Guild Wars 2

This goes back to what BLTC are and always have been and that is primarily a gem shop sampler. You are focusing on the box tops for a chance to win and not what normally comes in the box.

When they settled on adding ticket/ticket scrap onto the list of possible drops from the BLTC back in July 2013, it became all that anyone focuses on now. Even though it’s shown time and again that it is neither a means to generate income or that a player would be better off either using the coin spent on buying gems or selling cash bought gems for coin to buy the skin they want off the TP than buying keys with those gems and spinning the wheel.

They were meant to be a surprise bonus rather than the sole reason to open a BLTC.

One way to “fix” this is double the ticket drop rate and eliminate the scraps. This way it doesn’t matter if BLTC are opened by 1000 player or 100, the same number of tickets get generated, because spreading tickets across 10x the number of players means fewer will have the 10 needed for a ticket.

Scraps give players hope. Scraps passively encourage players to drop gems on keys. “Look, you only need X more and I’m a common drop. If only you had more keys.” Tickets are immediate gratification. Would the pull to open as many BLTC as possible shift substantially of scraps were … scraped and replaced with double the chance for ticket directly?

Here’s the difference between dropping the same number of keys across the active place that are lost from this limit. That’s collecting enough scraps to make a ticket. The number of full tickets that get dropped is the same but it nullifies tickets generating from scrap collecting by spreading it out. So there will be a drop off in overall ticket production. Which means a drop off in skin acquisition which chokes off supply to the TP which makes it easier to control that market.

The never said it key farming was fine, they simply allowed it. Big difference.

When asked if you could get into trouble key farming, the answer was no.

When asked if the NPE PS move to level 10 was to nerf key farming the answer was no.

That doesn’t mean they supported it. They simply didn’t have the data that allowed them to set a limit and know if that limit would affect a player playing “normally”. Now obviously they do and like DR, and dungeon and world boss chests they are setting a limit to discourage a form of game play they never wanted players to focus on.

Once you are 80 you can only get Hero Points from Hero Challenges. Before 80 you also get them as you are leveling.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_point

Also bulk Sun Beads please.

ovalle.4163:

would love the “use all” for bags and luck stacks

Hey I’m with you on that. It’s humorous that EVE had protests over an $80 cosmetic item and here it’s roughly $25 of gems on average, although RNG will still statistically create unlucky players, per ticket and at back when they were available, fused skins cost 7 tickets.

Today’s 1 ticket skins, Dwayna’s, can be bought off the TP for 90 gold. 90 gold will roughly buy you 5 keys and with 5 keys you have less than a 1 in 8 chance for a ticket.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Behellagh.1468:

I can click anywhere in the red box in the image and get a cursor to appear. If that’s too small of an area for you, I don’t know what to say.

1) This has already been patched
2) You STILL don’t understand how the bug occurred, since you need(ed) to have less than the amount of gold required to purchase 400 gems.
(In your screen, you have enough gold to buy 400 gems)

We might as well be carrying on a conversation with a cardboard box.

And the bug was fixed already or so it was reported the same day this bug was first reported in the forum and that was a while ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/support/Unable-to-custom-exchange-gems

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/custom-exchange-gem-broken

No what bothered me was your insistence that it’s currently broken. Since it was something that I used daily for a while and still use it weekly I know it’s not broken.

I’m seeing someone willing to inject themselves into any complaint thread to voice their own dissatisfaction over whatever perceived slight from ANet.

As for my white knighting when they first launched the redesign of the TP including the exchange I was one complaining about it as well but for the most part it’s been fixed and what they are willing to change has been (still miffed at truncating to gold on sold gems while we still pay exact change when buying gems). And currently I’m joining in complaining about TP performance issues over the last few months.

But when someone complains about how unintuitive it is or how the UI doesn’t allow them to select a field when in fact it’s working fine, I’m going to call them on it.

Ameepa.6793:

Hmm do we know yet if the once per week cooldown is a personal cooldown or does it have a fixed reset day like guild missions and wvw has?

