Wintersday Rewards Update

[Neutra.6857]

@jheryn.8390 said:

@ThomasC.1056 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

Converting as I proposed would have meant that all snowflakes would be equal in value to one tiny snowflake under the old system. Extremely simple math. No converting necessary.Yes, and converting as you proposed would have tripled the number of ordinary snowflakes in the new system, which would have been enough to overwhelm the early demand. Prices would plummet and everything would have been worthless at the start.

This is where your reasoning fails :

overwhelm the early demand

. That's not a simple offer/demand question, because the same people can alter both offer and demand the way they please. So the TP could have not crunched.

Just ask yourself : demand by whom ?

The final destination of flakes are probably a NPC vendor or a craft station. Flakes have no value for themselves as gear would. And who controls the costs in those specific places (demand) ? The very same people that evaporated the stockpile (offer). Those very people that could have just kept the overall amount of flakes ingame, and adapt the crafting and NPC costs accordingly to keep the economy healthy.

And spare us all that drama.

You may not like Illconceived Was Na's reasoning, maybe you don't understand it, or maybe you simple don't disagree. I happen to agree with IWN. Keeping supply manageable with the conversion as it is kept the TP from being flooded with the new snowflakes. Also, Anet sets the economy and conversions of anything in game. I don't always understand it, but I am not there to be abreast of why they make any of their calls. In this, I certainly feel most people are making a huge mountain out of a mole hill.

And using a pot shot like "spare us all that drama" is trite and fosters its own drama. Pot meet kettle.

Then they could have made it so that the conversion still happened where a number of tiny snowflakes became 1 snowflake. The remaining single tiny snowflakes could have been used to buy something.

1/1/1 flawless = 16/8/4 ordinary1/1/1 pristine = 8/4/2 snowflakes1/1/1 unique = 4/2/1 snowflakes1/1/2 glittering = 2/1 snowflakes1/2/4 delicate = 1 snowflakes2/4/8 tiny = 1 snowflakes

This retains the conversions rates from the previous situation while still reducing the number of snowflakes.

[Daddicus.6128]

@crashburntoo.7431 said:What was Anet trying to accomplish? We know one point, explicitly, but I'll draw three more logical ones:

1. Reduced inventory space for this themed currency
2. Alignment with other themed currency (candy corn) to establish a common approach and predictable rewards system
3. Maintain the value of the themed currency relative to gold (universal currency)
4. Maintain the buying power of the themed currency in the specific market (minis, infusions, Winter's Presence, etc.)

If Anet was able to accomplish all of these goals, they would improve QoL, make a common model for themed currencies and reward systems (easy to manage/replicate) and maintain the value of the themed currency. The system that has been implemented appears to have achieved this. We use less space. We have a common system. We have value in our Snowflakes, whether used for Wintersday rewards or sold for gold on the TP.

Honestly, I applaud the move and the execution. Thank you @"Alexander Youngblood II.9341" and the rest of the team that put this together. I appreciate the efforts and the results.

You applaud stealing property from people who followed your lead and did what you wanted?

Edit: "You" and "your" in the previous sentence applies to ANet, not the poster.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Daddicus.6128 said:You applaud stealing property from people who followed your lead and did what you wanted?

No property was stolen. Everything you owned was worth more after the change; some of it wasn't worth proportionally as much, that's all.

[Daddicus.6128]

Unfortunately, it looks like the ANet folks have stopped replying to this thread. Maybe they're re-thinking things now that the facts have been made clear to them. We can only hope.

Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done. Please correct your error. At least let us salvage the higher tiered flakes, as we could before. I would even accept a surcharge on salvaging them. (I actually proposed this nearly a year ago; it doesn't seem right to have a full 1/2/4/8 progression both up and down. There should be at least a minor downside.)

Let us salvage flawless flakes for 31, pristine for 15, down to perhaps 3 for glittering. Delicate ones won't work.

Or, if your intent was to make them all worth, say, 1 new flake per 3 old tiny flakes, then DO that. Make us trade in 3 tinies for one snowflake. 3 delicates become two. Etc.

But, the way you implemented it stole some players' wealth. You don't want to run your business that way.

[crashburntoo.7431]

@"crashburntoo.7431" said:

Market Value

Buying Power

Video Game

sigh

Why am I still awake? I'm not going to make any sense when I chair that meeting tomorrow.

[MachineManXX.9746]

They never "stole property from some players" because players never owned it in the first place. Hyperbole at its finest.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Ashantara.8731" said:Okay, so I can double-click to convert the old snowflake tiers. Will those slots eventually be removed from the storage?

