Wintersday Rewards Update
Gaile Gray.6029
ArenaNet › ArenaNet
A message from Alexander Youngblood:
Three years ago I made it my mission to make Wintersday rewards much more simple, straightforward, and fun. The objective was to remove the excessive number of items that were hard to get rid of in favor of items that were either fun to use or were actually useful in some way. I'm proud of the improvements we’ve made in the past, but snowflakes continued to bother me. As you’re probably aware, we started improving snowflakes by making them upgradeable through a double-click. That simplified a few things, but it also created some inventory annoyance. This year we have made even more improvements that will help you spend much less time managing your inventory and more time having fun: There now will be just two types of snowflakes which will mirror the way candy corn works. All snowflakes acquired previously now convert into the common Snowflake, and you can convert 1000 Snowflakes into the new Snow Diamond.
Thank you all for your support and I hope you have a wonderful Wintersday.
Gaile Gray
Communications Manager: ArenaNet
Fansite & Guild Relations; In-Game Events; Community Showcase Live
Comments
Thank you!
Envy the Madman his musing when Death comes to make fools of us all.
De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum.
TheGrimm PoTBS/GW1/WAR/Rift/GW2/MWO/ESO/WoT/WoW/D2/HoTS/Civ6/CU/AoC
Good show, Anet. Good show.
Please Anet give us a hide Chest Armour-option. Tattoo-clad Norns everywhere beg of you.
Appreciated!
Though.. what about our material collection in the bank? That's 5 slots that are going to need some fussing over.
Many alts! Handle it!
"A condescending answer might as well not be an answer at all."
-Eloc Freidon.5692
Good change!
What sleep is here? What dreams there are in the unctuous coiling of the snakes mortal shuffling. weapon in my hand. My hand the arcing deathblow at the end of all things. The horror. The horror. I embrace it. . .
Question about high tier old snowflakes: at what rate do they down convert? Do we get more new snowflakes per higher tier old snowflakes? Or is it 1:1 conversion for any old snowflake?
I sent a note to Alexander. Either he or I should be able to answer that pretty soon.
Gaile Gray
Communications Manager: ArenaNet
Fansite & Guild Relations; In-Game Events; Community Showcase Live
The old high tiers give you more of the new currency. One Flawless Snowflake, for example, converts into 10 of the new Snowflake.
Alexander Youngblood
Designer
Thanks, but what about all the ones we have in our material storage of the various types (I have close to the full limit of material storage of each one). Do the ones above common get broken down and go .... where?
New to the game? Feel free to give a yell if you need PVE help.
What about all the runes, insignias and foods that use all the different snowflakes? I mean snowflakes are more closely related to trophies than candy corn. How are you going to handle the different tiers of Givers gear?
I'd rather see this go the Unidentified Gear route (as in an item you can open for random stuff or salvage for snowflakes). Sounds like a safer bet. Because after seeing Aether fractal stand in for Volcanic at T2 yesterday, i'm suddenly not comfortable with sweeping changes.
Ah, see you are on it, good.
New to the game? Feel free to give a yell if you need PVE help.
TY! I'm so happy! I have 500 of each tier!
It's a Wintersday miracle! Thank you! (And everyone else on the team who made this happen.)
Oh dear ... Just when I got 200 000 Flawless Snowflakes for my guild decorations. This will take a while ...
Everything has been converted to use the new Snowflake in different amounts.
Alexander Youngblood
Designer
Youngblood II you have the best avatar so far.
Happy wintersday!
Praise Gaile!
Nice. Thank you for helping to clean up inventory shuffle
A Flawless Snowflake was equal to 32 Tiny Snowflakes. Does this mean it takes 3 Tiny Snowflakes to make one of the new Snowflakes, or will I be losing snowflakes by trading in the higher tier ones?
I have a super important question for you that totally involves snowflakes.
Is that your real name? Because that's fantastic if so. Also, Snowflakes?
You can no longer trade in tiny to pristine, so it's moot. Whatever you have now converts at the the new rates, which means those of us who saved space by converting tinies to pristines lost out on 60% of our potential ordinary snowflakes.
(Could have been worse.)
Hype is the path to the dark side. Hype leads to unfulfilled expectations. Disappointment leads to anger. Anger leads to disgust. Disgust leads to "oh, new shinies! I'm back!"
Hi all,
there are some recipes in mystic forge that use different snowflakes for crafting Winter Presence:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter%27s_Presence
There is a new recipe for those elements that are needed to be crafted in Mystic Forge?
Thanks
From the patch notes: "Significant revisions have been made to the regular Black Lion Chest items with updates to the Glacial Wintersday Chest. Highlights include the following updates: ............
Previously rare weapon skins are now uncommon drops.
Previously super rare weapon skins are now rare drops."
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!
Tiny Snowflakes convert into the new Snowflake 1 to 1.
Yep!
Alexander Youngblood
Designer
Can we get ascended giver's gear yet?
I'm pretty sure I saw Tixx Givers Insignia/Inscription recipes on the Wintersday vendor.
