Guild Wars 2

Today I spent 70 laurels to get two ascended cleric rings for my elementalist. I bought two of the same ring because I wanted both to have the defensive utility slot. I did not know that I couldn’t wear two of the same ring and now I have one ring I cannot use. Why is there no warning about this? Nothing in game told me I needed to get two different rings. That’s several weeks of doing dailies for nothing. I think there should be a warning in game or something so that people don’t have to find this kind of thing out the hard way. Thanks for reading.

it’s a unique item in the items description.

Qori.9671:

it’s a unique item in the items description.

Yes but I had no idea what that meant until today. I would’ve rather learned it another way.

Use the in-game wiki command in the future to help learn:

“/wiki Unique”

It really works in-game, and is awesome.

On the flip-side, if you don’t care about Agony Resistance, you can infuse one of the rings and, with them now being different rings, wear them both.

Israel.7056:

Qori.9671:

it’s a unique item in the items description.

Yes but I had no idea what that meant until today.

You had no idea what the word “unique” meant? Dictionaries are usually awesome tools for understanding words.

bcd.4352:

You had no idea what the word “unique” meant? Dictionaries are usually awesome tools for understanding words.

I had no idea what that meant in GW2 terms no. A standard dictionary wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know.

I would think Unique would be self explanatory ….

I agree, should be a warning.

The warning is the word “Unique” in the item description. If you don’t know what that means, see my previous post.

Theres a warning, its called the ability to READ,,,,

The rings are all stated as UNIQUE and unique items in general can be equipped only once. This isn’t anything new. because GW2 already had before ascended items unique items.

When Anet also introduced ascended items, you can read it in the blog, that players will be only able to use for rings and earings 1 item with defense slot and 1 item with offense slot. That was at a time, where anet hadn’t decided to bring into the ganme also some time later also a 3rd type of slot with the utility slot.

So, this thing that happend to you,, isn’t anets fault. its all just your fault for not properly reading how the ascended items work in the game.
Theres no need for this kind of extra explanation, because you can also read everything about in in the official wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unique

Thanks for telling. Neither would I have known that.. BUT I think I would have looked at the wiki and there someone describes it:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended

That – however – does NOT change the fact that the game itself should be more clear about such issues. It should tell you what UNIQUE means… (and not everyone knows the /wiki thing)

I feel sorry for you. :-(

Maybe some day they will become account-bound and you can give it to another character? Or is it account-bound yet?

You could send a mail to anet support or open a thread in the bug forum and explain what has happened, I don’t think they will refund you the laurels, but maybe they will give more information about this particular lack of clarity in the future.

I remember there was a similar thread about this a while back, and many argued the term “unique” listed on an item doesn’t hold the same meaning for all games, so someone can easily make a mistake if they don’t know what the term “unique” means according to GW2.

Navi.7142:

Maybe some day they will become account-bound and you can give it to another character? Or is it account-bound yet?

Rings are already both Account Bound & Soulbound on Equip. The OP probably equipped both rings, thus soulbinding them (and thus making a second mistake).

I imagine that there will be two basic viewpoints. One is that the onus of responsibility falls on the user; buyer beware.

The other viewpoint will be something similar to mine.

I don’t really care which of the two viewpoints readers take and I’m not going to argue with people about why mine is better or worse, that’s a matter of opinion.

I’m just hoping that people who didn’t know will read this and not make the mistake I just made.

I have opened a ticket for this issue and I really hope Anet will help me out here. I would be happy to receive a refund and buy the other ring or simply have the rings swapped out.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Navi.7142:

Maybe some day they will become account-bound and you can give it to another character? Or is it account-bound yet?

Rings are already both Account Bound & Soulbound on Equip. The OP probably equipped both rings, thus soulbinding them (and thus making a second mistake).

I dont have another character to give it to so it doesn’t matter.

thats no good, there should be a warning

Unique is meaningless without a description of what it is supposed to be unique to.

Unique to what? To the game? To the character? To the account?

Unique isn’t the only poor tooltip description you’ll find in GW2. There are plenty of confusing and unclear tooltips in traits, items and abilities.

There should definitely be a warning.

If the item is “unique” then why is it that a second one can be created while the person is in possession of the unique item?

The onus and responsibility in this case rests squarely upon the shoulders of the game designers. If one can only wear one of something then that information should be made available clearly and obviously.

The user should not be required to use esoteric commands that they’ve probably never used with weird syntax that isn’t clearly laid out in the first place. I don’t go around checking the wiki for every item I pick up nor do I think I -should- have to do that.

If there is an item with an unusual property I expect the game to let me know. This is good game design and good UI design. Hiding information or forcing the user to go out of their way to find something out is not good game design.

