Guild Wars 2

The button to go to the Custom Exchange says “Would you like to select a custom quantity”, yet it is still high increments of 1 gold at a time. Where is the option to do actual custom quantity as the button implies? 1 gold is the lowest increment on the “Standard Exchange” and is also the lowest increment on the “Custom Exchange”. Clearly this is a bug, as the button said I could do a “custom quantity”

I have 5 gems left over from standard purchases. I used to be able to trade those level of gems off for whatever they were worth. Now I appear to be stuck with those gems permanently? How do I trade those gems to clear them out? There is nothing on the gemstore for 5 gems to purchase either.

Hey Blehh!

Due to the rework of the currency exchange system, you can not set a custom quantity below 1 Gold. The way to get around this is quite easy, and doesn’t cost you nearly anything.

There is a spot to the right in the custom exchange menu for you to buy gems with in-game currency. You have to buy the gems required to purchase that 1 Gold.

Ex: 1 Gold = 11 Gems at the moment. You have only 5 Gems. You will need to purchase 6 Gems, then use the 11 Gems you now have to purchase 1 Gold.

You get your money back and more!

I see this as being a little more… say, tedious? However, it works, so I can’t really complain to much.

Hope this helps!

And lose 30% in the process?

Blehh.5240:

And lose 30% in the process?

Pretty much sadly…

I’m pretty much in the same boat on this. Due to my own OCD personality, I now hold on certain currency trades because I prefer to handle gems in larger, yet squared blocks; basically, any multiples of 100 where the hundreds-place is divisible by 2 or 5. Under the old system, I’d buy something for 700 gems and then use 100 gems in a gem-to-coin transaction; whatever gold, silver, and copper the 100 gems got me, that’s what I took. If I were just 300 above the nearest 1000 gems, I’d maybe go ahead and spend 300 gems instead.

With the new currency system (even the custom exchange with its new no-silver, no-copper exchanges), this is no longer possible. Often times, you can’t enter a rounded amount of gold in the custom exchange without the system telling you that you’ll spend some unrounded number of gems. Rather, it will be some small number of gems off the mark either way; you likely won’t hit one of these hundred-rounded numbers without putting in many hundreds or perhaps over a thousand gems, which is not a viable option.

A previous poster mentioned exchanging one way and the other over and over until hitting the right mark (a likely joke; I can only hope so, anyway). This would be a terrible solution. Really, it would be a fool’s errand; completely moronic. This leaves me just one good option: sit on any gold unless I can get exactly the number of gems I want, or sit on all of my gems unless I can spend a nice round number that I’d want. I suppose ANet is making quirky people like me into very frugal spenders.

I guess this is where I include my own SUGGESTION: If the exchange system would allow the spender to enter one of either side of the equation, and the other number auto-fills on the form in response to the custom entry (while also allowing a rounded-to-copper coinage or round off to ten-thousandths gold), it would encourage players like me to use the exchange more often. This would still keep all aspects of the simplified “volume-buyer’s” UI intact and make those that want true exchange customization even happier. I just can’t believe that no one at ANet has even thought about such a solution! Unless of course, it would break a “Microsoft Points”-type money-holding scheme that you did not see me mention, and that we’ll just keep on the q.t. (my inner conspiracy theorist…I really am an odd duck).

Yeah, I too ran into a situation where I was trying to sell off 100 gems, but the kitten thing was stuck at 11 gems for 1 gold, so it wouldn’t trade evenly. Had to keep a watch until it allowed me to sell off all 100 at once. I just don’t want to be hanging on to like 5 gems which are utterly useless.

The custom exchange system in place really sucks though. I’m not even going to be diplomatic about it, it’s just a filthy, grubby, rotten way to scrounge up every nickle and dime off the greasy floor. I’m less inclined to buy things from the gem store these days because I know I’m going to have to go through this custom exchange hassle every time I want to sell any excess off as gold.

I could understand if they were worried about some buying-selling scam (for some reason the fractional cents scam from Office Space comes to mind), but since you have to sell the gems at 70% of cost, I don’t really see what the issue is. If I have 5 gems, just let me sell them, I don’t care if they total less than 1 gold in value. I already gave you the money, now let me do what I want with it.

I could show this to a 5 year old and they’d be able to accurately point out how it makes no sense.

We’re not able to buy or sell fractions of gems and I don’t see this as significantly different. Sure, I’d prefer a true “custom exchange” interface (with appropriate sliders, defaulting to 100 gems instead of 400, and not hidden behind a separate button). But when originally added, the current interface was added as a stopgap to deal with not being able to buy gems in increments other than 400.

Thus, I’m happy enough with the current UI until the next time they do a major overhaul.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Sure, I’d prefer a true “custom exchange” interface (with appropriate sliders, defaulting to 100 gems instead of 400, and not hidden behind a separate button). But when originally added, the current interface was added as a stopgap to deal with not being able to buy gems in increments other than 400.

The custom exchange is just fine for coin-to-gem conversion because there’s no smaller denominations of gems, but for gem-to-coin, it doesn’t currently work this well. You don’t select the number of gems you’d like to use; you select the amount of gold pieces to receive and gems are deducted based on current exchange rates. Depending on the number you enter (or the button you press in the simple UI), this could leave you with uneven numbers of gems left over. I suppose people could “get by” with this, but it can (and often does) leave small numbers of gems sitting on the account that the player cannot use until extra gems are purchased to make a round block of gems that can be used.

The custom UI used before the exchange changes, while not including wholesale purchases, did allow you to enter a specific number of gems to exchange (allowing you to use all your gems), rather than a gold-only coin entry that could leave gems on the table. The stop-gap measure that was put in was supposed to appeal to players that liked the old exchange but not the new wholesale system. While the gem-buying functionality was restored, the coin-buying side still falls short. If the custom coin purchase can have only one entry box at all, I guess another suggestion would be that a custom gem-to-coin entry should be the reverse: enter x gems, receive y coin. You could enter any number of gems (an indivisible unit) and receive coins of all denominations to make the exchange work, because gold is divisible everywhere right now except the exchange.

Now, I’m not just one to say something and not put something on the table. I did give a suggestion (now two different suggestions) that I believe can add something constructive to make a better experience all-around, only changing the custom purchase and leaving the volume purchase as is. It’s just another concern that some have and it doesn’t hurt to post it when properly presented. If a dev comes around, reads it, and responds one way or the other, even just giving technical limitations, so much the better; at least we’d know whether or not it’s something they can look into.