I think someone mentioned that up on the support site that it’s tied to the weekly reset on Sunday.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

• There’s no evidence that anyone who key farms would be likely to buy keys instead; nearly everyone who farmed them did it because they liked it or because they consider it to be more cost effective — neither of those things are changed by this change.

Other than the rate they can get them. Key farmers had it down to a science, even after NPE. It affects any player who key farmed more than once a week.

But none of the OP notions that it’s all the P4F’s fault makes any sense and seems more like the inevitable extension of the P4F kneejerk reaction since the predicted doom and gloom hasn’t materialized in the two weeks since P4F went live.

Lambent.6375:

Tuthan.3250:

Makai.3429:

As a dedicated key farmer, this hurts really bad. Despite the grind and bad luck, it was, at the very least, an alternative. Like others have said, Anet is unlikely willing to give us a straight answer to the reasoning behind this change, and it’s sad they’re still employing time gating as a quick fix to a problem that they’ll sweep under the rug: never forget Continue Coins or players having their karma boosters removed for no given reason. With all of these frenetic, unexplained changes, I have extreme reservations about using the gemstore or even playing the game beyond getting my daily metrics treat – what’s the point if my accomplishments will be rendered useless on a whim?

In any case, looks like it’s time to add another column to Spreadsheet Wars 2.

I don’t understand why some people upset about this change. Key farming was not what Anet wanted in GW2. They designed the personal story reward as a bonus to your story completion. If players want keys, they should buy gems (or convert gold into gems) then purchase keys on the gem store. Period.

What is there not to understand? You may not agree with it, but it’s easy to understand.

Players think the process to obtain Black Lion Skins is too expensive, and they don’t feel that other things you get from black lion chest make up for it.

On average you’ll probably have to spend $20-$30 for just one ticket, which will get you one skin, and only during the time e the Black Lion weapons are on sale for one ticket, after that they’re looking into the $50-$100+ range. (you can also get lucky and get an extra few skins)

At this point anyone who aspires to just get one of each black lion skin that’s released, may as well be playing a P2P, they’ll might save money that way. (unless they have a lot of play time, or have amassed a huge sum of gold they can use to just buy the weapons)

Of course, we wont know how this change affects the actual market until the next 1 or 2 rounds of black lion weapons.

Additionally, key farming was a pretty fun activity for some individuals.

And when won’t you all understand that Ticket Skins were cosmetic rewards for players who primarily purchase keys with gems as a reward for buying a metric ton of blind boxes. Players who could generate loads of gold to dump into the exchange or cash to spend on gems.

Sure, if they want they could put them up for sale but really it was for show, and when shown it encourages other players to do the same. Remember buying gems with cash is ANet’s monthly cash flow and after expenses they would like it positive.

The weapon skins are not a “reward” for gaming an activity that wasn’t intended to be done as steady source of free keys. They now realize that they turned the faucet nearly off for dropped gems in the game and the result of that was a major upswing in key farming.

Remember, tickets and scraps weren’t added to the BLTC as a reward until chapter 9 of Living Story 1 in July 2013, although they had experimented with specific weapon tickets in BLTC starting in late March 2013. And about this time was when keys virtually vanished as map complete rewards, common BLTC rewards and world drops.

Okay, here’s a chart showing the daily spike in the rate around noon each day, the overall change for 24 hours and the difference between the two.

First, when more gems flow out of the exchange compared to flowing in, the rate increases. When more gems flow in to the exchange compared to flowing out, the rate decreases.

The red bars are the spike, the percentage change in the gold to gem exchange rate, measured roughly from 45 minutes before and to after the store reset, 16:00 UTC. The green bars are the daily change from 45 minutes before the reset to the same time the next day. The cyan bars is simply the different between the daily change and the spike, negative means that the 22 1/2 hours after the spike period, the rate went down.

The first ten days, from Aug 21st to Aug 30th were cumulative with items staying until the reset on the 31st. This means that players could wait it out until they saw everything offered and then decide what to spend their gems and how much gold to convert. Although over those 10 days the exchange rate increased 35% overall or 3% a day compounded.

It’s interesting to notice that any sell off after the spike was minor, the worst being down 3.9% after the spike on Aug 26th and that was a down day overall. That’s surprising because it was a day when a bunch of Destiny’s Edge skins returned.

