Switch and Bait - were equipment packs supposed to be that?

I believe that you are assuming that the customer is always right, which is wrong.

1) Not everyone is complaining. I am not, and many others are not. Do you have a survey that proves that the complainers are a majority(, and remember silent majority, vocal minority. Just because lots of people are QQing on forums, that does not make them the majority).

2) The possible spoilt behaviour on the part of many complainers. I am not saying that everyone is like that, but lets face it; there are many people who seem to believe that Anet owe them for some reason. They believe that they are somehow "entitled" to these things.

3) The item in question is not actually needed. As CHannum said, people have gone without these for four years. Anet has given us plenty of storage (enough for people who do not farm 24/7 like idiots). All of the sudden, new stuff comes along, but there is a catch, they require time and effort to get. I have no problem with that; games should never give too much for no effort if you ask me.

I believe the playerbase could use a bag to store the elite armours and weapon sets. It should be a feature implemented when the HoM arrived and on the spot.

If it would be a magical bag like in Baldur's Gate (one which can hold 100 items for example) I would agree with you, but not in this case.

It is not usually a good idea to equate what you personally want with what the "playerbase" wants. Many people also want a beneficial reward for putting some time into the game. The 10-20 slot bags provide many people just that incentive. I read a post recently about how a guy hit the max KoaBD title and immediately stopped playing that character because there was nothing left to improve. To each his own.

It was touched on earlier in this thread, but you are really not going to need to grind to get the 10 and 15 slot bags. The 10 and 15 are much, much easier to get than the 20. A person would be kind of foolish to wait all the way until they had enough for a 20 slot bag before getting a 10 or 15. Like many things in GW, it takes massively more input to get the final improvement. Therefore, once the 20's start being acquired, many people will be dumping their 10 and 15 slots to make room. What will they want for them? It's just a guess, but I'd say gold and ectos and z keys. How much will they go for? Time will tell. If you're really a cheap bastard, you can wait to buy your 5 slot bags until the 10 slotters start putting them on the market. I suspect they'll go for 2k or so. The only thing required is patience - admittedly not something a lot of players have in quantity.

@ MithranArkanere I believe you're overreacting a bit, and you tend to be a sensible poster. The character creation reset option is still available to anyone who wants to put in the time. If you are really unhappy with some aspect of one of your characters, you can delete and recreate your character with the gender, facial features, and name you really desire for no money whatsoever. They only thing that is truly unique to the store is the ability to mix attributes across campaigns. I personally cannot see getting exercised over that option being out of my reach. It is just far too minor a thing to get worked up over.

Just like the skill unlock packs, it is a way for the impatient to pay money to get what they want faster. If people want to pay for the instant gratification, more power to them. They help finance my game, and I am no worse for it.

Does the "direction" of these changes worry me? Only theoretically. As I said on another thread, the implementation of this update was totally fine. Yes, IF Anet went further than they did and charged real money for real advantages to either gameplay or even the vanity aspects of the game for cash, I would be annoyed. They did not, so I am not.

In the case of the unlock packs, there are alternatives.

There are no alternative ways to have access the Stylist feature.

They need money somehow, if you don't like it, it's your pixels you are stuck with.
It's not an essential thing, purely ascetic.

True, but as it seems most people like more storage, I was bold enough to make that statement.

Unless they fix the HoM to take any rare/green weapons and any max armor, I just dont have the space to carry so many alternate weapons/armor sets in my inventory.

With 16 characters over 2 accounts, it would be a long long time before I can get equipment packs to free space for all my characters so they can buy alternate weapons and armor for their HoM.

If I am hampered from transferring my achievements to GW2 that would affect my decision to buy GW2.

It's not about paying or not.

I got the pet unlock and all storage upgrades. I paid for them. ONCE.
I don't have to purchase 'storage credits' every time I want to use the new storage slots, or 'pet credits' every time I want to charm a pet in the Menagerie.

I have already paid for the feature, therefore I want the feature available anytime I want to use it.

Until now, that was true for all GW.

From now on, I can't help but fear what will be the net feature that will turn from 'pay once' to 'pay per use', preventing me from using it.

The "pay once" thing is limited, as the developers have seen with the sales of the campaigns themselves. They need a renewing source of revenue and these non-essential things are perfect.

So, which non-essential feature will be having to pay in the future future, namely in GW2?

Craft prestige armors? Buy unique skins?

They can still get money with unlockables. If they added a feature to unlock armors per character like we do with Festival masks, I'll be the first one in the line.

