Guild Wars 2

I have seen many posts of players complaining about the drop rate of Halloween items, and “rare” stuff in general ; I rarely post on the forum myself, but I think my contribution can be useful in this specific situation.

I think people in general are taking the GW philosophy completely the wrong way, especially when it comes to “rare” items.
Being a completionist in GW is hard, really hard, to a point where 99.9% have to understand they will NOT be able to get or unlock everything in the game ; they simply won’t. This was true in GW1, and I believe this is true in GW2.

Getting everything requires dedication, and it’s not a matter of throwing $10 or $20 at some party items to be sure to get the cool stuff. That would turn the gem store into a classic cash-shop and people not paying would be left out, which is not at all what the game is about.

If you want to spend some money and get what you’re paying for, get some costumes or armor skins, maybe some character slots or bank expansions to make your gaming experience nicer. See the BLT Chest as your Euromillion ticket (or whatever the equivalent is in North America) ; you don’t expect to win, but you put a few $€£ in it every now and then, just in case.

There are lots of occasions to get unique stuff in the GW serie, and there will be more ; you get what you happen to get, and if you don’t get what you want maybe you’ll get something else at the next event, or maybe next year, etc.

I would expect each player to open a couple of chests, hoping to get something ; and some would indeed get something and they’d all be like "Yeaaah I got something :DDD ". But that’s just a few in millions of players. Buying hundreds of keys thinking you’re guaranteed to get something is definitely not the right thing to do.

With that in mind, the BLT chests and rare skins actually work exactly as I expected as a GW1 player; for those who played it :
- How many players in GW1 never even saw some of the rarest miniatures ? (Island Guardian, anyone ? IIRC a handful of these were awarded in early tournaments ; there were 146 in the entire game, that’s it. 7.000.000+ copies of the game sold, 150 minis.)
- How many players could afford a Panda ? (~1500 Armbraces of Truth, that’s like 500x times what a normal player could gather in years of dedicated gaming)
- How many players would spend months trying to get some rare skin (Voltaic Spear, some of the Nicholas items, etc.) and never get it ?
- How many tens of thousands of Zaishen keys wasted on the Zaishen chest before you finally get an item worth keeping ?
Etc.

That’s what the long term game is about ; the so-called “missing” end-game everybokitteneps talking about, the “collector” side of things : you don’t get everything ; you simply don’t. You get what you get, and you’re happy when you get something because it makes you feel unique. If it only takes $10 to be “unique”, every paying customer ends up being “unique”, which completely defeats the point… That the F2P approach, those who don’t pay get left behind ; here, those who pay do get a slightly better chance. You’re not “buying” the item though, you get a small extra chance at getting the item.

ATM the drop rates from BTL Chests are very low, but that’s a GOOD thing ; it means whether I open a couple of chests or a few hundreds of them, the overall chance of getting something is still low. And that special someone who gets the item does feel unique.

I understand the frustration of some of the players, but I think it’s coming from a major misunderstanding of the philosophy of the GW games.

I agree with you I used to play GW1 and it’s true.. that you can’t have everything ^^ But drop rate of Black Lion Chests is really low.. even keys are hard to get, and you don’t get valuable things from them most of the time.

Thank you OP – I didn’t play GW1 but this is certainly the long-term attitude I had and still have as a GW2 player.

I want to still be playing this game in a years+ time, still be enjoying it, still searching out the rare and unusual because I can’t buy them from the Gem shop or pick them up after every other boss fight.

I opened 5 BLC this morning with keys I had saved up from drops/completions over the last week. Did I get any rare skins – no; am I distraught – no. Also, who knows what opportunities the other Halloween acts will bring?

