Guild Wars 2

AdaephonDelat.3890:

spoj.9672:

Thats a really lazy and ineffective method of teaching though. They need actual interactive tutorials. They would probably have to be class specific tutorials or use environmental weapons to demonstrate combos.

Not disagreeing but they have at least started putting the info in. When I started I had no idea what a combo field was until I found the wiki and looked it up.

How would you feel about a heart like the training heart in Queensdale where you learn to block (if you take the shield that is)? Just do ones for different mechanics or something.

They could have taken a much more helpful approach when they redesigned traits.

You go to the warrior trainer, and for your very first trait unlock he lays down a fire field and you need to blast it. For another put down the requested field and the NPC finishes. For some of the higher traits maybe you have to do a self-combo or achieve multiple stacks.

They could tie in all the explanation needed in the npc dialogue and with all the possible combos available you could have a LOT of trait unlocks that didn’t need stupid dead and bugged events to unlock.

At least this way the whole player base gets exposure to combos enough times that they remember a few, so hopefully will come out the other side less likely to just spam light fields when on guard.

The trainer would be an actual trainer then!

I’m not a fan of the story in the game, at all. I wish we got proper content, dungeons and end game areas instead. I could write pages on what is wrong with it, and why it’s killing the game I hoped for at launch.

But this? It’s 3 days. The character is dying of food poisoning due to bloodstone dust. I’d say it’s more appropriate for the context than it being over and done with in 15 seconds.

What’s more it’s not essential to anything. It’s a little bit of fluff that gives a very nice reward to lose some of those empyrial fragments every day.

1. Active combat. I could just as easily put this in 3x
2. Arah
3. No kittenty vertical progression.

My wish: Some new, challenging, dungeon content with decent rewards, which will need new NPCs in LA to exchange the tokens at. :p
It’d be SO nice to have some content that isn’t more story.

Orpheal.8263:

…
Removal
major versions of these runes

Spot on.

Just remove the worthless minor and SUPERIOR runes/sigils and keep the major ones.

At least I can drop those in the forge for a chance of a decent one – strength, scholar etc. Thats’ the reason only the major runes and sigils have a TP price of a couple of silver rather than just copper.

Also, give us a way to get sigil of generosity again.

After they did so well at Halloween, the loot for Wintersday is horrible.

Cyrill Faust.9340:

The point of this is to prove that even if you exclusively play one game mode you can get 3 dailies in about 15mins at most. Anet did a great job introducing some variety and rearward into the daily system. If you actually have difficulty of it takes you a significant amount of time to get 3 of them you kinda suck at…… well basic cognitive functions.

Whereas most days it took precisely no time, as I got them for free just doing what I was going to do anyway.

My cognition is just fine.

They turned it from a pleasant, zero effort, daily freebie into an annoyance, albeit a fairly minor one.

“Play how you want” is long dead by the looks of it.

I used to be able to always get my daily just by doing the things I enjoyed. The daily pretty much always “just happened”

Now it seems I need to run around doing things I wouldn’t normally want to. Specific times, places and classes.

No matter, I just won’t be getting much more AP. I never put too much effort into chasing it before, unless 20 or so off a 1,000 boundary. I guess now that effort will be nil.

So I’m not too bothered by the change, after all. It does seem like every change you make makes the game weaker though.

3,737 since head start.

Never seen a pre drop, or in the party. None out of forge either. Never seen a Giant Eye, fractal skin, or a Teq hoard either. Two ascended chests, both in the last two months. Horrible RNG for everything has spoilt many aspects of the game for me.

A guildie has 8 legendaries. All from drops.

Even if I had the gold 20 times over I would not buy one from TP. As far as I’m concerned they don’t exist.

New dungeons
New raids
Some tough new world bosses
Some balance in WvW

Such low standards!

