Guild Wars 2

Before I start I wanted to thank the developers for the game I’ve grown to love, as I’m sure many of you do. Before GW2 I thought I had an immunity to MMO genre as a whole. But Guild Wars has Many Things That Are Just Done Right, and its robust and streamlined item upgrade system is almost among them. I wanted to talk about this “almost” part today.
Current upgrade system is a strong foundation plagued by issues that make the game significantly less diverse and enjoyable. We all know them, we all encountered them. Now that the developers team is deciding what to do with the Legendary armor, the time is ripe to post this suggestion. By the way, you can skip right to tl;dr: part.

First, let me write down the problems just to make sure I didn’t forget anything. Some of them might or might not be result of the others:

1. Swapping runes, sigils and other upgrades is punishing. Swapping is expensive, therefore trying out new builds is discouraged. Replacing your full set of Rune of Leadership feels like shooting yourself in the leg. The game mechanics is terribly at odds with the GW2 manifesto and developers’ claims that they want us to experiment. Swapping stats on Legendary items is useless by itself half of the time because you need to swap sigils with them; soon we’re going to have Legendary armor and the situation will get worse.
2. Green, yellow and half or Orange runes have no use, so receiving them as a loot is liability, not a reward. You are almost never glad to see a green rune. You can’t bulk vendor or bulk destroy them, and actually selling them on Trading Post is almost out of the question – noone needs them.
3. Some upgrades are unextractable by conventional means. It hurts very much with the runes that are very expensive, unobtainable through Trading Post or put into unsalvageable gear, which might take the punishing aspect of the upgrade system to a whole new level for a newbe or unaware player.
4. Ruined unbalanced market. Runes and sigils are mostly split into several best ones and all the rest being useless with zero demand and profitability. Plus couple of overpriced legacy upgrades not obtainable anywhere else (like sigil of Karka slaying). It is not an issue in of itself as Trading Post is something that can be skipped entirely, but it is both a very good feature and a very good indicator of existing issues.
   
   Now, what do we want to acheive?
   A balanced state where players can easily experiment with new stats/sigils/runes once in a while for a modest price, probably sometimes even switching upgrades between, say, raid and WvW – but not to the point where you can switch upgrades between encounters in a single dungeon for free.
   
   Why are the most popular/sound suggestions to date not that great? Scroll a couple of messages below and the Pirate Quaggan will show you.
   
   And now, ladies and gentelmen, the solution:

tl;dr: make runes and sigils salvageable. Salvage fail gives stackable trash items that can be sold to vendors for no loss – now you don’t have a reason to sell the runes for their minimum price on TP. Salvage success gives an item that allows you to recover an existing upgrade from an equipment piece instead of destroying it when you apply a new upgrade. The idea is that to replace 8 sigils or runes without destroying them you will need to salvage 10 or 40 other runes/sigils of the same rarity with Mystic or Basic kits respectively – so you basically spend runes that you don’t need to save those that you need.
As a result, a player will receive approximately 1 chance to swap a rune freely per Agent of Entropy acheivement without additional effort. Green/yellow runes won’t clog your inventory anymore and you will be always glad to see even a green rune. 1 Exo rune translates into 16 Rares or 256 Greens, which helps get rid of excessive number of Greens on the TP.
END OF TL;DR

Next parts really only dive in additional details and reasoning. You only might want to read past this point if you like the suggestion or want to argue.

Detailed changelog and in-depth explanations for developers (and nerds. You can just skip it):
New item: Consumable item called Mystic Dissolvent (Name up to debate of course). For the sake of simplicity, item has 3 tiers, corresponding to Green, Yellow and Orange item rarities respectively:
Vial of Mystic Dissolvent (Green)(1c): Double-click to combine 16 Vials into a Flask of Mystic Dissolvent.
Flask of Mystic Dissolvent (Yellow)(16c): Double-click to combine 16 Flasks into a Bottle of Mystic Dissolvent.
Bottle of Mystic Dissolvent (Orange)(2s 56c): Salvage to receive 255 Vials.
Why the numbers are multiplier of 16? Because if you promote runes/sigils in the Mystic Forge, you have 20% chance to convert 4 of them into 1 of the higher tier, else you receive 1 of the same tier. This means that on average, you need to flush 16 pieces to get one of a better rarity. This is a time-consuming process that we should not make less profitable.

