Guild Wars 2

I spent my hard earned cash just week ago to get myself something that really buffs up my gameplay and gets me to finally level up those crafting professions I’ve had for over three years just holding on in case I ever wandered back.

So I bought a set of these Halloween themed infinite tools from Gem Store for a thousand (1000) gems each, just to notice that I have to actually transfer the tools to another character if I were to play with some of my alts.

This seems rather weird, taking to count that these tools are in fact account bound and they are surely not meant to be bought for each character individually. And as we’ve experienced before, items can be delivered universally to all of our characters (Hero’s Band for example, if you’ve got the Deluxe edition of the original game).

What I am proposing here is that the tools should be available for every character individually, with no need to end the game session near bank where you put the tools in to pick them up again with another one of your characters. In my opinion the cleanest way to achieve this would be to bind these items to the Hero Panel, under the Equipment tab, so when I click on a mining pick, I would have the unlimited tool I’ve bought, ready to be used.

Wouldn’t you prefer this instead of transferring your tools all around and at some point possibly just ending up using the “normal tools” because it is just easier at the moment? In my opinion, it would be a great improvement to bring these up to all of our characters instead of just one.

If you have account bound inventory slots you can put the gem store tools in there then click on the gemstore tools after selecting a char to put the tools on that char (the char needs to have a set of regular tools to make it easy to switch). Before logging out or changing to another char, click on the regular tools in the account bound slots to put the gem store tools back in there. Repeat as needed for each log in or change of character.

I’m guessing ArenaNet would prefer each character had their own set of Unlimited Gathering Tools, or, barring that, at least 3 Shared Inventory Slots on an account.

A solvent game is a happy game! =)

Valuation Estimation:

• The current cost of 1 permanent harvesting tool usable across the account without bank access is 1700 gems (1000 for the tool, 700 for the shared inventory slot). The likelihood of ANet deciding to forego $8.75 × 3 per account seems slim.
• A shared slot is much less clunky than bank, but still susceptible to oops, so an all-alts tool represents a greater level of convenience. That’s what the store sells, so I smell a surcharge.
• Then there’s the complaints from people who bought shared slots for tools and now want refunds. Got to defray the added Customer Service requests costs due to refund demands.

I’m up to between 2500-3000 gems per cross account tool. Would you pay that much? I wouldn’t, not when I can pay 1700 and have to remember to switch out tools.

Oh, you thought 1000 gems should do it? not gonna happen.

Agree with OP. When I spend 3k gems on account bound permanent gathering tools, I expect to get a version sent to every character. Otherwise, it’s completely useless to make them account bound. Don’t nickel and dime me ANet, that’s just kittenty business practices.

If you’re offering a convenience item, make sure it’s actually convenient and not a cash grab. If I have to buy two items to make just one work properly, then it’s pretty terrible and greedy design. There’s no defense for that.

Also it’s worth pointing out that in order to get 3k gems you need to spend $50 US and then you have 1k left over. Or you could make two separate purchases of $45 and have 600 left over. Either way it’s a lot of money – the equivalent of buying the game outright, or buying an expansion. For that much money, I expect a better deal.

You know. They used to not even be account bound/transferable. They were soulbound and cost 800 a piece. They should have probably left it like that with the 400 gem price cut to avoid people complaining about them fixing.. what.. people.. were complaining about.. wait what? The grass is always greener.

Anyway, considering how many characters you can potentially have, a one-time fee of 1000 gems per tool per account really doesn’t cut it. You’d be getting way too much out of it. The game was originally meant to be played with tools that break. If you really, really want the convenience.. then pay for it. Save your gold, if you wish. Buy a bank access express. Or swap gold over to gems for shared inventory slots when they crop back up. There are other options if you don’t want to dish out $50. However, if they were to grant OP’s wish, it’d cost a LOT more than 1000 gems per tool. They are a company, after all- they are going to try to /make money/ while still attempting to make the game fun to play. I don’t really fault them for that. It could be just a pure style-shop with costumes and no convenience to speak of.