Titus.4285:

Syzygy.5031:

The writing is a tiny bit better than first season, but it’s still simple and cliched. I skip everything I can in NPC interactions

Hmmm… :P

I have, at various times, tried to give the story a chance. It’s poor and disjointed. Characters come from nowhere and go with no significance or development. There’s no consequence to any of it. If it were a book, I’d not finish it. Especially now we’re forced to sit through those unskippable scripted parts multiple times to do achievements, it’s very difficult to completely avoid and form opinions. :p

Others do seem to like it, and that’s fine.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

This is a very general question but I’m genuinely curious. Here are some more specific questions that I would like answered if I am going to even give this game another shot:

1) Is Trahearne in it?
2) Does it have legitimately good writing?
3) Does it involve interesting game mechanics?
4) Does it have an enticing story driven by genuinely well written characters?
5) Are the rewards fun? CAVEAT: I don’t want to pay for rewards… I want a good story first and foremost.
6) Is there an actual expansion with game content in the works?
7) Is it worth the money?

1. Yes he is, sadly. Luckily only as a bit player.
2. The writing is a tiny bit better than first season, but it’s still simple and cliched. I skip everything I can in NPC interactions, but it’s not possible to skip cut scenes any more.
3. Surprisingly, in this latest episode, yes. You play Caithe, and get the skills of a ridiculously over powered thief. It’s been made a bit too easy with her skills, but it was fun.
4. [young cat] no. It’s the usual random unconnected rubbish.
5. Nope. There were some interesting reward mechanics introduced and a defend the forts group of events in the latest zone. If you want all the rewards you have to grind a ludicrous amount of tokens to get them. Trouble is the interesting new mechanics are simplistic and very repetitive. After a few hours you may be totally bored of doing the same few things over and over and over. Only another 4,000 tokens left to collect… Still lots of RNG in there. Nice ascended backpack you can make that can eat bloodstone dust daily, but that’s another lengthy grind (or spend gold).
6. As far as we can tell, no. No new dungeons or fractals planned either.
7. Depends. For me, no. 2 hours and you’ve done all the content and achievements of each chapter. If you want the rewards, perhaps. If you don’t find the new zones repetitive and boring, yes. Of course you can get most of the rewards and all the zone without unlocking the story chapters.

Mo Mo.1947:

Just log in tomorrow and the limit will probably be lifted.

Eight weeks after buying a second account I still regularly get the message trying to send a mail.

Taku.6352:

Get a personal guild bank and invite your alt account there. After the 48 hour restriction you can transfer any amount of money and items without any limits between your accounts.

Also not true. I still get the message trying to put money from my alt account into personal bank guild. The bank guild is six months to a year old.

I can get around it by drip feeding it into the guild bank 1g at a time. It’s really annoying, and I’m slowly accumulating gold on the second account that I want on main.

Sure I can understand wanting protections in place, but why not allow contacting support from the main account and lift these very arbitrary limits?

A hacker or thief could easily launder the gold and get around the restriction by buying a load of ectos or strength runes and dropping them in guild bank, so it really doesn’t make much sense. I, the honest customer who supported the game with cash, would rather not take the 15% hit…

It took 7 years for another MMO to give rewards just for logging in daily. That was the last cheap manipulative push I needed to uninstall after their 2 year f2p experiment that slowly sucked the fun and challenge out of the game. Slowly everything centred around the cash shop and casual horse collectors.

Dailies and monthlies were lovely as they were. I always got all monthlies, and most dailies apart from PvP. I could “play how I want”, and get dailies and monthlies incidentally.

“more challenging ones like … “Defeat the Shatterer.”

LOL! Since the ridiculous 15 minute world boss schedule, the one thing Shatterer isn’t is challenging. How can it be when it melts to the 120+ zerg? The most challenging aspect of world bosses now is being in zone at the correct spawn time.

Perhaps people aren’t logging in as much because there’s nothing challenging or fresh left to do?

My WvW guild is slowly dying due to the same repetitive unbalanced match ups every week.
Dungeon guilds barely exist any more outside the top speed clear folks. There’s no one in the middle any more between pugs and top end.
Living story is 2 hours and all achievements done every few weeks.

Truth be told, unless there’s some new dungeon, fractal or good repeatable open world content soon I’ll not be logging in much. A daily log in reward won’t change that in the slightest.

Your metrics will tell you I now spend 90% of my game time in Arah, that can only hold me for so long…

Not enough warriors maybe?

Why not suggest to your guild that they do a monthly JP event?

Once a month our guild does this, brings along a few mesmers, and for those who don’t like or can’t jump it consists of being silly on TS for 45 mins, standing where asked, and pressing F now and again. 45 mins later we go back to WvW or run a few dungeons, but everyone’s JP monthly is done.