I agree with you on the overall philosophy. I do remember, however, that it was fairly easy for anyone to get holiday weapons that last in GW1 – i’ll see how I feel about getting permanent halloween skins/weapons in GW2 once I get home and have time to actually play

And you are apparently forgetting the Halloween events in GW1…the items were fun, easy to get for everyone to enjoy regardless of level, not rare and it was a hoot. WHY does everything HAVE to be about rare or exotic? WHY can’t a Halloween event just be fun and everyone, low level or high, rich or poor, lucky or unlucky, have the chance to get something to remember and keep. Who cares if everyone has the same thing, at least people were able to get one. And many who played GW1 actually looked forward to pulling out that same item and wearing it the following year!!! I can see why so many are disappointed. Yes, they have a right to complain. Did they have to spend the money on gems? No. Of course not. But were they misled? I would say so.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/05/22/guild-wars-2s-microtransaction-system-wont-upset-or-alienate-the-player-base/

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/guild-wars-2-interview-monetization/#s:guildwars2-16

We haven’t seen the other acts yet, but I’m pretty sure it will end up with a finale where all participants do get some “Halloween 2012” exclusive item.

Also, some festive items are available for free in the store, and there are some new activities to complete. I also believe it is possible to craft some of the festive weapons (I haven’t checked, but rumors I’ve seen here and there, using some Gifts of Ascalon and Candy Corn, or something similar) ; to be confirmed, buf it this is the case it seems very achievable during the event, even for new players.

On the misleading, this is opened to debate ; I can understand that, without addiitonal information, players coming from different backgrounds could expect very different things. The event lasts for days ; if not sure, why rush it and spends $hundreds :-?

Agree with you all the Ref. I was about to post in one of the complaining threads, but its pointless. Gamers now-a-days have such self entitlement its not even funny. They basically think everything should be handed on a silver platter. The best part is that we are not even 24 hours into a week long event and all i read is how they aren’t getting more free stuff or about how bad the drops are from BLC.

I had lots of fun logging in with my guild and just enjoying the atmosphere and small events. I’ll leave the rare items to the people that want to spend money or massive amounts of gold.

money aside, have you seen the recipes for crafting the weapon skin items? it’s akin to farming for a legendary in …how long is this event? 5 days? yeh…I’d say that’s a bit discouraging for many, like those who can’t play a game 24/7 not mention very unrealistic for any low levelers to achieve. I can see making some things hard to achieve…yeh, ok, cool and fun for the hardcore and long term gamers. But I’m just saying that the casual gamer or beginner doesn’t stand a chance unless they fork out the big $$$, that is not the philosophy or vision which Mike O’Brien had in mind for GW2 if you had read the two articles I linked. Are those who fork out the money entitled to something? You say no…I say at the very least they should have clearly made the rates or chances known prior to selling…as in one of the articles above “clearly knowing what’s in bounds and what’s out of bounds” in regards to microtransactions. OK, enough about this. There will be those who agree and those who don’t, that’s not the point I’m stating. I’m stating this fiasco was never in the vision (or at least publicly known vision) for GW2.

I have bought a total of 0 gems and I’m not missing out on ANYTHING! Yes it would be awesome to have one of the rare Halloween skinned weapons, But its not stopping me from enjoying the event (THATS NOT EVEN FULLY OUT YET!)
People need to lighten up or atleast understand how gambling works before they start dumping money into BLCs.

Like Refeuh said, we still didnt see the entirety of what halloween will offer. I too am hopeful that just like in GW1 we’ll get a free halloween themed reward at the end of the whole thing. Things like weapons being quite demanding to craft, skins having a miniscule chance of droping from a chest are all extras that didnt have an equivalent in GW1.

And yes like OP said they’re not meant to be achieved by everyone, they’re meant to be special and that means only a few players get them! One should play the game for fun first and formost, its good to have goals and try to achievement but no one needs to do that on day 1.

sororsrca.1239:

money aside, have you seen the recipes for crafting the weapon skin items? it’s akin to farming for a legendary in …how long is this event? 5 days? yeh…I’d say that’s a bit discouraging for many, like those who can’t play a game 24/7 not mention very unrealistic for any low levelers to achieve. I can see making some things hard to achieve…yeh, ok, cool and fun for the hardcore and long term gamers. But I’m just saying that the casual gamer or beginner doesn’t stand a chance unless they fork out the big $$$, that is not the philosophy or vision which Mike O’Brien had in mind for GW2 if you had read the two articles I linked.

