Guild Wars 2

Who designed this mechanic? Why is it so widespread in the game? It makes no sense why Anet would want you to commit so much into playing one single character. Do they not get money from character slot sales? It’s unnecessarily restrictive and counter-productive.

If the idea is to prevent selling items to other players, then account-bound restriction is much better.

Currently there are things like Siege Weapon Blueprints that are bound to character. Even Harvesting Tools are bound to character that happened to buy them. Seriously? Any character can buy any tool from merchants in Lion’s Arch, a place every character can access right from the beginning of game.

Accessibility is what makes games fun. Take a look at how some great games handle accessibility. If something is inaccessible, it’s inaccessible by logic. You can’t cross a bridge because it’s not built yet. You swing large hammer clumsily because the hammer is heavy and you’re weak. Super Mario (not tiny Mario) breaks brick blocks with his head because of his size. Red text “soulbound to other character” is a creation of poor mind. It makes no sense intuitively and it’s not explained in any way in game. It’s just one bull**** restriction.

I see no problem with soulbound items…it’s nothing new to MMOs, this is probably something only people with no experience in the genre would complain about.

I think it’s effectively another form of gold sink. It stops you sharing all your equipment between characters. Although gathering tools and salvage kits being soulbound has stopped bothering me because you need to keep them with you pretty much all the time anyway so it’s actually easier for each character to have their own than to keep swapping them around or keep them in the bank.

I agree it sometimes seems excessive though.

Kasoon.3758:

I see no problem with soulbound items…it’s nothing new to MMOs, this is probably something only people with no experience in the genre would complain about.

True, but then being able to share things between characters at all is pretty much unique to MMOs. I can’t remember a single player game where that was an option. So if anything people unfamiliar with MMO’s would consider it a novelty that they can share anything, rather than being frustrated that it only works with some things.

I suspect it’d be most frustrating for people used to GW1 where (apart from armor) you had to choose to customise items.

Is MMO some genre of games where players are so conditioned to poor design that silliness like this doesn’t even spark a reaction?

Zenith.6403:

Is MMO some genre of games where players are so conditioned to poor design that silliness like this doesn’t even spark a reaction?

There’s no reaction to be had about it to be honest, it’s nothing new so why be surprised?

You’ll adapt, don’t worry.

Kasoon.3758:

I see no problem with soulbound items…it’s nothing new to MMOs, this is probably something only people with no experience in the genre would complain about.

It’s good because other games have done it is pretty much the weakest argument you could have made on this.

Soulbound items like harvesting items and such are just senseless, but I don’t necessarily have a problem with other items that are soulbound. Comparing games, DAoC didn’t have soulbinding, but items would decay and break over time. Without that mechanic, if items aren’t Soulbound, when someone crafts X weapon, it remains in the world forever, that’s one less of X weapon that will ever need to be made. Same with rare items, once one is found, thats one item that never leaves the system.

When one person needs this item, they buy it, they sell when done, to the point where every new instance of this weapon introduced to the system lowers the value of the ones already there until they’re eventually worthless.

So fine, remove soulbinding, but there needs to be some form of decay implemented, or it would simply destroy the economy in the long term (moreso than it is).

Soulbinding is a good mechanic as it avoids deflation of items.
It creates more demand and doesn’t allow reselling or sharing with alts.

Treize.7026:

Kasoon.3758:

I see no problem with soulbound items…it’s nothing new to MMOs, this is probably something only people with no experience in the genre would complain about.

It’s good because other games have done it is pretty much the weakest argument you could have made on this.

Soulbound items like harvesting items and such are just senseless, but I don’t necessarily have a problem with other items that are soulbound. Comparing games, DAoC didn’t have soulbinding, but items would decay and break over time. Without that mechanic, if items aren’t Soulbound, when someone crafts X weapon, it remains in the world forever, that’s one less of X weapon that will ever need to be made. Same with rare items, once one is found, thats one item that never leaves the system.

When one person needs this item, they buy it, they sell when done, to the point where every new instance of this weapon introduced to the system lowers the value of the ones already there until they’re eventually worthless.

So fine, remove soulbinding, but there needs to be some form of decay implemented, or it would simply destroy the economy in the long term (moreso than it is).

I think you’ve misunderstood somewhere along the line, nowhere did I say it was a good thing.

I said it’s not surprising, and you’ll get used to it.

