Guild Wars 2

Halloween was ridiculous, only the most devoted of fans accepted it for what it was. The rest of us who enjoy playing the game for the game itself, well, it was an unnecessary money scamming scheme that was bad for the gameplay and it was obviously so.

Now, here we are again with flame and frost, here we are again back in the same situation where the rewards are… worthless. The new missions were too easy, the char chick was just weird with the bug eyes and baby thing, in fact it was downright creepy, and it didn’t deliver any sort of worthwhile reward.

Instead we’re here again, because all the new skins are RNG blacklion chest items where you get a chance for a ticket, then you bring your ticket to the vendor and select what you want.

Apparently the thousands upon thousands of players complaining about the way the whole RNG weapon skins was absolutely awful didn’t really make much of an impact because… we’re here again, complaining about the same thing. I mean, if I put my hand in a fire it will hurt, so I won’t put my hand in a fire again. I guess they skipped that lesson.

I can only assume that the number of players willing to shell out money for a chance at something via Black Lion chests far outnumbers the players that dislike this sort of thing. If people were unwilling to gamble for rewards, I doubt this would be done. Personally, I don’t pay money to gamble in a video game, but it seems clear to me that many, many others do. Therefore, we see it repeated.

Freaking called it.

Freaking called it…

So you’re complaining about part 3 of 4 for Flame and Frost? I expected a bigger update than 1 and 2 and ANet delivered. Did you really expect a major update to occur for an unfinished campaign? Wait til part 4 comes before you judge it, each part was meant to build momentum for the living story and I suspect part 4 will have even better content than the rest of it. To be fair, Anet delivered on everything they said they would, if there was to be a new dungeon they would’ve said it. Who knows, part 4 may culminate in a dungeon.

Okay, yes I am complaining. Because these RNG skins are ridiculous, and they were ridiculous in halloween as well.

that being said, yeah BLC drops kinda sucks, but hey, microtransactions are necessary to pay for their time and efforts. At least they don’t jerk our chain around like other gaming companies

Gregorius.1024:

that being said, yeah BLC drops kinda sucks, but hey, microtransactions are necessary to pay for their time and efforts. At least they don’t jerk our chain around like other gaming companies

This is the equivalent to jerking a chain in my view…

I don’t want to be “lucky” in order to get rewarded for my time. If I put time in, I want my reward. I detest RNG, probably because I put around 800 rare lvl 80 greatswords into the forge and never got a precursor either, which fuels my rng hate.

Gregorius.1024:

At least they don’t jerk our chain around like other gaming companies

Actually that’s exactly what they are doing by putting account bound skins in the BLT chests.

Oglaf.1074:

Gregorius.1024:

At least they don’t jerk our chain around like other gaming companies

Actually that’s exactly what they are doing by putting account bound skins in the BLT chests.

They’re account bound on top of it?

Christ.

I guess that’s better than nothing then, if some lucky kitten doesn’t make 60-100g for a skin that I don’t get because of RNG then AMEN to that. LOL!

Greg, you are the reason systems like this are set more to abuse the player base and gambling addictions. Rather the be designed as content that everyone would love to be apart of and get something out of.

You need to remember this is a service industry and as such the company is here for you. Not the other way around! They are here to provide a service that you paid for or support that is on par within reasonable expectations. The fact is people paid to play GW2 and many people pay good money for gems as well to support a game they love. These people deserve better bang for their buck.

Also there is a fine line between designing good content to earn money that treats the player base like a friend. Rather then designing content that caters to gambling addictions that is sub-par. This content was designed to take advantage of the whale player base that will spend all they have because of the gambling rush because it is easy money. Instead of designing good content everyone can afford and desire to buy all the time.

This is a lousy way of doing thing an apologist like you need to stop defending it. Capitalism is supposed to let bad ideas fail not be propped up on high as something a company deserves.

KorKor.9452:

Greg, you are the reason systems like this are set more to abuse the player base and gambling addictions. Rather the be designed as content that everyone would love to be apart of and get something out of.

You need to remember this is a service industry and as such the company is here for you. Not the other way around! They are here to provide a service that you paid for or support that is on par within reasonable expectations. The fact is people paid to play GW2 and many people pay good money for gems as well to support a game they love. These people deserve better bang for their buck.

