[FIFA] The Handicap Mystery Finally Solved!

Back in July 2012 I posted the following to this very blog:

"One of the most controversial subjects in the FIFA community is that of Scripting/Momentum/Handicap (for the purposes of brevity, I’ll call it handicap in this post – though I’m aware that scripting and momentum refer to slightly different issues). Handicap is described as the feeling of sluggishness, poor ball control and general bad luck that some players with a high-rated team experience when they face a player which has a low-rated team. This only seems to happen when they face a team which is substantially lower rated than theirs, hence why it is referred to as “handicap” – almost as if the game is compensating for their opponent’s poorer players."

I went on to explain that it was a controversial subject and how bringing it up on official forums would get the post deleted and after many years of the theory being decried by official and unofficial sources as false, it was considered superstition or conspiracy theory. 

Well...

Today we might finally have cracked the case. Users  /u/RighteousOnix and /u/TheFakeNepentheZ (someone whose practices with regards to coin selling I do not agree with, but in this case I must concede has done great work), seem to have pinpointed exactly the issue which we've struggled with since the advent of Ultimate Team in 2010. 

This is potentially HUGE, as it will confirm the suspicions of thousands of FIFA players over many many generations of the game. It will show that EA either knowingly or unknowingly has been handicapping high rated teams in contrast to low rated teams, and it will vindicate all us supposed nut-jobs who have been arguing that handicapping really does exist and its not just in our heads.

To explain the glitch I will need to explain two important features of FIFA Ultimate Team mode - chemistry and upgraded cards. 


Chemistry

Chemistry is the degree to which your players work well together - the higher the chemistry your player has, the better he will perform on the pitch.

You can raise the chemistry of your players in a number of ways, play them in the correct position, play them alongside players from the same league, team or of the same nationality, assign them a manager from the same league or of the same nationality and so on. 

Players can have chemistry score of 1-10 (in FIFA16 at least). 

A team with full chemistry

What chemistry actually does is that the higher your players chemistry score, the more his in-game stats are boosted, conversely the lower the chemistry the more his stats are reduced. The threshold is chemistry 4: at chemistry 4 your players stats in game are exactly as they are displayed on his card. Anything from chemistry 5-10 and your player will be getting his stats boosted, between 1-3 and his stats are reduced. 

And this is the crux of the matter. Remember how I said "Handicap is described as the feeling of sluggishness, poor ball control and general bad luck that some players with a high-rated team experience"?...

It turns out that there is a glitch where certain players will be considered to be at 4 chemistry regardless of any other measures you take to increase the displayed chemistry score. But this glitch only occurs for what is now known as "non-day 1 cards". 


Upgraded Cards

If a player performs well in real life, sometimes EA will release a version of their card with supposed upgraded stats. Take, for example, Gareth Bales original card:

Day 1 Bale

This was the card available to all players at the start of FIFA16. It could be found in card packs purchasable from the EA in game store. Its relatively rare because he's a really good player. One week during the past season Bale performed really well in a game so EA released an "in form" version of his card:

In form Bale

It has a pretty picture and its black and most importantly it has better stats. His pace stat (PAC) has gone from 94 to 95, shooting (SHO) from 83 to 86 and passing (PAS) from 83 to 85 and so on. For that week (Wednesday to Wednesday) this card is available in packs. At the end of the week it stops dropping and the original card returns to packs. 

The 87 rated Bale card is his "day 1" card, the 88 rated is an "in form". There are other types of changes to cards, sometimes EA will release position changed cards (Bale has one in a striker role, as opposed to his right midfielder role on his original card), and at the end of the year the very prestigious "Team of the Season" cards are released and these cards often go for many hundreds of thousands of coins. 

What our intrepid FIFAites have discovered is that chemistry is bugged for any card which is not the "day 1" version. 

Day 1 versions of cards will receive all the proper boosts which come from achieving 10 chemistry score - that is, a significant boost to in game stats. Whereas any other version of the card will only ever be considered to be on 4 chemistry and will therefore receive absolutely no benefit from increasing his chemistry to 10. 

This means that sometimes the day 1 card on full chemistry will have better stats than the considerably more expensive in form versions of the card, as these non-day-1 cards receive no chemistry boosts. 

User /u/Masakari666 mocked up some side-by-side comparisons of day 1 with base stats, day 1 with 10 chemistry and then upgraded with 4 chem to demonstrate the difference:

All credit to MarakariPrime - contacts on the image.

Here you see the leftmost card is his day-1 card (NIF means non in form), compared to his day-1 card with 10 chemistry in the middle, and his recently awarded man of the match card on the right. Notice how the middle card is almost as good, and often better, in stats than the rightmost card. His pace, shooting, passing and dribbling are better than the significantly more expensive MOTM card, and his defending and physical stats are almost as good. 

All credit to MarakariPrime - contacts on the image.

Same again here - the leftmost card is Aubameyang's day-1 card. The right-most is his exceedingly expensive in form card. The second card from the left is his 82 rated day 1 card with full chemistry and it is superior in every stat compared to his 85 rated in form card, as well as being significantly better than the upgraded 84 rated card he received in the winter upgrades list (which, as it is not a day-1 card, is also glitched).

This glitch has not been discovered until now because the stats boosts attributed as a result of high chemistry scores are not displayed on the card, instead they are hidden. So the only way we've been able to tell the difference is the way the player feels to play with in game - which is a nebulous concept to pin down. 

THIS is why sometimes high rated teams feel slow, awkward and clumsy in comparison to low rated teams. Low rated teams will contain many of the cheaper "day 1" cards which receive significant boosts to stats from their chemistry score, whereas higher rated teams full of upgraded versions of players will only ever be using their base stats as if they are glitched on 4 chemistry. 

I have to say, if this is proven to be true then it is really satisfying to be vindicated in my assertions that there was something effecting the performance of highly rated teams in FIFA. How or why this glitch made it into the code for FIFA in the first place and exactly how it seems to have survived not only many generations of the game itself, but also survived the jump to a whole new console generation we might never know! But by highlighting the problem to EA perhaps it might be fixed in time for FIFA17 later this year.


Below is a few of the technical details as to how this glitch was discovered, as well as RighteousOnix's original video explaining how he uncovered it.

[GW2] Why Mo's Announcement Takes Gumption, But ArenaNet needs to Pull its Bloody Socks Up

Having to announce the cutting of future content is never going to be easy. Particularly when you are announcing the cutting of said feature in the middle of a somewhat lengthy content drought, and particularly when that content was one of the features upon which you sold your recent expansion pack.