But on the 31st, almost every sale though the was the 24 hour variety and the spikes were much larger as well as the post spike sell off. Nearly every day during the daily sales with 8 out of the 15 days with percentage drops at least twice as large as the worst day of the cumulative sales. That’s a significant cashing in of gems vs buying.

The one thing the daily sales show is player will rush to buy gems while gem holders are more than willing to sell off some gems for gold to cash in on these spikes.

And as I’m writing this the gem exchange rate has returned to the pre-sale level of the mid 19g per 100 gems.

I can click anywhere in the red box in the image and get a cursor to appear. If that’s too small of an area for you, I don’t know what to say.

Ah, that bug. But that was squashed the same day it was first reported since the change could be done at the web server side without the need to push a patch.

Just wait … the Mordrem Guard are clones. I will savor the outcry when a new and improved Scarlet returns as a Mordrem Guard.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Behellagh.1468:

Wait, you were caught on the fact it never occurred to you to click on the default 400 gems and change it? How is that not intuitive? It’s just like every other input field on the TP. I will admit that sometimes I click on the Buy More Gems under the field than the buy button to the right of the coin amount.

There is a known bug where players who do not have enough gold to convert into 400 gems (the default value) will be sent to the purchase gems with a credit card screen when attempting to alter the field which contains ‘400’.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Purchase-funds-covers-gem-custom-exchange/first#post5424300

The only way around this is to have over 90g on you when you go to convert gold into gems… otherwise it will not work…. period.

I wouldn’t consider that a known bug but a design decision. Player wants to buy X number of gems but doesn’t have the gold for it so you forward them to the buy with cash screen.

You all do realize that 1 Ticket would be 1500-2000 gems right? To make up for the loss of key revenue due to RNG tickets and scraps.

And as long as the value of the “junk” you get, in terms of gems or in coin equivalent, exceed the cost of a single key, then it’s technically not gambling as you are getting that value or more in items. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want those items or that you want tickets, scraps or permanent contracts, you are buying a blind box/gift bag, that has contents with a combined value of at least 84-125 gems with a few that have something highly desirable. You know that going in yet you all keep getting disappointed that a rare drop is rare.

Klocknov.8219:

Unless they only limited level 10 rewards then this is potentially hurting legitimate players as it is telling them they can do up to level 39 one week then up to 59 the next week or they sacrifice two keys just to complete that story. As that is the only real reward from Personal Story that is a wee bit bullcrap. Now add in that they state nothing of if it will also effect LS2 Tangled Paths ability to get a key and you have a wonderful mess. All this is if you are only running one character through the story, no imagine people that have 8 soon to be 9 with the revnant and some not even having story completed once or others like me that have 13 and an empty slot. I have only completed the story twice, and that was going to be my next charge after mapping all my characters, well guess that idea was a bust. I wouldn’t care if I had to wait a week per a character but 3 weeks per a character just to complete story and not be robbed of rewards is bullcrap.

From the patch notes. Emphasis mine.

Black Lion Chest Keys from the early personal story rewards have been limited to one per week accountwide.

Wait, you were caught on the fact it never occurred to you to click on the default 400 gems and change it? How is that not intuitive? It’s just like every other input field on the TP. I will admit that sometimes I click on the Buy More Gems under the field than the buy button to the right of the coin amount.

Well the grocery chain I go to put out Halloween candy mid August, 11 weeks before Halloween.

I routinely buy less than 200 gems a week through the Custom Exchange. They added that within a couple of days of the new TP rollout last year.

More likely they hired someone to create a logo for them and they are the ones that ripped off ANet rather than the magazine.

Black Lion Chests are first and foremost Gem Shop samplers. Tickets and scraps are the highly desired rares and uncommons from CCG booster packs.

Not all BLC rewards are of equal weighting in the RNG reward table. Adding an item doesn’t necessarily means another item will drop less frequently.

UniDyes are rather difficult to get since the wardrobe update. There are virtually no way of getting set 1-3 minis.

Except it’s a problem for players with metered accounts. Microsoft tries to identify these and not use them for P2P updates but also allows users to manually shut it off.

