Guild Wars 2

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.

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.

This is the problem.
BLC aren’t getting people to pay for them and not generating revenue because the drops from them are abysmally bad.

I should be excited when I get a chest – not go “meh – I wonder what junk I’ll get this time around”.

BLC are RNG-boxes done bad. They’re bad by default because they’re RNG boxes BUT these ones are extra bad because unlike other games – where the RNG boxes actually got me excited to open – these ones are just flat out boring.

Boosters? Repair canisters? A Merchant express? Wow. The possibilities really are endless aren’t they?

Harper.4173:

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.

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.

This is the problem.
BLC aren’t getting people to pay for them and not generating revenue because the drops from them are abysmally bad.

I should be excited when I get a chest – not go “meh – I wonder what junk I’ll get this time around”.

BLC are RNG-boxes done bad. They’re bad by default because they’re RNG boxes BUT these ones are extra bad because unlike other games – where the RNG boxes actually got me excited to open – these ones are just flat out boring.

Boosters? Repair canisters? A Merchant express? Wow. The possibilities really are endless aren’t they?

Thankfully, they’ve removed repair canisters from them. So that’s one less worthless item to get.

Seera.5916:

Thankfully, they’ve removed repair canisters from them. So that’s one less worthless item to get.

I’m quite sure that it didn’t increase the odds of getting the rare good stuff. You’ll still get as much trash as before, with the only difference of it being of lesser variety.

Do they have some effects or lore tied in?

Axolotl.4378:

SarahWitter.2317:

There are a couple of other interesting factors that you’ll want to know: The set is available for one ticket. It will remain priced at one ticket into the future, so someone who wants it now doesn’t need to be concerned about it becoming unavailable or about it rising in price in the future.

One ticket for a chance at getting it. It’s gambling in all but name. To say the item is priced at one ticket is disingenuous.

Cripes, if I knew ArenaNet would abandon it’s originally casual design ethos and go down this path, I would never have bought GW2.

Unless these weapons are using some entirely new purchase system from the BL vendor, it is 1 ticket per weapon. You get to choose which skin you purchase with tickets. The RNG is in the keys/chests and scraps to obtain the ticket itself. You’ll need, on average, around 30 BL keys to get a ticket.

Astralporing.1957:

Seera.5916:

Thankfully, they’ve removed repair canisters from them. So that’s one less worthless item to get.

I’m quite sure that it didn’t increase the odds of getting the rare good stuff. You’ll still get as much trash as before, with the only difference of it being of lesser variety.

Unfortunately, no.

Ok, the Anet post makes this all make sense. It was not clear at all that this was an irregular thing. Maybe next time release these “premium” sets alongside a normal ticket set to make it more clear.

Gatvin.6510:

Ok, the Anet post makes this all make sense. It was not clear at all that this was an irregular thing. Maybe next time release these “premium” sets alongside a normal ticket set to make it more clear.

That won’t do anything to reduce the anger players have towards this. The only things that would reduce the anger is to be promised that there will never be another set like this (and keeping that promise), the skins being made tradeable, and/or making the BLTC chests actually worthwhile to buy by removing the worthless items (leave those for the log in reward BLTC box).

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.

If this is your fix for BLTC chests being disappointing then it failed. The only thing special is that they just sold a lot of keys because of the “tripled chance” for permanent contracts. So they know the market is fairly saturated with tickets. So these skins would be cheap enough on the trading post they wouldn’t sell more keys for a chance of a chance of what you want. I love this response too of basically “Tough kitten, buy the old ones if you don’t like it.”

SarahWitter.2317:

Silveress.5197:

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.

Good catch. Yes, I did mean each skin is one ticket.

All your change really does is take a crap on the amount of gold it requires to acquire a BLTC skin. Average price is 100 gold.

Now if I buy $20 worth of gems, that will cover my cost.

Now with your garbage casino style approach, the drop rate of the tickets is such that I will on average spend more real world dollars acquiring your skins as gated by RNG.

