Guild Wars 2

Cultural armor is always sought after by players but only obtained by a select few because of the large ammount of gold for each of the tiers. Tier 3 for example, costs a total of 119 gold but is only a Rare armor set, when an Exotic armor set for level 80 can be purchased for significantly less. This is a deterrent for most people who want to buy cultural armor. I understand the need for a very expensive, prestigious, armor set. However cultural weapons are purchased with karm, and are easily obtainable for anybody. So, why not make cultural armor cost karma too? some would say its a bad idea because of how easy it is to gather karma, but if the cost per piece of a tier 3 armor piece was 250k or more, it would still have some sort of a challenge for the whole set and would have to be gathered over the course of a few months.

possible prices per tier:
tier 1 – 30k karma each
tier 2 – 120k karma each
tier 3 – 250k karma each

Mmm no. While ya karma would be better cause of the Lack of money involved( if not any) you’d have lots of “hardcore” karma farmers having this armor maybe in a week or 2. IF you wanted to change the cost of armor why not make it like the orignal Guild Wars 1.
You’d need:
1. Money
2. Materials, to be more specific: Leathers,cloths,metals and special material(s).
3. Rep or in the Guild Wars 2 way Karma.

Honestly speaking I kinda wish it was like that. Getting armor and weapons with just one currency is just boring. Having mats,money, and karma would make it more interesting.

I think it would be great for it to be for Karma instead of gold, you can farm karma more efficiently than gold right now, even if it’s higher than 250K karma, a lot of people would be choosing between prestigious cultural skins, or saving up for legendary weapons and most would do the latter. The way it currently is set up works against everyone who would want the cultural sets in the first place, but the cultural T3 needs to stay “rare” somehow. I dunno, it’s a double edged sword at the moment cause you don’t want every person of a specific race to all be wearing cultural t3 because then it loses it’s grandeur so to speak, just an alternative way to work toward it would be welcome…So maybe you could still get it with the current gold price, but if you wanted you could use karma? I guess in the end, a change so that you don’t feel at a complete loss if you want it…Money is just really hard to come by for most people in GW2.

There was a thread about this earlier, though I can’t find it now. My character has all three sets. The rough comparison was the current price would be around ~800 000 karma for the T3 set. I wouldn’t have a problem with that; as said cultural weapons cost karma.

nope leave it as gold its perfectly fine that way, by the time you go to Orr and farm all that karma i have no doubt you would has amassed the gold needed to buy the set your average player can make 3g/p so lets say you do 2 hours of money making that’s 6g everyday 6gx7 thats 42g every week so in 3 weeks your have a full set that seems very reasonable for what your getting.

+1 to the OP great idea

I agree! im at 600+k karma atm,and Nothing i can buy with it thats somewhat usefull to me.Being able to atleast buy cultural with it,( or something else…Whatever ) would be a nice addition.

Agreed for the cost alternative. Being able to purchase it with Karma would be helpful to those who do their daylies, monthlies, and de’s (me), but can’t raise a whole lot of money. As long as you keep the amount of Karma required high, it should be fine.

Not going to happen. Cultural armor was originally purchased with karma, and it was changed post-release to gold.

Arenanet decided at some point that Karma wasn’t the right move for cultural armor for some reason.

I like some of the Cultural Armor and actually would like to get 2 or 3 sets for some of may characters, however hi have run into the whole issue that what I want is really just the skin, which this is really what everyone wants out of the cultural armor. So it ends up boiling down to the fact of do I want to spend all that money on some lvl 80 rare armor or just go for a set of exotic that has the actual stats I want. Even if they where to switch the sets over to karma, I would still be dealing with the issue of using karma on those or getting the exotic sets from the temples in Orr.

I think to me the cultural armor whether changed to karma or kept as gold lose something, at least the teir 3, the other 2 teirs seem more functional to me as far as price and stat for the lvl. But for teir 3 to spend around 120 gold on a set of rare is a almost a waste. Granted I have noticed for a long time that what you are working for is the skins and not the stats themselves (this is true for a lot of items including legendary item). I guess in my mind if it is going to cost 120 gold make it worth the 120 gold, other wise maybe make it karma based or a a little cheap when it is more practical to try and obtain it.

I don’t really understand why the cultural stuff is so expensive, whether it be gold or karma. The weapons? Not bad, but not 63k karma good either. Cultural armor? Actually pretty nice is several cases, but not 120 gold nice; not for what amounts to just a skin. Why leave them as rares? Well since you’re really just after the skin you’re more likely to transmute the skin onto something with better stats, and that takes a fine transmutation stone, well 6 really if you want a whole set (is there any way to get those besides gem store? BL chest or anything?).

Does anyone remember if the Sylvari were ever shown wearing anything other than their cultural sets in any of the pre-release material? (such as artwork, trailers, etc)
The cultural sets were part of how the Sylvari were marketed, it was a rather huge shock to create one and discover they all just wore human clothes, and a further shock to find that the armor that’d been so prominent in how they were presented had been dumped into the “Since this is a cosmetic item we can slap as much of a grind/gold sink as we want on it and it doesn’t violate any of our anti-grind promises” pool.
That was disheartening.

I will also add that when they talked about cultural armor I thought they meant it was each races specialty, and that it was purchased in that races home zones, but that it could be worn by anyone. I thought I’d be able to give my human a leafy ensemble and so on. Really disappointed to find that the set I really wanted on my Sylvari ele was both ridiculously expensive and a Human set she couldn’t wear regardless.

But! To get back on topic, I kind of like the OPs idea of them being karma based instead of gold, because karma is somewhat easier to come by and leaves my money for more important things. But at the same time I’m not sure I’d want to spend a huge chunk of karma either, as I’m still up in the air on working on a legendary or 2 (we’ll see how the scavenger hunt thing plays out).
In regards to the suggested cost of 250k per piece, you do realize that puts a full set at 1.5 million karma right? That’s more than the legendaries, and for a skin set that doesn’t even fall into the same ballpark. Now if the cost for each piece of tier 3 was more like the 63k of the weapons (remember you have to buy 6 pieces for a full set, so that’s still 378k for a set) it’d be far more palatable, at least IMO, though still not great. Would love to see the prices brought to something more reasonable (honestly the cultural armors IMO shouldn’t have been used as a money sink like this, I can see having some nifty sets used like this, like the legendaries are for weapons, just not the cultural stuff you know?)

le sigh, as it stands these are on my “very long term goal” list, it’s just that these are something I’d rather play the game in, not something I want to buy just before I retire from the game because it’s the last thing on my list I haven’t done :P

TLDR: I agree mostly but not at such high prices.

Edit: Good gravy this was longer than I intended, sorry!