Guild Wars 2

With the announcement of the new ascendent armor, the deficiencies of the current cosmetic system are becoming more and more obvious. If this gear treadmill is to continue (and even if it doesn’t), it will soon become necessary for PvE players to choose between one of two things: build adaptability or cosmetic variance. The system was already severely lacking, which I can demonstrate easily in a quick example:

- I want to be able to swap between two different looks whenever I want
- I want to be able to swap between two different builds whenever I want (eg MF and condition damage)
- Presume the armors for both builds cost 15g each (this can even be on the low end for exotics) and the looks are free (which is not even close to accurate in some cases since order armor costs ~10g and t3 cultural over 100g)
- To meet my goal, I must buy 4 sets of exotic armor at 15g each: setAlookA, setAlookB, setBlookA, and setBlookB.

That is already 60g while making VERY generous assumptions. If you want more than two builds and/or more than two looks PLUS looks that actually cost significant gold, you will be broke almost before you begin.

All this is BEFORE even taking into account the possible new gear treadmill. Now after spending ludicrous amounts of money you can’t even be sure that you’ll be future proof for more than a few months. This is coming from somebody who actually enjoys farming, so as horrible as all this is for me casuals will be hit even harder.

Much of this agony stems from one thing: transmutation stones consume BOTH original items when transmuting. A simple yet powerful fix would be to make it so that only the stat-based item is consumed: therefore you end up with the skin you applied and the newly skinned exotic.

Now, Anet is probably weary of skin “duplication” since some of their gem store items are skins. However, I think that they would actually end up making MORE money on gems because transmutation stones would actually be worth something, and more people would buy them. To put it in perspective, I currently have 270 transmutation stones (from blcs). How many have I used? Probably about 5. This is because I don’t want to waste my expensive cosmetic items (like vigil armor) on exotic armor that I may not end up using much. If I did decide to get some new exotics, I would be forced to either transmute the old exotic armor onto the new (losing 15g) or buy some new cosmetic items to transmute onto the new armor (losing ~10g in the case of vigil armor). So for me the bottleneck is not transmutation stones, but gold. I think Anet would have something to gain if transmutation stones were the bottleneck instead.

Of course I would prefer above else just having a “skin” armor (where we can swap in and out any armor at will) that we can display instead of our stat-based armor, but it might be hard to implement given the current framework (what to do with all the transmutation stones in circulation).

TLDR: It’s already WAY too expensive to have different builds and different looks at the same time. A new gear treadmill will make it mind-bogglingly worse to the point of impossibility for most players.

You might want to check out my post about this. I put up a very detailed solution on how to solve this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improvements-for-Collectors/first#post499627

This is definitely a problem for me. If I could buy gem store armor once and use it on any of my characters in a costume slot or some kind of LotRO-like appearance selector, I’d definitely be dropping gems on it. As it is, I will never buy gem store armor. So they’re losing money on me for sure.

Svenn.5209:

You might want to check out my post about this. I put up a very detailed solution on how to solve this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improvements-for-Collectors/first#post499627

The problem doesn’t need a detailed and complex solution. It needs a simple solution.

The best solution is one where we have 2 slots for each armor location. A stat slot and an appearance slot. Its simple and provides the maximum flexibility. However, Anet wanted to make money off of transmutation stones, so the best solution is a victim of monetization of the game. I’m not against Anet making money, or the gem store in general, but this is a case of the store effecting game design negatively.

Good post, I was just thinking about this. Going to be a serious problem going forward with the new ascended gear

Joiry.2504:

Svenn.5209:

You might want to check out my post about this. I put up a very detailed solution on how to solve this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improvements-for-Collectors/first#post499627

The problem doesn’t need a detailed and complex solution. It needs a simple solution.

The best solution is one where we have 2 slots for each armor location. A stat slot and an appearance slot. Its simple and provides the maximum flexibility. However, Anet wanted to make money off of transmutation stones, so the best solution is a victim of monetization of the game. I’m not against Anet making money, or the gem store in general, but this is a case of the store effecting game design negatively.

Yes, as noted this would be my preferred solution. If they really wanted to they could monetize this as well by requiring you to pay gems to unlock skin slots. Honestly I would have no problem with this, and they would probably make more money on gem sales with this than the transmutation stones (I’ve already enumerated the reasons why they are currently undesirable).

The only issue is what to do with all existing transmutation stones. However they could easily just allow people to exchange existing transmutation stones back for gems, or even do some kind of mystic forge dealio (similar to the mad king chests).

While I consider GW2 to be overall the superior game, I think that LOTRO’s wardrobe handles cosmetics very elegantly:

http://support.turbine.com/link/portal/24001/24001/Article/3005/What-is-the-LOTRO-Wardrobe

Also, players happily and willingly pay extra money for additional wardrobe slots, so it isn’t as though Anet would lose out.

They really do need a DCUO system where you unlock cosmetics & just pick the one you currently want from a dropdown.

as much as I would like the appearance system to change it won’t.

As much as I love LOTRs appearance system, GW2 is not set up for layering or the ability to turn on or off any article of clothing.

Maybe in 3-4 years we may see a change in how GW2s appearance system works, but by then a new game will be out and no one will care.

Joiry.2504:

Svenn.5209:

You might want to check out my post about this. I put up a very detailed solution on how to solve this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Improvements-for-Collectors/first#post499627

The problem doesn’t need a detailed and complex solution. It needs a simple solution.

The best solution is one where we have 2 slots for each armor location. A stat slot and an appearance slot. Its simple and provides the maximum flexibility. However, Anet wanted to make money off of transmutation stones, so the best solution is a victim of monetization of the game. I’m not against Anet making money, or the gem store in general, but this is a case of the store effecting game design negatively.

Yeah, I like that idea. It reminds me of when I played Perfect World and could just swap out fashion whenever I wanted. It made me spend a whole lot more on the in game shop thats for sure.