Guild Wars 2

The title says it all. If you complete everything in the zone, you get free waypoints.

Saying “no” says it all. We want more gold sinks, not less.

If you have 100% map completion, you should be high level, which means you’re earning more money from dungeons, dragons, WvW, etc..

That means you should be paying more dues, not less. That’s how a good economy should work.

I hate the dues on Waypoints at any level above around 30 or so. It makes me not want to use them. I like free Waypoints. I would be willing to pay elsewhere, like higher equipment repair costs, if Waypoints were free (or much cheaper, like they are below 30).

I dont think it will hurt the economy, because it will encourage players to do more content, thus putting more items in to the economy, and more will push to play the game in its entirety. And its nothing that is mandatory anyway. You dont have to get every waypoint for free. Its just a thought, maybe a discount would work? i dont know, i just think some form of waypoint money-change should be looked at, im not saying i hate it, it just seems like a good perk for completing zones. That, or mounts. i know its so “WoW-esque” but it does feel rewarding to ride something that you earned yourself.

The argument here is that there needs to be a gold sink, to counteract inflation. Gold sinks are generally things that all players need to partake in to indiscriminately drain gold out of the money supply. My main gripe with GW2’s waypoint system is that it is meant to replace mounts and manual travel, but at the same time they overpriced it to the point that most people have an adversity to using it to travel (e.g. using Heart of the Mists to Lion’s Arch just to skimp on travel fees).

The problem is, high travel costs are currently discouraging people from going to low-traffic areas because it would cost them money to just hang out in random places. Most players with average amounts of gold will feel this way, and the only opponents of this are the moneybags with 100g+ that wouldn’t even be phased at shelling out a few gold in travel fees.

In a more liberal political sense, I argue that the ability to travel is a right, not a luxury or privilege for those with money. It’s integral for gameplay to the point that I would advocate for Anet to find a better goldsink than waypoints.

The way to do it would be to dynamically adjust the price of waypoints based on zone population… make it cheaper to go to empty zones. Tweak it as needed so that its effectiveness as a gold sink stays about the same. It would just require a lot of work, I’d imagine, and in the end probably wouldn’t be worth it from anets perspective.

This may be true, thank you for the replies, considering how much many MMOs have changed over time, i’m very curious to see what direction A-net goes with their masterpiece.

Waypoints are too expensive?

You’re obviously doing something wrong. I used to do a little running instead of teleporting at lower levels, but ever since I hit eighty, I’ve got money coming out of my ears.

Waypoints should be free.

There’s no need for pointless gold sinks.

The server economy will NOT explode.

It would help bring players together.

As it is it’s a single player game.

Are you kidding? If waypoints were free, you’d never see anyone anywhere except where they planned to be. With waypoints costing something, people sometimes choose to make the run instead of teleporting. People run along, get caught up in events, see other people along the way—it’s great. If waypoints were free, the spaces in between would become desolate wastelands, inhabited only by NPCs, monsters, and those few players that have yet to unlock the waypoint.

Tarvok.4206:

Waypoints are too expensive?

You’re obviously doing something wrong. I used to do a little running instead of teleporting at lower levels, but ever since I hit eighty, I’ve got money coming out of my ears.

Your definition of wealth please, how much gold do you have? I’m sitting on top of 20g right now after dropping 65g for cosmetic purposes, as a fresh 80 this week and I will tell you- I don’t want to drop 5 silver on travelling across the map. I have friends who are broke at 5g to their name but will travel frivolously, and buy dyes without second thoughts since they are reckless with money.

I do agree with the issue of desolate zones if all waypoints are free. My proposal would be to make a central waypoint in the zone free, but the rest still cost the same. This allows people to arrive in the zone while encouraging them to still make the trek by foot to reach places they want to go to.

Tarvok.4206:

Are you kidding? If waypoints were free, you’d never see anyone anywhere except where they planned to be. With waypoints costing something, people sometimes choose to make the run instead of teleporting. People run along, get caught up in events, see other people along the way—it’s great. If waypoints were free, the spaces in between would become desolate wastelands, inhabited only by NPCs, monsters, and those few players that have yet to unlock the waypoint.

