The Price of Transmuting
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not much of a complainer. I’m satisfied about just about all aspects of this game. But there’s one thing that really sticks out like a sore thumb in my mind! Transmuting at level 80! It costs 200 gems for 5 transmutation crystals. 200 gems is around 10-13 gold on average. So whenever I think I’ve found that perfect appearance for my character I have to remind myself, “Welp gotta spend 10 gold for 5 transmutes.. alrighty then I guess.” It’s not devastatingly bad. But it’s a bit of a thorn in me side and in a game like Guild Wars 2 it seems like it would be normal for a thing like transmuting to be cheaper. (I dunno just seems that way to me)
I know I know it’s a buy to play and they need extra cash for the servers somehow. So something purely cosmetic like this would be a nice market sure. But honestly it seems like other gem store items should suffice in keeping them funded while we get a less stressful system for changing our armor appearances.
My suggestion would be to have a npc in lions arch that sells the transmuting feature for around 25 silver a pop.
And for something that seems more realistic. Maybe just up the amount we receive for 200 gems? I could settle for 10 crystals for the 10-13 gold price. (Well 15 really but I’m not gonna push it)
“But Tigger, 10 gold is not much at all! I have two legendaries and 500 gold on me!” Well believe it or not I’m a guy with 1200 hours under his belt and the most gold I’ve ever had was the 70 gold I have now.
I agree. Back in the early days, you used to be able to get these as an occasional drop for doing dailies, I’ve had 6 or 7 drop, same with BL chest keys, instant repair canisters, instant revives, etc. I’ve not seen anything this good from dailies in quite some time, probably since late last fall. Back in November, or so, last year, it seemed they nerfed a lot of things, seemingly to push people in to the fractals and to use the gem store more. General drops last September/October were much better than they are now, but drops now seem vastly better than they were last winter. Drops were so bad last winter it was depressing and part of the reason I stopped playing.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
What we really need, and this has been suggested many times, is a way to turn the bundles of regular transmute stones we get, into fine transmute crystals. It seems like every time I finish a map, its another 3 stones to collect dust in my bank. And I already have all 9 characters at level 80.
Even something like 25 stones, + 5-10 dust, +elonian wine, +whatever to make 1-5 crystals would be great.
I agree. Back in the early days, you used to be able to get these as an occasional drop for doing dailies, I’ve had 6 or 7 drop, same with BL chest keys, instant repair canisters, instant revives, etc. I’ve not seen anything this good from dailies in quite some time, probably since late last fall. Back in November, or so, last year, it seemed they nerfed a lot of things, seemingly to push people in to the fractals and to use the gem store more. General drops last September/October were much better than they are now, but drops now seem vastly better than they were last winter. Drops were so bad last winter it was depressing and part of the reason I stopped playing.
I remember those days. I’ve quit a few times myself in the past for similar reasons.
What we really need, and this has been suggested many times, is a way to turn the bundles of regular transmute stones we get, into fine transmute crystals. It seems like every time I finish a map, its another 3 stones to collect dust in my bank. And I already have all 9 characters at level 80.
Even something like 25 stones, + 5-10 dust, +elonian wine, +whatever to make 1-5 crystals would be great.
I completely agree with this. (I haven’t noticed it being suggested before) That seems like the most reasonable and realistic thing to do. I hope Anet is aware of the idea and whatnot.
You would think it’d be as simple as putting 4 Transmutation Stones into the Mystic Forge to create one Transmutation Crystal. Or some similar formula.
Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm all day.
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.
– Unknown Fire Elementalist
Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm the rest of his life.
– Unknown Fire Elementalist
I think that there should be a more broader discussion bout gemprizes.
My suggestion would be to artificially letting the gemprize drop by adding more gems to the pool. This will change little to the amount off people buying gems and those who buy them to get gold will likely even buy more, but will bring balance back to the price off things.
Arise, ye farmers of all nations
Arise, opressed of Tyria!
Arise, opressed of Tyria!
