Guild Wars 2

Maybe they want to alienate the veteran players against the new ones.
I enjoyed so much helping newcomers, showing them their first Jumping Puzzle, adding them to friends, giving them some gold and gear, and telling them to have fun and to enjoy the little detours.
How will I explain them now that, apparently, they are ruining the game for me.

The damage is already done, even if they revert it back. They artificially inflated gem prices the moment the patch released, and ripped the price graph out of the game UI and disabled the gem price function call on the API to hide it. That’s why if you go to GW2spidy the gem price graph hasn’t updated since the patch but everything else has.

Don’t even think for a second that this change was done to accommodate a certain type of player. Gem prices don’t naturally spike 22% in the span of ten minutes, not even on a patch day. That has never happened in the history of GW2, even on the anniversary.

Terrible. I was a short amount away from being able to switch server now I need far more because I am going to be over the 1800 I needed no matter how I look at it.

screw you, you guys are so disconnected with your players

I also have to say: Please put the old conversion method back into the game, the fixed values would make a nice addition to that, but only having these fixed values is annoying and frustrating. No way to just get the amount of gems you want and most time ending up with more gems than you actually wanted is leaving me really in a bad mood since this is “stealing” my gold I want to use for other things at that moment.

arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i really like this game but it’s becoming harder and harder >:{ I won’t be buying gems until this is fixed.

Gaile Gray.6029:

fellyn.5083:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• 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.

And yet in the history of this forum there has never been a post saying “the gem exchange interface is confusing me as a new player” or anything similar.

Really? You’re 100% certain there’s never been such a post? Good for you, then!

Concerns of this nature come in via tickets, when someone takes the wrong step, buys too many times, isn’t able to process the acquistion or exchange, etc. By the time someone’s on the forums, they’re usually comfortable with the systems.

Just a sidequestion out of couriosity.
If a lot of feedback from you is gathered through tickets (which makes actually much more sense in retrospect now that I think about it), there have to be statistics etc…

Could you give us a a little Top-List of reasonable things people complained about, so we other players are not out of the loop?

A lot of the recent changes never occoured to me as problems , since I just addapted to them, however if there is a lot of complaining about certain elements it has some statistical value and has to be reevaluated (which you do, but I mean from us, the players perspective.)

People don`t question things that easily, as long as there is no reason to.
I know it sounds crazy, but with your expertise in this field, can we get a Gailes Corner ?
You post a Ticket-concern and we players are getting aware of it and try to find a solution, similiar to the CDI?
Question could range from high demamnd to courious or uncommon . Simply a nice little brainstorming exercise, that would give us players a new angle to look at things.

AN i see that you have alot of time and people resources to creat such thing and test it.

When are we going to get Tangu, new masive expansion. Not the living story where you give us ON LITTLE MAP DURING THE WHOLE SESONE TWO.

You have time, resources then next time give us what we want, something to play not THE BIG GOLD SINK.

I wanna buy one KEY now i can’t.

Where is the PRECURSORE HUNT, Guild Hall, Guild PvP, where are the shortcuts for consumables that is what we need not this.

It’s like Anet are purposefully trying to drive away veteran players. This is one of the most ridiculous changes I’ve ever seen to an MMO.

Put the manual exchange option back in, put it back in quickly. You’re driving away your long-term players with this crap.

I don’t know what statistics you use, but everyone I know in the game changed 10-20g at a time. No one did it in bulk, no one wants to do it in bulk, and no one will buy gems from you either because it’s clear you’re just trying to ruthlessly extort money from people who don’t have the time to save up enough to get 400 gems at once.

Put it back. Stop making needless, pointless and disruptive changes.

Why wouldn’t you ask the community about this before? Why do you promise that you’ll look out for veteran players, and then with every update stab them in the back?

At the very least you must put options in there that allow you to buy 10/20/50/100/200 gems. It’s so deceitful when most of the items in the gem store fall between the tiers of gems that you can buy.

Oh, and removing the conversion graph only makes it look more dishonest. That needs to be put back in too.

Suggestions:

• Keep the new system…
  AND
• Add option for smaller increments like 50 gems and 100 gems.
  AND/OR
• Add advanced options to purchase custom amounts. (For example, I want to buy X gems, and it tells me it will cost Y gold. Vice versa.)

