Guild Wars 2

And another thing.

I surmise people purchasing gold with gems are markedly more intelligent Less “new” than people who did not, seeing as how their conversion rates go down to 9 gem increments?

Or did people buy 10 bucks worth of gems to trade 9 of them for 1 gold piece with alarming frequency?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

lordkrall.7241:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Why funny? These people clearly have a passion for the game or they wouldn’t even bother. I think it’s kind of sad… they want the game to go in a good direction and may even want to give anet money, which is why they stick around despite what are arguably terrible changes.

But that is just the thing. They aren’t sticking around. They are coming back as soon as there is a new big thing to hate. When there are no new things to hate on they are very quiet and you more or less never see them post anything at all. But as soon as something controversial turns up they start posting like mad.

Threads like these give players who quit a feeling of solidarity and a platform to voice their concerns which they feel are not being acknowledged.

All fine and good, except more than a few basically agree they left and aren’t coming back, so . . . why bother caring about solidarity or their concerns? They’ve admittedly already left and uninstalled. It’s not about whether or not they have a point, it’s about whether or not they show up just to stir up the pot for their own amusement.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

nightwulf.1986:

I don’t think any company that I can think of has explicitly told their consumers that profit is the reason for that sort of system. It’s how companies, on the whole, operate.

Right, but anet has gone a step further — they’re trying to pass this off as new player experience , which seems far-fetched given the 75g minimum.

You expect companies to not mention the motivation, you don’t expect them to fib…

Honestly, if I had to pick one line to use instead of the simplification justification it would have been:
*Currency conversion system was updated to bring the Gem Store more in line with other shopping experiences.

Still not a great explanation but probably a little more palatable than the npe thing which some people already seem to hate with a passion. Heck, anything was probably going to be more palatable than bringing up new players again. I don’t think there was going to be any way to pass this without people jumping on it.

You took away my Legos and gave me Duplos. I can still build, but I can’t build what I want. Please give us the option to build what we want again.

To me, the easiest way to do the conversion page would be to have it set for the player to input how many gems they want, and have it say how much gold it will cost them. Or how much gold they want, and have it say how many gems they need.

I know, for me buying gems this way, I usually want a set number of gems. It is only confusing because we have to keep inputting different amounts of gold until we hit the right gem price. It is just backwards.

I read a comment that Arenanet is going to take suggestions about all this. So, here goes.

So here’s my suggestion
Why not offer a system that combines the best of both worlds: both of your new ‘less confusing more like other shopping experiences’ options and the old one where you can tailor amounts to your shopping needs.

Follow Up———
Realistically, you do have both blocks of code already generated, you know both work. It would be unrealistic to think your system couldn’t run both. And really, what is so bad with offering your ‘shoppers’ the best of both worlds, ease of use and exact service?

What does confuse me is that you’re telling your ‘shoppers’ how to shop with you. That’s not really a customer friendly attitude.

There is no reason to limit the options of shopping to your players as the new system does now. You are limiting my ways of shopping with you for no good reason. I just don’t understand why you feel you need to take away options when there really doesn’t need to be the case. Seriously, you have both blocks of code… you’re saying the creators of the ‘fastest selling MMO in history" can’t put both on the same screen to please both the new players and the old ones who had zero problems using the old system?

Options. People love options.

lordkrall.7241:

A rather interesting thing I have wondered about since the start of this thread is how many of the people in this thread actually used the Gold to Gem system.
I have seen rather many posts that starts with something along the lines of: “I don’t use this thing…”

I used it often, exactly have others have said, to top up gold or gems, with odd small numbers. Now I will NEVER use it. Ever. But that is exactly what ANet want (well, the gold to gems part, anyway). Let’s face it, if the minimum gold you can use to convert to gems is like 76g, no one is going to do that. It would SEEM much better to just pay $10 and buy them…. VOILA!!! ANet makes more money. Sad. Very freaking fracking sad they feel the need to go to these lengths to milk the players.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

lordkrall.7241:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Why funny? These people clearly have a passion for the game or they wouldn’t even bother. I think it’s kind of sad… they want the game to go in a good direction and may even want to give anet money, which is why they stick around despite what are arguably terrible changes.