What’s more, your stupid gamble boxes are an atrocity and people don’t like them, because essentially they’re of variable value for the same real world money spent.

That is, I could spend $10 and come out with a ticket or two, and another person might spend the same and come out with a single scrap or even none. SO MY $10 ARE NOT WORTH THE SAME %10 OF SOMEBODY ELSE BASED ON RNG RETURNS.

If I spend real world money, I WANT GUARANTEED RESULTS. Period. I don’t want to gamble with my games to acquire skins.

I’m not spending a dime until I get new hairstyles & faces. If they wanted more key sales then they should make them a more frequent drop & give out a freebie to encourage you to buy more keys. Atleast that used to work on me back when free stuff would be offered on the gem store.

Zenith.7301:

If I spend real world money, I WANT GUARANTEED RESULTS. Period. I don’t want to gamble with my games to acquire skins.

A million times this.

I want to add my voice to say this feels like a terrible cash grab by Anet. It’s been said before, but it deserves saying it again. Nothing should depend solely on these terrible gambling boxes.

Also, a hint to the monetization people – no one complained about keys because they gave too few scraps or tickets, it’s the other way around. No one wants all the other endless crap the keys give. Put good rewards in these boxes, or don’t complain when players won’t buy enough keys for your monthly key quota (or whatever metric you measure us by).

Imbune.5497:

Having tradeable skins might confuse new players.

LOL. Those poor new players. Every little thing confuses them.

Seera.5916:

Gatvin.6510:

Ok, the Anet post makes this all make sense. It was not clear at all that this was an irregular thing. Maybe next time release these “premium” sets alongside a normal ticket set to make it more clear.

That won’t do anything to reduce the anger players have towards this. The only things that would reduce the anger is to be promised that there will never be another set like this (and keeping that promise), the skins being made tradeable, and/or making the BLTC chests actually worthwhile to buy by removing the worthless items (leave those for the log in reward BLTC box).

Yeah, their answer does not satisfy my at all because there is no assurance that this won’t happen again. RNG lotto items are BAD. Especially when they are account bound like this. If I spend real money I want real results, not a “chance” at something.

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.

However that is a problem.

You first have to get your golden ticket.

it isn’t as easy. In fact it can be rather annoying.

Do you know how many tickets I got together over the years? Let me just tell you that it isn’t a satisfying process to have five keys and get only useless consumeables and maybe a scrap.
And you need ten scraps for a ticket.

Do you realize how many annoying unneccesary and more importantly, possible, expensive steps that is, to get one skin from the gambling machine?

Yes, if you are really lucky it would be one BLC. Then you got one ticket on your first go.
Scraps don’t eliviate that problem, because you need ten chests for that and have scraps in every one of them.

Of course that isn’t the case and you often get swamped with such essential things like Repair Canister.

Let me just tell you this. The way you believe you are helping, isn’t taking care of our problem, but yours .

We just want a reliabable way to get the things we want.
BLC gambling isn’t that way.
In fact it is the complete opposite.

BLC feels cheap, because the investment is often not the end result.

You actually don’t get revenue for the BLC Weapon, because I bet you get more revenue from each failed attempt at getting one.
I also don’t see how you get revenue from things, that no one paid for, because he converted gold to gems or got a key by playing.

So these things just don’t add up.

I will add that some of your thoughts have some weight behind them, but they still don’t adress the problem here.
You are providing a service. A service, which right now, is already mostly only tolerated because you are controling it.
However a service is bound to it’s customers. You don’t anger your customers.
You don’t use them as test subjects (at least not in such a blatant way).

Yes, you have the right to defend your income, by any means neccesary, but please be transparent upfront.
Don’t use extortion tactics to squeeze money out of us, just to please the ticket holding minority.

I mean, why do they not spend their tickets? Because your content isn’t satisfying for them.

Don’t shake our hand smiling, while the other is holding a dagger behind your back.

I can just see the meeting that took place in order to okay this.

Anet: “What the heck Todd, nobody is buying keys.”