You dont need to finish it in 5 days, you need to get the halloween specific items in 5 days. The rest you can get at your pace through the year.

thetoetag.5183:

People need to lighten up or atleast understand how gambling works before they start dumping money into BLCs.

Gambling law dictates that you announce the chance of winning.
That’s how gambling works.

Not to mention the same developpers used a much better rate of winning in GW1, which most people figured would be used here as well.

2 cases of misleading or holding back important information.

Galen Grey.4709:

You dont need to finish it in 5 days, you need to get the halloween specific items in 5 days. The rest you can get at your pace through the year.

While this is certainly true, the nature of these items makes people want to actually make and have them during the holiday, not months later
And they really are VERY expensive. I mean, come on – we already have legendaries, do we really need to make fun festival items this costly?

Kimbald.2697:

thetoetag.5183:

People need to lighten up or atleast understand how gambling works before they start dumping money into BLCs.

Gambling law dictates that you announce the chance of winning.
That’s how gambling works.

Not to mention the same developpers used a much better rate of winning in GW1, which most people figured would be used here as well.

2 cases of misleading or holding back important information.

So people aren’t crying because they lost, Theyre crying because the odds wern’t posted before hand? What BS! Anet could have said the odds were 1/234892734982734 and people would still be kittening.

And the drop rates for rare skins in GW1 was ALWAYS extremely low. If you don’t believe me go try farming an Obsidian Edge.

sororsrca.1239:

that is not the philosophy or vision which Mike O’Brien had in mind for GW2 if you had read the two articles I linked

Actually I have, and I haven’t learnt anything new ; the feedback on the Halloween event clearly shows people have different understandings of some statements that were made in the past.

And I don’t deny players who are frustrated the right to feel like they’ve been mislead, I am merely explaining that, for others, the content we have seen so far fits in the continuity of GW1.

sororsrca.1239:

money aside, have you seen the recipes for crafting the weapon skin items? it’s akin to farming for a legendary in …how long is this event? 5 days? yeh…I’d say that’s a bit discouraging for many, like those who can’t play a game 24/7 not mention very unrealistic for any low levelers to achieve.

I haven’t seen the recipes, and I consider myself a “low player” ; I have 350+ hours on the game, and I only just got my first level 80 (and another 70 just behind) ; not a single exotic item except a dungeon weapon from Ascalon Catacombs, no 400 maxed crafter, etc. I haven’t gone past the 50 PvE zones, as I’ve been busy with early dungeons, jumping puzzles, crafting, WvW, etc.
But that’s where our approaches to the game diverge ; many people only see what they’re missing : not getting the unique drops, not having enough time to craft the rare stuff, etc. What I see is what I’ll be doing next year. I will not be getting the unique chainsaw GreatSword skin this year, and I just accept that, and I’m fine with it. Next year, I’ll have a better idea of what to do for Halloween, my characters will be higher level, I’ll have more gold, etc.

Plus, the event has only just started… Not getting everything right now is what frustrates people. This is a long term kind of game, where the rewards come quite slowly and quite late.

I disagree.

You use GW1 as an example, yet GW1 hadnothing like this. GW1 sold their weapon and armour skins freely on the cash shop. The weapon skins in the form of the bonus missions required a little legwork, but the missions were fun and not difficult so this was ok.

The clothing was invariably something you bought directly.

In both cases you saw what you liked, you trumped up the money, and you had you cake and ate it. This cash shop is more reminiscent of F2P titles, something that I did not expect to see in a pay to own game like GW2

In the end, ANet is only really hurting themselves. One, the gem exchange has a laughably bad transfer rate. Two, from the spam the gold sellers are constnatly shooting off in different zones its more economical to BUY gold from a farmer than it is to buy gems and convert. Now youve got these super super rare items that drop in chests and go up in the BLTC for obscene amounts.