But that is just the thing. They aren’t sticking around. They are coming back as soon as there is a new big thing to hate. When there are no new things to hate on they are very quiet and you more or less never see them post anything at all. But as soon as something controversial turns up they start posting like mad.

Threads like these give players who quit a feeling of solidarity and a platform to voice their concerns which they feel are not being acknowledged.

All fine and good, except more than a few basically agree they left and aren’t coming back, so . . . why bother caring about solidarity or their concerns? They’ve admittedly already left and uninstalled. It’s not about whether or not they have a point, it’s about whether or not they show up just to stir up the pot for their own amusement.

dont worry about them.

There are people with genuine concerns, and then there are trolls that are desperate to feel right about something, so they come back to flaunt supposed correctness when it does absolutely nothing to help the situation, and would only expedite the situation if people listened to them in the first place.

Being right does not make your opinion not worthless. just saying.

Because “Anet are money hungry, dont buy from them” would not make them any less money hungry if people bought less.

Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_run

Suggestion: Revert the change, and develop a small GUI that is activated via a ‘?’ button to explain how the conversion system works.

Solved, simpler, far far less coding, and keeps us happy.

What was your honest consideration of people who had odd numbers of gems, like 50, or 199, or any other amount that can’t properly be traded or used to purchase anything? What specific factors made you decide that letting this spare change cash-shop currency rot, unusable, was the right decision?

Did you consider that new players would be confused by cash shop items that cost 700, 1000 gems, when there is no option to purchase or trade for those specific amounts?

Just here to add another post to the long list of people who do not approve of this. This is simply just making service and playability of the game worse than it is before.

There is no reason to this, other then the want to make more money of people, which actually I have nothing against, it’s just that, this is the kind of stuff that does not increase profits in the long term, it decreases the playerbase and turns new players off the game. Simply put you just shot yourself in the foot.

Whoever sits in your marketing department and came up with this, desperately needs to take some more courses, this is about the dumbest thing I have seen in a while.

Best Regards

Schoko

Anet, please understand something here and now.

Your players enjoy control. Just as any human being, we enjoy having control of our currency, making our own decisions on what content we would like to enjoy, and most of all, wish to feel empowered when we log into the game. This new system fails to satisfy any of those desires.

Shoe horning us into buying a set amount of gems, when once before we were given the tools to make decisions for ourselves on how many gems we would like to purchase and when we should purchase them is an insult to your player base. Worst of all, it comes across as INCREDIBLY greedy. When your gem store items range from 300-1000 gems in price, HOW does it appear to be a good idea to force us into buying specific quantities of gems?

I vehemently defend this game, and have supported most changes implemented into the game. From the changes in the leveling system, to the shifts of the wardrobe and even the Megaserver, I’ve continuously cautioned my friends to curb their doom saying and negativity, to first allow the changes to be implemented and try to evaluate them objectively. Each time, I’ve generally found that the changes were not detrimental and could even help improve the quality of the game. This is not to say that every choice you’ve made thus far was perfect. (I still feel Mega Servers could have been handled differently with similar outcomes accomplished.) On the whole however, I felt the the positive impacts on the gaming experience far outweighed any negative quibbles I had. I accepted that of course every change is going to incur some sort of unavoidable drawback, but each time a change has been implemented, I’ve seen the merits of such a change.

HOWEVER, now I fail to see any sort of positive impact this change relays to the players. You are taking away control from your players. Under the old system, you gave us the tools to make competent decisions about our in-game currency and real world currency. In short, the previous system treated us as intelligent human beings that did not require a guardian to make all of our decisions for us.

