Guild Wars 2

Anet introduced a potentially real world money using gambling mechanic without posting odds of winning. That’s shady. People complaining absolutely have a right to do so.

We complain because we enjoy the game of GW2 and would like honest and positive business practices to accompany it.

Akhet.6527:

Hats off to fizzypop for taking a positive thread on the internet and turning it into exactly what we all expected.

If you’re so disappointed by this game as you have continually complained, why on earth are you still here? It’s like digging your own grave and then complaining that you died in it.

It wasn’t a positive opening post. It was demeaning those of us who disagree with manipulative gambling cash shop practices. Fizzypop did nothing wrong.

nimajneb.3871:

One short expansion on my thoughts, then I’ll let this drop.

I’ve used the cash shop, specifically for bank space and character expansion slots (altitis confirmed and untreatable.) I will never… ever… ever pay cash money for something that COULD give me an item/skin/etc. in a game. Whether it be real life cash or fake life gold, my view is that gambling is a sucker’s game. If you enjoy it, great. I don’t. Beyond buying the occasional Mega Millions ticket, in case lightning strikes three times in the same place consecutively, I don’t gamble and here’s the point that I’m belaboring getting around to. If you’re unhappy with that model of monetization that ANet has setup… don’t pay them. It’s that simple really. They are indeed in business to make money. If they discover this system doesn’t do it for them, you can bet that they will find other ways to part us from our coin. I suggest it be with lots of town clothing options, because I’m a total clothes kitten. Whatever they choose though, vote with your dollar/ducats. ANet will get the message. No need to worry there.

The problem is that gambling hits parts of the brain that bypasses usual thinking.

It’s manipulative and causes people to make poor or irrational decisions. There is a reason that so many places in the world regulate it. Because it’s scientifically shifty.

Sanarian.9614:

Snerf.1650:

Sanarian.9614:

nimajneb.3871:

drops two cents in the bucket

Something I don’t understand. Folks are angry because they gamble and they lose? At its core, that’s what’s up, yes? You can’t make a pretense of estimating odds from a hundred chests. That’s no way near statistically significant (math background). You would need thousands and thousands of chests to start getting any real picture of what’s going on with the RNG. Regardless, whether the drop is 5%, 0.5% or 0.000005%, the point is still the same. When you gamble, you accept risk. You’re buying scratch off lottery tickets in a virtual world, for the sake of Ned. The best case scenario in which you win, you end up with nothing to show for it but a few pixels and some limited cool factor you’ll care about for maybe a month or two before you move onto the next cool thing. So reality check, do not spend your real life money gambling unless you’re completely comfortable losing that money.

You’re right. We shouldn’t waste our money buying things from the cash shop if they’ll continue this trend. That’s precisely whats going to happen, and I’ll tell you what, that effects everyone that plays this game. If they can’t pay their employees the game doesn’t tend to do so well.

I think its natural to assume that anyone is still here after the “new MMO must play for a month” group left that we want the game to succeed. The whole issue, as has been said, comes down to the fact that this alienates customers and discourages repeat buyers. Which does, in fact, hurt the game as a whole.

Gambling is a scummy use of the cash shop. Period. Bank slots, char slots, server xfers are all fine.

But turning an awesome game like gw2 into a fly-by-night ftp mmo cash shop nightmare with gambling lock boxes being used frequently is the bottom of the barrel.

Couldn’t agree more. I’d have happily forked out two-thousand gems for a single rare, especially knowing it helps to support the game. But with this I don’t feel like I’m supporting the game, I feel like I’m supporting highway robbery. Which is totally cool and all… but…

You know, this is my feeling as well. I’m all for giving x amount of gems for y product (that is non combat affecting).

But when they want me to give x amount of gems for z chance at y items. That is scummy to me.

Sanarian.9614:

nimajneb.3871:

drops two cents in the bucket

Something I don’t understand. Folks are angry because they gamble and they lose? At its core, that’s what’s up, yes? You can’t make a pretense of estimating odds from a hundred chests. That’s no way near statistically significant (math background). You would need thousands and thousands of chests to start getting any real picture of what’s going on with the RNG. Regardless, whether the drop is 5%, 0.5% or 0.000005%, the point is still the same. When you gamble, you accept risk. You’re buying scratch off lottery tickets in a virtual world, for the sake of Ned. The best case scenario in which you win, you end up with nothing to show for it but a few pixels and some limited cool factor you’ll care about for maybe a month or two before you move onto the next cool thing. So reality check, do not spend your real life money gambling unless you’re completely comfortable losing that money.

You’re right. We shouldn’t waste our money buying things from the cash shop if they’ll continue this trend. That’s precisely whats going to happen, and I’ll tell you what, that effects everyone that plays this game. If they can’t pay their employees the game doesn’t tend to do so well.