The gold sellers offering gold for increasingly cheaper and cheaper amounts plus ANet making vanity items like the halloween skins so rare they demand ridiculous prices on the exchange is eroding the market.

I had 2k gems last night plus another 10 or so keys already in my bank. After getting a few keys from opened chests plus about 20 keys bought I opened a little over 40 chests last night. Not one single solitary thing.

Whats that, 30, 40 bucks? Not a huge deal to me. So lets check the BLTC and see how much the skins are going for. Oh, kitten 50 to 70 gold?!? Ooooookay. Of course while I was in lions arch doing this here is some farmer spamming chat with his website, with gold prices so low they cause me to wonder why anyone would be dumb enough to use the gem exchange to try and buy one of these skins.

shrug

In the end, all ANet is doing is killing off any chance of repeat customers to the gem store. You think people who bought 20 or 30 keys last night are going to EVER do it again? Probably not. I know I wont.

I like the skins, ALOT actually, If they were offered up on the gem store for say 10 bucks per skin they would have easily made 40 to 50 bucks off me with the strong possibility of more sales from me for other skins and items in the future. Instead they made 20 to 30, left a bad taste in my mouth and me swearing off crap from the gem store forever.

Im not advocating the buying of gold, I wont be doing it myself, but ANet is only driving business away from themselves by doing this nonsense.

In the meantime gold sellers will continue to gain a foothold in your game and im sure we will continue to see “lol look at all these dead bots” and “the spam is getting to be too much” threads.

Maybe they’re trying to get people to quit now so they can re-release the game with a better ending? :P

^ This. I’d buy the skin, I won’t buy keys – Most of my guild says the same thing.

Where is the buisness logic in this? – Surely it’s better to sell a few things worth $5-10 to lots of people, than it is to sell lots of things worth $1-2 to a few people

I think previous MMOs, like WoW, have given players a false sense of entitlement. Just because you play the game and spend 20 bucks on gems doesn’t mean you deserve an epic or rare skin. Let me rewind time back to EQ1, it took people 6months to a year to get their epic weapons. This was because the week long spawn camping on monsters, rare item drops, and randomly spawning merchants. Just because blizzard use to hold you tight, whisper sweet things in your ear, and tell you “You’re right, have this epic gear to dry up those tears”, doesn’t mean every game producer is going to cater to your over nurtured needs.

Eicherjw.3926:

I think previous MMOs, like WoW, have given players a false sense of entitlement

You mean like Guild Wars, heaven forbid that a long time player of the previous title in this series expect that it’s sequel be as balanced and reasonable as it’s predecessor on topics like the cash shop.

And here’s the interesting bit; nobody in GW1 used to kitten that stuff was too easy to get or not exclusive enough… funny that

GW1 still had hard to get stuff, what it didn’t have is skins that effectively cost $50-100

I “had” a Panda, btw a VS is not rare, BDS with good stats is rare or even the infamous Crystalline Sword and no one opened the kitten Zaishen chest for the items they did it for title, you could just sell the keys and buy the item before finding it.

I agree with you Refeuh

Welcome to Guild Wars to all the others where dedication is the word^.^

Eicherjw.3926:

I think previous MMOs, like WoW, have given players a false sense of entitlement. Just because you play the game and spend 20 bucks on gems doesn’t mean you deserve an epic or rare skin. Let me rewind time back to EQ1, it took people 6months to a year to get their epic weapons. This was because the week long spawn camping on monsters, rare item drops, and randomly spawning merchants. Just because blizzard use to hold you tight, whisper sweet things in your ear, and tell you “You’re right, have this epic gear to dry up those tears”, doesn’t mean every game producer is going to cater to your over nurtured needs.

I dont think its an issue of entitlement so much as its just bad business.

Making vanity items super rare and by design mega expensive coupled with a horriby bad gem to gold exchange rate is only going to encourage players to get gold by other unsavory means.