Understand that your player base will not respond well to being forced into decisions about their currency. Understand that you are harming your reputation with those who still defend and support your game/company. Understand that I have some serious concerns, which appear to be shared if any of the replies in this thread are any indication, about your attitudes towards your player base.

I ask you treat your player base with respect. I ask you treat us as competent human beings able to make choices for ourselves and to foster this understanding with tools that allow us the information to decide for ourselves what we wish to do within the confines of your game as you once have.

I do not often post in the forums but I could not keep to silence with my faith in this company so utterly shaken now. Please, take these words to heart.

It’s like the really kitten poor decision making is a disease that has spread from sPvP, to WvW and now to the rest of the game…lol just keeps getting worse.

Hielohawx.7850:

What was your honest consideration of people who had odd numbers of gems, like 50, or 199, or any other amount that can’t properly be traded or used to purchase anything? What specific factors made you decide that letting this spare change cash-shop currency rot, unusable, was the right decision?

Did you consider that new players would be confused by cash shop items that cost 700, 1000 gems, when there is no option to purchase or trade for those specific amounts?

That is a pretty good point actually and something i find infuriating in other mmo shops. The increments never match the purchase prices. GW2 set itself apart from this by its unique and excellent system before the change

Makani Eldrinn.5638:

I very rarely did gold > gem conversions, however when I did it was because I ended up with an odd amount of gems after buying something else. Obviously they don’t want me doing that anymore, judging from the information around the spike in gem prices plus the fixed amount of gems and the patronizing response here. Don’t worry I won’t be converting anymore gems with gold. I also won’t be buying anymore gems either. If you wanted to simplify the game for new users that’s fine, but don’t take away a function that the rest of us were using.

This is exactly what I did....usually after spending at least $20 to 30.00 first. I also liked being able to buy just 1 key at a time, or one new toy item, etc. I was one who had also bout a new character slot way back so I could do some occasional key runs...now not worth doing.

Dear Anet(and anyone else willing to read my spiel...yes I’m hoping Anet really will read this...but I won’t hold my breath.)

I’ve been a loyal customer since 2010...and with all the changes over the last few months, and broken promises, I’m finding fewer reasons to keep logging in After making a gem purchase nearly every month for a long while, I no longer feel like it. I now feel like you are forcing people to pay cash for gems. No new player(unless they are buying gold or botting) is going to have enough gold to convert in order to buy that new outfit for 700 gems. I for one, would rather save my ingame gold for other things.

Some say the answer is to farm more...not everyone has time farm wvw, world bosses, and dungeons so they can get a few worthless items (blues and greens, or maybe white). You’d think that 130%+ magic find would give you better odds, but, it really doesn’t.

Speaking of WVW....I found this...in an article posted by by Jessica Boettiger on August 21, 2014 :
’What’s New?
Tournament Duration

Our next tournament will be an extremely intense, exciting four-week-long tournament battle. The shorter format will ensure that worlds will not be repeatedly matched against one another, which will more closely resemble a true Swiss-style tournament. Each matchup will be unique, and every win—or upset—will make a huge difference! ’

Funny, our server played one server nearly every week. We saw, and some reported, many of them hacking/glitching right over the top of walls in Stonemist and other places....yet they were not disqualified. There isn’t even a place to properly report this behavior although people have been asking for it since the game came out.

Perhaps we could get that and other things fixed instead of having you fix things that were not broken to begin with? You have a loyal playerbase, but, people have been wandering away in search of something with more content. Recently, SWTOR players have been coming to check out GW2, don’t screw it up by now acting just like the other greedy game companies. Many of the veteran players came to Guild Wars 2 because Guild Wars is Different....and we LIKE it that way! The community was also generally different, and better, with little of the garbage found elsewhere.

While I’m at it, I really miss the neat FREE GIFTS we used t get at GW1...it kept people playing, and has them still occasionally revisiting the old game. It was imaginative and fun...not thrown together and so predictable.

