Guild Wars 2

It seems with each successive release that you guys would like Karma to be viewed as a valuable resource, since Karma drops tend to be the most common “Living Story” rewards, and yet the players are determined to consider Karma as a practically worthless resource, since it’s such a pain in the kitten to spend. There are useful things to buy with Karma, but they are spread all over the place, with travel costs to get there and often event chains that need competing before you can access any of them.

My suggestion would be to open a Karma Bazaar, a single location in the game where most of the desirable karma-based items can be purchased. This could be in LA, although since that city is already packed to the gills I might suggest Rata Sum instead. This place would allow you to buy all the karma-harvesting tools, all the karma cooking ingredients, at least most of the karma clothing pieces, etc.

To some this would cheapen the specialness of unlocking these vendors in the wild. Perhaps if possible it could require that you “unlock” each vendor in the bazaar in order to use them, like for example if you have a vendor that sells every piece of level 50-60 karma armors, to unlock him you would have to first unlock each of the heart vendors that already sell those items, and then maybe have to activate a small quest, which would then unlock that vendor in the Bazaar for all your characters.

I really think that making it easier for players to buy handy items using their Karma would make people have much more value for the currency than they currently do. As it stands, they’re a bit like that gasoline rebate on the tv show where to collect it people had to climb a mountain. Yeah, the reward is nice, but is it really worth the bother?

I like this idea. The karma vendors will all be in one place but your characters can use them only if they did their heart quest in the wild.

The other karma merchants which are not related to any heart quest will unlock their stock by a karma fee that will be paid to the original karma NPC in its location.

The Kharmah Bazaar can be a totally new town for a future expansion.
Considering there are over 300 karma vendors, this town will be fully populated by NPCs so it needs to be a rather large city.

An Asura Gate will take you to this new City.

NOTE:
The karma vendors already existing in the racial cities and Lions Arch WILL NOT be present in the new Kharmah Bazaar city for obvious reasons

EDIT: the text said by the karma vendor in Kharmah Bazaar

when it is locked:
“Please help my supplier in [zone name] with his/her work before i can offer you my services”

when it is unlocked
“Thank you for helping my supplier in [zone name]. What can i help you with?”

Yes, let’s add a giant city in the middle of an already made area…

http://vnmedia.ign.com/gwvault.ign.com/dropbox/Cartography/WorldMapTyria.jpg

See: D’alessio Seaboard.

here is a picture i found about how the Kharmah Bazaar city may look like

The Kharmah Bazaar can be a totally new town for a future expansion.
Considering there are over 300 karma vendors, this town will be fully populated by NPCs so it needs to be a rather large city.

Well, I was thinking of condensing them. So insted of having a dozen or more vendors that only sell “Orihalcom picks” or “Mithril axes” on an individual basis, you would unlock one vendor that sells all of them. Instead of having six vendors that would sell one piece each of the level 50-60 karma armor (and technically I think there are 9 or more vendors that do), you would unlock one vendor that sells the entire set, like a dungeon armor vendor. I haven’t added them up, but I’m thinking it’d be something like 20-30 vendors tops, perhaps far less.

You do have a point though that the Karma Bazaar could be well suited to the Dominion of Winds, given the Tengu’s reputation as traveling merchants, but that would put this more into the long range planning since they’d have to make up the entire zone. If it were just a matter of adding and linking up the NPCs then it wouldn’t take much more work than they’ve already put into the seasonal events (like placing holiday vendors, Lionguard Lyns, etc.)

They could dump the couple dozen NPCs into Divinity’s Reach or Rata Sum’s lower levels with fairly little effort, but building a whole zone around them takes a whole different team. The only part I have no idea about is the part of linking them to existing heart completion. That might be easy, but it might require completely new code to recognize that you’ve unlocked those hearts. At bare minimum they could key it off of World Completion, if you’ve got that then you’ve got all the hearts.

Ronah.2869:

I like this idea. The karma vendors will all be in one place but your characters can use them only if they did their heart quest in the wild.

The other karma merchants which are not related to any heart quest will unlock their stock by a karma fee that will be paid to the original karma NPC in its location.