Also there is a fine line between designing good content to earn money that treats the player base like a friend. Rather then designing content that caters to gambling addictions that is sub-par. This content was designed to take advantage of the whale player base that will spend all they have because of the gambling rush because it is easy money. Instead of designing good content everyone can afford and desire to buy all the time.

This is a lousy way of doing thing an apologist like you need to stop defending it. Capitalism is supposed to let bad ideas fail not be propped up on high as something a company deserves.

I wasn’t even considering the fact that they were random, I was only stating that microtransactions are a good thing. I wasn’t trying to apologize for anet, I didn’t realize it was a random chance to drop. I thought the tickets could be available outside of the chests

Arena could just add them as purchaseable skins in gem store for eg. 300-700 gems, like they did winter weapons.

Gregorius.1024:

KorKor.9452:

Greg, you are the reason systems like this are set more to abuse the player base and gambling addictions. Rather the be designed as content that everyone would love to be apart of and get something out of.

You need to remember this is a service industry and as such the company is here for you. Not the other way around! They are here to provide a service that you paid for or support that is on par within reasonable expectations. The fact is people paid to play GW2 and many people pay good money for gems as well to support a game they love. These people deserve better bang for their buck.

Also there is a fine line between designing good content to earn money that treats the player base like a friend. Rather then designing content that caters to gambling addictions that is sub-par. This content was designed to take advantage of the whale player base that will spend all they have because of the gambling rush because it is easy money. Instead of designing good content everyone can afford and desire to buy all the time.

This is a lousy way of doing thing an apologist like you need to stop defending it. Capitalism is supposed to let bad ideas fail not be propped up on high as something a company deserves.

I wasn’t even considering the fact that they were random, I was only stating that microtransactions are a good thing. I wasn’t trying to apologize for anet, I didn’t realize it was a random chance to drop. I thought the tickets could be available outside of the chests

nope.

RNG Cash Shops are for F2P games that want to squeeze as much money out of suckers as possible before they realize the game is kitten and move on to something else. If Arenanet actually wants to grow and maintain a strong player base over a period of years, they really, really need to knock this kitten off.

It’s really like the person running the cash shop is more concerned about “how awesome it feels when I can sucker some gamer into paying x-hundreds of dollars on the cash shop”, rather than trying to establish a healthy, long term revenue stream.

IMO, the skins should be for sale directly for around 500 Gems AND the tokens should drop from chests. That way, people who just want a skin or two can do so with out the risk of shelling out a lot more than intended in the pursuit of an RNG, but people who already buy BLC keys, or have been on the fence about buying them, have a little bonus incentive to do so while the tokens are available.

I find it extremely sad that Arenanet has decided that “let’s rip suckers off for as much as we can” is their Gem Store mission statement, rather than “Let’s offer quality offerings at fair prices so a large portion of the player base can invest in the game over the long term and get some guaranteed value for their money”.

The people who are willing to gamble on these items must generally be willing to pay more in total than the people who would buy them if they were sold directly (or at least their marketing research causes them to believe so).

It works great for players like myself. I dislike monthly subscriptions and I dislike even more the free-to-play/pay-to-win model of selling highest-tier gear. I won’t gamble for skins, but it’s not the end of my world if I don’t have every new shiny.

I suspect that the range of players who are obsessive enough to desire every new skin but not obsessive enough to gamble excessively for them is a pretty small demographic.

I must be the only person on the planet who doesn’t really care about getting the OMG SHINY NEW SKINS, because the whole time I was reading this thread I just thought you all were a little kitten

You don’t pay a sub, so they offer RNG for (typically) very ugly skins in hopes that large numbers of people freak out and buy tons of keys.(success).

Are you really bothered that much by what other people have/do when it has no effect on the gameplay whatsoever?

I dunno, maybe I just have more sense than the average person.

Shelledfade.6435:

Halloween was ridiculous, only the most devoted of fans accepted it for what it was. The rest of us who enjoy playing the game for the game itself, well, it was an unnecessary money scamming scheme that was bad for the gameplay and it was obviously so.