Todd: “Y-you think it’s because we have only been releasing ugly gliders, reskins of gliders and glider accessories? Or wing reskins for days? I mean there’s absolutely nothing interesting whatsoever in the gem store despite tons upon tons of player suggestion and feeback. Maybe we shou-”

Anet: -Icy glare- “What the kitten Todd. Don’t you ever talk to me or my son again. We’re making them account bound. Gliders, wings and gathering tools for everyone. Not free, of course. Also you can kittening forget about those swimsuit costumes you wanted this summer, Todd. And you know that school uniform people have been begging us for? Whoopsie. …Look at that Todd, we lost the code. Just like the revenant weapons. Go kitten off Todd.”

And GW2 died a slow and painful death because ever year, Anet just kept refusing to listen to Todd.

Non of this would have ever happened if “we” as a community spent more money on gems.The game is almost 4 years old and a large portion of the player base knows how to farm gold with ease in no time.Anet wants more ROI for their weapon skins and judging by the prices of them for the past 18 months, i’d say they were constantly losing value. From both a consumer and producer standpoint.

It’s not just our fault though. Taking the easy route to produce and sell skins compounded by the fact that they are initially acquired via gambling boxes can only get the interest of a small group of players. Personally, I have yet to spend cash on a skin that I know is easily obtained resulting in me looking like a clone.To me, anything that comes from the gambling boxes have no good value when it comes to hard earned cash. Anet feels the same way I believe because you don’t see outfits,armor skins or back items inside RNGesus boxes.

Onisuo.8607:

Non of this would have ever happened if “we” as a community spent more money on gems.The game is almost 4 years old and a large portion of the player base knows how to farm gold with ease in no time.Anet wants more ROI for their weapon skins and judging by the prices of them for the past 18 months, i’d say they were constantly losing value. From both a consumer and producer standpoint.

It’s not just our fault though. Taking the easy route to produce and sell skins compounded by the fact that they are initially acquired via gambling boxes can only get the interest of a small group of players. Personally, I have yet to spend cash on a skin that I know is easily obtained resulting in me looking like a clone.To me, anything that comes from the gambling boxes have no good value when it comes to hard earned cash. Anet feels the same way I believe because you don’t see outfits,armor skins or back items inside RNGesus boxes.

Skins are in RNG boxes though in the forms of ticket scraps and tickets. None of the BLTC skins on the trading post came through someone getting it as a drop from a creature or bought directly off of the trading post. They come from people buying BLTC Chests, which are the poster children of RNG boxes, getting scraps and tickets and turning them into skins with which they sell on the Trading Post.

The gem to gold exchange is not static. The more people turn gold into gems the more gold is needed to get the same amount of gems. Eventually, the price will get to where most people will stop buying gems with gold and instead decide to buy gems with money and buy what they want and then turn those gems into a LOT of gold, driving the price of gems back down. Then when they get too low, it reverses again. It’s a nice cyclical process based on how fast players can generate gold.

And this skin that we’re up in arms over? Can only be obtained by getting scraps or tickets out of the BLTC Chest. Which again, is an RNG Box.

And no, we are not in this situation because people aren’t buying gems with real money. Because as another poster pointed out, the market is flooded with tickets due to the permanent contracts having had an increased chance of dropping from the BLTC Chests.

@Sarah

I get what you are trying to say, but you have to understand how this is as a player.

I never get anything good out of black lion chests. Ever. For years. I’m absolutely done trying, and I sure as hell am not wasting anymore money to gamble for more useless merchant summoners.

I know people that always get something good when they open black lion chests.

The RNG game is crazy.

But now you have effectively reduced people’s options for getting these items. In the past, I could go ahead and buy a weapon off the Trading Post, or friends that have amazing RNG might offer to get me a weapon with a ticket. The point was that those were the options you had. You HAD options.

Now you have taken that away and the ONLY way to get this so called “special” set is through gambling with the RNG game that has NEVER gotten me anything worth the money paid.

