Guild Wars 2

Khisanth.2948:

I think you are very much mistaken about who is the “most valuable customer”. The most valuable customers are the ones who will buy all the stuff rather than the ones whining 90% of the time.

Actually, the most valuable customers are those like myself. Adult, disposable income, no children. I’ve spent money in the cash shop before. I spend at least $15 a month, in fact. This month, I spent $55. I might have done the same during Christmas as well, if the drop rates in the chests were worth it. Now, I’m definitely not going to be doing that. The most valuable customers are those that will come back to the trough.

I’ve never “whined” about the cash shop before. In fact, I really like the idea, and I think it needs to have more worth buying. My hope was that the BLCs would be that thing during the holiday, but the drop rate was horrible. Yes, gambling, etc, “You lost your money, get over it.” Well, I will. I just won’t spend as much in the future. That could mean I spend $100 less throughout the year on the product. If I and a fraction of the playerbase (let’s say 10,000) follow that trend, that means ArenaNet loses $1,000,000 in potential sales that they are not going to necessarily recoup otherwise.

On the plus side, the price of gems went up, which means more people will buy them to convert into gold possibly. Is it enough to generate that missing million, though, and a better question would be, wouldn’t the smart solution be to lure back the “million dollar” players while keeping everyone happy enough to continue to increase their gem buying?

This business with the chests is not a winning proposition for anyone involved. It’s not good for the players like myself that are willing to drop that much. It’s not good for the company, because people like me do generate profitability for a business, whether some of you would want to acknowledge that or not, and it does not benefit the people who spend little either, because that extra money will translate into more content for free and higher production values because they can afford them while maintaining profits.

Funny enough, even McDonald’s had to acknowledge their Monopoly game pieces didn’t have good enough odds at one point. We’re talking about a much bigger company, and most likely a much smaller profit loss from dissatisfied customers, but even they took the effort to say, “Lost sales are just lost sales, we could gain them back and get more,” which they did. Now those stupid pieces are a 1 in 4 chance of you getting something, along with the food you bought. That was a smarter path to take than to just say “Sorry, you gambled and you lost.”

Hell, even casinos (the oft-cited parallel to this situation) will have something to keep you gambling and coming back. The atmosphere, the free drinks, the shows, the buffets, etc. There is nothing here that will make a gambler want to return. That should tell you something about how empty that comparison is, and why it is just not a smart business move.

They’re already in the process of figuring out a way to make amends on the chest thing as it is, so arguing against those who are disenfranchised is an empty gesture. ArenaNet’s already acknowledged that they feel the complaints and feedback has been valid.

In TF2, a few months before the advent of the Mann-conomy update, there was the engineer update. Like the previous updates, it focused on bringing us new content for the engineer and a few new maps and a game mode to boot.

However, this update came with something nobody had ever seen before – a golden wrench only accessible by crafting throughout the update period. There were only 100 available, so it was extremely rare.

A lot of people complained about it because of its idiotically high rarity, but when the mann-conomy was released we knew its true purpose – to tempt people to craft their entire inventory to pave the way for the demand for purchaseable items later on. It was a cunning strategy that resulted in a lot of broken hearts, but there was really no other way to do it without interfering with the judgment and freedom of the players involved. They even got a “destroy your golden wrench for charity” cause out of it because of the infamous reputation of what was basically a to-scale lottery.

Opening these chests is obviously not profitable – 10-30 gold is small compensation for the number of keys required to purchase a good chance at getting them. What it does do is equalize the economy a little bit as there were obviously people with thousands of gold exerting too much power over the economy, as the sharp spike in gem purchases showed.

It is too hard to make a game where some person can’t figure out a way to beat the economic system, through exploit, botting, or hacks. No matter how well you seal the leaks, the damage has already been done to economic stability, so the only way to reclaim it for the good of more casual players is to put in a money sink. The best part about it: this is a game. You play it for fun, and when you lose all your money and progress, you still have a game that you play for fun. People don’t come and repossess your house. You aren’t forced to go begging on the street. You don’t get your fingers broken in a back room. It is a game designed with easy, noncompetitive progress and abstract rewards as a break from real life where you have to claw your way to the top and failure means spending the rest of your days in suffering.

-I do believe this shuffled my post to the wrong thread. I was commenting in (22 Chests opened, nothing unique)-

I have to partly agree with Stark as someone who bought a kitten load of LoN packs in EQ2. I have one heck of a decorated house to show for it though.

I don’t expect to get skins out of this. They should be rare I agree with the op as well. I did however think other random halloween trash would have been in the chests. From recipes to candy and so on. The chance of getting one of the skins should be rare but without the trash items or lower end stuff it is not really up to snuff. As I said above and in my post earlier I bought LoN (Legend of Norrath) cards like a fiend. The chance of gettings a rare mount, cloak or house was slim you just had hope. You did however get the regular cards if you played the game along with low tier loot like cloaks, illusions, funny hats, etc… Now here it is my own fault for thinking when I read the notes it said skins and halloween items. I blew $50 honestly I have spent more in other games and in life just tooling around for fun. Assumption is the mother of all kitten ups.