Pretty much everyone has all the JP achievements now I think.

Mugiwara Zoro.9240:

Syzygy.5031:

Yes, sadly I do – bought in the sale
…

You mean she didn’t enjoy spamming skill 1 till level 13??? You spoil her too much :p

Well I could have gone all Victorian Dad with something like “you WILL grind to level 40, and you’ll enjoy it!” :p

It’s quite interesting watching someone new to the game.

It’s less interesting getting “Daaaad!” every 15 minutes.

The whole spam 1 thing didn’t impress her one bit.

The RNG didn’t help in giving her guardian three off hand drops she couldn’t use. She asks fair question of why do level 1 torches even exist if she can’t use them until 7 (or whatever it is).

RNG didn’t help again by placing a gathering node right after the exit from the Norn starter zone, so she went on a bit of a mission at level 6 or 7 to find gathering tools. This took a ridiculous length of time and gave us the second “this is stupid” of the evening!

She picked up on a whole set of things I’d never thought of, even though I’ve a pretty dim view of the new NPE.

Yes, sadly I do – bought in the sale

Bought account for daughter, ready for her next visit. She was completely new to GW2 and very put off by the NPE and especially traits. She’d played, and enjoyed WoW in the past.

I should probably write up her experience with NPE as we talked about it quite a bit – I was surprised just how unimpressed she was, even though she loved the graphics and active combat. I tried to sell it a little, but her being a teen, this was doomed to fail!

I’m just glad I didn’t preload some gems. I had thought of doing.

So apart from her trial it’s ended up doing a couple of hours, or less, of Maize farming, and it’s a bit of extra storage/alt space now.

Raise a ticket each time you don’t get the chest. Support have sent me a gold chest within 4 hours of the kill in the past.

I’d suggest including the server IP and kill time in your ticket.

/bug report it too.

If more players are ticketing this, a fix will move up the priority list.

meklin.4530:

Bellizare.5816:

You think your life is hard? You don’t even main a Ranger.
~Desolation~

And I’m using my ranger : )

Oi! kitten Rangers and that kitten Knockback destroying a perfect stack of fresh spawned mobs from the loot doors. And the troll KB against Vet doors knocking them halfway across the map.

9 times out of 10 the knockbacks are from the level ups in there.

No, I’m not a ranger :p

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I can literally feel the NPE change incoming: Removed everything that could possibly annoy the player. New features: Mobs wont move, attack or interact with the player in any way.

Seriously, I’ve never had any issues with this, even the labyrinth is manageable. The only CC-chain in this game can be found in WvW and is called “a hostile zerg”.

I’ve seen this happen in other games. At launch endgame zones quite challenging, patrolling champs, dungeons that need a 20min fight just to get to the entrance. Few years later and the mainly static mobs are so widely spaced you can walk from one side of map to other without pulling aggro if you’re a tiny bit careful with route. Meanwhile the mobs get toned down enough that nothing anywhere in the open world needs anything other than stand and 1 spam.

I guess it’s catering to casuals, but I’m casual and I hate this tendency. It’s why I’ve left previous games.

Someone further up was glad Cursed Shore had been toned down. To me it should have been left alone. It’s Cursed Shore, not Slightly Frowned Upon Shore. It should be a dangeous place rather than somewhere you can mostly wander anywhere whilst gathering and rarely have to care about mobs, let alone need to kill them.

That all said, I DO think the OP has a point that CC is overused as a mechanic. Some better AI, or enemies that dodge, or group up a little more intelligently would be nice to see. They tried a few of those ideas right back in beta. Always amuses me when you attack a risen and it calls out for reinforcements that never come… they should! Mix it up some.

A little surprised the selling gems isn’t simply “I want to sell 400 gems, you get 53G xxS”

I don’t sell either, so am very happy to finally have it sell me the number of gems I want, without trial and error to home in on a value.

Now, about the historic exchange rate graph… There’s a very convenient space under the new custom conversion dialogues.

Terrasque.8735:

I wish they would at least put in a temporary workaround and change the choices we got to more reasonable values.

Read reddit to discover that they could have put up a temporary fix in about 5 minutes.

