Gifting an expac item you don't own

My daughter wanted to use the gems on her account to gift me a Mount Skin for Christmas. but she doesn't have Path of Fire. Although I do on my account. Why is this not allowed, to gift something that you yourself can't use? As long as the person you are gifting to can? Whats the problem.

It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

I'm with ya. This is decidedly silly. I figure it has something to do with they way the system checks for valid content purchases, I would hope, so as to prevent players from spending gems on things they can't use. But, obviously, if the BUYER can't use the item, and the RECEIVER can, why is the check not made against the latter's account? The item will never have any association with the buyer's account, so why the restriction? Seems like an oversight, because it just kicks ANet in the butt by preventing more spending / buying of gems by certain players. I'd hate to think it's some sort of insidious incentive to buy expansions you may not want or want yet, something I'd readily expect of most AAA games, but so far, not from ANet.

I brought this up in the stickied QoL suggestions thread a while back. If ANet actually reads that stuff, they already know of the issue. Whether they see it as a valid issue or something working as intended is the question.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

You owning the expansion doesn't ensure that the other one does.I'd say it's probably to prevent abuse from free accounts, but i don't think they can do that either way, so idk.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

I thought that too but after checking in game that doesn't seem to be the case. They could disable to buy button while leaving the gifting button alone. Instead right now clicking either triggers the same dialog.

If I go through the gifting options it also allows me to select my alt account that only has core unlock so it isn't trying to prevent accidents either.

The dialog also implies that you only need to have an expansion and not a specific one. That means you can gift mounts even if you only have HoT.

her account has the H0t expansion, and it still will not allow her to use her gems to gift a mount.

@Reanne.5462 said:her account has the H0t expansion, and it still will not allow her to use her gems to gift a mount.

Of course it won’t. HoT =/= PoF.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

You don't need to be able to have an item yourself to gift it though, because it's never on your account. You click the gift button, put in the recipents account name and a message to them and it's sent directly from the gem store to their account. And you having the expansion doesn't mean they will, so that's not a precaution. It would be good if the game could check whether the person you're sending it to has the relevant expansion, and if they already have that item, but it's not currently possible. (I suspect that Anet assumes you'll check before gifting to see what the recipient has and wants, like with real-life gifts.)

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

There shouldn't be any risk of abuse from free accounts though. They can't convert gold into gems (even for their own use) so the only way they could gift items is by using real money to buy gems (with the same 72-hour wait after account creation which everyone else gets) and I doubt Anet would consider that abuse.

I suspect that it's an oversight/heavy handed lock system. Just like how it's impossible to gift shared inventory slots if you've already got the maximum number unlocked because they're hidden from the gem store. Whoever designed the locking/hiding systems probably wasn't thinking about gifting at the time. But I have no idea if it's something they're planning to fix.

@Danikat.8537 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

@ReaverKane.7598 said:

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:It's probably insurance. If it were allowed, some people would buy such an item, only to find out they or the person they wanted to give to, cannot use it. Then come the complaints, and requests for customer service.

Actually they could use multiple free accounts for daily login, and daily mission rewards to rake up AP and get the 400 gem rewards, then they could gift themselves whatever they want at less then 400 gems, or keep doing it till they get to the 800-1200 gems (it can be done with dailies alone, but will take a while).

But i'd think that this kind of interaction would be covered on the trading limitations on free accounts, which is why i said idk why they would limit it in this way.

Free accounts don't get daily login rewards. I guess they could farm AP...but that only gets you 400 gems at a time, and it would be pretty slow so I can't imagine it would be a big issue. Unless for some reason there were items you couldn't buy on your main account you'd be much better off farming gold to get them that way.