Guild Wars 2

The situation

• Many players are upset that cultural armor is no longer restricted to individual species due to the unprecedented release of the ‘Flamekissed’ Human Light Cultural T3 armor into the gem Store.
• The ‘Flamekissed’ Gem Store cultural skin includes enhanced design elements and sells about 68 gold (current gold to gem conversion amount), which is nearly half the price of the ‘generic’ version from the Cultural Armorsmith and also does not require the 6 transmutation crystals needed to apply the skins to existing armor pieces.

So, in addition to many players being upset over the principles involved of making a “Cultural Armor” design available to all other species, many players are also upset at having previously spent double the amount of gold (plus transmutation crystals and other related expenses) for the ‘generic’ Human Light Cultural T3 armor and now feel cheated due to the new (arguably better) version that has been made available and without warning or precedent.

What Cannot Be Done

• Due to thousands of players having already purchased this skin (with real money or converted their gold into gems) and have likely applied these skins to existing armor items, it is near if not impossible to now remove the armor from the Gem Store, refund the gems to the thousands of players who purchased it, everything involved with refunding money spent on the gems back to cards/banks if you even do that, forcibly removing the skin from every single item in the game that the skins were applied to and replacing it with the skin that was previously on those items, and many other issues I’m sure I am not including. This is simply not an option.
• It is also not a proper fix to the situation to simply offer an entirely new and unique armor design to replace the Human Light Cultural T3 armor and put the current ‘generic’ design onto the gem store along with the new enhanced variation. True, this would appease many by making all cultural armor restricted to their respective species once again, but many players who spent the large amount of gold on this existing cultural armor in the past will still be left feeling cheated now that it would be available at a fraction of the cost in the Gem Store. Dealing with the many requests to be reimbursed for the difference, entitled to one or not, will cause a high volume of tickets being made that must then be addressed, as well as sour feelings being propagated throughout the community especially if these requests would not be granted, or some being granted and not others. It’s just a really bad way to go about fixing the situation.

Due to this ‘can of worms being opened’, you must focus on addressing this cultural armor issue in its entirety. A bonus for the players is that other issues can be addressed at the same time for the benefit and fairness of all.

Class Trainers
As has been requested by many for quite a long time, I, too, am completely in favor of armor designs that are restricted to only being available to each class; Class Armor. In their current form, having an individual trainer for each class serves absolutely no purpose:

• Players do not learn new skills from these trainers (yet)
• Trait manuals are completely generic in that any class can use each manual tier regardless of whether it was acquired from the BLTP or even from a different class trainer via an alt of a different class; my mesmer can use a manual my thief got from the thief trainer.
• Class trainers also do not even offer a unique service of resetting traits. There are even ‘Trait Reset’ NPCs whose only purpose is to reset traits regardless of your class. And with the new single-use trait reset items in the Gem Store, one is not even required to visit an NPC to reset their traits.

Gem Store Skin Unlocks/PvE Wardrobe
I know it has been stated by Colin (PAX 2013) that a PvE version of the PvP Locker will be addressed in the future, however, you may need to bump that up to an immediate priority due to this cultural armor situation. I can see why it would be desirable to place cultural armors into the gem store as a way to encourage the use of gems to acquire them directly instead of converting gems to gold or straight up gold acquired from playing (I see many things that could easily be shifted into the Gem Store from the game world, though many of them shouldn’t be). However, even if it would be easy to shift cultural armors into the Gem Store while retaining the species restriction on the skins, this can no longer happen due to this human cultural armor skin variation now being made available to non-humans (the reasons I mentioned above support this not being a viable solution). Now, the PvE Wardrobe does not have to be implemented to fix this situation, it would just be highly desirable to make the situation a little easier with my proposal below.

[continued…]

[…continued]

This isn’t completely fleshed out to cover all possible issues and potential situations, but it seems like a step in the right direction to me. I even included the high gem prices that most may consider outrageous, though they are actually low in comparison to other armor skins as evidenced by the current cultural armor cost vs gem store variation cost situation.

I’m still working on the mock-ups to help visualize the changes I propose, but I really wanted to get this up here in the meantime for feedback.

