Guild Wars 2

Yes, the droprate looks beyond silly. Based on that data it might be 1 in 1m chance to get it. Maybe Anet added 3 zeroes too much to the drop chance?

Hamfast.8719:

TPenny.5071:

Guild leader opened 1.12 million bags and finally got it :P

One million bags is 4000 full stacks. Opening 5 bags every second would take 55 and a half hours (not counting breaks). These fish tales are getting bigger all the time.

I do believe they’ve reverted to their old horrid RNG methods, and that’s all I need to know to avoid even trying to get an incorporeal mutt.

EDIT: I did some quick Googling. Depending on the type of switch used, I found claims of anywhere from less than one million to a manufacturer’s claim of 8 million mouse button clicks before the mechanism dies.

With a macro you can easily open a stack every 5 seconds.

TPenny.5071:

Guild leader opened 1.12 million bags and finally got it :P

he must have used a macro to open all of those

Silmar Alech.4305:

As far as I see it Malediktus, you are a vicitim of bad judgement. When I saw the Halloween prices last year, I scratched my head and said to myself: “This must be an error. Considering the (then-)availability of candy corn, so high a price for only a minipet is simply invalid”, and I moved along. No bad feelings against Arenanet, no regrets: this was clearly an error. Everyone makes errors.
An error that was remedied this year.
If you did not saw that last year and even spent valuable resources to pay an invalid price, then you could perhaps work on your judgement.

The price looked acceptable to me for an exotic quality miniature. Also the Halloween update was live for several weeks so Anet had plenty of chance to fix the price and automatically refund people (like they did with the people when Elonian Wine was bugged) who bought it for the invalid price if it was a mistake.
So its clear to me they only changed the price because there were too many whiners who want all their rewards on a silver plattern.

I think adding it for 100 Candy Corn Globs at the vendor would be a fair non RNG way to add it. Also a good Candy Corn sink, because I am running out of things to buy with Candy Corn.

Chabo.7498:

Malediktus.9250:

“Things are more expensive when they are new. Decreasing their cost over time is a business’ way of maximizing return.”
Except Anet earns nothing by reducing the price from 500 Gems to a miniscule amount of Candy Corn or plastic fangs. Only thing they achieved is making the people who bought this with gems last year angry.

Why would they be angry they have had a year to reap the benefits of owning the miniature. Surely a similar analogy would be a game going free-to-play or having a huge discount a year after game was released. Should all those early purchasers be angry too?

Again a flawed comparison. Just stop making comparisons if they are flawed.

Akuni.8604:

I mean there’s literally no one running around with the skin anymore as they most likely left the game and it’d still take some work to finish the skin.

Wrong I use the back piece on at least one character and I have recently seen others wear it, too.

“Things are more expensive when they are new. Decreasing their cost over time is a business’ way of maximizing return.”
Except Anet earns nothing by reducing the price from 500 Gems to a miniscule amount of Candy Corn or plastic fangs. Only thing they achieved is making the people who bought this with gems last year angry.

Its too rare for not being tradeable. So it will probably be super easy to get 2015 if you look at what Anet did with Carlotta and Prince Thorn.

insanemaniac.2456:

Malediktus.9250:

DeWolfe.2174:

This game needs exclusivity like it needs a server cluster made up of 286 IBM’s.

Stop feeling entitled to it. Events are boring if you cant earn exclusive items.

i, and many others, embrace every tear you shed upon learning something has lost its exclusivity

Good for them, and I embrace any complaint about people who feel entitled to having access to everything in an MMO. Maybe they should play single player games instead.

Remember happy people rarely visit the forums. So it likely the people who are happy with exclusive items is much larger than the few who keep crying for inclusiveness here.

DeWolfe.2174:

This game needs exclusivity like it needs a server cluster made up of 286 IBM’s.

Stop feeling entitled to it. Events are boring if you cant earn exclusive items.

DeWolfe.2174:

Malediktus.9250:

You can collect pages but luckily there is no way to combine them to a book.

What do you mean “luckily”? If anything it should be unfortunately if true.

So there is something left which was exclusive to Halloween 2012.

