Candy Corn Gobbler change bugged? Or unadvertised limit on buff purchases?

[jabber.6415]

I wonder if the change to the candy corn gobbler is bugged, or else has some internal limiter involved? I just bought 83 from it (~250 candy corn pieces) and got 1 hour of EXP buff, 1.5 hours of magic find buff, and about an hour of the others. PReviously, I would get 5-6 hours of XP buff alone using about 750 candy corn pieces. A guildie of mine reported buying 1k worth of candy corn pieces form it and got 1 hour EXP buff and 2 hours magic find buff. I know it's meant to be random, but that seems disproportionately weighted toward not getting the buffs I think.

Side note: I posted this elsewhere in a totally unrelate post accidentally, so I'm trying agin in the bugs forum witgh a fresh one to see if others are noticing the same thing.

2nd edit: I can further clarify this by saying that I left the # to purchase at 1 and just clicked buy over and over about 15 times (spending 45 candy corn pieces), and I got 1 hour of the XP buff and 30 min of the magic find buff, plus some of the others. So are we meant to still be buying this one at a time from the new vendor interface? I mean that beats waitin 5 seconds between purchases, but that could be better explained if that's the intended functionality.

Edited March 19 by jabber.6415
Adding further testing results

[TieMyShoez.5972]

650 candies for 2 hours of XP boost. Previously I could easily get 2 hours of XP boost from 1 stack of candies.

Lets hope is a bug or oversight. Shadownerfing a gem item is not cool. 

 

[Swooz.7596]

they better fix it or we riot

[Vavume.8065]

After 7-8+ years of legit clicking this thing I am very thankful for the new change, except that the XP nerf needs to be reverted. 

Edited March 19 by Vavume.8065

[alteriel valie.4751]

They nerf the xp duration and gave magic find more though!!

p.s Rip autoclicker 😄

Edited March 19 by alteriel valie.4751

[disForm.2837]

QoL is great, but the output is abysmal compared with previous version. Granted, very small sample of a couple of stacks. 

If that's the case, not cool, we paid gems for the gobbler.

[Sobx.1758]

Would be better to remove the randomness of it by applying desired averaged out costs to each effect, but still a good change to remove the need to spam it.

Edited March 19 by Sobx.1758

[leila.7962]

They give us something with one hand and take something else with the other hand.. no more autoclickers but way less buff time and chance of getting it..wtf

[Jampire.4593]

Exp booster chances significally lowered

250 candy corn (2g for now) => 16 min exp boost.

I don't think it's useful after this "QoL improvements".

Edited March 19 by Jampire.4593

[LSD.4673]

There's no possible way they could be fool enough to mess with the output, rendering an item with a niche purpose utterly worthless. There's absolutely no wa-

Wait, yeah, ArenaNet. My mistake.

[SlothPowah.1072]

Most players use the Candy Corn Gobbler for the XP boost. The others are not desirable outcomes: magic find is trivial to boost separately when relevant and karma is in plentiful supply without boosters. Stat increases are meaningless in open world.

PvE players use it to farm more spirit shards. Competitive players use it to complete reward tracks faster. This is a nerf for everyone.

If this was intentional, I would love to learn more about why this was done. If not, this needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

[Jampire.4593]

10 minutes ago, SlothPowah.1072 said:

Most players use the Candy Corn Gobbler for the XP boost. The others are not desirable outcomes: magic find is trivial to boost separately when relevant and karma is in plentiful supply without boosters. Stat increases are meaningless in open world.

PvE players use it to farm more spirit shards. Competitive players use it to complete reward tracks faster. This is a nerf for everyone.

If this was intentional, I would love to learn more about why this was done. If not, this needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

they want us to buy heroic booster for 150 gems each 😁

[illuminati.8453]

Revert the nerf ANet!  

[Cernoch.8524]

wait what? And here I was happy we dont have to click anymore...

[Jampire.4593]

With new prices of candy corn, it's around 3-4g for 1h of XP buff, 70+g for 24h. Before patch it was 5-6 times less.

[Kaatora.3186]

The distribution of boosts received from the candy corn gobbler seems to have changed, but no mention in the patch notes.

It used to be heavily weighted towards giving the XP boost the most, followed by magic find by quite a distance away, then maybe karma, and finally followed by the other 3 much more rarely. Now, distribution seems close to even, as in each boost seems just as likely? I haven't tested it extensively, and I'm not really willing at the current candy corn prices when I'm not getting as much of the XP buff as I used to.