My Proposal (not dependant upon PvE Wardrobe implementation)
Groundwork

• All Cultural Armorsmith and Cultural Weaponsmith NPCs are removed from the game.
• Gem Store Armors become purchasable on a per piece basis to maintain the individual piece purchase ability of existing cultural armors while finally offering an option that many players have asked for.
• Purchased Gem Store Armor Pieces are added to the Account Unlocks section of the Achievements Panel (or receives its own panel).
• Account Unlock area (or new panel) gets redesigned to be similar to the Collectibles Tab storage slots but allows displaying of unlocked skins by skin or by item category; boots, etc.
• All available Gem Store skin piece unlocks will have a grayed-out slot until it is unlocked.
• Players can preview individual armor pieces via right-clicking on these item slots and hitting Preview.
• Players can also purchase skins directly from this panel for gems just as character bag slots and bank tabs can be purchased without being required to first go to the gem store.
• A Gem Store purchase history query can verify previous skin purchases and unlock them upon first login to the game following this proposed change.
  This will compensate for past pieces of gem store skins that players destroyed due to the past requirement of having to purchase a whole set just to get the one piece they wanted and unlock all skins purchased in the past through the gem store

Existing “cultural” armors:

• Have their species restrictions removed and are converted to skins instead of armors
• These ‘Base Skins’ (all current “cultural” armors) are made available on the Gem Store across the board for 1,500 gems for the full set (250 gems per piece).
• Purchasing these Base Skin pieces unlock them for infinite use via the Account Unlock Panel.
• Players who already purchased pieces of the base skin from the cultural vendor in the past can simply drag and drop their existing armor item that has the skin on it directly onto the Account Unlock Panel (similar to dragging and dropping an armor item into a transmutation window) and it will then unlock that base skin for that armor piece. This way they have it unlocked and infinite use without having to purchase the base skin again from the Gem Store or go through support to have their purchase history checked and the pieces unlocked manually.

“Base Skin” Variations:

• Variations of base skin pieces that are made available in the Gem Store (ex. ‘Flamekissed’ version of Human Light T3) remain as single use skins.
• Purchases of each piece of the Variation Skin will add “1x” to the skin piece slot in the Account Unlock Panel just as Finishers have on their panel.
• Players can also see in the Account Unlock Panel a tiered “Unlock Infinite Use” arrow by the desired armor piece that points to the Base Skin armor piece.
• Purchasing the Base Skin piece while the Variation of that piece has a supply of “0x” due to having never been purchased, causes the future purchase of that Variation skin piece to have unlimited use of it due to having already purchased the Base Skin unlock.
• Purchasing the Base Skin piece while the Variation of that piece has a supply of “1x” due to purchasing the Variation before the Base Skin, causes the Variation to become unlocked for infinite use.
• Purchasing the Base Skin piece while the Variation of that piece has a supply of “0x” due to the purchased Variation Skin being used on an armor piece, means the player must drag and drop the armor that has the skin on it into the Account Unlocks panel to then verify the previous purchase and unlock that Variation Skin piece for infinite use.
• If the Base Skin for the variation is unlocked, then the additional variations become infinite use as well.
  This will compensate for the situation of players having already purchased the Flamekissed armor knowing that it was single use and allows them to make it infinite use by purchasing the Base Skin piece unlock for current and future purchases so players who purchased pre-existing skin versions from the cultural NPCs do not feel cheated. To get infinite Variation Skins the Infinite Base Skin must first be purchased, which players who purchased from the Cultural NPCs already did.

[continued…]

[…continued]

Switch From Cultural To Class Armor:

• “Class Trainers” become “Master Thief/Guardian/Mesmer/etc”
• Masters offer tips that are related to the class and its unique mechanics and are actually informative and useful to players new to the class.
• Masters offer class restricted armor skins of only the armor weight type usable by that class (no chance of picking a skin that you can’t use).
• The old cultural weapons are made into weapon skins only available through Masters.
• Masters will only offer the player weapon skins of the type usable by that class (no chance of picking a skin that you can’t use).
• One Class and Weapon Skin is available from the start (T1) with new variations (T2, T3) made available coinciding with the levels associated with trait tier unlocks.
• Class Skins are unlocked and acquired from Masters unlimited times just as Hall of Monuments skins are infinite use and acquired from Kimmes the Historian at will.
• Skins from Masters are only available to that character that earned them. (transmute ‘workaround’ that would allow alts to get these skins without unlocking them is finally corrected by making common and fine items soulbound on use like every other quality armor)
• In the future, Class Masters can once again offer new skills for the class if that is the route you decide to take for introduction of them or even of additional weapon usage for classes.