They’re not going to make them easy to get because L80 skins are a big deal in GW2 that people are willing to pay obscene amounts for and I’d wager these little crystals are a big seller. Those, instant repair and revive items are among the most useful items in the store. Some boosters too, depending on your goal. If they made it forgeable through the MF, I’d bet the cost would be ridiculous, making the gem store a better option anyway.
You would think it’d be as simple as putting 4 Transmutation Stones into the Mystic Forge to create one Transmutation Crystal. Or some similar formula.
As Leamas said, it wouldnt be fair to them to make the recipe this simple, as Anet makes their money thru gem-store sales. The recipe has to be something that costs as much or slightly more than converting gold to gems. Otherwise, they have no incentive to put this conversion into the game, and would be happy for us to continue buying gems to get our transmute crystals.
You can always level alts, as they are, or atleast used to be, rare drops from dailies and map completion. This is where I got ALL, maybe 8, of mine, of which I’m still hoarding 3. Perhaps from AP chests too, I don’t remember. Once you find a look you like, at least me anyway, you really don’t go through many.
(edited by Leamas.5803)
I have tons of regular transmutation stones that are um…pretty worthless where it matters. Time for a recipe to convert them to fine transmutation stones, in my opinion.
You would think it’d be as simple as putting 4 Transmutation Stones into the Mystic Forge to create one Transmutation Crystal. Or some similar formula.
As Leamas said, it wouldnt be fair to them to make the recipe this simple, as Anet makes their money thru gem-store sales. The recipe has to be something that costs as much or slightly more than converting gold to gems. Otherwise, they have no incentive to put this conversion into the game, and would be happy for us to continue buying gems to get our transmute crystals.
In the game there are currently a few MF upgrading recipes such as changing common crafting material such as mith ingots into orich, as well as a recipe for cores into lodestones.
If they ever did add a MF recipe I would assume it would be similar to those formulas are ready in the game. For example the modified Lodestone formula would look like:
2 Transmutation Stones + 1 Bottle of Elonian Wine + 1 Crystal + 1 Crystalline Dust = 1 Transmutation Crystal
However I doubt they would go with this unless they increase the Stone input to around 10-20. Since people could just reroll new characters and map complete the low zones to get the 3 Stones quickly, granted people can still do that but they would have to do a minimum of 4-7 maps to get the 1 Trans Crystal.
or a modified common crafting formula would be:
250 Transmutation Stones + 1 Transmutation Crystal + 5 Crystalline Dust + 10 Philosopher’s Stones = 10-40 Transmutation Crystals (average ~17)
IMO I would prefer this option over the Lodstone modified recipe. Because frankly with the lodstone version getting the required stones is easy and fast so you would be getting 1 crystal steadily throughout playing making the crystals not as rare and rewarding when ever we get them. Needing 250 makes it more end game since it take awhile to get that much and rewarding since we get ~17 Crystals at one time. Not to mention that it is less farmable with rerolling to explore low zones since the amount is so high.
Plus a stack of 250 Stones input shouldn’t affect the gem store too much.
- First off the cost of Stones is 20-25gems per stone depending on bundle and Crystals are 32-40gems per crystal.
- Gem Cost for recipe 250*20=5000 gems and output max 40*32=1280 gems, so obviously the recipe doesn’t allow you to be able to buy stones and gamble to get more crystals then just buying crystals it straight up.
- Next ~17*32=544 gems going rate 100gem=6.8g so 544gem=~37g The amount of time and effort it takes to get 250 stones you could have easily gathered 37g to just buy the gems instead. Beside those of us who already have stacks of stone in our bank, the recipe shouldn’t effect those who would’ve purchased them with gold, since it is easier/less time consuming to buy crystals then gather stones (through map exploring & dailies)
- Lastly those that buy gems with money for the crystals would still. They purchase either because they don’t want to waste the time getting gold or they just want their preferred skins with out the wait. Since an input of 250 is so high/time consuming it’s a safe bet that people who buy gems wont bother with the recipe.