...and whatever you do, Don’t increase prices on gem store items, or bundle more items together to compensate for the complaints from people stating they have extra gems.

“The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.”

Let me translate to “normal” language

The team wont listen to your feedback, only when you stop giving us more money, we will change it to the old UI.

lekyii.9856:

“The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.”

Let me translate to “normal” language

The team wont listen to your feedback, only when you stop giving us more money, we will change it to the old UI.

So be it.

That is, if a sudden cash decrease doesn’t make an already hungry company even hungrier. Bank run incoming.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

ipan.4356:

Anet have revealed themselves to be the villains people like me warned you about.

I’m going back to single player games and mario kart until Star Citizen releases.

What value does your warning, even if it was heeded by some, have to do with anything that would stop this “villainy” from happening?

Tired of people going “Warned you guys” Like it means something to anybody but the person who gave the warning.

That being said, not happy about the gemstore “simplification.” It wont bother me too much, but its gating people that are grinding gold.

The point is to increase collective consumer intelligence, punish offenders like Anet by not supporting their game, and send a clear signal to other companies and future games that we’re not going to take it, no we’re not going to take it, anymore.

So that maybe next time, the next game I’m invested in, won’t make the same mistake.

Anet needs to be demolished for their arrogance. Corporate culture ruins everything.

I’d love to see an internal revolt by the devs and employees of Anet – Occupy Anet. That’s about the only thing that could turn this around.

I am professional program tester and my responsibility is testing windows, buttons, are they describe good way for the operation what the function is behind of them and look everything in user eyes. And is it even reasonable to use those changes.

What pokes in my eyes in this new Currency Exchage window is those Buy buttons. Because I am not buying currencies in this window, I am Trading or Exchanging them. Only that Buy More Gems button is good, because it is giving me new window where I really can Buy Gems.

So my suggestion is that those little Buy buttons should be replaced Trade or Exchange buttons. I think the best woulde be Trade it is shorter word and still fit in that area, where that Buy button is now.

Another thing what pokes in my eye, is the amount of the gems in Get Gems (exchange gold to gems) column.

1) Have you checked out from the gathered data that these are really most used exchange values, what new players have used when they started to play this game and exchange gold to gems.

• I think that 400 gems is bit too high for lowest trade.
• I think you did this interface for new players.

2) How many new players would have that kind of money to Exchange that amount of gold to gems (400 gems)?

• I think no one. Since Queensdale train have been stopped, new players don’t get very fast money.
• This game is not so rewarding that they would get that kind of money very easily.
• And when they have that kind of money, they are not anymore new players.

Or maybe you are going to change rewarding system same way, and let new players get more gold what to use in gold – gem exchange.

Yeah, I think so too, you are not going to do that. So rethink about that lowest amount of exchange gold to gems in perspective of new players.

Otherwise, the UI is really good and clear. These were my suggestions.

Keysha.2815:

To me, the easiest way to do the conversion page would be to have it set for the player to input how many gems they want, and have it say how much gold it will cost them. Or how much gold they want, and have it say how many gems they need. […]

I exactly agree with Keysha! That would have been a true improvement.

But I don’t even need an improvement. Just the old Interface back, with the option to buy exactly the number of gems I want, would be enough for me!

Please re-consider Anet. At least offer some smaller quantity like 100 gems.
Thank you

ipan.4356:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

ipan.4356:

Anet have revealed themselves to be the villains people like me warned you about.

I’m going back to single player games and mario kart until Star Citizen releases.

What value does your warning, even if it was heeded by some, have to do with anything that would stop this “villainy” from happening?

Tired of people going “Warned you guys” Like it means something to anybody but the person who gave the warning.

That being said, not happy about the gemstore “simplification.” It wont bother me too much, but its gating people that are grinding gold.

