Guild Wars 2

Arenanet, I love you, but please allow us to earn these weapon skins in-game without having to:
A: Resort to black lion key farming by doing the personal story again, and again, and again…
B: Spending a large amount of real-world money just for a chance at getting the skin we want. or…
C: Farming hundreds and hundreds of gold to buy the skins off the trading post

To be frank, I hate the black lion chests. They are a horrible system of rewarding your players (in my opinion). Using gems, gold or actual money just for a chance to get a weapon skin is absurd and not what I think anyone wants to do with their money. I know you rely on the sales of black lion keys to fund the game, but why not get rid of the gambling factor, and allow us to buy the skins straight from the gemstore?

Have a new tab for weapon skins, select the theme then choose the skin I don’t care if it costs 500 gems or 1000 gems, the mere idea that we aren’t gambling with our money, time and effort will see that you get much more profit from this.

We understand that you need to make money, and I’m pretty sure that the majority of people playing this game agree that you deserve it, but please allow us to give it to you in an honest, upfront manner. If I like an item on a menu, or a game in a store, or a car in a dealership, I will pay money for it, but I will not pay money for a mere chance to get it.

The logic is simple, and I don’t doubt Anet’s intelligence, this is no troll post at all. I merely ask for some feedback on why this system is so dominant in the game, that gambling must be used to provide the most awesome rewards, instead of upfront cash payments for what we want?

To the rest of ArenaNet’s staff (Who I don’t know so well), this game is fantastic. The Living World got off to a rough start, but you have learned and applied many lessons to the future instalments and it is starting to look much better and more polished as time goes on. The game does have glitches, zerker armour is annoyingly viable, dungeons and world bosses are too easy, many classes and races need some love and attention and the story needs a bit more progression.
HOWEVER it’s only your first year, and a hugely controversial and experimental one at that. The amount of attention you guys have been paying to players wishes and needs is monumental, and the balancing act you are trying to achieve satisfying all different player types is a largely underrated undertaking. I trust the dev team with this incredible game’s potential, and I know that a year or two from now most or all of these issues will be history. The living world initiative is a tough one, and there will be many vocal and unsatisfied forumers raging about the games “Inevitable end”. Take it with a pinch of salt, and know that there are thousands more players who actually like and enjoy the game’s direction.
This MMO is unique in so many ways, everything you guys are doing is new and different. Things will be difficult to balance, but you are working on it. Things will be hard to implement, but you are trying anyways. Players are hard to please, but you will succeed.
I might be the only one who has this opinion, and this post might get completely ignored just because of it’s length, but I at the very least hope that you guys see that this one player enjoys and appreciates all the hard work you guys are putting into this game I look forward to what this game will become, and look forward to this year to come

tl;dr: Thank you ArenaNet, thank you.

I came back to GW2 and I realised I was away from home. The world was beautiful, the gamers were actually FRIENDLY (Bar the forums of course), the combat satisfying, and so much was added since I had left. Achievement points were awesome now! People were running around with jetpacks and axes on fire, tentacles writhing from their backs, shatterer wings flapping at the Mystic Forge, I was jealous of all the time I spent away from my favourite game, I felt like I betrayed it :P So I’m back for good now and all I hear on the forums is people complaining and insulting and threatening to leave the game. You find that in every MMO forum. HOWEVER, when SAB came around I got a little annoyed with how people reacted.
Josh Foreman was trying to control the flak he was barraged with about the game being too difficult, how he’s a heartless money-grabber and whatnot. I played SAB w1 and w2 the other day for the first time, and I have to admit, it was challenging, it was difficult, but not NEARLY to the extent that everyone was exaggerating it to. W1 was easier than w2, sure. But not by as huge a margin as the forums seemed to depict.
Josh, you poured your heart and soul into working on SAB, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I loved all the references to my favourite old school games, I loved the humour of the shopkeepers, I even laughed in Tribulation Mode sometimes (Possibly out of manic insanity at that point). I do believe that you were horrendously treated by the overall forum community, and for that I am sorry.
On behalf of all those who were busy playing and enjoying your creation in-game instead of shouting their displeasure and non-constructive criticism at you, I applaud you and your passion towards this game. I appreciate all the hours you put into the game and every jumping puzzle I do I compare to SAB and Clocktower. As a jumping puzzle addict I LOVED all the little additions in SAB, the water geysers, the logs, crocs and rapids I repeatedly died in, the flower boosters, even the bosses. For those who don’t enjoy jumping puzzles, the infantile mode was very much enjoyable (My fiancé thanks you dearly for that), and for those who needed more of a challenge Tribulation Mode was something that got them to concentrate for once
I believe that you thought of every type of player when you were working those late hours on this, and I truly believe you were crushed hearing all that negative feedback on the forums. I’d just like to let you know that those are not the ONLY opinions on SAB and that many many many people enjoyed the hell out of this living story release. Thank you for enriching this game with your passion and dedication Josh, don’t let all of this nonsense stop you or your passion from doing great things in this game or in real life

I started playing Guild Wars 2 back when the game first launched, when achievement points were worthless and 100 gems were worth 50 silver. I played through the first few patches, I grinded my face against the mad kings clocktower until I could do all the jumps with ease and no tears, I entered a few guilds, I had a few laughs, I had so so much fun with this new, beautiful and bright game
Southsun cove came along. The area was massive and beautiful, full of little nooks and crannies to explore and be amazed by, new jumping puzzles that would infuriate me to no end, incredibly monstrous enemies, veterans that I couldn’t solo! Southsun Cove was a hint at where this game could go in the future. Then the karka event happened, I wasted 6 hours through lag, disconnect, disconnect, lag, crash, overflow, overflow and yet another disconnect WHILE in an overflow followed by a crash. I complained on the forums expecting to never get any compensation at all.
BUT THEY LISTENED. I got a Karka chest in the mail and got an exotic backpiece, they said they would remember their mistakes from that event and believe it or not they DID address those sort of issues about one time events Afterwards I was still slightly annoyed by the whole thing and got more immersed in real life, other games, etc. Then I tried playing SWTOR. The game that said FREE FREE FREE but ingame told you otherwise. You weren’t allowed to trade, you had to compete for loot with your friends, hell you couldn’t even create your first character without seeing how many races are locked to you =/ I kept remembering how GW2 didn’t extort money out of you or wave a red flag cause you don’t subscribe, how they said they would like to do a living world initiative, free huge patches every month, something MMO players usually dream about.