I assume most of this “confusion” in regards the old system was due to the fact that players would have to guess around with gold amounts to get a certain number of gems, instead of ordering a specific quantity of gems and seeing the market value. I think this was the issue that they were trying to alleviate. The way I see it, with my third point, this problem is eliminated, and it allows players to happily purchase their desired amount.

How on earth does something like this get past QA? You just remove a whole bunch of features from the game because some people are confused by it? You don’t make it an optional “advanced” screen or make them better explained, but remove them?

The most insane thing about this is that it actively discourages people from using the gem store. You can’t even write it off as ArenaNet being greedy or something.

Putting new items up for 200 gems on the same day you remove the ability to obtain 200 gems really is the icing on the cake. Joined up thinking, really gotta hand it to you.

I like how the new system works, but they have to improve it a little. They should add more options, like 100gems, 50 gems etc… Also add the custom option somewhere on a different tab. It makes no sence to remove it completely.

Kross.6428:

Suggestions:

• Keep the new system…
  AND
• Add option for smaller increments like 50 gems and 100 gems.
  AND/OR
• Add advanced options to purchase custom amounts. (For example, I want to buy X gems, and it tells me it will cost Y gold. Vice versa.)

I assume most of this “confusion” in regards the old system was due to the fact that players would have to guess around with gold amounts to get a certain number of gems, instead of ordering a specific quantity of gems and seeing the market value. I think this was the issue that they were trying to alleviate. The way I see it, with my third point, this problem is eliminated, and it allows players to happily purchase their desired amount.

If the goal was truly to alleviate confusion, I don’t understand why they didn’t just do #3 in the first place. As in, “I want to purchase 54 gems with gold. Type in 54 gems into a box, other box says how much gold it will cost.” Boom. Not complicated. All they would have needed to do at that point is make sure the UI reads clear in terms of what currency you’re exchanging and what currency you’ll be receiving. Could have even done an “are you sure?” prompt that tells you what you’ll lose and what you’ll gain.

I am finding it hard to believe that confusion was the issue here.

Tulki.1458:

The damage is already done, even if they revert it back. They artificially inflated gem prices the moment the patch released, and ripped the price graph out of the game UI and disabled the gem price function call on the API to hide it. That’s why if you go to GW2spidy the gem price graph hasn’t updated since the patch but everything else has.

Don’t even think for a second that this change was done to accommodate a certain type of player. Gem prices don’t naturally spike 22% in the span of ten minutes, not even on a patch day. That has never happened in the history of GW2, even on the anniversary.

Just bumping this to make sure it gets seen.

Schtizzel.5497:

Put in an option to manually exchange gold for X amount of gems and vice versa

Done.

No more putting in X gold to get the amount of gems you want and so it won’t confuse players. I want to exchang my 100 gems for gold, fine, just type it in and when you wanna get gems for your gold, fine, just type in how much gems you want. Profit.

This is a great solution and how I wish it were implemented to begin with. When converting to gems, the goal is (generally) not to spend a certain amount of gold, it’s to get a certain amount of gems for a particular purpose, so it makes sense for the user to set the amount of gems in this conversion. For me, the thing that was confusing was that I had to keep fiddling with the amount of gold I was going to spend to reach a target amount of gems. When I changed the amount of gold, the conversion rate may have changed, so suddenly even though I just increased the amount of gold to convert, I might be getting less gems. It was actually difficult to get the amount of gems I wanted. The current solution does solve this problem, but at the cost of severely limited choice – so limited that it will cause even more inconvenience.

Ideally it would be like adjusting the canvas size of a picture with the aspect ratio locked. You can set the height or the width and the other will automatically adjust to maintain the aspect ratio. However, if you’re going to go with just one, it needs to be setting the desired amount of gems in the gold → gems conversion.

There needs to be some way to buy/sell down to 1 gem. Anything else can leave folks stuck with leftovers.

Oh, and I’ve just seen that immediately after this change, gem prices went up nearly 25% – no wonder you removed the conversion history graph.

No, that’s it. I’m done. This is nickel and diming at it’s absolute worst. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you want to treat your player base like crap – well I’ll give my money to a company that doesn’t want to stab us in the back.

Such a potentially brilliant game ruined by outright greed and short-sightedness. Such a shame.

Am I the only one to be curious about the metrics/statistics/analysis they summon everytime they make a (bad) change? Because most of the time it seems to have been tested but the question is: who are the poor lunatics that allow those outrageous changes?