So needless to say that Friday's announcement by Mike O'Brien (ArenaNet President) that work on new legendary weapons would be suspended "indefinitely" was met with nuclear-level meltdown on the subreddit and associated forums and social media. 

The grievances with this announcement are many, some more legitimate than others - but I think they are covered very well with the countless posts on the reddit and forums. As a result I don't really want to cover them here, instead I want to talk about a very important element of this announcement which seems to have garnered little coverage since Friday night. 

What kind of environment are ArenaNet producing content in where a team of six developers can go a whole half a year and only produce one workable legendary weapon?

Now, I've found that the gut response to this question has often been: 

"Well legendary weapons take a lot of work, Will, you've got the collections and NPCs and quests and items and then you've got to produce the artwork, model, textures, animations and sounds for the weapons themselves. Its a lot of hard work!"

My response to this argument is as follows: no fucking shit.

So your work is hard? Welcome to the wonderful world of employment, buddy. Game developers are not alone in having to complete complex pieces of work to demanding deadlines. But what the above arguement really implies is that the job is too hard to complete in the time given. 

If your job is too hard to complete before the proposed deadline then you have to do something about it - not get six months down the line and when results are expected simply responding "it was toooo haaaarrrddd :( :( :("  Because that kind of shit will get you fired (or else moved onto another team) work being hard is not an excuse for not getting it done.

If you are not able to deliver because the work is too hard to complete in the allotted time frame then there has either been a serious misalignment of resources by management in the first place, significant time management issues within the team or else some unforeseen complication which has delayed development. And if any one of these are the case - then you need to highlight that to the people in the hierarchy who can make the changes so you can get the job done. 

Lots of people have hard jobs; they produce work in restricted time frames and to demanding deadlines. That's the world of work. Saying "its hard" is not an excuse for not delivering.

I respect Mike O'Briens gumption when it comes to this change. It's a real shit show, and it feels like he's made the tough decision and he knows we'll hate him and the team for it.

Strictly speaking I don't have an issue with them axing the legendary weapons. I think it sucks, but like - wtf are they supposed to do if they aren't finished? They can't release them now. And if the team working on them was allowed to continue on their current path then we might not get the full set for another two years or so.

No, I have an issue with them allowing it to get to this point at all; I don't know how a properly managed team can work for 9 months and produce so little end product - that's more worrying than anything else. I think that's what Mo means when he says "spread too thin", teams must have been working where they were either poorly monitored, poorly motivated or else severely under resourced and so we get to a point where they can only produce 10% of the content we were promised.

Are these same thinly spread resources the reason why a steaming turd of a WvW map was allow to eek out into the game? Or why the fractals update was so off the mark (and why we still have so few new fractals)? Is it why they had to discontinue any support for dungeons? If so then how long have they been working like this - and which of the coming updates can we expect to be below par or unfinished because for the past several years the team has been spread too thin?

Anyway, because of this royal fuck-up, he's had to come out and put his hands up and say "I'm sorry guys this is going to fucking suck, but here's whats going to happen". And I respect that, even if I don't like it.

He's absolutely 100% spot on when he says we will judge when the April update rolls around. They better fucking knock it out the park.

[FIFA] How FIFA reconnected me with my Dad

This morning I noticed a thread on the r/Soccer subreddit from a football fan living in Atlanta, he wanted to know how he might introduce the sport to friends and family when they haven't grown up with it.
I expected responses such as "go to local games", "get to know the players", "watch other leagues like the Premier League". But the top comment, by a long way, is "Play FIFA", and its not an aberration: "Play FIFA" is a comment which comes up at least 7 times in the top comments, sometimes accompanied by "play Football Manager".

I was astounded, because that is exactly how I got into football. But I didn't realise it was such a comment route.

In Britain, whilst you don't HAVE to like football, you are locked out of a lot of "blokey" conversations if you don't know anything about it. It's parodied in those IT Crowd sketch(es):





(Incidently, Arsenal DO always try to walk it in)

My dad has always had a season ticket to Leicester City, even when they were down in the lower divisions. My cousins have always been into football, my fiance's family and my coworkers all fluent in football banter. I was always a little behind. I'd watch England matches in European or World Cups, and I'd occasionally put a Champions League match on in the background if there wasn't anything else on - but I wasn't really interested.


Then one day I went to my cousins birthday party - I think he might have been 21 or something - and he and his friends were playing FIFA. I gave it a go and though I was terrible I enjoyed it.

First off, this is the weird thing about football in Britain. People who don't like football simply won't play FIFA - but there is no reason why you couldn't enjoy the experience of the game, what people tend to not like is the ethos around the game, the arrogance of the players, the way they are such arseholes but get paid so much money, the general inanity of the football-talk which surrounds the whole idea of football. But that doesn't mean you couldn't enjoy the experience of moving a player around a pitch and the challenge of putting the ball into the net - that's no different from shooting a player in CoD, or farming loot in Diablo 3. Its all just gameplay. Just look at the popularity of Rocket League amongst non-football types and you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, I decided to take a pop and when the next FIFA game came out I bought it. I still wasn't interested in football, but I enjoyed the game. Then I tried Ultimate Team - where you buy cards which represent players, and then build your team around those cards. Sometimes a player will perform well in real life, and that week EA will make an "In Form" card for that player - it will be a card with boosted stats. Suddenly I had some link to the real world of football - I was interested who might be getting an in-form card this week, so I started watching football and from then I was hooked.

I remember about a year ago I was talking with my family and my cousin said "This is weird, Will is saying things about football". I'd made it - I was a bloke. At one point I was noticeable football-illiterate, but now I had the patter, I could talk the talk - I knew that Arsenal do indeed always try to walk it in, I knew that Theo Walcott may (at the time of the sketch) have been better as a "super-sub" due to his pace, so Wenger putting him on early might be a mistake, and I would know which displays each week were, or indeed were not, ludicrous.

So thanks to FIFA I had this whole new connection to my dad. Its not like we were ever unconnected, but now I could go to games with him and we could sit together to watch matches and I'd actually know what was going on. I could talk to him about something he is passionate about, and that is priceless. I think that perhaps now I can even be a little bit insufferable about football, because I read the r/Soccer subreddit and try to keep up with all the gossip and transfers. It was inevitable that I'd get a bit nerdy about it really!

Either way, I've bought every FIFA game since '10 and, despite all of the games' flaws, I can't see myself stopping any time soon. I'm happy to play because it has given me a new thing to be passionate about, to talk to people about and to bond with my family about, and despite it being owned by the almost comic-book villainous entity that is EA, I still find myself loving regardless.

