Guild Wars 2

I propose a completely overhaul to the current system for changing skins on armor in relation to the transmutation stones. Currently, anytime you find a piece of armor you really like, you use a transmutation stone to “rip” the stats from one and the appearance of another. One of the many problems with this system is that unless you buy another piece of armor with the same stats of your current piece to transmute, the one you may have worked hard for will be destroyed in the process.

While I understand Anet needs to make a profit from a game without a subscription, I find this system to be lacking. An alternative would be to completely remove all the transmutation stones and give every player a locker to put the gear they like inside to change at will. There’s a system already in place from other MMO’s, Lord of the Rings online being one of them. While this would hinder the sales of transmutation stones, I believe if A-net starts pumping out quality skins for both town and combat, their sales will skyrocket.

As it stands, I’ve bought the game at release and have bought 0 transmutation stones since release. This is in part due to the fact that I don’t want to destroy a piece of armor/weapon i’d worked hard for in place of another better looking piece.

Here’s a read on the diary for the lotro system to give you an idea how it works.

http://archive.lotro.com/news/798-developer-diary-wardrobe-system

I don’t see this happening. This is an idea for a whole lot more work for less money. With the only prospect of making money on it being something that they can implement with the current system. It doesn’t make business sense.

In the long run they’ll be making more money. I’d be willing to bet that most if not everyone who has played has bought very few transmutation stones. Making more skins and a way to keep your previous set would be huge for them. The sales for transmutation stones is probably very small. Giving people the option to keep their hard earned piece of armor is key here.

In essence here you’re losing a piece of gear to gain another. At max level you might have a dungeon piece that has a nice rune on it but you end up finding another slotted item that you think looks better. Now you have to destroy the previous item to gain a new look.

Edit: That or you buy a similar piece of armor with the same stats/runes that might cost you more anyway.

But where does the new money come in from that can’t be made with the current system? Right now, they can already make new skins without going through an overhaul. So anything they do make from the stones is “extra”.

With the current system people are discouraged from transmuting to a new piece because it destroys the old one. Having a locker(like one in spvp) would make sense but more in depth. More people will buy these skins if they know there’s no risk to the previous piece.

Bump, this seems like it would do the most good for both the developers and the community. It’s worked in other games, why not here?

I can definitely get behind this. I’m a bit of a dress-up geek and am anxiously awaiting additional town clothes / armor skins to be added each month. In other MMOs, I’ve had multiple bank slots for costume gear or vanity items, and the trend continues in Guild Wars 2 (I currently have a bank tab full of skins I want to keep, with town clothes and toys spilling out into another).

Anecdotally, I’ve never bought transmutation stones; if there’s something I want to transmute, I wait until I get enough free ones from dailies or the occasional BL Chest. I’m a huge costume/cosmetics fan, but I’d rather spend my gems on actual cosmetic stuff instead of gems to simply enable them. I may be an exception to the rule, but I generally have over 100 Transmutation stones (134 at the moment) and a respectable quantity of Crystals (sitting at 30).

A few people have dismissed this suggestion for not generating any ‘new money’, but I think they may actually be overlooking ways in which a Wardrobe function could be monetized;

• Additional Wardrobe storage
  The default wardrobe could be expanded with additional slots. LotrO gives you 20, with a maximum of 50; something similar could be done here. There could be multiple tabs as well; buying extra space on the “Weapon Wardrobe” tab would not expand the “Armor” tab, for example. There might also be tabs for Back Items and Costume Gear / Items.

• Wardrobe Access Express
  A summonable wardrobe NPC , similar to the Bank/Merchant/Trading Post express vendors.

• Ticket Exchange
  Items using a skin obtained via a Claim Ticket (Sclerite, Jade, Fused, etc.) could be deposited into a special exchange slot within the wardrobe and turned back into a ticket, allowing a different weapon skin to be purchased. This process would have a gem-based fee attached.

And, as the original poster mentioned, people who may be reluctant about buying cosmetic items from the store would be more inclined to make purchases with a wardrobe function.