The point is to increase collective consumer intelligence, punish offenders like Anet by not supporting their game, and send a clear signal to other companies and future games that we’re not going to take it, no we’re not going to take it, anymore.

So that maybe next time, the next game I’m invested in, won’t make the same mistake.

Anet needs to be demolished for their arrogance. Corporate culture ruins everything.

I’d love to see an internal revolt by the devs and employees of Anet – Occupy Anet. That’s about the only thing that could turn this around.

That train of thought is lacking.

Anet pays the devs. you’re talking about getting people with wives and families laid off for the sake of your comfort, and assuming they’ll revolt against their employers for the sake of strangers they’ve never met; many of which, the metrics show, are children that cannot understand conversion rates.

Have some balance in your viewpoint where that is concerned. If you dont like something, dont support it monetarily. It isnt decent or even rational to say an entire company needs to go because they decided to squeeze a little harder for some profit than we thought was necessary.

Gee whiz.

May as well add my voice to the cacophony here. I too am disappointed in the change, you have in essence turned buying gems with gold into a cash card shop. Although this may appeal to the really dumb in society that cannot work a slider it rubs me in a very wrong way and has a distinct odor of greed.

As for a suggestion I would suggest you re-implement the slider, because I’m sure if a player is capable of actually playing the game they are quite capable of using this “confusing” mechanism.

Also if the slider is so confusing, why is it so prevalent in all the other TP areas? Please just admit you made a mistake and change it back.

Edit: If you are in need of more funding, maybe give us things in the gem shop we want to buy.

I’m sure this has already been suggested, but (i’ll be honest) I’m not going to read through 24 pages of posts to find it and reply. All this new systems REALLY needs is an option to say i want to buy X gems or sell X gems. Use the same UI elements you use everywhere else where you can either type in a number or use the little up/down arrows.

YES, the old system was confusing and more importantly annoying. If you wanted to buy gems for gold you couldn’t just say i want to buy 27 gems, you had to trial and error type in gold/silver/copper amounts until you got the right amount without overpaying. All i really wanted out of the old system was to say I want to buy X gems, and tell me the cost.

Some people here are going on about the market graph, but lets be honest, it was fluff. It was useless because it a) didn’t show you the buy and sell graphs at the same time, b) only went back 5(?) days (why not a week?), and c) had no sort of fine gain view or ability to zoom. If anyone really wanted to get more information than “huh, the marget really spiked sometime on tuesday”, we went somewhere online like gw2tp or gw2spidy. Power users are fine with that. It was neat, but lets face it, it was just a thing ANet used to fill space in a fixed size window and to “promote” the market driven nature of the gem exchange.

I’m fine with the new setup for the most part, it is “clearer” for sure, but the preset gem options should really be something like 25,100,400,1000. That is still 4 options, and with the exception of the 3 random items that are oddly priced at 35 gems, you can reach (i think) every other price point by 4 purchases. I am welcoming to new players, but I don’t think asking for the most basic of arithmetic skills is too much (i.e. that outfit costs 700 gems, that’s a total of 400+100+100+100)

TL;DR: adjusting preset gem amounts to 25, 100, 400, and 1000 will help, but all we really want is an adjustable amount for the number of gems we want to buy as wel as sell (since gems cannot be subdivided but gold can)

ozmaniandevil.6805:

lordkrall.7241:

A rather interesting thing I have wondered about since the start of this thread is how many of the people in this thread actually used the Gold to Gem system.
I have seen rather many posts that starts with something along the lines of: “I don’t use this thing…”

I used it often, exactly have others have said, to top up gold or gems, with odd small numbers. Now I will NEVER use it. Ever. But that is exactly what ANet want (well, the gold to gems part, anyway). Let’s face it, if the minimum gold you can use to convert to gems is like 76g, no one is going to do that. It would SEEM much better to just pay $10 and buy them…. VOILA!!! ANet makes more money. Sad. Very freaking fracking sad they feel the need to go to these lengths to milk the players.

