Guild Wars 2

I saw the new weapon skins, thought that FINALLY, some real cool stuff was taking the forefront in the art direction.

Then I hear that the new skins are untradeable? It’s appalling. I’ve told my friends that I will not be playing GW2 again if this is their chosen direction; and I preordered.

GW2 is already under fire for its content (or lack there of, particularly in HoT). I said to my friends that the next patch or two will be the ones that make or break this game. It has a lot to redeem, and this kind of play by them is unredeemable.

I’ll see you back in-game, if you choose to do the right thing. I like to imagine I’m not the only one.

The sad thing is that i feel sorry for the artists, the weapons are right up my alley, but the chest gamble is something i stopped once i converted 200g into a load of tomes and speed buffa.
So yeah, rather lovely Skins that for some reason had to be the test subject for a refresh of gem purchases?
Take a look at your chests, after they are “fixed” , as in not totally frustrating to open, you may See an increase of revenue.
This current action will cause you no good, even worse it will harm your goodwill as some one else pointed out.

I just have to say it after reading all those forum posts and reddit threads.

Anet I tottaly support your decision! And I hope you wont change your mind about the accountbound stuff.
If people really like the skins than its not so hard to get a ticket! Finally there are some weapons that are special and that arent sold for pocket gold (60-80g for a bl weapon is just funny)

Even if they say they are boycoting it only means they dont like the skins as much to buy them , let them try, they will buy it anyway.

I’m very disappointed to see this.

This is the exact same mistake that’s been made with mini pets several times in the past. In almost every case it’s eventually been corrected, after a lot of complaints and presumably poor sales (as far as I remember the only two exceptions are the Mini Festive Golem and the Infiniarium and I’m hoping those will be sorted out next Wintersday).

It’s been a long time since they did it with a mini pet so I had been hoping they’d finally accepted it was a bad idea and had stopped doing it, but now it’s come back with a whole weapon set.

The problem is fairly simple, there are 3 undesirable factors involved:

• Real money cost (the only reliable way to get black lion keys)
• For an RNG chance (always unpopular)
• At an Account Bound reward (meaning if you get unlucky there is no alternative)

None of these are a problem individually, even 2 out of 3 is ok but all 3 together makes for an extremely frustrating situation for players. Especially when the items you’re trying to get are part of a collection (and in this case a series of collections many players like to complete).

It doesn’t matter that they’re only 1 ticket each. That’s still 19 ‘lucky’ results each player needs to get to complete the collection, with no alternative but to keep paying out and hoping they eventually get the drops they need if they don’t get lucky.

In this case it’s a small chance but there’s also the risk that someone might never get those 19 lucky drops (or 190 if they have to collect scraps for the tickets).

I just count myself lucky that black lion weapon skins aren’t my preferred item to collect so in this particular case it won’t affect me, but I sincerely hope it’s corrected soon because it’s a terrible system for players and I really don’t want to risk it being used again.

SarahWitter.2317:

The set is available for one ticket.

I presume you mean each skin rather than the entire set of 16 skins, if it was the full set I would have no problem facing RNG to get it, but if it is just one there lyies my issue.

This is really really sad. The claim that “this set is just special” is – well not my favorite answer.

Could have done better – could have just left it how it was. But no – they had to change it.

As a loyal customer who has been playing since the beta tests, I am very disappointed to see this. Making these account bound pressures players into gambling with real money. I will never support MMO gamble boxes and will be very hesitant to spend money on this game in the future.

Vyshe.7940:

As a loyal customer who has been playing since the beta tests, I am very disappointed to see this. Making these account bound pressures players into gambling with real money. I will never support MMO gamble boxes and will be very hesitant to spend money on this game in the future.

so its ok when only a few people have to gamble to get tickets or skins, but not when many do? Remember the skins don’t just appear on the BLTC people had to use tickets to get them or gamble for tickets or the skins.

So, it’s your idea then of this set as “Monetization & Platform Strategist”?

@Sarah

There is nothing fun or rewarding about Black Lion Chests in their current implementation. If you truly cared about items being under or over-valued you’d have sorted the loot tables properly by now.

If you don’t give a guaranteed ticket scrap with each chest you will just kill the interest outright. People don’t like to be taken for mugs and a repair canister, tome of knowledge and a dye is beyond anyone with half a brain’s idea of ‘loot’.

Re-focusing the in-game arbiter mechanism away from the player-driven TP towards the content-creator Black Lion Store (and accompanying gem-conversion) would sound like logic if you pulled your finger out, dispensed with a lot of the RNG and gave actual rewards in the chests.

Fix the chests first. Make fundamental changes second.