Additionally, the wardrobe could be built to utilize transmutation stones as a currency rather than replacing them entirely. Depositing an item skin into the wardrobe could be free, but copying that item’s appearance could cost a Transmutation Stone (or Crystal if you’re copying to a level 80 item). If you wish to permanently transmute an item, the stones/crystals would continue to serve that function. This would not only retain the market for transmutation stones, but could increase it substantially.

I disagree your idea is not to my liking. the transmute stones are perfectly fine and easy enough to get. you keep the skin you want and stats…..perfect.

What you all speak of is already in the game..welcome to your bank tab..extend it..add cloths you like..keep skins you like with trans stones…EVERYTHING you mentioned is there in a different way.

Anet is not worried about selling the trans stones. That is a way to make players happy! Don’t force choke there throat for cash for stones you can get in game.

I once proposed a similar system. Basically, you have an armor wardrobe similar to the PvP lockers that you unlock skins in by “displaying” a complete set of armor to it. Once the skin is unlocked, you can re-apply the unlocked skin to your current set of armor at any time by paying Transmutation Stones/Crystals.

This means that the new system works in exactly the same way as the current system, except that the player no longer needs to carry around extra sets of armor with the skins he/she likes. ANet doesn’t lose out on Stone/Crystal sales, armor collectors get to save inventory space, and crafters would probably have a bigger market to sell their wares from people who are trying to complete their wardrobes.

A similar wardrobe for weapons could also be introduced under this system.

OK so what you want is to keep your skins infinitely. and then be able to equip every skin to the exact same armor..by paying with the stones. That isn’t a bad idea but…that’s allot of effort for a basic principle of just get the same armor stats for all the sets of armor you want.

That would require cluttering up my inventory/bank space with 6+ suits of armor whose skins I like, but I don’t necessarily want to wear for all occasions. The armor wardrobe would allow me to wear what currently suits my mood (say, my CoF set), and if 3 months down the line, I decide I want to switch back to my AC set, I can just pay the Stones cost, instead of either re-crafting the armor from scratch, or lugging it around with me everywhere and taking up 6 valuable inventory slots.

What I’d like to see most is a secondary armor tab for magic find gear (or even more tabs). It could be bought per character like inventory slots.

This is pretty much was suggested by Retro, Anet gets to keep the trans stones and we get to apply whatever skin we want without destroying the previous piece or cluttering up inventory space.

I prefer the current methods. They’re simple and in my opinion, fair.

Of course it’s simple, but I don’t believe it’s fair. By adding a wardrobe, making it so you don’t remove your previous piece but just covering it with the cost of a stone makes sense.

Zaxares.5419:

That would require cluttering up my inventory/bank space with 6+ suits of armor whose skins I like, but I don’t necessarily want to wear for all occasions. The armor wardrobe would allow me to wear what currently suits my mood (say, my CoF set), and if 3 months down the line, I decide I want to switch back to my AC set, I can just pay the Stones cost, instead of either re-crafting the armor from scratch, or lugging it around with me everywhere and taking up 6 valuable inventory slots.

Something else that no one has touched on in this thread yet; ArenaNet now seems to be on a blistering fast update cycle; the amount of armor and weapon skins is only going to continue to grow, and a lot of folks (myself included) have already maxed out their bank tabs and are onto private banking guilds. At some point, we’re just going to run out of space for things we want to buy.

So while it may be “allot of effort for a basic principle”, it’s something that a significant amount of players will eventually run into. Of course, they could always just give us more bank space, but I think the suggestions made in this thread are a much more elegant and functional approach.

Just a small bump for this thread. Arenanet should really look into people being able to keep the stats and skins they earned. A wardrobe system works and you can still work in the transmutation stones.

Right now I’m not using any transmutation stones on the setpieces I’ve grinded numerous hours for. If I did, I’d lose the entire look forever. For a game which has no stat progression but prides itself on attaining a unique look for your character, Arenanet is making it very difficult to experiment with unique looks.

It doesn’t help that there aren’t a lot of different armour sets to begin with. Please take a look into this and make it more appealing for us to switch skins.

Retro.6831:

I can definitely get behind this. I’m a bit of a dress-up geek and am anxiously awaiting additional town clothes / armor skins to be added each month. In other MMOs, I’ve had multiple bank slots for costume gear or vanity items, and the trend continues in Guild Wars 2 (I currently have a bank tab full of skins I want to keep, with town clothes and toys spilling out into another).

