Guild Wars 2

*EDIT: This post is being edited as dungeon tokens have been made account bound in a recent update! *

Suggestion: Change Karma to be account bound

Karma:

Currently, karma is earned on a per-character basis, making each individual character have it’s own separate pool to draw from. Along the leveling path karma can be spent on weapons, armor, salvaging kits, food buffs, and just-for-fun items. Over the course of a game, assuming a character participates in 80%+ encountered events and does the majority of map completion a player may expect to earn approximately 40,000-50,000 karma during one play-through of the PvE content.

At level 80 there is a selection of armor and weapons ranging from 16,000 – 42,000 karma per piece to purchase. An entire play through of the game only yields about 40,000 – 50,000. With karma being account bound, a player would need to play the game through 6 times over to earn the karma armor set.

If karma were account bound players could freely choose which character to play when they felt like a change of pace instead of being forced to play on a single character. This can make not only the game world content seem boring but the character itself. They could choose to save karma from all playing to gear up a single ‘main’ or use the karma they’ve already earned to gear up their alts.

Making karma account bound adds some much needed choice of play to the game and reduces the need for karma grinding event chains.

Personal Experience:
I have really enjoyed playing this game, so I don’t want to give the impression that I haven’t. The leveling was fantastic. Best gaming experience I’ve had in a long time! However, in Guild Wars 1 I could use my monk to farm materials/money and use that to buy gear on my mesmer or ranger. The current system is choking me and I feel like I am not even enjoying my character anymore because in order to get the items I want I have to play it exclusively. I was looking forward to trying out new classes but then I feel like I am hindering my own progression.

I sincerely hope that something can be done to make this game feel like less of a grind because I really do love the game play and world that Arena Net has created!

I hope to see that karma becomes account bound. I would love to make a new character and be able to purchase karma gear as I level because I have the karma to. If you’ve made it to level 80 at least once then why can we use our karma on other characters? Also, why cant we gather karma on other characters while saving for our legendary? Don’t get me wrong I love to do events and such but I would really love to do it on all different professions then having to grind on the same character forever.

There’s better gear than Karma gear in my opinion that you have to work just as hard for so I don’t see why not.

I already posted in another thread to say that I totally agree about the dungeon tokens, however i’ll post here too to endorse account bound karma.

Account-bound karma would be great. It’d certainly be helpful if you’re using alts as crafters as well – while it’s certainly possible to level and max crafting without karma recipes, it makes things a lot harder.

I also feel Account Based Karma and Tokens are a great idea. Currently I have CM tokens in my bank for my Ranger and Engineer, both taking up a slot for the same item.

Neither tokens nor Karma are combinable, which feels like a waste of time and effort.

Dungeon tokens being account bound would be a great change that would go some distance to eliminating the “I only want to run one dungeon over and over” syndrome created by GW2’s bad dungeon gearing model. I would be much more willing to run dungeons besides TA if I knew I could use the tokens to get gear for an alt down the road.

Account bound karma and dungeon tokens -would- be nice, seeing as that wouldn’t force people to play certain character or force them to GRIND so much (or feel like less of a grind at the very least)

Isn’t GW2 all about making it fun and not a grind, after all?

@ Yukishiro – That’s a great point and a good phrasing. Right now I feel like running certain dungeons on my “main” character is a waste because I don’t want the gear for that character anyway, but I’d like to do the dungeons rather than having to wait until I level the right character up to the dungeon level.

Posting just to show my support.

The benefits of account bound karma is that it won’t make the gameplay experience feel like you are being punished or wasting time trying to acquire karma on your other characters.

I mean the game was designed to be appealing so you would try out all classes and such, as it is now; for people who like playing various classes (like myself) getting karma on your alts that you would want to go towards getting cosmetic gear is simply pointless.

e.g. I’ve played my ranger for over 130+ hours and I have gained around 88k+ now. Now if I switch characters and play around on a thief and think “Oh I like this character, I would like ____ cosmetic gear”, it wouldn’t even be worth it, because that would mean I would have to play over 80+ hours on that thief alone to try to gain somewhat similiar karma that my ranger has now. Then what happens if I feel like that I would prefer my Guardian to have something cosmetic also? All that time went into the thief would seem like a waste when players start to think of the game in a time management sense.