I’ve played other MMOs so I understood what the term unique was referring to, but I think it would be a great idea to have a warning for those players who may not be familiar with it

Have to say I agree that ‘unique’ isn’t a helpful description.

A lot of people might make the mistake of assuming it means the same as in GW1, where it meant the item was only available from one source, usually a rare drop from a particular boss. (Although you could argue there’s a hint there because the colour/rarity system in GW1 went white > blue > purple > gold > green with all greens also being unique, and that changed for GW2.)

Just for more context I’ve played other MMOs and none of them had “Unique” gear, at least not when I was playing them.

I don’t think it’s nearly as obvious as many of the posters here, but I really fail to see a better way of “warning” players. I actually fell for it too simply because I never noticed that the rings stated “unique” (which is a standard MMO term). While it would have been nice to have a better warning, I’m not coming up with any good way to actually warn players beyond what’s already done.

There most definitively shouldn’t be a warning for purchasing a unique item that isn’t soulbound on purchase.

Warnings are for people that don’t know what they are doing, for those that strictly refuse to use their common sense. Printing warnings on everything and having “are you sure?” popups everywhere is just annoying as hell. Some people are used to it, especially Americans as far as I can tell (no offense) but that doesn’t turn this silly costum into anything even remotely desirable.
In this specific case it might not be the OP’s fault, but on the other hand the term “unique” is very common in RPG-like computer games nowadays, it’s nothing new or rare.

They cannot assume that everyone will know what that means.
Maybe there are these people that know it, but on the other side there still exist a lot of others that don’t know it.

As there already exist the confirming on purchase boxes, a simple confirming box like “You will now buy this unique item. You cannot use the same two unique items for the same character. Please confirm your purchase.” or whatever.. I think that would help a lot..

I think many people are taking for granted what they already know and calling it ‘common sense’ or ‘self explanatory’.

I know what it means when I see ‘unique’ in an item description because I have played many other games where it is used in this way.

Knowing the dictionary definition of the word unique does not tell you how the item will be treated in game terms. It could simply be a distinction of the item’s rarity. If the item was truly ‘unique’ in the sense of the word, only one player could have it, ever..

I wouldn’t want to make a 30 laurel mistake either, I think a sell back feature for these types of vendors would be a great option.

@OP I would open a support ticket and ask for a refund if the extra ring is still in your inventory and you have not salvaged it. The support people do sometimes show mercy.

If it really is unique wouldn’t it be better to not be able to buy it twice in the first place and just have a pop up stating you already own the item and cannot purchase another.

I personally had no idea you couldnt equip two acended rings of the same name and also no idea about the wiki command neither of those things have ever been meantioned in game to me.

It needs to be communicated better. I know it, and would never have made the mistake, but I do see how someone who’s never played an MMO before might get screwed over by it. Wasting laurels or any other currency is simply not fun.

I’ve played MMOs before not every game has these sorts of items.

The onus is always on the player to be cognizant of what they are doing before they do it. This is like buying an item from a karma vendor not realizing it’s Soulbound on Acquire or something and then being mad over that. You need to pay attention.

ANet support has repeatedly stated that they will not correct player-made mistakes, which this issue falls into the category of.

I think the term “Unique” should be described somewhere in the game (not just the wiki), like in one of the many Hints that could be accessed in the upper menu bar. One shouldn’t have to rely on outside sources (aside from the game’s instruction manual) just to understand some of the basic stuff in the game.

For instance, Unique items in GW1 and Unique items in GW2 are two totally different things! In GW1, Unique was a rarity (much like Masterwork, Exotic, and Ascended are rarities GW2) for certain items in the game; while in GW2, Unique is what it’s like in some MMOs in that you can only equip one of that particular item.

If GW2 is the player’s first MMO, then they might not know what Unique exactly means as far as this game’s terminology goes until it’s too late, thus spawning threads like this, and then getting egged on for not know about the elusive /wiki command (which, last time I checked, wasn’t explained about either in-game. Just undocumented).

Attached is a screenshot of me looking up the word “unique” in the Hints section (which can be accessed by typing /help). Notice that nothing shows up. Without using /wiki, Google, the dictionary, or any other out-of-the-game resources, how is one supposed to know what Unique means?

Unfortunately making hints explaining the term unique wont resolve anything. If it were that simple, stickies in forums would actually work. When it comes down to it, this is simply user error. If you noticed that there were rings with Offensive and Defensive, with the same stats… logic would tell you that you cant have duplicate rings.

They also specifically state they are unique.

This has been discussed before.

A lot of people were complaining that it shouldn’t give you an option to buy something you already have, because it’s no use. However, this is not true. You can give that ring to your alt and it can equip it.

As opposed to former games, you could not simply obtain items that were unique and pass it to your alt. I’d much rather have the ability to obtain more than one unique item so I can pass it on to my alts.