Not a perfect fix for sure, but enough to cool 90% of the objections until proper fix was made.

In short the API is already fully dynamic and the conversion values could easily have been changed server side to allow conversion amounts of say 10, 100, 400 and 2000 gems.

TL;DR There is NO technical reason why this could not have been adjusted in moments.

Ironfist.2895:

I don’t mind the RNG as it is, however, I’m one of those people that am looking at 20 years at current rate to complete the Tequatl weapon set..

At current rate of progress, infinity years here. I’m likely to be first in guild to a full stack of spoons though.

So yes, I do mind.

djsarcher.9263:

Thats interesting, I’ve never actually been in a T6 map, think the best group I was part of once got T5, (I’m not part of a large guild and have limited, sporadic playtime available) so haven’t seen people event tagging myself.

Pavillion had a similar problem in that except for organised Gold runs (which again, I could never find my way into), everyone just opted for making sure to get kill credit for every boss rather than splitting up into groups.

Makes me wonder if a better reward structure for Dry top would be to gain a bigger bonus chest for each level of Zephyrite favour obtained (if you participated in the events) rather than per event?

The meta for those collecting Ambrite weapons seems to be to wait until sandstorm, then LFG or map hop to join a T5+ map, then tag all the things.

I’ve a couple of friends quite well on with these, and at xx:40 they’re off to DT, and if you go with them they’re basically unfollowable. By the time you realise they’re heading for some other event and start running, they’re already onto the one after that! So no, you probably won’t see them.

After sandstorm seems to be the time that the “rare” events/bosses spawn on T5+ maps, so they’re in the rotation.

Maybe a bonus, but I’d prefer some more skillful things in there, like Wurm and Teq, over endless trivial events and the tiering up of maps and vendors. Sand Giant doesn’t seem worth killing (same reward, more effort due to HP), so not so many bother.

How are tiered maps going to look in six months when most who want them have their skins? New players and late comers will have to grind geodes on mostly empty T1 and T2 maps? The zone needs a world boss or two and something a kittenallenging to hold interest.

Overall GW2 is too scheduled, and keeps getting ever more so. World Bosses every 15m, teq at xx, wurm at yy. DT at hh:40. Most employers and weather systems aren’t nearly that regimented!

Shouldn’t dragon invasions and sandstorms etc be a little more random?

I’m no game designer, so what do I know?…

Hey

I also wanted to come here and put up a Thank You!

I’m having a huge amount of fun completely failing to solo Lupi.
Learnt a lot so far!

One day I’ll get there… Maybe.

zallis.2138:

I have been seeing a lot of people complain about how Dry Top isn’t good content because it is just a mindless farm. But people aren’t seeing the depth to it. I spend a lot of time in dry top, and most of the time I am doing just a random map that is unorganized where I normally am getting a T4 sandstorm. And doing Dry Top as an unorganized group IS a mindless farm.

But, the depth of the content comes from trying to get t6. You can join an unorganized map and get t4, but if you want the maximum rewards and profit, you are meant to do Dry Top in an organized map that is trying to get T6. I just got done with a T6 run and I really got to see how the map was designed to be played. 1 team at each area of the map, all efficiently completing events simultaneously while communicating on teamspeak. It felt like I was in a raid.

That is how Dry Top was meant to be played, but players just don’t see that. If you are a new player going to Dry Top, you will just see the mindless zergs and not know anything beyond that. There is nothing telling you to join an organized group. And when people just think that the unorganized run is all there is to do, they start complaining about how Anet is making bad content, when that really just isn’t true.

I urge people to join a guild on an organized run and see if you don’t find it way more fun.

Meanwhile half the players are crazy running from event to event tagging 2 mobs at each to get maxiumum returns and the other half are zerging.

T6 maps are a little more organised about it, but that doesn’t make the components any more fun.

I honestly don’t understand why people like this when so many complained about things like pavilion and clockwork chaos. Personally I far preferred both of those.

Meanwhile I get half the frame rate on DT as anywhere else in the game, even when there isn’t a sandstorm.

I try and avoid the place as it’s such a boring farm with the bonus of horrible frame rates.

I’ve not kept up with this thread since my post, as honestly I can’t see them improving it whatever consensus is reached. Meanwhile I’ve gathered another dozen or so Tequatl spoons.

