Acquiring Winters Presence Snow Skin

[Jake Orion.2049]

This is literally a no win scenario for Anet. Look at it this way for every game:

[Easy to acquire stuff]Player: stuff too easy to get, game boring, I play something else

[Moderate to difficult to acquire stuff]Same player: stuff too hard to acquire, too much work, I play something else

So....how would you resolve this situation?

[Dante.1763]

@"Jake Orion.2049" said:This is literally a no win scenario for Anet. Look at it this way for every game:

[Easy to acquire stuff]Player: stuff too easy to get, game boring, I play something else

[Moderate to difficult to acquire stuff]Same player: stuff too hard to acquire, too much work, I play something else

So....how would you resolve this situation?

ANET doesnt really have a middle drop rate though. the "middle" items due to the number of players playing become common. However, the drop rate on the charms that drop from sigil salvaging are annoyingly low. Ive still only gotten enough to buy the recipes for a total of 3 sigils since the change was made and thats salvaging all the items i get.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@CJH.2879 said:I will admit I do find it a little unfair how friends of mine managed to already make it when the prices were still more reasonable on the items needed & now even they admit everything has gotten very expensive compared to when they did it.

It's cheaper now, overall, then when it was first released. A lot cheaper. I think the lowest total cost I ever saw was maybe around 750g total, but that was buying everything off-season. During the first Wintersday of its release, costs were closer to 1100-1200 gold (and at times, if you bought at the worst times, it might have been 1600 gold).

Mystic coins cost more, the sigils|runes cost more now. But the drinks ... the drinks are available (1.2s or less) for under 10% of the best price I got for them originally (over 14 silver each).

tl;dr your friends didn't get it for a lot less; they just are remembering some of the costs, not all of them.

The lowest possible price that someone could have spent is actually around 155g but it still takes around 1 year.

This involves buying the mystic coins around when it was released, buying the rune and sigil during the off season after the first year then waiting all the way until the off season after last year for lowest price on the drinks.

[Gambino.2109]

Two years ago or so the sigils and runes we're just under 10 silvers...

The real hard work players had to endure was either gathering all the drinks needed, or saving money to buying them all.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

To recap, on a practical basis (taking into account the then-current market values of all components): Winter's Presence is cheaper now than in the past.

• First year costs of Winter's Presence could have been 1200 gold or more. As the second year began, it got worse (sometimes as much as 1500+), dropping down.
• Subsequent total costs have varied between 700 and 1000 gold, depending on when.
• Current costs are about 950g +/- 25g.

Similarly, on a practical basis, hardly anyone has ever been able to be self-sufficient in acquiring this item, i.e. almost anyone who unlocked it made use of the TP. It requires over 120k Wintersday Gifts to get enough drinks (even if you use the tonics) and few of us are going to get more than a few thousand each year.

---

@Khisanth.2948 said:The lowest possible price that someone could have spent is actually around 155g but it still takes around 1 year.

This involves buying the mystic coins around when it was released, buying the rune and sigil during the off season after the first year then waiting all the way until the off season after last year for lowest price on the drinks.In the thread, each poster is using similar terms to refer to differing concepts; in English, we sometimes use cost & value & price interchangeably even though they aren't identical.

(1) I was referencing market prices, i.e. the numbers if someone was purchasing relevant items on the TP (or selling to fund purchases).(2) Khisanth (quoted above) is describing minimal expenditures, the amount of money that would have left the wallet if someone bought each of the required items at their theoretically lowest possible TP price.(3) Some in the thread are considering labor as a no-cost endeavor; for them, goods acquired while farming, playing, or doing achievements are 'free'.(4) Several people are looking only at this year's most expensive components (sigils and runes). The runes went up, but the sigils did not. Since both have a high unit cost, this is very noticeable.(5) Some of us consider opportunity costs, i.e. the value of mats that you have that you could sell, as opposed to ignoring them as a resource.(6) Some consider risk|reward costs, e.g. you can sell Wintersday Gifts at 5-6s, but opened they are worth on average under 4s (maybe under 3s), although there's a tiny chance of getting a very pricey item which would change that.

The usual way that economists (and accountants) compare costs over different times is to convert everything into a coin value and look at the numbers. Economists will tend to adjust for inflation, while accountants typically will not. Any other sort of comparison requires much more careful use of terms than we are likely to find in the forums.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

Im so glad I played when these runes were so common you had hundreds of them at te end of wintersday.