Now, here we are again with flame and frost, here we are again back in the same situation where the rewards are… worthless. The new missions were too easy, the char chick was just weird with the bug eyes and baby thing, in fact it was downright creepy, and it didn’t deliver any sort of worthwhile reward.

Instead we’re here again, because all the new skins are RNG blacklion chest items where you get a chance for a ticket, then you bring your ticket to the vendor and select what you want.

Apparently the thousands upon thousands of players complaining about the way the whole RNG weapon skins was absolutely awful didn’t really make much of an impact because… we’re here again, complaining about the same thing. I mean, if I put my hand in a fire it will hurt, so I won’t put my hand in a fire again. I guess they skipped that lesson.

I agree with black lion chest RNG, it’s ridiculous. Last time it was highly criticized and this time it will be criticized too.

However….

You dare to diss on the two story instances, which I might add were very well done. Just because there’s the black lion chests thing and because you’re a wuss with bugs, doesn’t mean the whole content update is bad.

I mean really, the baby devourer was cute. It fits Rox’ not so standard appearance too.

You also generalize the whole of halloween over the BLC issue.

Imo this update has been pretty nice, the rewards aren’t stellar (though, lvl 80 instance with lvl 80 drops… does quite make up for alot of it.) I enjoy playing through the instances.

They basically are the missions from guild wars 1. We finally have two missions, with more sure to follow, considering this is regarded as teaser content still. I dunno about you, but you seem a greedy player.

RNG gem spending for pretty nice weapons, is just blerghehgw, yes.. but don’t rage on baby devourers. T_T!

AinSoph.5063:

people … buy tons of keys.(success).

This is why ArenaNet does the whole RNG thing with all their new shinies each month. Because enough people will buy hundreds of keys and/or chests for a chance at a skin or item. If the majority of players refused to spend money unless they knew exactly what they were getting, this would not be profitable and so it would be handled differently. But since there are enough players that “need” everything and have money to waste, this scenario works beautifully for them.

Good lord it’s a freaking skin! You don’t need it, but if you want it, go have the whack at the chests! I mean, I really wanted a Pink Quaggan backpack cover but 10 keys I bought during the key sale didn’t get me one. So I settled for a the backpack cover you can get from the gem store and called it a day.

I mean, its a purely cosmetic thing! It gives you ZERO game play advantages. So I don’t see why you are all crying over it being RNG. Only thing RNG does is add a bit of “uniqueness” to the look because everybody will not have it. That’s all!

Are you really saying that Anet can’t sell skins? Or add an element to the skin game that has a element of luck to it so as to make it a collectors item? I mean, it is not a collectors items unless there is some limitation associated with it. Honest to goodness the hysteria over the Black Lion Chests every single time is just… too much!

Needy users throw money at GW2. Gw2 has money to program more FTP content. I know I’d be more kitten if I needed to buy this world event.

Many of the posts after mine make me want to quote myself and just stare at them annoyed.

Not all of us are in it for the skins, Beaker.

KorKor.9452:

Many of the posts after mine make me want to quote myself and just stare at them annoyed.

KorKor.9452:

Many of the posts after mine make me want to quote myself and just stare at them annoyed.

I read your post. I just didn’t want to touch it because the psudo-psychology babble backed with zero data annoyed the hell out of me. You cannot apply Zynga terminology to the Guild Wars community, certainly not the Black Lion Chests and assume you have hit on some universal truth.

For one, most of us “gamble” in Guild Wars. We gamble every time we kill a mob or open an event chest like the dragon chest. We gamble that our number will come-up and we’ll get something O.O. In that respect, the Black Lion chests are not much different from killing mobs or opening Dragon kill chests. Especially since you can turn in-game gold you earn through the investment of your time into gems that you can use to purchase the keys. So unless you are willing to classify every loot related thing we do in Guild Wars gambling and all of use who continue to kill dragons and do dungeon runs despite the chests and mobs disappointing us 99% of the time gambling addicts, you do not have much of an argument.