Except you already never see anyone anywhere except where they planned to be so your argument falls apart right there. The spaces in between are already desolate wastelands….

I’m pretty sure zones are already desolate with the waypoint fees. I don’t like the waypoint fees. There are plenty of other sinks in the game, the biggest being the TP.

This is also a departure from GW1 which had zero penalties for movement.

This is really an area that encourages game play by removing any inhibition to joining players in other zones. It’s one of the few sinks in the game that encourages a Player NOT to play by taxing the simple method of moving around the map.

Granted movement is done better in GW2 than other MMOs by far… but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

Are you kidding? If waypoints were free, you’d never see anyone anywhere except where they planned to be. With waypoints costing something, people sometimes choose to make the run instead of teleporting.

This is maybe true, to some extent, but even when waypoints are essentially free (like at very low levels) I still tend to jog places, just because you tend to stumble over events and resources along the way.

I think at bare minimum every map in the game should have at least one, perhaps even two or three “super-waypoints” that are free to travel to and from. I mean, the minimum “free” route to Arah, for example, involves running from LA to Bloodtide, then through the Whisper base to the Pact HQ, then through three full zones of Orr. Otherwise you have to spend several silver to make the trip, which in this case is well worth it, but still galling.

Your definition of wealth please, how much gold do you have? I’m sitting on top of 20g right now after dropping 65g for cosmetic purposes, as a fresh 80 this week and I will tell you- I don’t want to drop 5 silver on travelling across the map.

You’re doing great. I’ve had an 80 for months now, and a bunch of alts, and I’ve only got around 50-55g between them, having only acquired a max of around 75g total if you count what I’ve spent on stuff. There is a wide gulf between players who just play the game and those who TP-farm, or dungeon farm, or Event farm.

Tarvok.4206:

Are you kidding? If waypoints were free, you’d never see anyone anywhere except where they planned to be. With waypoints costing something, people sometimes choose to make the run instead of teleporting. People run along, get caught up in events, see other people along the way—it’s great. If waypoints were free, the spaces in between would become desolate wastelands, inhabited only by NPCs, monsters, and those few players that have yet to unlock the waypoint.

Yes!

I certainly run more places and end up helping out in events because the waypoints cost money.

But it would help if there were one place in each area that we could travel to for free. I think it would increase the numbers of people in each map. I know I would return frequently to many areas if there were just a place to get into them.

Or at least make one waypoint in each area cheap.

If the gems to gold exchange rate (pegging game gold to real $ value) is at 100 gems gives 1 gold, that makes 1 silver equal to ONE PENNY of real money.

So next time you cringe on spending 3s to get to your destination, remember that the time you spent fretting already ate up the 3 cents you are concerned about.

:D

I too was annoyed by the pay-WP at the beginning, but now I don’t even notice it, and I never carry more than 5-7g at any time (usually invest it in one commodity or another to hedge against inflation).

MinorThreat.9523:

I dont think it will hurt the economy, because it will encourage players to do more content, thus putting more items in to the economy

AND more coin (copper/silver/gold) into the economy.

People generate coin way faster then they generate items. That naturally creates inflation.
To mitigate this, gold sinks are necessary. Reducing the effectiveness of waypoints, a major gold-sink, would be more harmful then helpful to this cause.

Ohoni.6057:

I would be willing to pay elsewhere, like higher equipment repair costs, if Waypoints were free (or much cheaper, like they are below 30).

I like that you suggest an alternative. Too bad increasing the repair costs after people have gotten used to them would have its own consequences.

Namely, players would start freaking out about dying in game because repairing gear bears a much higher fee, making the elitist popular that much more annoying.

Twylla Night.1792:

But it would help if there were one place in each area that we could travel to for free.

How would that “help” exactly?

All that would do is cause people to use other way points within the same zone less, reducing the amount of content some players experience, including yourself.

Exactly like what’s happening with Lion’s Arch and WvW/sPvP currently.
People are always going there because it’s free to warp there through Asura Gates, causing Divinity’s Reach, The Grove, Rata Sum, Hoelbrak, and the Black Citadel to become ghost-towns.