As a bonus idea for premium features of Gem Store armors:
Gem Store Armor Design Element Toggles

• Include tick-able on/off check boxes for the “Additional Elements” of the proposed “old cultural armor” and future Gem Store Armor Skins that can turn some people off from purchasing them. Knowing that these excess elements that may not be to a player’s taste can be toggled on or off can remove that element of hesitation to purchase from the player. I am not only completely fine with having alternate versions of cultural armor (or any armor), I actually encourage more alternate variations to be released that have different elements removed or added. Options for appearances are crucial to myself any many other players to fully enjoy this game. Ideally I would prefer the alternate appearances and elements of gem store armors to be able to be toggled off and on as well as being fully dyeable. I do not see offering alternate forms of existing armors (re-skinning) as being lazy, but as a way to offer us, the players, with many more options to achieve the look we desire via variations of existing armor designs.

Any thoughts on this proposal or how to improve it in a way that can make all players happy and still be possible to be considered by Anet as a possible resolution to this situation?

I like it, and would so love class restricted skins, not sure that will ever happen though, it would be a lot of work to make the new armor work for each class, race and gender (8×5×2) But I sure would love it!

While rather well thought out. there are a few flaws here, specifically those related to the massive can of kitten worms anet has now unleashed.

The presedent has been set at thus:
`. Tweaked Cultral armor (particle effects) Is and now must remain 800 Gems for a full set.

2. Purchases are a one time deal, buy it again if you want it multiple times.

3. Cultural armor is no longer legitimately cultural and this must now apply to all armor sets across the board.

As far as rectifying the situation, there really isnt much Anet can do short of a completely new set of armors for each race (heavy, Med and light) to “replace” what was once unique. However damage here now states that even new cultral pieces will not remain exclusive over the span of the game.

Or.

A complete reversal of the current gem shop armor. which is entirely Do-able. A mass refund is also Do-able tho it would mean a massive blow to Anet and NCSofts Financial gains for the entire quarter.

While I, for one, would appreciate some of your above suggestions in a quality of life patch, the stark and obvious elephant in the room is that Player Trust has been lost on a massive scale, and that kind of Damage is almost impossible to reverse no matter what is done going forward.

Hm. Not sure if I read it in there, but would I be able to buy say, Zojja’s armor as a human? If you haven’t addressed it you should. I doubt they have human sized iterations for both Asura and Charr cultural sets. It would mean a whole lot of work on anets part and therefore is worth mentioning.

Sounds good, but cultural should’ve remained bound to race. I like the idea of class armors, they could add a few to make classes recognizable and to distinct the look of them so they were really unique and exclusive. I like your tab idea, well thought. On the cultural problem, they should’ve chosen another armor to upgrade it in the first place. Making them available to evey race takes away from the uniqueness of the race since they were designed to “represent” a race(and makes choosinga race less important). In my opinion, the best solution is to replace the T3 light in the game, but that would anger those who bought it. So they created a lose-lose situation only the extent of the sacrifice is changing beetwen the solutions.

Swish.2463:

A complete reversal of the current gem shop armor. which is entirely Do-able. A mass refund is also Do-able tho it would mean a massive blow to Anet and NCSofts Financial gains for the entire quarter.

It also isn’t do-able in a way that is fair to the people that purchased the new armor. They (and I in this case) bought it because they liked it enough to choose to buy it over other things. To be fair, each person would need to have the new armor replaced with some other thing they liked enough to have purchased the other thing instead. They (and I in this case) have every bit as much a right to be happy with their purchase as people who purchased the T3 cultural armor. Just giving back gems (or money) doesn’t make up for the fact that you’ve taken away something they liked.

And, just giving back gems or money for the armor doesn’t account for the dye, base armor, weapons, total/hair makeover kits, minis and/or character slots someone bought with gold/gems or either via money to go with the armor. It doesn’t account for time they invested in getting everything together or opportunities to do other things with that time and money that might have been more enjoyable or resulted in having something rather than having something taken away.

So… you mean they need a real artist to re-design T3?

If this ever comes true… I would be so affraid if I were a human light wearer that I would keep the current model.

What i don’t get is, the main disappointment is that the armor is no longer “unique”. You mean the armor that I see every other light armor classed human female wearing? The one that more than half of the people in Lion’s Arch that are afk in front of the bank wearing?

It also isn’t do-able in a way that is fair to the people that purchased the new armor. They (and I in this case) bought it because they liked it enough to choose to buy it over other things. To be fair, each person would need to have the new armor replaced with some other thing they liked enough to have purchased the other thing instead. They (and I in this case) have every bit as much a right to be happy with their purchase as people who purchased the T3 cultural armor. Just giving back gems (or money) doesn’t make up for the fact that you’ve taken away something they liked.