Oh look. I have a signature now.
I'm sorry, but I'm don't understand how "the old high tiers give you more of the new currency".
1 tiny Snowflake = 1 new Snowflake.
1 Flawless Snowflake = 32 Tiny Snowflakes = 10 new Snowflakes. Not 32.
Is it intended that we lose out when converting Pristine snowflakes to the new ones?
In my opinion the rate that Flawless Snowflake converts to the new Snoeflake ist just to low. This rate punishes anybody who used to store all Snowflakes in the highest possible quality. Before the patch hit we could just salvage the Flawless Snowflake to get 32 tiny snowflakes. Now I'm getting 10 new Snowflakes for a Flawless Snowflake. That's a loss of 68.75%. I don't think this is fair.
Theoratically I Just could have salvaged my 2,000 Flawless Snowflakes and get 64,000 Tiny Snowflakes. Now I'm just getting 20,000 of the new Snowflakes.
I can understand that converting 1 Flawless Snowflake to 32 new Snowflakes could be a market crasher. But 1:10 doesn't feel right.
So trying to complete the Winter's Presence collection. Post Wintersday game release, 3 of the 10 items still report needing flawless snowflakes in the mystic forge in their in game descriptions. I already converted my different tiers of snowflakes into Snow Diamonds before realizing this. Is the mystic forge recipe actually different now? Or do I need to waste a bunch more money on the trading post to re-aquire the old snowlakes??
Has anyone been to the guild hall decorations trader to see if the Piles of Snow have been updated to require the new snowflakes, or do they still use the old ones?
Good luck, have fun.
This is exactly it, can someone at ArenaNet address why they thought that effectively deleting over two thirds of the value of an item was OK?
I have 569 flawless Snowflakes in my bank ATM, that's apparently going to get me 5,690 new Snowflakes, not the 18,208 it should be worth.
That is a misleading way to phrase it because it is no longer true. One Flawless snowflake no longer equals 32 Tiny Snowflakes.
One Flawless Snowflake is equal to 10 Snowflakes. There is no way to acquire the old Snowflakes so their old values are not relevant when asking what a Flawless Snowflake is worth.
Following the old values, there is a conversion loss, yes. This is a consequence of moving to this new system.
There are often ways to theoretically have benefitted from insider knowledge about economic changes.
Alexander Youngblood
Designer
How do I get an arctic fox mini?
The good feeling is gone
a) Trading post?
b) Inventory?
This sounds really bad. I guess those who didn't combine them before win and those who did (because inventory crunch) get punished by 2/3rd of the snowflake value. Why?
I didn't think about the Trading Post... early awareness exploitation is certainly possible unless all snowflake transactions were nullified and made impossible with the patch.
Let's be neighbours.
Yeah ... this is utter kitten. Of course the majority of people upgraded to Pristines, they were the 'go to' currency before.
I get it, there's no way to change back Pristines now ... but that doesn't answer why the decision was made to screw over everyone with the exchange.
Semantics. The fact is Anet devalued the flawless snowflake.
When a man lies he murders some part of the world – Paul Gerhardt
Just so we’re clear, I’m a solo player – Kirito
Live, Laugh, Love Kill Zhaitan Mordremoth Balthazar Joko Kralkatorrik my desire for the Skyscale I don't know... – DedTreeJig
But they also adjusted the market value with the new currency.
Folks, please look at the recipes and vendor uses to evaluate how far your "old" currency is still going by applying the conversion factors. Nobody is being ripped off with this economic change.
Let's be neighbours.
In fact, the value of all flakes increased on the TP. The pristines just didn't increase by as much.
Hype is the path to the dark side. Hype leads to unfulfilled expectations. Disappointment leads to anger. Anger leads to disgust. Disgust leads to "oh, new shinies! I'm back!"
Because it probably was easier to look at the amount of snowflakes already in the game and go from there to find a proper conversion rate, then the other way around.
Sorry, I dont see the problem. Since you cant convert to tiny back anymore, nobody got "screwed". If you still could do that AND the conversion rates would be like that, then yes. But thats not the case. You'd rather have had other conversion rates? The result would have been "3 tiny convert to 1 new", leaving you hanging if you have 2 left.
No, this is fine as it is.
Misleading? Really?
Sure, now it's not true. But that's because you decided to introduce a new item that drastically devalued the old ones. It was true up right until the moment you released the patch and decided to change it. It's also worth pointing out that this is not some theoretical value either, a Flawless Snowflake was worth exactly 32 Tiny Snowflakes, you could convert Tiny Snowflakes to Flawless ones and back no problems.
Also saying this was a consequence of moving to this new system seems a bit misleading to me. It sounds like an attempt to make this sound like some kind of unavoidable side effect. This was a deliberate decision that you guys made to reduce the value of peoples banked Snowflakes. You could have given people 32 snowflakes per Flawless Snowflake (what they were worth up until the moment you changed the system) but you decided not to.
Edit: Does this mean the value of the tiny snowflake decreased to maintain balance?
