Guild Wars 2

i would like to say thank you to Anet for the halloween event so far, ok act 1 wasnt the best but still good work. what i am upset to see is the forum. I am pretty sure that is game is age rated 12+. so why the hell is everyone acting like 3 year olds.
Anet added the mad king chest to give people a second chance to get goodies, they didnt have to but they are abit soft. If you are like me and didnt get anything then guess what, tough luck.
For all those people crying saying they payed £100 and got nothing, well you just lucky. I spend £4 a week on the euromillions and i dont go complaining to the lottery every week saying i didnt win. Anet said from the start that the drops are rare. i think everyone needs to learn what rare means.
Anyway, sorry about that outburst, i am enjoying halloween so far, cant wait till act 2 comes out.

I agree.
I’m just happy to be able to have the game and participate in the fun.
Of course, there will always be people complaining and they have a right to do so. But the levels that it’s getting to is beyond low.
Heck, there will always be elements that do not appease everyone, I just wanna be able to play and have fun.

A chance to win! That could be anywhere between the chance that there is a teapot orbiting Uranus and the chance of winning paper rock scissors.

Did you know your chance to win the lotto goes up for every ticket you buy so long as you pick different numbers?

Did you know you can find the odds to win the lotto on the back of the ticket or at the store you bought it from?

Neither is the case with black lion chests. Many people are feeling grief because Anet didn’t specify that the skins would be really rare. Much less list the actual odds of winning a particular skin.

Did you know you have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning versus winning the lotto?

I agree the community is downright immature at the moment, it’s a disgrace what’s going on. ANet made an amazing halloween event, but these whiny people ruin the whole thing.

Soul.5923:

A chance to win! That could be anywhere between the chance that there is a teapot orbiting Uranus and the chance of winning paper rock scissors.

Did you know your chance to win the lotto goes up for every ticket you buy so long as you pick different numbers?

Did you know you can find the odds to win the lotto on the back of the ticket or at the store you bought it from?

Neither is the case with black lion chests. Many people are feeling grief because Anet didn’t specify that the skins would be really rare. Much less list the actual odds of winning a particular skin.

Did you know you have a higher chance of getting struck by lightning versus winning the lotto?

And this helps this tread how?
Was it not clear that we just enjoy playing?

Nothing helps this thread, since this thread doesn’t help anything by itself.
it’s complaining about the complainers.

Just as useless as the posts it is complaining about.

With on difference: a company learns more from negative feedback, than from those who say the negative people should shut up.

Anet might be right or wrong, but it’s a fact that this is not good for business.

Illustrating the issue people are having of course. OP assumes people are being entitled. I have illustrated that it was that lack of defining what the ‘chance’ was that was the problem. Since there’s a lot of whinners who claim they would have skipped buying keys if they knew how low the chances were. Not understanding that is sad.

Please don’t compare chests with irl lottery. It’s completely different scenarios.

Having said so, I think it shouldn’t be that difficult to get such skins. I respect that you think there’s nothing wrong with someone spending £100 and not getting said skins.. But that’s not most people point of view and they have the right to complain, without being called 3 yo.

Anyway, I bet next holliday most people won’t be spending that much money (or even won’t be spending money at all).

I blame the fact that too many people refuse to enjoy surprises, and insist on wanting to know everything they can receive in advance.

These are the same people who blame ArenaNet for not posting all secrets, builds, loot tables and optimal game strategies on the official wiki. What they fail to appreciate is that the wiki is a community project by the players, and that the wiki is incomplete because the game is new.

Really, it’s like little children who want to watch their parents wrap their birthday presents, to ensure that they will not be disappointed when the time comes to unwrap them.

I love the beautiful Halloween artwork in the game. I haven’t opened any chests of either type though, so maybe my eyes aren’t blinded by rage heh.

I like the fact that there are very rare skins in this game. When I see someone in a beautiful dress, or a warrior with a ridiculously cool sword, I just love that. Maybe one day I’ll work towards a unique skin or cool outfit, but for now I’m happy killing people in pvp.

