I wish you could mystic forge 5 of the yellow transmutation stones into a transmutation crystal.
I mostly just chuck them out of my inventory since all my chars are lvl 80 and its kind of pointless to keep the dull skins on your journey to lvl 80.
IMO I think no one uses them unless they are new to the game. When you hit 80(which is quickly obtained) in this game all you have left is to get the cool looking armor and weapons.
Quite the opposite, I never used them when I was new to the game.
Now that I have several 80s, whenever I create a new character I can go out and get the look I want and transmute it onto them so I can have it for the entire leveling process, instead of waiting until endgame.
Agree I have over 250 of them and would love for there to be a mystic forge to turn them into the blue ones. You can make it like upgrading materials and we have to throw in 250 yellow to get ~10 blue back for all I care.
I’d be fine with being able to MF 4 of em for the lvl 80 version. I am an altoholic so I’ve always got uses for the regular ones, but I can definitely see how they become useless to people who don’t play alts or have all 80s.
50 yellow trans stones + 1 mystic forge stone + 20 ecto + 1 transmutation crystal =
random yield of 10-20 transmutation crystals.
ANet makes money off the crystals. It’s probably one of their bigger sellers. What would you suggest they do to replace lost sales if they were to do your suggestion? You have to consider what a company loses in sales when it turns a money maker into a freebie as otherwise your suggestion will never be considered.
50 yellow trans stones + 1 mystic forge stone + 20 ecto + 1 transmutation crystal =
random yield of 10-20 transmutation crystals.
ANet makes money off the crystals. It’s probably one of their bigger sellers. What would you suggest they do to replace lost sales if they were to do your suggestion? You have to consider what a company loses in sales when it turns a money maker into a freebie as otherwise your suggestion will never be considered.
show me proof that they make a lot from selling crystals because I convert money to gems for cheap stuff like that.
50 yellow trans stones + 1 mystic forge stone + 20 ecto + 1 transmutation crystal =
random yield of 10-20 transmutation crystals.
ANet makes money off the crystals. It’s probably one of their bigger sellers. What would you suggest they do to replace lost sales if they were to do your suggestion? You have to consider what a company loses in sales when it turns a money maker into a freebie as otherwise your suggestion will never be considered.
show me proof that they make a lot from selling crystals because I convert money to gems for cheap stuff like that.
You do realize that the gems you bought with ingame money were first bought with real money don’t you?
Just because there is an extra step there, you buying the gems from the player with gold, doesn’t mean the gems didn’t cost real money initially. Any time you reduce the number of items that someone wants to buy, either directly or indirectly, this reduces the money going to ANet as sales.
If ANet sells X number of crystals a day, it doesn’t matter to them if the sales are direct or indirect. Each way they make money off the transaction and if those crystals were removed from the gem store then that’s the money they would not be making on a daily basis.
50 yellow trans stones + 1 mystic forge stone + 20 ecto + 1 transmutation crystal =
random yield of 10-20 transmutation crystals.
ANet makes money off the crystals. It’s probably one of their bigger sellers. What would you suggest they do to replace lost sales if they were to do your suggestion? You have to consider what a company loses in sales when it turns a money maker into a freebie as otherwise your suggestion will never be considered.
show me proof that they make a lot from selling crystals because I convert money to gems for cheap stuff like that.
You do realize that the gems you bought with ingame money were first bought with real money don’t you?
Just because there is an extra step there, you buying the gems from the player with gold, doesn’t mean the gems didn’t cost real money initially. Any time you reduce the number of items that someone wants to buy, either directly or indirectly, this reduces the money going to ANet as sales.
If ANet sells X number of crystals a day, it doesn’t matter to them if the sales are direct or indirect. Each way they make money off the transaction and if those crystals were removed from the gem store then that’s the money they would not be making on a daily basis.
show me your source where you got this assumption.
50 yellow trans stones + 1 mystic forge stone + 20 ecto + 1 transmutation crystal =
random yield of 10-20 transmutation crystals.
ANet makes money off the crystals. It’s probably one of their bigger sellers. What would you suggest they do to replace lost sales if they were to do your suggestion? You have to consider what a company loses in sales when it turns a money maker into a freebie as otherwise your suggestion will never be considered.
show me proof that they make a lot from selling crystals because I convert money to gems for cheap stuff like that.