The Kharmah Bazaar can be a totally new town for a future expansion.
Considering there are over 300 karma vendors, this town will be fully populated by NPCs so it needs to be a rather large city.

An Asura Gate will take you to this new City.

NOTE:
The karma vendors already existing in the racial cities and Lions Arch WILL NOT be present in the new Kharmah Bazaar city for obvious reasons

EDIT: the text said by the karma vendor in Kharmah Bazaar

when it is locked:
“Please help my supplier in [zone name] with his/her work before i can offer you my services”

when it is unlocked
“Thank you for helping my supplier in [zone name]. What can i help you with?”

One problem with your map, ( Note I love it and it is well done) Is the fact that Southsun cove is not on it, Cantha is not on it, Dredgenuaght cliffs is smaller than it is in GW2, there is a lot of areas that have changed. Just a fyi

@Ohoni.6057

Making a new city dedicated to merchants which is called Bazaar implies having a lot of merchants. As you can see in the picture below, the trade alley as it may be called in Divinity reach, This is how I imagine that new city.

It is not important that there are more NPCs selling the same things, they will fill up the concept of Bazaar where it is not so easy to find what you are looking for.

Linking hearts to new merchants can’t be that hard if they just duplicate the NPC: once it becomes a karma vendor in open world, it will become a vendor in the city too.
Beside, they can make different sectors in that city dividing the vendors based on what they sell mainly. recipes, gear, tools
Also, in this city they can add all new vendor NPCs they will put in the expansions – if there are heart quests too, of course.

The city will also have crafting stations, banks, guild merchants. TP etc.

As the heart quests are character based not account based, not all the characters will see all the NPCs as merchants.

Right, I’m saying they don’t need a whole new city, that isn’t the point of what I was looking for. The point was just to make it more convenient to spend Karma on useful items. If they want to create a new city, then that’s cool, but that would be a significant undertaking and I wouldn’t want to hold up the function until they could achieve it.

Just dumping a couple dozen vendor NPCs, maybe setting up a few tent setpieces in one of the emptier areas of the existing maps, like the basement of Rata Sum or the back corners of Divinity’s Reach, would be a far simpler goal, something that they could reasonably complete in a month or two if they put their mind to it.

So yeah, if they really want to make a whole new city for it, and they feel they can do so in a reasonable timeframe, then more power to them, but that really wouldn’t be necessary.

Stuff you can buy with karma is mostly stuff you can’t buy for any amount of gold, and the few items that you can buy for either like tools are relatively cash cheap. I doubt they’ll lose much money by making the karma vendors more convenient.

Ronah.2869:

I like this idea. The karma vendors will all be in one place but your characters can use them only if they did their heart quest in the wild.

The other karma merchants which are not related to any heart quest will unlock their stock by a karma fee that will be paid to the original karma NPC in its location.

The Kharmah Bazaar can be a totally new town for a future expansion.
Considering there are over 300 karma vendors, this town will be fully populated by NPCs so it needs to be a rather large city.

An Asura Gate will take you to this new City.

NOTE:
The karma vendors already existing in the racial cities and Lions Arch WILL NOT be present in the new Kharmah Bazaar city for obvious reasons

EDIT: the text said by the karma vendor in Kharmah Bazaar

when it is locked:
“Please help my supplier in [zone name] with his/her work before i can offer you my services”

when it is unlocked
“Thank you for helping my supplier in [zone name]. What can i help you with?”

i think thats going to be the tengu city when they are added, i mean you cant get past the gate because of the tengu guards there

OP a karma bazaar would be nice, at the moment though im hoarding karma right now but when i wasnt it got pretty annoying to go do the events that often would fail because there werent enough people

I support this idea.

Unlock karma in area. Unlock karma guy in the bazaar. Worst comes to worst, if they want a gold sink, make the bazaar visitable only via waypoint.

I’m all behind the idea of having karma merchants unlocked as their respective renown hearts are completed, but I’d much rather have them added to our home instances; God knows we need some reason to visit them.

Would be awesome to have in the same place all karma vendors.

+1 at the idea!