Also this is not Zynga and I doubt the “whale” players in Guild Wars are who you think they are. Zynga could milk their whales for real cash because time investment could not be converted to the Zynga cash that you needed for the premium stuff and method for earning “free” Zynga Cash usually involved purchase through a third party. Due to the gold to gem conversion option, time rich Guild Wars players are more likely to be the “whales” who just convert their in-game gold into gems and purchase keys to try their luck. It’s the time poor players who often choose to pay and to classify them as gambling addicts is a bit much.

Both Halloween and Wintersday let you get the same skins without shelling out any money on the BLTP. This will be no different, wait for the conclusion.

The only people who complained about this were the same self entitled weenies who complained about the JP being too hard. Seriously, who complains about fluff being added to a F2P gem shop?

Came for the heading of the topic, read the post and decided that it’s quite true. You can’t play this game and like it anymore, or you are an apologist or a moron.

I enjoyed Halloween, even though I was never going to get Mad King gear or the special skins. I enjoyed it because it was fun to mess around in the maze with people, it was fun to hit up the doors, and I enjoyed the mini dungeon fight with the Mad King a lot.

I’m enjoying watching this unfold, and finally seeing some actual development and jokes about their own materials. (“Consume to gain karma” “Warning: Do not consume.”) Rox’s eyes don’t look so bad when I looked at it during the story instance – aside from standing out due to being that green color. The reward isn’t enough to make me rush to do it, but I’ll probably hit it up with some guildmates since it was pretty fun.

The dead drop was a much improved “find the hidden object”, so thanks for that ANet. It also provided intriguing morsels of hinted details.

The overall overhaul of the material was very nice, it feels much less “rough”. It’s a nice distraction from “same old same old”. Which, mind you, was how I felt Halloween and Wintersday was.

Lucky for me, I think the new items are sinfully ugly For a fantasy MMORPG, I have no idea where there get their taste from. For the most part the art is very cluttered, dark, dreary, and lacking the vibrancy of life.

I can imagine what the convo must have been like for this.
Dev: “Hey, we have a great idea. How would you like to add some new skins for Flame and Frost?”
Artist: “Sure, what did you have in mind?”
Dev: “You’ll love this… flames on grunge metal!!!”
Artist: <Facepalms>

So for me, the rng of blc’s doesn’t really matter. Since they have nothing I want in them. The only item I’ve been wanting is white and celestial dye’s per alt. Which is ridiculously expensive. $12 USD for dye for each alt is too much. So, I’ve tried crafting Unidentified Rare Gray Dye. Every time I get a fine dye, not even a rare. So for this, I understand how frustrating rng can be. I’ll probably lose interest in the game before I get either of the dyes.

For the Halloween event, I did purchase the Witch’s costume. A flat rate, no RNG, and it wasn’t too expensive. I use it every time a costume brawl comes up on the daily. I think Anet would get more return if they put things on a flat rate and was reasonably priced.

AinSoph.5063:

I must be the only person on the planet who doesn’t really care about getting the OMG SHINY NEW SKINS, because the whole time I was reading this thread I just thought you all were a little kitten

You don’t pay a sub, so they offer RNG for (typically) very ugly skins in hopes that large numbers of people freak out and buy tons of keys.(success).

Are you really bothered that much by what other people have/do when it has no effect on the gameplay whatsoever?

I dunno, maybe I just have more sense than the average person.

No most of the average player’s dont come to the forums. because much like you they also dont care about skins all that much

How ever to come to the forums and say you have more sence than the people that dont, you would be lieing to yourself..

we come to the forums because we are dumb :P JK

Alright OP. If you don’t like it, don’t participate. Complaining on the forums solves absolutely nothing. If you’re not willing to RNG for the skin that looks kitten, then you obviously don’t want it bad enough.

Apparently the thousands upon thousands of players complaining about the way the whole RNG weapon skins was absolutely awful didn’t really make much of an impact.

I maybe saw 50 people at most complaining on the forums or via in-game chat about the wintersday RNG.