You do realize that the gems you bought with ingame money were first bought with real money don’t you?
Just because there is an extra step there, you buying the gems from the player with gold, doesn’t mean the gems didn’t cost real money initially. Any time you reduce the number of items that someone wants to buy, either directly or indirectly, this reduces the money going to ANet as sales.
If ANet sells X number of crystals a day, it doesn’t matter to them if the sales are direct or indirect. Each way they make money off the transaction and if those crystals were removed from the gem store then that’s the money they would not be making on a daily basis.
show me your source where you got this assumption.
?? Which assumption? That the gems are bought first with real money or that if a business has a set number of items to sell and you remove one of those items then it makes fewer profits because people won’t be buying that item.
The value of the gems lies in having items to buy with it. If for example, the gem shop had no items to sell then of course the gems would have no value as there would be no reason for someone to buy them with either real money or gold. The fewer items the shop has to sell, all things being equal, the less value the gems have. If you remove one item then that means demand drops for gems by the volume that item sold by. Someone, for example would have bought gems to buy crystals but since the crystals are now made in game they don’t. This means gems will drop in value by that much.
If you as a business are selling 3 types of items and suddenly are selling 2 then you will be losing the money you would have made by selling the 3rd type of item.
Also, I think there is a difference between what you see and what ANet sees. What you see is you buying gems with gold and getting the item for free. What ANet sees is someone buying gems with real money and then those gems buying items in the gem store. To them it’s a one to one relationship.
Spoiler alert: It’s about to get theoretical up in here. You’ve been warned.
Say I run a bar/club with a cover charge. Once inside, after having paid their initial fee, patrons can dance, enjoy music, hang out, and, hopefully, order food/drinks, for which I also charge money. Generally, I want to make money off the orders, so I don’t give them for free. However, if I offer patrons a way to win food/drinks for free (say, by randomly giving them out to people on the dance floor, offering them as prizes for trivia contest, for participation in karaoke, whatever,) I may be able to entice people to stay longer because they’re having a good time. The more people there are staying and having a good time, the cooler the place is, which entices other people to pay their cover charge to get in, and encourages those who are already there to place food/drink orders. Even though I’m taking a hit on the freebies I give out, if I’m smart, I can do much better business.
bar/Club = GW2,
owner = Anet,
patrons = players,
cover charge = base game purchase price,
food/drinks = gem shop items including transmutation crystals,
earning freebies for club participation = earning freebies for game participation,
one (1) night of operating the club = the entire lifespan of GW2
This metaphor could also describe a f2p game, if there was no cover charge. That fact is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.
It’s a totally workable business model, and, indeed, Anet does give out Transmutation Crystals as rare prizes for Black Lion Chests and Daily Reward Chests, both of which can be earned in game. Transmutation Stones can be earned from Daily Reward Chests, too, (odds 17:1 in favor of Stones over Crystals, ) as well as from Map Completion Chests. 250 stones (as Shades suggested) would take an estimated 4,570 Daily Reward Chests. 50 Stones would take 914 daily bonus items. 10 would take 183. Clearly, that’s not going to dent gem sales.
These numbers don’t seem like they could possibly be right, so if someone would like to check them be my guest. It’s possibly I’ve made a mistake or have bad data.
(x)chests *(stones/chest) = 10chests
(x)*(stones/chests) = 10
x = 10/(stones/chests)
x = 10/(.0547)
x = 182.8...
I suspect most of these Transmutation Stones are coming from Map Completion, then, which, unfortunately, I don’t have usable numbers for, which means I’m finished with the math. Point is, Anet is fine with giving out basic gem store items; indeed, following the club example, it can help boost sales, in that it encourages players to invest more time, energy, and possibly money in the game. The only question is a matter of where the right place to set that dial is. Five stones per crystal might be too low, considering map completion frequently gives out three stones, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable number somewhere.
Given that ~200 transmutation stones are basically worthless to a player who has level 80 characters, but are still being rewarded, that could actually be more harmful to transmutation crystal sales (in that players are being constantly hassled with stones they have no use for, which is worse than no bonus item at all since they take up space,) so I think letting players do something with all those stones could be beneficial. Whether or not it would make any noticeable change on gem sales requires substantially more data and statistical modeling than I’m capable of handling, since there are a lot more moving parts in the game to account for.
