When attempting to overwrite rare infusions, require the name to be typed

I had a pretty bad experience recently where I overwrote one of the rarest items in the game (Chak Infusion). It was so easily done, I was swapping between my Condition gear and my Power gear, pulled my Chak Infusion from one pair of boots to place into the other, and then went to place my Scholar rune back into my boots - only I had actually clicked a Mighty infusion near it by mistake, and without realising I had just deleted a 10,000 gold item. I'm sure you can imagine how hard I was kicking myself.

Still, this happened way too easily. I suggest if attempting to overwrite any special infusion, that you are required to enter the full name of it as a failsafe.

I thankfully, thanks to a very kind and considerate customer support team, managed to get the infusion back - but they warned me this wasn't something they were normally able to contend with, and that I should be very careful in future.

This would be a simple change that would avoid similar cases. I did read about people doing similar things with their ghostly infusions etc.

They need to convert the Visual Effect infusions into a completely different type of item.

@mtpelion.4562 said:They need to convert the Visual Effect infusions into a completely different type of item.

They should be novelties imo, but could be 'soulbound' I suppose.

First, I'm really sorry that you suffered the loss. And I'm glad that you did the right thing: contacted support, who can nearly always offer some sort of assistance.

I'm just not convinced that this is a high priority change. There's already a warning for overwriting upgrades, including infusions; it just doesn't distinguish based on market costs, because the game has no provision to do that at all. So either the warning is in place for all upgrades (or perhaps only all infusions) or we continue with the status quo.

Then there's the question of how often this happens: if it's rare (only a few people each year), then customer support can handle it. If it's common (a dozen people per month, perhaps), then it's better for ANet to spend time programming preventative measures.

Further, there's a diminishing returns with warnings: with too many warnings, we start to ignore them all (the UI that cried wolf); too few, of course, and we have the OP's situation of losing a valuable item.

And finally, there's the Quality of Life: for every person who has lost an item (in this particular way), there are 1000s who never have... and never will. And yet everyone is going to have to type out item names to move forward. That's a huge effort from the many to prevent an inconvenience (no mater how traumatic) of the few.

Here's an alternative suggestion:Prevent the overwriting of infusions at all.

Anyone who owns an expansion can buy infusion extractors for 42s each, which safely remove all infusions from ascended gear. ANet could reduce the price to 1s and make it available to Core accounts too, if cost and/or access is an issue.

I can think of reasons in the current environment in which I'd be okay overwriting sigils or runes; I can't think of any reason I'd want to overwrite an infusion... except for that brief period when people are using AR+4 (or weaker) infusions because they are still working on building up to AR150 total. And then, that's only because the cost of the extractor exceeded the value of the infusion.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:First, I'm really sorry that you suffered the loss. And I'm glad that you did the right thing: contacted support, who can nearly always offer some sort of assistance.

I'm just not convinced that this is a high priority change. There's already a warning for overwriting upgrades, including infusions; it just doesn't distinguish based on market costs, because the game has no provision to do that at all. So either the warning is in place for all upgrades (or perhaps only all infusions) or we continue with the status quo.

Then there's the question of how often this happens: if it's rare (only a few people each year), then customer support can handle it. If it's common (a dozen people per month, perhaps), then it's better for ANet to spend time programming preventative measures.

Further, there's a diminishing returns with warnings: with too many warnings, we start to ignore them all (the UI that cried wolf); too few, of course, and we have the OP's situation of losing a valuable item.

And finally, there's the Quality of Life: for every person who has lost an item (in this particular way), there are 1000s who never have... and never will. And yet everyone is going to have to type out item names to move forward. That's a huge effort from the many to prevent an inconvenience (no mater how traumatic) of the few.

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Here's an alternative suggestion:Prevent the overwriting of infusions at all.

Anyone who owns an expansion can buy infusion extractors for 42s each, which safely remove all infusions from ascended gear. ANet could reduce the price to 1s and make it available to Core accounts too, if cost and/or access is an issue.

I can think of reasons in the current environment in which I'd be okay overwriting sigils or runes; I can't think of any reason I'd want to overwrite an infusion... except for that brief period when people are using AR+4 (or weaker) infusions because they are still working on building up to AR150 total. And then, that's only because the cost of the extractor exceeded the value of the infusion.

Yeah, your alternative change would be more than adequate, I too have no need to overwrite my infusions (I have an Endless Upgrade Extractor) and this happened purely by mistake. I always appreciate how with every post you make, you dedicate a measured and well thought out response.

I suppose with my original idea, I had it in my mind that ArenaNet would have some way to "flag" specific items.

@"ProverbsofHell.2307" said:

I suppose with my original idea, I had it in my mind that ArenaNet would have some way to "flag" specific items.They could do that, sure. They just aren't really good at it. Mostly because it's an impossibly thankless job to get the initial list of items. And because, even if they get all the flags right for existing items, they are going to have to remember to be just as accurate for every single new item introduced to the game.

To be fair, hardly any company is good at this sort of thing. It really is an awful job for someone... And heaven help you if you are good at it, because then you get stuck doing it for years. And when you finally can move on, no one else understands how to do it properly and it's worse than not having done it at all.(Case in point: the level of support for the game's API has slacked off since the last person responsible for it directly got promoted.)

I forgot to say: thanks for pointing out the potential issue and for trying to come up with a solution. I think it's quite reasonable (and kind) to want to prevent someone else from suffering the same level of trauma.

It's difficult, unfortunately, to prevent all the mistakes that even cautious people can make, without causing unintended QoL issues for everyone and/or without spending more time preventing issues than time spent fixing them manually. It sounds easy: require a failsafe. It just turns out never to be quite that simple :(

@mtpelion.4562 said:They need to convert the Visual Effect infusions into a completely different type of item.

I think that's the best idea on this topic. Just detach it from the gear since some of these effects are skin effects and others are the same no matter where you equip them, so there's no need to equip them on gear at all. Just make separate slots for them or whatever.

@ProverbsofHell.2307 said:I thankfully, thanks to a very kind and considerate customer support team, managed to get the infusion back - but they warned me this wasn't something they were normally able to contend with, and that I should be very careful in future.

This SHOULD be something they could normally be able to fix considering they allow such items of rarity to exist and too easily be destroyed. What good is CS otherwise?