Guild Wars 2

I wanted to take a moment to thank the developers for making the decision(s) to make Tyria much friendlier to alts. I’ve been around since GW1 and I’ve followed the discussions about why certain systems were character-specific “progression” as opposed to account-wide. Notably I recall the dye debate during the beta weekends, more recently the debate over Wxp or the ongoing debate over ascended. As an avid player of alts (an altaholic if you will), a trait first nurtured in how alt-friendly GW1 was designed, I was always on the side of account-unlocks and throughout my time in GW2 I have felt pressure and restrictions to change or avoid that style of playing.

This most recent patch has shown me that across the company you guys have made a conscious and robust effort to redesign systems (I’m sure this wasn’t easy) and even make generous decisions (retroactively unlocking dyes for the account, permanently unlocking gem store skins with a single purchase) to accommodate the best interests of the players. You didn’t just do this with one or two systems, you did a sweeping change across many areas of the game and I can tell you that I personally have felt and greatly appreciate how big an impact this has made on my experience in the game.

Off the top of my head here are the systems changed to be account wide in this last patch:

• Dyes
• The Wardrobe and skin unlocks (legendaries, expensive high end skins, gem store skins, Living Story Skins)
• sPvP reward track unlocks (unlike explorable mode, the reward tracks are unlocked for the entire account)
• Wxp
• Ascended and Legendary items (easing pressure on spending choices).
• Merging of PvP and PvE reward tracks.

Since the patch I have felt more freedom than ever in the game.
Freedom to:

• Experiment with as many dye colours as I want on any character I choose.
• Consume those too-valuable-to-use Living Story skins I wasn’t sure about and increasing the depth of my aesthetic customisation option.
• Play any character I want in WvW without feeling like I am “progressing” the wrong one or I’m less effective than another character because of a lower rank.
• Invest valuable currencies (laurels, guild commendations, pristine fractal relics etc) into ascended items knowing that I can swap them between my characters if I want to try new builds or play one more heavily than the other.
• Play in sPvP without halting my aesthetic progression in PvE.

The impact this patch has had on me (a patch that added very little “new” content) and how I am able to play and enjoy the game is considerable. So often I am critical of this game and will give negative feedback but I truly believe this Feature Pack represents a significant positive shift in how GW2 is designed and I really want to highlight how supportive I am of this new direction (thank you CDIs?). To see such a positive shift in the game from all the different teams is very encouraging. Thank you.

So how has the Feature Pack changed GW2 for other players? Have you guys lost an evening to the wardrobe experimenting with your character’s look? Spent an hour or more perfecting your look with dye combinations? Post screen shots of them if you want to show off your results. Or have you played a character you wouldn’t play as much without Wxp or access to account wide ascended items?

This is pretty much spot on for me, as well. Thus far, the positives outweigh the negatives in this patch (for the way I personally play). The wardrobe is such a massive improvement- I got my refund for a duplicate gem item today, which was much faster than I was expecting, and I’m so happy that ascended items are account bound.

I’ve also said in the past that I was not a fan of dyes as account unlocks, but consider me converted.

Its all fun and games till you realise that altoholics like us have been screwed over severely by this new wardrobe. I was very excited about the wardrobe till i realised that each time you upgrade your armor on your alt you have to pay more charges to keep your look but not only that you also pay triple the amount that you used to in the old system. Im sorry but my excitement was turned into total dissapointment. I dont even feel like playing any alts atm. This is greed plain and simple.

Making the game alt-friendly was the best thing they have done since launch. Now if they will just make it friendly to roleplayers again I will be happy.

Osculim.2983:

Its all fun and games till you realise that altoholics like us have been screwed over severely by this new wardrobe. I was very excited about the wardrobe till i realised that each time you upgrade your armor on your alt you have to pay more charges to keep your look but not only that you also pay triple the amount that you used to in the old system. Im sorry but my excitement was turned into total dissapointment. I dont even feel like playing any alts atm. This is greed plain and simple.

No, you build an armor with that look and store it, then you can use it forever. If you stick to fine-quality gear, it will even be account-bound.

The costs are mostly for end-game gear where you really need Exotic stats.

That said the change does hurt levellers quite a bit since transmutation stones were common, however low level players can now use level 80 gear looks with just the rewards that they get from map completion as a compensation.

They can even use the big bad expensive stuff from their high level characters; Living Story reward items, BLC weapons, even legendaries.

I’m not saying its enough, but it is there. Plus the cost is now 25/600 not 25/800.

thank you OP for summing it up so neatly.
there are some (negative) points I made in other posts regarding this update.

but all you list ARE true improvements and I am enjoying the accound wide system a lot.
it is very important to state that.

