Holiday Chests Released

Hi-Rez released "Holiday Chests", where you can find new Nu Wa and Sylvanus skins, ward skin, and old holiday skins : Wreck the Halls Fenrir, Father Christmas Bacchus and Jingle Hel.

Hi-Rez will donate 1$ from every purchase to American Red Cross. This will last from Nov. 28,2014 to Jan. 14,2015.

And I saved up 600 gems (I don't remember how much it used to be) especially for that Jingle Hel... just to find it behind a new paywall... **** you and your chests HR, really.

Sad to say, it's pretty much to be expected by HiRez these days.

It seems they never learn anything. Just a month ago, they received an overwhelming amount of negative feedback when it was shown that the Halloween skins were initially going to be chest exclusives, even the Thanatos skin they had released the previous year. Now, they're doing the same thing.

Granted, I don't mind chest exclusive skins, like Nuclear Winter or Derpules, and not just because Ymir and Herc have gem skins already you can just buy, but because it does give some incentive to buy chests. Kind of like a prize you could potentially get. What I do mind is their trend of bringing out seasonal chests for 400 gems that you can only get their seasonal skins from. Why should we not be able to purchase these skins outside of the chests, even if these chests exist? I mean hell, after the uproar, they released some of the skins outside of the chests, even if they shamefully over-priced the Thanatos skin since the previous year.

You'd think they could give us a bit of a break and actually allow us to choose which season skin(s) we want to spend money on, but at this point, you really shouldn't expect much from HiRez on this. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays indeed.

I want the Nu Wa skin (fapfapfap), but I'm sure as **** not gambling for it.

Now you can buy it without chests. HiRez posted it in one of the threads on reddit. Jingle hel, Father Christmas bacchus and wreck the halls fenrir are all individually purchasable and cost 500 gems each.

Lol, increasing the prices just so the chests stay relevant.

Stay classy Hi-Rez.

Well. If they gave Father Christmas Bacchus a new VP. I'd say the 500 gems is worth.

Just thinking of Spamming "Merry Christmas" as one of his VP lines in the middle of the summer makes it more great.

Again, not surprising in the least. Last year, the Jack the Reaper skin was 400 gems, this year, when they put it up for direct buy, it was boosted to 600 gems for no reason other than the fact they received negative backlash about him originally being a chest exclusive and were pretty much verbally "forced" to make it a direct buy.

What's even worse is that, while the Bacchus and Fenrir skins have some decent looks and effects to their skins, Hel's is no where near worth that much. It's not even a recolor. It just adds a few lights and a hat to the pre-existing model. Still, neither of them are worth 500 in my opinion, unless they add a custom voice pack.

So Happy Christmas and Merry Holidays to the Smite community. Nothing like the feeling of getting ripped off by HiRez.

This. Bacchus has a bit of original effects, can't say anything about fenrir, but hel.. Just the lights and that is it. No new VP, no new effects, nothing.. and 500 gems...

I know I don't have to really do any convincing as to why it's a **** move to charge 500 gems for these skins because I'm sure most people here agree, but I want to rant some more about the really scum bag move HiRez is trying to pull:

To put things into perspective, let's look at this:

• Isis' Scarlet Coven skin: Custom voice, visual changes to the skin, visual changes to abilities: 400 gems
• Chang'e's Moonlight Love skin (which will probably overpriced during V-day): Custom voice, visual changes to skin, visual changes to abilities: 400 gems
• He Bo's Infinity Wave skin: Custom voice, essentially just a recolor, visual changes to abilities: 400 gems
• Anubis' Gravehound and Stargazer skins: Custom voice (Stargazer only), visual changes to the skin, visual changes to abilities: 400 gems each
  etc...

Granted, I'm not one to place value on a skin based on how much you have to pay for them, especially considering some 400 gems skins clearly give you more than other 400 gems skins (Scarlet Coven vs Afrodite for example), but seriously...some genius(es) are actually trying to pass off those 3 Xmas skins for 500 gems that aren't even half as good as these skins listed above and others for less than that.

Of course, as stated by Buddha, the obvious reason for this is to force more of an incentive to buy the Xmas chests, which is a real scum bag move, in my opinion. Fortunately, it's looking like the community is getting fairly vocal about their opposition to it, though, if the chests and skins are selling, I'm definitely not holding my breath on them changing anything.