I get that we tend to have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and you are never going to please every single person that plays this game but if you don’t mind maybe you could establish some actual value in these skins. To just say that they are “special” is pretty arbitrary. Exactly how did you expect the community to respond to this?. NOTHING in patch notes established value in these skins other than that they are account bound. You only stated as such after there was already a long thread of of unhappy customers.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

This set of purely cosmetic skins still can ultimately be acquired either by purchasing them or by earning gold in the game and trading it for gems. If you like getting skins from the chests that can’t be obtained more cheaply through the trading post, use your claim tickets on these weapons. Or if you prefer tradeable skins, use your claim tickets for the other weapon sets, or acquire those weapon sets by trading for them with other players who bought them with claim tickets.

We on the dev team want to thank you again for taking the time to share your views with us.

I’ll be blunt and say that the prices haven’t scaled with the conversion ratios because a lot of the recent skins have been low-demand, and the valuable ones aside from the early skins have been re-released with no warning (chaos skins, for example) such that those involved in skin trading have largely stopped bothering to try and uphold their prices and value. For a simple example, I saw some BLTC skins fall an upwards of 90% of their value when made more accessible in terms of bolstering RNG rates or making them return. The skin economy right now as a whole is still suffering from these inconsistencies and massive price swings that seem to be coming with increased frequency due to decisions from ANet.

Thing is, there aren’t enough individuals crazy enough to drop the amount of in-game money necessary to reliably generate skins from boxes with the conversion rate so high. There might be a pseudo-increased demand for luxury gem items, but the RNG gating turns a lot of potential prospective customers into people not willing to bother. And if this market was affecting or affected by the value of gems and gold, then we’d see sell-price TP offers skyrocket to match the inflation, or we’d simply see lower supplies and prices would fix themselves naturally to the highest buyers. Further, the availability of the skins on the TP led to large amounts of gold being deleted altogether, which directly helps curb the gem : gold conversion rate, while account-binding them does nothing except hope people charge more gems and lower the demand. Sad truth is you probably won’t see non-regular buyers pay real cash for gems, so that demand is likely not going to change. Further, changed dailies and upped rewards since HoT have inflated gold incomes. We haven’t seen any “must-buy” skin sets lately aside from a few select ones from a few select sets, so the skin economy hasn’t reacted naturally to the inflated gold prices.

A lot of the skins lately have been similar in concept and appearance to earlier ones. While new meshes are great, the lack of weapon-dying vastly inhibits demand when two sets of skins look so similar in both aesthetic and color.

This shouldn’t be a matter of the gem : gold conversion ratio, especially when it favors those who buy gems and convert into gold (as this is direct revenue for ANet) while still making item accessibility reasonable.

And if it was a matter of generating revenue from people pursuing skins, normalizing the price in gems for a skin would be the best way, rather than locking the sets behind RNG boxes which strictly do not profit, which people will become increasingly aware of.

There are a lot of things about the approach that simply don’t make sense except for trying to monetize more heavily per customer. I fear this will both earn less revenue long-term and will also adversely affect player mentality as well as totally destroying a sub-economy while enforcing trends which will always lead towards the high-paying customer. In a game where aesthetic value matters so much, this is a very dangerous move for the long-term.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

Yes, but you’ve altered the dynamics of the demand. Before, someone who already had a ticket—say, someone who had a ticket drop, or who has a stockpile—who didn’t want that skin—but who did like gold—could trade the ticket for the skin and put that skin on the BLTC. Then someone who wanted that skin could come along and buy that skin. Easy peasy.

Now, with account bound skins, that can’t happen. The person who isn’t interested in the skin is still going to have a ticket. The person who is interested in the skin is going to have to purchase BLKs until they get a ticket. The number of overall tickets earned (whether they are used or stockpiled) goes up, as does your revenue.

As an example—my boyfriend and I are playing, and we’re each interested in one of the Privateer skins. If we each buy five keys, it’s possible he’ll end up with two tickets, and I’ll end up with none. If the skins could be redistributed, the total purchase of 10 keys would be enough for both of us to obtain our skins. If the skins can’t be redistributed, then the 10 keys would not be sufficient, and I would need to buy more keys in order to meet my goal. Three tickets would be required where two would be before. Multiply this across an entire player base, and you’ll see where I’m coming from. More BLK purchases will be necessary in order to slake the demand for the Privateer skins than would be the case if the skins were account bound.

Not acknowledging this is incredibly disingenuous. No one is saying that you’re increasing the price of Black Lion Chests—they’re just saying that you’re requiring more people to buy them.

That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

Those who had stored tickets would have had those tickets anyway. You’re not really rewarding them. In fact, if these individuals would prefer gold to these skins, you’re actually limiting the benefits of the ticket.

Moreover, it feels awful to go through RNG with real-life money. For those who don’t have money to burn, it’s especially annoying. I can grind out keys—one per week—until I have enough tickets. I can’t budget real-world money for it, as I have no idea how many chests it will take. I can make a guess based upon reports of people opening chests, but that’s by no means binding. If it were available in the store for a fixed price, I could at least go, “well, I can save up X per week/budget this amount, and definitely meet my goal.”

