Guild Wars 2

Gaile locked off most of the threads where this would make sense naturally, but yeah, thanks to the devs for the hard work. I assume you saw where it still has rounding errors, but I know you were just trying to get it out so it could be used as soon as possible, which couldn’t have been the easiest given what I assume is lots of last-minute work for the big Tuesday update.

The attention that has been paid to this from the beginning has been excellent, I don’t care what anyone else says. We’ve had response and communication at every step, and I’m really happy for that. It would have been nice to have had some advance warning so we could have worked this out earlier, but it seems gauche to harp on that when you’ve made such an effort to try and make us happy after the fact.

Yes, thank you. I’d still rather have the graph, as well, but thanks for the Custom option. =)

Yes thanks but……It’s clumsy.

There is an automatic price/gems in the slots and I can’t back through all the numbers to erase them. I have to put the cursor on the left side of the number in there, type a number to start, erase the automatic number then finish typing the quantity I want.

It’s not intuitive or gracefully designed.

I think its great that they (re-) added the custom exchange, BUT I’m still missing something… The ability to type the amount of gems you want to convert to gold.

I can make it work with (for example) 498 gems to gold or 503 gems to gold, but not the 500 that I want. That still leaves me with spare gems I cannot use.

Good step in the right direction, but I really miss this option.

Thank you for the custom feature. It happened faster than I expected and that is nice.

Yes, I too would like a little more control over how many gems I wish to convert. But I am willing to wait since you listened to us and have made a good start. And if it never happens, I can live with this.

Thank you again.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes, thank you. I’d still rather have the graph, as well, but thanks for the Custom option. =)

Bookmark this, as long as we don’t get the graph back :

https://www.gw2tp.com/gems

Gaile Gray.6029:

I will be sure to pass along your comments and I know a lot of the devs will see this thread and be glad to hear that you’re pleased with the changes.

Thanks for the insights!

the other major issue is exactness. If you buy 1g with gems, it costs you 9 gems and you get 1g. if you buy 10g with gems, it costs 87 gems and you get 10g. It was so much more sophisticated before: if you sold off 9 gems, you would get 1g8s37c (the exact price of those 9 gems)
I can tell there is a general ‘buy more at a time and get a better deal’ (for amounts more than ~50 gems), but it should still be exact instead of rounded.

Mystic.5934:

the other major issue is exactness. If you buy 1g with gems, it costs you 9 gems and you get 1g. if you buy 10g with gems, it costs 87 gems and you get 10g. It was so much more sophisticated before: if you sold off 9 gems, you would get 1g8s37c (the exact price of those 9 gems)
I can tell there is a general ‘buy more at a time and get a better deal’ (for amounts more than ~50 gems), but it should still be exact instead of rounded.

IIRC the rounding is only on the display side, when you buy, the correct amount is subtracted. Or that’s how it used to be.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I know a lot of the devs will see this thread and be glad to hear that you’re pleased with the changes.

I guess many devs were against the change in the first place

Thanks for the update, I do hope more effort can be made in this area to close out the problem raised by others in this thread, that being converting 8 gems to coin it may seem petty such a small amount I know.

ED Ah I get it, if 8 gems then by 1 gem for coin then sell 9 then equal 0 gems remaining, excellent

It’s better than nothing for now, but I think we all just want the old system back, where you can convert any quantity. I still cannot convert exactly 50 gems to gold. I can convert 44 gems to 6 gold, and then I’m still left with 6 gems. Or am I just not using this properly?

This is gotta be one of the smartest strategies I have ever seen…

• Community unhappy
• Announce a feature that would rage the community
• Watch the community complain
• Announce that they listened to us and reverting the change
• Become the hero again and everyone happy ever after
• Continue with no contents but they listened to us at least

Zylonite.5913:

This is gotta be one of the smartest strategies I have ever seen…

• Community unhappy
• Announce a feature that would rage the community
• Watch the community complain
• Announce that they listened to us and reverting the change
• Become the hero again and everyone happy ever after
• Continue with no contents but they listened to us at least

Ummm, there’s new content coming November 4th. Conspiracy Theory much? lol

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lishtenbird.2814:

IIRC the rounding is only on the display side, when you buy, the correct amount is subtracted. Or that’s how it used to be.