I don’t want a great feature to be disabled because of a minute user error.

Chase.8415:

Unfortunately making hints explaining the term unique wont resolve anything. If it were that simple, stickies in forums would actually work. When it comes down to it, this is simply user error. If you noticed that there were rings with Offensive and Defensive, with the same stats… logic would tell you that you cant have duplicate rings.

They also specifically state they are unique.

This has been discussed before.

A lot of people were complaining that it shouldn’t give you an option to buy something you already have, because it’s no use. However, this is not true. You can give that ring to your alt and it can equip it.

As opposed to former games, you could not simply obtain items that were unique and pass it to your alt.

You can also buy the ring on an alt…so you cut down on errors. These vendors are easy enough to get to for everyone. So it doesn’t allow one character to buy it, but since the tokens are account bound, you can save people some heartache.

Vayne.8563:

Chase.8415:

Unfortunately making hints explaining the term unique wont resolve anything. If it were that simple, stickies in forums would actually work. When it comes down to it, this is simply user error. If you noticed that there were rings with Offensive and Defensive, with the same stats… logic would tell you that you cant have duplicate rings.

They also specifically state they are unique.

This has been discussed before.

A lot of people were complaining that it shouldn’t give you an option to buy something you already have, because it’s no use. However, this is not true. You can give that ring to your alt and it can equip it.

As opposed to former games, you could not simply obtain items that were unique and pass it to your alt.

You can also buy the ring on an alt…so you cut down on errors. These vendors are easy enough to get to for everyone. So it doesn’t allow one character to buy it, but since the tokens are account bound, you can save people some heartache.

Those rings are not only from the vendor, you can also obtain them from drops inside Fractal of The Mists LvL 20+. If you were to change the rings to be only bought on separate characters, this would mean you could not obtain rings by FOTM unless you specifically went with your alt.

Again, this is a fantastic feature of Guild Wars and I do not wish it to be limited or disabled due to a user error.

Chase.8415:

Vayne.8563:

Chase.8415:

Unfortunately making hints explaining the term unique wont resolve anything. If it were that simple, stickies in forums would actually work. When it comes down to it, this is simply user error. If you noticed that there were rings with Offensive and Defensive, with the same stats… logic would tell you that you cant have duplicate rings.

They also specifically state they are unique.

This has been discussed before.

A lot of people were complaining that it shouldn’t give you an option to buy something you already have, because it’s no use. However, this is not true. You can give that ring to your alt and it can equip it.

As opposed to former games, you could not simply obtain items that were unique and pass it to your alt.

You can also buy the ring on an alt…so you cut down on errors. These vendors are easy enough to get to for everyone. So it doesn’t allow one character to buy it, but since the tokens are account bound, you can save people some heartache.

Those rings are not only from the vendor, you can also obtain them from drops inside Fractal of The Mists LvL 20+. If you were to change the rings to be only bought on separate characters, this would mean you could not obtain rings by FOTM unless you specifically went with your alt.

Again, this is a fantastic feature of Guild Wars and I do not wish it to be limited or disabled due to a user error.

The dropped rings wouldn’t have to change at all. I’m not sure how what I said would affect you. If the vendor refuses to sell Character X a ring because he already has that ring, that has nothing to do with drops at all.

Rings would still drop in the fractals exactly the same way.

Chase.8415:

Again, this is a fantastic feature of Guild Wars and I do not wish it to be limited or disabled due to a user error.

How in the world is making an item unique “a fantastic feature of Guild Wars”? I surely read what you typed wrong, because I can’t imagine that is what you mean.

The dictionary definition of the word unique is: single, solitary in type.

As you CAN buy two of these items and in fact everyone playing the game can buy two (or more) of these items…..they are not “unique”. In fact quite the opposite.

The wording is wrong and should be changed to better reflect the meaning.

pricer.5091:

The dictionary definition of the word unique is: single, solitary in type.

As you CAN buy two of these items and in fact everyone playing the game can buy two (or more) of these items…..they are not “unique”. In fact quite the opposite.

The wording is wrong and should be changed to better reflect the meaning.

Except that it’s a relatively standard MMO term, and many people do understanding. Out of curiousity, what word would you use instead?

As has been mentioned, “Unique” is a standard term in many many RPG type games that indicates this behavior.

It might not be explained as well as it should be, but there don’t seem to be any serious ideas for how to improve it that exhibit both efficacy and ease of use.

I just don’t see why they can’t refund the laurels. It can’t be that complicated. We can argue all day about what ought or ought not be in a game or what terms should or shouldn’t be used. This is not my first MMO and I’ve never seen this term used before.

Ack! Thats really tough, sorry to hear about the problem. However, since the second ring should of been “unequippable”, you can transfer to another character before it becomes soulbound.