New Button: A new button is added to “Add rune/sigil to an item” dialog. You now can apply an upgrade to an occupied slot of an item and choose to spend a dose of Mystic Dissolvent. If you do, the upgrade that is already present in the slot is added to you inventory instead of being destroyed. The new prompt text is: “Recover or destroy the existing upgrade? Recovering will cost 1 Vial/Flask /Bottle” with possible choices: “Recover” “Destroy” and “Cancel”. The cost depends on existing upgrade’s tier and is 1 Vial for green, 1 Flask for Yellow and 1 Bottle for Orange, the logic resembles Transmutation Charges.

New Rule: Runes, Sigils, Crests and Jewels can be now salvaged into Mystic Dissolvent and vendor trash. (Bulk salvage only affects runes that are already in the inventory; runes that you get as result of salvaging are unaffected. To salvage them, you will need to click “salvage all” one more time).
Masterwork (green) items give Vials, Rare (Yellow) items give Flasks, Exotic (Orange) give Bottles. Success chance depends on Salvage Kit chance of recovering upgrades. Failure gives Ruined Dissolvent trash item. The cost of the Ruined Dissolvent should partially offset the cost of buying/salvaging runes from Trading post. Yellow runes’s chance of successful salvage are 2 times lower, Exotic is 4 times lower.
Why make the vendor trash output is significantly lower for the runes of higher tiers? Both to encourage salvaging greens and offset the fact that you need 256 times less Orange items to acheive the same result, while still keeping Exos in a good spot.
What the prices should be? Well, it’s up to John Smith and the team to decide of course. I’d put it at 23c to encourage salvaging greens that are not needed, but make buying them out from TP just to junk salvage unprofitable. With the numbers proposed, you get 1 Bottle (Orange) you will need 256 Vials (greens). By salvaging with Copper-o-Matic, assuming 20% success chance, you will spend on average 1280 green runes which currently cost 19 c on TP, it requires 2.43.20 gold. You spend salvage that into 1024 trash that costs 23c each, with total cost of 2.35.52 gold and 256 Vials of Dissolvent that you combine in 1 Bottle and net loss of 46.08 silver. Salvaging Yellows and Oranges is less profitable.

Totally optional QoL mechanics: when salvaging a bulk of items, you get a popup that asks you how many items you want to salvage. Works for items such as Runes/Sigils/Globs of Ectoplasm.
Why? Why not. It is better to click through a stack of Ectoplasm 256 times.

Pros:

1. Minimal change to the current game. You don’t have any new interface elements, unexpected interactions, bottlenecks, logic knots and so on.
2. You are now always glad to see even the lousiest green rune in your inventory. You now never have to cringe at a with a full inventory of green/yellow sigils.
3. Low development cost : one item, one button, a couple of error messages, slight adjustments to Bulk Salvage methods plus the code of the feature itself. Additional features and final polish might take some time, but the core prototype feature can theoretically be written in less than an hour by just copypasting already existing code.
4. The feature is highly adjustable (developers can adjust drop rates, vendor prices, how many bottles you need, etc).
5. The feature stays perfectly relevant if the developers one day decide to change the rune system to PVP-style and add a “Rune wardrobe” – now Mystic Dissolvent acts like Transmutation Charge. The new item can also be used elsewhere to add additional material sink coughfor legendarycough.
6. Rebalancing trading post: Useless runes and sigils now are needed to save the useful ones. As a direct result, the upgrades that were overpriced now cost less. Part of their cost is transferred to previously worthless ones that now cost more and you can always sell them on TP.
7. Mystic Dissolvent is collected in the players’ inventory as a byproduct of playing, just like Transmutation charges. Having this unused item in the inventory naturally encourages new players to start experimeting with their builds, thus breathing new life in already existing features of the game.

Potential issues:

1. Less demand for Black Lion Upgrade Extractor
2. Less demand for additonal bag slots – partially offset by the fact that the players will now carry spare rune sets with them.
3. Potentially huge number of clicks without the additional QoL feature if not using Bulk Salvage.
4. Having multiple armor/weapon sets in the inventory retain their value to some extent (unless one day we get build templates), but become somewhat less needed. But it is maybe a plus.
5. Players can accidentally bulk salvage their stack of 6 yellow/green runes that they actually need. Very unlikely to happen, who would carry yellows to actually put them in their gear anyway?