There’s no reason to make this set special except for ANET to hope more people begrudgingly buy keys with real money and try the RNG game to get one. There is NOTHING special about this set.

GG – done with real money on the gemstore if this is how ANET is going to operate. If I want to gamble and lose with my money, I’ll go to a casino. And I don’t like casinos.

Buying something like a glider is one thing. Buying a chance at a weapon is something else entirely, and NOT ok with all other options to get it now removed. With my RNG luck, it’d be $50+ before I got a ticket or enough scraps for it. This is just plain unethical.

My personal problem with this is not the ticket price or the account binding of the skins…its the simple fact that you can (so far as I could see from a quick visit to the trader) no longer preview them without spending your claim ticket first to access the ‘choose your skin’ stage.

RULE 1: Don’t buy anything from anyone that I can’t actually see before handing over my cash.

RULE 2: If you don’t like it don’t buy it (see rule 1).

RULE 3: Returns policy? I spent my ticket to preview and didn’t like anything I saw, can I have my ticket back please?

If there is a way to preview without spending your ticket please tell me – I didn’t feel like spending one to test the system.

And finally, please don’t do anything like this again, not popular among forum/redit posters and not by extension anything like good PR for the game.

Here’s an idea. Instead of making us buy keys to get these skins, how about just selling the tickets in the gem store. You get paid. We get skins. The game ‘gets supported so you can produce content’, and we can all get past the rng that makes this process a terrible idea.

Bbear.7830:

My personal problem with this is not the ticket price or the account binding of the skins…its the simple fact that you can (so far as I could see from a quick visit to the trader) no longer preview them without spending your claim ticket first to access the ‘choose your skin’ stage.

RULE 1: Don’t buy anything from anyone that I can’t actually see before handing over my cash.

RULE 2: If you don’t like it don’t buy it (see rule 1).

RULE 3: Returns policy? I spent my ticket to preview and didn’t like anything I saw, can I have my ticket back please?

If there is a way to preview without spending your ticket please tell me – I didn’t feel like spending one to test the system.

And finally, please don’t do anything like this again, not popular among forum/redit posters and not by extension anything like good PR for the game.

You can preview the weapons in your Bank’s wardrobe. You just have to know what the name of the skin is. In this case Privateer. So go to a crafting station or a bank.

>Why is the set special? Why would we think it’s anything but you testing the waters on how much you can screw over customer before there’s backlash?

I can’t say anything better than that.

I mean, you guys KNOW how much we hate rewards being tied to RNG. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE A PRECURSOR HUNT NOW! Did you forget already? I don’t care how awesome it is, if it’s tied to RNG, that just makes it worse!

The thing is, I have been happily spending real life money to convert to gold to buy weapon skins on the TP so I won’t have to worry about RNG.

I stopped buying black lion keys about six months into having the wardrobe system. I use the ones that I get from playing the game, and I am always so frustrated at the results, it really reinforces my decision to not ever spend real money on keys.

Now you have taken away my ability to buy the skins on the TP, which means I don’t get the skins (which are actually pretty awesome, good job, artists), and you don’t get my money.

Whoever is making these decisions, you need to remember your audience. Think about precursors. Think about how passionate we have been about it, and why you made the decision to create the precursor hunts. Listen to the backlash and realize what that means to this “testing of the waters”, and get a clue. And then make the privateer skins non account bound, please. They really are cool, and I’m bummed to be missing out entirely like this.

Seera.5916:

Bbear.7830:

RULE 1: Don’t buy anything from anyone that I can’t actually see before handing over my cash.

You can preview the weapons in your Bank’s wardrobe. You just have to know what the name of the skin is. In this case Privateer. So go to a crafting station or a bank.

Seera, Bbear was talking about the result of opening a chest, not being able to see the weapon skins. If you buy a key, you don’t know what you’re going to get in exchange for that key. If you don’t like what you get, you can’t return or exchange it.

So stupid. Bothered me enough to actually want to sign into GW2 forums and post.

