Zilentnight, for someone who starts with explaining your idioms to me, you don’t seem to understand the one I used. But aside from that, your points.
The price increase to the new item from the previously available ones is 25% (Since it is 200 more than the original 800), and the only improved functionality it has is account binding rather than soul binding. This only matters if you like or want account binding. For the rest of your point to be valid, this would have to hold true. But since you want math, we can do math.
The first cost is time. To change over the gathering tools, assuming I both wanted account binding and was willing to juggle, I would have to end any session I wanted to gather on the characters I wished to gather with at a bank to store and move my gathering tools, and start the next session with another character either already at a bank, or moving to one and then back to wherever it is I am doing things with that character. Which at the very least binds me to a smaller subset of choices, or multiple loading screens to start. Let’s assume a relatively fast computer and this means that anytime I want to switch a character and expect to gather using said tools, I add two and a half minutes to my ending with the previous character and the same as starting with the other.
This is not convenient.
So I either use the basic tools (which is pretty much where I am going to be doing) or I do this extra juggling, with additional load screens. You talk as if the only cost is gems or coin. It’s not, and putting more cost on the alternative just because one item is removed and it’s replacement is given a function that some people don’t want doesn’t mean that people will be satisfied. It just means people more willing to burn the time than the rest of the playerbase will be happy.
As I am unwilling to spend as much time as you are for a convienence turned into an inconvience, we come to your point about price. You state that I would be saving 37% by being willing to do the aforementioned shuffle for two characters. But if not being willing to do so is a truth, saying that I save 600 gems by buying one gathering tool for two characters becomes facetious. Because I wouldn’t buy a single gathering tool for two characters. Pretty much ever. Any gathering tool I purchase, either infinite or normal, I bought for the character who I intended to use it on. Thus the math I get to look at is, with those same two characters, I would now need to either spend 2000 to outfit them for one sort of gathering or 6000 for three sorts when I could have done so before for 1600 in a single line or 4800 for all three types of gathering. That’s a lot of gems. Still the 25% more cost increase you yourself noted. Yes, you could make the argument that, hey, I’d be getting them for account bound and that means extra value. But it’s only extra value if that’s how you are willing to use them.
As it is, I’d be getting the tools for a extra price I don’t want to pay to do a thing with them I didn’t want to do in the first place. Making my current infinites account bound would just mean a hassle leading to other hassles, which is why I have not bothered. Account bound only matters if that is how you desire to use the tools, and it is a hinderance (a demonstratively expensive one, as we now see) if it is outside your intentions.
As to the players who purchased and supported this the first time? And the second? I am one. I applaud that ANet is giving a refund to those that ask, and has offered upgrades to those that want them. I don’t want an upgrade. I don’t want a refund. I am not saying people who are willing to give themselves the extra run-around shouldn’t be able to get account bound if that’s what they want. All I ask for is the option to not pay as much to get soul bound, since that is what I would prefer and it is obviously something that can be delievered.
How I paid for my current infinites – coin to gem or cash to gem – is not germaine to the discussion, but either way I earned the half-way equipping I have done. I am very unhappy that not only am I not going to be able to finish, but by asking if the ability to get soulbound is met not with an answer but with people saying that a unpleasant situation is better for me and not to question it.
Because it’s not better for me.
Everything I have stated is my opinion, just like, despite what you think, same with everything you stated. The recent change made a lot of people happy. Good for them. I am not saying it is fair or unfair. I am saying that I do not want this, and am asking only to have the option to purchase in the future what I could have purchased in the past.
I certainly will not be buying any of the current offerings in this line.