I’ve never heard anyone being a beta tester of the features ANet claimed that were asked for. I guess these are just excuses made to sound professional and well-thought while they are just arbitrary changes made to get more money.

If they only focus on new players, why change the game? At this rate most if not all vets well quit, and new players will be drawn to the game, and they could experience LS1 and 2! Let’s put the game on repeat then…

This is by far the dumbest cash-grab I’ve ever seen. It needs to either be reverted, or re-add the custom functionality it had before. Nothing else can happen. For now, I am boycotting everything related to the gemstore, and I probably won’t recruit new players ever again.

Signed, a (very) concerned player.

Tulki.1458:

The damage is already done, even if they revert it back. They artificially inflated gem prices the moment the patch released, and ripped the price graph out of the game UI and disabled the gem price function call on the API to hide it. That’s why if you go to GW2spidy the gem price graph hasn’t updated since the patch but everything else has.

Don’t even think for a second that this change was done to accommodate a certain type of player. Gem prices don’t naturally spike 22% in the span of ten minutes, not even on a patch day. That has never happened in the history of GW2, even on the anniversary.

The spike was the nail of the coffin for most of us, it’s so sad and heartbreaking to see which kind of direction has taken GW2 since launch, even if they revert it or change it somehow (which of course they won’t since “they” won’t allow A-Net to revert a thing), the damage on the community has been done already..

Back to topic I guess, allow at the very least an option to buy 50/100/200 gems, yeah.. but mark my words, “they” will keep stealth increasing the gold-game conversion/korean MMO grindfest rate to levels beyond belief..

I think adding a “100 gems” option, a “custom” amount box, and keeping the history graph, would make this a great system. Its nice to be able to see just how much commonly-traded gem amounts go for, but i think at least the 100 gems option would be a very nice change.

Also, gem prices are continually rising, from what i see. If im going for something that costs gems, i tend to buy them around a low moment as soon as i can afford 100, so i’ll pay less than if i have to save up for 800.

ZaxanRazor.6235:

Oh, and I’ve just seen that immediately after this change, gem prices went up nearly 25% – no wonder you removed the conversion history graph.

No, that’s it. I’m done. This is nickel and diming at it’s absolute worst. You’ve made it perfectly clear that you want to treat your player base like crap – well I’ll give my money to a company that doesn’t want to stab us in the back.

Such a potentially brilliant game ruined by outright greed and short-sightedness. Such a shame.

I agree it is just astounding to me, in one hand the potential, the beautiful and fun to play game and in the other hand the absolute kitten you attitude of the devs of it towards their playerbase. Oh and please infract me for typing kitten again. Kittens.

disgraceful.

…such a shame.

For the love of all things holy .. stop changing things that don’t need it anet you a ruining the game.

Oh well gonna miss being able to buy myself a key once in a while without having to spend 70g on it gg this is BULLKITTEN.

Love a very annoyed player

fellyn.5083:

Revert the change entirely. There. Done.

Exactly. This isn’t rocket science. They should know better and I’m certain they do. They don’t really need any big brainstorming from the forums, they are professional game developers who absolutely understood the ramifications of this change.

I find it vaguely insulting being asked for ways to fix something by someone after they broke it for no reason. If I was a paid employee I would advise against this change in the first place, if that helps. Since I’m not I leave it to the professionals to figure out a solution.

This new gem exchange is stupidy. I had 600 gem, thought that left side are gems where you can buy from gold and right side that gems from real moneys. And what? I do not buy 100 gem but SOLD. and where i’ll 700 gems i have now 500…. (sold 100 gem for 10 gold lol) GIVE back mine gems and bring back old system exchange!

Or just give 100 gem buy for gold in system like 100 gem for sale. This is unfair. You can sell 100 gem but you cant buy it. Horrible and stupidy change. rly.

This was a terrible change that nobody ever requested. I’ve been playing the game for quite a long time, and I am certain that nobody, NOBODY, ever complained ingame by saying “oh no, the gold/gem interface is too complex!”.

The previous system was very intuitive: select your type of transaction (gold > gem / gem > gold), input a numeric amount and boom, you got your result. And you even had a wonderful graph describing the price fluctuations in the meantime – ingame, with no need for external sites or things like those.

