Guild Wars 2

I was hoping they would be more reasonable this year and they are! Thanks for the change.

Yes. I will give plenty of kudos to ANet for listening to feedback about rewards this time around. The sinks are not only smaller and easier to access, but they also crucially put the loot drops back into the Labyrinth. ToT bags drop like rain, from what I hear, and the massive supply means that over the course of the two weeks, it should be easy for anyone actively playing to get what they want, either through direct farming or just buying it off the TP. And the large supply means that people who miss Halloween should still be able to buy the items throughout the year, just at a slightly more expensive price.

Got both this year already. The chattering skulls and plastic fangs are dead cheap and altogether cost me about 6 -7 gold.

Thanks ANet.

(I told my guild about it too).

They’ve admitted that last year the candy corn requirements were seriously out of whack.

It was ridiculous last year – there was never any need for such a high cost for a fun item and there was a lot of feedback about it which they have listened to for this year. This is a very welcome change to the rewards systemr, especially as it’s a short festival and meant to be a bit of fun.

I’d rather the stuff be too easy to get than too difficult. One of the major complaints about last year was how darned expensive everything was, considering its supposed to be a fun holiday event and not a grindfest.

I guess they could have added new stuff as the “cheaper” rewards and left the old stuff expensive, but… oh well.

They are not skill rewards, but grind rewards, and account bound ones, and so they can’t be devaluated.

They just reduced the grind to get them. Not their value. Their value is the same. They say: “I grinded for this”.

By making their costs more reasonable, they are making them more available to those with less time to grind. Nothing else.

I think exclusivity, unless it is tied to a skill test, is pointless. It’s a video game, played by hundreds of thousands of players. Trying to be a special snowflake is meaningless.

For the record, I’ve been here since the first beta weekend, and have my share of items that are no longer available in game, so this isn’t just sour grapes.

But, what about bragging rights, proving I was there, etc?

Why does anyone need to “prove they were there”. Do you think newcomers really care that you played the game a year before they did? Aren’t your memories of enjoying it at the time enough? You really need some sort of shiny to make the experience meaningful? This “need to prove I was there” is akin to the bizarre urge to constantly photograph things rather than experience them when sight seeing, or the need to keep up with the neighbors in price of car and the vibrant green of your lawn.

But, won’t everyone look the same if everyone can get all the armor and weapon skins?

Only the people who jump on the most recent items. Sure, for the month after a new skin is released, every other character in Tyria is wearing that piece, but when the next thing comes out, they’ll move on. Remember when everyone had a SAB weapon? Or holographic wings? You still see them around now, but sprinkled here and there on players who decided they fit the look they wanted.

The real secret to everyone not looking alike is having enough variety of quality skins in game. The more options, the more player’s individual taste will cause there to be a variety in looks. Especially if ANet gives us mix-and-match armor pieces instead of must-be-used-as-set costumes.

But it should be at least as difficult to get the item when it comes available later, right?

Not necessarily. As I said above, the newest thing is usually the most desirable. You have to work harder if you want to be an early adopter, like in real life. When it gets released later, it makes perfect sense for it to be more accessible to those who didn’t get it the first time, and the early adopters can chase whatever has been just released. This is common in many areas of life.

Other than GW2, I’ve never paid more than $7 for a video game, because I’m content to wait two to three years and pick it up on a Steam mid-week madness sale. I’m playing the same game (actually, sometimes an improved game due to patches/mods) you spent $50 on back when it was released. Does that upset you?

I’ll reiterate, exclusivity does make sense if you are talking about a particularly challenging skill test to get the reward. I’m not an elite player by any means. I’d likely never have rewards locked behind knowing an encounter inside out and split-second dodging skills. Still, I see the value in providing exclusive rewards for people who really excel at the game.

Exclusivity because you’re willing to grind out thousands of a particular crafting mat or just because you were playing during the two weeks the item was available? We don’t need that. It takes time for ArenaNet to develop every item they add to the game. We need maximum access to those items so that the content is as full as it can be for any player. Sure, rotate it out to keep it fresh (my wife does the same with my kids toys), but nothing should be kept out of the game permanently so that a small section of the player base can feel special.