You can collect pages but luckily there is no way to combine them to a book.

I just bought this skin for 54g via buy order to add to my collection. Looks like some people craft these to sell way below their material cost, even if you ignore the 15% tax.

MrSilver.5269:

You want to sell gems… put auto 500 crafting boosters on there. I’ll take 4 please.

No thanks.

Sapphic Savvy.8376:

I think most players that are happy with Anet’s response are too busy farming to say thank you, so on behalf of those folk – thank you.

I think allowing this farm is unfair. People who played through the instance as intended are excluded from it. Once again Anets judgement calls fail miserably.

I got an answer to my next ticket:
"Thank you for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team.

At this time, we are unable to fulfill your request. However, please feel free to contact us in the future if we can help you with other issues or concerns.

Regards,"
This sounds highly stupid. Guess I will tune down my Gem purchases again for the next few months. So not refunding me these 6,50€ worth of gems will result in 100s of € I wont spend. Sounds like a good deal for Anet.

Its a very ugly skin. Looks like its worth 1-3g at most.

daft inquisitor.1605:

skullmount.1758:

lordkrall.7241:

…
2: The prices of Powerful Blood and the selling price of the complete item is completly based on supply and demand and not something ArenaNet sets,
right?

Except Anet does pretty much set it though, by controlling the drop rate

That’s not how that works. Powerful Blood is only worth what people will pay for it. Even if it is a rare drop, if nobody will buy it, then the price on the trade post will be low. Supply and demand, that’s how that works. If supply is low but demand is low, prices tend to drop low. If supply is low but demand is high, that’s when the money rolls in.

For things like Powerful Blood, the supply is fairly high, but the demand is even higher, which is the only reason the prices are as high as they are.

This is not how it works. People have a lot of gold so they dont mind spending it on rare items. People wont just stop buying something in GW2 because its expensive, because buying expensive cosmetics is basically the endgame of this game.

Yes, ToT bags not going away but will go insanely expensive after Halloween is over. It looks like it takes most people over 100 stacks to get one. Supply wont last long.

I dont think they even read my ticket properly:
“Thanks for contacting the Guild Wars 2 Support Team.

Before we can make an assessment of this situation, we would like to obtain additional information from you to about the item or items in question. Please respond with the following information:

Date and exact time of the purchase. (as close as you can remember)
Your time zone
Exact name of the item or Items you want to be refunded.

Once you have provided this information we will investigate and let you know if it is possible for us to refund your items. We hope to hear from you soon.

Regards,"
I basically provided all those information as close as possible as I can after this year passed in my initial ticket. Guess I will answer back and hope it helps.

silvermember.8941:

Malediktus.9250:

hydeaut.1758:

Malediktus.9250:

I dont see this even as remotely fair.

It wasn´t fair last year, this year it is though.

It was fair because noone forced you to get it. It was just a cosmetic reward for a lot of Candy Corn. If 100-200g or whatever the 20k candy corn were worth last year were not worth it to you, you obviously did not care enough about it.

Couldn’t the same be said about your rant. Nobody forced you to get it last year either so stop whining that it got easier.

But I suppose based on what others have said, your self worth is based on in-game items being exclusive or something sad like that. I don’t know, could be wrong. (ad hominem FTW).

Normally NPC vendor prices are static and do not change over time. Especially not becoming cheaper. I realized the possibility that the vendor could come back, but based on anets track record it was out of question to become cheaper since the price was not a bug. So how would I know this could happen?

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

There is one problem though. People who completed the instance cant return to it and loose the ability to farm it.

So much hype for an ugly exotic skin. I expected more than this.

DCM.3654:

The logical explanation is that these skins were probably not selling that well anymore, so ANet decided to squeeze the last drops of money out of them by removing them and thus creating demand for them.
In a few months, when they return for a week only – because they will – everyone is going to be all over them again, which means even more black lion keys sold. Simple.

Yes, noone buys these skins because 5 tickets each is too much to be worth it. In most cases its better to buy 5x 1 ticket weapons and sell them to get the one you want.
If anet would sell them for 2 instead of 5 tickets after the introduction phase they would sell much better.