Err. Casinos tell you the odds of winning. Does that detract from the enjoyment? hardly. What it does do is keep the casino from ‘tweaking the odds’, and it informs the customers of reality so that they won’t feel cheated when they don’t win.

I too am a lover of unique looks. grats to those who are lucky. I’m not lucky and have never been lucky, so I have to brute force with math to see how long it will take to get something. Hard to do the math unless Anet posts the odds, or I see enough people talking about the odds to get a general idea.

To be honest: all of that is besides the point by now.

You seem to treat this like some theoretical, ethical issue that can be won by arguments of how people are greedy, entitled, impatient or what not…

But in reality it’s about simple business practice:

1. Anet is a company.
It has customers who just bought the game, and it has customers who are willing to spend extra cash.

2. This company sold something to a lot of those customers that are willing to spend cash.
It advertised it for the halloween event.

3. for reasons that can be childish or stupid, justified or entitled tantrums… for whatever reason, suddenly a LOT of those paying customers are upset.

4. as a business relying on selling more to these very customers in the future, as well as relying on mostly mouth to mouth advertising about how great the game is, this is alarming.

5. the forums are filled with complaints. this shows the company there is a real problem.
Again: it doesn’t matter if it justified or not.
When your best paying customers are angry, you have a problem as a company.
The fact that they may be wrong changes nothing on this issue you have as a company.

6. The complainers showed the company there was a problem, and gave the company the feedback to mset things ‘right’ or change them so the angry customers wouldn’t be so upset anymore.
But in the meantime many ‘defenders’ of the game tried to silence the very feedback that helped the company see that there was a real problem.

Conclusion: the people defending the game did nothing constuctive in this issue.
The fact that they think the complainers are wrong is totally irrelevant for the fact that a lot of paying customers were upset.

all they did was show the company they had still happy customers left as well, which by itself is a great message, but it doesn’t help the issue at hand one bit.

when your customers are angry, you have a problem you need to deal with as a company.

Arenanet is in the business of making money of this game.
If they mess up that part, all else will collapse with it.

Nail, head. Good job Kim.

Kimbald.2697:

Conclusion: the people defending the game did nothing constuctive in this issue.
The fact that they think the complainers are wrong is totally irrelevant for the fact that a lot of paying customers were upset.

Wrong, Kimbald. Because it is usually the dissatisfied customers who complain (and make the most noise generally) ANet need to have a balanced view of the overall level of satisfaction of their current customers. Not 2 months down the track (by looking at subscriber numbers/login times/patterns etc.) but now, because they’ve got much work to do on future events.

It is important that ANet therefore receive the full picture. Companies do this all the time by doing exit surveys and stuff about customers’ satisfaction. They would rather have a balanced view rather than a mailbag of complaints.

As a wee disclosure, I have done no complaining or defending regarding Halloween in game or on the forums (although you will probably infer that this post less-than-neutral).

kiwiburner.2186:

Kimbald.2697:

Conclusion: the people defending the game did nothing constuctive in this issue.
The fact that they think the complainers are wrong is totally irrelevant for the fact that a lot of paying customers were upset.

Wrong, Kimbald. Because it is usually the dissatisfied customers who complain (and make the most noise generally) ANet need to have a balanced view of the overall level of satisfaction of their current customers. Not 2 months down the track (by looking at subscriber numbers/login times/patterns etc.) but now, because they’ve got much work to do on future events.

It is important that ANet therefore receive the full picture. Companies do this all the time by doing exit surveys and stuff about customers’ satisfaction. They would rather have a balanced view rather than a mailbag of complaints.

As a wee disclosure, I have done no complaining or defending regarding Halloween in game or on the forums (although you will probably infer that this post less-than-neutral).

You’re right in genearl of course: they need a total view of their customer satisfaction. Positive feedback is just as important as negative feedback.
In general.

