This will generate some bad word of mouth publicity. But in the end the final outcome will be determined by the bean counters. Anet will run stats and see how much money they made vs potential loss of customers.
Just realize that even though Anet is a US company it is OWNED by a company that is not American hence a different philosophy on gambling than you might expect.
As for me I feel sorry for those who spent money on keys and I do think the odds are way too low. I personally spent my gems on a Witches outfit which was a sure bet.
I couldn’t read all of this as 25 pages eats into my game time. Let me tell you a little bit about one of your players. I’m Lisa, 48 and single. I have a dog and two cats. I was in college before the internet was born and it was a way for us students and staff to communicate. I fell in to video games easily and have played from the day Pong was born. I care for my elderly Mother.
My Mother had a close call in March, CPR, intubation and ICU for over three weeks. But it’s all good, she’s doing great. I had to take out a $20k loan on my own paid for home to pay off her hospital bill. Following me here? I can’t do hundreds of dollars of gems. Catch me in a couple years, but by then I’ll have moved on to another game. But, being a gamer, I’d love to have neat and cool things too. But I struggle just to have money to pay repairs. But see, I give away that which my friends need, I don’t charge them. They need a new backpack, I’ve got your back. You need anything, it’s yours. I love them, I’ve played with these people for going on ten years now. They have jobs, babies and lives. Do you only cater to people that pay you? We could take up a collection so one of us could have something nice. Why should we be penalized for our lack of kitten and playing just for fun? Isn’t that what games are for? As for me, been 80 for a long time and on the way there with alts but I wear a mix of green and yellow. My two gold can’t afford more than that. And, if you read this far. Speaking of kitten could you get rid of the blue WvW dot in PVE! God kitten thing sticks on my map regardless of where the person actually is.
You sound like a nice person Lisa, but what is your point?
Not everyone spends lots of time and RL money in the game to get good stuff. If your gamer friends are such good friends they should be giving you stuff too.
I got a Ranger to 80 got Exotics and then dropped it when the nerf came into effect. Most of my gold for the gear was farmed the hard way.
Now I play a 25 Warrior and a few others leveling up very slowly with what I can afford from in game. My biggest splurge was for the Witches outfit which thank goodness is account bound not soulbound.
Just play and have fun. Most of the expensive stuff are just skins and aren’t as cool to the other players as the wearer may think.
PS: a level 80 should be able to earn at least 1G per hour of playing even with repairs. if you die too much you may be in too hard a zone, go down a few levels. Also, you may want to rework your traits and weapons. Makes a big difference. Unless you are a Ranger, the nerf hit my build so badly I stopped playing it except to go to newbie zoneswith friends.
I used to think it was really bad that a GM didn’t just poof in there and Banhammer them, then I thought about it.
So we have lots of cheap items in the TP doesn’t that make things more affordable for everyone? I think there would be just as much QQ if the prices in the TP were too high.
Also, I doubt that those botters aren’t being tracked in a database. The longer they think they can get away with it the more links to Goldsellers and Goldbuyers show up. I would LOVE it when a gazilion players who bought cheap gold, powerleveled and got the coolests legendaries to show off, get permabanned.
The longer a reported bot is up the longer they can track all the transactions and find the big boss behind it as well as all the illegal gold buyers. Then Bam get them all at once.
I’m tempted to say flipping burgers. Oops I said it.
But seriously who would give out their secrets?
Yes there is money to be made but it takes work, patience and a big bank balance to start with. I’m tempted to just buy some gems with RL$ and buy gold to start my bank, or forget trading altogether and just buy the stuff I want.
I just realized this might be a good thread to report an item where you want the spread to be closed, ie: where the item is being manipulated to increase the price artificially and you simply want to buy the item at a reasonable price.
Rofl, TBH I wouldn’t even know when a person had a legendary item vs some other cool looking item. Good for them (and Anet) if they want to spend a crazy amount of money for a skin to feel good.
Sooner or later there will be an influx of gem store skins which will be the coolest thing of the moment and for under $10 in gems which isn’t bad and supports Anet, I think that works fine.
