Guild Wars 2

I wanted to tell a story of something that happened to me recently in Guild Wars 2. I want to say it not because it’s my opinion, but because it was something subconscious that even I only realized recently.

I recently got my final alt to max level. I’m not usually an alt person, so that was a big deal for me. Once I hit max level, I wanted to give the character at least some set of 80 Exotic gear to get him started. Once I had done that, I realized that I had never done so with my previous alt, despite having thought I did. After that, I realized that my main had some incomplete elements of their set that I had let happen for so long that I had completely forgotten about it.

What this led to, however, was that my main and my first alt’s wardrobes were all messed up. This wasn’t initially a huge problem, since I had been wearing the Wedding Attire on both of them, but I didn’t want to wear it all the time.

The problem came, when I realized how many Transmutation Charges it would take to fix this on my existing characters while creating a look for my new alt. Then realizing that they weren’t exactly final equipment sets, and I’d have to do it again at some point (I’m not kidding when I say that skinning three characters completely would take about half of my Charges).

It was at that point, that I realized that, while I’m usually a huge collector of cosmetics, I’ve barely thought about it in this game. I realized this was probably another reason why I wasn’t in a hurry to get Heart of Thorns, and while I’ve found it easy to ignore the Gem Store for the most part (I bought the Wedding Attire on a sale with Gems I bought with gold). I appreciate that this game has cosmetic rewards for many of its challenges, but I realized that they don’t feel like real goals to me as long as Transmutation Charges are limited.

I just don’t feel like putting time or money earning things that I’ll have to spend another currency on to use, and then hope I don’t get bored of the outfit and want to change it again. I’d love to experiment with different outfits over time, and I’d be looking for a lot more skins then, but I won’t as long as that is a finite resource.

I’ve been given some advice about how to earn Transmutation Charges, but they’re far too limited. I’m pretty casual, and I’m a PvE player. I take long breaks from this game, come back when something big is going on, do the dailies for awhile, and then stop again. The thing is, that rewards you about 3Transmutation Charges per month. As it is, most of my Transmutation Charges came from back when I used to do the PvP dailies, but I only really ever did those because I found them simpler at the time.

Certainly, I could devote more time to the specific aspects of the game that reward Charges and spend my gold on Gems to buy more, but it’s already made me put a very low priority of cosmetics, so it’s not worth the effort.

I guess my point is just to raise awareness, that Transmutation Charges are a barrier that can easily discourage hunting cosmetics, which are one of the main rewards in this game. I really want to care about cosmetics, but it’s just far too easy for me to not to in the current system.

Just do some PvP or WvW and you’ll acquire them quite quickly.

Getting transmutation charges is really (in my opinion) only a problem for people who just log in to do dailies then log back out again.

It’s 3 transmutation charges per 28 daily logins. They don’t need to be consecutive and it literally takes a minute or two to get the daily login. However city map completion is the easiest.

But since day 1 of the game you could buy a transmutation stone/crystal/charge from the Gem Shop as one of the cheapest items offered. For $10 you can buy 30 charges and have 50 gems left over which could get you trade at the moment for 18 gold The point being the armor system was designed to cost charges from the beginning.

But if a player doesn’t want to use the “free” methods others have outlined to accumulate transmutation charges or buying them direct with gems, sorry, it was part of this game’s DNA since launch.

While I do also feel that T charges are undesirable for a cosmetic based game I doubt ANet will change this as it would require changing several reward systems and the gem store. If you want T charges you’ll have to do what’s necessary to get them or do without. For myself, the T charges are a big reason why I use so many outfits as one complete changeover of one char’s gear uses enough T charges that getting them back takes a fair amount of gameplay and time (or gems)

ANet decided before the game’s launch that a prime source of monthly cash flow was going to come from their Gem/Cash Shop and that would only offer account, cosmetic and convenience items. And that they decided that everyone would have to “pay” to alter their looks. Sure they gave us ways to accumulate T-charges for free but if you wanted to play Fashion Wars 2 with the big boys you will have to fork over the gems to do so. Yes, it use to be a lot cheaper on the way to 80 to change up your look, which is why I wear outfits until I’m 80, but there was always a cost.

Players who are cash and time poor have always had issues with the Gem Shop and exchange. You can’t satisfy everyone and still run a profitable business.

Wait until you have the L80 Gear before using Transmutation Charges? Earn some skins you like the look of, instead of Transmutation Charges? Acquire more Outfits (some are available sans Gems)?

Not only do I have a ton of Transmutation Charges, but a bank full of skins I’ve yet to use, as well.

Good luck.

Have to second that the easiest way to get Transmo Charges is city map completions. I always keep an open character slot for that, make a new toon, and just run through all 6 citites and do map completion.