Economy argument falls apart very fast. How can there be economy where items and money appear from thin air infinitely (as you slay monsters, complete quests) and nothing decays? Economy is only a facade on single player games, where merchants agree to buy whatever stuff you have for fixed prices and sell you items for convenient sum. It’s meant to feel realistic for that short period of time you’re playing an area. Immersion is broken soon should you begin to “grind” millions of gold pieces. Same happens with game difficulty in games that have character levels.

Some MMO’s with an account wide bank would let soulbound items be traded that way. Not sure why GW2 decided not to allow it.

Zenith,

I get where you’re coming from (the soulbound harvesting tools baffles me too—I imagine it has something to do with getting harvesting tools from karma, and then playing them on the Trading Post, which will then potentially warp the overall cost of gathering) but…

You’re neglecting the frequency of items and tokens in this game that are account bound. Guild Wars 2 definitely encourages multiple characters and rewards you for it. Your bank is account bound. Your Collections are account bound. Rare/Exotic Gear is almost exclusively account bound. Even your dungeon rewards are account bound—an anomaly in MMORPGs. And if you count intangible rewards, your achievements are account bound.

If you want to make a case for account bound harvesting tools, I could get behind that. I don’t know much about soulbound siege equipment, though, so I can’t really comment. Still, most of the rewards in this game are very much account bound.

Outside of harvesting tools, I really don’t have a problem with soulbound items. And as money can be transferred from character to character, it’s not a big deal.

I respect your opinion, but this is a mountain the size of a mole hill.

Eveningstar: I think all equipment at Masterwork-grade and above are soulbound on use. I haven’t seen any account-bound gear. Most things like collections and bank are rightfully account-bound. What if you had 5 stacks of onions on your bank with each bound to a single character? Wouldn’t that be silly? Soulboundness of gathering tools has little impact on anything, other than having bank slot occupied by item that only benefits one of my many characters. I complete a low level zone and I’m left with some uses of copper tools. I could put them on bank to have my other low level characters use them.

Event items like those Quaggan pearls from WvW borderlands are also soulbound. It feels silly that I could hoard massive stacks of these on your bank, but then have only one character use them.

Note: you can drop blueprints to trade them.

Okay, but your argument is that soulbound is an inherently bad mechanic and encourages using a single character while discouraging multiple alts and the sale of character slots.

But in practice, this isn’t true. A single character could, conceivably, provide for an entire gallery of alts. Any dungeon tokens you win at the end of explorable mode can go to any given character, so if the only dungeon set your 80 Warrior wants is, say, the Koda armor, you can still run the other dungeons and collect the tokens to gear up your alts.

Furthermore, it’s important to remember that having high-end (i.e, 80 Exotic) gear soulbound on use rather than soulbound on acquire is a big deal. This means that you could pick up all the gear you want directly off the Trading Post rather than having to run dungeons ad nausuem for your desired stats.

Soulbound on use isn’t a problem. Soulbound on Acquire may be, depending on what it is you acquire and whether or not you have any reason to hang on to it. But removing soulbound restrictions from gear you’ve already equipped means you’d never have any reason to gear up after the first set—ever. If you had an Elementalist, a Mesmer and a Necromancer at 80, you’d only ever need one set of gear between all three of them.

Soulbound items have a purpose, usually. Soulbound-on-use exotics keep a healthy market for these items without restricting them as random drops off dungeon bosses—which is the formula a lot of other MMOs use. Having account-bound dungeon rewards is an especially big incentive to keep multiple characters rather than just having one.

In fact, account bound dungeon tokens is a recent change, which illustrates that ANet is willing to reconsider some of their soulbound restrictions. I think you’d be better served by suggesting changes to specific instances of problematic soul-binding rather than decry the mechanic in general.

Soulbound in general I don’t have a problem with but I think the soulbound siege blueprints is silly, I have trouble remembering which character the blueprints in my bank belong to (I got them all from map completions) and I think being able to be adaptable in WvW by bringing a different class and still being able to use stored blueprints is a good thing.

I have one to add to the same category as Gathering Tools – random jewellery.

I cannot conceive of any reason why a random ring I find is soulbound on acquire. In fact, I can’t think of any other non-event loot that can be found that is like this… and even some event items aren’t soulbound. To add insult to injury, they are worse than crafted jewellery and as rare as hen’s teeth.

I agree that the soulbound mechanic is ridiculously excessive. soulbound harvesting tools, why? and so many gears are soulbound, they leave me no choice but to destroy them once i’ve outlevelled them. I dont understand why so many materials are account bound either, I don’t know how making stuff like peaches or pears tradable would undermine the economy, but then again I never studied economics so…

mulch.2586:

Note: you can drop blueprints to trade them.

how exactly? :O i dragged one out and it destroyed them =/