I think that waypoints cost high enough to annoy you by adding insult to injury when you are broke but not enough to be a gold sink. Its a bit of a silver sink. I wish they would lower them to the level 30ish cost and leave them there.

I like that you suggest an alternative. Too bad increasing the repair costs after people have gotten used to them would have its own consequences.

Namely, players would start freaking out about dying in game because repairing gear bears a much higher fee, making the elitist popular that much more annoying.

I think the game would be better if people were more careful about dying than if people worried more about fast travel. It would take some balancing, they might have to nudge up the cash rewards for things like WvW or some dungeons so that people wouldn’t feel to bad about dying so much in them (places with traditionally free waypointing), but in the long run it would be a better solution, at least.

People have a point though, Waypoints do a rather bad job of acting as a gold sink, because all it does is encourage many players to not use them at all when they can help it. It’s a bit like that old argument that you shouldn’t overly tax cigarettes because then people will just stop smoking and you wouldn’t be making that tax money. Of course, it’s in the public interest to have people not smoke, the question is, is it in the public’s interest to have people not waypointing?

Ohoni.6057:

I think the game would be better if people were more careful about dying than if people worried more about fast travel.

People are already concerned about dying, and your logic is insensitive to the fact the game is designed to kill people OFTEN, especially since it’s partly catered to casual gamers who die very often.

Higher repair fees makes a large group of players suffer for a minor comfort.
Notably: The entire WvW playerbase would suffer if your idea was implemented. People die there (not downed, die) on a minute-by-minute basis.

It’s plainly a terrible idea.

is it in the public’s interest to have people not waypointing?

That is a non-existent issue. Your statement is empty-fluff.

All players use way-points and Higher level players earn more then enough coin to pay for fees.

Way-Point usage is not gated by fees. It’s gated by appeal of content.
Warping there is just as expensive to travel to Cursed Shore, but people still use them. Why? Because the reward is more appealing. It has nothing to do with fees.

That is the real root of the problem you identified. Not travel fees.

Oh, and your attempt at an analogy is pitiful.

What happens when taxes are too high for smoking is that people start smuggling cigarettes. DUH. People don’t stop smoking, they find ways to avoid the tax while still enjoying the product.

They cannot do that with way-points and would not stop using them.

(LOL. Your analogy is too funny. If taxes could make society quit smoking, health-departments would have done so years ago.)

I think gold sinks are necessary but they could probably be placed better in the game.

Waste of money to go anywhere but Orr, or a dungeon. So really dungeon WP’s and level 80 zones should cost money and the rest should be free.

We know it wont happen, so those zones can remain dead.

People are already concerned about dying, and your logic is insensitive to the fact the game is designed to kill people OFTEN, especially since it’s partly catered to casual gamers who die very often.

Higher repair fees makes a large group of players suffer for a minor comfort.
Notably: The entire WvW playerbase would suffer if your idea was implemented. People die there (not downed, die) on a minute-by-minute basis.

As I said, I understand that some activities cause more almost-inevitable death than others, but that’s easily solved by causing them to give higher cash rewards than they currently do. If they can expect WvW players to die, say, five times as often as PvE players, and they double the repair costs paid each time, then they could just raise the amount of cash each WvW player earns over time so that it balances out that they are paying very little more, or about the same. Basically an active WvWer would spend maybe 10s more per hour, but he’d also be making around 10s more per hour, so it works out. Same with fractals.

That is a non-existent issue. Your statement is empty-fluff.

All players use way-points and Higher level players earn more then enough coin to pay for fees.

All players use Waypoints to some extent, but you cannot argue that they get used as often as they would be if they were free. I often jump through a lot of hoops to avoid WP fees, using the mists to get to LA, using LA gates to reach other cities, using the Divinity gate to reach Ebonhawke, etc. It’s hassle that I could avoid if wayoints were relatively free. Yes, you make more money at higher levels than at lower, but the cost increase for WPs is higher than that, it costs about two greens or three blues at level 80 to WP from one side of the world to the other, and costs around one green to just cross the map you’re on.