But the primary purpose is to distribute an update on internal networks using P2P.

Maybe it’s a start of the trend to bring the last few town clothes head pieces to the Gem Shop as skins.

There might be hope for bunny ears yet.

Joining the bandwagon.

P4F accounts can’t sell skins on the TP.
P4F accounts can’t mail out items or gold.
P4F accounts can’t deposit the skin or gold into any Guild Bank.

This isn’t about P4F. This is about shutting down an emergent form of game play that was only tacitly allowed because ANet wanted the new player to get their first hit of BLTC rewards for free. I do suspect that by observing new player since the start of the year with both $10 accounts and P4F accounts that they were able to convince themselves that a once a week restriction would minimally the impact on new player.

I also suspect that they also analyzed who were generating the most BLTC ticket weapon skins and found that this was a very small pool of players, some with possible RMT ties.

I’ve always said that key farming was an emergent style of game play that was only allowed because they wanted to give the new player a taste of the opening BLTCs and they couldn’t figure out how to do that and shut down key farming.

Well it looks as if they got enough data metrics to set a restriction that shouldn’t impact the vast majority of new players while closing down the farm.

I would also not be surprised to find that key farming, to farm for ticket skins, was also a RMT source of income and that a relatively small pool of players were generating the majority of skins for sale on the market.

I remember when keys dropped frequently in the world as well as keys dropping frequently from BLTCs so you could chain open several chests. Hopefully the improved world drop rate will hearken back to those days.

cafard.8953:

Why install software when you can simply opt to receive a SMS for free? I mean, if you’re young and don’t have a phone yet, fair enough, but otherwise?

People value their privacy. Not everyone give out their mobile number freely. Afraid this will result in telemarketing. Some people still pay per message.

Cross linking my final analysis in case they stop reading threads that fell off the first couple of pages.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mordrem-Invasion-Feedback-merged/page/11#post5491970

Okay, I just ran the gem exchange rate numbers for the sale including the extension and Monday.

Using the recorded exchange rate from GW2TP ( https://www.gw2tp.com/gems ) during the hour and a half around Noon each day to look at the spike when the Gem Shop is updated as well as day to day changes.

The three days that had spikes well about the average were;

• Sep 1st – One Bag slot at 50% off (but rumored unlimited if you bought from your inventory instead of the shop), 75% off one flame and/or one shadow dye kit. – up 25.4%
• Sep 8th – Five Taimi’s Dye kits for 50% off as well as returning for the day – up 22.0%
• Sep 11th – One Total Makeover Kit at 65% off and Heroic Boosters at 30% off. – up 26.4%

The two days that had significant negative spikes were

• Sep 2nd – Belinda’s Greatsword Skin returning at 20% off and the Shadow Assassin’s Outfit at 35% off. – down 7.5%
• Sep 7th – Introduction of the Harbinger of Mordremoth Outfit for 7 days at 700 gems – down 12.8%

Now the negative spikes may be due to players selling gems after seeing what the daily sale was and decided that now was the time to cash in their excess gems. The drop on the 2nd was after the spike on the 1st and the drop on the 7th was after 4 days of rate hikes that in total was 25%.

The two key sales had a 9% spike for 25% off any amount on the first day of 4 sale days and 9.4% spike on the one day sale of 5 keys at 75% off (also five Bank Access express were 90% off).

The one day sale of bank tabs at 20% off (also 75% off the Magic Carpet) had only 5% spike. But the Account Jump Start was introduced Aug 18th and included two bank tabs and that may have satiated some of the demand.

There are also some interesting numbers when you compare the spike around noon vs the 24 change in the rate. But I’ll talk about that next later as it’s late/early.

Unless you bought those gems with cash, they don’t care. And even if you did, they already have your money.

The purpose of these sales is to get us to part with whatever gems we already have, deplete gold we already have, and put us in a situation where we are desperate enough to buy gems with cash because only gems bought with cash pays their bills.

Of course to do all that they need to put items up for sale, either new, returning or existing at a discount and considering the exchange rate shot up by 70% I say they succeeded like gangbusters. Likewise since the rate has come down 30% that gems are being sold back to the exchange, likely cash bought ones.

