Guild Wars 2

I like many others have found the waypoints to be overly expensive esspecially when i want to play with a friend and we have to warp a couple of times before we get to the area we want to be in. Now i know the point is to make farming for wood/food/minerals less profitable from just teleporting from area to area, but there has to be a compromise to make it better to play with others.

My idea is to make waypoints initially free to teleport to, however each teleport you get a point of debuff that will last for a length of time. for each point or two of the debuff the price of the waypoints would increase. After a certain number of debuffs other negative affects like unable to gather wood/food/minerals.

obviously the amount of time the amount of time debuffs and the increase amount for the price of waypoints whether it is exponential or linear all needs to be calculated out based on the time it would take to farm from just running around.

I think this would alow players to warp around when they need to with paying much less while preventing people from abusing the waypoints to farm

Yes, please, running around with my lvl 80 i rarely go over to the other side of the map because someone needs help with an event. This is not how its supposed to work, esp as zones are seeing less and less people?

-1. Waypoints are fine IMO, the amount of money you spend on a waypoint is nothing compared to the amount of money you should have at your current level (be wise how you spend your money good sir)

The debuff of not being able to gather things? Nty, unecessary.

xCrusanentx I agree that waypoints as they are, are not a game breaker. For a lot of people though the cost has left them with a bad taste in their mouth. It is a cost that is on the verge of being a prominent budgeting concern, and is the essential way of traveling. Meaning it adds costs to playing with others that are in different zones and even more so to playing with of different levels, as lower level players tend to teleport a lot more (to complete quests). In general it is not a good design to punish people for wanting to play together.

As for you comment about the debuff not being able to gather things, my thought process for that was for cases of extreme amounts of teleporting, for instance 10-20 times in 5 minutes or something on those lines. It would not be something that a normal person playing the game for fun would run in to. More of a hard wall that would absolutely stop farmers at that point.

I do see the point you’re making; however, you have to remember teleporting across Tyria for free the first time in a set period of time, doesn’t fit in my terms of logic. Pick a point to go to with buddies and then just have fun. The game isn’t about teleporting from point a to point b constantly; you spend most of your time running around, doing events and hearts. And again as for the debuff, it’s not needed; remember, let’s say that you’re a decent level, and you’re teleporting around 10-20 in 5 mins, you’ve lost around 20 silver in that short period of time. That is your punishment there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re stating your opinion, I’m just offering my $0.02

WPs should have an unique cost according to the distance traveled, and it should be the same no matter if you’re level 1 or 80

Gold accumulates like nothing when you are at high level, for you to even notice it the price has to be higher than if you were at level 1 where you might struggle to make 10 silver.
*edit
Although I do think if you are standing right underneath the waypoint should have no charge, perhaps up to a distance of 10 in-game meters away. I don’t see this having much practical use but I find it very annoying on the odd occasion where I have waypointed somewhere and accidentally clicked the waypoint again on my minimap and it asks if i want to travel there for over 1 silver when I am right under the thing.

When you start out at lvl 80 I found it hard to manage, now it’s just a joke. You said the purpose of it was to make farming stuff less valuable, as that may be true it isn’t the main reason. The waypoints serve as a “gold sink” which is a bit hard to explain, but it’s for the better of the economy.

First of all, if you are so rich because of the money being so easy to make, then the cost of the waypoint is insignificant to you. It isn’t a good money sink because in fact, you are rich. It would have to cost several gold to travel for it to be an effective money sink.

If, on the other hand, you are someone who finds the cost of using waypoints inhibiting playing with folks in lower areas because you aren’t rich and the cost therefore is not justifiable, then it still isn’t a good money sink because, heck, you just avoid using a waypoint.

Katz.5143:

First of all, if you are so rich because of the money being so easy to make, then the cost of the waypoint is insignificant to you. It isn’t a good money sink because in fact, you are rich. It would have to cost several gold to travel for it to be an effective money sink.

If, on the other hand, you are someone who finds the cost of using waypoints inhibiting playing with folks in lower areas because you aren’t rich and the cost therefore is not justifiable, then it still isn’t a good money sink because, heck, you just avoid using a waypoint.

The effectiveness of a money sink has nothing to do with making people poor. It’s sole purpose is to remove money from circulation (this is one of the main reasons commander title is 100g). It doesn’t matter how rich you are, it just matters how much money there is. The percentage of it’s cost to total economy size is what determines it’s effectiveness, not the person it’s effecting.

It is interesting to see what the level 80 players think. Right now I am level 52 and the cost of teleporting is a concern as I have so much things that I need to be concerned about being able to buy. From Skill books to weapons/armor to keeping up my crafting skill with my level, to wanting to explore new zones.

From the way it sounds, once you are level 80 for a bit the cost becomes negligible.
I do have some questions for once you reach max level that would help me better understand the game play at that point. Is a lot of the world explored at that point either from previous questing or events? Do you still buy new gear from vendors just to keep up with the new zones? How close are you to maxing out at least your first crafting skill? Are there fewer quests that make you teleport to other zones?

Perhaps the issue is more that the cost is too high for lower levels players as they have more things they need/can do with their money. I can definitely understand it being a gold sink at max level, that makes perfect sense. But is it necessary to have teleporting be as much of a gold sink for players before they reach max level?

Goatjugsoup, while I do like the general idea of being under a waypoint changing the cost of travel. There would still need to be something to prevent people from teleporting around too much or it would be abused. Some people/bots would just teleport to safe areas to gather then going back to the waypoint and go to the next one. This would allow people/bots to gather so quick it would destroy the current economy.

By the way I appreciate all of the helpful insight everyone is providing, thank you.

Elesti.4965:

From the way it sounds, once you are level 80 for a bit the cost becomes negligible.
I do have some questions for once you reach max level that would help me better understand the game play at that point. Is a lot of the world explored at that point either from previous questing or events? Do you still buy new gear from vendors just to keep up with the new zones? How close are you to maxing out at least your first crafting skill? Are there fewer quests that make you teleport to other zones?

That really depends on how you level up. Some people level mainly by crafting, so their crafting would be quite high for the time they reach 80 (and also probably with a nice rare or exotic crafted set). Others focus on exploring and map completion so it also would mean their world completion is pretty high. Others do mostly WvW, so in this case both their crafting and world completion would be quite low.
The way I did it, it was balanced between the 3 (a little more on exploration), so by the time I got to 80 I had like 75-80% world completion, one crafting at like lvl 375 (the other one at 0 lol) and my WvW maps (source of many crying around these forums) completed.
I also got to 80 with mainly blues and a couple of greens and yellows, so I boguht some items from the karma vendors at Orr. But while leveling only bought a couple of things and they were mainly because of their looks and not because I needed them. Most of the 80 gear is buyable though, being from gold or badges you get at dungeons or wvw.
About there being fewer quest, if you refer to hearts, then the last 3 zones (Orr) have no hearts at all, but they do have quite a lot dynamic events. If you’re not farming then you can easily keep up with them by just running, but if you go farm karma or loot or whatever, you’ll have to chase those better for what you want, and that could mean spending some silvers in waypoints.