Guild Wars 2

Hi,

Just putting a couple of ideas out there on why universal account bound tokens would be beneficial to (what IMO) is Anets philosophy.

After spending time reading Anet blogs, forum posts and actually playing the game, I’ve come to some conclusions:

1. Anet wants every end game item to show the progression of the toon and not the account.

2. Anet wants everyone to try as many features of the game they made, not just one dungeon, DE, etc, over and over again.

3. The gold market is very important to maintain regulated since it disrupts the Gem market which allows Anet to keep servers up and make more content.

To achieve this they have implemented several ideas:

-dungeons tokens can only be used by the toon that got them and for the armor of that especific dungeon. this goes hand by hand with point 1.

- Making adjustment in difficulty and rewards to discourage “farming” one feature over the others. Enter the las CoF nerf.

- Gold sinks, golds sinks everywhere, not a bad thing but it does gives a lot of stress… (you know the thing we game to forget about)

Now then, why should Anet consider the universal account bound token without failing to abide by (what I think is) their philosophy?

A. Because steps can be implemented to not allow toons to buy armor from a dungeon that said toon did not finish in story mode and all paths. This has already been done in GW1 just like vendors won’t talk to you if you don’t have the necessary title level (Norn, Asuran, human title tracks).

B. Because steps can be implemented to encourage players to do all dungeons and not just one farm. So far Anet’s idea are punitive instead of rewarding. While nerfing rewards do achieve this they should be counter balanced, perhaps give some extra tokens for a complete dungeon tour per week.

This is very simple mechanic, rewards players for behaving the desired way and put limits to players that “farm” and you will get the results you want. You’ve recently hired an economist (can’t remember his name) ask him about it!, or look at books like freakonomics and similar books that give great examples of what people do when faced with reward/punitive systems.

As of now players have no reason to try other toons and dungeons because the tokens they have invested time in, only work for that toon and for that dungeon. Liberate the tokens and people will have reasons to play other toons and dungeons. Instead of having players do the same dungeon with the same toon daily you could have players doing dungeons on a whim with whatever toon/build they want to try since the rewards are not restricted.

I’ve made my point but one last example. Why do you guys work? to get money? no, that’s not right, is it? Nobody really cares about the printed paper money, the reason you guys work ( and us too) is to exchange money for goods and services. Now imagine for a moment that the money you made working in Anet only lets you buy office supply goods and if you want to buy groceries you need to work in a bank, because banks give you “grocery specific money”. Pretty messed up isn’t it?. If tokens are interchangeable between toons and dungeons people will freak out less about a changes to 1 specific dungeon, as long as you implement a block for toons that do not have completed the dungeons it will still show the toon’s progress while making it rewarding to play on many toons and in many dungeons.

Thanks!

(Full disclosure I’ve done CoF Magg runs 4-5 times and believe to have 65 tokens in total)