[GW2] A Bigger Box - a Guild Wars 2 Analogy

I've spent this morning arguing with people about why I think Guild Wars 2 needs more skills for its primary professions. On the Reddit, at least, I think most people misunderstood my arguement. So I've got a little analogy to explain it.


Imagine I have a toybox. This toybox can hold 20 multicoloured building blocks, no more. Every day I take my building blocks out of the box and build a house, or a car, or a space ship.

It doesn't take too long till I've used every block in every workable combination. The blocks are interesting enough, but they are played out and I could do with some more.

Then a guy comes along and tries to solve my problem. He takes my box and takes out all the blocks, he repaints them, and buffs them up so that they are shiny. He hands me back my box of blocks.

This doesn't solve my problem. Even though they look different, I am still choosing from the same number of blocks and the number of things I can build has not changed. I want more choice, so I can make different structures - not just houses, cars and spaceships, but giraffes, skyscrapers and mobile anti-aircraft units. 

So the guy goes away, determined to solve my problem. After a while he comes back with another box entirely. This box has a whole new set of 20 multicoloured building blocks in. He takes my box away and places his new box, exactly the same size, containing the same number of blocks, in front of me. He says that I can use either box I want, but not both. If I want to switch between the boxes then I have to put all my blocks away in his box and ask for the other one.

Again, its not long before I've used every block in every combination in the new box. I don't want to go back to the old box, because that is played out as well.

What the guy doesn't realise is that I don't have a problem with the blocks. I have a problem with the box.

What I need is a bigger box with more blocks in it. Then I could build more houses, skyscrapers, hotels, mansions, maisonettes, bungalows, wig-wams or yurts than I could shake a stick at. Each time I got more blocks the number of interesting and exciting things I could build would increase exponentially - I could combine new blocks with old ones and put an anti-aircraft cannon on the top of my house, or giraffe, if I were that way inclined.

ps. My arguement has not been helped by the fact that I totally overlooked the addition of those new healing skills from 2013 in my original arguement. Yes, they do count as new skills, but seeing as most builds are built around the utilities, rather than the heal, they are not very impactful - hence why I forgot them.

[GW2] Why I am not Hyped for Heart of Thorns

There is a post at the top of the GW2 Reddit at the moment which asks the question: "Why are you NOT hyped about Heart of Thorns?" It assumes that there is a significant number of players who are indeed not excited, or perhaps are even disappointed about the upcoming Guild Wars 2 expansion.

In my case this assumption is pretty accurate. I replied to the thread in what eventually became a bit of a rant, but I kinda felt I should elaborate on one particular element of my dissatisfaction with Heart of Thorns - so here it is.

I've said on this blog before that one of my favourite things to do in GW1 was to try out new and interesting builds. There were hundreds of skills, and the fact that you had access to not only your primary, but also a secondary profession and all of their skills as well meant that there were thousands if not millions of possible skill combinations waiting to be tried out. This was, I know, a complete headache for the designers in terms of balance. But what it did mean is that you were always seeing new builds come out to counter certain metas or take advantage of the latest skill balance changes. It might not have been balanced, but at least it was interesting.

Fast forward to Guild Wars 2 and we launch with the weapon/utility skill system. People tried to argue that it actually meant you had more variation in builds, I think that is demonstrably crap - when you only have the ability to switch out 3 skills on your bar from a pool of just 20 that is not comparable to a system where you can switch out all 8 skills on your bar from a pool of several hundred.

When you have a pool of several hundred, you can afford to have a few duds - when you've got a pool of just 20, you really really can't. But the simple fact is that GW2 has so many dud skills in the utility pool that out of a possible 20 skills you might find that only 10-15 are usable, but then out of that remaining (lets say) 15 you are further limited by the traits you can slot in.

When you doll out your trait points you have to invest in lines, some skills have traits which increase their efficacy, whilst others only become viable at all when taken alongside certain traits. when the trait-point investment required to make a skill work is to the significant detriment of the rest of your build because the line you are investing in has other effects which are not as strong, then it simply is not viable to run that skill. So between just having skills that are complete garbage, skills that require too much investment in traits and finally skills which are simply bugged, the already tiny pool of skills dwindles even further.

Now - this might  have been ok if, at some point over the past 2 and a half years we had some new skills introduced into the pool. If your pool of viable skills is about (a rough estimate) 12, then adding 5 more skills is a MASSIVE increase in possible variety. With each single skill the number of skill combinations increases exponentially, adding in 10, or 20 new skills would have been mindblowingly awesome for the health of the build economy. Creative people could get their teeth into a system like that. But instead we've had - nothing.

Other than a single classless heal skill designed for a specific encounter, we haven't had a single new skill added to the game in well over 2 and a half years. I sometimes wonder if the ArenaNet developers somehow think that their skills are SO UNBELIEVABLY FUN that they will keep a player interested and excited for that entire time. No. I'm sorry, if they think that is the case then they are delusional - even the most exciting and fun skills in the world will not keep a person entertained for 2 and a half years straight if they are given absolutely no alternatives. The skills are stale, and the game, I'm afraid, has become a chore to play.


So here comes Heart of Thorns. FINALLY - something new. New weapons, new skills, new classes, new traits, elite specialisations - think of the possible variations! I was so happy!

But - I'm not sure if they have fundamentally misunderstood how it works, but they seem to have fucked this up too.
Each class gets an elite specialisation. A new twist on their class. They can choose to take on this elite spec or stick to their original spec. For example, a ranger can choose to be a druid or they can choose to stick to ranger. ANet have assured us that there will be a reason to stick or twist and both will be viable. But here's the rub:

• If you want to use the new weapon for your class you have to choose the elite spec.
• If you want ANY new skills you have to choose the elite spec.
• If you want ANYTHING NEW AT ALL you have to choose the elite spec.

So - just to spell it out. After 2 and a half years of waiting for a little bit, not a lot, just a tiny small miniscule amount of build variety, they finally release an expansion which adds absolutely nothing to the existing classes.  If you want any variety at all you have to choose your elite specialisation. Its a binary choice - either you stick with your existing class and absolutely nothing changes, you use the same skills you've used for over 2 and a half years with the same weapons you've used for over 2 and a half years, or you switch to the elite spec and gain access to some new skills and a new weapon. And to make matters worse, even if you do choose the elite spec, it locks you out of some other skills and weapons usable by the original class. (EDIT: wrote this, and have since reconsidered it - locking out of existing ranger skills is a good idea because it means that there is at least a reason to choose between the two specs)

I know they are tweaking some existing skills in a balance update prior to HoT release, but even if they get that 100% spot on and make every single skill viable in some way - that still only means that we are working with exactly the number of skills and traits we were supposed to be making builds with at release over 2 years ago and not a shred of new content has been added to the original classes.