Only takes a couple of hours to do the six city tour for 6 charges. I only do DR after my once a week key farm.

I’ve never been able to decide how I feel about transmutation charges.

On the one hand the basic system does sound undesirable – you obtain skins to use, but then have to pay extra (either gold or real money) to be able to use them. That would definitely put me off changing skins and therefore obtaining skins.

On the other hand I’ve been playing this game for 4.5 years, I’ve got 9 permanent characters and had literally dozens of temporary ones (who do sometimes get reskinned equipment) and I’ve never bought transmutation charges, or transmutation stones. I’ve always had more than enough simply from the ones we get free, even with my main character totally changing her look every few months. I don’t play PvP and only play WvW occasionally so I think most of those came from login rewards and map completion (mainly cities but you can get them from other maps as well) – because I make a lot of alts I do a lot of map completion so I end up with a lot of charges.

I suppose the logical conclusion of those two points is that transmutation charges are ineffective (in my case) as a way of generating income for Anet, but still create the impression of a pay gate, so the game would be better off if they were removed.

But in practice the outcome is that I don’t care. I don’t worry about spending them because I know I always have enough, so they don’t feel like a barrier to me. I almost forget that changing skins costs anything, I just pick the skins I want and apply them.

Same here. I’m swimming in transmutation charges I hardly use, because I normally make just one, specific ascended set for each of my 9 chars. My main changes more often, but even with that, thre are plenty of charges to use.

The two main ways I farm the charges is exploration on the city maps and PvP. I don’t wvw that much so idk how efficient that is.

Casual players probably won’t have as many transmutation charges, but long time, more dedicated players will have tons. I’m sitting on 773 of them.

Danikat.8537:

I’ve never been able to decide how I feel about transmutation charges.

On the one hand the basic system does sound undesirable – you obtain skins to use, but then have to pay extra (either gold or real money) to be able to use them. That would definitely put me off changing skins and therefore obtaining skins.

On the other hand I’ve been playing this game for 4.5 years, I’ve got 9 permanent characters and had literally dozens of temporary ones (who do sometimes get reskinned equipment) and I’ve never bought transmutation charges, or transmutation stones. I’ve always had more than enough simply from the ones we get free, even with my main character totally changing her look every few months. I don’t play PvP and only play WvW occasionally so I think most of those came from login rewards and map completion (mainly cities but you can get them from other maps as well) – because I make a lot of alts I do a lot of map completion so I end up with a lot of charges.

I suppose the logical conclusion of those two points is that transmutation charges are ineffective (in my case) as a way of generating income for Anet, but still create the impression of a pay gate, so the game would be better off if they were removed.

But in practice the outcome is that I don’t care. I don’t worry about spending them because I know I always have enough, so they don’t feel like a barrier to me. I almost forget that changing skins costs anything, I just pick the skins I want and apply them.

I’d honestly prefer a WoW style “pay gold to change appearance” model. A proxy currency adds no particular value, I think, since it’s already possible to do gems => gold if people want to buy more transmog.

OTOH, in-game gold is generally a less “valuable” resource, and this adds another sync to eat the constantly generated income out of the game, so … that’s a win.

Like a lot of currencies, some people find they have more transmutation charges than they can use, some find they have far too few, and many (perhaps most) have trouble understanding that anyone has too many or too few.

For better or worse, ANet decided long ago that cosmetics are a luxury. If I want to chase more and more variations and change frequently, I have to find a way to finance that preference. It turns out, it’s not that hard: PvP/WvW reward tracks, city completions, as well as through the gem shop (where we can go with gold→gems or cash→gems).

In other words, for those who don’t care that much, there are plenty of charges. For those who do care, there’s the gem shop.

So sure, insufficient transmutation charges is an inconvenience to dressing up our toons. But it’s that way to encourage those of us who want more options to play or spend more. That seems like a reasonable design choice.

It’s not unreasonable to want this to be simpler, easier, and/or cheaper. It’s also not unreasonable for ANet to prefer the status quo, unless we can offer them an alternative that is also simpler, easier, and financially as valuable for them.

You can get transmution charges free in-game, convert gold to gems to buy them or spend up to $7 on a 25 pack. Pretty easy or at a low cost to get these.

I could understand if we were talking about upgrade extractors, at a whopping $30 for 25, but…

Meh, this just speaks to the need for VIP/Premium access to convenience services. Something cash only. Pay once, use forever.

You guys know that over in China GW2 players can buy all 5 permanent contracts for about $35?

Hell, I’d pay that much for a permanent transmutation contract alone. Lol

Well the game isn’t run my NCSOFT or ArenaNet in China. They can offer anything for money. Sadly I think the direct sales rather than gem shop shafts ANet out of royalties but …