For the issue at hand however, it was the negative feedback that made them realise they made a big mistake, not the defending side telling the complainers to shut up.
Just imagine that the defenders would have been able to shut the complainers up.
Anet would not have seen so much negative feedback as now, and would have done nothing to ‘make up’.

Up comes the next event but suddenly no one buys keys for chests…
Big crisis: what whapened between here and halloween? Why didn’t we see this coming?

And an important distinction: I have no issue if people spoke up and said they didn’t see harm in the way Anet did the sales.
I do have a problem with the countles posts saying the complainers shoul shut up, that they shouldn’t have been so stupid etc… those posts didn’t help. That feedback did little good for the company.

In general you are very correct, and certainly not arguing only negative feedback is important.
I realise my post comes very strong from one side.

Kimbald, you assume that the complainers are right and Arena did a great mistake that will ruin the financial income of the GW2 in the future.

But it does not have to be true. It could be exactly the other way around. Maybe the amount of money Anet will not get from disappointed blc-buyers will be completely compensated by the amount of money they get from happy lucky gamblers.

Of course a lot of posts saying that the complainers should shut up are pure emotional and bring nothing constructive to the topic. But the most posts of the complainers are like this to. A lot of emotions = a lot of trolling.

With a customer base of several hundred thousands of (active) players, it is very hard to tell whether complaints stem from a small, but extremely vocal minority of immature people with entitlement issues, or whether a majority of the player base is dissatisfied (some of which just happen to be extremely vocal immature people with entitlement issues).

I can’t tell such a difference from this forum alone. Because in the end, all evidence is anecdotal, and therefore, near-worthless.

You guys could have a point of course, but chance calculations do give a certain image of things here:

if there were as many (or more) lucky buyers of the chest, that would mean that the droprates would be decent.
Simply because the droprate is the average number of all buyers together.

So in order to have as many winners as the outcrying losers, the droprate would have been in the middle.

I’ve seen several posts about winning, but not that many.

This would mean that despite the whole forum attention (and people are disaster tourists on things like this), all of those other winners would have kept silent?
That’s rather unlikely.

Especially since the forums were filled with people saying they were entitled, and saying how Anet did nothing wrong… but not filled with people putting up their better droprates as much.

So it becomes even more unlikely: of all the happy people, moslty those posted that reacted to the complainers, but not those who won? Or not as much, as I said: there were several posts of winning.

After all: nothing would silence the complaints as strong as having just as many posts of people winning, which would even out the droprates…
This didn’t happen.
Not even the defenders could provide better droprates, they could only provide arguments to why they think the complainers were wrong.

Somehow I find it extremely unlikely that there is some large group of winners that kept silent through it all.

And please don’t think i’m trying to argue for the sake of arguing Kathmandu and Jornophlaphlathelphlathingy. Nor that I am trying to make fun of any of your names.
I take your arguments serious and respectfull.
But i don’t think they are that likely seeing what posts i did and did not see.

oh and Kathmandu: you’re dam right that a LOT of complaining posts did nothing constructive by themselves. Their only value for me was showing the numbers of unhappy customers… I didn’t like them that much myself to be honest.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

With a customer base of several hundred thousands of (active) players, it is very hard to tell whether complaints stem from a small, but extremely vocal minority of immature people with entitlement issues, or whether a majority of the player base is dissatisfied (some of which just happen to be extremely vocal immature people with entitlement issues).

I can’t tell such a difference from this forum alone. Because in the end, all evidence is anecdotal, and therefore, near-worthless.

^this so much.

What the vocal immature people, and basically what everyone who complains about the RNG system do not understand is this.

It’s your wallet that speaks louder If you do not support the gambling way of acquiring rare seasonal skins, why did you buy in on it the first place? (Especially without any data or indication of the dropchance)
You see? Right now your wallets are yelling “YES, WE WANT MORE GAMBLING PLEASE”.