It just feels crappy, particularly in a game where cosmetics are a big part of the endgame.

Do you guys really like the skins actually? I for myself don’t care at all about these particular skins as I just find em typical no-effects/special looks BL weapon skins. My only concern is that such accound bound skins would become a regular practice and I hope it will not as I usually use my tickets to buy/gift skins for my friend and as they are account bound my only way to help would be to buy tons of keys and thats hundreds of gold which I would’ve rather use on direct purchase from TP or direct pirchase from wepon skins vendor if I have a ticket.
As I said earlier – I don’t care about these skins, but please no more account bound stuff like that. It does not make the them special – it makes them limited by possibilities. On the 3 out of the 4 types of players – massive gold grinders (ye, there are some that literally have tens of thousands of gold), real money gem buyers (tho a bit conflicted) and ofcourse the RNG favored (not by someone, just by default, luck is luck). The 4th type – casual players that just do 1-2 runs SW a day/week or get other decent profits by dungeons, other maps, w/e, will be unable to get em or unable to recieve em as a gift cuz " skins too specia " ….plz no more of this.

Previously….

Person A has ticket, person A exchanges ticket to sell skin on the market.

Person B has no tickets, person B buys skin from market.

Now….

Person A has ticket, they can not sell this skin. They do not buy it, they still have a ticket.

Person B has no ticket, but wants skin, they must now buy Black Lion Chests.

Are you sure this isn’t a ‘money grab’ Sarah, because if player B wants the skin they now have to buy god knows how many keys to get it, where as they didn’t before.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

This set of purely cosmetic skins still can ultimately be acquired either by purchasing them or by earning gold in the game and trading it for gems. If you like getting skins from the chests that can’t be obtained more cheaply through the trading post, use your claim tickets on these weapons. Or if you prefer tradeable skins, use your claim tickets for the other weapon sets, or acquire those weapon sets by trading for them with other players who bought them with claim tickets.

We on the dev team want to thank you again for taking the time to share your views with us.

Oh please if you wanted to make the people who buy BL chest feel rewarded all you had to do was remove all the consumables and boosters and add useful items like minis and weapon skins to them. I’ve seen hundreds of threads complaining about boosters and other worthless crap that is in the bl chests and ways to improve them. Instead you made the only thing that is worth a kitten from these chests untradable . Which means you are screwed if you don’t like the skin. This is one of the most ludicrous claims I’ve heard in a while. After ignoring player feedback about how worthless the loot from bl chest are you made it worse and claim it was done on behalf of players which is insulting. And for your information I’ve never heard anyone complain about bl skins being tradable or how they are too “cheap”. As i recall making bl skins tradable was a change welcomed by the community after the fused skins fiasco. Also how much a bl skin goes on the TP is decided on how much the players like that item so if the players don’t like a particular skin ofc it’s gonna be cheap! What you should learn from that is to look at the skins that go for a lot of money and design more skins like them instead of ugly skins nobody wants. The best example for this is fused skins which go for thousands of gold either bring them back or release a cool set like that. Now that ACTUALLY WILL increase the value of bl chests.

SarahWitter.2317:

That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items.

I’m not sure how this is improving that situation. There are huge issues with the chests, whether it is skins players want not being available anymore or keys being often problematic to get. However, the biggest issue is how tiresomely low the rng on tickets and scraps are

If this is a precedent to repeat this exercise and hopefully you will read into your community feedback and not do this again, then at least improve the rates of gain. Even getting 1 ticket is pretty difficult. I have never once seen a ticket and barely scraped maybe 2-3 from scraps over the years.

Exclusivity and feeling of a valued possession does not come from rng boxes. It comes from things like beating your raid content or effort in making a legendary from scratch via the collections etc.

Making them tradeable at least gave players a feeling they could collect those skins via the tp at their pace and leisure and finish those collections. It was an aim which has partly been taken away on this set in a game which really isn’t set up for that kind of thinking.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

This set of purely cosmetic skins still can ultimately be acquired either by purchasing them or by earning gold in the game and trading it for gems. If you like getting skins from the chests that can’t be obtained more cheaply through the trading post, use your claim tickets on these weapons. Or if you prefer tradeable skins, use your claim tickets for the other weapon sets, or acquire those weapon sets by trading for them with other players who bought them with claim tickets.

We on the dev team want to thank you again for taking the time to share your views with us.

I’m responding to the bit in bold, but kept the whole post for context.

That’s absolutely correct, but only for your end of the deal. On the players end it only holds true if you assume that 100% of people buying black lion keys are trying to collect all the weapons.

In reality we know that’s not the case from past discussions on keys. There are many people who buy them to try for other items (such as the permanent contracts) and many who simply buy keys because they enjoy gambling on chests.

