Guild Wars 2

Does anybody know?

I have asked around and some people think it is A-Net discouraging gold making. While others speculate it is A-Nets way of forcing people to run to the top.

Either way, it seems like a rather odd thing for A-Net to implement in a Living Story area.

What do you all think?

Asurans want to make money. Also, it’s a tiny bit of silver. If a handful of silver is going to stop you from making gold, it’s a terrible method to make gold.

I don’t use the travel golems anymore. If I happen to die at any point in the tower, I just waypoint back and start over from the ground floor. More loot that way.

The travel golems have a powerful neomagtherium reactor inside that uses silver and copper based alloys to generate enough energy to activate the crystallonium spacial relocator that transport you between them, it just happens that the silver and copper alloys in the coins are a perfect match to the alloys needed to generate the most energy possible, it really it’s so simple even a bookah would understand it.

BTW, pay no attention to the asura assistant that’s removing coins from the back of the golems, those coins were put there by us for safekeeping sometime ago and are entirely unrelated to the ones you inserted into the golems.

Hamfisted goldsink is all it is. Just an excuse to have no waypoints and charge twice as much instead. Don’t give it any more credit by asking why.

Leablo.2651:

Hamfisted goldsink is all it is. Just an excuse to have no waypoints and charge twice as much instead. Don’t give it any more credit by asking why.

Yep, when you realise that they don’t do anything WPs couldn’t have done instead, you realise the hamfistedness of it. All for gold sinks, but prefer them to be a bit more subtle and intelligent personally.

the golems costing money is annoying, true… not as annoying as not having a golem at the top though

I’m more bothered by there only being one waypoint and it’s at the bottom. A bit annoying when you’ve paid to travel to the top, tried to help out a fallen player whilst running through, ended up dying yourself (I’ve started running past downed/dead people.. feel so incredibly guilty but more often than not trying to help results in my own death ), so have to pay to wp down then the fee to travel up again.

I think it’s probably to try and encourage people to go through the tower. Otherwise after the first time most people would just skip it and then new people would have an even harder time than they already do.

The thing about virtual worlds is that there’s very few actual restrictions on what you can do. They could have used waypoints instead of golems. They could have made either version free. They could make the tower automatically teleport you to the furthest point you’ve reached before. They could remove the gravity and enable us all to fly to the top.

But as I found out the hard way when I tried using cheat codes in Morrowind and jumped so high I got stuck in the top of the map (and that’s a very tall map) sometimes limitations are actually a good idea.

Why Do Travel Golems Cost Money?

Its a money sink.

John Smith is actually inside the golem, counting his taxes like Scrooge…

Travel golem cost money cuz there is no real gold sink in the game so anet have to make silly one.

Tho the encouragement theory is still ok while one needs zerg to go through tower.

Basically it’s to encourage people to actually go through the Tower rather than just waypointing to the top all the time. Doesn’t mean I don’t find it annoying though. Or that I wish you could teleport right to the top of the Tower. :P

Same reason why waypoints cost gold.

In order for this to be an effective gold sink, it needs to function as a graduated cost that increases with the wealth of the player wanting to use the waypoint and decreases with the poverty of the player wanting to use the waypoint.

A static cost cannot serve as an effective gold sink because it removes too much gold from the poorer players and way too little gold from the richer players. A gold sink needs to remove a lot of gold only from the richest players.

As Ellisande says. I’ve seen a lot of people throwing lines out along the lines of “gold sinks are good for the new players” – but in practise, a lot of the things called gold sinks in GW2 serve to keep those newer and less experienced players from being able to establish themselves, while being merely a pittance for the super-rich who are driving inflation.

You could see this in the TP prices – GW2 essentially has a two-tiered economy where the stuff that newer players are likely to be selling stagnates or even depreciates (see greens before the introduction of essences of luck, and even with that they’ve been steadily dropping since) while the stuff that’s of interest to the rich such as gems and precursors soars further and further out of reach.

For a gold sink to have the desired effect, it needs to be sinking gold from the players that are driving inflation. Things like waypoints, repair costs, and now the golems just don’t affect them, while they do affect the poorer and newer players that gold sinks are supposed to protect from inflation.

To be honest, I’m glad they designed it the way they did. With 1 WP, travel golems costing 5s each, and no port to the top, it forces players to actually fight/run their way thru the content. It keeps people from trivializing the tower and just bypassing all the content. Also, it keeps people from WPing to the key vendor, buying the 3 pieces, and WPing back to the chest each day. Gotta at least work for it. A week into these LS and we’ve usually got a ton of people either abandoning the content or exploiting it (think Pavilion & Invasions). This way if you want to experience it, you’ve got to actually, well…experience it.

Can you imagine the level of complaints that would amass if they didn’t force a zerg?

“Oh, woe is me! The hour is late and I thus cannot climb dire tower of nightmares as I lack a furious company of fellows!”

Or something like that.

Seras.5702:

To be honest, I’m glad they designed it the way they did. With 1 WP, travel golems costing 5s each, and no port to the top, it forces players to actually fight/run their way thru the content. It keeps people from trivializing the tower and just bypassing all the content.

Contradict yourself much?

And what content? There is NOTHING new here that doesn’t exist everywhere else.

Want to fight mobs? You can do that kitten anywhere.

Want to run around the map? You can do that kitten anywhere.

draxynnic.3719:

As Ellisande says. I’ve seen a lot of people throwing lines out along the lines of “gold sinks are good for the new players” – but in practise, a lot of the things called gold sinks in GW2 serve to keep those newer and less experienced players from being able to establish themselves, while being merely a pittance for the super-rich who are driving inflation.

You could see this in the TP prices – GW2 essentially has a two-tiered economy where the stuff that newer players are likely to be selling stagnates or even depreciates (see greens before the introduction of essences of luck, and even with that they’ve been steadily dropping since) while the stuff that’s of interest to the rich such as gems and precursors soars further and further out of reach.

For a gold sink to have the desired effect, it needs to be sinking gold from the players that are driving inflation. Things like waypoints, repair costs, and now the golems just don’t affect them, while they do affect the poorer and newer players that gold sinks are supposed to protect from inflation.

At last someone who can see reason.