Guild Wars 2

Dear Guild Wars,

Currently, I can travel for free to any of the cities in Tyria.

I do this by pressing “B”, and pressing “go to the mists”.

The game then loads the mists instance, and I appear just in front of the portal to Lion’s arch.

I then walk forward for around 10 seconds, and the game loads all the player models and characters that are standing there looking for PvP matches etc. I then go through the portal to LA.

I then get a second loading screen, and appear in the south part of the LA map, near the WvW portals. Again, the game loads all of the characters standing around, and so on.

I then waypoint travel to the city portals in LA and after a third loading screen, I appear in front of the city portals. I can choose any I wish, and walk through. Again, the game loads all the other players nearby etc.

Finally, I walk through the portal of the city I want to go to and get my fourth loading screen. I then appear in my chosen city.

Time spent on load screens = approx 90 seconds (I have a fast SSD, I guess Hard Drive people will be much longer)

Actual time spent interacting with the game = approx 15 seconds to walk through 2 portals and use 1 free city waypoint.

Amount of data that is streamed to me via A-net’s servers in loading 4 maps worth of content, player models etc = probably quite a lot.

Amount of gold spent to do this: 0.

Now, if I take the route which is less taxing on the A-net servers, just clicking the waypoint in the city I want to go to on the map, I have to pay between 1 and 3 silver to get there. I know this is almost nothing, but when I can get there for actually nothing, I am prepared to sit through a few load screens, no big deal. I will always take the free route.

It seems that you would cut down on server resource substantially by making city travel free, and make it quicker and easier for players like me (who prefer to save as much money as possible) to get there. I can’t imagine I’m in the minority of players, since it’s quite hard to make money in this game, and very easy to spend it. I always see a lot of foot traffic to the city portals in LA.

If city Waypoints were free both inside and outside the city, it would be one Waypoint, one load screen, 0 time spent running through portals. Surely this is the preferred method of travelling to cities?

People don’t understand :\

OK let me break this down for you.

ANET isn’t taking the money you spend on waypoints to buy them selves some sweet exotics. Then why are they doing it you might ask?

Well in the guild wars world there is an infinite amount of money. You could farm mobs forever and the vendors would still have money to buy the drops. So without some form of taxation the entire economy would inflate ridiculously so Anet needs a way to stop the inflation. This is through buying things from vendors, Waypoint travel, and Repairing armor.

But Anet is nice … They make travel in cities free when they have no reason to. They give you the OPTION of getting to any city for free if you want to take that extra time to save a little cash.

The point is you should be thanking Anet for the waypoints costing money because if you leave for a week and come back, the 10 gold that you have wont buy you want 1 gold would have a week before.

( also loading screens are more about internet then your hard drive type .. just saying )

I think it should be like this:

Pay to travel to a waypoint from anywhere in the world.
Free to travel to another waypoint when you are standing on one.

Like that idea Sekin—good compromise.
I guess I am a little bit more pessimistic than DUAx. They have these penalties to stop players from accumulating gold. gold can be converted to gems to get items that you could purchase by buying gems with real money. It is a way of handicapping players who don’t care to purchase with real money. Not a game breaker, but annoying.

DUAxWolff.2759:

People don’t understand :\

Well in the guild wars world there is an infinite amount of money. You could farm mobs forever and the vendors would still have money to buy the drops. So without some form of taxation the entire economy would inflate ridiculously so Anet needs a way to stop the inflation. This is through buying things from vendors, Waypoint travel, and Repairing armor.

But Anet is nice … They make travel in cities free when they have no reason to. They give you the OPTION of getting to any city for free if you want to take that extra time to save a little cash.

The point is you should be thanking Anet for the waypoints costing money because if you leave for a week and come back, the 10 gold that you have wont buy you want 1 gold would have a week before.

( also loading screens are more about internet then your hard drive type .. just saying )

Wow…aside from the vast majority of your post being inaccurate, including the loading screens comment, let’s respond.

OP was stating, that there is no reason for us to have to go through the mists just to reach Lion’s Arch. We can already do it for free, with just 1 more loading screen, why hassle players with waypoint costs to do it!?

Its definitely not about taxation, because most experienced players (you know, those players who are at 80?) already know this trick. What this means, is that the only players losing out are NEW ONES. And guess who pays the lowest waypoint cost? New players.

OPs original comment might be too far to one extreme. Free waypoint travel to any city might be pushing it. Instead, what there should be is free waypoint travel BACK to Lion’s Arch.

This is something already in the game. Travel to mists, from anywhere, run 50 feet, and bam, you are in Lion’s Arch.

Problem with this method is the conveyance of this method. There is none. New players are the only ones being punished by it. The only way people figure it out is if they get annoyed in game, complain in the map chat, or come to the forums to post the same thing 100 other people post every day. Why is Anet punishing new players by withholding information to save them a little copper? It is definitely NOT to balance the economy.

You last comment about 10 gold to 1 gold inflation is obviously hyperbole, but I see where your thinking is coming from. Inflation in new games always happens. Its has striking similarities to real world economics, although simplified. As people figure out how rare some items are, or how common others are, prices will inevitably fall.

Unidentified dye dropped from 6-8 silver opening weeks to the 4 silver it is now. Ecto has gone down from 20+ silver to a steady 17-18 silver. (Legendary precursors are crazy, but that is for another reason which you can find in other forum posts.)

TL;DR The point is, why are the charging people for something that is already in the game and free, map travel back to Lion’s Arch. The only people who get charged, are the newer players who don’t know about it.

To me, Chamone’s argument seems equivalent to “why should I have to pay to use a taxi to cross town when I can walk for free?” The answer to this real-life dilemma is that it’s quicker and more convenient to take the taxi. The same applies in GW2. When you compare the few seconds of using a way point with ‘walking’ to LA and then on to whether your want go, it may not seem much difference. However, over the life-time of the game, the difference can mount up to hours or days of game-play.

Some players might be prepared to save time by paying to use waypoints, while other players might prefer to save coin by running. Charging for waypoints makes the game more interesting by allowing players to make choices that suits them.