With any other weapon set if those people get a ticket and don’t want another black lion weapon themselves they can pick one and sell it to someone who does want one. Meaning that player does not need to buy keys.

With this weapon set the people who buy keys for other items or for fun will continue to do so, but the people who would normally have purchased weapons from them no longer have that option and instead have to buy additional keys to try to get tickets themselves.

Of course this isn’t a problem for you, and making changes aimed at increasing your profits are completely reasonable. But surely you can understand how for those players who now have to buy keys for the first time it feels like they’re being told their part in the previous system was not good enough and they now have to pay either a lot more gold (further pushing up the exchange rate and making their own situation even worse) or real money in order to achieve the exact same end result. Which is a bad deal however you look at it.

Sariel V.7024:

Honestly, I don’t get you people. You look at everything like it’s a payday. A way to make bank. The idea that you might enjoy these things for yourselves just goes over your heads.

I guess I’m lucky. I don’t like any of these skins and I don’t want them. They certainly aren’t worth getting up in arms about.

Except it’s the people who just want to enjoy these skins themselves who are getting a raw deal here.

For people who just want to make a profit on black lion keys absolutely nothing has changed, they just exchange any tickets they happen to get for a skin from another set and carry on as before. It’s the people who actually like the skins and want to be able to use them who are stuck having to keep paying out and hoping they get lucky because they have no guaranteed way to get them.

For the record I don’t actually want any of the skins myself either. But I’ve been in the exact same situation with different items so I know how horrible it feels, and how much worse it feels when people who can’t even understand what the problem is try to tell you that you’re over reacting.

If luck were on your side and you were getting one scrap per key…

With the minimum cash to gems option available you can’t even get one of these skins.

That strikes me as wrong, majorly so.

SarahWitter.2317:

This set of purely cosmetic skins still can ultimately be acquired either by purchasing them or by earning gold in the game and trading it for gems. If you like getting skins from the chests that can’t be obtained more cheaply through the trading post, use your claim tickets on these weapons. Or if you prefer tradeable skins, use your claim tickets for the other weapon sets, or acquire those weapon sets by trading for them with other players who bought them with claim tickets.

We on the dev team want to thank you again for taking the time to share your views with us.

But they cannot be gotten without playing lotto. I absolutely refuse to play lotto, whether it’s with my real life money or in-game money. Black lion ticket scraps and claim tickets are account bound and not tradeable. Only way to get them is with RNG lotto.

I’m horribly disappointed in Anet for doing this. The gem store has always been very fair in the way it handles things. While I dislike rng boxes, the way this game did them was good. Those who like to gamble, can gamble. Those who don’t like gambling and prefer to just buy the item they wanted can do that too. These new untradeable weapons…they put a bad taste in my mouth. It’s the type of thing I really despise. This is Blade & Soul level RNG tactics and it makes me fear that we will be getting more of this kind of thing in the future. Unless Anet comes out right now and promises they will never do something like this again, I will continue to be greatly concerned.

I’ve been playing Blade & Soul quite a bit these past few months because of the content drought here. But the absolute RNG BS that goes on in that game has finally just burned me out. It’s incredibly frustrating to deal with. So I’m basically probably just going to quit that game. It was a nice vacation though, but I was ready to come back “home” so to speak to GW2. Now this whole debacle has me thinking I should just go back to WoW. Which would be a shame because I definitely like GW2 more than WoW when it comes to combat, community and just overall fun.

I still love you Anet. I still love GW2. But this news makes me really sad and disappointed.

SarahWitter.2317:

That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead.

If you didn’t want us to feel like chumps for buying keys to open chests with, then maybe you could remove some of the useless junk we get and actually put decent rewards in there. Instead, this? I’m extremely disappointed. This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder what BL skins will be considered an otherwise unremarkable “special” release in the future.

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Previously….

Person A has ticket, person A exchanges ticket to sell skin on the market.

Person B has no tickets, person B buys skin from market.

Now….

Person A has ticket, they can not sell this skin. They do not buy it, they still have a ticket.

Person B has no ticket, but wants skin, they must now buy Black Lion Chests.

Are you sure this isn’t a ‘money grab’ Sarah, because if player B wants the skin they now have to buy god knows how many keys to get it, where as they didn’t before.

This person has a very good point, please make sure you take note of it.

To be honest I don’t mind this… so long as they stay at 1 ticket forevermore as advertised… and if this remains as a one of or at least an infrequent practice.

Math - BLTC ticket rate: 5%
Tickets 	Chests 	Gems 	$
  1 	            20 	1,800 	$ 22.50
  9 	          180 	15,120 	$ 189.00
16 	          320 	26,880 	$ 336.00

WELL DONE, ANET!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4o279r/is_it_really_okay_for_bl_weapon_skins_to_be/d48yu0c

only 6000g for exchange …..

This is a great method to deteriorate the exchange of gold in gems….