I will never spend another cent on Gems after this. I don’t care if you’re reverting it afterwards. What you have done to your player base time after time is disgusting. We are not here for you to abuse.

Grymlocke.1067:

no fused weapon skins

^ This
I am still holding my one ticket just waiting for those fused weapons to return. I want to buy fused hammer skin because there is none on TP anymore.

If you wanted the chests to be more valuable you’d remove the junk like Tomes of Knowledge and T5/T4 material bags and not do what you’re currently doing. What a poor excuse for making these skins account bound.

Iason Evan.3806:

SarahWitter.2317:

Reading this thread, we understand your questions and want to share a little information: This set is designed to be a special, exclusive set and therefore it’s a little different than most. There are a couple of other interesting factors that you’ll want to know: The set is available for one ticket. It will remain priced at one ticket into the future, so someone who wants it now doesn’t need to be concerned about it becoming unavailable or about it rising in price in the future. Other sets currently available are not account bound, such as the Cavalier Weapon Set which was recently released at a price of 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket and remains at that price now. In addition, we do intend to continue to offer tradeable sets in the future. If you’d like a preview of the new set, go to your bank wardrobe and filter for “Privateer.” We hope this answers your questions, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

-Sarah

This is the type of info that needs to get out before it’s released so people know, this is a different thing.

Exactly.

One of the following two things happened here:

1. ArenaNet forgot to communicate in time with their customers. Most likely the case as that is a common problem for them.
2. ArenaNet is surprised by our reaction to this and made up an excuse. Wouldn’t be the first time they are surprised by our reactions to something controversial that anybody with a little bit of common sense would see coming. But not very likely in this case I think.

If this will be the last account bound BL weapon set will probably be determined by how well it sells. ArenaNet will analyse their sales data and make decisions based on that. They have to make money somehow and think that selling gems is the best way. There are probably not enough new customers to make money to support the game.

Only problem with this for me (and many others) is that I am not willing to spend money on this game until they deliver new and (for me!) interesting content. And they still have to deliver more content to make the €50 I paid for HoT worth while. Only after I am satisfied with the amount (and quality) of content I received since the release of HoT I am willing to spend money on the gem store.

AlsoAdelas.4901:

>Why is the set special? Why would we think it’s anything but you testing the waters on how much you can screw over customer before there’s backlash?

I can’t say anything better than that.

I mean, you guys KNOW how much we hate rewards being tied to RNG. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE A PRECURSOR HUNT NOW! Did you forget already? I don’t care how awesome it is, if it’s tied to RNG, that just makes it worse!

The thing is, I have been happily spending real life money to convert to gold to buy weapon skins on the TP so I won’t have to worry about RNG.

I stopped buying black lion keys about six months into having the wardrobe system. I use the ones that I get from playing the game, and I am always so frustrated at the results, it really reinforces my decision to not ever spend real money on keys.

Now you have taken away my ability to buy the skins on the TP, which means I don’t get the skins (which are actually pretty awesome, good job, artists), and you don’t get my money.

Whoever is making these decisions, you need to remember your audience. Think about precursors. Think about how passionate we have been about it, and why you made the decision to create the precursor hunts. Listen to the backlash and realize what that means to this “testing of the waters”, and get a clue. And then make the privateer skins non account bound, please. They really are cool, and I’m bummed to be missing out entirely like this.

The thing is, they have “indefinitely suspended” the creation of legendary weapons. I know, some people think this means it’s not off the table for good, but when you read that same phrase used, ‘indefinitely suspended’, again recently for something else that is no longer being worked on (fractal leaderboards) and is seemingly abandoned, it begins to feel as if perhaps they don’t remember what customers have asked/paid for, or hope that we’ll forget about it at any rate.

Supporting the game is one thing if people wish to, but the rng thing should really be removed from this equation.

Reclaimermaster.4107:

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.

It’s okay to let the people that want to gamble gamble. But making this the only option forces players that want the skin to gamble, which is not okay.