If you didn’t stuff money into the “slotmachines” ANet wouldn’t see $$$ coming in the door for keys, and that way they would’ve went for a different route for the next seasonal event instead of BLCs. But that’s not what happened and it’s unreasonable to come up with “I OPENED CHESTS GOT NOTHING, GIVE ME STUFF NOW” complaints, as they are not constructive at all. The damage has been done mainly by you buying into the gambling system and quite frankly no one deserves to be compensated for that. It’s unbelievable ANet even gave you a second chance to acquire the items. NO company that follows this business model has ever done such a thing. (Just look at TF2 and how successful they are)

The “They didn’t tell us the chance” argument is rather silly really.

After opening 5 – 6 chests and not getting anything you should have realised the chances probably weren’t too high; the real issue is you didn’t have the restraint to stop yourself and the blame for that sits squarely on your shoulders.

Anyway, yeah, loving the events so far and looking forward to the ones coming.

Not everyone who received an item that you would consider “winning” feels compelled to go to this forum and post about it.

Some people use a different forum.
Some people don’t get excited about cosmetic items, even if they got a rare one.
Some people post in one of the non-English subforums (although I haven’t looked at those).
Some people don’t realize that the item they received is extremely rare.
Some people are very pleased, but don’t feel the need to share that on the internet.
Some people (the vast majority?) just play the game, without using a forum to talk about it.

You know why I think the chance rate is important?

Not because of the gambling calculations as such.

but simply because of one thing: trust.

The players trusted in Anet to be generous with the things they could win for the halloween event.
That’s basically what made people buy so many chests: they trusted in the goodwill of the company, despite knowing the droprates of rare items in the normal chests outside of the event.

They saw Anet advertise the chests for the event and figured: hey, fun, they are handing out presents! Let’s buy some and win a few.

In a logical sense they were utterly stupid to think so.

But in the sense of happy gamer trusting their beloved game developers… they were just being normal human beings.

It’s the breaking of that ‘unofficial’ trust, that caused the uproar.
It doesn’t soothe them if you tell them gambling is stupid and all of that.

And it all could have been so easy to avoid:

all they needed to do was add silly rewards to each chest (corn candy and all of that), and a few less rare towns clothing skins that half the server would have in the end…

Give people a consolation price and they don’t feel being cheated. Simple and effective, not to mention just the nice thing to do.

Kimbald, I don’t think either that the droprates are quite high and there are a lot of people who were lucky to get 10 skins out of 15 chests and just do not bother to post about it in here. The droprates are very low for sure.

But low droprates here do not necessary mean a lot of unhappy people. I am sure that almost nobody spended hundreds of bugs on keys and got nothing. Most players used keys they found ingame. A lot of people bought some keys additionaly, opened some chests and got over it to other things the event afford.

Some other guys were smart or lucky enough to wait so they decided to buy the skins directly from tm instead of gambling for them.

All of this players are not unhappy despite very low drop rates. And I cant know it for sure but I’m ready to bet that this players are by far the majority.

PS: Kimbald is a funny name too, you know

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Not everyone who received an item that you would consider “winning” feels compelled to go to this forum and post about it.

Some people use a different forum.
Some people don’t get excited about cosmetic items, even if they got a rare one.
Some people post in one of the non-English subforums (although I haven’t looked at those).
Some people don’t realize that the item they received is extremely rare.
Some people are very pleased, but don’t feel the need to share that on the internet.
Some people (the vast majority?) just play the game, without using a forum to talk about it.

All true and possible.
Still i think we would have seen more of those here if the droprates were indeed better than posted, and there would be that large roup of silent winners.

It’s possible, all that you write, but it’s simply not very likely.

Kimbald is what my father used to call me when i was a little kid. My real name is Kim and he seems to have gotten that from the celtic Kimball I guess.

Could have been Kathmandu… he was sort of a hippy after all

Kathmandu.2417:

Kimbald, I don’t think either that the droprates are quite high and there are a lot of people who were lucky to get 10 skins out of 15 chests and just do not bother to post about it in here. The droprates are very low for sure.