I’m pretty much accepting of this, and don’t play the game to get the precursor I wanted, or the Teq weapon skin I’d have liked. It does, however, affect my view of the whole game and what I say when asked what I think of GW2.

But I’ll just drop this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2kikrr/im_a_brand_new_player_and_i_guess_anet_really/

Brand new to game player gets two Tequatl weapons in two days, and she can’t even use either of them yet as she’s not yet got a character to level 80. Do I begrudge her this? Not in the least. She has had an amazing break and has either used up all her in-game luck in the first week, or is going to become one of those super-lucky outliers.

To me, though, it’s a perfect demonstration of what is wrong with pure RNG. Someone not yet able to use the items gets them twice, yet the countless people who have been doing the event regularly since it was released still get nothing.

This is as bad as other games which allow players to roll on loot they can’t use in raids, so a thief ends up with that perfect heavy armour piece the tank has been chasing for months.

People have quit because of the horrible approach to loot. Many more will do so.

Is that really working as intended?

Gaile Gray.6029:

I saw the test of the new interface today and it looks solid to me. (I also happen to think it’s very attractive, but maybe that’s just me. )

The interface and Custom option move into testing now, and the text is already headed to Localization.

The dev team is keenly aware that there are Halloween items available only during a specific period (through November 4) and therefore they intend to do their darnedest to offer the new options in the next few days but certainly in advance of November 4th if humanly possible. (I have confidence this will happen.)

This is just about best case in terms of announcing future items.

Work has actually been done and moved towards release, rather than merely being on someone’s to do list. It’s not just some soothing words to calm the restless natives.

It’s not that soon is vague, it’s that it’s become truly meaningless in online and MMO terms, frequently followed by “TM” to reflect the irony.

eg WvW Achievements were acknowledged to be ludicrous, and a fix coming “soon” around a year ago. Nothing happened, and it reinforced the worthlessness of soon. Better to have said nothing until someone was actually tasked with adjusting the numbers. As changes go it would have been one of the simplest ones.

So the problem is distinguishing the soon that means soon from the soon that means never :p

Gaile Gray.6029:

What I wonder about is this: What if someone says something is coming “in the next couple of days” or “within the next week” or “by the end of the month” and then testing reveals an issue that delays the implementation? Would you rather hear something rather specific, like “in the next couple of days,” even while you know that it could change for reasons outside our control? Or would you rather hear “soon” and not have as solid an expectation, but also take on board that the implementation is a top priority (as was mentioned in the thread about the Currency Exchange changes)?

I feel that either answer isn’t perfect, so I’d welcome your insights. You should know that I truly do understand that “soon” is frustratingly vague and I argue against.. I mean, “I gently speak in favor of alternatives…” whenever we can use something more meaningful. On the other hand, saying something more specific can result in flaming “You promised it by XX time!” comments, because even a casual possible release time could be adopted as an absolute date/time/time zone promise.

Thoughts?

I’d hope to hear some follow-up on cases where soon turned out to be never. Something changed, so if possible provide insight. Even something as simple as deciding resolving server hangs or lag to be more important than wvw achievements right now, so sorry this is on hold again…

Better is the more concrete example you gave above – work has been done, it’s moved to testing and localisation. That’s a “soon” that can be reasonably believed to mean something and should actually happen. So it’s meaningful.

ErazorZ.5209:

Seeing even 1 person with the same type of armor really gets me out of the mood for playing this game, it makes me feel like im one of the millions of ppl who spend all all there time for crappy updates, rehashes of content and literally killing of exclusivity.

Really?

There’s not millions of armour sets to go with millions of players. Chances are high that you’re going to see similar geared people.

Even the rarest things dropped in the thousands.

nomad.7210:

there is no logic behind your reasoning. get your facts straight.

the original way to obtain these skins was black lion chest grinding (which means key farming or spending money)

I’m well aware of that. And? This is one step further of the gamble-box idea, lengthening the odds. A lottery ticket is a dice roll pure and simple with nothing of certain value. For sure you can say the minis, dyes and boosts are just junk (I do), but at least there is some inherent value.
Key farming was insanely easy before patch. Still is mostly. I don’t know if it was a thing back in Halloween 2012, I didn’t know of it back then.

nomad.7210:

A-net stated that they dont want to go back to the season 1 meta achievements and that you shouldnt get any unique skins (or stuff like that) this way. They learned from their mistakes which is a good thing.