“I shouldn’t waste time playing on [class] if I want the karma gear on my [class]”

With how things are it doesn’t feel like you are progression at all when playing. Diablo 3 had this same problem, they did some changes and then realised their playerbase were being punished when playing the game and were not really gaining anything when playing their game.

If karma becomes account wide, it won’t matter what character/class you play, you will still continue to progress to whatever karma gear you want, then players like me won’t feel punished for playing newer characters with very little karma.

Posting just to show my support.

The benefits of account bound karma is that it won’t make the gameplay experience feel like you are being punished or wasting time trying to acquire karma on your other characters.

I mean the game was designed to be appealing so you would try out all classes and such, as it is now; for people who like playing various classes (like myself) getting karma on your alts that you would want to go towards getting cosmetic gear is simply pointless.

e.g. I’ve played my ranger for over 130+ hours and I have gained around 88k+ now. Now if I switch characters and play around on a thief and think “Oh I like this character, I would like ____ cosmetic gear”, it wouldn’t even be worth it, because that would mean I would have to play over 80+ hours on that thief alone to try to gain somewhat similiar karma that my ranger has now. Then what happens if I feel like that I would prefer my Guardian to have something cosmetic also? All that time went into the thief would seem like a waste when players start to think of the game in a time management sense.

“I shouldn’t waste time playing on [class] if I want the karma gear on my [class]”

With how things are it doesn’t feel like you are progression at all when playing. Diablo 3 had this same problem, they did some changes and then realised their playerbase were being punished when playing the game and were not really gaining anything when playing their game.

If karma becomes account wide, it won’t matter what character/class you play, you will still continue to progress to whatever karma gear you want, then players like me won’t feel punished for playing newer characters with very little karma.

Posting just to show my support.

The benefits of account bound karma is that it won’t make the gameplay experience feel like you are being punished or wasting time trying to acquire karma on your other characters.

I mean the game was designed to be appealing so you would try out all classes and such, as it is now; for people who like playing various classes (like myself) getting karma on your alts that you would want to go towards getting cosmetic gear is simply pointless.

e.g. I’ve played my ranger for over 130+ hours and I have gained around 88k+ now. Now if I switch characters and play around on a thief and think “Oh I like this character, I would like ____ cosmetic gear”, it wouldn’t even be worth it, because that would mean I would have to play over 80+ hours on that thief alone to try to gain somewhat similiar karma that my ranger has now. Then what happens if I feel like that I would prefer my Guardian to have something cosmetic also? All that time went into the thief would seem like a waste when players start to think of the game in a time management sense.

“I shouldn’t waste time playing on [class] if I want the karma gear on my [class]”

With how things are it doesn’t feel like you are progression at all when playing. Diablo 3 had this same problem, they did some changes and then realised their playerbase were being punished when playing the game and were not really gaining anything when playing their game.

If karma becomes account wide, it won’t matter what character/class you play, you will still continue to progress to whatever karma gear you want, then players like me won’t feel punished for playing newer characters with very little karma.

I’ve updated the original post to reflect the changes to account bound dungeon tokens! Please keep the discussion to account bound karma only now.

Thank you Arena Net, for the changes to the dungeon token system! I will actually plan on playing other characters now (though still not until after I have gotten all the karma I will need on my main, probably).

Acount bound Karma would be helpful, I for one really want the exotic medium armor from orr (the one with the hat) for my new human character but won’t be able to get it for a very long time, I would like to be able to buy it with one character and transmute it for my other so I could start my game in the armor I like

That would make things a bit too easy. They would need to either reduce karma gain or raise karma cost.
So it would return to be the same, but with more people crying.