Here’s an idea, Anet… just get rid of the black lion chest. Put weapon sets (you can even make them account bound) up for $40-$50 worth of gems and sell them individually for $3-$5 worth. Get rid of the gambling, put ALL the permanent nodes in for 800 gems each (so one higher tier costs the same as the bundle of three lower tier nodes), put the permanent bank access in at 2000-4000 gems, and the other permanent convenience things at 1500-3000 gems and I’ll consider buying things again.

As it stands, the only keys I’m going to use ever again are the ones I miraculously get in game. BL skins have always been ‘exclusive’ to me because only those who either had the expendable income (or credit card) or those with the time to waste 16 hours a day grinding for gold could get. I’ve gotten, maybe, 10-15 skins total since the game released from the BL chests and have wasted too much money on keys already. I bought the phoenix glider before finding out the switch to this skin set.

What I do like from this, and you should apply if you don’t want to get rid of the chests, is keeping the ticket price at 1 ticket for 1 weapon. If you’d kindly revert all the old ones to this as well, remove the account bound status from the privateer set, then I think you would actually see a rise in key purchases. (And no, you don’t make the same money from the skins like you claimed, you only make the same money if the same number of people buy the skins. Lots of people get the keys with the idea of holding onto the skins and selling them when they reach 200+ gold price on the trading post, you make them account bound then ALL of those people who use them to make a profit suddenly don’t buy them-cause and effect people. I will be surprised if the privateer set makes more or even equal income compared to any of the other sets of similar quality).

So much complaints… Somebody already mentioned this before. Wouldn’t getting these skins be cheap and easy if you go buy enough of the skins to complete a set? You will unlock one BL weapons set and get 7 keys. You can spend gold to complete the set. You will end up spending less RL cash to buy gems to convert to gold instead of gambling on those chests.

So your suggestion as to how to buy these skins is to… buy… other… skins… profound…

fishball.7204:

If you wanted the chests to be more valuable you’d remove the junk like Tomes of Knowledge and T5/T4 material bags and not do what you’re currently doing. What a poor excuse for making these skins account bound.

This. I didn’t feel very special when I got Large Crafting Bag and 2 Tomes of Knowledge.

Plain and simple bad damage control response from Anet.

I’d just like to add my dissaproval. I’ve never followed the drop rates or item quality in BL chests, but I’ve bought some on occasion and nearly always been disappointed, so I stopped buying them, unless there was a particular skin I wanted. Then I realised I was far better off just converting gems to gold instead of wasting them on keys and buying the skin on the TP.
Anet still got my money for gems, and I got my skin with no hassle.
That way was good, this way is bad. It essentially randomises the price of the skins so they can be wildly different for each person/skin, which is unfair.

I like the new skins. I want several. I might buy 1 because I already have a spare BL ticket. I will NOT be buying more BL chests to get another.

Special?

Looks like any other Black Lion weapon to me…

And unless there will be a guaranteed way for every player to get hold of one, I doubt it’s special in the sense that it will be intrinsic to future story/lore – i.e. get hold of Privateer weapon that will be part of a longer journey to build a better weapon… e.g. semi-precursor hunt. That wouldn’t work since even at 1 BLT there will be a huge part of the player base not getting one.

Understandably the general feeling here is that this is an engineered situation to get more key sales in the gem store. I take a different view, that this is also to clear excess scraps and tickets in players inventories following the “increased contract %ge and crystalised thingamyjig” of the past few days. I think more players bought keys and chests than may be apparent from reading these forums……personaly, I bought 100 keys and opened a total of about 200 chests over the past few days, and although most of it was rubbish, I did get some decent items including enough scraps and tickets to buy almost two complete sets of weapons. I could buy a complete set or just cherry-pick the best ones from future sets for a long time to come (usually only a couple of good ones in ach set anyway), but the latter option will likely mean I don’t buy any more keys and chests for the foreseeable future. So, would Anet prefer to offer something more ‘exclusive’ (i.e. can’t be bought on the trading post) to tempt me to use the tickets now? For the record, I’m not impressed with this new set….