Karizee.8076:

Confirmed just last week that there is no Diminishing Returns in the game.

John Smith.4610:

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

John Smith is blatantly lieing. Easy to see the diminishing returns in the labyrinth. Events give less and less exp, karma gold after a while. Also loot seems to get noticeable worse.

Stupid item. Totally worthless for people who have ascended trinkets.

I would agree with making it tradeable. But it would go for several 100g at the current rarity.

Looks terrible. Way to go anet.

Good idea. I see no reason for it to be account bound if there is no 100% chance way to get it.

Zaxares.5419:

Sentimental/collectors/functional value would remain completely unchanged regardless of how cheap/expensive or common/rare an item is.

Only the functional value stayed the same. If you can get it for a pocket change now it will loose all meaning to you and to collectors. An item which everyone can have is worthless to collectors. Why do you think some people specialize on lets say 100 year old stamps. The rarity and exclusiveness makes it attractive to them, otherwise they might as well collect recent stamps which are worth nothing because millions are printed of them.
Sentimental value is also destroyed if you had to work much harder for something than everyone else who was too lazy to get it in year 1.

I wrote a ticket to request a refund yesterday, still waiting for a response.

hydeaut.1758:

Malediktus.9250:

I dont see this even as remotely fair.

It wasn´t fair last year, this year it is though.

It was fair because noone forced you to get it. It was just a cosmetic reward for a lot of Candy Corn. If 100-200g or whatever the 20k candy corn were worth last year were not worth it to you, you obviously did not care enough about it.

The population does not matter as long as the ratio between gem to gold and gold to gem traders stays the same.

Be happy we can complete them again for more APs

I hate the lower costs. Makes me feel ripped off by paying the full prices last year. A lot of wasted resources I could have spent better otherwise.

People need to vote more with their wallet. If I dislike an update I wont buy gems for a while until an update I enjoy happens. If people keep buying gems when unhappy Anet has no reason to change.

Gibson.4036:

Malediktus.9250:

I take this update as a slap into the face to veterans who played since the beginning and as a sign that anet is too lazy to make new rewards despite earning 100m $ a year with the game.

I take it as good stewardship of resources. IP takes time to create, and the more times you can bring it back into use, the greater your return on investment.

The more stuff that gets locked away permanently, the less return ArenaNet is getting from the development time, and the less stuff there is for players to experience/acquire in game. It’s taken quite a while for them to hear us saying “Don’t make content temporary”. We don’t need to undermine that with “but I need proof that I was there when”.

Stop saying we. There are people who enjoy temporary content.

lordkrall.7241:

Malediktus.9250:

Dont get me wrong I spent 100s of real money on this game this year, but this lottery idea is even worse than Black Lion Chests.

So it is okay to have something that require gems for a chance to get it but it is not okay to have a chance to get something with in-game drops?

100 of the highly demanded skins for all the games population is like nothing. If I buy BLTC keys I know about every 50 keys on average I will get a skin of my choice. In this lottery you have to compete with other players for your items. So RNG on RNG on RNG. Many open variables. How many tickets will I get? How many players will participate? How many tickets are used in total? If I win do I get the skin I prefer or the worthless 80g Pumpkin rifle?
I prefer if Anet wouldnt bring these skins back at all and keep their exclusivity instead of this farce (and no I dont own any of these skins)

The game will be dead as soon as there is a new non fail MMO release if they dont get their act together and release an expansion or at least more substantial living stories.
Anet can deem themselves lucky that all the new MMOs coming out are flopping.

lordkrall.7241:

Malediktus.9250:

This lottery is a horrible cash grab idea.

Yeah.. except for the small fact that you don’t have to pay anything for a chance to win.

Did you have the same problem with the original release of the skins?

Dont get me wrong I spent 100s of real money on this game this year, but this lottery idea is even worse than Black Lion Chests.

juno.1840:

It’s account bound — it has no value. You cannot gain or obtain any currency value for it.

That’s why everyone is giving the OP a hard time — because the argument is flawed.