I mean, I dont care. This is only going to further marginalize gems as a source of currency and give power to gold farmers in the end.

Sure they could make the vanity items bind on acquire, but then with the super low drop rates people would cry foul so bad you could hear it for miles. Oh you got a staff after dropping 50 to 70 bucks on keys and nothing else and you only have a warrior toon? Too bad sucker.

Conversely you could make the skins easily obtainable, say a 25% drop rate and hook completionists like myself. 40 boxes and I got 3 or 4 items? Well, time to drop another 50 dollars on keys because I need ALL OF THEM.

This isnt about entitlement, its about being out of touch with good business strategy.

Frotee.2634:

Galen Grey.4709:

You dont need to finish it in 5 days, you need to get the halloween specific items in 5 days. The rest you can get at your pace through the year.

While this is certainly true, the nature of these items makes people want to actually make and have them during the holiday, not months later
And they really are VERY expensive. I mean, come on – we already have legendaries, do we really need to make fun festival items this costly?

If what you want is to experiance them during the holidays you can just rent them ! if you want to craft them you’re doing it cause you want to use them permanently ergo not just for the holiday event thats how I see it!

Truth be told I had your same exact reaction the first time I saw what it would take! I was expecting something like crafting your regular exotic 1g – 2g materials needed and you’re done. But then I kinda realised this is a really nice skin which I intended to use instead of another rare skin and it was kind of inline with the corrupted staff I am currently building! (granted this thing is like 4x as expensive)

What I mean is, its a unique skin… the fun of the holiday event is getting the stuff and the activities.. you can rent it for that fun and at same collect the materials if you want a permanent version. In a way it would kill part of the game if nice weapon skins released during events would be easy to build.

Though personally believe this is still on the high side, 1/2 the requirements would be more reasonable but I do agree it shouldnt be finished in a couple of days!

sororsrca.1239:

WHY does everything HAVE to be about rare or exotic? WHY can’t a Halloween event just be fun

This. A few rares might be cool, but in a holiday event, of course people will be angry, if they feel left out. Holiday events are usually more about everyone, not rare exclusive stuff. That seems just the opposite of holiday spirit.

I have to say, I’m not feeling left out… I’m whizzing around LA on my broomstick, spawning cauldrons so others can enjoy costume brawl, farming candy corn, so I can exchange it for T-o-T bags, enjoying the bats fluttering their wings along the banners in LA, and hunting down “haunted doors”. The scavenger hunt thingy was great fun, although a little too easy. The BLC blurb always said a “chance” to obtain a weapon skin (and I’d already decided that the keys were really too expensive)

And this is only Act 1!

Call me easily pleased (I don’t think I am), but I’m really loving this update!

Arienne Di Savorie.7468:

But drop rate of Black Lion Chests is really low.. even keys are hard to get, and you don’t get valuable things from them most of the time.

Uhm, then you can have my droprate chances of BLCs, because I get them all the freakin time. I have 93 in my bank currently. Obviously I don’t get that many keys.

It seems like the GW1 players are split into two camps…

Guys who want every festive item to be the equivalent of a torment weapon, obi armour or VS. And guys who want festive items to be like GW1 festive items; half given away free and half available on the cash shop for a fee.

The former camp puzzles me, because this is exactly how GW1 didn’t work. Festive items were time for everyone to have some fun and awesomeness added to their wardrobe, and dungeons, trading and farming were for obtaining super rare skins, nobody used to mind or complain about this setup.

Claiming Guild Wars 1 was all about putting in tonnes of effort for reward (Which it was) but then applying that mindset to festive items is a fallacy.

I’ve already got what I wanted, six limited edition halloween item, and I only opened 21 chests. So I’m not saying this because I have the gimme-gimmes, but there really needs to be some guaranteed reward for supporting ANet by buying chests and keys. It doesn’t have to be these rare drop items, but there should be something within the chests as a consolation prize.

