Guild Wars 2

I didn’t have the extra amount on my last gem purchase. It was an exact quote.

Not that I’ve seen. Saw it last night before I jumped off to check and see the new deals like I normally do and happened to see the bank and bag slots went on sale. Considering some of the bland sale choices (especially the last day, that was horrid) I am fairly positive this was from player feedback. Someone did some talking somewhere is my guess based on the timing, but to be fair – there’s always something on sale at the Black Lion Trader.

I know this was definitely because of player feedback. I was really sad I didn’t see it during the sale, and I’m stocking up on gems now to take advantage of it. Definitely appreciate the decision on your part, Arena.

Yeah that’s kind of what I was afraid of. Meh. I was wanting to buy her the new Harvesting Axe, specifically.

Is this always immediate, or can I hold onto the item in my bank until I’m ready to send it to someone else? I ask this because my sister’s birthday is coming up in a month and I think a few gem store items would be a nice touch to her real present.

Gah the bag sale needs to hurry up already… Same with some of the skins I want!

tolunart.2095:

Alfador.7649:

tolunart.2095:

When I buy $25 worth of lottery tickets, I should be guaranteed to win at least $25 from them. Anything less just isn’t fair.

I can’t tell if this is sarcastic or just naive. Since there are people who actually believe that, I’ll treat it like it’s legit for the sake of argument.

Sarcasm. I don’t buy lottery tickets or random stuff box keys. You can get keys for free in game by “farming” the Personal Story. Create a human character, choose the middle class origin, and you can run through the first part of the PS and get a key in about half an hour or less. I got several tickets, three more tickets’ worth of scraps, and various other valuable items just by doing this when I had some time to kill.

You don’t need to spend money on this game, it’s great if you can afford to, but not required. They are going to keep introducing things that will make money as long as they keep selling, regardless of individual complaints on the forums.

You’re right, but that’s a form of exploiting technically and that is not how they designed people to obtain the keys. I expect to further their sales that eventually that form of farming will be demolished to prevent Lions Arch keys from being free.. Most likely by incorporating it later into the story if I had to take a guess. That certainly wasn’t there as an optional path to getting keys. Not saying people are wrong for doing it because I fully understand why they are, but I am saying that Arena definitely did not see people farming keys as an issue until that method popped up.

Penguin, as far as value is concerned – they really shouldn’t have made the skins tradable if everything else in the LA boxes aren’t collectively…Particularly when the rest of the skins in the store or any other vendor cannot be exchanged in the same way. If they were account bound like many of the things in this game, “value and prestige” would be a nonissue since nothing is exchanging hands with other players. Those skins are only worth something because Arena has ALLOWED them to be worth something as a means of getting people to buy and use gems on the TP and gemstore. In a way it’s smart, but in another it’s completely pigeon-holing your customers by withholding content from them at a steep price just to get a taste for it. Short term money makers are very poor business practices with serious potential ramifications for the upfront gains seen.

I would also like to see this as I have only started playing again since release for the past month.

Behellagh.1468:

You are all forgetting that the BLC use to never give tickets. It was, and my eyes, will always be a Whitman Sampler of Gem Store items. Now most of those items I would never buy in the first place. What the chests use to have was a fairly good chance of dropping another key. But I’m an RPG hoarder. I hoard consumables not wanting to start relying on them only to run out at some point. I still have kite fortunes.

But then ANet slapped a “chance to enter for a new car” on their sampler box and everyone conveniently forgets that the purpose of the BLC is to expose players to Gem Store Items in hopes there’s some consumable that they would be willing to pay for ..

This is also what I was getting at but you explained it more clearly than me. I agree here.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

DeltaElite.5832:

TLDR: People should WANT to keep and open up their chests. You all at ArenaNet have failed to do this effectively. Look at the trader and you’ll see clear evidence of that along with people readily destroying these chests as soon as they get them. For such a potential money maker and the fact you push them so hard, this makes ZERO sense. No, nobody forced anyone to buy the chests, but it’s pushed hard and I am not okay with this when it’s currently setting people up for disappointment in a game for entertainment value. Using probability tactics to pull people’s money is a low move.

It only makes zero sense to people who don’t understand how the business works. These items locked behind the chests are completely optional. If you want them, you need to invest Gold or real money into getting keys to open them. And because some of these skins take so many tickets to get, that makes them much more rare and valuable. People who can afford to buy Gems will do so to get keys, and that helps the game with microtransaction revenue. Case in point, I bought three “25 stacks” of BL Keys a few months ago, and I’ve never converted Gold to Gems.