—

Me personally? I like to earn my convenience.
I now am fully convenience-ified with shared inventory slots, bank access, shop access, etc. and most of it I used gold to get. Yes, it’s expensive. Cash or gold. You either pay with what you’ve earned IRL.. or pay with what you’ve earned in-game.
Either way, if it’s what you really want- it’s worth it in the long run if you actually use the stuff.

Also, everything else aside, I don’t think using normal tools is that inconvenient. Just gotta have a tad bit of organization. That’s just my opinion, though!

Leiloni.7951:

Agree with OP. When I spend 3k gems on account bound permanent gathering tools, I expect to get a version sent to every character. Otherwise, it’s completely useless to make them account bound. Don’t nickel and dime me ANet, that’s just kittenty business practices.

If you’re offering a convenience item, make sure it’s actually convenient and not a cash grab. If I have to buy two items to make just one work properly, then it’s pretty terrible and greedy design. There’s no defense for that.

Also it’s worth pointing out that in order to get 3k gems you need to spend $50 US and then you have 1k left over. Or you could make two separate purchases of $45 and have 600 left over. Either way it’s a lot of money – the equivalent of buying the game outright, or buying an expansion. For that much money, I expect a better deal.

So if someone has the max number of characters, 70 (and some people do), If they spend 3000 gems on a set of 3 permanent tools the game should send them 210 tools instead of 3 tools? That’s a value of 210,000 gems or $2625€ for their $37.5€ purchase.

That’s quite a good deal. No wonder you want it.

And no wonder ANet doesn’t agree with you.

I just put my infinite tools into three of my account shared slots, then I keep generic tools on each character, and when I switch from one to the next, I swap out their infinite tools, play as normal, and then swap them back when switching to someone else. I sometimes forget that last step, but it just means I need to relog, not a huge deal.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If you have account bound inventory slots you can put the gem store tools in there

That is true, but those slots are not cheap. Surely this is a working plot at the moment if you think it from the marketing side, but I am driving the customer’s side here. Spending real money to the game items should always mean that those items are easy to use on every single character, when it comes to an MMO game.

I don’t see them making the tools available to all char for free. Not when that’s a loss to them of 1000 gems per tool per char. That’s a lot of gems to a company that doesn’t have a subscription and gives away LS episodes to anyone that logs in during the active time. The best I can see them doing is creating and selling harvesting tool slots to add to the Hero Panel.

True Story;

I have the watchwork pick and a couple of the halloween tools and deleted a character that had them equipped one morning. I got them back after a ticket to CS. Scared the kitten out of me.

Moral of the story, make annything from the gem store that is equipable on characters account bound and unable to be deleted. Yes, you get the whole name confirmation ‘Are you sure’ box, but if you have gem store equipment on a toon you should get an error box saying you can’t delete the toon until you remove CASH PAID FOR ITEMS from toon.

Would save CS from ‘oops I kittened up’ tickets.

I still get the point that they’re making more money this way, but it seems like this has just been forgotten/not thought of when the unlimited tools were implemented.

If you buy a pair of wings or a glider skin, you are able to put them to every single character you have and create in the future. And skins in general only cost 700 gems, so why would they keep such a good sharing system from account bound gathering tools that cost even more gems. Also, I do not think the crew of ArenaNet is choosing the profit of microtransactions over good player experience. This could be expected from several other, unnamed companies, not ANet.

And as wongdong stated, if the tools get lost in the process of deleting the character, it costs the company way more to even open the CS ticket and send out a reply (+ the recovery of these items) than what they earn for selling these tools.

Just be glad they made them account bound. I bought the original set when they first came out and they were soulbound on equip. I ended up deleting the character I had equipped them on. After many emails to support, they un bound the tools for me in the bank so I could equip on another character before the NPC was added to trade them in for account bound versions.