The rest of us who enjoy playing the game for the game itself, well, it was an unnecessary money scamming scheme that was bad for the gameplay

These items requiring RNG to obtain did not affect gameplay whatsoever. Just because a bunch of people you know didn’t get what they wanted out of the RNG, doesn’t make it a money scam. The fact is, this IS a non-subscription fee game, RNG is how ANet makes the bucks. Deal with it. So anyway, like I said, if you don’t like it, don’t play. It’s a non-subscription fee game after all. End of my rant, continue on with your day please

if no gem buyers, you wouldn’t keep getting these updates, if anything at all.

at the same time, it’s not like they did the EXACT same thing. ANet does listen and learn. sure not to EVERYTHING we have to say… they do have to pick and choose. i think it’s a decent system. you get a ticket and get to CHOOSE YOURSELF which weapon YOU want. of course, the drop rate of the ticket, who knows what that is. but beats getting a super hard to get skin and NOT be able to use it? at least you have some choice in your hands.

or.. that’s what ANet wants us to think. ; ))) i kid i kid. i am going to go home and tst my luck tonight.

DeWolfe.2174:

Lucky for me, I think the new items are sinfully ugly For a fantasy MMORPG, I have no idea where there get their taste from. For the most part the art is very cluttered, dark, dreary, and lacking the vibrancy of life.

I can imagine what the convo must have been like for this.
Dev: “Hey, we have a great idea. How would you like to add some new skins for Flame and Frost?”
Artist: “Sure, what did you have in mind?”
Dev: “You’ll love this… flames on grunge metal!!!”
Artist: <Facepalms>

The Living Story is about a Molten Alliance between the Flame Legion and the Dredge. What did you expect of the items? Flowers and butterflies? Of course they are dark and dreary.

Don’t like it? Don’t spend money (RL or IG) on it.

“Oh look a slot machine”

“I hope I win big”

puts a dollar in the machine, and pulls lever

loses his dollar

“Stupid slot machine, what a terrible idea having one of these is”

(What I got from reading the OP)

I agree with the OP. Except that I think most of this update is great, it’s just putting the skins in the Black Lion Chests that’s the problem.

I’m actually fine with RNG for rewards, I look forward to Canthan New Year in GW1 as a chance to open fortunes and get my mini. I’m also fine with paying real money for in-game items as long as it’s optional.

But I am never going to pay real money to gamble for in-game items. It’s just not worth it.

Unfortunately it seems Anet is determined to persuade us, every time I think they’ve changed it they revert right back to this system. All I can suggest is voting with your wallet – if you don’t like the system then don’t buy keys and chests and hope enough other people do the same to give them an incentive to change it.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Don’t like it? Don’t spend money (RL or IG) on it.

“Oh look a slot machine”

“I hope I win big”

puts a dollar in the machine, and pulls lever

loses his dollar

“Stupid slot machine, what a terrible idea having one of these is”

(What I got from reading the OP)

That last line is pretty much how I feel about slot machines. I’m not totally against gambling but I’d only ever do it because I enjoy the process (ie. playing poker), not because I want the reward because I know the chances are you’ll lose far more than you win.

Don’t you just love it when you go out to buy something at a store, and you need to play on a slot machine for a while to get a ticket so you can get the item you came to buy initially. Isn’t it fun? No, because stores don’t work like that.

I hate the whole “oh, it’s like gambling and you get to win your prize” response just as much as I hate the “that’s how they make money, if you don’t like it, then just leave”… So, ANet likes to make money by adding gambling into a game. WTH?

Here’s an idea, it’s crazy, but bare with me. Why not sell the items for gems? Sort of like they did during Wintersday… crazy I know. They’ll still make money, because people will actually pay directly for the things they want, or just let players buy a ticket at the BLTC and also reward a ticket at the end of F&F. That way you ‘re rewarded with a story themed item by playing the story, and those who’re interested in buying more items get to do so.

Sounds like a sound way to do business, rather than making suckers think they actually stand a chance.

I just hate RNG overall, but specialy in GW2, find some legit way to take our money and get rid of this nonsense.

DeWolfe.2174:

Lucky for me, I think the new items are sinfully ugly For a fantasy MMORPG, I have no idea where there get their taste from. For the most part the art is very cluttered, dark, dreary, and lacking the vibrancy of life.