Whether or not its a 900 gold item or whether its supposed to be, the most i spend on it, because of that advantage, is like 50 gold. Ofcourse i had to wait a few years for the drinks/tonics.

It just goes to show that market value is more important than obtainability and fun. I dont understand why its still hundreds of materials, when the acquisition is limited, even when its better this year, its still 200 brilliance elements.

I dunno, I guess GW2 used to be alot less grindy for some things, and now its supposed to be prestigious. Please. ArenaNet simply doesnt change it and lthe players determine afterwards how valuable it is or isnt through the trading market. Easier to design, and it gives something longterm for players to work towards, which makes them play longer which hopefully makes them buy more gems.

It doesnt matter that its grindy to get either as its optional customisation anyway.

That some people have a life and find it too grindy doesnt matter, as its the players that want everything that more often also pay the real moneys.

[Super Hayes.6890]

There needs to be a higher input of this sigil and rune in the game. The price is high compared to previous year's values because they dramatically decreased the drop rate. This is all just my opinion of course but I stand by my original reaction when I realized what happened in the pricing. "Not Cool!"

[Holykitten.3064]

@Super Hayes.6890 said:There needs to be a higher input of this sigil and rune in the game.

They (the Rune and Sigil) are now able to be crafted. The input is now infinite.

The price is high compared to previous year's values because they dramatically decreased the drop rate.

The price to craft them is dependant on the cost of the materials used now (which are all obtainable), rather than the rarity of them dropped in Gifts.

[Super Hayes.6890]

Fair enough but that price remains restrictive. Time will tell if that goes down to a reasonable rate and I hope it does. I've waited years as it is for the price to come down. It is still dropping way to slow in that regard.

[Khisanth.2948]

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:Im so glad I played when these runes were so common you had hundreds of them at te end of wintersday.

Whether or not its a 900 gold item or whether its supposed to be, the most i spend on it, because of that advantage, is like 50 gold. Ofcourse i had to wait a few years for the drinks/tonics.

It just goes to show that market value is more important than obtainability and fun. I dont understand why its still hundreds of materials, when the acquisition is limited, even when its better this year, its still 200 brilliance elements.

I dunno, I guess GW2 used to be alot less grindy for some things, and now its supposed to be prestigious. Please. ArenaNet simply doesnt change it and lthe players determine afterwards how valuable it is or isnt through the trading market. Easier to design, and it gives something longterm for players to work towards, which makes them play longer which hopefully makes them buy more gems.

was less grindy? :/

near the end of the first year I calculated how much longer it would take to finish based on progress at that point to get an idea of what amount of progress I could get per yearthe estimate was something like 10 years =_=

It doesnt matter that its grindy to get either as its optional customisation anyway.

That some people have a life and find it too grindy doesnt matter, as its the players that want everything that more often also pay the real moneys.

[Gambino.2109]

The gripe here is they removed the rune from the presents... and the sigil drop rate is about 0.0003

was extremely over tuned to be unfair and hasn't been changed since the third winters day, since now you can't even hope to get them as drops.

Edit- I think the new candy cane exotics which seem to have a decent enough drop rate doing the lair of the snowman was a step in the right direction... unfortunately they decided to deflate the Sigil of concentration instead.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Gambino.2109 said:Edit- I think the new candy cane exotics which seem to have a decent enough drop rate doing the lair of the snowman [...]

You only get the rare drop chance once per day per account, and so far, I only received one or two of those new exotics since the launch of Wintersday 2018. The rest of the time, I get common rares.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.

[Super Hayes.6890]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.

While it is exclusive it did not start out this exclusive. That's my gripe with it. I am still working on the festive imbiber thing and have been since this collection became available. That part makes it exclusive enough. It did not need to be placed farther out of reach with the sigil and rune acquisition change. I just hope to achieve it before GW3 releases.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Super Hayes.6890 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.

While it is exclusive it did not start out this exclusive. That's my gripe with it. I am still working on the festive imbiber thing and have been since this collection became available. That part makes it exclusive enough. It did not need to be placed farther out of reach with the sigil and rune acquisition change. I just hope to achieve it before GW3 releases.