Thank you for reading. I actually don’t believe you made it up to this point, but if you did – my apologies for this wall of text, it’s my first post. I will be very glad to hear your feedback and critique, and if you are a GW2 developer, I will be extatic.

BONUS:
Many popular suggestions and why they are not that great.

The pirate quaggan by limliris got you covered!

1) Make some kind of character-bound wardrobe and add the unlocked runes and sigils there. Make them freely swappable like current minis.
Is the solution better than the current system? Yes. With all the obvious pros, the idea is at odds with the current design and has multiple issues:

• Doesn’t actually make you want previously unwanted runes; kills the market even deadier that it is now (e.g. you need only 1 rune instead of 6);
• Potentially clogs UI with new entries and makes it more complicated (There are significantly less item prefixes than possible runes. especially if we count in green and yellow ones);
• Development cost: requres creation of additional tables in database. Requires additional Hero interface sections. Requires new “add rune to wardrobe” action and how to do it. The current logic for applying upgrades to items in PvE needs to be rewritten and changed to PVP-like, but PvP system cannot just be added to PvE, it will require additional tweaking. Decide what to do with current item rewards that come with runes and what happens with the socketed runes after you put the item on and off your hero.
• Learning cost: what do we do with jewellery gemstones and jewels? What do we do with the newly-reworked infusions? Should we add them to wardrobe to or will we have two separate user cases? Should we have a separate wardrobe for every slot type?

2) Create upgrade unlock system just like in the previous suggestion, but make runes/sigils unlocks item-bound instead of soulbound.
Issues:

• The same as above, but each aspect is significantly more pronounced, especially the development cost (additional table per item instead of per player);
• Hard to remember what you did and did not unlock for any particular item.
• Overall seems like a chimeric inconvenient compromise between current PvE and PvP systems.

3) Just don’t destroy already existing upgrades when swapping runes. – Very convenient and easy to develop solution for the issues with swapping. However, it removes the need for runes/sigils completely in the long run and turns the market into a moonscape.

4) Rework runes/sigils that are useful – a glorious goal, but how?

5) Count green runes as trash, – partially solves only one issue. But it does the job, so I stole it.

6) Add a bank tab specially for sigils/runes – just solves nothing.

I could go on, but you probably got the idea.

Sorry, a bit too early to read all of that but I assume I sort of do what most do? Treat the green ones as vendor trash (I put all my trash in my bottom bag then just click though the bag rather than ‘sell all trash’), minimizing it with a copper salvage kit. The yellow ones I get with a better kit and send to an alt parked next to the MF (then I toss them when I get a bunch, sometimes I get lucky, sometimes not).

Well I believe you do what many do, yes. Most players probably don’t even know that you can promote runes/sigils in the Mystic Toilet. You can just read tl;dr part, it will be enough.

I always keep them during my ‘travels’, once I’m done I put them all into the Mystic Forge Conduit I carry in my shared inventory slot.

Sometimes I do get a pricey one that I sell or keep for my own needs. Rune/Sigil salvage is a good idea. Maybe I should start hoarding them xD

I am a firm believer they haven’t fixed lesser runes/sigils because it promotes bag/slot sales.

The idea sounds good for the most part. Salvaging in exchange for upgrade recovery is a GREAT way of moving things around.

I strongly believe Anet also should reduce the number of tiers and types available, taking out as many as possible of the “never used” ones. Making them salvageable could be a good way to begin this.

I agree that it would be nice if something would be done to the superior runes. But the only way to fix superior rune pricing is to rebalance all the worthless ones to be more on par in usefulness. You can’t really remove them all because some people do use less wanted runes for niche reasons. You also can’t remove lower tier runes/sigils because there are still many players that aren’t lvl 80 or people with alts. What I do at the moment is just stack up all rare runes/sigils in my bank. At the moment I’m sitting at well over 200 and constantly rising. I don’t even want to think what kind of nightmare mystic forging that will be.

Oh for heaven’s sake.

Just add a row of six boxes to the characters sheet next to the armor slots . If a rune is put DIRECTLY into that slot it supersedes the rune on the armor in that location. Runes can be moved in and out of these slots freely.

Done.

>Runes can be moved in and out of these slots freely.
>Done.