Having tradeable skins might confuse new players.

I personally like the skins. I’ve got a character that it would fit and I would need 3 skins to do it. I’ve got 3 full tickets that I was holding onto until such time as a skin I liked came up.

I’m not cashing them in.

Here’s why:

It would be one thing if the majority of items received from the BLTC were actually wanted by the player base or sellable if you didn’t. But it isn’t. Especially the booster which you’re guaranteed to get 1 of.

Since it was not posted in the patch, it was not announced ahead of time, and the fact that a majority of players do not read the forums, the fact that they are not going away or getting more expensive any time soon is something you weren’t wanting to expose unless prompted. Which means you are expecting sales of keys to go up. Because most players will assume the skins will be getting more expensive and eventually going away. Since it’s no longer possible to key farm, players will turn to buying keys.

So in protest of the fact that there will be people who really want the skins and despite spending hours or tons of money to get keys will not get enough scraps or tickets to get the skin(s) they want, I will be holding onto my tickets and wishing I could gift them to someone who felt those skins made their character’s look. Because I don’t need my characters’ looks to be perfect, but other people do.

Instead of having to suffer the Randomness of the Black Lion Chests, why not just open a cash shop, where we can buy whatever skins we want for between £2 and £5, because right now it’s not worth spending real money on getting gems, to purchase Keys. (which you can’t even buy 10 of with 800 gems, so there’s no way of getting 10 ticket scraps unless you’re super lucky and one or two chests contain multiple scraps!)

FrownyClown.8402:

Ven Zehn.6573:

I really like the skins, and have a lot of tickets with which to get em, but I still don’t agree with the choices made with making these bound.

As far as being special, there’s no lore behind them (yet), and if they really were special, they would’ve been obtainable via gameplay, maybe associated with the little tidbits of Living World we’ve been getting.

I don’t usually think things like this are worth commenting on, but in this case, I mostly hope our opinions matter enough to prevent trends in the future.

Pretty sure its Anet’s way of saying you need to purchase gems to obtain future skins. Can you really blame them though. They are trying to make the game survive off the gem store. They have over 200 employees and a vast amount of servers so I don’t blame them for making this kind of choice.

I would of strongly prefered a monthly fee and removing free to play but can’t do much about that now. Games become free to play usually always follows the downfall of the game.

The spent at least $200,000 on prize money for a single tournament. Doesn’t sound like they’re hurting for money.

seeing where this game is going now , so now at this point, why not turning this game Subscription based and dump this kitten Gems Store and all the crap that comes with it ?

blah blah your supporting the game blah blah
I heard quite enough of this violin , i know the song.

There’s nothing special about a set that can only be acquired by dunking gems in to a slot machine.

Special skins require effort on the part of those that wield them. Special skins are tied to specific pieces of content. Special skins pay out unique rewards for unique challenges.

No part of anything sold in the gem store is special. It’s cannibalizing the efforts of an excellent art team to nickel and dime a user base because Anet continues to lean on the tired excuse that gem store items are “just cosmetic” despite cosmetics being the primary reward mechanism for GW2.

Count the number of armor sets added in the fifty dollar expansion you sold. Count the weapon skins. Got the count?

Now count the number of outfits and skins exclusively obtainable via gems since the release of HoT.

This is not what your player base asked for when it asked for expansions. You built this IP around a paradigm that allowed successful sales of one expansion to fund the next. That was what people wanted when they asked for expansions.

Transitioning to an expansion model was something your user based asked for because they wanted to pay you for quality content with a requisite expectation of unique rewards for that content. People wanted an expansion model because they were tired of being excessively pushed toward the gem store to get the vast majority of “rewards” in the game.

The excuse that these items are “merely cosmetic” is not a satisfactory one in the item reward system offered by GW2.

If you continue down this path, you will face another round of poor sales for the next expansion. People did not want expansions tacked on top of an even more predatory microtransaction shop. They wanted expansions so they could support development and spend less on microtransactions.

What you’ve delivered since the release of HoT is content largely bereft of reward, and reward largely bereft of any meaning other than farming gold or whipping out a credit card.

You are abusing your user base to cover a monetization problem you created by not presenting expected value for the price of your expansion. A problem largely created by leaning so hard on the cash shop in the first place.

These items are not “merely cosmetic” because the PRIMARY REWARD PARADIGM OF THE REWARD SYSTEMS THE GAME IS DESIGNED AROUND IS PURELY COSMETIC

The argument you are not selling stats/items falls flat for this very reason. You are selling items with the exact same appeal to the user as those they are encouraged to acquire ingame, and furthermore you are willfully not offering even a tenth of that volume of the core reward mechanism to players to earn by actually taking part in the challenges designed to be rewarding

Players do not want to play content simply to shuffle gold in to a gem trade. Players want to play content to earn rewards. You deliver quality content. The reliance on microtransactions was perfectly acceptable in the old monetization model, as it was your only revenue stream.