If you had actually started when the collection became available why didn't you get the runes and sigils when they were cheap? There was an interval of several months where you could have gotten them for ~6s each. Even if you didn't wait there were other intervals of 10s-20s.

In fact if you actually started in the first year it was available you could have been the few lucky people to pay the least for it by getting the runes/sigils one year and the drinks the following year when some of the cost got shifted from drinks to runes and sigils. Besides doing it that way which nobody could have foreseen it was always in the several hundreds of gold range.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.I do not expect it to come easily. I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.I do not expect it to come easily. I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore.

It is expensive but it has always expensive. The only exception is for the people who happened to have done things in a particular order. Whether or not ANet should have made the change that resulted in those people spending less would be a different discussion.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.I do not expect it to come easily. I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore.

It is expensive but it has always expensive. The only exception is for the people who happened to have done things in a particular order. Whether or not ANet should have made the change that resulted in those people spending less would be a different discussion.I'm not sure why you're saying this to me. The OP complained about it being too expensive and someone replied saying to craft them. So I ran the math to demonstrate crafting is expensive also.

So I'm just saying it's still expensive. I never said that it's TOO expensive. I did indicate that it was more than I had available and since I don't care to grind too much, I bought gems and turned them into gold.

So perhaps you could explain to me what your point is, because I do not understand what you're trying to tell me here in relation to my comments.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.I do not expect it to come easily. I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore.

It is expensive but it has always expensive. The only exception is for the people who happened to have done things in a particular order. Whether or not ANet should have made the change that resulted in those people spending less would be a different discussion.I'm not sure why you're saying this to me. The OP complained about it being too expensive and someone replied saying to craft them. So I ran the math to demonstrate crafting is expensive also.

So I'm just saying it's still expensive. I never said that it's TOO expensive. I did indicate that it was more than I had available and since I don't care to grind too much, I bought gems and turned them into gold.

So perhaps you could explain to me what your point is, because I do not understand what you're trying to tell me here in relation to my comments.

No one in the thread said it is cheap to make; people are pointing out the opposite: that it's never been cheap. The OP claimed it would take 10 years to make, which isn't true now and wasn't ever true. Other people implied it takes longer now, because the runes & sigils are ... something. That's not true either, because in the first year, the options were worse: you could have opened 120-125k gifts on your own (which requires farming over 5k gifts per day of the festival) or bought them on the TP for no less than 1000 gold, more likely 1200 gold. Near the start of year 2, just the drinks cost 1500 gold.

This year, it's the easiest it's been (outside the first year) and about as cheap it's ever been, which is: 900-1000 gold total. I think the lowest total cost I've seen (summing up the costs on any given day) has been 750-800g, but that didn't last long.

The first years, drinks were the bulk of costs and the upgrades were nominal or less; this year, the drinks are minor consideration and the upgrades form the bulk of the total. The drinks aren't any easier to farm: it still requires 120k+ gifts if you want to do it on your own, otherwise it's the TP. The runes & sigils are available in quantity on the TP and this year, you can also make your own, by buying the materials to make them; that wasn't a realistic option in the past.

tl;dr it's never been true that the average person could make this item on their own, without going to the TP. It's never been true that this was cheap to make and it's within 20% of the lowest ever market value, within 5% of its lowest realistic market value.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:Still expensive. To make the 50 sigils and 50 runes you will need 100 mystic coins (140 gold), 750 ectos (150 gold) and 100 charms and 100 symbols (550 gold). That's already well over 800 gold for just those two items.

It is an exclusive skin after all, just like the Halloween one. You can't expect to get it for a nickel and a dime.I do not expect it to come easily. I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore.

It is expensive but it has always expensive. The only exception is for the people who happened to have done things in a particular order. Whether or not ANet should have made the change that resulted in those people spending less would be a different discussion.I'm not sure why you're saying this to me. The OP complained about it being too expensive and someone replied saying to craft them. So I ran the math to demonstrate crafting is expensive also.

So I'm just saying it's still expensive. I never said that it's TOO expensive. I did indicate that it was more than I had available and since I don't care to grind too much, I bought gems and turned them into gold.

So perhaps you could explain to me what your point is, because I do not understand what you're trying to tell me here in relation to my comments.