SarahWitter.2317:

After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays.

The point you, devs or people with other roles in anet, are continuing to miss, is: listen to the players, treat them like a community and non cashcows, and they will gladly spend real money in cosmetic gear to support you. All anet’s choices in the last 3 years have gone the opposite way. So sorry, but the words i’ve quoted an many others are simply excuses for the many bad decisions you’ve made through the years.

You did a wonderful job with the original GW, everyone LOVED and supported you , always. Personally i spent a good amount of money to support you buying all those costumes (btw, those were at honest prices, not the ones you are requesting for GW2 even for a minimum thing), mission packs etc.

Ask yourself why now you’re often getting only hate at every decision you make. We understand that you can be forced to take decisions about the direction the game is going that will collide with the original “manifesto”, to make money. We can’t accept to be treated like we are stupid persons instead of [paying] customers. That’s not what anet was and promised to be in the future, and if you don’t change something thats what will let your servers empty.

Everyone keeps saying it’s a “money-grab” by Anet – but my feeling is that a lot of people will buy less gems as a result – all the people who buy the skins as an investment / guild reward / present. That’s certainly the case for me. Anet missed out on a gem purchase from me yesterday as a result of this.

SarahWitter.2317:

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

You mean like spending real money/a lot of gold on keys, then getting absolutely nothing in return? Most of the contents in these chests are worthless and the chances of getting something good are awfully small considering how expensive they are.

lmfao, this is the most brain dead decision Anet has made to date

WE WANT MOAR MONEYZ SO BUY MOAR KEYZ PLZ THX!!

Before -
A player buys gems to convert to gold to go to the TP to buy the skin they want

Anet gets money. Player gets skin. TP Seller gets gold, for in game earning of keys or paying Anet money for the keys. Everyone is happy.

After -
A player buys gems to buy keys. Player opens chests. Player gets 0 scraps and tons of useless kitten. Player then has to buy more keys. Player gets 2 scraps and more useless kitten. Player then has to buy more keys and gets 3 scraps, along with, you guessed it, even more useless kitten. Player has 5 scraps and 3 tons worth of useless kitten and still doesn’t have the skin he wanted. TP Seller who has tons of tickets sitting in his bank that he uses to sell skins can no longer buy skins to sell.

Anet makes more money. Player has no skin. TP seller has no gold. Only Anet is happy.

If you guys want more profit because of the inflation of gems to gold. Just flat out sell BLTC tickets in the gem store, and cut out all of this RNG bullkitten.

I’m using REAL hard earned cash, I don’t want to gamble it away in a game. I need guaranteed results.

I see this ending up with less people buying gems/keys, as well. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a money grab. That would just make it an unsuccessful one.

Anet has been making repeated pushes to sell more BL keys. From a couple different reworks of the items they drop to nerfing the ability to farm them with new characters. It’s clear that they want to sell more of them, but they’re continually failing to address the primary reason why we aren’t buying them.

There seems to be a huge disconnect in the perceived value of a BL key between Anet and players. It’s probably because Anet sees the items in the chest at their face value in gems. Bank and TP express items being worth 35 and 50 gems, or a revive orb being with 250. On the other hand, to players these are nearly worthless items. A lot of players have piles of the service NPC items, and it only takes one of them to provide that service to a full map. I know people that use these items immediately when they get them from chests/login rewards just to not have junk taking up inventory/bank space.

Even if so many of us didn’t have stashes of these things piling up over the years, how many would actually see a single use a TP agent as being worth $0.63 or 15g?

I’ll just take the waypoint and waste a minute of my time. It’s an overpriced minor convenience, and it just feels bad to get it as a “reward” from a gambling box.

jheryn.8390:

First off, I agree with most here that it feels like a cash grab.

I honestly do feel that this is ANet testing the waters. Result: The water is toxic. Poor move on Anet’s part I believe.