Is it? Not everyone thinks S2 is an improvement over S1 in terms of how rewards are given out. I far preferred the meta achievements to the RNG and Dry Top grind, even though for some things it probably took similar time. You get enough candy or whatever and trade for the gift of choice, rather than hope on another RNG drop. At least you knew how you were progressing with collecting cobs or zhaitaffys. You bring up Tequatl? He should drop hoard scraps with each kill.

S1 stories were thinner for sure, which was what I remember as most people’s issue with S1. Now we get to rerun the boring story twice more for some AP only and lots more RNG.

nomad.7210:

There is a way to earn them in game, go play the festival events and get yourself a ticket.

As already said, I have no issue if they were just free drops, or even just 1 chance for everyone who talks to the NPC. It’s the additional gambling only chances in the cash shop. Let’s drop precursors in there then.

nomad.7210:

“Why not give them for a fixed price in the gem store?”
How can you say the reasoning behind the tickets is money grabbing and then ask for the skins to be in the gemstore? This doesnt make any sense xD

It makes perfect sense.
In the gem store it is a straight value exchange – x gems or y gold. People can decide for themselves whether it’s good value. Works out to $$ each, they buy or not.
To put them in as a gamble, is quite plainly an attempt to get more gems per skin given out/sold than they feel they could in a straight sale, otherwise they wouldn’t have put the tickets in the gem store. And more than they think they’d get just dropping them back in BLCs. Money grabbing.
Gambling leads to poor decisions.
If it works and they get more gems in from it, we’ll see more.

nomad.7210:

I guess the idea of these skins was, that they are very hard to obtain and not everybody should walk around with them, thats why you didnt unlock the greatsaw skin just by login in

I didn’t suggest they drop like spoons. But just dropping from BLCs as they did originally isn’t very hard to obtain at all, is it? Just a few simple key runs. Hardly very hard to obtain. :p
The biggest difference is they never ended up at a BL weapon NPC.
Just making some less cynical suggestions for some of the most requested items in game.
Perhaps a route that requires some element of skill or at least persistence over just endless dice rolls.

nomad.7210:

And its not really gambling if you didnt invest something, and cmon the time you spend doing the event and having fun is hardly an investment.

But some WILL invest something. Some will invest unhealthy amounts. That’s one issue with gambling and lotteries, why it’s heavily regulated, and one reason why I feel it’s a bad idea for a video game.

nomad.7210:

I see Tequatl more of a gamble than these random shiny ticket drops.
Every time i do Tequatl i invest time and gold, for the possibility of an ascended weapon drop.
I do that now for a year and didnt get one weapon chest. NOT ONE!!

So by your logic above, tequatl hoards should be harmlessly available in a BLC or a gem lottery? “It’s not really gambling if you didn’t invest something”.
What about precursors? Weekly lottery for a pre in the gem store? 1 in however many buy chance to win random pre? Drop them in BLCs too?

If not, why are they different? They’re all just skins, after all, apart from a tiny number who might want Tequatl Hoard for a condi build.

This is starting to resemble a slot machine. At least those have regulated odds and payouts.

I have no issue with gambling though, I don’t think it has a place within a game outside of online gambling games.

There will be a ridiculous amount of foils dropping and entered. The odds will be tiny for both those who do and don’t invest. I doubt even investing $500 will move the odds noticeably in your favour, and there is the problem.

That was a change in the Sept feature pack. As far as I know it’s been a fake cripple ever since.

Suspect it’s no bug but another New Player Experience change to pander to their new low IQ target demographic.

Nick.6972:

Here’s wondering when they are going to add BUY GEMS button to both log in screen and character selection screen.

Shh, no giving ideas. LotRO had both. From the launcher it took you to the web gem store. :p

If it’s the scythe staff skin it’s somewhere about 1200g – that’s £85 of stupid money. I know the shield is quite a bit more.

That’s quite a bit to want to drop on mum’s credit card! Or for a moment of impulse.