Oh, that would be great, if it’s display and not functionality. If someone verifies that, could you please post? Thanks a bunch.

Sure, I’ll spend even more of the gems I’ve purchased with real money to double check your game for you. It’s not like you have access to people that could test it there at ANet, right?

And… confirmed that it’s still keeping the remainder. Currently it’s 73 gems for 10 gold. Purchased, and lost 73 gems to get 10 gold. Then tested the custom amount screen. Asked for 2 gold, was told the price was 16 gems. Purchased, lost 16 gems got 2 gold. Both times, any silver and copper was eaten by the exchange.

Now, who do I talk to about a refund, or at least the excess coins I should have gotten? Should I submit a customer support ticket?

+1

Thanks guys/gals at ANET!

Glad to see the gem issues fixed, but why did this a non-game changing flub get fixed after a few weeks and the Traits System not(after 6 months)?

Are the exchange rates still influenced by transactions? For ex right now 800 gems = 110g roughly. In a few weeks will i see 800 gems = “1 coper”?

Gaile Gray:

If you are suggesting that all new development of every kind — from convenience items to appearance options — should be offered for free, please reconsider that opinion. Much is offered for free, but we need financial support — as any business does — in order to continue to support the game and to offer expanded content such as our Living World episodes. Imagine any business, from a grocery store to a car manufacturer, offering everything they produce in the future on a no-cost basis. It’s not possible in the real world and it’s simply not possible in game development, either, and particularly in a game that does not charge a monthly fee. Voluntary, individual support of our Gem Store is an essential element that allows us to continue to support the game and to continue to offer expanded content, feature additions, and many other things on a free basis to every player.

I would like to pick this up because I think this argumentation is flawed.
A huge segment on the gemstore are the skins that are released every now and then.
They are by no means necessary to “win” the game, they are however the main driving factor of the game. If you don’t play for the (now and then lax) story or the (almost nonexistant) mechanics, you’re playing the game for it’s graphics and the skins are a crucial part of this.

But since the release of GW2, most of the skins have been put into the gemstore. There are some skins that have been put into the game as reward but those are the minority of skins released. This approach is on multiple levels unsatisfying and I will go through all of them.

1: The “rewards” the gemstore offers outshines the rewards the normal game offers. This does happen because the items on the gemstore are, as said earlier, the main driving factor of the game. The amount of effort ANet puts into those gemstore releases does only increase this feeling.

2: The gemstore is the biggest reason for the grind that exists in this game. Many people have either decided to not spend money on gems because of one or multiple reasons which I’m listing right now, or they simply don’t have the money. So they have to farm gold to convert them into gems. This however, combined with the fact, I will repeat this once again, that skins are the main driving factor for this game, leads to the players looking for the most efficient way to farm gold to get the skins quickly. So few areas of the game get repeated over and oever, while the most get abandoned.
There is simply no such thing in GW2 as “doing this content to get htis gear or that skin” but only “doing this content to get gold to buy stuff”.

3: The gemstore-strategy stays representative for the for the overall strategy ANet is pursuing; and the players are unhappy about it. They are not buying gems because they don’t want to support this strategy or because they don’t want to support the gemstore. I’m number among this group, I would even pay a monthly fee if we would get skins added into the game, not in the gemstore and if ANet would fix the flaws they never acknoledged.

As Anatoli Ingram from Massively said, the gemstore needs a PR update. And for now a huge PR update if the skins in the gemshop would be handled differently. The most drastic way of doing this would be to say that you wont release new skins for the gemshop but put them into the game (as additional skins to buy from dungeon tokens as example). A less drastic way would be to release only the half of the created skins in the gemstore while the others can be found in game. Another idea would be to release them in the gemstore first and add them to the game for free later.
Now those changes would definitely cost ANet money, thus new things that could be sold must be found. One of those could be animations. Animations are nice to have but neither necessary, nor a crucial part of the game. They could be something like a different animation for the autoattack of a warrior who’s wielding two swords, so that he is using both his swords for the autoattack. Another idea would be to sell different voices. These would certainly cost a lot of money but I personally would buy them.
Those are some ideas of things that could be added to the gemstore rather than skins.

Thank you for changing this! It’s really appreciated that it happened so quickly. Much thanks!

Thank you for the fix! I know I’ve been critical of Anet for a bit, but I do appreciate the ability to purchase gems smaller increments. Thank you.