They’re the weapons of the molten alliance. It’s the whole point of them. The whole CoF armor is like it. The sorrows embrace armor is like it, so then a mix between the two is exactly like that. Of course that doesnt mean the weapons look much better to you, but it IS in style with the two races.

I don’t see why Anet can’t use one of their MANY currencies in the game to acquire the Fused skins instead of continuing to rely on 0.1% drop rates. You know, the ones that require people to cooperate in groups or spend time playing the game to earn? Not that I have a problem putting money into the Gem Store to help support the game but when you’re opening hundreds of chests and hundreds of dollars are going towards buying keys and you still have the unfortunate ones that don’t get a skin, it’s very disappointing. Would a weapon skin in return be a crime?

I think selling the tokens/skins straight out would be a little too direct. On the plus side, people would probably buy quite a few of them to spread over their characters or have sets. On the down side, people would probably buy quite a few of them. They would probably get pretty old pretty fast if it was too easy to acquire. I’m just thinking of stuff like CoF armour which people tend to avoid like the plague because every second character you see is running around with it because of easy access. (Yup, I’m guilty, too.)

Perhaps we could just fix the drop rates a bit. By the time someone throws $100 or more into the game for keys, is the skin really worth it anymore? Okay, you get other stuff from the chests, too. The Mysterious Tonics and Instant Repair Canisters are flowing. Even that isn’t quite worth it, really. Why can’t I just throw a dozen unlocked chests at the NPC and we can call it a deal? Why can’t the chests have fragments tucked down in the bottom of them that Zommors could magically whip into a shiny, new token for a skin? Something to put a cap on the spending.

Sure, in the end, it’s our decision to take our chances on the chests but sometimes it feels like an apple’s being dangled out over a canyon and people just shake their heads when you fall in trying to reach it. “Silly person, could have just stopped leaning out so far!” MEDIC!

I agree, it’s Halloween all over again—a fun update that improves the game, feels like a party, and has lots of things available for people to do.

I’m not a fan of RNG-based skins in the chest, either, but that’s why I don’t buy the things. They’re an invitation to waste money, and the drop rates should be reasonable enough that if you’ve spent $10-20 on keys, you have a good chance of getting a skin. But overall, the update is very good.

Your spending RL Money on stuff? Crazy….. Convert Gold into Gems and get Keys. No real money out of your pocket. If you think the trade off on Gold to Gems is too low, then your still silly…. I work hard for my real life money, I just click to kill stuff for my Game Gold.

The “big” rewards will probably come at the end of the whole event (next month). At least thats what I’m thinking. Giving a large in the middle would be kind of strange, better to have the reward at the end to entice people to complete the whole chain. Mind you, the rewards for this part could have been a little better (a back item or something would work, with the “big reward” being weapons or armor hopefully)

As for the Fused weapons… I’d prefer they were available through in-game means like karma or something, but if they must be Gem Store exclusives I wish they were at least available to buy directly rather than just the gambling chests. Thought they finally got into that mindset with the Wintersday skins, but apparently not so much. But oh well.

Shelledfade.6435:

Gregorius.1024:

that being said, yeah BLC drops kinda sucks, but hey, microtransactions are necessary to pay for their time and efforts. At least they don’t jerk our chain around like other gaming companies

This is the equivalent to jerking a chain in my view…

I don’t want to be “lucky” in order to get rewarded for my time. If I put time in, I want my reward. I detest RNG, probably because I put around 800 rare lvl 80 greatswords into the forge and never got a precursor either, which fuels my rng hate.

You don’t hate RNG, you just like to complain about it. This is easily evidenced by the above statement. No one who actually hated RNG would so heavily utilize a system based on it.

RNG rewarding things exist because they are heavily utilized because people like taking chances, even if they don’t like to admit it. Things with guaranteed outcomes are what actually quickly become hated and are correlated as “work”.

Ah…sooooo you don’t believe in playing new content in order to enjoy said new content and watch the world grow?
To be fair, I hadn’t seen anything of new skins only available through RNG in the cash shop before looking at the forums. I rather like the rest of the update. Also, I never buy anything RNG based off the cash shop (except for a couple of dye sets for my first character).