Just because they didn’t have what you wanted, doesn’t mean it’s a bad sale.

Starts responsive, at least for me, and quickly becomes sluggish to the point you have to be extremely careful if you set your own price for asks and bids, taking seconds before recognizing you are selecting a field to edit. This is a relatively new phenomenon in the last few months. I didn’t have a problem when it was first redone with Coherent UI.

2FA – Two-factor authorization, this is what ANet want players to use as a means around compromised e-mail. The two of the methods they support are:

SMS – Text Messaging, self explanatory needs your mobile number
Software Authenticator – WinAuth, Google Authenticator which you set up once with the 16 character “secret code” displayed in text and as a QR code to scan from your browser screen. After that as long as your system’s time is set by a time server, standard nowadays, it generates a constant stream of 6 digit codes every 30 seconds.

With the third is phoning you and giving you the code audibly which needs your home number.

Sure, if your system has already been rooted with a key logger, software authenticators on your PC is pointless since they’ll get your secret code when you set it up. But you already have a key logger installed, you have bigger problems than fretting over using an authenticator.

After four days and too many times, let me jot down my thoughts after a good night sleep.

The individual events, the three different kinds, were fine, with caveats. All three were designed around the concept of a three teams coordinating the take down of each type quickly. The only problem was as every other group event, organized teamwork was as good as a soccer(football) match of 7 year olds where everyone chases the ball. But that’s not the devs fault.

Then there are those caveats. First in Brisbane having events spawn in close proximity (almost on top of) Toxic Offshoots with their nightmare AOE. At least one catapult event had one catapult inside the nightmare field. Fighting a battle on two fronts hamper the ability to finish that one quickly.

Second in Kessex, several times existing map events contested nearly every waypoint on the map, making you waste precious time getting to the next event.

Third terrain sometimes made the bomb events difficult to do. One in Kessex and one in Brisbane in Skrittsburgh where the bomb carriers were deposited some distance away requiring transit time to reach them, dispatch them and then run with the bomb back to a range where it can be tossed.

Lastly spawn level in some locations. I noticed this in Diessa with a shield generator event. I was downleveled to 20, meaning a level 19 area, yet the vine spawned at 27 and the generators at 24. It took way longer to dispatch this event, needing three rounds of destroying the generators than a similar shield event just north of Nageling where the level of the vine was more inline with me being level 20.

====

Now the meat of the problem, the reward system and the rewards themselves.

Let’s talk about the rewards. Two major issues. First some were simply stupid. 50 Luck? A Case of Sand? A UniDye? A random rare gear item? Not compelling. Second, there’s the addition of spending coin besides blooms. I know this was done before but it was done for events where you get coin from participating making it coin neutral or at least less burdensome for those without a pile of gold.

Now the reward system. Tiered, timed zone participation determined by minimum level of participation in completed events. This has been beaten into the ground but a reward mechanism that assigned blooms at the end based on each completed event’s gold/silver/bronze participation could have rewarded a player that stayed and cleared fewer events as much or more blooms than a tag and dash player. I would say half of the map wide events I did I only got 9 done and thus denied 5 more blooms for one more event where if I decided to tag and dash I could easily get ten and sit back for 15 minutes waiting for the event to end. That leaves a very bad taste in one’s mouth. As it was once I got 10 done and knowing there was no way to get 20 done with the time remaining, I had reduced motivation in helping my fellow players, especially knowing the taggers were waiting for players like me to do the heavy lifting by staying as they flit around like butterflies and waiting to see how many events paid off.

At least toward the end Sunday evening there were taggers complaining that they only got 19 because more of the participants choose to tag rather than stay, slowing down the rate events were being cleared. And they got angry at everyone else that they didn’t get their 20.

====

I understand what you were trying to do with this, but the system of rewards you designed to reward participation for the entire 30 minutes was too easily gamed. Only half of the rewards were interesting to get and the addition of coin requirement while no coin was rewarded during the event at all placed a burden on newer players who may have had time to acquire the blooms needed but not have the coin part needed for the item. I think you swung the pendulum to far to the other side as a result of the Scarlet Invasions from LS1 so players would try for zone participation rather than critter farming and overcompensated. Hopefully next time you can find a more balanced approach.