The only good reason I can see them doing this (and it is a huge stretch) is that many people also gripe about not having any exclusive items. By making them account bound there would be a lot less people with them. Again, I know that is a stretch for some type of justification.

This was my original thought too. There have been people now and then on these forums asking for more “exclusive” sets. I don’t recall if they have been asking for them to be in game rewards or straight up cash spending. But I do very much doubt being behind the BLTC gambling, no one would want that would they? O.O

This is an awful decision. No way am I spending real money on gambling.

Paulytnz.7619:

jheryn.8390:

First off, I agree with most here that it feels like a cash grab.

I honestly do feel that this is ANet testing the waters. Result: The water is toxic. Poor move on Anet’s part I believe.

The only good reason I can see them doing this (and it is a huge stretch) is that many people also gripe about not having any exclusive items. By making them account bound there would be a lot less people with them. Again, I know that is a stretch for some type of justification.

This was my original thought too. There have been people now and then on these forums asking for more “exclusive” sets. I don’t recall if they have been asking for them to be in game rewards or straight up cash spending. But I do very much doubt being behind the BLTC gambling, no one would want that would they? O.O

“Exclusive” rewards should be earn through playing their godforsaken game, not something that anybody can buy for money. And they actually realised this, when they made the new legendaries account bound, but now here we are again… you can buy “exclusive” and “special” stuff for money, you don’t have to earn it.

Sarah’s explonation was cute about this weapon set is special, but it’s a dumb thing to believe is a good and beliveable reason. So well, congrats, Anet, the ship is still sinking.

Neural.1824:

Onlysaneman.9612:

Chiming in here. I don’t mind you guys selling skins on the gem store- I’d prefer more armor and fewer outfits, but that’s a different matter entirely- but the RNG involved is a step too far. You’re forcing anyone who wants one of these skins to gamble, either with tons of gold or notable amounts of real money. It’s the rare moment most people would be better off playing the -actual- lottery.

The blatant use of gambling by game companies as a means of getting income has gotten to the point where perhaps it is time for governments to step in and regulate it, just like they have done with online Casinos.
Heck, with real casinos, at least you have a chance of getting real cash back. With game companies, the house keeps 100%

I normally don’t want the do-nothings in our (or any) government to start slapping hasty, ill-thought legislation on our video gaming.

This sort of predatory gambling really makes me rethink it. Any lawyers in the audience willing to draft up some possible bill proposal to send to NA and EU legislatures?

So, IF you want the skin you need to get 10 Black Lion Claim Scraps or 1 Black Lion Claim ticket.

IF NOT, then nothing in your world or how you play the game changes, correct?

Meh, doesn’t bother me.

I had 2 tickets sitting in my bank gathering dust as I have not really liked any recent sets so I bought the rifle and pistol as they suit Engi’s well (rifle looks like a sawn off shotgun to me) and since I main an Engi. However I did see another issue here.

That being, when you purchase the box and select a skin that particular skin does not disappear from the list? You unlock the skin as soon as you purchase them so I really don’t see any reason for the skin to stay in the list. It could be that someone purchases the same skin a second time by accident and that could be a problem. No one would want a second skin, why would they? Untradeable and once unlocked you can just reskin anyway. This needs a quick fix imo. It could be the skin disappears from the selection once you use the skin from your inventory, I did not and can’t check that now. But again there would be no reason for this even as someone could still buy an extra skin by accident before using the skins.

Seera.5916:

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.

Really, I understand that it looks frustrating from the get go, and you might think you will never get one. But in the long run this is just nonsense, and it’s not impossible to put in some effort and get these skins regardless of not wanting to spend money.

So it takes a bit more effort than usual, and those who invest money can get it much faster.
It’s like complaining about ascended weapons being account bound. Or HoT Legendaries.

And that all is on top of it being something that is supposed to generate money for ArenaNet either way, and reward those that actually do spend money to get some more reward for their money, if they wish to do so. Which isn’t a bad thing.

It’s basically complaining you don’t want this game to have any further development.