Ah, on a side note: I actually don’t really mind Anet putting new cosmetics into the cash shop, as a rule. That what it’s there for, after all. I would prefer it if you could buy them directly though.

Yep… I’m going to be playing the new character key game to try for mine. I refuse to buy keys from the gem store. I missed the one shield skin in the game that I really REALLY like back at Halloween because of this RNG based calamity, and here we are again. I thought things were getting better with the “buy direct” option at Wintersday, but apparently not.

sigh

There are some important factors that need to be mentioned in these specific topics.

First, you must remember that gold can be used to obtain gems. This system is a wonderful benefit for us, however, it’s trouble for Anet. Which brings me to my next point: Anet needs to make money.

If all of the skins were direct sales and were not limited time offers, then Anet wouldn’t make anything worth the effort and then the game goes downhill from there.

So the real solution is to remove the ability to transfer gold for gems. Otherwise, you guys shouldn’t be complaining.

Blackmoon.6837:

If all of the skins were direct sales and were not limited time offers, then Anet wouldn’t make anything worth the effort and then the game goes downhill from there.

I don’t know about that. I for one would pay real money for a couple of the Fused skins if I could buy them outright. I did with the Wintersday skins, grabbed 3 of them total, 2 of which I bought using gems I purchased with real cash (and the 3rd was 50/50 cash bought gems and gold exchanged gems, I believe).

On the other hand, I won’t be spending a single cent on Black Lion keys to gamble on getting one. If I happen to get lucky with a key I get from the storyline or something then great, if not I’ll just suck it up and go without.

So at least in my case, they’d make more money if they just let you buy them. And I doubt I’m the only one.

Shelledfade.6435:

Halloween was ridiculous, only the most devoted of fans accepted it for what it was. The rest of us who enjoy playing the game for the game itself, well, it was an unnecessary money scamming scheme that was bad for the gameplay and it was obviously so.

Cannot disagree with you more. I feel that the only people who were kitten at Halloween were the most devoted of fans? I personally loved it. I am a reasonably casual player, but couldn’t care less about the skins. However, even if I did want the skins I was fine with the way the chests and RNG worked.

Spending loads of money to get the skins you want and complaining when the RNG does not fall in your favour seems like the act of a die-hard fan to me.

People also need to understand that games, especially mmos need to have a reward system in place that REWARDS players for their time, money and hard work. This is what keeps them playing for years on end. That is what kept me playing them as I was rewarded for my time invested. Because this game doesn’t have an “end game” like most other mmos in where you get better and better gear. It chooses to have skins as its main “end game”.

When you make so many things RNG, you remove the reward aspect out of investing your time and money into a game. What tends to happen is people eventually get tired of it and leave for a game that will. I am getting close to leaving too. I don’t want to, but time invested vs reward gained in gw2 is poorly lacking. I have no problems shelling out money to invest in a game but I also want something in return for that money, not a roll of the dice chance. If I wanted to gamble, I’d go to a casino.

Sure there are other mmos and they also have a subscription fee, but at least in those games you get to work towards anything you want and in time you will get it. GW2, you could work and work and because of RNG, you might very well not see any reward for that time, effort or money. People here have blown 100’s of dollars on this game just to get a new skin and still didn’t get anything for it. 100 dollars is about 6 months subscription to the other mmos out there.

When your “end game” revolves around the collection of skins, don’t turn that into a casino. Give us a way to slowly work towards the reward and give us store options to buy things as well. That is how you will build a long term playerbase. I’ve played GW2 about 6 months now and I am already looking for a new game because of this. The other mmo I played before gw2 gave me 7 long years of fun. Because I was rewarded for my time and money.

I really don’t want to leave gw2 but it just doesn’t reward you very well for your time or money. It’s very unfortunate because I really had high hopes this game would give me many years of fun and it just isn’t. I’m not saying this game wasn’t fun, it was just one that didn’t last as long. I actually wish gw2 WAS a subscription game. At least then we’d probably be rewarded more for our time and money..

ceno.1584:

People also need to understand that games, especially mmos need to have a reward system in place that REWARDS players for their time, money and hard work. This is what keeps them playing for years on end. That is what kept me playing them as I was rewarded for my time invested. Because this game doesn’t have an “end game” like most other mmos in where you get better and better gear. It chooses to have skins as its main “end game”.