And, just giving back gems or money for the armor doesn’t account for the dye, base armor, weapons, total/hair makeover kits, minis and/or character slots someone bought with gold/gems or either via money to go with the armor. It doesn’t account for time they invested in getting everything together or opportunities to do other things with that time and money that might have been more enjoyable or resulted in having something rather than having something taken away.

Just as it was not fair to diminish Hours or Gems or Time spent gathering up gold, stones and Exotic or Ascended armor to place the original skin on?

I would debate that My 3-4 months of grinding and several hundred (or thousand in other cases) hours of Game play equates to a bit more than 10 or even 30 dollars and 2 hours spent looking at dyes etc. Specifically in Time spent that cannot be given back that also could have been spent doing other things.

It’s easier to remove something everyone just grabbed and hasn’t formed an attachment to as apposed to those who now have had T3 for months or even over a year.

Is it fair either way? No. No it is not. Is there a winning situation? No, someone is going to lose any way this goes. Just don’t try to defend or defeat a solution by saying your time was more valuable than someone else’s, please and thank you.

For an equitable solution, Anet needs to either:

1) Roll back the Flamekissed skin completely, and refund gems/cash to everyone who bought it+any related dyes etc., OR

2) Introduce minimally modified re-skins of every other race’s T3 light cultural armor skins, available for 800 gems to any character.

Redesigning either the existing human T3 light skin or the Flamekissed skin is going to cause more blowback, because that’s replacing the object that you paid for (either with time, gold, cash or gems) with another object which you might not have wanted.

If they do option 2), or if they do nothing, they basically admit that they are abandoning the whole point behind cultural armor, i.e. race-exclusivity. IMO this is just a bad precedent to set.

Anet doesn’t like the idea of designing armor that only one armor class belonging to one specific race can use.

They surely won’t limit armor designs per class. That would be terrible. Players complained about the armor designs differences in GW1, they won’t do that same mistake. I don’t understand why players like to limit themselves with such ideas. On one hand you have those that wished all armor skins could be worn by everyone, and on the other you have those that request armor skins to be limited by the profession you chose.

While I appreciate your ideas, there is a far simpler compensation that Anet could apply to make up for this fluke.

- Anybody who has a piece of human T3 cultural armor, recieves a matching piece of Flamekissed armour skin. So if you had the human cultural T3 head and leggings, you recieve a Flamekissed skin head and leggings in your in-game mail, free of charge.
- You can choose to apply these to your character, or an alt, or you can sell them at a vendor for a full 50% of the price of the matching T3 cultural armor piece. They are account bound.

What this does is the following:
- Players who bought the T3 cultural armor due to its uniqueness, are compensated for it now being availiable to all races, if they wish to keep their current T3 cultural, and basically have the gold difference from the “upgraded” gem store skin over the T3 vendor skin returned to them, so they don’t feel as shortchanged.
-Players who spent money on the T3 cultural, but prefer this new, reskinned version, basically get a free upgrade; Or an extra skin set to give to another armor set on their character, or an alt.

While it’s not an 100% solution, it does assure most players are compensated in a fair way for this “oversight”.

Easy fix is to change the skin to some other generic reskin out there..

That’s not fair on the people who bought the skin for what it is, though, so you’d be solving one problem and creating another.

KotCR.6024:

That’s not fair on the people who bought the skin for what it is, though, so you’d be solving one problem and creating another.

so just refund the gems.

easy easy!

I don’t get it how this new skin got into release. If there is any person working in Anet thinking about immersion of the game, lore, anything like that she/he must have thought this would bring turmoil.

With this kind of Pandora’s Box open they could release any armour to any race, give us automobiles, whatever..I get the idea of fun items like charrbaby backpags and stuff but this kind of thing breaks the immersion and roleplay aspect + people like me who have bought 119g armour + transmutation stones and could now buy same with flame effect for half the gold…I mean what is going on really…..These are basic things in a roleplaying game.

Thank you all for responding to my proposal. Despite being nearly done with the mock-ups, there is now no need to continue to discuss this matter.

Unfortunately for me and many others, they’ve stated that they are going the route of taking the Flamekissed skin away from those who purchased it and replacing it with a new mystery skin despite their having already paid for this one. Once they finish this replacement design, the current skin is being taken away and replaced with it, and if the many thousands who purchased the Flamekissed skin do not like the new design then they can file a ticket and request a refund of the gems that it cost. More info in that thread which also has many players inquiring into the depth at which the refunds will be granted due to the very nature of this move causing the very problems that this proposal was addressing to prevent.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply and share your thoughts. I bid you farewell and many enjoyable adventures.