If the dear team doesnt change that i must say its all about the MONEY…

But with so much things costing under 400 gems i think thats absurd.

Please spread that image…

Solutionnn.jpg

Same image as Lorrainder posted, kitten “img” code doesn’t work in GW2 forums…

I wonder why they decided on locked numbers only, instead of not adding them to the manual system…

Well, not to mention other problems in GW2…

Lorrainder.6053:

The perfect solution… Nothing more to add… If the dear team doesnt change that i must say its all about the MONEY…

But with so much things costing under 400 gems i think thats absurd.

Please spread that image…

Erm… not really.

In both cases, you should put the number of gems you want to trade, not guess how much gold you need to type to trade the gems you wish to exchange.

People don’t buy gems to buy 100 gold, we buy 100 gems to buy whatever amount of gold we can get. If you need 100g exactly and trade gems only to get that, you’ll have leftovers, which is pretty much the current problem.

Unless of course, you can type an arbitrary number and the game automatically change it to the maximum gold you can get.

Absolutely terrible. I believe that if the developers looked at the usage data more closely, the users who play regularily, because they love the game, make small gems store exchanges constantly. Updating this conveience to accomodate only new or occasional users that drop large blocks of real cash rather than the core GW2 community does not make sense. Fixing something that was not broken is a waste of developers effort. Sorry for the rant, but that is what people do when misguided “improvements” happen.

Don’t see the reason for this, don’t like it, let players buy/convert what they want!

kins.3294:

This Anet is far from the Anet that brought us GW1 dude.

They got money hungry and are looking to empty your wallet on every turn.

Or they became a larger company and need more revenue to sustain their larger employee-base as well as keep the game sub free?

Seriously, people need to stop complaining about how ANet keeps trying to take our money. Any respectable/successful business has to make money; and that is exactly what Arena Net is—a business. You’re not paying $15 a month to play this game so stop crying about the gem store.

ANet already knows that they screwed up with the conversions and they said that they’ll fix it. Any further ranting on this thread without constructive criticism is only going to take up space. If they take too long to fix the conversion system, then you may complain. Until then, cool it.

The fact that being vocal worked somehow towards a viable solution is a great thing, on both sides.
The reality is this game lately has became a nest of kittenes ready to exploit any single flaw or gray spot in the game, I actually think that they deserve that gemstore, or at least the thought behind it.

Noah.9654:

Seriously, people need to stop complaining about how ANet keeps trying to take our money. Any respectable/successful business has to make money; and that is exactly what Arena Net is—a business. You’re not paying $15 a month to play this game so stop crying about the gem store.

And once again, I will point out, most of us understand ANet needs to make money, and don’t have issue with that.

What we DO have issue with is the shady ways the go about trying to make their money. The kittenty business practices, the high prices on what is generally considered poor store content… there are better ways for them to earn money. I’ve said before that they could likely generate far more revenue by going with an “impulse buy” system. (Lots of little interesting things at low prices, rather than a handful of big-but-not-interesting things at very high prices. $5 for an extra character slot? I paid it a couple times, but I’m not happy about it…)

For example, the Mining Node Pack. There is absolutely no reason for that to be $10 by itself. That’s just ridiculous. All it is is a couple of low-end mining nodes in your home instance that you can harvest once a day. Is that really worth $10?? Just for the aesthetic value, I wouldn’t think so, and those nodes are nothing you couldn’t do by going thirty seconds out of your way during any normal daily endeavor…

daft inquisitor.1605:

Noah.9654:

Seriously, people need to stop complaining about how ANet keeps trying to take our money. Any respectable/successful business has to make money; and that is exactly what Arena Net is—a business. You’re not paying $15 a month to play this game so stop crying about the gem store.

And once again, I will point out, most of us understand ANet needs to make money, and don’t have issue with that.

What we DO have issue with is the shady ways the go about trying to make their money. The kittenty business practices, the high prices on what is generally considered poor store content… there are better ways for them to earn money. I’ve said before that they could likely generate far more revenue by going with an “impulse buy” system. (Lots of little interesting things at low prices, rather than a handful of big-but-not-interesting things at very high prices. $5 for an extra character slot? I paid it a couple times, but I’m not happy about it…)

For example, the Mining Node Pack. There is absolutely no reason for that to be $10 by itself. That’s just ridiculous. All it is is a couple of low-end mining nodes in your home instance that you can harvest once a day. Is that really worth $10?? Just for the aesthetic value, I wouldn’t think so, and those nodes are nothing you couldn’t do by going thirty seconds out of your way during any normal daily endeavor…

I think a lot of us are watching too much TV if we think that overpriced gemstore items are shady business practices. There is nothing illegal, unethical, or otherwise against standard business practice about overpricing exclusive items. ANet has every right to make the Mining Node Pack—their own ‘creation’—$10. We as consumers can just decide not to buy it. That’s how economy works. We as players don’t like the system but that does not make it ‘shady’ at all.

Personally, I don’t agree with the small impulse buy marketing strategy. Their is no reason players will spend real money on something that is more cost effective to buy with in-game gold (a fake currency that has no weight as far as a real live business is concerned). Under pricing items will not make larger companies any money.

Pricing items high is not a shady business practice — that was a separate statement, hence the period. Shady business practices are ones like the change to the Gem Conversion system itself — taking a system that let you freely do what you wanted with your gems, and locking you in to only being able to do what you wished with sets of 400 at a time.

Before, you could sell your gems literally for nothing if you wanted, but taking the control out of your hands and severely limiting what you can do with the item you paid for (because, yes, your money is buying gems, not buying the content you buy with the gems directly).

That’s shady, through-and-through. It’s like buying a giftcard for a store you don’t shop at to give to a friend, then the store saying it’s illegal for you to give the gift card to someone else. The card is then effectively worthless to you, because you don’t shop at their store.