Way-Point usage is not gated by fees. It’s gated by appeal of content.
Warping there is just as expensive to travel to Cursed Shore, but people still use them. Why? Because the reward is more appealing. It has nothing to do with fees.

People warp to Cursed Shore because the only other way to reach it is a very long run (as detailed above), while the awards are the highest available. Therefore, it is one of the few zones in which the WP costs are “worth it,” and you can offset them in a couple of minutes of play there. On the other hand, traveling from LA to Brisban Wildlands or Mount Maelstrom costs about as much, and yet is less rewarding, which is a discouraging element to players. I’m not arguing that reduced WP costs would automatically flood every zone with high level players, but people would feel much more free to travel around where their whims take them, instead of sticking only to those areas that are “worth the trip.”

And as others have noted, it may be a good idea to shift the way costs are calculated. The current method is that there is a base cost to use any waypoint, and that cost rises as you level. It’s practically zero at level 1, and it’s something like a silver and a half at level 80. Then there’s an added cost for distance traveled from your current location. Maybe change that method, so that the level-based cost would be almost nothing, but that travel to and from higher level zones have an exponential price increase, such that travel to and from Cursed shore might be around as much as it currently is, travel to Strait of Devastation or Frostgorge Sound might cost slightly less than it currently does, Dredgehaunt Cliffs or Fireheart Rise would be significantly cheaper to reach, and any zone below level 40 would be almost negligible to travel to or within.

The point isn’t whether reduced WP costs would encourage travel, it’s whether discouraging travel is a worthwhile goal of the game’s mechanics.

I think a better solution is to make waypoint travel to any major city free (because it already is via Heart of the Mists/WvW portal to LA, which has portals to every major city), as this would drastically reduce the amount of loading screens one has to sit through just to go from point A to point B.

Then you could make it so that when taking a waypoint from anywhere in Tyria to anywhere else, it could calculate the shortest distance from any major city to your destination to determine the waypoint cost. That way, traveling from Metrica Province to Plains of Ashford (for example) wouldn’t cost you 4s or more, it would only cost you 1-2s (the price of traveling to Plains of Ashford from the Black Citadel).

I think that this wouldn’t effect inflation very much because so many people already use the portals in Lion’s Arch, and the portal to LA in HotM and WvW. It would, however, make it so that no one would have to sit through 4+ loading screens just to travel to a major city, or to travel across the world for less than 4s.

Anyway, I forget who came up with all of this, but it sounded like a good idea to me and so I thought I would share it with all of you.

P.S. I also like the idea about making waypoint cost relative to the level of the zone you are traveling too (I assume major cities would still be free). I can definitely see why it costs a few silver to travel to Cursed Shore, but nobody is going to want to waypoint over to Metrica Province or Caledon Forest from Lion’s Arch at 80 because you would have to complete roughly half the hearts in the zone to simply cover the waypoint cost. The only exception would be if the player is going for 100% map completion, or if they are an extremely selfless player that doesn’t mind wasting a large portion of the gold they earn to waypoint across the map helping guildies and/or random players with events, skill points, etc…

Ohoni.6057:

People warp to Cursed Shore because the only other way to reach it is a very long run (as detailed above), while the awards are the highest available. Therefore, it is one of the few zones in which the WP costs are “worth it,” and you can offset them in a couple of minutes of play there. On the other hand, traveling from LA to Brisban Wildlands or Mount Maelstrom costs about as much, and yet is less rewarding, which is a discouraging element to players. I’m not arguing that reduced WP costs would automatically flood every zone with high level players, but people would feel much more free to travel around where their whims take them, instead of sticking only to those areas that are “worth the trip.”

Hmm… this suggests an interesting possibility.

It stands to reason that there are three costs associated with running Asuran waypoints: recovery of installation costs, wear and tear, and an energy cost. The recovery of installation cost would be a low base cost to use every gate (I don’t want them totally free, but a small 5 copper fee is not at all unreasonable). Wear and tear would factor in “how frequently is this gate used”; more frequently used gates would be more expensive than less frequently used gates. Finally, the energy cost: a greater cost for traveling a greater distance, with maybe some kind of inverse square law applying to make the kind of short hops newbies regularly take substantially cheaper than the Lion’s Arch to Orr hop.