And I was going to use it last night to get 72 gems. I need that to get to 700 gems so I could buy the new outfit and I certainly didn’t want to be forced to buy 400 instead. (Bottom line, I didn’t buy).

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

I loved the gem system and promoted it because of the ability to specifically buy what you need and sell what you don’t. It set it apart from say….XBL’s points system, which has annoyed people to the point they ended up changing it.

Please, RETURN THE ABILITY TO SPECIFY LIKE WE DID BEFORE. The ability to instantly view the value of 400 gems is great, but do not strip away the best part of it.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

Because every at Anet is out to lunch.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

No, I’m sure they could find near religious like nonsense to try and be Arenanet forum warriors, it just that there are so many people opposed to this it’s not funny, that and people have constructive thought instead of “OMGZ!!!11!!11 Anet sucks” comments.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

I’ll be honest with you and also point out something.

Up until this point, there have been several cases where decisions made by Anet had some form of understandable point. the NPE was one of them, although it was outlandish.

This, I cannot find anything nice to say about. I had something nice to say about commander tags being expensive as kitten. This, nada.

Not blind, just optimistic. That’s run out as far as this conversion goes. They didn’t even mention it was being worked on or whether there was a problem with silly players not being able to figure out what conversion rates were. This whole thing just comes across as “we need money now” thing. which, along with the comparatively nice and new gemstore releases when viewed alongside a halloween event near recycled in its entirety, doesn’t look very good.

What makes me more irritated is this whole stupid controversy could have been avoided by devoting that same effort to polishing the Halloween event at least a little. There was nothing wrong with the kitten conversion rate. They broke it for no reason.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

At least a couple of them have posted in this thread, basically saying exactly that.

I mean, I’m usually willing to at least try to understand the reasoning behind Anet’s decisions (even if I don’t agree with it) and explain it to my friends. For the most part, I love GW2. I think from a game design perspective, it’s well executed and it feels good, which is hard to pull off. So, even when Anet makes what I consider a foolish decision, I try to wrap my head around and figure out what they must be trying to do (even if it’s not how I would have done it).

This time, though, I’ve got nothing. Like, I’m willing to believe that it’s like Gaile said and that they didn’t see a majority of users making Gold -> Gem conversions of under 400 Gems. But--as I said elsewhere in this behemoth of a thread—I have to wonder if they bothered to look at which users were in that minority, because I’d be willing to bet money most of the small transactions were being carried out by users who were also making real money purchases of gems and using the Gold -> Gem conversions to make up the difference.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

I have read every post in this whole thread and so far haven’t seen any real defense of this decision Even the white knights don’t like it. The new (player) trend of flipping the player base off every patch is disturbing and unnerving.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

They are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lets-talk-about-the-new-Gem-conversion-Merged/page/15#post4504753

The people who really do blindly agree with everything don’t post here anymore. And they certainly would steer clear of this topic

Gaile Gray.:

• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

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 need to know who it needs to be practical and desirable for before the system is adjusted.

Community? Now.

Anet? Probably never, since gold converters more often than not do not spend money to buy gems and the income comes from people who do, where gold conversion is conveniently placed at single piece transactions.

Just wanted to note that.

Constructive Criticism:

Please add the ability to exchange whatever gold to gems and vice-versa to this new system, including a method where we can see the graphs and such.

Anet, we, your players, DID NOT like this change. It is absurd beyond rationality.

Devata.6589:

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

They are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lets-talk-about-the-new-Gem-conversion-Merged/page/15#post4504753

Jeezus even Vayne doesnt like it.

I’m almost giggling.