The only mess up is the BLC drop rate for the hallloween skins. That left a bad taste for paying people.
Nope, they would rather release a patch for lame haloween skis instead of fixing hacks that allow botters to get away with inflating prices
This is the same with almost all MMOs. The devs are so caught up in making sure what they THINK players would like is added (stupid holiday event stuff), when there are far bigger and more important things that could be added/changed.
If ANet spent less time talking to their financial department thinking about how to make more money (Black Lion items!), and more time reading the Suggestions forum, then this game could be far better.
You do realize that the % of people coming to the gw2 forums and making suggestions is tiny compared to the player base?
Frankly I think they don’t spend enough time talking to their financial dept, or are under pressure from a shareholder. Which is the reason for the BLC fiasco.
I probably can’t list the name but just do a search and you may be very surprised at who the largest shareholder of Anets parent company is.
I guess you didn’t read my post. Anyway, I think they are doing something about it, I’ve seen gold spam e-mail/chat go away. Many botters which camped in one spot have disappeared.
Most likely they have moved on to more human like bots. Which they had lined up from the beginning.
These companies do it for a living 24/7 and have experience with botting on 100s of MMOs and all their attempts to stop them.
GW2 had many protections in place originally against hacking but I don’t think anyone expected that these companies had the EXACT password and login of people stolen from other sites. just waiting for GW2 launch,
Unless you know something I don’t, I bet you your so called saving will become a massive loss when all your soulbound items get lost when they track you down and permaban you. There is a trail, it is just that they probably have a big stack of illegal buyers they need to track down.
The reason bots have been gone lately is due to all the patches and needing to update their offsets for the current patch. So don’t read too much into that one.
The gold selling spam is still in full effect. Just more of a loss for them because it is alot easier to report.
If I had bought gold then yes, it would a bummer to lose it, but that is what AMEX charge backs are for. They are good for that and that is why I use AMEX solely for online purchases.
Well I don’t see much map chat gold spam anymore on my server and I only seem to get mail spam once in a while if i engage in map chat, so i think they harvest names from that.
Yes Amex has a very decent return policy on small transactions but that doesn’t stop the fact that the character you spent hundreds of hours building is lost.
Bottom line is that it is a cat and mouse game and playing catch up.
I had mentioned a suggestion sometime ago that Anet should buy a gold selling company and turn them into agents for catching offenders, Who knows maybe they are doing something like that and the next time someone trys to buy illegal gold their account is flagged.
I guess you didn’t read my post. Anyway, I think they are doing something about it, I’ve seen gold spam e-mail/chat go away. Many botters which camped in one spot have disappeared.
Most likely they have moved on to more human like bots. Which they had lined up from the beginning.
These companies do it for a living 24/7 and have experience with botting on 100s of MMOs and all their attempts to stop them.
GW2 had many protections in place originally against hacking but I don’t think anyone expected that these companies had the EXACT password and login of people stolen from other sites. just waiting for GW2 launch,
Unless you know something I don’t, I bet you your so called saving will become a massive loss when all your soulbound items get lost when they track you down and permaban you. There is a trail, it is just that they probably have a big stack of illegal buyers they need to track down.
4800 Gems from Arena Net is 60+ dollars.
4800 Gems if you buy gold from an illicit site is 16 dollars
This Negatively Affects Us And You(ANET).
Watching Prices on Pre Legendary go up 400% in 3 weeks is absurd from any economist point of view. You could say Supply and Demand.. but the truth is that inflation on a major scale is happening.
This is not a botting question because I already know you are doing nothing but stall tactics to drive off angry customers…..
This is a question asking what is being done to curb inflation to keep prices in line?
Simple common sense:
4800 Gems from illicit site =$16+$60 = $76 when they permaban you.
Inflation should be measured by overall pricing. Most items have dropped in price to vendor value. That offsets the few rares.
I would argue that there is actually deflation.