While Anet has stated that they don’t necessarily want everyone to have everything (was in one of the various twitch streams…think it was back around SAB2), I can understand them not making holidays exclusive. In GW1 the only thing exclusive about the holidays was the unique hat they gave each year. Everything else was pretty much accessible each year. Even then, there was a relatively big fuss by some about not being able to get the previous years hats, so this could also have led to part of the reasoning in changing some of the holiday exclusivity.

Above and beyond all of that, this is China’s first Halloween (and Anet has stated that they want to keep patches synced), and it wouldn’t be fair to them to not have any access to any of this what so ever. It’s not their fault they didn’t have the game at that time.

Personally, I’m neither feeling let down nor ripped off. I sort of expected it to be honest.

Its a good idea n theory, and very easy to do with sub-based games. But what is to stop someone just logging in for a moment to reactivate their forum account? Doing that perhaps invalidates the claim they have given up on the game, but not to much of an extent if they claim to only log in to post. For the most part, those who claim to have quit and still hang around are usually there to just stick the boot in (whether they have actually quit or not). Those who truly quit for the most part give up until the point they think about getting back into the game. Its those people, however small in number that would get the thin end of the wedge with this.

If that can be worked around as well as some way to determine what constitutes inactivity (period of absence etc), it would be a nice idea. Not sure how workable it is, but a nice idea.

I can hear the protests already: “my time! my money! my investment!”

That’s all beside the point. If you gave up playing, and especially if you uninstalled the game, you made the conscious decision to walk away from what you had invested in the game. I don’t see why your opinion, in that case, should hold equal or greater force than those people who actually are playing. Moreover, when you complain about something in GW and then immediately go on to say how much better some other game is, I smell troll.

I don’t know how feasible the OP’s idea is, but I like it.

After all the critique which quite often involves people that have outright claimed that they haven’t played for months or even have the game installed I was thinking about the question in the title.

Would it be possible to only allow active accounts (such as having been logged on the last x days/week) to write on the forums? Everyone would still be able to read of course, but I have a feeling it might create a better environment for everyone here if you actually had to actively play the game in order to join in on the discussions.

As seen with the NPE change there were massive amounts of hatred posted, quite much of it from people that didn’t even try it before (either due to not wanting to start over or due to not actually playing anymore).

Any thoughts about this?

(Oh I know people will hate this thread, if only on principle because I created it, but thought it was worth a shot to see what people thought about it.)

not doing the clock tower is the reward i’ve decided to give myself each halloween

The problem is that the JP doesn’t only take skill into consideration. People with bad internet or stuff like that will basically be mechanically unable to do it, seeing as you need very exact timing and a single lag means you will fail it more or less.

This raffle system Anet is doing is just crap….no other way to put it…one ticket or a thousand tickets…as many people already said its luck…skins like these should just be on BTC

This is just another example of cash-grab.
That being said there is NO way for a hardcore player that is able to sit at home for the entire 2 weeks let a lone for a casual player to obtain any of these skins.

When systems like this raffle appear only a very few very dedicated groups will be able to have a chance at getting one of those 1000 skins.
There are shared accounts being played atm that have absolutely NO downtime. Shift-work, one player leaves the next logs in and keeps farming.

Now add in the fact that you can also get those shiny wrappers from real money purchases (in a non-f2p MMO I might add) and there is no way to ever get one of those skins.
Except maybe if you pay 1000$ of dollars. And there are players that dedicated, always.

That being said, if you are an average player and interested in making a profit out of this event then there are other methods, dont fall for this obvious money sink trap.
If you are interested in one of those skins the best bet is to just save your gold and buy it some time later this year off the TP.
Currently its possible to make around 20gold per hour. A lot more if you consider all possible ways of gaining profit out of this years event.

Edit:
Of course there is a slight chance to win if you only submit 1 ticket. But lets be honest, its like playing the lottery. No “realistic” chance.

I was just wanting to post that because there are certainly some casual players buying TnT bags for 100’s of gold now. Going complete broke with no realistic chance because whatever the quanitity of tickets they will get its not going to be enough.

Paradox.1380:

skullmount.1758:

Paradox.1380:

Malediktus.9250:

SirJack.4760:

But they are back.
http://i.imgur.com/KanshP2.jpg

Buy Candy Wrapped from the TP, receive a chance to win one randomly. Yay?

Worst way to do this ever. Anet must be out of their mind

Just wanna throw this out there, you can get the Silver Wrappers from Trick or Treat bags. I have 250 ToTs from farming Labyrinth with my guild and I got 20 Silver Wrappers from them that I chucked at the little Skritt.