The main mistake you’re making with your complaint is that you don’t know the difference between what you want, and what you need. You want the items that are locked behind the chests, therefore you complain that you can’t get them. This is working as intended. If the items weren’t desirable, you wouldn’t want them. See how it works? Going further, since you don’t need these items to play the game, Anet is not forcing anyone to invest in BL Key purchases. Simply toss the locked chests if you get one as a drop.

None of the items in the gem store are needs. I covered that in my original post. Your average person is not going to buy 25 stacks of keys. I am not worried I can’t get them without the chests. I am complaining because you need to spend an asinine amount of money just to get those tickets for a skin… Something which offers a large amount of exclusive content. Do I feel I deserve a skin from every chest? Absolutely not, but I do feel I am not going to blow a car payment’s worth of money on keys just to land a skin or something else of equivalent value because that’s not logical with my money. “People who can afford” is NOT a good business tactic for a game based on targeting all ages with all these chests popping up repeatedly. It is a much more viable business tactic to sell high volume at cheaper prices than vice versa.

My point: if you’re going to go through the rounds of making people gamble for tickets, don’t punch them in the gut by offering pieces of things with such a ridiculous drop rate. What’s next? Booster fragments to combine to make one 3-hour booster?

Alright so I gave things some serious thought as to why I HAVEN’T purchased any keys yet. That’s right, what makes me so hesitant to buy them when I have quite a few chests sitting like everyone else does? I have spent real money in the gem store before, so what gives? Well, heres’s my beef:

1. The contents are correct in that they don’t give a nasty overbearing advantage (I support not doing P2W) but most commonly dropped items in them are completely undermined for what you paid for. I paid real money to get an item with gambling elements, not to gamble and hope my money didn’t get sucked down into something else like a crafting booster which I can’t sell, trade, and never ever use. I can turn my gems into gold, so why not all the items I get from the chest? Doesn’t make much sense there. At least if I got several boosters I didn’t need, I could trade for others I do need and I wouldn’t be so disgruntled in this regard. The point is: I paid for random and I can’t even offset my “losses” if they are something I don’t like.

2. An average of 5 tickets for one skin with a horrid drop rate on tickets… And the ticket scraps are a massive punch below the belt. Why Arena.net has resorted to that kind of pitch makes me NOT want to buy gems at all (or anything else) because of how you’re potentially stringing along your customers for the small carrot at the end of a very long tunnel.. The actual scraps are probably what irk me the most because it’s blatantly attempting to reel you in with a “false hope” item. If we did the real math on how much money is required for a skin at 5 tickets, it would vastly outweigh the cost of any of the skins priced in the store (which are also not cheap, mind you). Yes we could convert gems to gold to get the skins, but that is not the argument we are addressing here as SOMEONE is still doing the legwork to make said skins available on the market.

3. Price. This is a game that has entertainment value as it’s core focus. I could understand fully if the drop rates were consistent with much cheaper keys as a means of equalizing “fairness” with what you’re getting but that’s not the case now.

My potential suggestions for fixing the situation:

- keep the current price for keys while offering 4-5 items instead of 3 and giving us somewhat better odds of decent items. Not expecting to strike it rich, but the current loot tables are just bad any way you look at it. Maybe give us an option on all item drops to “roll” for what I want based on categories available to me. This would require some careful thought to prevent market saturation.
- make them significantly cheaper by a large margin while keeping current drop levels and amounts.
- offer us a chance to PICK what we want based upon what kind of drop the item should be (like if it’s a ticket we should be able to pick from a list of items in similar drop rate category). This would be mixing gambling and picking and I would feel very comfortable spending money on something like this because I still have some flexibility on what I am getting.

TLDR: People should WANT to keep and open up their chests. You all at ArenaNet have failed to do this effectively. Look at the trader and you’ll see clear evidence of that along with people readily destroying these chests as soon as they get them. For such a potential money maker and the fact you push them so hard, this makes ZERO sense. No, nobody forced anyone to buy the chests, but it’s pushed hard and I am not okay with this when it’s currently setting people up for disappointment in a game for entertainment value. Using probability tactics to pull people’s money is a low move.

dulfy.1493:

StinVec.3621:

Any word on if there is an undocumented bonus aspect to this sickle like the pick gave sprockets? Just like the pick, the description in the store makes no mention of a bonus. You had to buy the pick to then find out via its item description that it had the extra “feature” on it.

No undocumented bonus as far as I can see

I’m not seeing anything either. I’ve tried quite a few different plants and it’s all the same animation with no additional benefits. I didn’t have a permatool before this one (and the two mining picks since I just came back to the game since it’s release). It’s an interesting animation, but for some reason it throws me off… maybe it’s because it sort of happens nearly AFTER you obtain the plants you’re harvesting? That and I have always wanted to falcon-punch any golems I see.