Let’s be clear, they wouldn’t be in the gem store if they didn’t hope and expect people to pay for them. That’s the only bit I object to. Tickets from in-game drops only? Nice!

They’re pushing the envelope to see how far they can go with grabbing cash. It’s an area that needs more regulation. I’m sure that will eventually come as most countries have fairly comprehensive regulation of gambling and lotteries. They haven’t yet caught up with in-game real money gambling.

In game lottery for some things that have been requested back so many times, and putting tickets in the gem shop is a horrible idea. Doubly so in a game that allows minors to participate. At least online poker is the preserve of adults who should be able to know what they are getting into.

Why not give us back the original way of obtaining these?
Why not make a harder meta-achievement to earn one of these skins?
Why not give us a way to earn them in game?
Why not give them for a fixed price in the gem store?

More money. That’s why.

So much for GW2 wanting to be different.

Edit: I know full well these tickets can drop in-game. More chances in store are an attempt at getting more money from all those hoping to improve the chances of winning the lottery.

Lots of comments about the dev team. Mostly unflattering.

Guys, it’s management, not the dev team, responsible for this.

Chances are the dev team know full well it’s going to be unpopular, but not getting fired, and not arguing with the company line in public are going to win every time.

It’s a well known dark pattern after all: http://evilbydesign.info/greed/money-to-tokens/

As for not commenting in here, well why would they publicly admit they were told to code this, unless they had to? :p

The nearest we’re likely to see to the dev team’s vision of the game was at launch. Since then it’s more about payback, profit, improving next year’s numbers.

They broke categories. You have to search by name, or just “strong potion” etc.

Other categories are coming up empty – dyes for instance.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Tulki.1458:

Immediately before this patch: 10g = 70 gems.

Immediately after this patch: 10g = 57 gems (going off the 400 gem exchange rate).

They tampered with prices to make gems more expensive at exactly the same time as they removed the price history and made 400 gems the lowest increment you can buy in. Did anyone else see this? No other holiday event has had that big a fluctuation before.

Hey Tulki,

I wanted you to know I went immediately to see if I could get an answer on this, and don’t worry, there was no “stealth nerfing” of gem costs. What happened is a common occurrence with new builds: A whole lot of people made exchanges when the new build went live. And as you know the conversions are market driven.

So that’s why you saw the seeming discrepancy in the exchange rate. All is well, and it will continue to ebb and flow according to the volume of exchanges, as always.

To be blunt, I don’t believe this. If no market adjustment was made, you have a pretty serious bug.

Immediately prior to patch the price for 100 gems was 15.50g
Within minutes of the patch being available, the price for 100 gems was 18.54g

That’s a spike larger, and faster, than any in the history of the game.
There’s nothing much new in the gem store, certainly nothing like the anniversary offers, or the much talked about Lich outfit. The anniversary offers brought a huge amount of trade and a huge amount of people trying to raise more gold to make one more exchange, map chat was full of it for days.

Gem API has been broken since patch. Coincidence? Another bug?

Look at the full price history over at http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem
Obviously this shows nothing since patch due to API breaking.

Some of us would like the Scythe. 1200g last I looked. A few have sold today.

What I wouldn’t like is a lottery for a chance of a scythe.

Interesting. I’m not a lawyer.

On the face of it, that lottery is illegal in the UK.

Real money lotteries/raffles must be licensed. To have a give-away without lottery licensing there must be a skill aspect for all participants. Alternatively ALL people must be able to get a free entry – which is how raffles on packs of cereal etc are usually handled.

Many broadcasters have fallen foul of this with their premium phone-in lines. Mind i’ve no idea how, if at all, these things apply to online games!

X T D.6458:

Here’s my proposal

Change it so we can buy in increments of

x100
x50
x25

Problem solved.

Not for anyone who ever once converted gems to gold as they are not in round increments of 25. They are now forced to have a random, albeit fairly small, (depending on exchange rate) amount of gems left over they can never use.

Custom conversion of an entered amount is the only fair way.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

New players don’t have enough gold to convert at the lowest increment. How can this be for new players?

This answer doesn’t make sense…

Ah but it does.

New, mad-keen player wants some gem store thing. Maybe just one foil wrapped candy (another thing I hate to see in games). Has nowhere near 75g. Now has to ask mum to get her credit card out.