Anecdotally, I’ve never bought transmutation stones; if there’s something I want to transmute, I wait until I get enough free ones from dailies or the occasional BL Chest. I’m a huge costume/cosmetics fan, but I’d rather spend my gems on actual cosmetic stuff instead of gems to simply enable them. I may be an exception to the rule, but I generally have over 100 Transmutation stones (134 at the moment) and a respectable quantity of Crystals (sitting at 30).

A few people have dismissed this suggestion for not generating any ‘new money’, but I think they may actually be overlooking ways in which a Wardrobe function could be monetized;

• Additional Wardrobe storage
  The default wardrobe could be expanded with additional slots. LotrO gives you 20, with a maximum of 50; something similar could be done here. There could be multiple tabs as well; buying extra space on the “Weapon Wardrobe” tab would not expand the “Armor” tab, for example. There might also be tabs for Back Items and Costume Gear / Items.

• Wardrobe Access Express
  A summonable wardrobe NPC , similar to the Bank/Merchant/Trading Post express vendors.

• Ticket Exchange
  Items using a skin obtained via a Claim Ticket (Sclerite, Jade, Fused, etc.) could be deposited into a special exchange slot within the wardrobe and turned back into a ticket, allowing a different weapon skin to be purchased. This process would have a gem-based fee attached.

And, as the original poster mentioned, people who may be reluctant about buying cosmetic items from the store would be more inclined to make purchases with a wardrobe function.

Additionally, the wardrobe could be built to utilize transmutation stones as a currency rather than replacing them entirely. Depositing an item skin into the wardrobe could be free, but copying that item’s appearance could cost a Transmutation Stone (or Crystal if you’re copying to a level 80 item). If you wish to permanently transmute an item, the stones/crystals would continue to serve that function. This would not only retain the market for transmutation stones, but could increase it substantially.

This. A hundred times. I want to change my skin every time I sneeze, I want an incentive to start collecting tons of armor as I did back in LOTRO (80 slots in my wardrobe and several toons bank slots full of cosmetics… I had HUNDREDS), that would give me something to work on as well. I’d have a reason to run more dungeons, to spend my karma, to buy cultural armor.
I want to change it on my whim!

Agree with the OP, a more flexible wardrobe system like Rift or LotRO has would be nice. I’d even say that WoW’s transmogrification system is better than GW2s because the model-swapping process doesn’t destroy the gear.

If monetization is an issue, either require Transmutation Stones to activate the swap or have a limited wardrobe size (say enough to hold one full set of gear) and sell expansions via the gem store. This will have the added benefit of making gem store-bought armor skins actually worth the price since they’ll be re-usable.

I currently have two exotic armor sets for my mesmer. Both are full berserkers. I got the second set for the looks because I like the looks of both sets. Now I want a third set, yet it kills me to have to make a third berserker set. It’s not the cost, it’s the inefficiency. Sure, I could make a magic find or rampager, but I’ll hardly ever use them. Releasing new armor sets only makes this worse.

If anyone else think there’s a better way to utilize this system please don’t hesitate. I believe the current wardrobe system is flawed as such.

I’m sorry to say, but in the respect to changing the looks on armor goes, i would near say that World of Warcraft (bleh) has the BEST Wardrobe editing system i have EVER seen in ANY MMORPG. Have it cost in game coin, which the player can either earn or pay, you guessed it, cash money to get. Don’t make it ridiculous that the average Joe player cant do it without paying real cash money for. But what dude is trying to say in his post is HE DOESN’T WANT TO LOOSE EITHER SET OF ARMOR. Say if he wants to use that skin on another armor set, but doesn’t want to loose the peace of armor he currently has it pasted to. If you are bashing this guy because you think his idea is trying to break ArenaNets revenue. It isn’t it is trying to make it easier for the consumer while doing NOTHING to ArenaNets take. i have easily 50 or more of both the transmutation stones, that i haven’t used due to the fact that i am a glutton for the look of gears, and don’t want to actually destroy either pieces.