Guild Wars 2

Now, I fully admit that I don’t understand some of you people. I sometimes get the impression that people are not really stepping back and looking at some of these ‘much better’ suggestions and just jumping on the band-wagon. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sometimes seems that some of you just seem to think that because it’s NOT what ArenaNet are doing, any alternative suggestion, whatever it may be, must somehow be better for you than What ANet plan.

I thought that I’d look at the two wardrobe scenarios, one being what ANet have announced, the other being what a lot of players are arguing would have been a far better and fairer system.

One other thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that in additional to the wardrobe we also get a new bank tab with 2000 skin spaces to ‘collect’.

Much like the miniatures and achievements a lot of the players who tend to be vocal on these forums will want to collect every single skin. I’m assuming that the glaring spaces of un-collected skins will have the exact same effect of ‘needing’ to all be filled. Right?

So lets look at the ‘better’ option that people keep suggesting in direct comparison with what’s been announced.

Choice 1
Each time you equip an item, accountbind an item or salvage an item it’s added to the collection for free, and you pay charges to transmute.

Choice 2
It costs 5 charges to ‘collect’ the item but you can then transmute for free whenever you like.

• Cost to collect all 2000 skins using choice 1 : 0 charges
• Cost to collect all 2000 skins using choice 2 : 10,000 charges

Most players are also not going to change looks ‘that’ often, with exception of a few roleplayers. Let’s say that over the course of a year you decide to change parts of your look 96 times (each armour piece and both weapons once per month).

• Cost to change your look using choice 1 : 96 charges
• Cost to change your look using choice 2 : 0 charges

Just to pop back to the first calculation, lets assume that your doing this monthly change because you’ve completed some content or purchased/been awarded some skins. Let’s say that 1/5th of those yearly changes are because of new skins that will require an unlock.

• Cost to change your look using choice 1 : 96 charges
• Cost to change your look using choice 2 : 96 charges

Lets say 50% of those yearly changes require an unlock

• Cost to change your look using choice 1 : 96 charges
• Cost to change your look using choice 2 : 240 charges

What about 100%?

• Cost to change your look using choice 1 : 96 charges
• Cost to change your look using choice 2 : 480 charges

For the most part choice 2 would probably make ArenaNet a hell of a lot more money out of gemstore purchases and would probably cost the average player a lot more.

This is based on the assumption that collectors probably vastly outnumber roleplayers and that collection sizes not only will continue to expend over time, but also vastly outnumber the number of changes a roleplayer would want to make to thier outfit.

Implementing choice 2 would have actually been a far more calculated profit making scenario on ANet’s behalf at the suggested `fairer` price being posted.

How did you come up with, “It costs 5 charges to ‘collect’ the item but you can then transmute for free whenever you like.” ? Just curious.

I see the Wardrobe as nothing more than Transmutation Stones 2.0 In fact for any character below level 80 it is now 3x more expensive to transmute armor. That is 7 gold per piece of armor or 49 gold for the entire outfit including the back item every single time you change skins.

For level 80s it’s the same as now. The only improvement is that it doesn’t destroy one of the pieces of armor and makes it easier to access. People are excited for it but honestly it’s still a cash grab which I fully support them doing. That’s what the Gem Store is for and I hope they make bank off it. Judging by everyone’s excitement it seems they will.