So do tell me, what was so difficult to comprehend about this, and how does it justify a system which is in any possible way WORSE than the previous one?

Usless change noone wanted.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• 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.

Well I can see the value of having a selection you can quickly select from. Even as a veteran I like the idea, it would indeed speed up the process. That being said Like others have express it needs to be more granular. If 100 and 200 where to be added to the selection process it would be a much better experience for everyone. New players get to be able to convert gems 4 times earlier then they can now and perhaps more then that it might not scare them off.

I mean if I were to put myself in the shoes of a new player who is likely making just a few silver an hour because they havent learn yet how to make the big bucks so to speak and I look at the gem conversion seeing that I need to amass around 70g before I can convert my gold I would likely think the whole gold→gem conversion option is nothing more then a gimmick because for a new player it would seem they need months of gameplay to convert gold to gems and worst yet with 400 gems there isnt much they can buy from the gem shop since most stuff cost just a bit more then 400 gems.

As for veterans we obviously love our control. I would personally still prefer the option of entering arbitrary numbers, In fact personally I would suggest you still retain that option even if its another screen accessed by clicking a button but if that turns not to be feasible I think adding the 100 and 200 denominations would be a good compromise.

edit: grammar

Not spending another cent on this game so long as this system exists, full stop.

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
-Sam Walton

Well, ANET and Gaile, you’ve had the suggestions you wanted from the other “bosses” (did you REALLY need them?) Now I’m not copy-pasting them here again. 99% of them are perfectly fine to solve the mess you’ve done. So here’s a little more “rant” from another “boss”. Now go back to work and fix this.

Well you made this to be “less” complex for who ? Only kids that are 9 years old could probably not understand the concept of INSERT NUMBER → ex. 50gold = (Gives you) 300gems. What’s so FREAKING hard to understand about it in the first place. And with this new system it looks like you either didn’t give a crap about anyone just to get people to buy gems by paying IRL money AND/OR your software developing team is a disgrace, which is not taken into consideration everything you’v done until now. SO please ANET, BRAIN ?

I love how they seem to focus on fixing problems that no one here has heard people complain about, rather then fix the problems people are very vocal about.

>A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.

Yeah, veterans who were once new players, who seemed to manage the original gem conversion ui just fine (same goes for downed state, and the like).

How I imagine a “new player” might feel at seeing all of the changes to make a very simple thing “easier to understand”: http://i.imgur.com/kOCUIh5.jpg

Seriously. I’m not sure what demographic you’re trying to appeal to, or if you really mean to insult potential new players by suggesting they’re stupid, but either way.. it’s not going to draw crowds. Especially when you’re dumbing down several very basic, very obvious elements, while at the same time making the leveling/trait system incredibly tedious.

But I guess tons of gamers are looking for easy, right?

Sithaco.4673:

I love how they seem to focus on fixing problems that no one here has heard people complain about, rather then fix the problems people are very vocal about.

Preach.

Terrible and shameful change Anet, you’ve disappointed your loyal fanbase big time once again.. Just revert it please, or change it while there is still time..

A heartbroken fan.

This is a terrible change. I will no longer buy gems with real money until this change is reverted.

I wonder who approves the final changes for the game. There’s been so many times rediculously stupid changes are made that make your players go WTF is Anet thinking. Just when you take a step in the right direction, you make a change somewhere that’s not needed in the wrong direction.

It’s pretty common sense that many players have some odd amount of gems on thier account. Ofcourse these players will be upset thier 172 gems, will have a remainder left, no matter what they buy, that remainder of gems will never get used.

It’s common sense that the new chosen amounts are not low enough for the prices of items in your gem store charge. Some items are 100gems, 200gems, but you make the minimum purchase 400gems. Really?

I hate to be insulting because i love your game, and try to support you guys, but when you guys constanly make the most stupid changes, it just blows my mind how some of these changes get approved. Are you really so blind to what your players want and need?

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 almost like a scam to make everyone with an uneven amount of gems forced to buy things they don’t want or forget about them and pretend they never had them.

I have 900 gems right now, which are the left over of gems I bought with money. I wanted to buy 100 gems to get 1 outfit + 1 mask.
Now I can only buy a minimum of 400 gems, which would leave me with 300 gems after my purchase and there’s really nothing else I want that I could buy with only 300 gems in the store. So I would be forced to get 400 more gems, but then would only have 700 and most useful stuff are 800, so I have to wait for a sales that may never come to get something I want, or buy 800 gems right away and be stuck with my 300 gems forever.