Not really alt-friendly with the trait unlocks though Hard to find the events up to run on even 1 char

There were a lot of really good alt friendly stuff in this patch:-

1) Wxp.
2) Wardrobe.
3) Dyes.
4) Ascended & Legendary items.

But they undermined it somewhat by requiring that the trait unlocks be soulbound…

I am lucky, I have 8×80′s, 1 of each class, so I only after unlock 40 grandmaster traits…I feel really, really sorry for new players who after unlock all traits well levelling. Starting from scratch and getting 8×80′s with fully unlocked traits is a awesome grind or a really expansive grind.

Unlocking the traits is not even fun thou, as well, I after complete the same temple event 8 times x3, open the same chest 8 times and kill the Karaka Queen 8 times, which I can only do twice a week if I am lucky due to the new timings.

So Anet gives with 1 hand and takes away with another, that’s probably why all the complaints.

A lot, of those changes have really come in for GW2 releasing in China/Asia, a lot of those players will not know any different (although with the power of the internet and modern communications, I wouldn’t bet on that, word has a habit of getting around), so not notice the increased grind.

Hannelore.8153:

Making the game alt-friendly was the best thing they have done since launch. Now if they will just make it friendly to roleplayers again I will be happy.

Osculim.2983:

Its all fun and games till you realise that altoholics like us have been screwed over severely by this new wardrobe. I was very excited about the wardrobe till i realised that each time you upgrade your armor on your alt you have to pay more charges to keep your look but not only that you also pay triple the amount that you used to in the old system. Im sorry but my excitement was turned into total dissapointment. I dont even feel like playing any alts atm. This is greed plain and simple.

No, you build an armor with that look and store it, then you can use it forever. If you stick to fine-quality gear, it will even be account-bound.

The costs are mostly for end-game gear where you really need Exotic stats.

That said the change does hurt levellers quite a bit since transmutation stones were common, however low level players can now use level 80 gear looks with just the rewards that they get from map completion as a compensation.

They can even use the big bad expensive stuff from their high level characters; Living Story reward items, BLC weapons, even legendaries.

I’m not saying its enough, but it is there. Plus the cost is now 25/600 not 25/800.

No you misunderstanding my point. let me explain lvl80 is fine you pick your look and save it no problems there. But at lower level 1-79 as you level you constantly upgrade your armor (not the look)to correspond to your caracter level and this happen very often. Now the thing is say you got a lvl1 caracter you choose your look in the wardrobe pay your charges and lock the look in.

Now you start playing get to say lvl5 now your armor is not good enough anymore and this is where the problem comes in you now upgrade the physical armor but just wanna keep the look you locked in but now you have to fork out more charges which is fine but here is my delema in the old days you used 1 stone a piece now its 1 charge which = 3 stones That means you pay 3x as much now and the rate of gathering these charges havent changed so you cannot keep your look anymore. I dont care bout the actual armor that gets salvaged.

Imo what should happen is you pick your look pay your charges and keep the look even if you upgrade your armor as you level. When you decide your tired of your look then sure pay more charges to change it again not each time you upgrade

Osculim.2983:

Hannelore.8153:

Making the game alt-friendly was the best thing they have done since launch. Now if they will just make it friendly to roleplayers again I will be happy.

Osculim.2983:

Its all fun and games till you realise that altoholics like us have been screwed over severely by this new wardrobe. I was very excited about the wardrobe till i realised that each time you upgrade your armor on your alt you have to pay more charges to keep your look but not only that you also pay triple the amount that you used to in the old system. Im sorry but my excitement was turned into total dissapointment. I dont even feel like playing any alts atm. This is greed plain and simple.

No, you build an armor with that look and store it, then you can use it forever. If you stick to fine-quality gear, it will even be account-bound.

The costs are mostly for end-game gear where you really need Exotic stats.

That said the change does hurt levellers quite a bit since transmutation stones were common, however low level players can now use level 80 gear looks with just the rewards that they get from map completion as a compensation.

They can even use the big bad expensive stuff from their high level characters; Living Story reward items, BLC weapons, even legendaries.

I’m not saying its enough, but it is there. Plus the cost is now 25/600 not 25/800.

No you misunderstanding my point. let me explain lvl80 is fine you pick your look and save it no problems there. But at lower level 1-79 as you level you constantly upgrade your armor (not the look)to correspond to your caracter level and this happen very often. Now the thing is say you got a lvl1 caracter you choose your look in the wardrobe pay your charges and lock the look in.

Now you start playing get to say lvl5 now your armor is not good enough anymore and this is where the problem comes in you now upgrade the physical armor but just wanna keep the look you locked in but now you have to fork out more charges which is fine but here is my delema in the old days you used 1 stone a piece now its 1 charge which = 3 stones That means you pay 3x as much now and the rate of gathering these charges havent changed so you cannot keep your look anymore. I dont care bout the actual armor that gets salvaged.

