Deriko.6138

Okay, so first of all did you actually read the entire post ? Probably not, else you would not even say anything at all because you would know how stupid what you just say is. Where did I or anyone else actually blamed Anet for the law ? (You should be understanding the nuances here when you'll be finished reading) So I'll take time to explain that to you. So, "get the law changed in your country" did you actually say that ? You probably have no clue about this law and how it'll never be removed so let me enlighten you first of all the law : "The gaming Commission was institued by the act of 7 May 1999 on games of chance, bets, gaming establishments and the protection of players. In a bid to appropriately guide and control the operation of games of chance, we award different types of licences." I wont take the whole text law because it would be too long. Couple of years ago this law was applied and enforced on the online gaming area because of two games : FIFA and Battlefront II as of why here it is : Both had loot box you could not pass on if you wanted to be competitive with others (player for fifa, characters for battlefront) therefore they decided to ban every loot box for the country without distinction as unfair luck based advantage (which is not in our case but they don't care). I could've talked about all of that in detail and I could add more and THAT could be complaining about the law which, I am not, I understand it and I'm fine with it. Also, there already was a lot of petitions and politics who tried to calm it down. (It didn't work, see ?) Multiple country want to adopt this law, france for exemple have a project in that area, australy too (not the entire gaming commission but the ban on lootbox inside of gaming) and once this law come into your country, will you "change the law" ? Like it's something easy to do from a day to another ? I don't think so and so do the politics. This law have been saluted by many countrys do you know what it means ? That they have the public opinion on their side, you see were I'm going with that ? The law won't change and I don't want it to. What I said is that whe should have the same experience as every other and if the law prevent it then yes Anet is responsible because whatever you might think, it represent an unfair advantage for any F2P players and also a sinkhole for those wiling to spend. You saying that tells me that in my place you'd cry about it without even trying to give a solution. Next up, as I said I spoked with an admin, who recommended me to make a forum post for my suggestions to be available to the dev team (and actually himself read it and was willing to try to make it move further into the chain) do you know what it means ? It means that even if they're doing nothing about it, they know there's a problem. If, in their opinion there was not he could have simply told me "Sorry this is the way it's intended to stay". You also could've figured that out on your own. Next, I'm pretty sure one of the last sentance of the post is : So why would you say I'm blaming Anet for this when I'm a) explaining the situation b) asking question c) giving suggestions ? Since either way I will still spend money in the game if they can't and don't want to make a change for us. This post also bring the spot on other issue such as the random ban occuring, the fact that gifting is not available for certains thing and so on. Which I believe could help them figure something out because YES it is not about the law but about Anet in this area and you could see that if you read the post there's people interested in this even tho they're absolutly not affected by this law, which mean this idea have a certain value not only for us but for others. So, no "changing the law blablabla" won't do because in the end this has nothing to do with most of it it's literally what drive me to make suggestions about the game. That's it for you I have nothing to add, even tho I'm pretty sure you won't read past the first sentance but it's fine, I know others like you could find it useful to understand. I apologize for my arrogant behavior tho, I despise this kind of thing as I'm pretty sure I'm trying to help improve things but w/e. I totally agree there's no perfect solution and in my opinion different bundle without keys is the best one. They don't even have to be a copy/past of those we have they could be a bit different and no one would complain about it. (as for exception the event one like the halloween one atm) I'll do a summary in a couple of days to clarify and adds what came for it if it goes on. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and if you have any idea that could also fit in those area I'd like to read it.

As for the win/loose situation for them, honestly I'm not sure they would loose that much (again we'd need to have an idea of the price of said bundle without keys but we need exact reduction unmber for that or for these bundle to exist). The thing is if you get to choose between the two, it's totally up to you if you'd like or not to pay a little extra for the keys and I'm sure the numbers would be close to even with new buyers who despite keys in the first place and Belgian who can't buy them at all. That's why in the couple of suggestions I've made, separating bundles for everyone sounds the more viable options because as you said if only Belgian player get x, it'll get other people mad. You are right, no one is pushing anything on anyone BUT let's keep in mind that the RNG factor in games nowadays especially the loot boxes are something really attractive especially for young people that's exactly why most of the game have some kind of loot box systems because it works. In my opinion the law in my country is a good one but a poorly designed one in gaming area, as I said it was first designed because of game like FIFA where if you don't buy you're not strong enough and what you buy is rng, enforcing player (if they want to get stronger) to buy but if you take GW2 as the exemple, the game do not enforce you to buy keys because there's this item that will make you stronger it's mostly cosmetic and QoL, all obtainable with gold.

