Guild Wars 2

Now that recipe sheets are unlocked account-wide, what about the same recipes we purchased on multiple characters that would now be considered duplicate? Like in Silverwastes, I bought the Sinister Intricate Gossamer insignia recipes for 3 different chars: armorsmith, leatherworker, and tailor – that’s 800 bandit crests that are now wasted (for the 2 extra). Can something like this be refunded?

Obviously, this would be much harder to track, but I did the same thing for the Light of Dwayna back piece recipes. I bought the recipes for all 3 armor disciplines. I think I bought them on the TP, so I know I might just be screwed on that one, and that’s ok if nothing can be done about it. But is any sort of refund for duplicated recipes possible? If so, is something in the works?

Doubtful. Some recipes that could be purchased dropped, as well. It would be very labor-intensive and time-consuming to check everyone’s history over the past years. Also, would it be expected to pay for the recipes that are now granted to those characters that learned them automatically with the patch? To even things out, you know.

I think one must just be pleased the recipes are now account-wide, which can save much resource in the future.

I can’t imagine that ANet’s going to do this. This was an amazing QoL change.

Regardless of your reasoning for purchasing three versions of some of the most expensive recipes on the TP, didn’t you get value from unlocking them already? How would ANet know who purchased on the TP (and for how much) versus those who acquired them some other way?

I didn’t realise this change means one recipe unlocks every version (e.g. for all 3 armour crafting professions). But I just tested it by buying a cheap recipe, using it on a character with no relevant crafts and checking on 2 others and it does.

That’s much better than I realised. I thought it was just to address the problem of people assuming recipes were already account wide and using them on characters without any crafts levelled expecting it to be available on the characters who can craft. (Which has become increasingly common with precursor crafting.)

I understand the frustration if you’ve bought multiple copies of expensive recipes, but I don’t think there’s a realistic way they could refund it. Even if there are records somewhere of how each person got the recipe, what they paid for it (if applicable) etc. whether they sold it afterwards and so shouldn’t be given a new one I doubt there’s a quick and easy way to sort it out. It would probably have to be done manually – as in someone at Anet combing through years of data to find out who gets what.

They could just do it like dyes where they just returned the duplicate copies, but that wouldn’t get you back your bandit crests, and for people who bought it from the TP it wouldn’t get them their gold back because all those duplicate copies would be dumped on the TP and the price would crash.

I think it’s better just to accept the loss. I don’t know how other people do it but I tend to unlock recipes for 2 reasons:
1) it wasn’t worth selling
2) I wanted to make that item at that time

In the first case I might never actually use it, and I certainly don’t think it’s worth worrying about the cost. In the second case if I bought duplicates it’s because I wanted to make multiple versions of it back then, not wait months or years in case the recipe became account wide. I probably won’t use the recipe again since I’ve got the items I wanted, and I see having them for all this time as the compensation for having to have multiple copies.