However, you did not change revenue streams. You simply tacked an additional cost on to your existing revnue stream, expected everyone to be okay with it, and then were apperantly blind sided when your expansion did not sell as well as expected.

When you tout gliding as a core feature of your expansion and then have the audactiy so tell players on the day on release they can’t actually earn glider skins, but they can pay you gems for them… that sends a clearer message than any collection of pretty words strung together in a forum post.

This weapon set sends a similarly clear message. You care far more about players purchasing gems, directly or indirectly, than you care about the satisfaction of your user base.

As you have illustrated, it is unimportant which method players use to purchase gems, as the end result is the same. Trying to dress it up as a service to players is pure spin, and its not even very well executed spin.

You already have a system in place to cater to people with excess tickets. You specifically designed the black lion skin system to be self adjusting, reward immediate purchase, and control ticket hoarding through scaling up the price of older skin sets.

Farming Flats.5370:

seeing where this game is going now , so now at this point, why not turning this game Subscription based and dump this kitten Gems Store and all the crap that comes with it ?

blah blah your supporting the game blah blah
I heard quite enough of this violin , i know the song.

B.c everything in the Gem store is optional and nothing in it actually improves your performance or changes much. Its all just looks, other than character slots (but you dont really need it to play solidly).

You dont have to spend a gold/dime on it if you dont want to.

IMO the game is moving in a better direction now with Raids, wvw changes, pvp leagues etc…

If you arnt happy dont buy stuff on the gem store, ultimately that is the best way to speak to a company.

I have been playing GW2 since beta, and I have not liked a single set since launch, and this is the first set I would actually use on my characters, however, it is also the first set I cannot obtain, because of these shady business endeavours.

Somehow I have a feeling ArenaNet isn’t going to be able to win over the playerbase on this one. Even in GW1, skins were the endgame, so making this stuff as hard as possible for players to get a hold of, isn’t going to rub well with anybody. If we wanted to spend irl cash on cosmetics, we’d go and play a random Chinese-made MMO, who tend revel in such mechanics. Nobody in their right mind is going to convert gold to gems for this, because the loot tables in the chests will bankrupt any player, and we know that, because the kind people over on Reddit, have been doing tables of chest drops, and shown us that they’re a total waste of money, in-game, irl or otherwise.

Stuff you get for Gems costs money! The outrage is real!

If people wanted something worth for their money you can now pick between a set that you can trade and a set that you can’t trade.

It’s a choice. Plus really you can also get your weekly key if you really want to.

Special: “Oops, that didn’t go well, lets make an excuse and not do it again.”

SarahWitter.2317:

It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests.

If that was your goal, you should just remove them. They are a terrible RNG, underhanded, casino-with-house-advantage mechanic and I can’t justify ever spending money on them, and can’t imagine how they could be fixed. If you want to offer value for our money, then just sell the weapon tickets on the store and remove the blatant cash-grab chests from the game.

PopeUrban.2578:

There’s nothing special about a set that can only be acquired by dunking gems in to a slot machine.

Special skins require effort on the part of those that wield them. Special skins are tied to specific pieces of content. Special skins pay out unique rewards for unique challenges.

No part of anything sold in the gem store is special. It’s cannibalizing the efforts of an excellent art team to nickel and dime a user base because Anet continues to lean on the tired excuse that gem store items are “just cosmetic” despite cosmetics being the primary reward mechanism for GW2.

Count the number of armor sets added in the fifty dollar expansion you sold. Count the weapon skins.

Transitioning to an expansion model was something your user based asked for because they wanted to pay you for quality content with a requisite expectation of unique rewards for that content. People wanted an expansion model because they were tired of being excessively pushed toward the gem store to get the vast majority of “rewards” in the game.

The excuse that these items are “merely cosmetic” is not a satisfactory one in the item reward system offered by GW2.

If you continue down this path, you will face another round of poor sales for the next expansion. People did not want expansions tacked on top of an even more predatory microtransaction shop. They wanted expansions so they could support development and spend less on microtransactions.

What you’ve delivered since the release of HoT is content largely bereft of reward, and reward largely bereft of any meaning other than farming gold or whipping out a credit card.

You are abusing your user base to cover a monetization problem you created by not presenting expected value for the price of your expansion. A problem largely created by leaning so hard on the cash shop in the first place.

These items are not “merely cosmetic” because the PRIMARY REWARD PARADIGM OF THE REWARD SYSTEMS THE GAME IS DESIGNED AROUND IS PURELY COSMETIC

The argument you are not selling stats/items falls flat for this very reason. You are selling items with the exact same appeal to the user as those they are encouraged to acquire ingame, and furthermore you are willfully not offering even a tenth of that volume of the core reward mechanism to players to earn by actually taking part in the challenges designed to be rewarding

Players do not want to play content simply to shuffle gold in to a gem trade. Players want to play content to earn rewards. You deliver quality content. The reliance on microtransactions was perfectly acceptable in the old monetization model, as it was your only revenue stream.