Where exactly I asked for a way to break the law ? Tell me. Because I'm pretty sure the only thing I did was to explain the question I ASKED MYSELF and to answer these before asking question about why certains things work a certains way, again not about the law. You probably don't know what this law is about so let me explain roughly I won't get into real specifics or text book. It prevents gambling games with real money (with exception for those who have the "go ahead" of the government), for the loot boxes it's far more complicated and in a grey area at the moment. It's initially because of games like FIFA who raised the alarm because children started throwing hundreds of € games could have the approval of the Belgian government but they won't because it's too much effort for the little market it is. In our case gems can be bought with gold which mean it doesn't break the law but since gems is also the real money currency the law do apply, else we wouldn't be able to get keys in any way in the game (map completion for exemple), it's not a way to prevent gambling but to prevent real money purchase directed to gembling or else they would also removed ectoplasm gambling since gold and ecto can be bought with gold which can be bought with real money. I'll never stress enough that I don't want to break the law or bypass it, yes I asked the question to the support but in my post I am just explaining the way I asked myself if there was a way, yes some of the way I speak about (such as using a vpn to buy it) could be taken as "breaking the law" but did I asked for a solution to break the law here ? No. Did I try to use a VPN to buy it ? Also no. I suggested ways for us to be able to buy bundle WITHOUT the keys which is perfectly legit. I'm not sure what's your point here but you either didn't read the whole thing or are just trying to give me intention I don't have. The whole post explain my toughts about it and ways to handle it, as the title says it's not only about the lootboxes, this post raises some issue with VPN usage (unrelated with the gemstore). The law do NOT prevent people to gambling I'll take the exemple of CS:GO, Belgian player can no longer buy keys but if someone give a key to us we can use it, it's not against the law. Please before reacting and throwing a judgment at someone make the effort to read the post and understand it especially when you're clearly not familiar AT ALL with the subject, this doesn't help.

The point is, I don't want the law to change but I want to be able to purchase high value bundle as everyone else. This being blocked by the fact they contain either : Keys or dye kit. Also even it's not their job to interfere in that area, it is their job to provide the same access to the content to everyone including making change to this area (I'll speak about an idea below) We might come to the point, as you say a little further where they won't have a choice to take action. Multiple country already liked the idea of this law, France for exemple already has a plan to discuss this law and other country (such as Australy I believe) have some kinds of project too. Well in theory, yes it would work but since you're moving location I would take a wild guess and say that if you're unlucky you could get trapped into the security sweep (I could try to find the post but I'm 80% sure I've seen someone speaking about gettin ban for logging at his parent's house in another country), since again it's a bot and he won't make the difference between you using a VPN and someone leaving at a frontier. That's why the 2FA should be a little permissive in that area but it's just straight up useless in this area at the moment. Also I don't know if the VPN/logging in another country trick still work, I know it did work in the past since I've seen and known people buying keys in Belgium before (past law ofc) but they might have taken action to prevent that, not sure. Please do remember that I'm not complaining about the law or want it to change, I'm only speaking about the fact that it is unfair. I also just think about something but when you buy specific item out of a bundle (ex. mount skin, living world episodes) the bundle price drop, right ? Which mean Anet have the tools to say "you own this item so the price is lowered" meaning that they could say, for Belgium "You cannot buy keys, so they're off the bundle for you and it's a bit lower priced" I'm pretty sure it's the easiest fix since they already applied it to other area.

Actually I'm pretty sure I've seen the solution of using a vpn to purchase those even while being in Belgium. Even tho, yes it make them accountable to the law. I'm not sure if it's still possible but I took the chance to speak about VPN issue at the same time. As for the bundle, I'm of course talking about every bundle which includes keys and/or dye kit, them being the most interesting in my opinion (even if you remove the keys) and they do NOT have counterpart available to us. I don't hold anything against loot boxes I think it's up to the consumer, of course here we're speaking about a law so they can't do anything about it but for exemple you dislike loot boxes so you could be interested in buying the same bundles without keys If you wanted to

