It is nice that we can deposit our Quartz Crystals directly to our vaults like other materials. The pain is that you can’t use the QC’s directly from the vault. So I have go to a vault, get them out, then go find a skill point place of power to convert them.
Can they not be used at the place of power directly from your vault? Similar to the way other materials can be used from your vault when crafting?
But it’s not crafting, per se. It’s more akin to the Mystic Forge or a trader which requires you to have your mats on-hand.
I loved the cutscene also, but it did seem so very stereotypical of film noir — the first person terse yet witty narration, the stranger who walks through the door, the other stranger who emerges from the shadows, the closeups, the exchange of money… everything was rote.
Don’t get me wrong, the addition of GW2’s paint style animatics made this one something special, and I took the stereotype presentation as part of the humor. But I don’t think this would work well anywhere else in the game. It’s just too … ordinary.
Regardless, I still wish I could watch it again. It was fun and made me smile.
Last time I recall, Gaille said you can try if were a day early.
Personally though, when you are a week early, tough luck.
If they had a strict policy of “refunds permissible for purchases x days before a sale”, then how about x+1, x+2 and so on?
People would keep trying to stretch the policy.
Not really. In America, many large retailers have policies for price-matching against competitors and their own sale prices as long as a month out. I don’t think a week is unreasonable. If people have a solid policy in writing, it’s easy for them to approve or deny claims. People couldn’t get away with trying to stretch the limit because the limit has been carved in stone, so to speak.
As far as I know, ArenaNet has never stated explicitly anything regarding “gem sales are final” or “we have a refund policy to account for sale promotions — ask us!” I could be wrong, though, and would welcome quoted verbiage here. A solid answer would help tremendously.
I got my mini pack — thank you, Anet! I would have liked them to not be account bound, but I can understand why they are. The only minis I have are the ones I got through the usual free channels — HoM, Wintersday, and now this — plus a couple lucky drops in SSC which are waiting for an opportune moment in the TP.
For all the complaining I do (as do others) about the despicable RNG boxes, there’s one major upside to them: they keep GW2 from getting arbitrarily shut down. NCSoft has already shown that they’re only in it for the money and not the playerbase loyalty (-ahem- City of Heroes anyone?). If RNG boxes are lucrative and keep Anet employees, well, employed and making a game that we mostly enjoy, this is a good thing, right? Especially if the alternative is: “You spent $500 over the last 12 months on virtual goods that you don’t really own. Thanks for your cash, now go away. – Sincerely, NCSoft”
Those are some gorgeous weapon skins. But I’m torn — I was planning to work toward Kudzu for my Ranger and that longbow skin is oh so pretty. What to do…
I suppose step one is to get a jade ticket (which is about as likely winning the real lottery), so there’s a load off.
Has there ever been items introduced into the game that were only available for a limited time, and yet to be reintroduced? If the answer is yes, then why wouldn’t the same be true of the F&F dyes?
If for some reason they decide to reintroduce the dyes they should wait a very long time knowing that players have put a lot of gold into these dyes as an investment based on how they marketed the dyes in the Gem Store.
There’s no indication that items related to one-time limited-time content will ever be reintroduced. There DOES seem to be indications that holiday-style limited-time content may come around again next year, either as a reintroduction (i.e. candy corn), with improvements (SAB), or added themed content (new recipes, expanded special drops, etc.).
It’s possible, though, that similar items — renamed clones, so to speak — could be introduced. I kind of expect that with the infinite harvesting tools. And there are really only so many colors that can be introduced for dyes. I’m personally hoping for dyes in the future that have a luminescent or chrome appearance, or that add texture/detail to areas of your armor.
Still would love to see these changed to Account Bound. I only bought one each for my main, but I have a feeling that as I level up my alts, I’ll be wanting that same benefit on them as my Ranger gets mothballed for a month. Can’t afford the cash right now, and gold is very hard to come by for me due to my available play time.
Currently have 900 gems waiting for the axe and maybe a swimsuit. It’ll be very nice to never worry about the harvesting tools as my charr pounces around Orr.
Also, I have a feeling that they’ll repeat these offerings later with different themes and effects to keep players (especially new players) spending money.
So for 4 days of farming karkas and other mobs on this island im have 50-60 Boxes…. and 4 Tickets from them. Nerf it =////
Most hilarious post I’ve seen in a very long time. RNG loves you like no other in this game, I think. Let’s try 20 days of farming on SSC with a grand total of 6 boxes dropping only mats.
