Guild Wars 2

For some of us who started back before Scarlet’s destruction on Lion’s
Arch, we had one option: buy soulbound unlimited harvesting tools for 800 gems each. Later they allowed you to upgrade them to account bound at no charge. The price was increased to 1000 gems to compensate. So at the time, some players had purchased multiple sets for multiple toons. Some chose to bank the one set of tools they owned and swap them between toons. Then came the Shared Inventory Slots, which allowed the newest players to purchase a set and have them always available without having to goto the bank. Very nice on Anet’s part. So over the past 4 years my 13 toons each have a set of unlimited gathering tools. I’m more than happy to pay with gems for all the hard work that Anet does for the game, but I would like to see some sort of swap/exchange program preferably in-game to switch out the tools you already have for something a bit more updated. Of course a fee would need to apply to the transaction. For example; I own the skritt glitter bomb harvesting tool and don’t really care for the animation or the time it takes to use it (whether or not it is actually longer, its my perception that it does take longer) and would love to swap it out for another tool. Maybe a fee of some gold or gems, or a mystic forging of some kind. Because some of us bought the tools that were available at the time and much better ones have since been released that look better and/or give added mats (Watchwork/Unbound). It would be useless to buy more sets just to destroy or bank the old ones and I’m not really one to use 3 of my shared slots for the tools since all my toons already have a set of their own.
TL;DR
Anet you wonderful people, please grant us some way in game to pay a fee and exchange/swap existing unlimited gathering tools for other that are available.

I would support this, under a system which I outlined on the other thread discussing the infinite UBM tools:

“Allow players to “trade in” old/unwanted gem store purchases at 50% of the original purchase price, but these refunded gems MUST be immediately put towards the purchase of a new gem store item. (This prevents the economy from getting swamped with sudden dumps of gold whenever new offerings get released, and the 50% deduction I feel is a fair tradeoff so that ANet doesn’t see a complete drop in gem sales.)”

Probably the easiest way to implement this would be to offer a BL Agent Token for X gems. You could bring the token to one of the many BL agents in Tyria, along with an existing tool; they would exchange it for any of the tools in the gem shop.

I doubt that ANet will implement it though, since the current system works for them.

And frankly, I’d prefer to wait two years for them to change the system to something closer to what the OP wants:

• separate skins/‘effect’ from ‘function’
• separate bonus drops (or remove them from the game)
• make the effects/skins part of the wardrobe (along with auras)

So we’d equip and everlasting tool and choose a skin from the wardrobe. I’m willing to wait.

I just wish they would do a skin system for the tools. Buy a unlimited/unbreakable tool and unlock it’s skin for use on all tools of the same type. It could just be an extension of the wardrobe system. I thought they were going to do this when they released the generic unbreakable tools. They could do a skin unlock credit for players who have multiple versions of the same tool.

Heh, yeah, that was my second suggestion (which I omitted here because it didn’t seem to be what the OP was asking for).

Like you two, I think a better (though more complicated) solution is to update the gathering tools so that every unlimited tool comes with an upgrade slot, into which you can put a crafted essence that determines what bonus reward you get when using the tool. (The Watchwork Pick and Unbound tools already come with essences pre-inserted.) Bonus rewards could include rare crafting materials (determined by the tier of the node you are harvesting), festive materials (snowflakes, Halloween mats), and map currencies. This method means that you can use whatever skin you’d like for your harvesting tools (indeed, there could even be a wardrobe specifically for tools) and still get the bonus reward of your choice.

Tekoneiric.6817:

I just wish they would do a skin system for the tools. Buy a unlimited/unbreakable tool and unlock it’s skin for use on all tools of the same type. It could just be an extension of the wardrobe system. I thought they were going to do this when they released the generic unbreakable tools. They could do a skin unlock credit for players who have multiple versions of the same tool.

This.

Zaxares.5419:

I think a better (though more complicated) solution is to update the gathering tools so that every unlimited tool comes with an upgrade slot, into which you can put a crafted essence that determines what bonus reward you get when using the tool. (The Watchwork Pick and Unbound tools already come with essences pre-inserted.) Bonus rewards could include rare crafting materials (determined by the tier of the node you are harvesting), festive materials (snowflakes, Halloween mats), and map currencies. This method means that you can use whatever skin you’d like for your harvesting tools (indeed, there could even be a wardrobe specifically for tools) and still get the bonus reward of your choice.

And this.

As soon as they made them account bound I asked to return mine for the gems I used. Since it was right away they allowed me to do that. I forgot one extra and now it is too late to trade that one back. My other half waited and waited and now it’s too late for her to trade them back. But then she’s fine with not trading back cause she just trades them between multiple chars anyway and thinking about getting more tools to match the rest of her chars.
They actually made me destroy them and then refunded those that I destroyed, BUT I did it with them telling me when to do that. Again it is now to late for the extra one I forgot I had, oh well.
I ended up getting a set of tools for one of my sons, lol, and gifting them to him.