I won’t argue that Anet was caught with their pants down on the Gold farming issue. I personally didn’t realize how big a business it was until I did some research – multi-BILLION. There are hundreds of highly sophisticated companies that do it full time across all MMOs of note. They are 2 steps ahead of anything Anet can do, ATM.
Heck do a search and you can find incredibly sophisticated bots for sale by one man crack programmers. Can you imagine what a well financed farming company can do?
Note that I will caution you NOT to use any of these methods because, sellers use hacked accounts for the transaction and don’t care if the account is eventually shut down, but you will be tracked down eventually and permabanned.
TP trades across ALL servers. That is why you can switch servers with no real economic impact. Exchange rate and availability of stuff is the same on every server.
@plague
Nope, thats what i thought at first. Wasted 30 mins doing absolutely nothing but running around like an idiot in LA. The Pow Bams were coming from other players!
When you switch to a brawl enabled outfit say witch, or drink a tonic you get a whole different skill bar. 2 of which are attack skills. The bought outfits have more abilities but only 2 are attack.
The difference is I’m not calling them a bully or a griefer. Just someone who is putting more effort than me into brawling. If they want to sit there with their hero panel open and swapping weapons constantly then more power to them.
Well those people have reduced the fun factor for me. I have mostly avoided them but I see in general a decrease in interest in people wanting to brawl when i summon a Cauldron. Once things become unfun, people stop doing it. There aren’t any rewards of note other than the fun factor.
The Mad King fear is what takes the fun out of the brawl. Getting knocked into the water 10+ times by a spammer who just stands there. What is the point?
If someone is standing in one place spamming fear and you keep running into him whose fault is it?
if you haven’t noticed there are a few areas where the Mad king can stand and fear people into the water and make things unpleasant for others too. Also, unless you are a hard core PvP player you run around just having a blast until all of a sudden you end up in the water.
Anyways as you mentioned with the guy who switched between Broom, Mad king and Boxing Gloves, some bullies have taken this griefing to a whole new level.
Witch costume isn’t really all that. Yeah you can be immune on broom but that’s the best you got. The puddle has a delay at the beginning that makes you vulnerable to dmg/interuption, then you’re stationary and after the block/dmg part stops you’re still stuck sitting there, vulnerable, for like 2-3 seconds, not able to do a kitten thing.
Also Thieves can abuse the hell out of their swiftness on dodge trait so they can’t be outran.
yeah I have the Witch and the number of times I get interrupted rolleyes
The Mad King fear is what takes the fun out of the brawl. Getting knocked into the water 10+ times by a spammer who just stands there. What is the point?
At the very least put some kind of barrier that prevents the fear from knocking you out of the brawl area.
Thank you! For not just giving everyone skins. It would have been like giving every kid a trophy while not keeping score.
This will hopefully not cheapen it for those already lucky enough to get drops.
They are holiday themed skins. What’s the point of having the event if only a few people can match the theme. It’s like inviting all your friends to a toga party then randomly letting one person wear a toga.
I love this analogy.
Sure I guess someone who spent a lot of money should get a gold or pink toga to show off their wealth, but everyone should have a decent chance of getting a toga.
I wouldn’t consider my self casual – I play a great deal, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to stumble across every fact about a weeklong event before its over.
For instance, I now know that you can somehow enter haunted doors, but having tried several times I am not sure how.
You mean the trick or treat doors that pop up all over the world? Yeah I’ve been wondering myself. 90% of the time I trick or treat and nothing happens, not even some kind of snarky remark such as “get lost we’re out of candy” . 10% of the time some event happens. Why such a low rate?
@Jnaathra
This is a game, some people have more time and experience in other MMOs than others. Some have limited play time and want to be able to get into the action without wasting hours.
I personally find it too dificult to figure out what to do. It took me quite a while to figure out how to do the costume brawl properly. I was trying to fight in rented gear in the beginning. LOL.
The issue is casual vs hardcore players. It is too difficult for casual players and perhaps very easy for hardcore players.
I don’t agree. Knock downs are very easy to dodge and usually affect only one player.