And this is the problem with the RNG. I opened > 200 of them I got from the Labyrinth as well, and I got 4. 4 ><

You can get guaranteed drops for 25 gems, lol. Free is free I am not gonna begrudge if I get 4, 10, 20, or 1000. A chance in a raffle is all you need. You just need one ticket.

No, you require at least one ticket. What you need is luck. And not only luck – since it is a raffle, and number of winning waffles is capped, you also need misfortune for others.

Skoigoth.9238:

kins.3294:

I dont know if you played during that halloween but all skins were obtainable through that chest at the end of the dungeon.

Stop spreading false information.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascent_to_Madness

The now re-released skins (Chainsaw, Ghastly Grinning Shield, etc.) were never obtainable through the chest at the end of the Ascent to Madness dungeon.
The “exotics, including Halloween weapon skins”, Dulfy was referring to are totally different skins (Arachnophobia, The Crossing and The Mad Moon).

Sadly, this is exactly what I stated in another thread to kins, complete with links to all of the information spelled out… and he ignored it and then said he was wasting his time with me. But thanks for the confirmation. Nice to have someone else’s input maybe they will understand now.

Guys, I’ve gotten 12 wrappers in just one day, and I haven’t spent a dime… I wasn’t even trying to farm them.

They’re available ingame without buying gems, sheesh. Jump to conclusions much?

I just spent the last 40 minutes loading in and out of the labyrinth map, in and out, in and out… and GW putting me in one empty map after the other. Ocne, the game suggested I leave the empty map, and put me in another empty map. And they’re all different maps, with /ip all the way up to 300.

I can’t find a populated labyrinth for the life of me.

I ran it solo for a while but that gets pretty old pretty fast, especially as the labyrinthine horror is on the loose in pretty much all the empty maps. Probably why they’re empty.

I… didn’t get an MMO to solo world bosses

I saw in another thread Arenanet wanted constructive player feedback about this change, so this thread is dedicated towards it.

Only post constructive feedback, I know this has angered a lot of people, so let’s give Arenanet the feedback they asked for and if they hold true, we shall see the changes we need.

I’ll start…

It’s simple, bring back the old way, but keep this way as well. I’m going to hope Arenanet have done this purely because they wanted to make it better for the players, not as a marketing scheme.

Even keep the same UI, and at the bottom have a option to click “advanced” or something which brings up the ability to add your exact number of gems you wish to buy.

drowze.3709:

My first reaction when opening the new Gem-Gold exchange UI was this:

“Ok, streamlined presets that make for easy one-click purchases; alright, not bad. Now how do I buy a custom amount of gems?”

I honestly thought I overlooked the button that lets me input a random amount of gems. That’s why I came to the forum to double-check.

So having a button “buy custom amount” added to the current interface would feel a lot more natural to me.

Edit: Clicking the button would spawn a popup window, where you put in the amount of gems you want to buy and it shows you how much it would cost you in gold.

How did this not come up at a meeting about changing the gem conversion UI? It’s simple, straight forward, fair to players and convenient.

This is a real slippery slope I have seen other game companies go down. It gets to a place where it’s hard to go back. Where do you draw the line with it? There must have been some real division at the company over this. I know I wouldn’t have kept my mouth shut about it. I implore you guys to remedy this. This system is flagrantly trying to extract more gold out of players to purchase more gems than they need. It’s pretty gross. I’d really appreciate this post being printed and displayed on a bulletin board at the office please. You can do better and moreover should want to do better.

It’s my favorite outfit so far.

Until now, with my human noble elementalist I could only wear Heritage armor, as none of the other scholar armors matched his style. Some are nice for necromancers and mesmers, and the rest just look stupid to me.

Now I have two nice suit choices. Now that they are unlocked I’ll probably also get the winter outfit for a third suit to use on snowy areas.

But since there’s no hat slot, I can’t equip me glasses or top hat with it. That’s really shame.

We really could use a hat slot.

So glad i reach my 10k ap chest a day before the patch and ive saved up enough gold this is one awsome looking costume my necro gonna be proud wearing that

it really is fantastic looking……it’s a shame it comes from a gemstore that now has a dishonestly altered conversion system that will leave me with 100 spare gems that are completely useless to me unless i buy more gems.