But low droprates here do not necessary mean a lot of unhappy people. I am sure that almost nobody spended hundreds of bugs on keys and got nothing. Most players used keys they found ingame. A lot of people bought some keys additionaly, opened some chests and got over it to other things the event afford.

Some other guys were smart or lucky enough to wait so they decided to buy the skins directly from tm instead of gambling for them.

All of this players are not unhappy despite very low drop rates. And I cant know it for sure but I’m ready to bet that this players are by far the majority.

PS: Kimbald is a funny name too, you know

I stand corrected here: my argument doesn’t say anything about those not winning, but not minding it so much.

If ANet is at all clever about datamining, they can draw valuable conclusions from these forums. What can only be anecdotal evidence to us, doesn’t have to be so for them.

They are in the position to relate every user’s gem-buying habits, actual keys bought with said gems, actual keys spent on opening chests this event, actual rare skins received from said chests, total number of posts made on this forum and their opinion on the results of their chest-opening as expressed on this forum.

They can do so because our posting identities here use the same account as we use to play the game. All of that put together might be quite enough to establish a sample-size large enough to establish the general customer satisfaction off of, like polls do.

I’m not saying they do this, but they might, because all information is available to them.

K Cross.3458:

Please don’t compare chests with irl lottery. It’s completely different scenarios.

Having said so, I think it shouldn’t be that difficult to get such skins. I respect that you think there’s nothing wrong with someone spending £100 and not getting said skins.. But that’s not most people point of view and they have the right to complain, without being called 3 yo.

Anyway, I bet next holliday most people won’t be spending that much money (or even won’t be spending money at all).

yeah…. have you opened the TP lately and searched “skin” you may notice that most of these skins are 2g-20g atm… so in all reality, everyone in this game regardless of weather they spent real money on gems or not can get these skins.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

K Cross.3458:

Please don’t compare chests with irl lottery. It’s completely different scenarios.

Having said so, I think it shouldn’t be that difficult to get such skins. I respect that you think there’s nothing wrong with someone spending £100 and not getting said skins.. But that’s not most people point of view and they have the right to complain, without being called 3 yo.

Anyway, I bet next holliday most people won’t be spending that much money (or even won’t be spending money at all).

yeah…. have you opened the TP lately and searched “skin” you may notice that most of these skins are 2g-20g atm… so in all reality, everyone in this game regardless of weather they spent real money on gems or not can get these skins.

Exactly. If most of the complainers just sit down and thought a moment before throwing money into the slot machines, this whole ordeal would have never happened in the first place, but I guess some just don’t have the capacity to do so. Lot of people bring up complaints like “I spent 40+$ and got nothing boohoo” well if you would have exchanged the gems for ingame gold instead of buying keys, you could have bought up to like 10 of the exclusive skins depending on which one you wanted. And still you could buy the most expensive one from 40$ (or even less now). It baffles me how THESE people think they deserve to be compensated…

and this way you can still support ANet while doing so.

Hawken son of Z.1367:

yeah…. have you opened the TP lately and searched “skin” you may notice that most of these skins are 2g-20g atm… so in all reality, everyone in this game regardless of weather they spent real money on gems or not can get these skins.

Were there a few million of them for sale then? I guess they’d better hurry and make a mystic forge recipe to get rid of all the excess skins!

Manasa Devi.7958:

Were there a few million of them for sale then?

Nope. But the fact that you have quite a lot of affordable skins on the market every time you look for them means by itself that you don’t need this million. There are apparently more Halloween skins ingame than players who want them.

Kathmandu.2417:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Were there a few million of them for sale then?

Nope. But the fact that you have quite a lot of affordable skins on the market every time you look for them means by itself that you don’t need this million. There are apparently more Halloween skins ingame than players who want them.

This is so true. They’re just sitting there on the TP waiting for the taking yet people come here to whine… It’s just unbeleavable.

Is there some reason that feeling left out of some neat cosmetic items is considered “entitlement,” “whining,” or “immature?”

