Nero DarkSlayer.9206

[deleted comment] On second thought, I'm probably reacting too soon. They probably just closed my new ticket and merged it into the old one which is still open probably. They didn't ignore me. My bad for jumping the gun like that. Let's give it some time.

Another thing I was not aware of. Thank you for the tip :) Just out of curiosity, when does this wiki update? Because like I said, the news article dropped on the same day as the item. I.E. No forward notice. If the wiki you linked is updated at the same time, my argument (which I will not reiterate again) stands. If that wiki is updated prior to the famous Tuesday gemstore news updates, we can work with that.

Oh. Huh. Y'know. I was not aware there was a distinction. I was looking at the other page, which didn't have the item listed since 2018. That's useful information to know. At least now I know it generally goes on sale around march of most years. Thank you for that. Really. :) Though I still maintain my stance that the flash sale system is terrible and unethical. The argument of "luxury items" really gets under my skin. Yeah, it makes sense, and I'm all for the existence of luxury items in a game. Makes the game fun. But when those luxury items are weaponized under high-pressure, time sensitive flash sales, they become something much more shady and poor-tasting. Imean.. This is a digital storefront. Luxury items are luxury due to scarcity. Scarcity that is 100% manufactured at the arbitrary will of the company. There is no production beyond the initial design of the item. No manufacturing, shipping, packaging, property, no 3rd party distributors or retailers. No materials cost. Nothing. It costs the company fractions of pennies for the electricity that will be spun into the sequence of zeroes and ones that makes up the item's few KB of data on the server. The 'value' is derived solely from the company randomly dictating how "rare" the item is, and how it can be acquired. A game dev could simply take 5 minutes to change the drop rate of an item from 20% to .001% and BOOM. Luxury item. The existence of those items can be a very good thing. They can be rewards for performing in-game tasks or completing challenges; and in many cases, they are exactly that in Guild Wars. That I 100% support. But when those same imaginary luxury items are walled off behind psychologically manipulative paywalls, they go from being compelling gameplay rewards to hostages withheld for no other reason than to coerce even more money from people than A-Net is already making. A-Net would still turn a profit from selling the item outright, and people would be much happier overall. But A-Net wouldn't be making the absolute maximum amount of money by any means necessary. That is their responsibility as a company to do so, they have a duty to their shareholders after all, but it SUCKS that we have to live under a culture that pathologically prioritizes money over ethics when it is possible to have both; Just not A.L.L. of one or the other. And when people defend these practices for any reason -maybe they like the game, maybe cus the company has the right to do it and people falsely believe that companies are people with feelings, or maybe cus ppl just wanna be bullies-, it makes things worse for all of us because it emboldens companies to go even farther with crummy practices. They know they have support. And as long as they have that support, they will continue to sacrifice even more positive customer treatment in the name of chasing their bottom line. Like... I was heartbroken when mount skins first came out and A-Net had the audacity to shove them in LOOTBOXES. I can only imagine they came out with the mount select license in response to all the backlash. No way they'd have done it otherwise. Lootboxes are astronomically more profitable than even flash sales are. Companies have proven time and time again that there is no low they won't stoop to for money, and it is incomprehensible to me that there are still people out there who haven't realized this yet. I farmed the game for months to unlock the griffin and skyscale, but I refuse to purchase any skins for them (despite how cool they look) because I simply will. not. support. lootboxes in any sense whatsoever. And by the way, mount skin lootboxes came out right around the height of the controversy regarding Star Wars Battlefront 2 and its malicious lootbox system. Right around the time literal politicians were decrying said practices as unethical and moving to regulate them in some parts of the world. When legit politicians are calling your system unethical, you know you done messed up somewhere. But of course even then there were those who defended such practices for some fantastical reason which I cannot comprehend. I digress. This got way more off topic than I intended, but it's information I think should be considered.

Yeah, the news was posted beforehand, but for the third time. The news published on the 16th. The item was only available on the 16th. And there just so happens to be a global health pandemic going on right now. The government told me I wasn't allowed to work a year ago. I've been sitting here, wasting away in my house for an entire year. I'm sorry if I don't even know what day it is anymore. And yeah, I know it was my fault for missing the window. I admitted such (albeit briefly) in my initial post. My whole argument is that the window was unreasonably short when compared with how infrequently it goes on sale (24 hours available in a span of THREE YEARS is utterly ridiculous). and that there shouldn't even BE a window because of how psychologically demanding, manipulative and unethical it is to host immoral market models such as exclusive 'flash sales' in the first place. Sure, it is the company's legal right to do so, but it still blows my mind when people defend and endorse this kind of predatory practice. Sometimes seemingly for the sheer sake of gleaning some smug-satisfaction from posturing over someone else's misfortune. I get that impression more in the steam forums than here, but still. My point stands. I'm advocating for a freer, more open and consumer-friendly gemstore for everyone -you included-, so why on earth are you against me here?