I already said before. Items have a value beyond their currency value.
I dont give a crap about the currency value of an item. Currency (both ingame and in real life) is just a tool to get what I want to have for me.
There are more values such as sentimental value or collectors value or functional value. And reducing the amount of resources to get an item by around 90% without even accounting for inflation of the required resources definetely also hurts the non currency values.
But I know that economic specialists like John Smith have no clue about things like that. Those people only care about currencies and metrics.

This lottery is a horrible cash grab idea.

calyx.9086:

Malediktus.9250:

This game is about cosmetic progression. How am I supposed to “progress” if everything is easy to get at any time? Dont tell me legendaries, most of them look like they could as well be exotics to me. And the most expensive armor is 119g for a whole set lol. Thats like 1 day of farming for me, less if I combine with trading.

No, it’s about cosmetics, there is no “progression” about it. Some people like legendaries, some people don’t. Some people like t3 armor sets, some people like mix n match.

To be progression, it has to be a series of steps with improvement from one to the next, and that doesn’t exist here, because being about aesthetics everyone has a different idea of what looks good to them and what they want their “end look” to be.

You are wrong about that one. There are clearly different amounts of efforts on the details on various items. Taste may be subjective, but the amount of details, effects, animations and rarity offer a clear path of progression.
Especially visible on the gem shop skins which Anet clearly spent more effort on than the average item you can earn ingame save a few exceptions such as legendaries.
A skin does not have to be of your taste to be a cosmetic progression of the item you want to use.

Pimsley.3681:

I dont think this game is a money grab. Compared to most game developers, Anet is one of the least aggressive with monetization.

Mobile gaming developers are the most notorious.

This game doesn’t cost us any monthly fees nor does it promote sleazy pay to play schemes. Yet it delivers one of the best PVP systems I’ve seen, WVW and new content.

It was ok for a while but they are slowly but steadily catching up to the “evil” cash shop games.

Astral Projections.7320:

Labjax.2465:

I would sympathize, but it appears to be a theme with you, lobbying for exclusive items to stay exclusive in whatever capacity you happen to own them or are going for them.

I find it hard to believe that this has anything to do with boredom, unless you somehow find it more entertaining to walk around feeling special than not?

^

This seems to be Malediktus’ theme song. “I’ve got mine and I think it’s exclusive so I don’t want others to get it now.” I’ve seen him posting this in multiple threads.

In the world there are people who are naturally inclusive and those who are naturally exclusive. ANet has decided to side here with the inclusive crowd. They aren’t going to change their way of doing things unless you can bring up a compelling reason why they should favor you over all the new people (and their money) who want these items.

I dont think Anet is inclusive. Otherwise they would add more than 100 greatsaws and ghastly shields to the game. They just have hate for people who collect all kind of account bound items. These 100 skins wont even reduce the value of the Greatsaw by more than 10% if at all. But these minis lost more than 90% of their value for no good reason at all.
They are also not inclusive at all by increasing the old BLTC skins to 5-7 tickets or removing them entirely. They just cater to gold investors.

This game is about cosmetic progression. How am I supposed to “progress” if everything is easy to get at any time? Dont tell me legendaries, most of them look like they could as well be exotics to me. And the most expensive armor is 119g for a whole set lol. Thats like 1 day of farming for me, less if I combine with trading.

They should make it tradeable.

Gibson.4036:

Isn’t devaluation the risk you take investing in something? Why should anyone be entitled to see items grow in value?

Thing is this is more of a bragging right investment. Since all of this stuff was bound to your account anyway, having it was an investment in collector’s value.
I take this update as a slap into the face to veterans who played since the beginning and as a sign that anet is too lazy to make new rewards despite earning 100m $ a year with the game.

I am very outraged about Anet ruining my miniatures. I definately wont use these minis anymore since 5g minis are not worth using. Also feel cheated because I used real money for the gems to get Mini Carlotta.

Way to make up excuses. Anet said they will take everything we loved about GW1 and put it into an open world. (I know this promise was just a marketing ploy but still.) A MMO game without rare and exclusive items will quickly get boring for people who play it for thousands of hours.
Also the prices of some of the minis in GW1 were that high, because some of them only existed in double digit amounts. Kanaxai for example existed 28 times. Rarity like that is exactly what we need in GW2.