There’s speculation that for Dragon Bash, there are two tiers of RNG chests:
1. Rich Dragon Coffers are only available from the Gem Store, and they contain a guaranteed skin ticket.
2. (Normal) Dragon Coffers drop from mobs and from activities, and contain a rare chance for a ticket.
I feel that this system could work, provided that tickets from the Rich Dragon Chest are account bound to prevent them being resold, while tickets from the normal chest can be sold on the TP, to provide an avenue for those who don’t have the $$$ to drop on the Rich Chests to still be able to obtain a skin.
If this is true, I might actually buy one (depending on the skin selection this time).
As much as I hate RNG boxes, if they were more like BL chests they’d be far more appealing. The RNG boxes from recent events and the F&F dye packs had one major glaring flaw with players (IMHO): a high percentage chance of getting everyday crap instead of special stuff. I think that if they want to offer RNG boxes AND keep players happy, the boxes need to be filled with low-level stuff that’s event-exclusive. They can then tier the rares in there for more appeal, but at least people don’t walk away feeling like they wasted real cash on useless junk.
TC seemed to have a healthy player population in Southsun this morning. Don’t recall if I initially logged into an overflow or main server tho. Got the achievement within half hour, but I probably had really good timing. The Steadings were fully overrun with karka while the Queen was outside, so it was hard to get through — seems unbalanced to me, but maybe that’s an intentional challenge or a ward to keep the zerglings from an easy chest.
It’s really not ANet’s fault that people swarm whenever there’s new content, and unfortunately there really isn’t anything they can do about it. Once things settle down this may relatively subside. Though it’s hard to say since this is effectively a Dragon that shows up randomly and drops two rare or better things every time.
Don’t you think they should expect that by now? In an established game where players are already invested time- and resource-wise, new content will get pounced on by everyone anticipating “the next thing”. That’s what dev servers and internal testing is all about — discovering bugs and shortcomings before they hit the masses.
Still, I have to say I’m glad I’m always at work when new content rolls out. I’d be sorely tempted to jump right in as well and end up suffering the same fate.
Didn’t have much time to work on Canach this morning, so I only tried a couple times. Still, my primary toon is a ranger, and (as voiced elsewhere), my pet keeps causing problems for me.
Second, having to use an environmental weapon to beat him with no alternatives just sucks. I avoid all environmental weapons everywhere in the game because they just seem like a step down for me. I’m used to my bows and my pets. Needing to learn a new skill setup just to finish a story relevant encounter is backwards.
I’ll eventually figure it out and finish off the “bad guy”, I’m sure, but I don’t like being pigeonholed into one way to do things. Frustrating.
I’m generally pretty forgiving of the content ArenaNet adds, and I usually am very excited by it (except the RNG boxes — hate those with a passion), but this just makes the story harder to enjoy.
If this is an exploit (and it sounds like it is), you can probably expect players who collect on it to be on this forum in a week or two complaining how they got banned.
ArenaNet does not control Gold to Gem prices players do.
This. ArenaNet can’t lower gold→gem prices since the price is based on how many people buy gems with gold. The fewer gems to buy, the higher the price. That’s the way markets work — low supply + high demand = higher prices, high supply + low demand = lower prices.
they should switch it to the normal sickle animation, but make it so it keeps gathering if you have a second chance instead of having to press F each time.
The animation is NOT 3x longer than normal. They just removed the progress bar and replaced the slow kneel-and-gently-cut animation with the 3-swing pickaxe animation. Takes the same amount of time as before EXCEPT you can stop it early by moving away thus actually saving time over normal.
Still, I would like to see a different animation. Hacking at those delicate flowers seems to be counter-productive and prone to error. ArenaNet, please fix this and make it pretty for what it is. I’m’a be rather peeved if all my node hits look the same in the end.
Many consider 3g+ per 100 gems to be too high and have quit converting gold to gems.
I tend to think that short term ups and downs in the market really have no bearing on the long term value of in-game currency. Inflation will naturally happen as liquidity grows in the player base. 3g may seem cheap in retrospect next year.
I personally think that the real world tends to dictate a game’s currency value overall. I used to play a different online game whose currency was very closely tied to real money. When the world economy started to sour, the game’s proxy currency more than doubled in the space of 3 months. The devs offering new and desirable items also helped the inflation along, I’m sure, but since fewer players were putting real money into the devs’ pockets, less conversion was happening to favor the game currency, thus supply dwindled and became more valuable. The fulcrum is the proxy currency.