When a man lies he murders some part of the world – Paul Gerhardt
Just so we’re clear, I’m a solo player – Kirito
Live, Laugh, Love Kill Zhaitan Mordremoth Balthazar Joko Kralkatorrik my desire for the Skyscale I don't know... – DedTreeJig
Pure absolute nonsense. Given the flawless snowflakes (vs. tiny snowflakes) stock is a direct heritage from their previous conversion rate, eventhough they're not worth anything now doesn't mean that the previous conversion isn't relevant. It's still the key to their relative value. Or let me rephrase what everyone is telling : A = 32B. Everyone agrees on that one, even the devs, because it's "no longer true" (which means it used to be), and as A and B have no use now, there's no reason to say it's wrong unless it's a wintersday's miracle. Now, I summon C with the following properties : C = B and A = 10C. Which leads to 10C = 32C which is 10 = 32. Everything is fine in ANet's wonderful world.
The core thing is you're actually admitting you scrapped their relative value to less than a third of what it used to be. Just tell it like this : you snapped your fingers, and the value dropped by 68%. That way, it's not misleading. Wasn't there any way to move to the new system without the conversion loss ?
Look at that—you broke Scruffy's sarcasm meters. ~ Taimi.
Speculative insight... They moved from a Base 2 to a Base 10 system and used a 1:1 ratio of tiny to snowflake as the reference point. There are rounding errors and the potential for unintended benefits for those that saved large quantities of lower tier snowflakes. However, those people paid a real estate price over time by storing mats in that form, so magnification of their impact now is a boon that didn't come without any cost.
The new system will work out just fine. I'm happy about the consolidation and future benefits, and I'm happy for those that may benefit from having lots of lower tier materials. There's likely very few people in that situation, and I would guess the literal number of materials is low as well.
Let's be neighbours.
Eh? The recipe thing basically assumes you only had tiny snowflake before. All you have to do is to compare:
Let me help you with the maths.
If 1 tiny snowflake = 1 new snowflake, then 32 tiny snowflakes = 32 new snowflakes. Now, as 1 flawless snowflakes = 32 tiny snowflakes, then 32 tiny snowflakes =/= 10 new snowflakes. That has nothing to do with a base. And if you think that writing "10" instead of "32" is only a rounding error, then I suggest you to think about how you're supposed to round when you're multiplying integers, in a system that manages integers without any issue.
That's only they wanted to erase them. Fair and square.
Look at that—you broke Scruffy's sarcasm meters. ~ Taimi.
The cost of some items will be less. Therefore, the "buying power" of your previous flawless snowflakes is fine, relative to everything they could do. The buying power of the tiny snowflakes relative to what they were specifically used for should be the same story. The only situation where people recognize unintended benefits would be if they saved everything as tiny snowflakes. If they intend on using the new currency for uses that used to be for flawless snowflakes, they'll have triple the buying power. My guess is that few people are in that situation.
Overall, it's not a loss of "value", since the snowflakes are useless unless you do something with them. By adjusting the market/recipes/uses along with the currency, you can maintain the buying power. Nobody loses, and very few people are likely to gain a measurable advantage.
Where's John Smith when you need him?
Let's be neighbours.
Binary and Metric don't get along perfectly. Currency conversion required compression. There was no perfect solution, so they did what they could to make it fair. See post above regarding buying power.
Don't get hung up on the numbers.
Let's be neighbours.
No. That's not how that works, 11111111 in Binary is 777 in Octal, FF in Hexadecimal and 255 in Decimal. Converting from one radix to the other does NOT result in "rounding errors". The actual value remains 255 regardless of the radix. What they actually did was remove 2/3s of the value of Pristine Snowflakes when they introduced a new item.
Compression was NOT required. If they felt that 1 Flawless had to equal 10 New then they simply needed to set up an exchange merchant for the equivalencies as follows:
1 Flawless = 10 New
1 Pristine = 5 New
2 Unique = 5 New
4 Glittering = 5 New
8 Delicate = 5 New
16 Tiny = 5 New
No compression and only SLIGHT loss for the remainders at lower tiers.
Your code knowledge is excellent and far superior to mine. It was meant as an example only. Ultimately, it's a currency conversion that required compression. The value loss is relative to the base only. By compressing the value in the market via recipes and vendors, they've ensured that the buying power remains.
Per @Alexander Youngblood II.9341 , prior knowledge of the change would have led to exploitation via Tiny Snowflakes. I doubt that this was the case for anyone in any great number.
I've tried my best with several posts here, and I don't think I can explain it any other way. My post count doesn't need to climb on this subject any further... plus, I should likely do real work at work.
Enjoy Wintersday everyone! It's a great game, and I'm looking forward to playing when I get home.
Edit: No new post...
@mtpelion.4562 , I like your point. It's valid. Compression wasn't necessary; it was chosen. Your system may have been fair, but it would depend on each person's quantity of each of those tiers of snowflakes, since some are "winners" and some are "losers" (relatively). Really going back to work now...
Let's be neighbours.