Trust me I am aware of this game's market model. I have been for years. Just knowing about something doesn't make it ethical or just in any sense. A known evil is still an evil. I did check the news. Like I said in my initial post, I check the news several times a week. I wouldn't have missed the sale if it had been up for more than TWENTY FOUR KITTEN-LICKING HOURS after THREE YEARS of absence. That's the issue here. It's not that I was unaware of the system. It's that the system is downright ABUSIVE. And I couldn't really mark the date of that item because like I said, the gemstore news article published THE SAME DAY the item was on sale. There was absolutely no forward notice on that item whatsoever. Imean jesus christ... I know you guys are just trying to help, but it's irritating when I'm told to do the thing I literally already said I did in the initial post. It just sends the message that people aren't even reading what I wrote before chiming in.

I can remember one time a few years back I bought an item, had an error of some kind, and they mailed me a replacement. I think it was the harp or flute or something. Iunno if they changed the rules recently or something. Maybe I just sent a ticket to the wrong department. I sent the ticket to the purchasing support team. Should I have sent the ticket to game support or something?

Yeah the reason they only sell items for one day is to psychologically pummel people into logging into the game every day and spending more time overall in the store. Thus maximizing the amount of time you spend getting advertised to, and therefor vastly increasing your likeliness to make a purchase. Because you're forced to spend all your time sitting in the market for the one thing you DO want, and are manipulated into buying things you might not normally buy because you won't get another chance to. It's called FOMO in the business (Fear Of Missing Out). The same concept behind pre-order bonuses. And if A-Net wants to reach out to me and make a special sale, I'd be overjoyed. But I doubt they will. I already submitted a ticket and they basically told me to get lost. Though if they did make a special sale just for you @Randulf.7614 , I'd be very interested to know exactly what you did or said to get that sale. Because like I said, I already asked and they said no.

Thank you for your concern, but I'm afraid I already tried that. I explained the situation far more calmly than I did here, and support still said they won't help. Which is part of the reason I'm so heated in this thread. I genuinely do feel like A-Net just spit directly on my face.

I've been waiting for three years to buy the lava lounge pass. I even posted about it in the gemstore request thread back in October 2020. I check this game's news feed at least twice a week, but come on. I can't check the news EVERY day. The pass was on sale for ONE DAY. Out of THREE DAMN YEARS. I missed the sale by TWO DAYS. Yeah, I get that's on me. But there's little more infuriating and insulting than diligently supporting a game for the better part of nine years, convincing at least a half a dozen of my friends to try it out, and then to be slapped in the face by marketing models that demand I spend every minute of every day playing this game. I sent a support ticket asking very nicely for leniency. Even offered to pay full price for it. Of course they told me 'no'. I fully expected them to. I'm colossally pissed off all the same. I mean the news article dropped the same day the item did, so there wasn't even any forward warning. it was literally 24 hours from the word go, out of nowhere. P.S. Here's my quote from the gemstore request thread. Oct 28 2020 "My only wish is for the (permanent) Lava Lounge pass to be on sale again. I've been checking the gw2 news feed every few days for like a year now waiting for it." I got news flash, A-Net. I'm a PERSON. I like to play other games. I like to consume other media. I've been playing Valheim the past few days, so I missed the sale. Sue me. I think it is outrageously unfair to miss out on something I've been waiting and asking for for YEARS just because FOMO market models happen to be profitable, albeit disgustingly draconian and manipulative towards consumers. I mean come on. The item was up for TWENTY FOUR HOURS. If the item was on sale for one day, but available for a few, this wouldn't have been an issue. But no. it was available for ONE DAY. That is just disgustingly disrespectful of people's time. I'm over here BEGGING to give you my money, but you won't accept it because I failed to log into your news feed EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. Amazing.. Amazing what corporate number crunchers will demand of people for the sake of turning a profit, isn't it? ... Nine years... Nine goddamn years I've been playing this game. Thousands of hours... Probably at least a thousand DOLLARS grand total over those years... And then this. Thanks Arena-Net. Good to know you care so much about your most loyal customers.