Keep the vendor interface. Fix the boost distribution back to what is was previously.

[VictorLeal.4102]

4 hours ago, jabber.6415 said:

I wonder if the change to the candy corn gobbler is bugged, or else has some internal limiter involved? I just bought 83 from it (~250 candy corn pieces) and got 1 hour of EXP buff, 1.5 hours of magic find buff, and about an hour of the others. PReviously, I would get 5-6 hours of XP buff alone using about 750 candy corn pieces. A guildie of mine reported buying 1k worth of candy corn pieces form it and got 1 hour EXP buff and 2 hours magic find buff. I know it's meant to be random, but that seems disproportionately weighted toward not getting the buffs I think.

Side note: I posted this elsewhere in a totally unrelate post accidentally, so I'm trying agin in the bugs forum witgh a fresh one to see if others are noticing the same thing.

2nd edit: I can further clarify this by saying that I left the # to purchase at 1 and just clicked buy over and over about 15 times (spending 45 candy corn pieces), and I got 1 hour of the XP buff and 30 min of the magic find buff, plus some of the others. So are we meant to still be buying this one at a time from the new vendor interface? I mean that beats waitin 5 seconds between purchases, but that could be better explained if that's the intended functionality.

Can confirm maybe it's bugged, i get more xp buff buying 1 by 1

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

I've been talking with some of our designers about this. Any change is unintentional and they are looking into it to see if something is happening that shouldn't be. 

[jabber.6415]

6 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I've been talking with some of our designers about this. Any change is unintentional and they are looking into it to see if something is happening that shouldn't be. 

My expectation would be that using the new interface to buy 83 boosts (~250 candy corn pieces) would be the same as me clicking the old one 83 times yesterday, but so far in our limited testing this seems not to produce the same amount of buffs as the previous item.

[Sobx.1758]

How about just deciding on a set value (considering the regular costs and chance) for each of the effect and removing the element of randomness from it altogether?

[Sunyavadin.7962]

Either I have had the worst streak of abysmal luck in the world testing this on both my accounts, or the XP buff has been nerfed into the absolute ground, because I am getting a ratio of about 4 hours of each of the other buffs to 15 minutes of the XP buff since the change.

Edited March 19 by Sunyavadin.7962

[Seaunicorn.9317]

Is it possible to have options in the new window to select which booster we need? Take the randomness out of it completely. So XP booster for those who wants it, Magic find for others and if someone wants to RP as a spider, that as well.. ?? 

[Sunyavadin.7962]

Just now, Seaunicorn.9317 said:

Is it possible to have options in the new window to select which booster we need? Take the randomness out of it completely. So XP booster for those who wants it, Magic find for others and if someone wants to RP as a spider, that as well.. ?? 

The random nature of it is intended as part of the balancing of it vs more reliable, more costly alternatives.

[Sobx.1758]

4 minutes ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

The random nature of it is intended as part of the balancing of it vs more reliable, more costly alternatives.

The idea involves adjusting the costs appropriately. They should know the intended probablility of each of the effects which basically makes up a relatively stable cost of each of the buff in the long run one way or the other. The point here wouldn't be to make it cheaper.
The ability to choose to use the gobbler xx times is already a good step, but why is the random element needed there?

Edited March 19 by Sobx.1758

[Seaunicorn.9317]

15 minutes ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

The random nature of it is intended as part of the balancing of it vs more reliable, more costly alternatives.

If we are talking economy, the randomness makes no sense because the price of candies won’t reach the price of alternate boosters no matter which way it works (random or not)

alternate option for the same XP booster is 3 BL keys or 100 Gems for 2hrs.  That’s about 45 gold-ish? Even with randomness, a 2 hour worth of XP boost from gobler will NEVER be close to 45 gold. So what’s the purpose of randomness other than being annoyance to players? Someone who wants to boost XP is not suddenly gonna RP because “they are now a ghost”.  (Not considering the laurel xp booster because that’s a limited currency and one would be mad to use that for 30 min XP boost). 
Agree that the gobler was originally designed as a fun gizmo with xp booster as one of the options. But players (customers) repurposed it over the year for XP boost. Now the same customers are asking to further improve the item. Why would there be any reluctance against that?