I truly hope they do not hand out skins like candy. Reading the update above I hope it is just trading the normal trash items in chests for Halloween trash items.

They’re not really trash, anyway. Keys are a much better investment than buying boosters/services with gold if you need to farm. People who opened all these chests are going to have the best magic find runs of their lives if they don’t trade it all away for some cosmetic skins.

I think that is quite wrong.

Skins should be hard to get because of effort , everyone could have it , but only if they really put enough into the game.

Sure , luck could be a factor , someone could be lucky and get it for free in one split of second , while others still work for it , but creating only the luck path?

That is a really , really terrible idea.

“The only fool bigger than the person who knows it all is the person who argues with him.” -Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

kaffaljidhma.1496:

It is too hard to make a game where some person can’t figure out a way to beat the economic system, through exploit, botting, or hacks. No matter how well you seal the leaks, the damage has already been done to economic stability, so the only way to reclaim it for the good of more casual players is to put in a money sink. The best part about it: this is a game. You play it for fun, and when you lose all your money and progress, you still have a game that you play for fun. People don’t come and repossess your house. You aren’t forced to go begging on the street. You don’t get your fingers broken in a back room. It is a game designed with easy, noncompetitive progress and abstract rewards as a break from real life where you have to claw your way to the top and failure means spending the rest of your days in suffering.

No.

My body can’t handle anymore cash sinks.

I might die, Please, No.

I thought about buying gems for keys, but after reading threads on 2 forums and ingame testimonies I’ve decided it’s not worth it. I haven’t spent a dime on the cash shop, and will continue that trend.

I think everyone knows the concept of house odds, it’s just that the odds are comically skewed in this case…making it not even worth bothering playing for fun.

The world’s crappiest slot machine has a better payoff rate than what is going on here, which is what people are angry about.

Phy.2913:

I thought about buying gems for keys, but after reading threads on 2 forums and ingame testimonies I’ve decided it’s not worth it. I haven’t spent a dime on the cash shop, and will continue that trend.

If you want any booster/service and are not especially picky about it, buying keys with gems is more economical than picking the item straight, even if all the gems are from gold.

I’ve got boosters cluttering the bank. I don’t enjoy random luck based rewards when there’s such a small time limit or financial risk. I’ve had enough of that from other games.

Phy.2913:

I’ve got boosters cluttering the bank. I don’t enjoy random luck based rewards when there’s such a small time limit or financial risk. I’ve had enough of that from other games.

That’s good, then. You absolutely shouldn’t try to gamble on black lion chests for these or any other item if you find you can’t live without them. Focus on what you want and sell everything else that doesn’t give you a good guarantee on that goal.

best way to do this event just buy gems and sale them for gold then buy from players

This event will see a lot of redistribution of wealth to casuals who would rather pay for gold than farm, much to the dismay of botters.

Stop bootlicking plz

anet screwed the pooch (and us)

I’m sorry OP and others in this thread but I think you are missing some key points here.

it is not about players “wanting everything easy”
Do you see 1100-post long topic about legendary items or PvP achievements?

it’s not, for everyone complaining, about RNG element available in the store for real money
Again, do you see a thread of substantial length on these forums about the chests in general? No, people didn’t like them and almost no one bought the keys, it was more than evident by the amount of chests on TP and by ANets recent moves to make chests more appealing (more on that below)

it’s not about chances / low chances from the chest in general
Again, no substantial protests from people against the recently added “small chance of permanent remote TP access” – but this was clearly stated as “small chance”

it’s not about the rest of the update
Yes, for some people the festival spirit is ruined when they feel they wasted 50$ and really, can you blame them?
But the root of the problem is not the rest of the festival, which is really enjoyable

IT IS about deceptive marketing (or what players felt as deceptive marketing) from a company that has over the years earned a huge trust among their player base
Their newsletter e-mail, official web page and every press release stated prominently that chests will be a part of the Halloween event. Indeed, there was a “chance” involved, but the chance was not – unlike with the permanent TP access – listed as small and given the company history and the fact that it’s an event, people assumed the chances would be quite high

“but the haven’t listed the chances, it’s your fault” – NO
If you’d read the thread you’d know that quite a few countries in the world make it mandatory for any game of chance to list odds. ANet probably didn’t have to do it and their lawyers will prove it, but that’s not the point.
The point is that this kind of law is made against deceptive companies and their deceptive practices: when you tell someone “you have a chance of winning”, from semantic point of view you are not lying either when you have 1:3 chance or 1:15000 chance. But that’s deceptive. And that’s what many players feel about the chests: the marketing was deceptive.
Maybe they would pay more attention or be more cautious if it was a different company, if it wasn’t an event and if the info about event items from chests were not highlighted everywhere possible.
But it was ANet. A company that players from GW1 learned to trust.