Last I checked, I spent money on the CE of this game like the rest of you. Spending $20 on the gem store for keys to a bunch of Black Lion chests to try and join in the fun, only to get absolutely nothing neat out of it doesn’t exactly endear me to the idea of spending more money to get another 40 mystery tonics. Even after using all those tonics and some boosters that were collecting dust on Mad King chests, I didn’t get anything but another 100 candy corn and some mummy/skeleton tonics.

I don’t really understand why everyone insists these things must absolutely be a grind other than to lord the fact they got really lucky over other people. Other games have holiday events that everyone gets a chance to get into and have fun and get some guaranteed goodies. But if I want the chance to get those things without having to dump a fortune into the gem store or pray to the RNG gods, I’m a whining, immature player with entitlement issues?

It’s possible that maybe the upcoming events will have the things I want, and that’d be great. But I’d also like a couple skins without having to dump my entire bank, real or virtual, into it. I don’t think that’s a whining or entitled statement; it’s just me saying “hey, Arena net, I also paid for the game and want to have fun.”

Kimbald.2697:

You know why I think the chance rate is important?

The players assumed without any evidence to support that assumption that Anet would be generous with the things they could win for the halloween event.

Fixed that for you.

This is the problem right here. Instead of being a responsible adult and waiting to buy keys to see what the drop would be like, they rushed in going GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME.

Sahriah.3792:

Kimbald.2697:

You know why I think the chance rate is important?

The players assumed without any evidence to support that assumption that Anet would be generous with the things they could win for the halloween event.

Fixed that for you.

This is the problem right here. Instead of being a responsible adult and waiting to buy keys to see what the drop would be like, they rushed in going GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME.

That’s the exact problem: seeing the history of Anet, seeing the way GW1 handled this, seeing their manifesto, and seeing their bond with their playerbase, the players actually never needed that evidence to support their assumption.

It’s called ‘trust’.

Kimbald.2697:

Nothing helps this thread, since this thread doesn’t help anything by itself.
it’s complaining about the complainers.

Just as useless as the posts it is complaining about.

With on difference: a company learns more from negative feedback, than from those who say the negative people should shut up.

Anet might be right or wrong, but it’s a fact that this is not good for business.

He did thank ANet for the event. That is helping something even if it wasn’t you.

Sahriah.3792:

This is the problem right here. Instead of being a responsible adult and waiting to buy keys to see what the drop would be like, they rushed in going GIMME GIMME GIMME GIMME.

“Heh you assumed this event would be fun and interesting, way to expect everything on a silver platter” is pretty much how I would interpret this.

There are parts of the event that are fun. But unfortunately the Chest fiasco has many PAYING customers very angry.

I had though about buying some keys but when I saw the threads with the ridiculously low drop rates… well.

I did end up buying a Witch outfit. That was great but I fear the value of the brawl will diminish due to lack of awards, not even anything tiny, for using up Tonics etc.

I have experience with marketing and when this many customers are unhappy it isn’t a good thing. For every single unsatified customer will tell at least 10 friends (industry stats). Maybe more due to the ease with which info spreads now.

NinjaKnight.1340:

There are parts of the event that are fun. But unfortunately the Chest fiasco has many PAYING customers very angry.

I had though about buying some keys but when I saw the threads with the ridiculously low drop rates… well.

I did end up buying a Witch outfit. That was great but I fear the value of the brawl will diminish due to lack of awards, not even anything tiny, for using up Tonics etc.

I have experience with marketing and when this many customers are unhappy it isn’t a good thing. For every single unsatified customer will tell at least 10 friends (industry stats). Maybe more due to the ease with which info spreads now.

Yeah, I mean. To clarify, I did like the phase one event with the memoir. It got me out into parts of the world I had never been to, and I had fun trying to puzzle out the clues, although I had to look up one because I am unfamiliar with the lore of the game.

The abysmal drop rates from the chests are a little grating though.