When you make so many things RNG, you remove the reward aspect out of investing your time and money into a game. What tends to happen is people eventually get tired of it and leave for a game that will. I am getting close to leaving too. I don’t want to, but time invested vs reward gained in gw2 is poorly lacking. I have no problems shelling out money to invest in a game but I also want something in return for that money, not a roll of the dice chance. If I wanted to gamble, I’d go to a casino.

Sure there are other mmos and they also have a subscription fee, but at least in those games you get to work towards anything you want and in time you will get it. GW2, you could work and work and because of RNG, you might very well not see any reward for that time, effort or money. People here have blown 100’s of dollars on this game just to get a new skin and still didn’t get anything for it. 100 dollars is about 6 months subscription to the other mmos out there.

When your “end game” revolves around the collection of skins, don’t turn that into a casino. Give us a way to slowly work towards the reward and give us store options to buy things as well. That is how you will build a long term playerbase. I’ve played GW2 about 6 months now and I am already looking for a new game because of this. The other mmo I played before gw2 gave me 7 long years of fun. Because I was rewarded for my time and money.

I really don’t want to leave gw2 but it just doesn’t reward you very well for your time or money. It’s very unfortunate because I really had high hopes this game would give me many years of fun and it just isn’t. I’m not saying this game wasn’t fun, it was just one that didn’t last as long. I actually wish gw2 WAS a subscription game. At least then we’d probably be rewarded more for our time and money..

I don’t really get where this is coming from. The greatest skins in-game are the Legendary Weapons. Those are not luck based. Neither, were the Halloween exotics since the Arachnophobia, The Mad Moon and The Crossing were all crafter-able though the mystic forge. Indeed, the majority of the super cool looking weapons are mystic forge craftable like Foefire’s Essence, Anomaly to name a few.

Fractal skins are on RNG but they are RNG on game play (still can be very unlucky, I know I am) and the Winter’s Day skins were directly purchasable.

This brings us to the chest skins. Halloween had 8 skins were RNG on chests, Karka event had 4 weapon skins and 2 types of armour skin that came in 3 varieties (thus 6 total) and now the Fused weapons skin tokens are in the Black Lion chests. Compared to the number of skins available in-game, that’s actually a very, very, very small % that’s on RNG. In addition, so far, only the fused skins cannot be bought off TP. Are you seriously saying that Anet reserving less then 5% (and 5% is being generous) of the skins for RNG through gem store purchase chests is game breaking for you? Especially since you can spend time farming gold in-game that you can use to buy gems and thus gems be a direct result of the time and effort you put in the game? Come on! Let’s have some perspective here!

As I see it all people are really upset about is the RNG. And they nitpick every other aspect because they have to beat the odds. If you don’t like range and want to make it known to anet, don’t buy the keys. If profit falls because of RNG, they will put the skins in the gem store.

BTW I loved Halloween. Awesome jumping puzzle? Awesome skins. And lets not forget the mad king getup that is still seen today.

People are upset because its an obvious cash grab. Its little more than a dev saying to the support team. “How can we make people buy more black lion keys.” And one of them says, “lets put some more rare skins in them, people love rare skins. But lets also make sure its less thakitten% chance, ensuring that people have to constantly buy to even get a shot.”

I know this is true because I just took a little expendable income I had, bought 60 Keys. Which btw is 5,600 gems(75 dollars). And out of those 60 keys, I got an additional 20 keys. Making the grand total attempt’s to get a Fused weapon ticket, 80.

Out of those 80 tries, the only items of value i received were.
~ 1 Hairstyle kit
~3 Dye kits
~1 Charr backpack
~3 BL salv kits
and 1 Fusion ticket.

I know they don’t want people saying “don’t buy this” but if you want to gauge your risk vs reward in this type of rng system. Prepare to be disappointed.
1 out of 80 tries.

Venirto.4208:

Arena could just add them as purchaseable skins in gem store for eg. 300-700 gems, like they did winter weapons.

I wish this would happen =( I’d certainly shell out money for the skins if it were a guarantee