French ver : here Little disclaimer before we start on this topic : As I'll be discussing bundle and VPN, this post does not concern Belgian player only. Any price discussion will be in € and gems. It'll also be filled with a small amount of salt (sorry if a dev actually come across) and probably a bit of sarcasm I apologize in advance. I, yesterday decided to throw a request without real expectation to see if they had a "solution" for us to get around this lockdown which gave me an answer telling me "yeah yeah it's the law in your country" (I knew it, wasn't my question) and to make a forum post to give my suggestions (like any devs actually read it or do anything about it right ? right) So, here we go. It's been around 3 years [ref.here] now that the law have been applied to Gw2, disabling the purchase of everything including : Black Lion Chest Key/Dye Kit for us. One or both of these items being in most (if not every) bundle (Account bump/Jumpstart/Event bundle/Every dye kit/Extension prep pack, ...) the purchase in Belgium is therefore blocked. Bundles are most of the time very good deals as you will see later in the post, shame we don't have access to ANY. This is, in my opinion either a poor marketing choice or arenanet doesn't care about their Belgian player (which make sense, small country, why would you make change for us ?) I'm pretty sure I've seen post about this but hey don't forget that forum is the best place for them to hear us right. So a couple question came to me : What if I use a VPN to buy those bundle ? Yes, it would probably work so I decided to make some research about the usage of VPN for Gw2 which lead me to an incredible amount of people getting BANNED due to the security sweep occuring. I then continued my research on the topic and found this devs do encourage the usage of VPN if you're having trouble with ping or else but they DO NOT tells you that you could get banned and there's a kitten tons of player posting to forums or reddit without being answered by any devs/admins (throwback to the second sentance of this post) wandering why while their tickets take between 1 and 3 days to get answered and the ban lifted (One of them quite recent). So vpn = risk to get ban = 1-3 days of tickets to get unbanned and still wont be able to buy your thing since you got banned, meh. What if I ask a friend to gift me these bundle while I give him the money ? Great, it sounds like a good idea why not after all if I'm being gifted the bundle it's not a problem for the law. Yeah I found the solution ! Except.. no, these are the only thing in the shop you cannot gift which is another great idea as I'm pretty sure community would love to be able to gift these type of bundle (especially as giveaway/rewards for community events) VPN isn't a good idea, my friend can't gift them to me.. What if I buy these item individually ? I'll be using the wiki since I can't see the ingame price taking the account jump start as an exemple. So the bundle cost 2000 gems according to the wiki (25€ or 575 gold at the time), the game says the value is estimated at 4000 gems (50€ or 1148 gold) which mean I'd have to pay double the price for the same items which make it a great bundle unlucky I can't buy it. Now I have no idea what's the individual price reduction for these items in the bundle so I won't be able to compare without the keys (which are the issue in us being able to purchase them) but you get the point. Other question came to me after that : Why a security sweep bloody BOT is given the right to ban people for using a VPN (Especially 2FA users) ? As for regular VPN user (without 2FA) I'm not surprised since it probably help reducing botting, gold selling and else (even tho VPN doesn't mean you're a gold seller or a bot but the security sweep don't make the difference) it should in my opinion still require either a warning, staff message, automated email reporting a suspicious action or else before taking action and ban which could prevent player for being banned for nothing and have to wait 1 to 3 days to get unbanned without being sure to not get auto banned again right after and also drastically reduce the charge on tickets sends to the supports which again should help getting through tickets quickly. As for 2FA user, if they're being asked "hey is it you ?" and they say "Yes" why in the world some of them would still get banned by this ? I'm not a dev, I get that it's probably not that easy but common.. If 2FA is not enough to your security service to approve a connexion, why would you even have a bloody 2FA available ? It's pointless. Why these bundle are not available to gifting ? That's a big question, now I'm pretty sure some genius will say "because it makes them more money if you give seperate item" so I'll do it on my own and get rid of this. Putting aside the money part is there an actual reason why these bundle couldn't be gifted ? I'm 100% certains that it's fairly easy to say "only 1 of these by account" and make them giftable. Last but not least why don't you make separate bundle to content everyone ? I'll explain myself, bundles tend to be out there for a very long period of time, some of them won't ever go away until they're bought, having 2 identical bundle one with the locked item and one a little less expansive without them and say "one or the other" should be fairly easy to add, I'm sure some people don't care about black lion keys anyway and would rather buy those bundle without keys at a lower price ? Or easier, since you can region lock items on the shop it means you can adds region only items, like the same bundle without the keys either with something else or at a lower price. TL;DR You can't buy juicy bundle so you search for a solution, the solution guys says you have to make a forum post cus there's no solution, you do a forum post to say VPN are bad because a bot is doing a thing which get a bunch of people banned so that's sad and they're not giftable and not worth to buy each item alone so you ask question and give suggestions with the hope of being heard somehow. (Easy tldr right ?) I'm not a huge "spender" and in the end if I have no other choice I'll end up buying seperate item anyway but as I've been told "forums are the best way for devs to read and take advantage of suggestions" . Let's see if something actually comes out of these forums or if, as the hundred of people banned for using VPN I will also not be heard. This is the end of this rather long post, I'm sorry my english isn't flawless.