That’s a good point that they give some away, partly to entice people to buy more and partly to reward people for logging in. Imo though, the number they give away is calculated to be the most “efficient” amount. What OP was suggesting was making the crystals ingame. The way it’s set up now, these would be more than what ANet hands out as many people have a lot of the yellow stones and can easily get more of them. I think it would mean they would decrease Transmutation crystal drops. That you would no longer get them as readily from BL chests or area completion and that they would also decrease the rewards of the yellow stones to limit the numbers of crystals made. If they did this then it would hurt the low level people who are getting free stones and using them to transmute to keep a look while leveling. In the end, I think people would still need to buy stones from the gem store as the drop rate and manufacture rate would be tightly controlled.
It would take some care to balance the needs of players with 200 stones and those with 2 stones, but I think that could be reasonably done. They could factor a player’s level into their odds of getting transmutation stones from a map completion chest, for example, instead of the current system that appears to use one result table regardless of level. Transmutation stones could be replaced on the “level 80 table” with something simple, like unidentified dye, another daily chest bonus item (mystic forge stones or boxes of fun, etc.) an essence of luck, or even just a little extra coin. It could even be left on there, just balanced against some more options, as the table currently reads “three transmutation stones, or, MAYBE IF YOU’RE LUCKY, a Black Lion key.”
They get rewards they can actually use, so they’re happier, it doesn’t have to dramatically increase the supply of other items, and they don’t have tons of transmutation stones floating around. Meanwhile, level 1-79 players can still get all the transmutation stones they could ever want.
As for getting rid of the old stones, if they reduce the output from map completion, they can just make it a temporary sink. They’ve done it before with Mystic Chests to reduce supply of common crafting materials, and very recently with the Twisted Watchwork Portal Device to reduce the supply of Living Story junk.
It would take some care to balance the needs of players with 200 stones and those with 2 stones, but I think that could be reasonably done. They could factor a player’s level into their odds of getting transmutation stones from a map completion chest, for example, instead of the current system that appears to use one result table regardless of level. Transmutation stones could be replaced on the “level 80 table” with something simple, like unidentified dye, another daily chest bonus item (mystic forge stones or boxes of fun, etc.) an essence of luck, or even just a little extra coin. It could even be left on there, just balanced against some more options, as the table currently reads “three transmutation stones, or, MAYBE IF YOU’RE LUCKY, a Black Lion key.”
They get rewards they can actually use, so they’re happier, it doesn’t have to dramatically increase the supply of other items, and they don’t have tons of transmutation stones floating around. Meanwhile, level 1-79 players can still get all the transmutation stones they could ever want.
As for getting rid of the old stones, if they reduce the output from map completion, they can just make it a temporary sink. They’ve done it before with Mystic Chests to reduce supply of common crafting materials, and very recently with the Twisted Watchwork Portal Device to reduce the supply of Living Story junk.
I’m reading this but I’m not sure how it ties into OP suggestion that you be able to turn 5 stones into one crystal. A number of people have ~200 stones, which would be in this case 40 crystals for free. Multiply those sort of numbers across the player population and there would be a glut of crystals, which ANet would be losing the sales on. Even if ANet then decreased the drop rate of the crystals and stones, it would still hit their sales pretty hard.
I already wrote off the 5->1 exchange rate a couple of posts ago, in the one with the double spoiler tag. (Although it’s in the paragraph right after the math spoiler, without actually being in the spoiler) 5 stones per crystal would absolutely wreck the transmutation crystal market, and Anet would almost certainly see lost sales there.
The more important meat of the thread is that transmutation stones are practically worthless to a level 80 character, yet level 80 characters have tons of them, and so it would be nice if they could do something with them. So I’m attacking that in two ways, by reducing the number of transmutation stones they get and giving them something to do with all their old stones. Whether they’re rewarded with transmutation crystals somehow, or something else, anything is likely more useful to them than stones.
It’s nearly two here, so I can relate. I’ll be lucky if any of this makes any sense tomorrow.
I already wrote off the 5->1 exchange rate a couple of posts ago, in the one with the double spoiler tag. (Although it’s in the paragraph right after the math spoiler, without actually being in the spoiler) 5 stones per crystal would absolutely wreck the transmutation crystal market, and Anet would almost certainly see lost sales there.