Okay, 25 pages later, I think everybody has stated their opinion (pretty much in unison for the first time in GW2 history) so let’s move on to suggestions…

Summary

1. Replace fixed amounts with fields that you enter the amount of gold/gems you desire to buy
   Original suggestion by playerbase since release
2. Keep fixed amounts, but add custom amounts field at the bottom
   Best of both worlds. We have enough room in the UI; if necessary, we could get rid of the 2000 gem exchange. (Nobody needs the ability to exchange 400 gold to gems with a single click.)
3. A sliding scale
   A sliding scale was just implemented to make the TP “easier to use”, why would the gold-gem exchange be treated differently?
4. Roll back
   The old interface sucked, but it had functionality that the community is not happy to give up.

And the other issue

1. Bring back the exchange rate history (maybe add a button that opens a pop-up) so players don’t have to go to outside sources to find the information.

This would Solve most “problems”

So the forums and reddit are on fire, because of the currency exchange rate.

While I disagree with how loud people are ranting and think that this is not a core system and should ignore it while it’s in the current state and just enjoy the Halloween event; I have to agree that the change is bad. (big buttons and instant view on price scales are nice especially for new players, but the lack is choice is severe)

Even if it may be right that most of transactions were over 400 gems before the update, fact is, they may not have been multiples of 400 (buying 450 is more than 400 but not 800!). Other fact is, the community is on fire, so calming the fire would be a good idea no matter how few players anet think a change would help.

Since I don’t know how the system work, I can’t tell if adding a box to let us choose the exact amount of gems we want is as easy and it seems.

But there is probably a solution that is easy to implement in the short term and would calm the community until a better solution is found
-> remove the 1200 gems option (clicking 400 + 800 is easy if people really want 1200)
-> add a 50 gems option

The 50 gems option will let people round the amount they need to a much finer scale while still not requiring too many clicks.

Longer term option ? Add a second button near “buy more gems” : “buy another amount”. Clicking on this new button displays a textbox that lets us choose the exact amount we want. Don’t know if this one is easy to implement since the back-end system may have been replaced with an Enum of options for example, don’t know if it’s ok regarding the real reasons why the change has been made (insert theories about money greed from ncsoft) , this is why I came with the above solution that should be ok at least for short term.

Is pretty much how I feel about this.

They should have atleast added a 50 gem/100 gem/150/200/250/300/350 gem options- WHY is it capped at 400 gems?
Where is our graph chart?
This was a horrible decision on Anet’s part or whoever as in charge of this idiotic idea.

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

Hi.

In other news, aparently Arenanet doesnt care anymore about what the player base wants. OPEN YOUR EYES ANET, YOUR LOSING PEOPLE FOR NOT LISTENING TO THE PLAYER BASE. each and every update you did that had changes to the ui like this one on the gem exchange has had negative impact on the games player base, you want money huh? stop kittening us over and try and actually listen to us for once, yes this is a rant. but kitten it anet, you dont listen or ask for imput from anyone. keep this up and your favorite game is going to die faster than you can get players back.

cmon arenanet how can you fail so bad? Bunch of sad gold diggers.. GG

ps: you don’t have to roll back, but down from a cliff.
pss: yeah it’s an opinion and it’s rude, exactly like your lame decision…

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Devata.6589:

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

They are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lets-talk-about-the-new-Gem-conversion-Merged/page/15#post4504753

Jeezus even Vayne doesnt like it.

I’m almost giggling.

. . . I really rankle at the reputation being saddled on the guy. He’s spoken out of a few things (most recently being how Traits are handled) but it gets buried, and forgotten, under how everyone remembers him for defending everything and anything blindly. Not to mention it’s rarely blindly. He does try out things before he passes judgement when it’s possible.

As someone who often spends $50 or more on gems I really dislike this new system. I can appreciate that the new interface is more visually streamlined but it came at a huge cost. Here’s my suggestion:

1. Keep the streamlined look. You can even keep your preset “buy buttons.”

HOWEVER …

2. Add a custom box where we can input the amount we want in both sides of the exchange. If I want to buy 21 gems, I should be able to.