This change is an insult to everyone who spend time and money on this game.

Bring out these unwashed hordes of noobs who were stumbling so badly on the functioning exchange. We want to see them. Your shameful cash grab isn’t hiding behind your even more shameful lies about it. Show us or put it back how it was.

Dear arenanet.

I love your old currency exchange. I love determining how much gold 1 gem costs just to determine the trend. I love having exact control over the the amount of money I will be spending. I want this count outfit but i feel VERY VERY UNCOMFORTABLE about clicking that 800 gem exchange worth …153 gold? I would buy this in an instant on the old UI. It explains so much compared to the new one. You can’t balance the game and you’re ruining something as simple as a precise and working UI. Do you really want us to quit the game that bad? Just tell us. We can understand english.

islarose.7356:

Sithaco.4673:

I love how they seem to focus on fixing problems that no one here has heard people complain about, rather then fix the problems people are very vocal about.

Preach.

A thousand times THIS.

Somewhere in the world there is one 9 year old who is looking at this change and saying, “Whew, finally I can understand how to buy gems with gold without hurting my brain.”

So yes that single player thanks you for this. Mission accomplished.

Wasbunny.6531:

Somewhere in the world there is one 9 year old who is looking at this change and saying, “Whew, finally I can understand how to buy gems with gold without hurting my brain.”

So yes that single player thanks you for this. Mission accomplished.

if a 9 year old couldn’t figure out the old one he needs to be in a hospital getting treatment not playing games. this is the most blatant and disrespectful lie i’ve ever seen from a community management team.

This change was bad.
I dont mind the fact that you make little pushes to make more money, you’re a business after all, BUT, when you change the system around to give yourself a bigger income, and then lie about making it easier… Really guys? Disrespectful.
I hope you return it to the previous state, i still love the game, but this put a big dampener on my enjoyment.

What a terrible change… Currently I’m missing 50 gems from a store item I want to buy and I most certainly don’t want to waste a significant amount of gold to get 400 gems because someone out there thought that it was the best option for smallest conversion rate.

That being said, I have difficult time believing this change was made to help “new players” who found the previous UI confusing. Because quite frankly, this newer UI is not only less clear than it was before but it also screams of trying to strong-arm people to use their credit cards more.

As a frequent gem purchaser, maybe 10-20 dollars every paycheck, this change will keep my money in my wallet. Never buying gems again as long as this system is in place. Very distasteful ANet. You’ve lost yet another customer with your unnecessary changes and horrible decision making. I know a cash grab when I see one. Sad to see such a revolutionary and innovative videogame slowly being ruined due to poor management. You’re bleeding yourselves out….

Serum.4067:

As a frequent gem purchaser, maybe 10-20 dollars every paycheck, this change will keep my money in my wallet. Never buying gems again as long as this system is in place. Very distasteful ANet. You’ve lost yet another customer with your unnecessary changes and horrible decision making. I know a cash grab when I see one. Sad to see such a revolutionary and innovative videogame slowly being ruined due to poor management. You’re bleeding yourselves out….

They were probably expecting this, but worked out they will make more profit then losses, from the people unnecessarily buying extra gems.

Constructive criticism: If you are going to implement something new that objectively limits our freedom, you should allow us to use the old system as an option, not remove it completely.

Best option should be: How many gems do you want? Fill field form. Then you show the costs. Accept or Cancel. Simple.

Skarg.6834:

Another case of making quality of life worse with an update.

There’s nothing else to really say here…

Why?

WHY?!

Are you trying to force us into buying gems? I can’t see any other reason for this change. I’m trying not to go all tin-foil hat conspiracy mode here,but… What other purpose does this serve? The lowest option is seriously 400 gems? What in the gods names was wrong with the previous system?

First forcing us to map with the new trait unlock system…

Then the breaking down of the leveling system that only made the game more tedious and and highly unfriendly to new players…

Now this…

I don’t even…

Who are you people?… And what have you done with the Anet execs that designed the game we fell in love with and took the MMO gaming world by storm in 2012? The game that eliminated the sacred triune classes of MMO gaming AND all but got rid of the unnecessary grind that was the staple of gaming. Cause you’re certainly NOT they.