According to material storage guru

@linseymurdock

,

Once an item has been added to material storage, it cannot be removed EVER. Like, for reals, EVER, unless you want to delete players items on Live.They

could

force the conversion on everyone at some point, i guess. Although after a moment of thought i realize this might be a bit risky as well.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:It's an economic problem: the supply of snowflakes would have been tripled compared to the actual implementation, just considering the pristines on the TP alone. That would have resulted in a huge loss of value relative to what we saw on Tuesday.It depends. Each individual snowflake would be worth 1/3 of what it's now, that's true, but then many players would have 3x as much of them as they have now. What's more, the conversion of value would have been uniform for everyone. Not more beneficial for those that had Tiny Snowflakes, but far less so for those with Flawless ones.

[Wanze.8410]

@Daddicus.6128 said:Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done.

This is were your argument fails because the snowflakes arent your property, they are Anet's property, along with your whole game account and everything else in it.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

I see these conversion rates as a fair price to pay for the incredible amount of storage space I saved all year by being allowed to store all my "snow" in flawless form instead of tiny.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done.

This is were your argument fails because the snowflakes arent your property, they are Anet's property, along with your whole game account and everything else in it.

I think it would be better to say that everyone at time of the update still had as much snowflakes as usual.

Nothing got stolen. Just the shop rebalanced their prices and started using a different currency where the smallest snowflakes are worth more than the biggest.

In alot of cases you can actually buy more than you used to. In which case you are actually handed more stuff. In other cases you can buy less than you used to, where you can argue that you've been ripped off.

But stolen? Thats not even applicable.

[Glacial.9516]

I wasn't overly impacted by this (I think I had one full stack of each snowflake) but I do think it would have been best if they had raised the cost of the lower snowflakes to acquire one new snowflake (ie. 3 Tiny for 1 Snowflake) to not over-inflate the number of new snowflakes while maintaining the relative value of the old ones. That said, and like others have pointed out, it seems that no matter which kind of snowflake you had they have all received a boost in buying power, just not as much as the tiny ones did.

I do have a question though, perhaps unrelated to the main point being discussed. What are most people spending snowflakes on? The vendor items seemed hardly impressive and wouldn't appear to be a major sink (10k-11k for each snowball, 20k for the mini, 4k for all four ascended recipes, none of which are repeatable, and then 5k for a 20-slot bag). Are some people buying one of each coloured snowball? Are they being used primarily for guild hall decor? Or mystic forge recipes?

[Wanze.8410]

@Glacial.9516 said:

I do have a question though, perhaps unrelated to the main point being discussed. What are most people spending snowflakes on? The vendor items seemed hardly impressive and wouldn't appear to be a major sink (10k-11k for each snowball, 20k for the mini, 4k for all four ascended recipes, none of which are repeatable, and then 5k for a 20-slot bag). Are some people buying one of each coloured snowball? Are they being used primarily for guild hall decor? Or mystic forge recipes?

I think you are greatly overestimating the droprate of the new snowflakes from wintersday gifts this year. At ~0.66 snowflakes per wintersday gift, you have to farm quite a bit to get these rewards. Right now, we are just using up excess of old snowflakes but once that is gone, these rewards will be quite expensive to get.

[Glacial.9516]

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Glacial.9516 said:

I do have a question though, perhaps unrelated to the main point being discussed. What are most people spending snowflakes on? The vendor items seemed hardly impressive and wouldn't appear to be a major sink (

10k-11k

for each snowball,

20k

for the mini,

4k

for all four ascended recipes, none of which are repeatable, and then

5k

for a 20-slot bag). Are some people buying one of each coloured snowball? Are they being used primarily for guild hall decor? Or mystic forge recipes?

I think you are greatly overestimating the droprate of the new snowflakes from wintersday gifts this year. At ~0.66 snowflakes per wintersday gift, you have to farm quite a bit to get these rewards. Right now, we are just using up excess of old snowflakes but once that is gone, these rewards will be quite expensive to get.That makes sense. I bought most of my snowflakes and I've been selling Wintersday gifts, so I suppose I was comparing them to Candy corn. I wasn't aware the drop rate per gift was so low. Thanks!

[Daddicus.6128]

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done.

This is were your argument fails because the snowflakes arent your property, they are Anet's property, along with your whole game account and everything else in it.

Then it shouldn't bother you or anybody else to correct this, would it?

[Daddicus.6128]

@"Manasa Devi.7958" said:I see these conversion rates as a fair price to pay for the incredible amount of storage space I saved all year by being allowed to store all my "snow" in flawless form instead of tiny.

But, why DIFFERENT conversion rates?

[Daddicus.6128]

Here's a scenario, folks. It matches what happened very well, except because we work in base 10 and old snowflakes were in base 2, there are rounding errors.

First, pretend there aren't any $100 bills. (I do this only because the US has 7 tiers, but flakes only had 6.)