Imo what should happen is you pick your look pay your charges and keep the look even if you upgrade your armor as you level. When you decide your tired of your look then sure pay more charges to change it again not each time you upgrade

I understood your point, but you didn’t understand mine. I have 8 lv80s in this game, and I used Transmutation Stones while levelling them all.

But you’re failing to see the positives here; for example the fact that you’re now getting the equivalent of a Transmutation Crystal (an expensive gem store item) every single time you complete map, or that you can use any look that you have ever discovered in the game including items that cost 100-3000 gold to create.

On top of this, they already lowered the price of the Transmutation Charges.

I’m all for making transmutation cheaper for people who are not level 80 yet. But all these flame threads just keep making it look like ANet didn’t provide anything good in this change while there definitely are many positives. Especially when they have sacrificed some of their income to give better map completion rewards and to sell the associated gem store items from a cheaper price than before.

What you suggest would cause a huge loss of income for them and is unrealistic, because people would always just keep upgrading instead of transmuting and their only income would be from end-game players who decide on final looks. Like it or not, the large majority of income in MMOs is from levelling players, because most players leave the game after reaching max level due to market saturation.

Hannelore.8153:

Osculim.2983:

Hannelore.8153:

Making the game alt-friendly was the best thing they have done since launch. Now if they will just make it friendly to roleplayers again I will be happy.

Osculim.2983:

Its all fun and games till you realise that altoholics like us have been screwed over severely by this new wardrobe. I was very excited about the wardrobe till i realised that each time you upgrade your armor on your alt you have to pay more charges to keep your look but not only that you also pay triple the amount that you used to in the old system. Im sorry but my excitement was turned into total dissapointment. I dont even feel like playing any alts atm. This is greed plain and simple.

No, you build an armor with that look and store it, then you can use it forever. If you stick to fine-quality gear, it will even be account-bound.

The costs are mostly for end-game gear where you really need Exotic stats.

That said the change does hurt levellers quite a bit since transmutation stones were common, however low level players can now use level 80 gear looks with just the rewards that they get from map completion as a compensation.

They can even use the big bad expensive stuff from their high level characters; Living Story reward items, BLC weapons, even legendaries.

I’m not saying its enough, but it is there. Plus the cost is now 25/600 not 25/800.

No you misunderstanding my point. let me explain lvl80 is fine you pick your look and save it no problems there. But at lower level 1-79 as you level you constantly upgrade your armor (not the look)to correspond to your caracter level and this happen very often. Now the thing is say you got a lvl1 caracter you choose your look in the wardrobe pay your charges and lock the look in.

Now you start playing get to say lvl5 now your armor is not good enough anymore and this is where the problem comes in you now upgrade the physical armor but just wanna keep the look you locked in but now you have to fork out more charges which is fine but here is my delema in the old days you used 1 stone a piece now its 1 charge which = 3 stones That means you pay 3x as much now and the rate of gathering these charges havent changed so you cannot keep your look anymore. I dont care bout the actual armor that gets salvaged.

Imo what should happen is you pick your look pay your charges and keep the look even if you upgrade your armor as you level. When you decide your tired of your look then sure pay more charges to change it again not each time you upgrade

I understood your point, but you didn’t understand mine. I have 8 lv80s in this game, and I used Transmutation Stones while levelling them all.

But you’re failing to see the positives here; for example the fact that you’re now getting the equivalent of a Transmutation Crystal (an expensive gem store item) every single time you complete map, or that you can use any look that you have ever discovered in the game including items that cost 100-3000 gold to create.

On top of this, they already lowered the price of the Transmutation Charges.

I’m all for making transmutation cheaper for people who are not level 80 yet. But all these flame threads just keep making it look like ANet didn’t provide anything good in this change while there definitely are many positives. Especially when they have sacrificed some of their income to give better map completion rewards and to sell the associated gem store items from a cheaper price than before.

What you suggest would cause a huge loss of income for them and is unrealistic, because people would always just keep upgrading instead of transmuting and their only income would be from end-game players who decide on final looks. Like it or not, the large majority of income in MMOs is from levelling players, because most players leave the game after reaching max level due to market saturation.

Well dont get me wrong the wardrobe itself is a improvement but the costs to use it is and i dont see how they loose money. They didnt give up any profit on map completion they still giving exactly the same ratio as before. The thing is they might have dropped the price in the store but you can do so much less with the charges than you could have with the stones back in the day heck transmuting 1 set for 5 stones vs 15 thats tripple only level 80s gain anything here new people and altoholics are being punished no matter how you look at it. But ye i guess my altoholic days are over.