I have never ever seen a virtual cash shop game officially disclose actual drop odds for random purchase loot. Even TF2 didn’t officially list the drop chance of unusuals when they started going on the market.

@cherrie

You can’t blame someone just because you assumed something. THey stated chances, yes it is ambiguous, but when ever did you see chance on something that isn’t low and is not in middle school maths?

I find it Ironic that the only dev. reply on the issue of the quality/grind involved with the Halloween rare items is in the one post that is not adamantly against this …

Please give us the benefit of the doubt that you do not think that your player base is either mentally kitten or just a bunch of cry babies. It is your JOB to actively communicate with people on both ends of the spectrum (IE comment in the other posts as to why you feel that the requirements for these Items is so absurdly high —- 250g trumps the cost of some legendary precursors and yet… there it is staring me in the face when I look at the price of rare mats.

All I ask is for a little clarity on the other side of the fence. Thank you for your time and please don’t troll me for making a valid point.

That is all.

I would rather spend 10,000 gem knowing that I will get the skin rather than spending 5,000 gem knowing that I might get a skin.

Get your fact straight, period.

like its been said and ppl keep missing the point, the chance drops are the problem.
and ANET as much as i like them, messed up massively on this one.

the players who spend alot of money and basically are paying salaries and server costs, feel cheated and rightly so when its possible to through so much money at something for absolutely nothing, those players then say “enough is enough” im not spending money on the game anymore. and honestly im at that point already unless they make a change and so are a few friends of mine. so there already i know for a fact they have lost a income source.

now my friends and i aside ive seen other players saying that as well, so when you add up the numbers, they basically just killed off a large amount of money and their own reputation.

when those people stop paying, who is paying for staff and servers? progressively the game will reach a point where you might as well just pack it up.
obviously that would still be a long long way away but you can see where it leads.

brickforlife.1364:

@cherrie

You can’t blame someone just because you assumed something. THey stated chances, yes it is ambiguous, but when ever did you see chance on something that isn’t low and is not in middle school maths?

I don’t understand your second sentence, sorry. Could you elaborate?

As for the first one: yes, you can when it is deceptive and for many players, it was.
Some countries have laws againt deceptive marketing and then you can legally sue the companies that use it.
I am not saying that what ANet did is against the law, but it feels borderline.

Fore Kittens sake people. They said "Save your Chest rewards that they hear loud an clear that people are upset with drop chances and are going to allow you to trade in items gotten from chest for Halloween lewt. Period. Discussion over, everybody wins quit beating the dead horse already.

@cherrie.8907

I couldn’t agree more with what you said. It is about Anet losing the trust it earned during GW1. There will be fallout from this. The rest of it is great though and I’m really looking forward to the upcoming event.

I bought the witch costume from the cash shop because I knew, in the end, I would have the witch costume. I don’t like to gamble.

I am enjoying many aspects of the Halloween event. The costume brawl is fun. I like being able to put out a cauldron that others can then use.

I don’t mind having to buy things from the cash shop. I do mind having to gamble via the cash shop to get items. I don’t mind things being rare and the rng limiting whether or not I get something. BUT…I do mind combining the cash shop and rng to be the only way to get some items.

I have spent a decent amount of money in the cash shop getting bank slot unlocks, character slot unlocks, and the one costume. None of which were a gamble as I knew what I was buying. The gambling part is very off putting for me.

Hilarious to watch these people.

Not one of them would survive in Vegas judging by how they treat the chest slot-machine game with anger and indignation whenever they don’t get jackpot on the first to third try.

That’s why I only play craps.

If you don’t like the idea of chests why, oh why spend so much on them and then complain about it?

If they see a few threads of people complaining about chests and then see that they sold 50,000 of them the logical conclusion is that the majority of players like the chests because they are buying them.

Rather than buying 100 chests and then saying you’ll send them a message by never buying from the store again, why didn’t you just buy a fixed item like a costume in the first place? Or convert to gold and buy the weapon from the TP? Then they can clearly see which is more popular, chests or fixed items.

The chest skins aren’t all expensive in the TP, I got a shoulder skin for 90 silver. If you did spend 100 chests worth of gems you could easily have gotten even the greatsaw if you’d converted to gold.

You weren’t sold a chest of Halloween items, you were sold a normal chest with a chance of Halloween items. That’s what the patch notes say.

You guys are totally off base. It’s not about gambling. It’s about losing trust in a company that had done a lot to earn it during GW1. Yes, while you guys were off playing WoW, some of us were playing other games. ANet earned our trust by NOT going after our wallets first and foremost and then did a total 180 and screwed their fans.