People forget, this is a game. As much as people try to portray video games as some kind of extreme or hardcore pursuit, this like all video games is more akin to little league than the MLB. In little league, everybody gets their juicebox at the end of the game, everybody gets a consolation trophy.

“I’ve already got what I wanted, six limited edition halloween item, and I only opened 21 chests. So I’m not saying this because I have the gimme-gimmes, but there really needs to be some guaranteed reward for supporting ANet by buying chests and keys. It doesn’t have to be these rare drop items, but there should be something within the chests as a consolation prize.”

Have you done the act 1 quest yet? The reward is a back piece, which is insanely easy to get at no cost… each act will have something similar… there’s your guaranteed reward…

When it comes to gambling roulette is a very popular game. A good part of its success is based on the fact that it is only slightly biased towards the bank (which is the 0’s fault), so it is very fair and requires no special education or gift. Also, basic understanding of mathematics gives you a good understanding about your odds, so that you can make an informed decision if the risk is worth the possible reward or not.
Unfortunately Black Lion Chests are the opposite of that. For a normal player without access to insider information the odds are unknowable and too many contents of the chests feel like a waste of a key. Both factors come together and lead to many players not knowing if they are being ripped off. And a player who suspects he is being ripped off is not a happy player.
If you are the type of person who buys keys regularly Halloween rewards are a welcome bonus. But if you are a person who feels he is not getting his money’s worth when buying keys but does so anyway for a shot at Halloween stuff the experience of not having any luck whatsoever is… well, not so good.
So, we can argue about the odds of getting seasonal stuff are good enough or not, but given the random nature of BLC gambling we should really leave terms like “dedication” or “work” at the door as no amount of work or dedicaton can influence a random number generator.

Refuh, I agree with your overall philosophy. however…

If you don’t understand the reaction of some players being vocal about the chests, maybe you should spent some more time and effort to emphasize.
There is definietly a lot of not very constructive feedback in the 1100-posts long thread, but there is also some very to the point that should shed some light on what others feel and why and really, it does make sense.

To summerize very fast some of the more improtant reasons for the outrage that I’ve personally found, please take a moment to think about the following questions:

- was there such outrage about the chests before the Halloween? Why not?
- was there such outrage about the chests after they’ve announed “small chance of permanent remote TP access” drop from the chests? Why not?

People, from what I’ve seen, generally didn’t care about the chests and not too many bought the keys, most reasonable assumption would be that they didn’t see the keys worth their money.

This changed with ANets marketing campaign for Halloween: do note that the chests are mentioned everywhere where they speak about the event, this gives an impression that the chests were to be one of the main parts of the event – can you really argue that given the marketing? And not a side part where you have a tiny bit of receiving anything event-related, but a vital part of the festivities.
For me personally – and for many others, as you can see on the forums – that was deceptive marketing. They were expecting something different for their money’s worth. That’s where some (most?) of the outrage is coming from. They might word it differently but really, most of it boils down to “This is not what I expected” with an occasional “from you, Arena Net”.

Again personally: I would not be at all surprised with such “event” being handled by one of the many games popular in Asia (Aion, Lineage etc), but up until this event if you’d ask me what does “a chance of Halloween-themed items drop” marketed by ANet, I’d bet my GW1 account the chance would be high enough for any casual player to get a few of the items in question without much hastle.
I do think that for many people, especially GW1-veterans, trust in ANets approach towards players and how they handled events in general was a huge factor when trying to judge what that “chance” meant in Halloween marketing.

tkalamba.2541:

“I’ve already got what I wanted, six limited edition halloween item, and I only opened 21 chests. So I’m not saying this because I have the gimme-gimmes, but there really needs to be some guaranteed reward for supporting ANet by buying chests and keys. It doesn’t have to be these rare drop items, but there should be something within the chests as a consolation prize.”

Have you done the act 1 quest yet? The reward is a back piece, which is insanely easy to get at no cost… each act will have something similar… there’s your guaranteed reward…

I said, as you quoted, a guaranteed reward for those who support ANet buy ‘buying chests and keys’. Exactly how many keys does it take to get that backbrace? None.