This doesnt solve your issue, as I dont think there is a solution, just trying to make the best of a bad situation.

It is a standard term for MMOs and if you saw it, you should have at least found out what it meant before you got it. However, they could change the wording to Unique Equipped which would make it more clear for some people.

Or “Character Unique”.. ^^

Syeria.4812:

As has been mentioned, “Unique” is a standard term in many many RPG type games that indicates this behavior.

It might not be explained as well as it should be, but there don’t seem to be any serious ideas for how to improve it that exhibit both efficacy and ease of use.

The fact that it is a standard term means nothing to someone who has not played other games using it.

As stated it does not behave in such a way that the dictionary definition of unique would have you expect it to.

It was also pointed out that Guild Wars I did not treat the unique status this way.

So it is far from obvious or self explanatory. Why are so many people unable to look at this from anything but their own view point?

I’ve played many rpg’s and MMO’s, I know what a unique item is. I know I can’t equip more then two, I also know that is not made obvious by the in game tool tip and that 30 laurels is a devastating cost at which to learn this lesson.

There have been solutions stated. There is already a ‘buy’ confirmation window. Simply state in the confirmation window. “You are about to purchase a ‘unique’ item. You can not equip more then one unique item of the same name.” [Buy] / [Cancel].

This is a very easy solution that would simply involve changing the text in an already exiting pop up warning.

Alternatively you can offer a buy back option, even if it is only 10 minutes. Enough time for the player to attempt the equip the item and realize they can not. These seems like it could take a bit more work, and I don’t think it would work as well, especially if the player is buying multiple unique items for an ult and will not equip them till later. A longer timer would allow players to purchase the items, do a dungeon run and sell them back..though I’m not sure why you would do that.

You can also have a player be unable to buy a second of the same unique item of the same name if he currently has one in his inventory or equip. Again more work but should solve the problem. This would not affect a player being able to get the item from the loot table.

Many solutions have been offered.

I don’t understand why players who are in the know are defending against putting a solution in place. Does it hurt you so much to see a safe guard in place just because you don’t need it yourself?

Israel.7056:

bcd.4352:

You had no idea what the word “unique” meant? Dictionaries are usually awesome tools for understanding words.

I had no idea what that meant in GW2 terms no. A standard dictionary wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know.

So when seeing this strange new marking, it never occurred to you to look it up before making the purchase?

Since this mistaken purchase was entirely your fault and no fault of the product, your refund is 4 silver and 95 copper after restocking fees. Thank you, have a nice day.

Sorry but the fact that “it’s a relatively standard MMO term” just doesnt cut it. This game was marketed specifically to atract people who may not be familiar with MMo’s…remember “if you love MMOs you will love GW2, if you hate MMOs you will love GW2”?

And even if it wasn’t, does everyone playing have a vast welath of MMO experience? What if it’s your first?

Fact is, a purchase in game of this item needs a tooltip making it clear you can’t equip two….in plain English. As it doesn’t…a refund of the laurels is in order.

pricer.5091:

Sorry but the fact that “it’s a relatively standard MMO term” just doesnt cut it. This game was marketed specifically to atract people who may not be familiar with MMo’s…remember “if you love MMOs you will love GW2, if you hate MMOs you will love GW2”?

And even if it wasn’t, does everyone playing have a vast welath of MMO experience? What if it’s your first?

Fact is, a purchase in game of this item needs a tooltip making it clear you can’t equip two….in plain English. As it doesn’t…a refund of the laurels is in order.

Though I used the term “relatively standard MMO term”, I never said nor implied I’m not for having a way to protect people from wasting laurels. I said quite the opposite in fact. I’m simply against changing the term.

I agree that there should be a warning, I was lucky enough to ask my guild before buying them, because as an offensive player I would buy two offensive pieces, but I learned you can only buy one or the other.

I find that with a lot of things in this game I have to do lots of research before committing to any big purchase.

Sorry to hear =(

CryxTryx.9208:

I don’t understand why players who are in the know are defending against putting a solution in place. Does it hurt you so much to see a safe guard in place just because you don’t need it yourself?

It’s called Schadenfreude…basically it’s a delight in the misfortune of others and a desire to show a superiority that is usually not very evident on closer examination.

Pennry.9215:

Israel.7056:

bcd.4352:

You had no idea what the word “unique” meant? Dictionaries are usually awesome tools for understanding words.

I had no idea what that meant in GW2 terms no. A standard dictionary wouldn’t have told me what I needed to know.

So when seeing this strange new marking, it never occurred to you to look it up before making the purchase?

Since this mistaken purchase was entirely your fault and no fault of the product, your refund is 4 silver and 95 copper after restocking fees. Thank you, have a nice day.

You don’t get to make that ruling but I understand that some people will see it that way.