Fear is an AOE that is as far as I know impossible to dodge. Like I said, the fear would not be so bad if it didn’t knock you out of the fighting area and make you lose your town clothes. As far as I know all brawl transforms only have 2 attack skills.
When i first mentioned knocked down I actually meant KO. Which is simply when the player has lost all his/her lives.
Yes, the problem is that grinding to 80 is a pain when you have done it once or twice the normal way so, if you have the money dump it into leveling via crafting.
I don’t think taking XP away is a good thing. There are already enough nerfs going on in the game. Perhaps creating more demand for intermediate items will drive prices to nearer breakeven. ie: allow them to be used in mystic forge?
PS: my guess is that most people just want to get a new profession to 80 for WvW. If that actually worked like they suggested before launch (ie: any level could uplevel to 80 and do WvW) that wouldn’t be necessary. But as we know the upleveling of a low level char makes a very weak lvl80 WvW.
One more thing, I don’t mind so much if the player is doing it occassionally while actively participating. However, this fear mechanic is being abused. I was at LA where there was a Mad King standing in one spot (near the water) not moving just spamming the fear. It was obvious he didn’t care for any achievements, just to see people fall in the water repeatedly.
He might even have been AFK with a macro running since he was there not moving for a long time.
I do have a mad king costume but I also play with others. I have been feared into the water more than once. It’s usually pretty funny.
Yeah it is funny the first couple of times, then you don’t bother anymore and leave.
The event is supposed to be fun. Losing your town clothes and having to find your way back to the area is not the same as being knocked down, which is pretty much all the others can do.
“And on top of that, the fear skill tends to fear people into the water, taking away their costume form. "
I view this as total victory.
The broom is the worst though. Dropping down from invulnerability to deliver an invulnerable attack and then getting right back on the broom. Super cheese.
I assume you have a Mad King outfit and spam fear often. There is no other skill that affects so many other players in such a negative way. Being feared into the water, what fun is that? I guess if being OPd and bullying a large group of players is fun then I guess so.
The brawl needs balancing and additional perks. I’m already starting to see fewer people want to brawl at this early stage. I would be ok with the fear if it was a little shorter and it didn’t force people out of the area into water which removes town clothes.
Well, it is an achievement that you can work on outside of the event, to my understanding. Brawl is as far as I understood, here to stay, why it’s under Community and not Special Events. Still, would’ve been nice to have a “Brawler” title.
well I have heard many people have already maxed the acievement. Also, you can’t get an achievement if people are not interested in brawling. It is fun the first few times then with no reward, people go back to grinding where you actually get drops and XP.
Yep the fear is so annoying I don’t feel like playing when there is a Mad King spamming that skill. There is no other brawl skill as far as I know that does that much of an annoying effect on such a large group of players. Way too overpowered.
The mad king outfit is OP’d. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been feared into the water, mostly by a player who is standing still and spamming fear. Might even have been AFK using a macro since I never saw him move. (I guess I should have reported)
The witch outfit, I have seems ok or even weak against certain types. The mummies and skelies seem strong, so is the Mad king. The ones you get from the Witches cauldron tend to be weak (or at least slow which can be difficult to play) the exception is the hawk which is pretty strong..
I’m not a fan of gambling, it stinks of other MMOs which have a much poorer rep. Nevertheless, there are players who love to gamble and that is fine with me as long as they are satisfied with their return on what they spent and the items are tradable so that people who don’t want to gamble can buy them either from the Gem store or from the TP. The majority of gamblers are not happy right now.
When I first heard about GW2 a year or so ago, I argued that it would not be good because of the parent company. I was assured that Anet was a US company completely different from Aion and other titles.
In the beginning I thought GW2 was amazing bugs and all. But once the Gem store started operating and with this last fiasco, I lost trust. The outside people brought in to manage the Cash shop do not have the same philosophy as Anet.
I suggest that they either replace them with more customer centric Anet staff or have a frank discussion on how to fix the loss in trust, and explain profit maximization in this company does not mean using the biz practices of less savory MMOs.
There are parts of the event that are fun. But unfortunately the Chest fiasco has many PAYING customers very angry.