I think its natural to assume that anyone is still here after the “new MMO must play for a month” group left that we want the game to succeed. The whole issue, as has been said, comes down to the fact that this alienates customers and discourages repeat buyers. Which does, in fact, hurt the game as a whole.

Gambling is a scummy use of the cash shop. Period. Bank slots, char slots, server xfers are all fine.

But turning an awesome game like gw2 into a fly-by-night ftp mmo cash shop nightmare with gambling lock boxes being used frequently is the bottom of the barrel.

Not all of those complaining are “gimme now” people. I’m an adult with a life and full job that I work hard at.

Luck is not a fun mechanic. Reward based on skill or REASONABLE time. Make the skins require a dungeon run, or jumping puzzle, or something like that. Not a lucky roll on the random number generator.

Vithaar.8637:

@ Kristine, negative, I got it from opening a BLC chest, those are perm skin

Then you got extremely lucky. It isn’t an example of what most people can expect.

@DonQuack that’s great. I mean it. It’s cool that you are having fun running around.

However, for the casuals of us that find other areas of the game fun (like getting "things), this is a serious disappointment.

Vithaar.8637:

I logged in this morning 1 hour before work. I was able to mine 75 candy corn, get a scythe skin for mah staff and do a bit of costumes things and start the Act 1.

dunno pretty nice for casual

How did you get the scythe skin? Did you luck into the sub 1% chance to loot it in a black lion chest?

That’s not a really good example if so.

RShara.3265:

If your idea of fun is to get the super-unique, hard to find, requires lots of time skins, then okay, I guess it’s ruined for you for not being able to play 18 hours a day.

But I can still smash a pumpkin in your face and laugh my rear off about it (that’s called fun)!

My fun is getting neat things for my character that last throughout my playtime in gw2. It’s not running around and pressing F by a pumpkin 100 times.

But that’s besides the point. My point is that gambling mechanics (black lion skins) and legendary requirements for skins go counter to the “have fun for the holiday!” idea.

Why not just have a vendor sell the neat skins for a gold or so? It would prevent them from being trash, while still having them accessible to all players.

Then in the cash shop you simply sell the black lion skins for a set amount of gems rather than appealing people’s addictive gambling responses.

RShara.3265:

No, they said no grind for top level gear, grind for aesthetics only. Which is exactly what these are.

FYI—I only get to play maybe 2-3 hours a day max, between job and family and health issues. There’s no chance I’ll ever get a Legendary. But that’s because I don’t have the time and resources to get one. That’s fine. I get what I can work for. Fair deal.

The difference is that this is a holiday “fun” event. This isn’t end game stuff where you can work at it for a year. This is a one week fun event ruined by grind and gambling mechanics.

RShara.3265:

It’s like….I don’t want to work 40 hours of overtime every week, but I want to get paid for 80 hours of work anyway!

This is a video game. This is not a job.

Many of us have jobs and real life obligations and simply cannot treat it like a job. We want to be able to enjoy things as much as those of who do not.

Make the rewards come from skill. Require defeating tough mobs, or doing tough jumping puzzles.

Making things require grinds of either money, time, or gambling are not good solutions.

Kana.6793:

zxosz.4097:

@kana because that is the way this world works

Ok. Well it’s also the way this world works that you can’t have everything. Especially if you’re unable to put either a lot of time or a lot of money into getting it.

It’s not about not being willing to work for things, it’s about things requiring unreasonable amount of work.

If you require something that takes people playing the game 15 hours a day for a week straight to get, that’s unreasonable.

That’s what these Halloween items will take. Insane amounts of time, or insane amounts of money. Neither of these things jive with anet’s stated “no grinding, have fun” philosophy.

So the chainsaw has dropped in price to 10g?

My thread should not be merged into this topic. It is about the gambling nature of the holiday event, not about what some guy got when opening his chests.

Like many people, I am seriously disappointed with how Anet is handing the black lion chests.

I understand you need to make money in the cash shop. Fine. Do it with skins for gems at a STANDARDIZED rate.

However, sticking neat content into the boxes as rare gambling fodder is just gross. And doing it with such a small drop rate is just the icing on the cake. This is promoting unhealthy gambling behaviour and is completely unnecessary.

The Anet RMT philosophy was that you could REASONABLY get the same items through just playing the game. I cannot REASONABLY or reliably get the weapon skins through just playing the game. 40g that the GS skin is going for is insane.

This is really putting a damper on the otherwise fantastic job Anet has done with the art design and world building of the event.

Once again, I had a response typed up that was lost by a site error. Grr.

Anyways, I’m in the camp that would prefer the warrior rifle line to our own for sure.