Instead of increasing build variety they've effectively added ONE more build for each class. Because every single person who chooses their elite spec will use the new weapon, why wouldn't you? And every single person who chooses their elite spec will use the new skills, why wouldn't you?

The distinction to be made is between a binary and granular choice here.

I was hoping that they'd add skills and weapons so that each ranger will be different, you could make thousands of small choices about which new skill to take, and how to spec your new traits and which new weapon to use alongside them, or indeed to stick to existing weapons with new skills or new traits with old weapons etc etc. You could still have the druid, you could still lock out some skills from the "ranger line", but give the existing classes a bit of fucking variety as well - so any ranger you see could be using A, B, C, D... ad infinitum combination of new and old features etc.

Instead any ranger you see (if you see any at all) will be almost identical to the same rangers you've been seeing for the past couple of years because they have no new choices to make within their spec. But it won't matter anyway because most players will have switched to their elite spec, they will be using their new weapon, with a combination of the new skills. Either you're a same old ranger, or you're this new druid. 1 or 0. Off or on. A or B.

The sad thing is that people are so sick to death of their classes, they run through the same key combinations day-in-day-out that they will clamour for something new. So the original classes will likely not be seen for a long time after the expansion, at least in PvE - and this will give the illusion of variety. But it won't be variety, it will just be another class choosing from another pool of 10 useless skills, 10 viable ones and a single new weapon.

I'm happy to be proven wrong. And all of this could be washed away if they announce (or we find out during the beta that they've been hiding) new skills for original specs, otherwise its just another example of ANet blundering massively over something just so staggeringly simple as building a little variety into the game.



EDIT: Like my reddit post I linked at the top, this ended up being a bit of a rant. There are elements I am looking forward to in HoT. I don't think another Elder Dragon makes a compelling enemy, but I'm looking forward to the character development of the new Destiny's Edge, I think the Mastery system will provide focus for continued development and I want to see new weapon and armour skins. But the lack of skills being added just riled me up something fierce, and I needed to vent. 

[FIFA] How YOU Ruined FIFA15 (if you bought cheap reliable coins)

I've played a lot of games which have been plagued by illegal coin selling. By illegal in this case I mean outside the laws of the game or the terms of service set forward by the developer and effectively signed by each and every player who plays the game (that's the thing you scroll past and click "accept" at the bottom before starting the game for the first time!).

Coin Selling in Other Games
In various games these sites have varying degrees of authenticity (in terms of whether they will actually deliver the product they claim to be able to provide) for example, in Diablo 3 there is a bot which spams a link to a site which claims to be able to sell you Diablo 3 coins and armour - I have no idea how it could ever do that, seeing as item trading is removed from the game at this point, so its an obvious scam. And the players react as I'd expect them to - "please just block the bot" "ignore the spam" etc etc. Reasonable.

In Guild Wars 2 if you pass through the edge of the mists you might be bothered by the occasional coin seller. Generally they are detested, I'm not sure many people take them up on their offer - perhaps they do, but it is not discussed in polite company I can tell you!

What about FIFA?

Then there's FIFA15. Now, coin sellers have been around for a while and for the most part the big sites which operate will not scam you as such - you pay your money and then put a cheap bronze player on the market for the amount you paid for, and they will buy him from you - delivering your product. I'm sure there must be scam sites, which would steal your money or account details - but thats by the by for what I want to talk about in this post.

Games in FIFA15 reward around 350-550 coins depending upon a number of factors (whether you win, quality of your play and your DNF bonus), you might be able to fit three games in an hour considering the breaks between games for squad changes and finding a new opponent. That means that, end-of-season bonus aside, an average above-board player might expect to make around 1500 coins in an hour. If you buy coins you can purchase millions of coins for less than £5 in seconds. It has completely destroyed the Ultimate Team market and ruined this year's game for a lot of us.

So What?

This frankly lazy, selfish and illegal system of coin selling/buying for real money seems to have become an accepted norm amongst a lot of FIFA 15 players - I'll go into why I think this is in a moment, but first I want to set out the three reasons why FIFA15 coin selling is lazy, selfish and illegal. 

1) Coin selling forces card prices far far far outside the scope of any player who does not want to engage in this illegal practice. When you can buy millions of coins in the push of a few buttons, it means that the prices of the best players can be pushed further and further into the many millions of coins - a number of player cards have even reached the upper price limit of 15m coins. There is no way that a normal law-abiding player could earn that amount of money.

This is why buying and selling coins for real money is selfish. Imagine children who don't have free access to their mummy's credit card playing FIFA15, there is no way they could ever buy any high rated players, even if they played every day of their lives for hours on end. All because some lazy, selfish asshat 17 year old yob can't be arsed to earn his players and would rather pay his way to victory.

2) Coin sellers simply cannot be earning their coins legitimately, as I said - the reasonable yield per hour might be around 1500 coins - so its incredibly likely you are not only supporting one illegal industry (coin selling) but also another one (autobuying). 

What about those of us who don't want to support an illegal industry which is built upon bot autobuyers which trawl the online marketplace snapping up any players being sold for a below average price? Again, no chance we could ever compete. These coin selling sites must get their coins from some where and you can be damn sure they aren't playing the game legit to get them. And as the prices of players rise, so the autobuyers ensure they never drop - scalping any players being sold below the average and selling them on again for profit. So - just because some lazy arsehole doesn't want to put the effort in - the rest of us have to suffer through a bloated market trying to compete with autobuyers and coin buying dickweeds outbidding anyone who comes along with their ill-begotten gains. 

3) Coin buying begets coin buying. So, players buy coins, prices rise because people have more money, so players have to buy more coins and more coins. There is no way a new player could ever hope to buy a player worth more than a few thousand at this stage - so now they have to buy coins too - and the prices keep on rising until they hit the golden 15m ceiling. Its frankly ridiculous. For some people at this point the choice is removed - either you buy coins or your enjoyment of the game is severely reduced. 

You are forced to break the terms of service and risk having your account banned in order to compete all because some fucking lazy selfish mindless twats are too braindead to realise what they are doing is fucking up the game for everyone else. Good job you cunts, this is why we can't have nice things.