My only wish is for the (permanent) Lava Lounge pass to be on sale again. I've been checking the gw2 news feed every few days for like a year now waiting for it. It first came out in like 2016, then got brought back for a while in may of 2018. Now its 2020. The math checks out to me. making it a bi-yearly thing sounds reasonable.

Yea I get what you're saying, but I wouldn't call the invisi shoes "prestige drops." Auras, precursors and legends all have super awesome looking, unique and flashy models / particle & light effects that broadcast to everyone how advanced you are in the game, as such they are very rare and highly sought after. The invisi shoes don't fit that description. Quite the opposite actually, they are the lack of a skin. In most cases, others don't even notice the lack of skin (unless they're abnormally perceptive, or straight up looking for it.) The next part of the issue is possible substitutes. No other items in the game share skins with auras and legends. At least 90% of them have no duplicate in the game. They're unique. The invisi shoes serve only to reveal the base character model while retaining stats. The base model is nearly identical across all players (not counting species). The character creator isn't that in-depth. You could simply unequip your boots and achieve the exact same visual effect as having the skin. You cannot do this with other "prestige items" in the game. And that brings us to the stats. I have been playing with my shoes unequipped on... maybe 3 of my 9 odd characters for literal years now. Both solo, in party, dungeons, and in zerg. I have never noticed a difference in performance stat-wise. GW2 isn't and never has been a particularly difficult game, so the loss of boots stats is easily worth far more than the time it would take an average player to farm up the gold (or money) to buy the skin, or, god forbid, farm the actual item drop itself. Finally, there's the sheer confusion aspect. I'm not very well versed in auras, so I can't speak on that, but precursors can drop from nearly anywhere as far as I know. It doesn't matter a whole lot where you look for one. The leges require the player to explore the whole map and do a plethora of different activities, ranging from WvW all the way to item crafting. All of which can be worked on simultaneously alongside other activities. Dailies, farming, story quests, etc.. In a way, leges are a reward for playing the whole game. Compare that to the invisi shoes, which only drop from one enemy, which always spawns in the same spot on a handful of maps, requires an otherwise unappealing perk unlock to access, and has no unique mechanics other than "kill the bullet sponge", has a similarly hopeless drop rate to precursors, and can only be done once per day. Both are similarly grueling to get your hands on, while one is clearly superior to the other in almost every way, on top of the invisi shoes being easily substituted. All in all, I just don't see a reason for this specific item to be as weirdly valuable and rare as it is, when i believe 3 of the 6 armor slots have visibility toggle options already. This item is just... SOOO expensive and SOOO rare when its literally as easy as unequipping an item to get a near-identical result. The whole thing is just baffling to me.

Yeah, I bought into the hype for the first day. I killed two bosses before I came to my senses and realized:"Y'know what. I'll bet that ad was deliberately (vaguely) worded to make the drop rates seem much higher than they actually are, and that this is just some marketing trick to boost player count for whatever reason." I then logged out, because I knew I'd be spending 10+ hours playing content that I've already done to death just for like a .00000001% chance of getting something good.

This video gives an in-depth analysis of this kind of lootbox system.

Then how about don't bother MAKING the non-shiny skins, and focus on making the ones people actually WANT. The reason the crap ones are in the lootboxes are so people unlock those instead of the ones they want, forcing them to keep buying the lootboxes to get the one they want. With a one in thirty chance of getting the one you want, you'll need to buy WAY more than just one lootbox to get the one you want. If you end up getting lucky and only buy ten lootboxes, that's still FOUR THOUSAND GEMS you spent on ONE DAM SKIN. And that's not even taking into account whether or not the odds of each one dropping is equal. There are no drop tables yet, so the really cool looking ones could have a one in sixty or even EIGHTY chance of dropping rather than a one in thirty, artificially forcing you to buy EVEN MORE THAN 4000 GEMS on lootboxes to get them all. This is purely anecdotal but most people who have talked about buying 3-6 contracts have all stated they got Springer mounts mostly in the initial drops, I barely use my springer so you could be on to something there I'm not on to anything; that's exactly how these systems work. If you don't give players what they want, but make them FEEL like they're getting closer, they'll keep buying without ever realizing how much they ACTUALLY paid to get the thing they want. It's corporate greed 101.

Translation: We've made this thread so we can ignore you all in a group rather than than ignore you individually in the dozens of new threads flooding our forums.