And each account can have 36 character slots, and some people still buy more for more storage.
GW tried to prove they can make a game work with the 'pay once' policy.
If they failed, they should explicitly say so.

Never happy are you? It's an optional up to 20 extra slots per character.

5 slots can be had the second the update went live, 10 slots could have been had by today for a couple of your characters at the least, 15 will make you wait a week or two per character, and 20 will make you wait longer, oh noes.

They didn't have to give you anything and you will still find a reason to whine. Personally, I couldn't fill a 20 on any body, and if I could, I'd be f'in thrilled having just freed up an entire mule/xunlai pane.

You do "pay once", for the game, if you want to use a SERVICE in game, be prepared to pony up each time you need it.

The system works, you just seem to apply the same policy to completely different scenarios where it doesn't make sense.

It's a shame that the grind linked with it isn't optional. Not everybody isn't that found of grinding in this game anymore. This large equipment pack is a nice feature to have though.

Don't get me wrong, I really can understand players are having fun with the zaishen quests, but repating all that old content once more for this pack that Anet made rare doesn't do it for me.

Off topic: Anet made me happy a lot of times in the past and I often expressed it on the forums.

Anyway, peace out and don't let this grumpy old man spoil your fun. That's not my intention. I wish I could still have that kinda fun in this game.

Next step converting GW into just another F2P microtransaction mmo will be simple directly selling the ZCoins for $$$. It will be the day when I'll leave for a monthly fee game instead.

Some fan boys just dont understand how many elite armors and elite weapons are needed to fill their HoM. The equipment pack was suppose to off-load these needs. All my characters only have 1 set of elite armor, it is the one they are wearing. Why? Because I was waiting for the equipment packs to come before I can free up space for more armor. Now, that they are here, I still dont have the space to get another 4 sets of elite armor per character.

Unless you are saying filling up your HoM and transferring your credits to GW2 is completely optional, then so is playing GW2.

Because you need to actually keep all of those sets once they are added...

The cost of 1 set of a 15k armor is 75k + cost of material, typically it can cost as much as 100k or more. 4 sets of armor would be 400k or more, PER CHARACTER.

To me, that is alot of gold since I regard myself as a casual player. Not to mention that it would be STUPID to not keep your investments after paying so much for it.

I dont know of anyone who is so dumb as to throw away 400k per character just to save inventory space.

I'm well aware of how much armor costs. When I buy multiple armor sets, its to fill my HoM for unlockable bonuses. THAT is where my investment goes, so it isn't wasted.

Everyone with half a brain is able to realize that the price of one single 20-slot bag equals three 15-Slot bags. You get more than double the amout of space for the same Zcoin price.
They did this intentionally, as it actually involves some thinking – am I going to spend my Zoins for an "incomplete" 15 slot bag yet, or am I saving for the Heavy Bag? If the prices were proportional (that would be 6,6 gold coins for the heavy one) everyone would go straight for the 20 slot bag without a single thought about it.

YOU! BANISHED FOR UTILIZING REASON AND RATIONAL THOUGHT ON THE INTERNET! You are hereby sentenced to spend eternity living a fruitful life and being successful, due to your belligerent use of your brain to solve simple problems!
Thing is, the Light pack is only half the size of the Large pack, but costs 1/5. The difference percentage between the two is larger than the difference between the large and Heavy packs. I guess the real-world difference is the fact that the large pack can be had on all characters within a week, rather than in a year.

With 8 characters per account, that would mean 3,200,000 gold for me to throw away for whatever unlockable bonuses you are referring to.

You are absolutely right. The unlockables will be with me in future. The gold will not.

That is if I have that much gold and I doubt many people has without buying from gold sellers. Realistically, I not going to buy 3 mil worth of armor and then destroying them.

Do people not understand the idea of farming materials? That cuts the cost down for armors quite a bit, especially obsidian.

And since they made the switch to account-based HOM, I'm assuming the bonuses in GW2 will also be account based. Then again, given what Anet's trend is lately, you'll have to grind the piss out of everything on all characters in order to get bonuses on all GW2 chars.

Are you implying that gold is hard to obtain in this game?
Wow...

YES 3 million+ gold per account, is hard to obtain for a casual player like me unless I buy gold. Since I have 2 accounts that means I would need 6 million+ gold.

Are you saying most people have > 3 million gold per account, to throw away?

That is the official statement, and has been for quite a while. See the wiki.