However, you did not change revenue streams. You simply tacked an additional cost on to your existing revnue stream, expected everyone to be okay with it, and then were apperantly blind sided when your expansion did not sell as well as expected.

When you tout gliding as a core feature of your expansion and then have the audactiy so tell players on the day on release they can’t actually earn glider skins, but they can pay you gems for them… that sends a clearer message than any collection of pretty words strung together in a forum post.

This weapon set sends a similarly clear message. You care far more about players purchasing gems, directly or indirectly, than you care about the satisfaction of your user base.

As you have illustrated, it is unimportant which method players use to purchase gems, as the end result is the same. Trying to dress it up as a service to players is pure spin, and its not even very well executed spin.

You already have a system in place to cater to people with excess tickets. You specifically designed the black lion skin system to be self adjusting, reward immediate purchase, and control ticket hoarding through scaling up the price of older skin sets.

The problem isn’t microtransactions – I would gladly pay for microtransactions – the problem is that there is very little stuff added even in the gem store.

This game’s biggest lack right now is Armor skins – very few sets have been added since release. HoT added very little – and outfits just don’t cut it really.
I would gladly pay for more armor skins – if they made and released decent-looking ones on the gem store – but they don’t.

I’ve been wearing Human Cultural T3 heavy armor pretty much since release because with the exception of the phalanx armor set there’s really no decent heavy set that’s not over the top spiky or absurd to fit the “heavy knight” archetype.

That’s my point. Nobody is complaining about microtransactions. The problem is the sheer volume of microtransaction items when compared to items with similar reward value obtainable by playing the game.

At this point more than half of the post-launch item rewards (and let’s not mince words, skins are items in GW2, that is the primary function of acquiring items long term) can not be obtained by playing the game, and must be obtained, directly or indirectly, by someone purchasing gems.

I have nothing against untradeable BLTC skins, as long as they can be purchased directly with either gems or real currency.

If its only source is going to be a Kompu Gacha box, a method so unethical it ended up banned in Japan, then they should be tradeable.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

I’d guess that all of the BLC skins I’ve bought for 75-150g didn’t cost the seller $30 cash or 800g to acquire.

You get the same amount on average, but the RNG element makes each rewarded ticket a different actual price. If they were all the same price, a weapon skin on the trade post would cost probably the full price of the average number of keys required to get it. But that’s not the case, as someone can get lucky and receive a full ticket from a single BL chest. There is also the fact that BL keys do, albeit rarely, drop and (I believe) are still available one per week from level 10 personal story rewards, as well from higher level story.

It also seems quite possible that making the skins bound will cause a drop in sales. There are quite a few people that buy keys for the purpose of getting skins to sell. Taking the gamble for monetary gain instead of the item itself. They are supplying the skins for those that do no wish to gamble for them. Anet is taking a gamble on the sales gained from people wanting skins and also being willing to gamble outweighing the loss of sales to players gambling for profit.

I can’t speak for others, but for me there will not be gambling for skins. I’ll buy them with gold, or use gems/exchange to buy them with gems, but I’m not gambling my cash or gold for them.

[edit] I can’t believe I forgot about keys from map rewards. I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve done any of that.

SarahWitter.2317:

It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items.

if you want the chests to feel rewarding, then why are they purely RNG based, often dropping nothing but a few relatively valueless items.

and account-bound items aren’t really a good thing. if you want them, it means they’re harder to get. if you don’t want them, it means they’re all but useless to you (I recall a handful of mini snow owls proving this point quite effectively.)

if you want to make BLTC chests to feel rewarding, then make the drops better. if you don’t want people feeling like a chump when they buy one, then don’t make it so horribly uncertain.

it feels like your actions here are the opposite of your stated goals…

Faux.1937:

Farming Flats.5370:

seeing where this game is going now , so now at this point, why not turning this game Subscription based and dump this kitten Gems Store and all the crap that comes with it ?

blah blah your supporting the game blah blah
I heard quite enough of this violin , i know the song.

B.c everything in the Gem store is optional and nothing in it actually improves your performance or changes much. Its all just looks, other than character slots (but you dont really need it to play solidly).

You dont have to spend a gold/dime on it if you dont want to.

IMO the game is moving in a better direction now with Raids, wvw changes, pvp leagues etc…

If you arnt happy dont buy stuff on the gem store, ultimately that is the best way to speak to a company.

‘’ U dont have to spend money if you dont want to ’’’

yep , already heard that violin too .. sorry.

DragonflyDusk.6582:

From my experience, “Let’s just see” always ends very badly. I’m not going to wait and see where this goes, because we were here long ago with fused weapon skins. We’ve already been down this road. If you don’t stand against the precedent now, I don’t doubt for a second this will not be a one-off scenario.