There could also be a few “subsidized” gates, gates that are free to travel to because the local government or merchant’s association covers the fees, to encourage people to show up at these locations (and hopefully spend money in nearby shops). At the very least, the Trader’s Forum at Lion’s Arch could be free.

I have made this point before. A great many of us would be very happy playing this game without ANY economy. So for all you that say paying for waypoints and armor repair makes for a good economy, your views mean nothing to the other half of us that could care less about your precious economy.

I accept that Arenanet has decided to include a mini “Donald Trump” game with their new, extreamly feature rich, Guild Wars 2 adventure game but the only way this is going to be sucessful is if they keep the economy and the adventure seperate.

One of the developers once said that the death penalty was too punitive. In GW1 you would die, resurrect with 15% less health and energy (to a maximum of 60%less) and would have to run back to the event location.

Now, if you are defeated, you have to spend a minimum of 1s45c to resurrect and run back (with a reduced armor rating from damage) to a fully healed foe. Heaven forbid I should go down for the forth time and need to waypoint to a place close to a repair guy(2s50c) pay 6s to get fixed, then either spend another 2s50c to get back to the closest waypoint and still have to run for 1-4 minutes to get back to the event or run the entire way in about 20 to 25 minutes. There may be more waypoints in GW2 but the map is so much bigger that the running time is no different.

Anytime I read a person say the costs are reasonable, they are talking about 1s50c to get to the nearest waypoint. I am defeated, 1 cm away from a waypoint and 1s45c is reasonable? I am lvl 80 and I make about 1g adventuring per day. After 2 days I have enough to buy a single piece of exotic armor. As I am standing there admiring how cool I look in my new armor a guildie calls for help “insufficient funds cost 2s25c. you have 21c” then I have to go and sort through what crafting materials I can afford to part with then see if the TP is offering good price for whatever I have decided to sell… All this so I can go help another one of your paying customers.

I have friends that would say “come farm the tunnel with me, I make 2 gold an hour” not one of those friends are still playing.

When someone calls out in map chat for help, I will check how much coin I have. But I won’t even bother to look if a guildie calls for help in Fireheart rise when I am in Caladon Forest.

Guild Wars 1 had a great system and they tossed it out the window for the same crap they have in almost every other MMO on the market. Anet is saying they are stepping forward with innovation then go and drag this barbaric type of money drain into the game.

I want my foes to be in front of me. I get enough of fighting my own bad money skills in real life.

Suggestions:
-Do away with both repair costs and travel costs. Worked well in GW1
-100% exploration=$0 waypoint cost. (someone elses suggestion that I could force myself to except)
-2s for repair canisters that repair 1 armor piece each. Armor repair dude=free.
-5s for each zone crossed to get to your destination. Free travel within the same zone.
-charge 5% of all coin on all toons and in bank. 200g in your bank, 10 gold to nearest waypoint. People with more than 100 gold just stand around the TP anyways. This way rich people can be miserable too. Why should they miss out on this element of the game.

One other thing I read from a developer was about underwater combat. When we jump in the water the breathing apparatus automatically equipts… because it is no fun worring about breathing while fighting or exploring. Thinking about money while fighting or exploring is exactly the same kind of “no fun”

One person on guru accused me of wanting no opposition which would make the game boring. Who buys an adventure game to rush out and challenge financial burdens.

I am not asking for more drops or more money. I just want you to stop taking the money I do have from me just so I can go on playing your game. If you need a philosophical reason to justify dumping waypoint/armor repair dude costs… Think of the reason why pay once/free MMOs have almost completely wiped out the monthly subscription model. We want to choose how we spend our money. With travel and armor repair, there is no choice. Check my PayPal history with you. I am not whining about this because I am cheap.

I am not just opposed to the high cost travel and armor repair, I am opposed to a cost at all. There is NO good reason for it and lots of good reasons against it.

100% can be a pain in the butt to accomplish I think it’s a great reward. economy wise its really not that big of a gold sink anyways. +the economy is broken with bots/ gold sellers anyways this won’t make any kind of impact.