It’s a dark pattern, plain and simple, to “encourage” additional real money spending.

It’s well known that the first real money transaction is the hardest to get. See numerous offers in just about every smart phone game, for that first RMT.

lol If it’s “fine” just buy 400 gems.

Oh I see, it’s not fine, you want changes.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Errant Venture.9371:

Add an option buy gems in 100 gem increments instead of making 400 gems the smallest denomination possible. Problem solved.

THERE! Thank you, Errant Venture — that’s a solid suggestion with a reasonable tone. Thank you.

Simply:

Give us an option to exchange a custom amount, behind a “custom amount” button.

Give us a page to view the exchange rate history.

Celestina.2894:

I’m sorry, but I really can’t believe you guys anymore till we see proof. Your charts, your metrics, whatever.

There’s a thing about metrics. They show you what you measure. Which doesn’t go to show they measure the correct things. They can never measure WHY.

As a for instance, see the Amazon and eBay habit of suggesting you buy another microwave, because you just added a microwave to basket.

ANet may have metrics a-plenty, but I am increasingly convinced they don’t have GOOD metrics.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

1. I almost never exchanged more than 400gems. Most often it was small amounts, frequently around 100.
2. I relied on the price history, and would typically time it so I exchanged on a dip.
3. I very simply want the old system back: Both a custom amount exchange, even just 1 gem if I want to be so silly, and the exchange history graph.

You can, by all means, keep the new interface, but add a “custom” button, and perhaps either a tab or button to show history, just like before.

Sailsd.9245:

Syzygy.5031:

In fact, as a point of principle, I’m not even exchanging gold-gems until this is reverted ANet.

That won’t bother them. Not buying any gems with rl-mony will, however.

No indeed, but I’m not buying either. But I wasn’t a big buyer, so I still doubt they’ll care.

I just really object to dark patterns.

In fact, as a point of principle, I’m not even exchanging gold-gems until this is reverted ANet.

And what of people who used to drop spare gold into gems and don’t have a nice round amount of gems? I currently have 5, so not a big deal, but I used to often have 75 or some other random amount, and would make up as and when, usually when something I wanted to buy came up.

So the “milk the dead cow” phase began already. This is NO quality of life improvement. It’s objectively worse.

Stop money-grabbing and revert.

Rauderi.8706:

I’m seeing concerns with a token system, specifically related to farming:

How much is too much, or too little? Basically, how much time or how many runs should a person be expected to go through before the system pays out?

More importantly, what happens after the player gets what s/he wants? The tokens would become meaningless, unless there were secondary rewards that could also be purchased. Just about every item we receive should have multiple uses, especially if it isn’t tradeable.

tl;dr – Token rewards would have to include a secondary reward for those who already achieved their focused goals, especially if they are not available for sale.

Why would they have to include secondary reward?

We’re trying to correct a problem of outliers, which will exist in any random distribution, not introduce an additional loot system. We have far too many of those already.

There could be hundreds of people that random has “blessed” with outlier results, and so hundreds of people likely to be that bit closer to leaving than the average, because they really do get less. Much less for a tiny few.

We don’t actually know it’s truly random either, or that the pseudo RNG is bug free, so the distribution might be far from ideal.

What happens to the lucky folks who have had 2 Tequatl Hoards or two minis now? They salvage, sell or vendor depending on binding. I guess some stopped going to Tequatl now they have all they want. Give the tickets 1s or 1c vendor value and people who have all they want can either vendor them or save for a mini, skin or exotic and make a few gold, just like some already do with multiple drops.

The Sunless weapons are already worthless for many as they run zerk, so unless they want the visual it’s just very expensive vendor trash.

Personally I’d prefer if the RNG was weighted to break “unlucky” streaks so you eventually get something shiny over a selection of tickets/tokens/scraps/dragon scales to take up bank space we don’t have! That way the system quietly “fixes” any inherent accidental unfairness. I’m not seeking more loot overall – that’s a different conversation.

Lich Outfit Wings.

Sell it separately if you must, but I’d stil buy.

Current outfits redone as armour skins. I haven’t bought most as I can’t mix and match.

I’d have bought the pirate outfit if I could just use the hat. I’d prefer you fixed the headgear makes you bald of course.