Morally Bankrupt YouTubers

But the actual buying/selling transaction is only one part of this story, the other half of the story are the morally bankrupt shills known as the YouTubers:

I've followed the FIFA YouTube scene for a long time. And in the past I've enjoyed the content they produced - but over the past year I've been slowly but surely unsubscribing from FIFA content creators one by one as they continue to sell out and lie to their viewers. These coin selling sites fund YouTubers with FIFA coins so that they can continue to make YouTube content without having to.. you know - play the game a bunch. So rather than try to build their fame legitimately with hard work, innovative content and building a fanbase upon trust, they create lacklustre content, and instead take money from shady sites which actively destroy the game they are basing their fame upon and advertise a service to their fans which might lead to any of their viewers who follow the "LINKS IN THE DESCRIPTION BITCHES" and buy coins to be banned from the game and their account terminated. 

The phrase "CHEAP RELIABLE COINS" has become an all-too familiar preface to any and all YouTube FIFA content. The creators themselves have become parodies of themselves - shrieking harpies who create the very lowest of the low - the "pack opening" video (simply a video showing them opening and overreacting to players pulled from FIFA ultimate team packs). HatFilms' recent parody of the whole Pack Opening/Coin buying/selling scene was eerily fantastic:

People (the YTers included) argue they are just trying to make a living. But they ignore the position of trust they occupy and their responsibility to be a role model to their viewers. There are few YTers who really make it in the scene nowadays and for the most part the way they do that is by building a respect amongst their peers and the companies upon which they build their reputation. Is that what KSI and Nepenthez and all the other morally bankrupt shills are trying to do with their content? Hell no - they are trying to make a quick buck while they can and who gives a fuck about anyone else, right? They are supposed to be representatives of the community - and perhaps in supporting coin selling, they are - and that is very very depressing.

The Excuses 

There are usually 2 main excuses touted by the lazy selfish greedy mongs who buy coins. And here is why they are bullshit:

"FIFA points are too expensive!!!!"

FIFA points are a currency introduced by EA - you buy points with money and then spend the points on card packs. They are expensive. But they are a luxury and if the market had not been vastly inflated by coin selling you wouldn't need to do anything but play the game and earn coins legitimately in order to afford the players you want. "FIFA points are too expensive so I have to buy coins!" is a tautological arguement - you only need to look for alternative revenue because people have bought coins, you need to buy coins because you've bought coins. It doesn't matter how expensive FIFA points are.

"You never get anything good in card packs, they aren't worth the money!"

No shit. Whenever you buy a card pack you are gambling and when you gamble the house almost always wins. If you buy a card pack worth 7.5k then you should never expect to get a player worth 7.5 out the other side - you are paying for the thrill of the potential payoff, not input money output player. 

The long and the short of it is that these people are too stupid or too ashamed to admit that the reason they bought coins is because they are lazy and selfish and greedy and would rather blame EA than themselves for fucking up the game.

So What are EA Doing about it?

So we've got punters buying coins, fucking up the market and funding botters, and the YouTubers who advertise the coin selling websites and then you've got the sites themselves scalping players using autobuyers and generally being the scum of the earth. What are EA doing about it? 

Well, up until recently they've been engaging in seemingly random strikes against coin buyers and YTers who advertise the sites:

But if the coin sellers are the pimps then the YouTubers are their girls on the street selling their wares, and if the police (EA in this loose analogy) take them off the streets (ban their FIFA accounts) then you can bet your bottom dollar it won't be long before they're back on the streets (ie, their coin funder will just give them a new account within minutes). This isn't just me being cynical, its exactly what Nepenthez said happens when his account gets banned . 

The repercussions for players themselves (if they've bought coins, lets call them punters if we are carrying on the analogy above), are a little more severe. Typically they'll get a warning -  they've bought coins and been caught, and if they do it again their account will be terminated/wiped. Its a pain because they could lose everything they worked/didn't work for. But again - make a new FUT club, sure you lose the ill-begotten coins and players but spend another £10-20 or so and you're back up and running with a club worth several million.  

Random band-aids, really. There was no way for EA to strike at the sites themselves who were selling the coins.

Until a couple of weeks ago when EA took FIFA15's webapp (a browser based system which allowed access to the market and your ultimate team squads) offline. This was the first blow - most coin selling went on through the webapp - it was simply an easier interface. Not the mention that almost all of the autobuying went on through the app as well - without this autobuying we began to see the price of players drop down to more manageable levels (myself I was able to pick up a couple of decent bargains). But then today EA brought the hammer down in a MAJOR way. 

Starting from today all players in FIFA15 Ultimate Team will have a set price range including both a lower and upper limit. The price of these upper and lower limits will be set based upon previous purchasing history of the player and other factors (such as card weight etc). There are a number of repercussions of this drastic change, but primarily this strikes at the fundamental method through which coins are transferred from seller to buyer - typically a player would pay the seller online with real money, then agree on a trade - the buyer would list a cheap bronze card on the market for the price agreed upon by the seller (say 3m coins) and the seller would buy that card from the buyer - effectively transferring the coins over. Now that an upper limit has been set which should be appropriate for the card, you can no longer list a crappy bronze card for 3m - if you want to list a player on the market for 3m you'll have to have a player who is worth roughly 3m (at which point you might as well sell the player legitimately and avoid the risk!).

The price ranges are a blunt instrument. They have effectively removed the chance for traders to make any legitimate money - and that is a real shame. But I believe it is recognition from EA that FIFA15 is a bit of a lost cause. They were not able to quell the problems caused by coin selling in time  - so they've brought the hammer down on the market and the baby has definitely gone out with the bathwater. But if your baby is bathing in fetid bathwater then perhaps that's for the best. 

So what now?

My advice for anyone who was banned and lost everything, and now can't buy coins to make up the difference - fuck you, first of all, but second - adapt. Its perhaps a different game now - maybe you should try earning your money legitimately.

To traders - I'm sorry they messed it up for you. That's fucked up. Hopefully you got the money you needed in time, at least players will be more affordable now. 

To everyone else - enjoy that 150k Di Maria. Sweet.

\u\TheBeardedPole put it most succinctly in his reddit post today, better than I have above: here

Anyway... bring on FIFA16. Its going to be... interesting.

[Hearthstone] Who on Earth is MagicAmy?