The more important meat of the thread is that transmutation stones are practically worthless to a level 80 character, yet level 80 characters have tons of them, and so it would be nice if they could do something with them. So I’m attacking that in two ways, by reducing the number of transmutation stones they get and giving them something to do with all their old stones. Whether they’re rewarded with transmutation crystals somehow, or something else, anything is likely more useful to them than stones.
It’s nearly two here, so I can relate. I’ll be lucky if any of this makes any sense tomorrow.
Yah. I’m just trying to figure both Murphy’s law and the Law of Unintended Consequences when you essentially remove an item from the gem store that ANet is making money from. I figure if you make a suggestion that reduces sales for a company and it’s implemented you should assume that they are going to react to counter the loss of sales and that may not be favorable.
as long as we’re making suggestions about how to use “excess” transmutation stones…
how about letting players use a stack (250) of transmutation stones to make a “special transmutation splitter” at the MF which would let a player recover a SAB skin (or other one time award skin) from an already transmuted item?
as long as we’re making suggestions about how to use “excess” transmutation stones…
how about letting players use a stack (250) of transmutation stones to make a “special transmutation splitter” at the MF which would let a player recover a SAB skin (or other one time award skin) from an already transmuted item?
This morning I bought some dungeon armor, so I could transmute the stats I liked on to my current armor…. I went to my bank, and realized I had no more transmutation crystals left…. and that I would basically have to buy new ones from the gemstore.
I gave my huge stack of worthless transmutation stones one more angry look, and just threw the piece of armor in my bank storage. What ever….
5>1 is too low of a ratio, but 25>1 would work, along with some expensive stuff like 25 mystic coins, and 5 bottles of elonian wine, and 5 mystic stones or mystic binding agents, etc, all thrown into the mystic forge.
Why would they allow you to make crystals that they can charge you for? I am willing to bet those transmutation crystals are one of ANET’s best sellers. I know I have purchased my fair share.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disagree and I think it would be cool. I just don’t think they are going to do it because the new ANET seems to be more concerned with business than art. Quantity over quality.
I don’t know how well the crystals sell. I’m pretty sure I’ve never bought any in the store, or if I did, it was just once when they were on sale. Between map completions and Black Lion Chest bonanzas when I was trying to buy other things (skins and tickets), I’ve had a very full supply of crystals for my needs. And I have 8 80’s.
I also have plenty of stones, and I like that. I never have to hesitate to make a lower level character look good. I do support being able to transmute them. It fits in the game as is, advances QoL, and if the number of stones needed is calculated well it should still make people think hard about doing the transmute versus simply buying crystals.
I’m up for any way to turn these things into something more useful. I never use the yellow transmutation stones myself, but I would love a way to get the blue transmutation crystals. I have a ton of yellow transmutation stones that I never use. As someone said earlier, nobody cares what I look like from level 1-79 (including myself); it’s the long-term, level 80 armor that I want to look good. When leveling up, you have to upgrade your armor so often, there’s no point in transmuting a skin onto a piece of armor that you’re just going to replace in a few days, anyway.
It would be great to throw them in MF to get the blue one, but I think it’s never going to be added. To me it looks like they treat transmutation crystals as their main income source tbh…
Transmutation Stones are completely useless to a 80th lvl players but ArenaNet continues to give them to us. I just got to my 5000 achievement chest and guess what they put in that chest. Something a 80th lvl player has no use for, but they continue to use that as a reward. That to me is a completely ridiculous reward that I am being given after busting my kitten to get those achievement points.
Well, there were a couple of threads about this since game’s launch but they just got ignored. (surprise)
Yes, transmutation stones are useless, NEVER used a single one, never met anyone who used it aaand got almost a stack of them i think.
What would be resonable is for AN to include some Zommoros recipe for like 10-20 stones + some mats (ecto, whatever) that would produce 1 crystal or something like that.
But still, probably never gonna happen. As someone already mentioned:
Quantity over quality. (AN’s motto)
They kinda are, but if nothing else, it helps me define my toon’s fashion sense before I hit 80 and waste money constantly trying to find something I like. I do use pieces from various armor/weapon sets.
I’d actually work towards map completion if they did this :d
I don’t think hitting the crystals in the MF should be a guaranteed formula though. Some use for them with guaranteed formulas for other things wouldn’t be bad, though. Or using them as a currency to buy things like dyes and skins and back pieces or something…