I would often buy gems to purchase an gem-store item and then sell my left over gems for gold. Not being able to do this – or being stuck with single gems – makes me not want to purchase gems anymore. Right now I have 1501 gems. And frankly, seeing that “1” gem in my total is driving me batkitten crazy.

3. Please re-add the sale history graph! It was helpful and interesting.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Devata.6589:

cesmode.4257:

Curious…where are all of the people that blindly defend the questional decisions and direction of this game? Even they must be like “Wow…can’t really defend it here..”

They are here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Lets-talk-about-the-new-Gem-conversion-Merged/page/15#post4504753

Jeezus even Vayne doesnt like it.

I’m almost giggling.

. . . I really rankle at the reputation being saddled on the guy. He’s spoken out of a few things (most recently being how Traits are handled) but it gets buried, and forgotten, under how everyone remembers him for defending everything and anything blindly. Not to mention it’s rarely blindly. He does try out things before he passes judgement when it’s possible.

I’m not saying he is blind, I’m mentioning that he puts in significant effort to validate decisions that may otherwise be seen as a kick in the teeth by the majority, but this time is at a complete loss.

Forget whatever reputation people pile on him, the fact that he cannot actively defend this is a strong message.

….I’ve always seen him as a phoenix wright of sorts, don’t take my giggling as condescending or what have you. I actually find it humorous.

Honestly, this is ridiculous. The interface was not hard to figure out, even if you’re brand new to the game. You hold their hands throughout the entire game, now you’re just saying you don’t care about your older players. What happened ANet? In gw1 you guys were all about making new content for people, you didn’t change the interface unless it was for the better (ie. party search). Having the MINIMUM amount of gems you can buy with gold being 400 is incredibly foolish. You’re driving away your vet players, please stop. Also, at the time it was around 13-14g per 100gems. That means AT MOST it would’ve cost us 56g. Seriously, start focusing more on what the players as a whole are saying. Rather than just the “new players”

this change was horrible

such updates which makes things worser make me think if i should stop supporting gw2 with money…bcs things get worser…but at the same time..if the things get worse..it means there is not enough money to make good things…

but im not ready to pay more and more for things which become more and more bad or stay only in the same lvl after few years….

lordquibble.1672:

Some people here are going on about the market graph, but lets be honest, it was fluff. It was useless because it a) didn’t show you the buy and sell graphs at the same time, b) only went back 5(?) days (why not a week?), and c) had no sort of fine gain view or ability to zoom. If anyone really wanted to get more information than “huh, the marget really spiked sometime on tuesday”, we went somewhere online like gw2tp or gw2spidy. Power users are fine with that. It was neat, but lets face it, it was just a thing ANet used to fill space in a fixed size window and to “promote” the market driven nature of the gem exchange.

According to devs, the logic is that the change was for new users, so I want to ask a rhetorical question here: do you think these new players would know to go looking for gw2 spidy for context of gem exchange rates? You said yourself “power users” are fine with going to gw2spidy but aren’t we supposed to be concerned with the NPE?

The graph was a fantastic feature because it gave a quick in-game snapshot of recent data. It let you know “hey, prices are spiking right now compared to yesterday or a few days ago, so maybe I should wait/act now” and was a very immediate, easy to read visual indicator that prices are market-driven. Back in the day, its presence made me think “huh, maybe someone has a longer term graph”, led me to google and to gw2spidy. Without the graph, new users will have zero context for exchange rates and then may not even know/care to go looking for such a thing. The only thing on that page that lets you know prices are market-driven is a two sentence disclaimer at the bottom. Quibble as you like about the length of time it should ideally show, the graph was enough to at least put the current rate in some sort of context. What they’ve done by removing this is disempower the individuals in their market from making informed decisions.

The community has been talking loudly for years about putting more relevant information inside the game itself. This change does not in any way help that, and only succeeds in keeping players in a state of ignorance without third party sources. Blinding consumers is only beneficial to Anet, as far as I can see, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that people are annoyed.