Conncept.7638:

tkalamba.2541:

“I’ve already got what I wanted, six limited edition halloween item, and I only opened 21 chests. So I’m not saying this because I have the gimme-gimmes, but there really needs to be some guaranteed reward for supporting ANet by buying chests and keys. It doesn’t have to be these rare drop items, but there should be something within the chests as a consolation prize.”

Have you done the act 1 quest yet? The reward is a back piece, which is insanely easy to get at no cost… each act will have something similar… there’s your guaranteed reward…

I said, as you quoted, a guaranteed reward for those who support ANet buy ‘buying chests and keys’. Exactly how many keys does it take to get that backbrace? None.

It takes no keys. But you can’t get it if you just started the game. 2 of the places you need to go are in lvl 20-25 and 30-35 areas. How is a new player suppose to get it? Sure they could join a guild have hope someone can be bothered to baby sit them for the whole thing. I played guild wars 1 and had a blast. But the thing was with guild wars 1 you kinda had to work to get to LA so all the quests where made for the area. Where as you can get to LA as a lvl 2 and have little to no chance of finishing the quests. I’ve already done the quests and as a lvl 80 it is a pointless reward unless it can be upgraded for a lvl 80 version.

And as for the BLC. They said a chance to get a Halloween item. By a chance I thought I might not get a skin, but for every chest you open I feel you should have got some thing for Halloween. And before anyone tells me you get a tonic just don’t. You and I know that’s BS. You should at least get a ToT bag. Weather you users in game gold or spent money you should get something. I’m willing to be if ANet had said, you have a very very very small chance of getting a Halloween item from the get go. People would not have complained. The wording was misleading to some. So when they spent there money/gold and got nothing to do with Halloween I don’t blame them for feeling a bit cheated. I was so glad I looked here before I spent money/gold on keys for a very poor drop rate RNG chest. I know I won’t spend money/gold on keys for other events.

I really feel ANet needs to look at there “is it evil” policy again. As I for one feel that this was.

cherrie.8907:

If you don’t understand the reaction of some players being vocal about the chests, maybe you should spent some more time and effort to emphasize.

I do understand the frustration, as stated in my initial post And I agree with you that the problem is coming from a significant “gap” between people’s expectations and what BLTC/rare skins actually are.

From my point of view, the ideal solution would be to rollback all these transactions, state the odds clearly, and let people decide. Which is never going to happen.

Instead, the buyers will now be compensated with actual in-game items. That completely defeats the point of the GW2 gem store. When people who have spent $100s in keys and were disappointed will be compensated, as stated in another thread by an ANet official, what it actually means is that people can “buy” rare skins for $100s ! This is terribly wrong, and is exactly what people complain about in all other typical F2P MMO cash shops… It is exactly the same as putting a costume on the gem store for $100. Don’t people realise this is probably the worst thing that can happen with the in-game shop ?!

What I don’t understand is why assume you’re going to get what you want ? If you’re expecting high drop rates, and you open 10 or 20 chests and don’t get anything, maybe you should ask questions… Ask the community about the rates. Raise a ticket if you think it’s bugged. Contact the support. Something useful. But no, people open 200+ chests and then complain ; that’s completely inconsistent.

People thought “I’m going to spend $100s to get what I want”, and they’re going to get what they want (or at least some form of compensation). I do empathize with the disappointed players, because their expectations were not matched, and it’s not entirely their fault, but what’s happening right now with the BLTC is going to pervert the gem store.

The best thing from a publisher point of view is that the community did ask for it. How ridiculous is that.

In my opinion this is all fine and dandy for the game itself. I look at festivals differently. Honestly I don’t care if everyone has the same item, as long as I like it I will use it. The next event will come, the next item will be out and people can swap. All over sudden you hardly see the “in” item from years ago and if you do you go like …. yaah, that right, I got that in the vault too.