I had though about buying some keys but when I saw the threads with the ridiculously low drop rates… well.
I did end up buying a Witch outfit. That was great but I fear the value of the brawl will diminish due to lack of awards, not even anything tiny, for using up Tonics etc.
I have experience with marketing and when this many customers are unhappy it isn’t a good thing. For every single unsatified customer will tell at least 10 friends (industry stats). Maybe more due to the ease with which info spreads now.
@Erebus
I think the problem is not Anet a US company, but the company they contracted to manage the cash shop Nexon a Korean company with a completely different philosophy. Look up Nexon in the urban dictionary, I was amused to find they have such a bad rep it has become an English language word.
@aliquis
if you read my thread of discussion I was using Roulette as a simple example for calculation purposes of house odds.
You are correct that in small samples some people will get nothing. If I place one bet on Red in roulette there is a 59.5% chance I will get nothing and a 40.5% chance I will double my money. IfI were to do this 100 times I would likely get near 81% return.
What you are talking about is more in the realm of lottery where you buy a $1 lottery ticket and have a very small chance of winning $1 million+ and they sprinkle smaller winnings in between so that people are motivated to keep buying.
The Chests are nothing like that because we know there is no gigantic jackpot. The most sought after item ATM is the Chainsaw and it goes for around 50G last I checked. Furthermore, it becomes soulbound once used =/= RL money or assets which can be resold.
Hopefully that clarifies my point.
The chests are very much like the lottery because there are only jackpots and consolation prizes. Nothing in between. So it is absurd and irresponsible to suggest to people that they should expect an 80% return.
no they should expect much more than 100% return long run. ie if you buy 5 keys sure there is a chance that you get nothing. But people have bought 50+ keys and got nothing they want. Most people don’t have more than $10 $20 to spend on a game which doesn’t get you many keys.
Furthermore this is a virtual game. IRL the casino has to make money because they are gambling with real money. Here, it is just a skin or other virtual item they can manufacture ad infinitum at no incremental cost other than the original graphics artists work.
Most MMOs I know of that use gambling have better odds and the rare items and the common items received are tradable.
If a casino, or any other gambling venue, only has one big prize and nothing else, they won’t last long.
People need consolation prices, or they stop puring in money, no matter how big the big prize is.
They need to get small incentives to continue.
This is one thing Anet did wrong with their chests. This simple rule.
Look at it this way. If I tell you to gamble a Dollar with me and I give you 80 cents right back. Would you do it? Of course not, that would be an awful deal, but that would be the 80% return.
Or, I can tell you, gamble a Dollar with me and you will probably not win anything, but there is a small chance that you win an enormous amount.
That’s the lure of gambling. Of course mine was an extreme example and in reality, if you gamble long enough, you will win some small amounts to keep you going. But the real draw of gambling is the small chance of winning really big.
So what is the winning really big? A 50G Chainsaw which you can buy for certain in the TP without gambling for about $100 in gems>gold.
As you can see in the threads people have spent $200 on keys and got nothing but the usual account bound junk.
@aliquis
if you read my thread of discussion I was using Roulette as a simple example for calculation purposes of house odds.
You are correct that in small samples some people will get nothing. If I place one bet on Red in roulette there is a 59.5% chance I will get nothing and a 40.5% chance I will double my money. IfI were to do this 100 times I would likely get near 81% return.
What you are talking about is more in the realm of lottery where you buy a $1 lottery ticket and have a very small chance of winning $1 million+ and they sprinkle smaller winnings in between so that people are motivated to keep buying.
The Chests are nothing like that because we know there is no gigantic jackpot. The most sought after item ATM is the Chainsaw and it goes for around 50G last I checked. Furthermore, it becomes soulbound once used =/= RL money or assets which can be resold.
Not like a casino? MMOs have relied on random loot drops and extreme rarity for over a decade. It’s part of the addiction. It is precisely how I explained the enjoyment of a game like World of Warcraft to my aging father, who knows a thing or two about the lure of a one-armed bandit but couldn’t get his head around people playing this type of game.