If they replaced 3, 4, and 5 with a volley, rifle butt, and kill shot, it would be my perfect skill bar

To sum up. Right now selling the materials will generally make you more profit than using them to craft and selling the finished product – particularly when you factor in cost of leveling the tradeskill up.

That is a fact. Whatever your time is worth to you is irrelevant. Regardless of how much you enjoy crafting (and I do enjoy it and am a completionist, so I’m going for all 8 crafts maxed anyways).

Why? It’s is a combination of how the TP works, all characters being able to learn all crafting skills, xp gain through crafting, and GW2 being a new game where many people are leveling up and want to match crafting with character level.

If you want to make gold in a non-combat method in GW2, playing the market by buying/selling is a better bet.

Really, the issue is that omnom bars take vanilla and are far and away the most used food item at lvl 80 for the magic find/gold find.

Sure they also take butter and eggs but we all know how common butter is and eggs can be acquired all over the world through regular activity.

I’m actually quite curious why these items are soulbound in the first place.

As someone that has lots of alts, it would be great to be able to swap them around to particular characters as they are in appropriate zones. Making them account bound could only be a good thing, and I would love it if this change was made. It hurts my mild ocd to have to lug around and keep many different kinds of gathering tools with varying amounts of uses

Well I had a whole response typed up that got lost when I got a posting error that I don’t have the energy to redo. Apologies on the list form.

But it summed up as:

- That’s a tough combo for visuals
- I found medium armor to show best on asuras – the small size of them makes it tough to see a lot of details unless someone looks close.
- There are some neat looking gear that can be gotten from various heart vendors at all levels
- Mystic forge can make items that look like skulls/chains/etc that overall I personally prefer to flashy legendaries like rainbow shooting my little pony bows.

Moonpuncher, as a counterpoint – that’s just your opinion.

I like the understated more practical look of simple lower level gear even at 80 and absolutely hate “that other game” type of end game armor. Spikes sticking out of everywhere and enormous castles on each shoulder do not appeal to me at all.

Legendaries are optional content that’s available if you want to put in the time and energy and like the particular look. I think that there is plenty of pre-level 80 gear that looks awesome, and plenty of it I would use over legendaries anyways. Just about all of the pre 80 leather is sweet. The scale heavy armor is awesome. And I really love all of the charr-themed steampunk-esque weaponry. That’s just to name a few.

Hi Linsey, thanks for taking the time to discuss this with us.

I do understand removing them from coin/karma. That’s fine.

The issue is that they now push out other materials to the point where natural crafting paths are altered.

A few possible suggestions to consider:

1. Look into alternative methods of cloth/leather generation. Butter/chocolate taking these spots can be quite noticeable in lower tiers particularly.

2. Bring the Butter/Chocolate/Oranges to more specific geographical locations. IE. certain spawns or areas dropping significantly higher percentages of the ingredient. It still requires players to adventure to receive them, but takes them out of the common loot pool of most bags.

3. Re-examine the rate at which low-mid tiers generate fine crafting materials. Butter/chocolate generation itself is less of an issue than the impact (or perceived impact) on an already frantic scramble for fine materials.

Looking for a mid-high level explorable zone with a cooking crafting station in it to speed through the 100k xp survivor monthly. (As I’m told that zoning or logging out resets the counter just like dying does – which is horribly messed up)

Does this exist?

bFusion.7314:

Snerf.1650:

Slightly related, does crafting xp work for this if all the xp is gotten without zoning or logging out?

From what I understand, crafting XP works. The area where I got my 100k XP didn’t have crafting stations so I cannot verify this personally, but I do not see why it wouldn’t work.

Heck, even the ~1,000 XP I received for completing the “75k XP without dying” milestone in the monthly achievement counted toward it

Thanks! This makes me wonder if there are any higher level explorable zones with a cooking station.

If what you guys say is true, I’d very much like to hear an ArenaNet response on this.

It seems like either a large bug or a large design oversight.

Slightly related, does crafting xp work for this if all the xp is gotten without zoning or logging out?

I’ve been running into an issue trying to complete my monthly experience survivor achievement. (Finished all but this part).

My counter appears to stop going up when I log out. I’ve hit 80some thousand xp a couple of times now without dying, but then when I inevitably need to log out and take a break or sleep or whatever, the counter stops.

Is this intended? Known?

I can’t imagine they would purposely make it so logging out of the game stops it. Not only does this encourage unhealthy behaviour, it is simply not doable for those of us with a job/family that prevents us from sitting down for many hours at a time.

As a follow-up, can anyone recommend relatively painless ways to go about hitting this achievement? My highest level is only 53, so no level 80 areas please.

Edit – I’ll also add that at no point during this time did I even go into a downed state. If leaving a zone resets the counter, that REALLY needs to be clearly stated.