Is MagicAmy Hyerim Lee, a young attractive Korean pro Hearthstone player? Former Starcraft: Brood War pro and currently top ranked female player for Hearthstone? A player who seemingly dropped out of nowhere and nonchalantly smashed her way to victory at the ESL Legendary Series beating well established pros like Hyped and Trump. Subsequently recruited by Reynad team TempoStorm as both a "competitor and a coach". Is that MagicAmy?

Or is MagicAmy a face, and is the player pulling the strings not based in Korea, but in Canada, a Mr William Blaney? Are the claims of previous pro experience in Brood War actually a fabrication? And is MagicAmy, in fact, the result of a collaboration between Lee and Blaney to create a character who could at once appear to be perhaps one of the undiscovered gems of Hearthstone pro play, and also a vivacious and infectious personality, well thought of amongst the pro scene - at least until now.

When Amy smashed onto the scene many people were entranced. The casual nature with which she brushed aside some of the absolutely top ranked players was fascinating, and perhaps a little intoxicating. It was not a surprise when she was snapped up by a pro team like TempoStorm and she has been a witty and effervescent contributor to the Hearthstone subreddit since. Recently she dropped out of the ESL Legendary Series Quarter finals in California due to "visa problems".

Specialist (Eric Lee) today made claims that MagicAmy is not all she appears to be. In a lengthy Reddit post, Specialist claims that MagicAmy is a "trick to decieve people into thinking she is a girl" so she might be able to garner more attention than she might be due. He presents his evidence that she never attends real-life events, even though there are many opportunities to do so in Korea. Unlike a lot of pro players she never streams her gameplay and she "screenshares" with other people during competitive play. His final conjecture is that he believes the ultimate goal of this "being" is to milk the NA scene for as much money as possible.

To be honest Specialist's evidence is really just opinion, it can't really be seen to be concrete in any way.

But this is where Chakki (Keaton Gill) and Blackout (Lewis Spencer) step in. Through some Poirot-like social media sleuthing they managed to work out a number of connections between MagicAmy, Hyerim Lee and a player called William Blaney from Canada. This information was posted to reddit and it was spread widely - however much of it has now been removed as it contained lots of personal information and so breached Reddit policy.

In addition, Callum Leslie at DailyDot provides further evidence: when he approached MagicAmy for an interview on 30th January she provided a Skype ID which is actually registered to William Blaney and a number of other connections exist (Facebook accounts for MagicAmy redirection to Blaney, the same skype ID appearing on profiles for both Hyerim Lee and Blaney on other sites and a twitter account for "William Blaney" having the username "@magicamy_65199")

Reddit user \u\TimothyAssPoppins evidence

On Reddit as the hype train whirred on people started putting together other pieces of evidence. Some people reviewed the footage of the ESL Series, as part of this tournament players were required to provide a live webcam of themselves whilst playing their matches - MagicAmy had always been noticeably calm and almost nonchalant in her visage as she destroyed opponent after opponent. But Redditors noted that this calm could almost be interpreted as boredom, some even matched up the timing of her card movements to periods of time where her hands were recognisably away from the keyboard.

Following all this evidence emerging, some other players have come forward claiming to have had long-distance relationships with Amy which involved large sums of money being transferred to her overseas for pizzas and plane tickets amongst other things. Celerity Desu signs his post with: "TLDR: She is shady as fuck, she is a pathological liar, but she is not a guy. Thanks for your time."

So at the moment the position appears to be MagicAmy is a person, at least that much we can tell! But several players have confirmed that they have been playing on her account for her, and there are accusations that this may have been going on during competitive tournament play. The Hearthstone community is no stranger to controversy, we are only just getting over the accusations put towards the former member of Team Archon - Hosty - who was accused of stream cheating during tournament play. Ironically, MagicAmy herself posted this rather ominous message Hosty's thread regarding the allegations of cheating:

[GW2] I Only Wear Skirts on Sundays - Trenchcoats in Guild Wars 2

What is ArenaNet's obsession with trenchcoats? Seriously, its getting a little bit old now. 

By my count there are 37 full medium armour sets in Guild Wars 2 and all but 1 include coats which extend beyond the waist. Furthermore, most are full-blown rain macs which go down past the knee (28/37). All but one includes butt-capes which stick stiffly out from our arse-cheeks, often they clip with boots, the edges of gloves or backpieces, weapons sheathed on the waist or back... every single medium armour player out there is dressed in a coat which you wouldn't be surprised to see donned by an old man hanging around the gates of the local primary school.

Frankly, its become a bit of a joke by now. One of the great things about MMOs is getting interesting and varied gear, so every player you see looks unique and individual. Seeing an announced armour set (or the illicit guilty pleasure of an as-yet unannounced datamine of new armour sets) is an exciting experience - but finding that, once again, the designers have created another trenchcoat is just disappointing. Its this disappointment I felt over the carapace/luminescent set, and the latest that_shaman find is absolutely no different.

I like the armours. I really do (Once I've completed the set I'm thinking of switching over to carapace or even luminescent if it dyes well). And I am super-super-super happy to have in-game armour added with at least some regularity now. But does it have to follow this exact same mold every time? Seeing players wearing these two armours at any distance but up close, it would be hard to tell them apart! Flared gloves, check, long coat, check, high boots, check. Its just such a wasted opportunity. 

This problem is not limited to the medium armour professions, heavy armour seems to be also cursed with an over-abundance of armoured skirts as do the casters. But I think this lack of imagination is felt most potently in the medium armour professions.

The GW2 medium armour professions have so much scope for variety. It doesn't just have to be leather or cloth coats! What about light chain mail or a bodice/vest of hardened hide or chitin? What about scales, shells or fur? We had all three of those in GW1 and they didn't need a leather tail to balance out the set! There is so much opportunity for imagination, and whilst I don't doubt that whatever style this new armour set ends up having (and its important to note we've only seen the bare-bones image as of yet), it still appears to be a long coat, just like 36 of the 37 (now 37/38) other sets we have already.

[GW2] A Villain with a little Va Va Voom

Lewis over at Ten Ton Hammer wrote a piece recently detailing why he thinks a Guild Wars 2 expansion is on the horizon. I don't want to repeat all the stuff he said about why its coming, needless to say its an argument with which I agree - and I've seen other very clever people saying the same thing, so I'm inclined to believe that we are right.
He also asked what we'd like to see. I think most people's reactions are all stuff that I'd like to see too - new races, professions, armour, weapons and skills. To be honest I took these to be a given, what I'd really really like to see is a good ol' fashioned villain. 

I want a villain akin to Moriarty, Lex Luthor or Doctor Claw (ask your parents, kids!) and I'm going to tell you why the Elder Dragons simply won't cut it this time, at least not on their own.