So, I have a question: are the only gems available in the game available through players who’ve bought them, or does Anet help keep ANY of the supply available on the market?
Pretty good idea, actually. They’d have to code for a new mechanic to implement, but if they thought the return was worth the development, I’m sure they’d do it. A blind auction has it’s pros and cons for both sides of a bidding war for sure. Maybe more of an eBay style auction where you only see when your max bid has been passed?
The biggest drawback is that RNG boxes make Anet real cash. Money is spent in large sums when people gamble in general, so I believe the only way they’ll abandon RNG boxes or look for alternatives is when sales go down significantly.
2nd thought: instead of an auction-style competition, what about the idea of a lottery? Buy entries to a lottery with gem-purchased tickets (relatively low cost … maybe 50 each?) and the winners are chosen randomly from the pool. It can be coded so one person does or doesn’t win multiple items in the same lottery depending on which outcome Anet prefers.
I don’t believe RNG boxes are scams either. It’s simply people lashing out with buyer’s remorse.
This issue will go away when people STOP BELIEVING THERE’S A FAVORABLE / REASONABLE CHANCE TO GET WHAT YOU WANT. As with gambling in a casino, expecting to win the jackpot is unreasonable and will only help addict the gambler and destroy their finances. These RNG boxes are a much smaller scale gamble, but the belief you will beat the odds will only hurt you in the end. If you happen to get lucky, remember that you got lucky.
I also read somewhere (MA prisoner in Black Citadel at the end of F&F, I think) that the mastermind behind this is female. Then again, if this is a personal nemesis, mightn’t it be someone different for each player, perhaps someone from the personal story? Still, I’m very intrigued by the thought that Kasmeer might be behind it all.
As for what happened to Canach, it could easily be the Nightmare Court or elder dragon corruption. Just because we have no lore yet to support his change doesn’t mean the months he’s been absent, things haven’t happened to change him.
Last, I wonder if the blue puffs of smoke we get after raiding a chest from an instigator are tied to the blue light seen in that screenshot. (Actually, it looks more like a boon aura to me, but whatever.)
1) ArenaNet is trying out a bunch of convenience items on the Gem Store to see what works for the average player vs. what doesn’t. Since it doesn’t cost them a significant amount in terms of development and deployment, these are easy things to do to the game. (Highly likely scenario)
2) They’re introducing these items as a way to buffer the players’ reaction if/when they decide to remove current easy access to services that already exist (i.e. two-click entrance to WvW from anywhere). I highly doubt this is what they’re doing, but it’s certainly possible, and it would drive interest in the GS amenities more.
False ideas are put into people’s heads and somebody benefits from this monetarily. It’s the functional definition of a scam.
People do not willingly throw money away. They are convinced one way or another that it’s a good idea. They are persuaded to make a choice that is detrimental to themselves. Scam.
This is also the definition of gambling as a whole. Ergo, all gambling is a scam, right?
I’ve gotten 4 crates total from farming, 3 from wooden chests that popped up. Nothing but mats, as expected. That’s with the settler’s +MF boon and Yakkington ring only. I are non-optimal.
By the way, these are by far the coolest gauntlets in the game. Nah, I’m just busting your chopps OP. Go get yourself a new back piece; no one even remembers the fused gauntlets by now.
Huh. Oh yeah … gauntlets. I still have that claim ticket in my bank, I think. Never decided which toon it would look best on.
I know this has been mentioned in passing in other posts in other topic threads, but what this island needs is some serious variety in weather patterns. I mean, I want to be walking along in the hot sun, whistling a merry tune and hear the rumble of thunder in the distance. I want to look up and see foreboding clouds quickly advancing on the horizon. I want to be enveloped by darkness moments before getting my armor stinkin’ sopped in a torrent of rain. Then, 10 minutes later, the sun is out again, the birds are chirping, the karka are roaring, and I’m back to cleaning up the local wildlife for their blood and poison sacs.
This would make my stay at a tropical island resort memorable.
I would have liked them to not be account bound, but I can understand why they are. The only minis I have are the ones I got through the usual free channels — HoM, Wintersday, and now this — plus a couple lucky drops in SSC which are waiting for an opportune moment in the TP.