Now, the US government asks us to try to save all of our wealth in as large denomination bills as we can afford. Being good citizens, most of us comply, and take most of our paychecks as $20s and $50s.

Now, a year later, the government decides to stop using the dollar as currency, and switches to pazoolas. But, they're very generous, because they offer to us that we can trade in our old dollar-denominationed bills for pazoolas. But, there's only one level of pazoolas, the 1 pazoola note. I'll call a 1 Pazoola 1P below:

• So, in their generosity, they will exchange all of our now-obsolete $1 bills for one 1P note. Not bad.
• But, we do have $2 bills now, so they offer to also exchange those for one 1P note.
• For $5 bills, they'll give us a generous three 1P notes.
• For $10s, they'll give us seven 1P notes.
• For $20s, they'll give us nine 1P notes.
• And, finally, for the $50 notes that they asked us to try to use, they'll give us sixteen 1P notes.

What would your reaction be?

The above numbers are roughly what happened with snowflakes. As I said, there are rounding errors due to the different denominations in the game vs. real life. The actual amounts, if they matched precisely the ratios we were offered for the 6 tiers of flakes would be:

• $1 = 1P = 100%
• $2 = 1P = 50%
• $5 = 2.4P = 48%
• $10 = 6.25P = 62.5%
• $20 = 8.75P = 43.75%
• $50 = 15.625P = 31.25%

As you can see, I rounded all of them up, to be as generous to the naysayers as possible. The point is that the ratios are different for each denomination.

[Manasa Devi.7958]

How about looking at it from the more realistic viewpoint of setting the flawless conversation rate as the baseline, because you can be sure that there were a lot more flawless snowflakes in people's inventories than any other type, because of the obvious fact that it saved tons of storage space.

That gives you:

• Flawless: 100% - baseline
• Pristine: 142.9% - 42.9% extra snowflakes at a cost of 100% extra storage space over flawless
• Unique: 200% - 100% extra snowflakes at a cost of 300% extra storage space over flawless
• Glittering: 333.3% - 233.3% extra snowflakes at a cost of 700% extra storage space over flawless
• Delicate: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 1500% extra storage space over flawless
• Tiny: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 3100% extra storage space over flawless

I'm pretty happy with what I got for the rows upon rows of flawless snowflakes in my private guild storage that I amassed over the years. Storing them in smaller denominations would've been impractical for pristines, insane for uniques, and impossible for any smaller short of buying extra accounts.

[Daddicus.6128]

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:How about looking at it from the more realistic viewpoint of setting the flawless conversation rate as the baseline, because you can be sure that there were a lot more flawless snowflakes in people's inventories than any other type, because of the obvious fact that it saved tons of storage space.

That gives you:

• Flawless: 100% - baseline
• Pristine: 142.9% - 42.9% extra snowflakes at a cost of 100% extra storage space over flawless
• Unique: 200% - 100% extra snowflakes at a cost of 300% extra storage space over flawless
• Glittering: 333.3% - 233.3% extra snowflakes at a cost of 700% extra storage space over flawless
• Delicate: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 1500% extra storage space over flawless
• Tiny: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 3100% extra storage space over flawless

I'm pretty happy with what I got for the rows upon rows of flawless snowflakes in my private guild storage that I amassed over the years. Storing them in smaller denominations would've been impractical for pristines, insane for uniques, and impossible for any smaller short of buying extra accounts.

That's not valid, because we already know the baseline: one snowflake. And, it just so happens that one snowflake is what you get from a tiny or a delicate.

Furthermore, my question is intended to make people realize the absurdity of the other argument, not to show math. I had 44,000 snowflakes taken away, only counting my flawless storage. It's just that simple.

[Meridian.4983]

While I'm happy to have some of the space in my storage, losing any value because they decided on a bad conversion rate is (another) bad move that shows they'll do whatever they want because they can, and then let the "community" pick itself apart without any further acknowledgement that they messed up.

[Wanze.8410]

@Daddicus.6128 said:

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done.

This is were your argument fails because the snowflakes arent your property, they are Anet's property, along with your whole game account and everything else in it.

Then it shouldn't bother you or anybody else to correct this, would it?

The excessive amount flawless snowflakes bothered Anet and thats why they corrected their relative value.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Daddicus.6128 said:

@Manasa Devi.7958 said:How about looking at it from the more realistic viewpoint of setting the flawless conversation rate as the baseline, because you can be sure that there were a lot more flawless snowflakes in people's inventories than any other type, because of the obvious fact that it saved tons of storage space.