Think of the baddies who make you squirm, the ones who make you gnash your teeth or slam your book, controller or theatre viewing binoculars down in disbelief  - jaw gaping at the sheer skulduggery of it all.

The ones who betray the hero at the last second, revealing their Machiavellian plan as they slowly wheel him or her towards a pit of lava or into a pool of ill-tempered sea bass. They all have real personalities and lives, relationships to the characters - more often than not they have qualities which the hero of the piece sees in themselves ("we're not so different, you and I"). Some are flawed, others are downright damaged (often by the actions of the protagonist earlier in life) and we get to know them personally and the connections they have to every other character and how our lives are interwoven with theirs and, in a way, how poetic it is that we should be the ones to face them in the end.
In some ways we see ourselves in them, or at least we understand how they reached the brink of madness on which they teeter... and so we hate them, because we know how easily it could have been us.
Given a different circumstance Bruce Wayne could have ended up mad like the Joker, Prof Xavier could easily have used his powers for evil like Magneto, and we even saw it in what I believe to be the best villain in a video game to date - GlaDOS (spoilers) - we see how quick and easy it was for Wheatley, our mild-mannered sidekick, to become corrupted by immense power.

An Elder Dragon does not have any of these qualities. An Elder Dragon is a whirling thunderstorm of hate, hunger and lust. They are elemental. They do not have personalities and so we cannot see ourselves in them, and so we cannot hate them. Our drive to destroy them is simply "they are a bad thing, if I do not kill them more bad things will happen and that would be bad". 

They are a daunting foe, sure, but they are no villain. If we are going to face Mordremoth (and there's no telling if this confrontation will be saved for the Living Story ending or if they might stretch it out to an expansion) then I think another soulless strategic campaign against an enemy which we have no real strong feelings for will not provide as compelling a narrative as one with a truly despicable (and hateable) supervillain at the end.

What we need is a pre-existing character. One who is close to our party. Someone who might betray the group and drag them to their lowest point - just when they think they are getting the upper hand.
No no no - Trahearne is far too obvious, come on use a little imagination. We need someone with a little vavavoom, a little mystery. There are, in my opinion, two main candidates:

Canach has shown a certain ruthlessness, a willingness to do a little bad in order to achieve a lot of good. This is actually a relatively common trope amongst villains, (Bane, Tyrion Lannister, Walter White, Gabriel in Constantine etc etc) and it is easy for the "little bad" to become "lots of bad" as things spiral out of control and the antagonist rationalises ever more evil deeds in pursuit of his or her noble goal.
He hits the "not so different, you and I" quota also. He is a good guy driven bad by circumstance and again that could have so easily been us.
The only drawback is that he is currently on a path of redemption, and I'm not sure the message ANet want to send with his story is "rehab doesn't work, kids". That might just be too much of a downer. I wonder if he could simply be a fall-guy - the one which we all suspect as being behind it all, the one which all clues point to until the very final second when the true puppetmaster is shown to be:

Faolain. She is a character who seems built to make our skin crawl, and we really don't know why yet. She has a past with Caithe, and claims to love her very much. They were close friends once, perhaps even lovers and Caithe still, on some level at least, trusts her. Caithe has always been seen to be stoic, infallible almost to the level of humourlessness but Faolain seems to be able to break down these walls and get underneath her leaves.
She is the leader of the Nightmare Court, an ostensibly evil character, an enemy even, but nevertheless she seems to be Caithe's one weakness and there seems to be the very strong suggestion that "Caithe's Secret" has something to do with her. Something in her past which she has buried somewhere deep inside and hopes will never see the light of day. Scarlet knew it, perhaps as a result of delving deep into the history of the Pale Tree.
I've ruminated on the idea that perhaps the sylvari could be the Pale Tree's natural defense against the Elder Dragons. In light of new information, perhaps the relationship between the dragons and the Tree is not so antagonistic, and this is what Caithe and Faolain know, and what Scarlet saw, on account of being "first born"?

I would like to see Faolain be the Eldritch Horror at the end of Guild Wars 2's first expansion. As a servant of the Elder Dragons - a part of the earth, just like the Pale Tree and the Dragons themselves.

How I'd Like to See it Go Down:

Imagine a story in which we delve deeper into the dream, and the deeper we get the more clues about the connection between the Tree, the sylvari and the Dragons are unearthed. But the closer we get to the truth, the more drawn and distant Caithe becomes - she warns we are digging too deep, and might not like what we find, she argues with Canach and they both disappear into the darkness. The group suspects Canach (and perhaps there is some handily planted evidence to support our suspicions) has kidnapped Caithe and is some kind of Dragon worshipper.

The final confrontation takes place at a bloodstone site somewhere in Maguuma, we face off against our foe - who we suspect to be Canach, he is standing alone shouting fos us to "stay back!". Nonetheless, we march forward, but as we approach to make an arrest a thick vine appears out of nowhere and impales him!
Riding upon a twisted tendril is Faolain and at her feet is the mangled body of Caithe. All these years, she tells us, she had been grooming Caithe for this - this blood sacrifice to bring about the rise of an age of Nightmare. Using Caithe's first-born blood, Faolain channels the Elder Dragon energy from the earth, absorbing it all and driving her mad in the process, she can't contain all that energy in her small body - she explodes into a gigantic sylvari nightmare beast!

We struggle to keep up with the pace of battle, but are no slackers, we persevere but just as we are about to strike the killing blow the dragon takes over, knocking the entire party to the ground and rising up above us - preparing to consume us all!
Off to the side comes a beleaguered groan - the air seems to stand still and silent - Canach claws his way to his knees and grits his teeth, snarling at the dragon beast in front of him. Struggling he rises to his feet but bereft of energy, he stumbles and is caught by a flash of light - the image of the Pale Tree draws him to his feet. Just as the Dragon poured all his energy into Faolain, so too does the Pale Tree pour her energy into Canach.
Enraged, the Faolain/Dragon beast screams of the injustice of a second born being granted such a blessing - drawing up all her hate and spite, the beast lunges at Canach but he swats her away easier than a fly, Faolain smashes against the trunk of the Tree and the Dragon Spirit bursts forth from her body. The love of the Pale Tree is no match for the choas and hate of the Elder Dragon.

We then begin our final battle with the dragon spirit itself, but we are imbued with great gifts of strength and ability from the Pale Tree's blessing and with Canach at our side we fight our way through the spirit and to Faolain's body - the conduit which is giving him form - just as we did with Scarlet, we finish her once and for all.