The x16 slot closest to the CPU?

Only other suggestions is to pull and reset the card, making sure it’s fully in the slot from front to back. And while the card’s out check the slot and the edge connector on the card for anything that could interfere with the connection.

You could also double check the motherboard manual for the proper location for a single video card.

Forum bug, she’s on it.

The point is they were never SOLD in the GEM STORE as a skin. So saying they should re-release the skin is technically wrong.

Yes they have to buy, with cash, at least the base HoT. The upgrade in the Gem Shop is base HoT to Deluxe HoT, just the various goodies.

When I made my P4F account I was allowed to choose whatever not full server I wanted. I didn’t notice if the server transfer option was grayed out or not.

You might not have gotten what you wanted but all you need to do is look at the spike in the exchange rate for the duration of the sale to see that there were things a lot of players wanted. From the time the Gem Store Account Bundle kits went on sale the 18th (yes it was a few days before the sale to it’s peak, the exchange rate grew by 73%!! That’s a lot of gold flowing in for gems. And since it’s now down 23% from that peak shows a lot of gems, more than likely cash bought, being converted to gold. We may not be able to see cash bought gems being used in the store itself but we can see it in how the exchange rate is being pushed down.

I would say it was successful. It just didn’t have whatever you wanted.

Linken.6345:

considering how easy 2/3 of the events are shield and bomb pods they will get finished quick, catapult events will stay longer tho but get finished in 3-6 mins + that way alot more get credit then having 3 ppl on the catapults the whole event.

Actually no. There are times where the event had serious level scaling issues like level 27 in a level 19 area. Takes much longer to clear a shield when you have to go through three or more cycles because it’s 7 levels above you. Also for bomb pods and catapults, taggers engage just long enough and then run away just when it decides to drop Champs like snow.

The catapult event just south of Nageling had nobody there but there was a dozen Vet and Champs lumbering about. Clear evidence of a tag zerg that ran off and the few who remained getting slaughtered so they decided to go to another spawn point as well, one with a crowd of players who would stay.

Kidel.2057:

What’s the precise end time for this event however? I can’t find it anywhere.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-mordrem-are-coming/

From 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on September 10 through 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (UTC-7) on September 14

Except they don’t complete on their own, they are completed by players who don’t tag and run and end up getting stuck on 9 done when it would be easily 15 or more of taggers stay to help.

I’ve run out of fingers the number of times I got owned while manning a catapult or finding a catapult unmanned while defending it because someone got off a shot and ran off.

Pet rock is a steal. Ugly armor is ugly.

Announcement and reasoning

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Transfer-Changes/first#post4931494

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-Transfer-Changes/page/5#post4933116

online.1278:

measuring with twitch viewer number makes best sense than any other thing
just go
http://www.twitch.tv/directory
and see which game is on top.

League of Legends
100,464 viewers

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
96,224 viewers

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
75,030 viewers

World of Warcraft
40,400 viewers

Dota 2

see? who would claim that many people dont play those games?

I don’t play any of those but I might occasionally watch someo, especially the MOBAs. After 3 years I’ve just started to watch GW2 ones. That’s the problem with trying to use a proxy to measure something else. I’ve seen analysts use web traffic to gauge if a new game or expansion is going to succeed, and that is as accurate as throwing runes.

At 225 each, individually it’s relatively easy to get with just the extra 60 per day. Even both of within a set at 450 isn’t all that bad.

Price of bundles fluctuates base on other sales of items within the bundles.

Before Pax Prime they announced 5 million in sales. No indication if that includes HoT Pre-purchase or China sales. How many are active daily? weekly? monthly? Don’t know.

uhohhotdog.3598:

More disappointing sales. What’s the point of these useless sales? Why not put something people want?

Rate spike indicates that there were things today that players were willing to buy. 1/2 price outfit and up to three 5 packs of transmutation charges at 75% off. Buy 15 charges for less than the normal cost of 5? Sure you get one for every city map complete but that’s a lot of time just to get 6.