Thanks for the fix! I was hoping it would be fixed during the new sale and it was~ really glad that you listen to player feedback

Saw the fix earlier. Thanks.
Still – Its about time to implement a system against the passive inflation now. (Pic related)
Because at this rate this wont end well. I am already spending a lot less gold on gems than before.

I understand that higher gold to gem ratios will probably net Anet more money because many people will opt to real money transactions.
I wont – The higher the ratio the less likely I will ever buy gems from money.
A system like this is tricky.

Oh behold, Flitzies pessimistic views again.
You can be sure that, comes time, comes p2w at some point. And then having a very high gold-gem ratio is even more beneficial for the company because now people will be passively forced to buy gems from real money.

Its the nature of current MMOs. At some point most of them go F2P, or in our case straight P2W, if they are not going to well. Its no wizardry that even guild wars 2 will see a declining player base and at some point will be forced to take this step.
This does not even relate to the lack of content atm. Its just the fast nature of this genre these days.
The sad part again is that Anet most likely has ony limited control over that.

Please dont hate me for this because I certainly dont think of Anet as a bad company. Infact Gw2 is probably the best MMO currently around and they do a great job, sometimes questionable but good. I dont blame anyone.
Just a heads up.

Oh wow thanks. Ill make sure to check this out. Must have missed topics based around that.

Edit: Edit: Meh, LostProphet beat me to it

Gaile Gray.6029:

Flitzie — I am not an economist. But I know our resident experts in this field have posted about this in the past.

I suggest you read this thread, it’s fascinating!

Or search for John Smith’s posts here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/John-Smith-4610

Both links point to John’s profile.

Finally, thank you for the custom option, that makes me super happy. Now I don’t have to fiddle with coppers to get exactly the amount of GEMS I want when I convert gold to gems.

Wish a simple graph was available so I could tell if I was getting a decent deal or not. Luckily I remember how many gems 200g will get me so I can go off that.
The graph would only need to go back about 2 days, or at least tell me the high and low for the last 24 hours.

The only thing I would like to change from the current exchange now is perfect gem-to-gold exchange. Not just integers in gold, but also able to get silver and copper. This would help reduce things like being stuck with 1 gem (which i would be if I converted all of my gems to gold) and also reduce players feeling cheated out of a little extra coin by the system.

Still, the new “enter how many gems you want and well give a price” is a vast improvement over “buy this specific amount of gems” or “tell us how much gold you want to convert, then we’ll let you know what you’ll get in return.” Kudos.

Thank you , finally this company made something right for a long time. Only thing Im still missing is the conversion graph.
But please, think of us players first instead of our money in the future . Happy players will spend far more RL money on this game than now. We dont want to yell our souls out of our bodies everytime you do something not well considered. After all we want to enjoy this game too as you do. But you are making it very hard for us everytime you do something like this.

First, thank you for addressing player concerns in a timely fashion while maintaining a solid line of communication on the process/progress involved.

The cynical side of me notes that Anet took something away from the player base and returned a lesser version only after receiving bad press for the feature removal and then gaining the gratitude of players for, “listening.” At the end of this process the players have less than they did before and Anet gets kudos for listening to their players. Weird.

I think I will choose to ignore Cynical Ashen and instead thank Anet for their responsiveness to player concerns in this matter.

Thank you guys for rolling this change out! A few minor changes mentioned above would make this perfect. Thank you for listening to our feedback.

Thanks for putting the custom amounts back in, ANet. The rounding discrepancies does bother me a bit, but it’s still early days so I’ll wait and see when all the bugs get ironed out and we know more about how the system is supposed to work.

I’m glad this got patched quickly, but feel it needs more work still. The old method was better, and the graph should be put back in place.

Thank you very much for the patch to the trading post. I would still like to see the graph so I don’t have to go to 3rd party sites, but it’s a start. I exchanged gold for 97 gems today to buy my Candy Corn Gobbler.

THANK YOU~~~!!!!!!
I’M 43 GEMS AWAY FROM THE TOMB FINISHER, NOW YOU KNOW WHY I’M SO HAPPY I HAD TO CAPS.

I don’t like that I still have to pick and guess a gold amount to see how many gems it’ll be. I’d much rather enter how many gems I’d like to sell and see how much it would give. At best both options.