That gives you:

• Flawless: 100% - baseline
• Pristine: 142.9% - 42.9% extra snowflakes at a cost of 100% extra storage space over flawless
• Unique: 200% - 100% extra snowflakes at a cost of 300% extra storage space over flawless
• Glittering: 333.3% - 233.3% extra snowflakes at a cost of 700% extra storage space over flawless
• Delicate: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 1500% extra storage space over flawless
• Tiny: 1000% - 900% extra snowflakes at a cost of 3100% extra storage space over flawless

I'm pretty happy with what I got for the rows upon rows of flawless snowflakes in my private guild storage that I amassed over the years. Storing them in smaller denominations would've been impractical for pristines, insane for uniques, and impossible for any smaller short of buying extra accounts.

That's not valid, because we already know the baseline: one snowflake. And, it just so happens that one snowflake is what you get from a tiny or a delicate.

Furthermore, my question is intended to make people realize the absurdity of the other argument, not to show math. I had 44,000 snowflakes taken away, only counting my flawless storage. It's just that simple.

Setting a baseline is arbitrary, not factual. You just set the baseline on one snowflake, rather than one flawless snowflake. Both are valid.

In fact, because many of the wintersday stuff that you could get with the previous types of snowflakes were flawless snowflakes, setting the baseline on flawless snowflakes doesn't make that little sense as you make it out to be.

You could easily say that ArenaNet gave us 10 times as much currency than we thought we had (many guilds that were gathering/hoarding flawless snowflakes for decorations would agree).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Daddicus.6128" said:Furthermore, my question is intended to make people realize the absurdity of the other argument, not to show math. I had 44,000 snowflakes taken away, only counting my flawless storage. It's just that simple.

It is simple: you had 0 snowflakes before the update and 0 snowflakes immediately after the update. On that basis, you lost nothing.

• Prior to the update, your 4.4k flawless flakes were worth 70g. Today, they are worth 170g. So you gained value without doing a thing.
• Prior to the update, Snow Piles (a primary component for Wintersday GH decorations) cost 100 Flawless Snowflakes. Today they cost 100 (ordinary) Snowflakes. In other words, you gained the ability to make 10x more piles, again without doing a thing.

The only thing that lost was the idea that ANet always converts things from old to new systems at a rate consistent with what we are used to... and that's never been true. ANet's always attempted to make sure the post-transition balance is better (or at least as good as) the old one, without regard to consistency. Some people lucked out from the transitions, some weren't as lucky. That was true for the wardrobe introduction (in several ways), account binding of commander tags, the introduction of shared inventory, and now, with snowflakes.

There's no question that the change wasn't mathematically even. But you should be glad that ANet cares more about ensuring balance in the aftermath (and for the long term) than in any short term numerical equivalency.

[Anchoku.8142]

Correct me if this was already pointed out but only flawless snowflakes had value beyond recipe discovery.

By converting all snowflakes to a quantity of the new snowflake, the stock of all types are now useful in both exotic and ascended recipes while keeping lesser equipment and food recipes compatible.

I am fine with the conversion rate but hope there will be more uses for the new diamond tier.

[Daddicus.6128]

@Anchoku.8142 said:Correct me if this was already pointed out but only flawless snowflakes had value beyond recipe discovery.

By converting all snowflakes to a quantity of the new snowflake, the stock of all types are now useful in both exotic and ascended recipes while keeping lesser equipment and food recipes compatible.

I am fine with the conversion rate but hope there will be more uses for the new diamond tier.

My problem is the DIFFERENT conversion rate for different people. People who dutifully did what ANet clearly wanted us to do were severely penalized compared to those who ignored the upper tiers. I have 2000 flawless flakes. That SHOULD give me 64000 flakes, but 44000 just evaporated. But, the ones that I hadn't gotten around to upgrading yet are worth full value.

Now, they might have intended to give people 1/3 of a flake as the base conversion rate (which I wouldn't have minded). In my illustration, because the math is correct, one would simply divide all of the pazoolas by 3. (Or, whatever ratio they wanted.)

But, they didn't. There's simply no excuse for what they did do, as my illustration proves. It's not an exchange rate problem. It's a matter of treating different people differently.

There are people loudly proclaiming that they like it, because they got lots of extra flakes than the 10-to-1 flawless conversion gives. They're kind of missing the point, because that IS the point: it's different. Some people were favored heavily, and others were treated poorly. Why?

This has really soured my perception of the festival this year. And, there was no reason to do it.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:

@Wanze.8410 said:

@Daddicus.6128 said:Alexander, was it your intention to steal property from some players, but not others? Because that is exactly what you have done.

This is were your argument fails because the snowflakes arent your property, they are Anet's property, along with your whole game account and everything else in it.

Then it shouldn't bother you or anybody else to correct this, would it?

The excessive amount flawless snowflakes bothered Anet and thats why they corrected their relative value.I could understand that, if that correction affected everyone equally. It didn't.

That

is a problem, not the change of value itself.