This current whine is also awfully similar to the complaining about legendary precursors. What is telling is that the same people aren’t committing forum seppuku over the fact that the rarity of the item being dropped from a mob is equally low, if not lower. Who cares what the mechanism is? Chest, forge, mob .. rare is rare.
Uh, BIG difference between a positive surprise while fighting a mob and getting something rare and dropping $80US RL money and getting nothing. Casinos have WAY better odds.
So, you haven’t gambled much, have you? If you were guaranteed to make a profit every time you gambled 100 bucks, casinos wouldn’t exist. Incidentally, I got the greatsaw skin and avian shoulders within the first 20 regular chests. Burned through all my boosters (about 50 MKC) and got the shield and two more sets of shoulders. Judging by the responses, I’d say I was lucky. Some will win, some will lose – it’s the whole point of gambling.
try reading some of my posts above. I went into great detail about the house odds and calculations. Say roulette at 81% return. So i spend $100 on keys and I should at a minimum get $81 back, if not in rare items, in other Halloweenish items I can sell or keep if i prefer. The problem is most of the lousy items you get are account bound.
This whole idea that you’re pushing is complete and utter nonsense. Please stop. Read up on how gambling works and how those returns you keep bringing up are computed. It doesn’t work anything like what you’re saying.
I know about math and I have done recreational gambling in Vegas. I have studied for fun the math etc behind pro gambling.
Can you please give me a very specific example of how my calculations ideas are wrong? Making a general blanket statement like you did is easy but has no foundation.
Not like a casino? MMOs have relied on random loot drops and extreme rarity for over a decade. It’s part of the addiction. It is precisely how I explained the enjoyment of a game like World of Warcraft to my aging father, who knows a thing or two about the lure of a one-armed bandit but couldn’t get his head around people playing this type of game.
This current whine is also awfully similar to the complaining about legendary precursors. What is telling is that the same people aren’t committing forum seppuku over the fact that the rarity of the item being dropped from a mob is equally low, if not lower. Who cares what the mechanism is? Chest, forge, mob .. rare is rare.
Uh, BIG difference between a positive surprise while fighting a mob and getting something rare and dropping $80US RL money and getting nothing. Casinos have WAY better odds.
So, you haven’t gambled much, have you? If you were guaranteed to make a profit every time you gambled 100 bucks, casinos wouldn’t exist. Incidentally, I got the greatsaw skin and avian shoulders within the first 20 regular chests. Burned through all my boosters (about 50 MKC) and got the shield and two more sets of shoulders. Judging by the responses, I’d say I was lucky. Some will win, some will lose – it’s the whole point of gambling.
try reading some of my posts above. I went into great detail about the house odds and calculations. Say roulette at 81% return. So i spend $100 on keys and I should at a minimum get $81 back, if not in rare items, in other Halloweenish items I can sell or keep if i prefer. The problem is most of the lousy items you get are account bound.
@NinjaKnight now I understand you. Though not sure how you apply that in GW? how do you calculte the return on a skin?
Do you mean to convert the price in gold->then to gems and calculate the $$ equivalent?
Wouldn’t that be too subjective, I mean the gold pice in the TP is simply a reflection on wheter the skin is popular or not.
And how much is “the long run” 10 chests? 30 chest? 100 chests? I gambled with 30~ chest (10 of them I payed money for) and got back a shoulder skin and 2 chainsaw skin, plus 2 BLTC kits and 30 fine trans stones adn 5 repair canisters (these items I value the most… I got booster, tonics, bankers, orbs, etc too but dont really use them) what would have been my return?
Perphas a less convoluted comparison would be better, no?
So you spend $100 RL money on keys. That is about the same as 50 Gold depending on current exchange rate. You should expect to get stuff that you can sell for at least 40G if the return is 80%. (another problem is account binding, so you have to overcompensate for that)
Many games will increase the return well above 100% for tradable items. The return only drops when the rare items drop in rarity.