There's no way that I'm throwing away, at the very least, 400K worth of armor. Not to mention the time and effort involved in getting cash and materials, as well as the time it takes to grind out for the EotN armors if that's the armor you've chosen. If I'm buying armor, I'm buying it because it's pretty ( ) not because it's something to fill my HoM. And I would think, or hope at least, that I'm not the only one that feels that way - otherwise there are a lot of people out there that need far better things to do with their time.

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I think a lot of people are disappointed in the fact that the equipment packs were built up, based upon the reason for their existence as well as the way that GW has implemented stuff in the past, as being something that you could just go buy and be done with it. Frankly I was picturing an exaggerated version of the Bags and Runes of Holding. You would get the 5-slot EQPacks from a collector in Pre-Searing, a merchant in Ascalon, Kamadan, or Shing Jea for 5k, the 10-slot bags at Kaineng, LA, or SS Sanctuary for 10k, and the 20-slots at Droks, Kodash, and HzH or Cavalon for 20-25k.

Then it turns out that you will literally have to spend months trying to get them because they decided to implement a new, untradable currency. If nothing else they could have charged anything for EQPacks and made a huge gold sink that this game desperately needs. My thing is that I can't figure out why they have to be hard to get. Prohibitively expensive, heck yeah, but just simply.. hard to get? Why?

That is the issue, for me at least. It shows a fundamental shift (or a continuation thereof) in the philosophy of Guild Wars. The only thing other than the free storage slot ( thank you Anet! ) that was free of grind or cost in this update was the Zaishen menagerie - everything else requires a significant investment in either time, real life money, or both. Neither of which really seems to fit in with what GW was, or was meant to be.

Or maybe servers are not so expensive:

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/showp...7&postcount=25

maybe there are no servers involved? see the missing fields in the data for Guild Wars, no indication of servers, lol how do you read this ??

Whats a Key Operating Metrix?

data download from here

If you have two accounts for any reason other than you lost your password and no longer had access to the e-mail account tied to the game account, but still wanted to play, then you are *NOT* a casual player.

Casual players also don't care about filling their HoM beyond an "if it happens, it happens" level. They care about finishing the 4 storylines, having people to chat to, and to have something to do for a couple of hours every once in a while (or even a couple of hours each evening and more on their days off from Real Life, if they've chosen to make it their main entertainment instead of TV or whatever).

Why not? If you're not going to wear it as your day-to-day armor and don't need it as your spare armor for a different build, there's not much reason to keep it once it's in your HoM. Might as well break it down for materials (and, if it's your old daily wear, for the runes and insignias, of course).

I have 2 accounts because people quit and gave it to me. But what is your point? Are you saying if I am not a casual player, therefore I should have at least 3 million in gold per account to throw away for elite armors?

If you are going to spend more than 3 million gold for them, they better be your spare armor for different builds because, unlike some players, we are not gold buyers.

Why would you spend 3 million on armors? HoM rewards are unlocked account-wide so you only ever have to put in 5 different elite armor sets for the reward. You probably already have the reward unlocked.

NVM read wiki and answered my question

Please read what I say before writing a response.

If only account based HoM is transferred to GW2 then there is less need to buy more than 1 elite armor.

But if you want more than 1 set of armor, say for farming and another for general PvE, there is still a space constraint.

Wait until you see the experience required to level from 2 to 3! Huge shock there too!
-_-

I agree with your point, but there would be QQing no matter what was done.

Am I the only one that thinks that something is nicer if you had to "work" for it?
They put that in so we'd have something to do, if you dont wanna do quests again you cna buy hte new pack from other players.
What more do you want a 30K storage slot bag that come with every char?

What is worse than people who QQ on the update, are people who QQ about the people who QQ so now we have a multiplicative effect of QQ.

The 20 slot bag is still too much grind if you compare the prices 80 copper coins is only worth 500g at the merchant.

I find that I tend to need bigger bags if I farm with that character or I play more with that character. For example, 55hp build usually requires another set of armor, that is already 5 slots there. Add in the headgear for smiting (RoJ), healing, and protection, add in the different foci and wands for each of them. If you do 600hp too with Spirit Bond, you need another set of low end armor, which is another 5 slots.

It depends on how often you play with that character and how much flexibility you demand from it. Space constraint is the main reason why most of my casters are using staves instead of 40/40 set or using a focus for that bit more energy. If I want to be flexible I should at least have wand and foci for all the different setups and headgear. My warrior should have hammer, strength and tactics shields, axe, and sword. It depends on how much flexibility you need, a 5-slot bag may not be enough.