As I’ve noted in a previous post in this thread, if these remain untradeable then I can go ahead and consider them out of reach, because in 3 years of playing I have only received enough scraps for a single ticket.

It’s not even about wanting this exact set, it’s about nipping this is the bud before they all end up this way.

Well to be honest, if they’re going to do something, they’ll probably do it anyway and there are a lot more important things I’d prefer they fixed and worked on, so I am happy with their official reply. So, I am happy to see what happens. There are so many things people revolted on with thread after thread after thread, but at the end of the day, they’ll do as they please with whatever they think is the right decision at the time no matter what we say.

Farming Flats.5370:

Faux.1937:

Farming Flats.5370:

seeing where this game is going now , so now at this point, why not turning this game Subscription based and dump this kitten Gems Store and all the crap that comes with it ?

blah blah your supporting the game blah blah
I heard quite enough of this violin , i know the song.

B.c everything in the Gem store is optional and nothing in it actually improves your performance or changes much. Its all just looks, other than character slots (but you dont really need it to play solidly).

You dont have to spend a gold/dime on it if you dont want to.

IMO the game is moving in a better direction now with Raids, wvw changes, pvp leagues etc…

If you arnt happy dont buy stuff on the gem store, ultimately that is the best way to speak to a company.

‘’ U dont have to spend money if you dont want to ’’’

yep , already heard that violin too .. sorry.

But a sub fee means you DO have to pay to play, atm we dont have to pay to play.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Stuff you get for Gems costs money! The outrage is real!

If people wanted something worth for their money you can now pick between a set that you can trade and a set that you can’t trade.

It’s a choice. Plus really you can also get your weekly key if you really want to.

You’re missing the reason that people are upset. They aren’t upset because you have to either spend money or time to get the skins. They are upset because the chances of getting scraps or keys is so low that most people won’t even trade gems for keys. They’d rather spend time playing a character that will generate other items that can be sold for gold to the point in their story where they get a key.

That’s 10 weeks for a player to even have a chance at getting ONE skin if they start off with 0 scraps and 0 tickets and only get 1 ticket scrap each time and no full tickets. And that’s very hard to do.

Unless they can come up with a better than reason than the item being special, it’s hard for me to see this as anything but a ploy to increase the sale of gems for keys or get people playing the game a lot more to generate enough gold to trade for keys (and that’s a lot and will likely increase if players go that route for these skins).

The problem isn’t for those that get tickets and scraps. The problem is the people who don’t who want these skins. This decision hurts them.

SarahWitter.2317:

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead.

It was always bad to buy keys with gems. And it was because chests were in general filled with worthless content, with the few exceptions hidden behind low chance rng.

As they are, they’re only good for gambling addicts, noone else.

SarahWitter.2317:

It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests.

Then change the very idea behind them. More guaranteed good content, less mostly useless thrash and rng.

Gambling is bad, and you should be ashamed to promote it. But of course you aren’t, because it brings cash from naive customers.

Byron.1902:

If you don’t give a guaranteed ticket scrap with each chest you will just kill the interest outright. People don’t like to be taken for mugs and a repair canister, tome of knowledge and a dye is beyond anyone with half a brain’s idea of ‘loot’.

Last result from one of my friends: a booster and two tomes of knowledge. It felt bad even for a map reward. If that was a bought key, it would have been downright insulting.

I’m having flash backs to the RNG chests in blade and soul now, please dont go the same way NCSoft did and ruin it.

Agemnon.4608:

After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items.

But don’t we do that anyway by converting gems to gold or buying makeover kits, gliders, outfits, and armor sets?

Exactly. They can have nice account bound things to support the game that we can buy directly without RNG.

I support this game constantly buying minis, outfits, etc. Things I can get without RNG involved.

Astralporing.1957:

SarahWitter.2317:

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead.

It was always bad to buy keys with gems. And it was because chests were in general filled with worthless content, with the few exceptions hidden behind low chance rng.

As they are, they’re only good for gambling addicts, noone else.

SarahWitter.2317:

It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests.

Then change the very idea behind them. More guaranteed good content, less mostly useless thrash and rng.

Gambling is bad, and you should be ashamed to promote it. But of course you aren’t, because it brings cash from naive customers.

The thing is, I’d likely buy gems with RL money to buy keys every so often if most of the stuff received was actually useful or sellable for decent gold/silver if I didn’t want it. But I’m not going to buy gems just to get keys just to end up getting stuff I don’t want and can’t sell.

They’d actually likely make money if they made the chests have mostly things that are wanted.

Taegos.4132:

I’m having flash backs to the RNG chests in blade and soul now, please dont go the same way NCSoft did and ruin it.

Please don’t bring up that abomination. The RNG in that game is a nightmare.