After the battle we mourn the loss of Caithe and Canach who cannot return to his former life, he must now live as the vision of the Pale Tree, one with the eternal alchemy having restored balance for a while at least. His is truly a story of redemption, willing to sacrifice his own life to save others, but not in such a way that he takes the fight away from us. Faolain is a villain who betrays us, kills our friends in front of our faces but is still ultimately a victim of the draw of the power of the Dragon.

Sales soar. ANet become billionaires. Everyone is happy.

Apart from Trahearne who was killed at some point.

ps. The only drawback is that it would be yet another female sylvari corrupted by dragon power. Maybe they all just look evil to me, I dunno.

Whatever Happened to the Wizard?

There are, perhaps, three significant stalwarts of wizardry in fiction - relatively evenly distributed across time, they are comparable in a number of characteristics: wisdom (typically they are advisers and guides, trusted by less experienced characters), great big white/grey beards (almost, some might say, essential) and most significantly for this article they are similar in their extremely advanced age. They are Merlin from the stories of King Arthur, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and most recently Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter. 

Its the advanced age (and general wizenedness) which I want to focus on. All three are immensely powerful beings, venerated across the lands and respected as such. There is the implication that their immeasurable power was gained through many years of learning, training and reading dusty scrolls on the arcane arts. So much time and effort has to go into developing their skill that they presumably forget to shave for a couple of decades, leading to impressive beards. Similarly, with time being of the essence, they don't want to waste precious seconds unbuttoning or unzipping flies, so they all go for cloaks and cowls which allow just a quick lift and you're ready to roll. My point is that their training consumes decades of their lives, and by the time they reach the kind of power where they might legitimately call themselves wizards they at least appear to be very old men.

So where on earth is this trusted archetype in modern gaming? The Guild Wars elementalist, the Warcraft Mage, the Diablo Wizard, Amadeus in Trine, the wizards in Magicka... all fresh faced youths in the prime of their lives. Have they even had half the time to develop skills through which they might call themselves spellcasters of note? I say nay. Some games (like Skyrim) give you the option to change the appearance of age of your character, but this is for appearances sake only - to all other agents in the game you will still be a youth of relative inexperience.

In fact, the old wizard archetype is often employed as a secondary character to your own: the greybeards in Skyrim being a good example. Again, they are elderly bearded advisers - though their wisdom could be somewhat questioned. But still I miss the chance to play that character - a character whose staff is not only a deadly weapon, but also an essential walking stick to soothe his aching back! In the future I want my RPGs to include in character creation a slider for "hunchbackedness" and the further I slide it to the left, the more broken and bent my character becomes. Instead of dodge rolling, he could shift or phase out of the way, instead of fizzing out puns like no tomorrow, he can dispense golden nuggets of wisdom ("a wizard arrives precisely when he means to!").

Power does not necessarily need to be communicated through vim and vigour, the kind of boundless energy which the Guild Wars elementalist seems to possess in spades - shooting around, throwing out wise-cracks and one liners like no tomorrow. Power can be like Yoda - old and immense, but with the appearance of being small and inert. These old characters, Merlin, Gandalf, Dumbledore were thoughtful in their movements, slow and steady, their calm masking their immeasurable power because when required to act they act swiftly and decisively, I understand that there are certain examples (I believe the wizard character in Gauntlet is old and beardy) but rarely are we given the chance to factor age into a game which allows character customisation and certainly in MMOs the robe-wearing bearded wizard seems to have been superseded by the young spell-slinger type.

I get that game developers want us to identify with the characters we create, and its easier for us to identify with a character who appears to be of a similar age to the standard gaming demographic. Perhaps I'm getting a little more advanced in age now and with my back I can't see myself dodge rolling much in the near future. Instead, I'd rather play a character who is as immobile as I am, but still gives me the feeling of being old and powerful. 

There is a whole other article about how wizards are venerated, but witches (until the Harry Potter franchise at least) got the shorter end of the stick and largely still do. That's a topic for another time and one I'm sure which is tied up with various cultural views on power and femininity.

[GW2] Here's your feedback - The Gem Store [UPDATED!]

For a TL:DR (and particularly if you are an ArenaNet dev) see the bottom of the post.

The Guild Wars 2 gem store has always allowed players to convert their in game gold into "gems" which they can use to buy items from the gem store.
This system has worked in tandem with the ability to buy gems with real money.

Before this latest update players could choose the amount of gold they wished to spend to buy items.

Need a key for 125 gems? Then buy 125 gems! Need an outfit for 700 gems? You guessed it, buy 700 gems!

The new system works like this:

Need a key for 125 gems? Buy 400 gems and have 275 left over! Need an outfit for 700 gems? Buy 800 gems and have 100 left over! Because reasons!

Players can now only convert their in game gold to gems in increments of 400. Once again ArenaNet's justification for this change has been: new players found it confusing and as veteran players we wouldn't understand. 

"Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated."

This is an argument they've used before, and I've written about here.

As one eloquent redditor quite rightly put it: "Bullshit". First off, if the interface is confusing players - then change the fucking interface. This has nothing to do with the ability to convert however much gold you need. The interface is just the way the player interacts with the system, not the system itself.

Second, which "new player" has the gold stashed away to be able to convert gold into 400 gems anyway!? At the current conversion rate that equals 75 gold! I played for a good 6 or 7 months before I had that kind of currency lying around, and even then I wouldn't have thought of converting all my worldly possessions into gems to buy a cheap looking outfit! There is nothing about this update to this system which is helpful to new players, in fact it isn't even a system which new players will have the option to use because they simply will not have the gold to buy the required 400 gems.

I'm afraid the actual motivations for this change are very thinly veiled. Before you might convert a small amount of gold into gems to buy a Black Lion Chest Key from the store, now you are far less likely to have the spare change required - so instead you BUY the gems with real money. That's the reason this change  has been made - the only thing confusing is why ArenaNet are so brazen about it. It is mind boggling.

So, just to spell it out for ArenaNet - feed this back to your team:

There is absolutely no way that a new player will have the in game gold to buy 400 gems, so they will spend real money instead. This is NOT a system which is friendly for new players, it is absolutely the opposite. This is a system to rinse more real money out of new players. You. are. fucking. it. up.

Update:
Kotaku (I know, ew, but bear with me) are claiming that ArenaNet will be reversing the changes to the gem system in light of our "ranting". They don't actually give any source for this announcement but I anticipate a statement from ANet soon if its true. The system works. Rant for justice. All haile the rant.