But they forgot to follow the principle of Casinos where people don’t leave because they keep getting small returns that are acceptable enough to keep them going. Common skins would have solved that problem.
Not like a casino? MMOs have relied on random loot drops and extreme rarity for over a decade. It’s part of the addiction. It is precisely how I explained the enjoyment of a game like World of Warcraft to my aging father, who knows a thing or two about the lure of a one-armed bandit but couldn’t get his head around people playing this type of game.
This current whine is also awfully similar to the complaining about legendary precursors. What is telling is that the same people aren’t committing forum seppuku over the fact that the rarity of the item being dropped from a mob is equally low, if not lower. Who cares what the mechanism is? Chest, forge, mob .. rare is rare.
Uh, BIG difference between a positive surprise while fighting a mob and getting something rare and dropping $80US RL money and getting nothing. Casinos have WAY better odds.
@OP
There will always be people who gamble and I have no problem allowing them their fun/vice. I have played games where that is big business, but those returns usually net the gamblers more than they pay, not less. Which is why they do it. Usually the items are 100% tradable. Currently too many items from the chests are account bound.
Also,most of those games don’t have the good reputation Anet has. This is why there is a problem. The money people Nexon look at their crappy game and say this works and don’t see how it could affect the reputation and mechanics of GW2.
@ cancer,
the odds i’m giving are long term RETURN odds. The odds in roulette you are giving are betting odds.
Lets say the house has 0, 00, 000 in addition to the 36 black and red numbers. Then the odds of winning by betting on say a RED 16/39 = 41% or long term if you bet again and again it will be an 82% return on your money ie: you lose 18% to the house.
But you will get winnin streaks and if you stop before you go into a losing streak, then you willcome out ahead.
@Refeuh
Vanity items are big. This is a game and you want to look the way you want to look whether for RP or just because you “think” you are impressing others.
My daughter spends hours just customizing the look of her char.
One game that does it well (even though it is now a horrible P2W game) is PW. You can get skins which are almost all tradable even after use from the cash shop, they are usable in combat. Some of the super rare ones come from events or gambling items. But they all turn up in the Trading Post and after you get tired of it you can resell it. Invariably they are only cool and rare in the beginning, then later everyone has them, then it just becomes how you combine the look to suit your tastes.
I think the best idea is a suggestion somewhere that there should be multiple tiers. A common chainsaw, and a rare one. The current model is IMHO common looking. Add some blood and flames and wow that would be rare. Allowing the common items to drop more frequently and the rare to drop less would solve the problem. And the graphics work to add the flames and blood is minimal.
Spent about $30 trying to get a skin (specifically a greatsaw).
No luck so far, and I have about $10 left in gems. I am wondering if it would be best to just purchase $60 more worth to convert to gems, to then buy the greatsaw skin. I also tried the mad king chests and got candy corn.
Do you guys think the price will go down later in the event? Or would it be best to bite the bullet and get it now?
Seeing this whole thing unfold the way it is makes me wonder how many people are actually buying gold from those farmers just to get a shot at a skin. Not that I would ever resort to such measures.
Personally, if you want it now, buy Gems convert to Gold and buy it. If you can wait, it is possible that the Gem>Gold conv rate will go up and the price of the Greatsaw will go down and you may only spend $20 or so.
To do it via gambling is the worst way atm. You may get shoulderpads, or other non Chainsaw items, or nothing at all. Those odds may change due to all the angry customers.
BTW: the chainsaw is only cool now because noone has it. In a few weeks they will become fairly common amongst the rich people. So this is oneof the times when sooner is better.
5. Yes it has negatively impacted my opinion. Anet is from all accounts a great company Nexon (the ones managing cash shop) does not have a good rep. That partnership was in my opinion a disaster. (Look up Nexon on urban dictionary )
Is it worth investing in the halloween weapon skins and then sell them within a few weeks/months?
Save them and sell them just before Halloween next year, most likely the price will be higher. Assuming they haven’t come out with a Gem shop skin that is cooler at a lower price.
to show off their wealth, but everyone should have a decent chance of getting a toga.