I also don’t understand why the two exchanges aren’t even. If I’m selling gems to players, shouldn’t it be the same? Right now I can get 20 gold for my 157 gems. If I want to buy 157 gems, I have to pay 27g84s56c. Say “no” to hidden fees.

As far as the rounding goes on the gems to gold: Is it up or down? At what point, the standard half? Is it then double rounded, first by coppers then by silver? And why isn’t the gold in gold to gems rounded?

Pennry.9215:

I don’t like that I still have to pick and guess a gold amount to see how many gems it’ll be. I’d much rather enter how many gems I’d like to sell and see how much it would give. At best both options.

I also don’t understand why the two exchanges aren’t even. If I’m selling gems to players, shouldn’t it be the same? Right now I can get 20 gold for my 157 gems. If I want to buy 157 gems, I have to pay 27g84s56c. Say “no” to hidden fees.

As far as the rounding goes on the gems to gold: Is it up or down? At what point, the standard half? Is it then double rounded, first by coppers then by silver? And why isn’t the gold in gold to gems rounded?

Splitting your points up by paragraph:

a) Very much this. It is a very clumsy system. Seems the issues with the previous system in buying gems have now appeared in this one when selling, wherein you put in your number and hope you are close. It seemed better the other way around to me, and as it is right now it is very clumsy and inprecise.

b) That difference was there with the old system, hence te two slightly different graphs depending on the which tab you were looking at. If I remember right one of the reasons was to prevent a fast buck being made, which could destabilise the economy if largely unchecked. The difference in what you get depending on what you are doing is to ensure that profits aren’t being made in a matter of minutes by simple flipping. Flipping can be profitable, but with the current way can take weeks or months to show that profit. Those who wish to take advantage of the inflation can thus do so, but not so quickly as to destabilise the price.

c) The rounding is by far the biggest bugbear I have with this system. Why in the name of Grenth’s Reapers couldn’t it be be the same as the old system with precise currency use, including gold or copper. Say you buy a gem for 1g. If you buy 10 gems and the price was 10g, all is well, you paid the value of the gem, all good. But if the 10 gems was say 9g 70s, then you overspent on your single gem by 3 silver, and needlessly so. Sure, it allows those who buy large amounts to benefit from economies of scale, which I believe they did to some extent with the last system. But with the removal of silver and copper in this system, its more potential for some buyers to be shortchanged. OK, not by a great deal in the grand scheme, but it would still be like going to a shop, buying something for £4.70, handing over a five pound note and then not getting the change. It ain’t a lot, but it does irk you. It has been suggested that here, if I read it right, that it may give the silver and copper conversion but just give the gold on the screen. Which then begs the question why is it like that, and is anyone willing to chance it to prove a point when Anet should have mentioned it before.

For me, bottom line is its better than the system they just implemented, but is still clumsier and more inprecise than the old one, and still seems to penalise the small-quantity trader more than it should. And the lack of the graphs is the removal of a trusted feature of the old exchange, that allowed for monitoring and speculation. I feel its removal is yet another move towards less transparency, intentional or not, and potentially opens the way for, if not covert exchange rate manipulation by Anet, at least the greater mistrust and paranoia around it.

It still feels like Anet are streamlining systems, which is fair enough, but removing well-used functionality with it. Players like choice, and greatly dislike that choice being removed for no clear reason. Still, better that what there was the last few days.

Edit: Just had a look at that GW2TP site, and really nice little thing. Glad to see there are still ways to monitor for those who look. As a fun little aside I just noted that the gem price for this time last year was 6g70s, as opposed to 17g41s74c now. A heck of an increase in the old inflation. I’m not much of an economist so won’t try and justify it or say this is good or bad, but it does make me wonder where we’ll be this time next year.

:D Well this proves anet does care to fix what a lot of people find important, now if they would just fix the Commander tag covering up harvest nodes and other important features on mini maps , as well as the disappearing cursor issue that has plagued this game for two years now…we would be golden.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lishtenbird.2814:

IIRC the rounding is only on the display side, when you buy, the correct amount is subtracted. Or that’s how it used to be.

Oh, that would be great, if it’s display and not functionality. If someone verifies that, could you please post? Thanks a bunch.

This was how it use to be when buying gems.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gold-Gem-exchange/first#post3983726