No one in the thread said it is cheap to make;

I never said anyone said it's cheap this year either. I just had your post in the back of my mind that said...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The year Winter's Presence came out, it cost around 900-1300 gold to make. It costs 900 or so this year.I figured after doing the math on the sigils and adding also the drinks to it, which still cost quite a bit at the time this discussion started even more, the total cost was well over 1000 gold now too. So I felt like you were lowballing the current cost involved. But ok, that's not the case I understand now.

Beyond that misunderstanding my whole point has only been that it is still expensive today and that crafting the sigils is still expensive so that reply wasn't that helpful. There was no judgment at all from me about that being good or bad. I just noted that it's expensive even when you craft it yourself.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Gehenna.3625" said:I never said anyone said it's cheap this year either. I just had your post in the back of my mind that said...You wrote "I am just not agreeing with the sentiment that it's not that expensive anymore," and no one expressed that sentiment, least of all me.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The year Winter's Presence came out, it cost around 900-1300 gold to make. It costs 900 or so this year.@"Gehenna.3625" said:I figured after doing the math on the sigils and adding also the drinks to it, which still cost quite a bit at the time this discussion started even more, the total cost was well over 1000 gold now too. So I felt like you were lowballing the current cost involved. But ok, that's not the case I understand now.

• GW2 Efficiency clocks the total as under 920 gold, buying sigils & runes on the TP.
• GW2 BLTC figures 932g if buying most finished product off the TP using buy offers and 1053 using sell listings.

Most of the discrepancy is that GW2BLTC is using "flawless snowflakes" instead of ordinary ones (and the numbers are a bit off for some reason, e.g. for the Magnanimous Obsidian, they want 50 Flawless, whereas the new collection cost is 125 ordinary, 50% fewer ordinary or flawless equivalents.)

If your calculations are done differently from either of those, please share. I've tried as best I can to double-check those numbers, but perhaps there are errors I didn't find.

PS the costs have varied since the event started, so it's somewhat more expensive today than it was at the start (because the runes went up more than than sigils went down), so any number posted "today" is going to be wrong "tomorrow," even though it was accurate at the time. It didn't help that ANet forgot to include the new recipes when the festival began.

my whole point has only been that it is still expensive today and that crafting the sigils is still expensive so that reply wasn't that helpful.It's helpful in refuting the inaccurate claim that total costs have gone up substantially this year compared to other years. Unless you think it's reasonable for people to focus just on one component, in which case, I'll focus on the fact that drinks are less than 10% of the cost today that they were as the second year of the skin began.

There was no judgment at all from me about that being good or bad.Nor has there been from me or others reminding people of past costs.

I just noted that it's expensive even when you craft it yourself.Yes, as have those people posting the actual costs.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:I never said anyone said it's cheap this year either. I just had your post in the back of my mind that said...And I explained I realized that I misunderstood your post. So why do we need to do this dance again?

I'll repeat myself so it's clear:I misunderstood your postorI misinterpreted your postorI misconstrued your postorI was wrong about your postorI was mistaken about your post

Pick whichever version is clearest to you. I already said it but I really don't get why you give an in-depth reply to convince me I made a mistake after I wrote that I realized my mistake.

Edit: To clarify - After quoting your comment I explained what I thought you meant and then I said: But ok, that's not the case I understand now. That's the part where I admitted I didn't understand your post correctly. It seems that this was unclear and so hopefully now you realize that I already understood I was mistaken in my interpretation of your earlier comment.

[Super Hayes.6890]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

If you had actually started when the collection became available why didn't you get the runes and sigils when they were cheap? There was an interval of several months where you could have gotten them for ~6s each. Even if you didn't wait there were other intervals of 10s-20s.

In fact if you actually started in the first year it was available you could have been the few lucky people to pay the least for it by getting the runes/sigils one year and the drinks the following year when some of the cost got shifted from drinks to runes and sigils. Besides doing it that way which nobody could have foreseen it was always in the several hundreds of gold range.

You have no idea how many times I kick myself for missing that boat. I remember picking out what I thought would be the most time consuming part of the collection to work on first. When I looked at it the following year and decided to do some of the other parts I was unpleasantly surprised by what had happened with the sigils and runes. Now I look at every collection I do and eliminate every piece I can cheaply right away for fear that the collection might get the same treatment. Unfortunately I didn't start the requiem armor collection until after the sigil of nullification spiked. I've just been too slow moving on some collections.