Guild Wars 2

So we got plenty of different permanent gathering tool, yet few ppl use them. Reason? It’s very anti-alt. Many and more ppl run alts. Be it 2,3 or 8 characters – if you regularly run on more than 1, buying any permanent tool is a waste of money, as running always to bank to move it to another character is waste of time. However, there is a simple fix to it. Change it from item to hero panel tool. After buying from gemstore, you unlock it on your account. Then any of your characters can use it. First ‘equip’ would be free, but each next would cost some money (0,5g?) so we’d introduce some gold sink. It’d also possibly interest ppl that alraedy got their set of permanent tools to buy other ones for cosmetics (so in hero panel you could switch between unlock animations. GW2 is all about cosmetics, isnt it?). Before saying that ppl would fast stop buying permanent tools – well, why not introduce more of them with time? Also they could have built-in features like the watchwork mining pick (corn pick? quartz pick? foxfire axe? then switching between them would take some money away from game). Would be also nice for salvage-o-matics to work this way.

sorry for my english

I’d just add a “Toys & Tools” tab to the bank.

Basically, anything everlasting and account bound (the HoM minis would be made account bound) available in the Toys, Services or Special sections of the gemstore, and anything else similar to them you can find outside the gemstore, like the HoM portal stone, Mawdrew II the everlasting election buttons the selfless/thoughless potions, the flames of Kryta, the model of the Zephyr Sanctum, Marjory’s and Scarlet’s Journals, etc; would be added to this bank tab.

They would be unlocked as characters obtained or characters with these items are loaded, like when the skin locker was introduced.

Soulbound items like the Birthday Blaster would be exceptions, as its supposed to be given to each character separately.

Minis would be moved to this tab from the collections tab, and the collections tab would be renamed “Materials” and include only materials from then on.

The “Toys & Tools” tab would have two kind of slots:

• Stacking slots
  • These are for tradeable stuff, like tradeable minis and the everlasting bell. They’ll work like they do now in the collections tab, you take one, the number goes down. Take the last one, the slot gets empty.
• Infinite or “Cornucopia” slots.
  • These are like upgrade slots used to be in the PvP locker. There’s no number or stacks. You can just take as many copies of the item as you want once unlocked. Anything account bound that can’t be traded would have cornucopia slots so any character can take one independently of other characters getting the stuff or not. You can safely destroy these items as they will always be available in your bank.

Stacking slots would be upgradeable to infinite slots by sacrificing one copy of the tradeable item, like when unlocking skins. Any remaining copies of the item will be removed from the stack and sent to your inventory. For example, if you wanted to turn the Unbreakable Choir Bell’s slot into an infinite slot, you’ll first need to get one, then rick click on it in your inventory and choose “Unlock toy” (or destroy the item). You will get a warning telling you the item will become account bound. If the item was in a stack or you had more copies in the bank, all of them will be sent to your inventory, as only one copy would be made account bound to unlock the slot.
Now you can no longer store the tradeable version in the Toy & Tools tab as the slot was replaced with the account bound version, but you can make as many copies of the account bound version as you want. So feel free to sell the rest in the trading post so others can enjoy them.

+1 for the basic idea of this permanent tools being account items shared between all characters simultaneously
+1 for the basic idea of combining this tools with some sort of money sink

But I don’t agree with your proposal of how this money sink could look like since it’s just some kind of initial money sink that won’t affect people not buying different parts of these…
I’d add some “usage” fee for this items, e.g. a few copper/use (like 5 copper) comparable to the copper-fed salv-o-matic…

I agree. If permanent gathering tools unlocked the tool on all characters, I’d actually invest in them, but as someone who regularly swaps characters, it’s completely nonviable.

While it would be nice to have easy access to my selection of permanent tools on other characters without the bank, I don’t know where your getting the idea that hardly anybody uses them.

When I arrive at a node at the same time as someone else, more often than not they have a permanent tool equipped (can tell based on the animation). As they are a Gem store only item, I’d say the percentage of players with them is actually far higher than would be expected.

That being said, I still wouldn’t say no to an easier way of sharing them between alts.

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I agree. If permanent gathering tools unlocked the tool on all characters, I’d actually invest in them, but as someone who regularly swaps characters, it’s completely nonviable.

Keep in mind this change would potentially have each player purchase ONE of each item and never need another (that would likely result in an immediate spike in sales….then settle to near ZERO). HOWEVER, they would have to refund every player that currently has multiple ones…potentially a HUGE loss in sales (I have 4 sets myself). Then the change would totally tank any future sales of the items (nobody but new players would ever need one).

Does this seem like an intelligent business step to you? I get all the ideas in here come from the “good for players” perspective, but Anet does need to make money so the servers keep humming…..so we all have something to play.

BTW, I would LOVE this feature but I realize it would not be good for Anet in the long run.

We have gathering tools we never need to replace and take no inventory slots yet that’s not good enough? It’s too much trouble to park you alts at a bank to swap them in? I know why don’t we just have a button so you can gather up all the mats in the zone at once because it’s obvious we have become to lazy to move our characters.

Why would you add a money sink to something that is permanent?
May as well just buy the in-game tools with gold, and save my real cash.

I’d prefer that all characters would get their own tools once bought, with no need to do anything further.

Would never happen OP. And with good reason. The fact that they’re account bound reduces their overall profitability already, and ANet needs to be able to make -some- money off of them. They’re supposed to be a long term investment Afterall.

One interesting suggestion that has shown up here in the past is an “account bag” that takes ups a bag slot, and whatever is in the bag is in the bag for all characters on your account that have an account bag equipped. They could sell the bag in the gem store, the first purchase being a pair, and you can purchase additional bags if you want the items stocked across more than two characters. Kind of like a miniature, portable bank tab (with less slots).

I’m all for the idea of making the tools accountwide.

But since that is not likely to happen, at least give players the possibility to send mails to our own characters. That wouldn’t require too much work for Anet and it would only take the players a few seconds to do before switching character.