Ok, done. And how about all that green runes that you receive as loot?

An interesting idea.
I’m no economist so I can’t predict the effects it may have. However it’s certainly one of the better ideas I’ve heard regarding minor runes and being able to swap them around.

Would you suggest letting a player use them like a perfect salvage kit ( upgrade extractor in gw2)?

Seems like that would be easier for anet and simpler for players to understand than “it adds an extra option to the upgrade dialog”

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Would you suggest letting a player use them like a perfect salvage kit ( upgrade extractor in gw2)?
"

Yes, seems good. Will need to think how to upgrade by tiers or whether to have multiple tiers in the first place then.
Also, Anet currently has a perfect Gemstore extractor. Could be some issues in that department.

OmskCamill.6412:

Potential issues:

1. Less demand for Black Lion Upgrade Extractor
2. Less demand for additonal bag slots – partially offset by the fact that the players will now carry spare rune sets with them.
3. Potentially huge number of clicks without the additional QoL feature if not using Bulk Salvage.
4. Having multiple armor/weapon sets in the inventory retain their value to some extent (unless one day we get build templates), but become somewhat less needed. But it is maybe a plus.
5. Players can accidentally bulk salvage their stack of 6 yellow/green runes that they actually need. Very unlikely to happen, who would carry yellows to actually put them in their gear anyway?

Thank you for reading. I actually don’t believe you made it up to this point, but if you did – my apologies for this wall of text, it’s my first post. I will be very glad to hear your feedback and critique, and if you are a GW2 developer, I will be extatic.

1. No one buys them anyway since rebuying the rune/sigil is cheaper no matter what.
2. Probably
3. The feature would be added to the Salvage Kits in the right click menu to Salvage All Major Sigils or Lower, and then another one to Salvage Superior Sigils only.
4. Not sure on this one to be honest
5. This is what Invisible bags are for, so you don’t accidentally your runes/sigils you want to keep.

OmskCamill.6412:

>Runes can be moved in and out of these slots freely.
>Done.

Ok, done. And how about all that green runes that you receive as loot?

Well there is two problems here. The first and biggest is how the rune system limit your ability to swap your build. And tbh being able to move in and out your runes freely is by far the best answer to that problem.

The second is how much useless rune we get. That problem can be divided in 2 sources. First because so much runes are simply useless in their design and absurdly situational. That can only be fixed by balancing them, which should have been done years ago. And secondly because of minor and major.

Major rune used to actually have value. I wasn’t playing gw2 during the summer, but in June the supply of major rune exploded from a stable 12k constant supply to the current 30k. I don’t know what happen exactly, but Ant changed something while I was gone that affected drastically this market and it could be fix.

For Minor runes? They can pretty much do whatever they want tbh. They could remove them all, make the vendor view them as junk or allow us to salvage them for junk.

An extractor that no one uses because is the most overpriced of all the items in the gemstore.

I just would like to see runes and sigils overhauled / updated to provide more real options. Some of the older runes have ridiculously long cooldowns. Been said many times, there’s like what 80 or so runes? but about 6-8 that are generally highly popular and most optimal for use. I would love more options. Hell, any rune with slot 4 cooldown over 20 seconds, or slot 6 that has a 40 second CD needs to be looked at and updated. Players should be excited to try out new things, and then maybe we’ll have many runes on the market for half a gold to a gold, instead of 60 or so that are listed for 2 silver 70 copper.

Smart idea OP, I’d take it over the current situation.

Yeah what is that upgrade remover in the gem store all about anyway?? It should be 1/10th of its current price, i assume theyd make alot more sales that way…

Nah too complicated,

*6 rune boxes like suggested by others.
*4 sigil boxes.
*Leveling up rune rewards changed to 6 for full set. They are not worth anything anyhow on the TP.
*All runes and sigils salvageable for dust. (optional)
*Add a collectable tab for all runes and sigils ingame. (optional)
*Rune and Sigil promotion, 3 same of tier + Arbitrary Item = 1 tier higher. (optional)

And this is somehow less complicated from the developer’s standpoint?

OmskCamill.6412:

And this is somehow less complicated from the developer’s standpoint?

Less messy sorry.

They could also lock it as a new feature for legendaries, each sigil you apply to a legendary armor/weapon becomes unlocked in a pool or runes/sigils you can use for this specific piece.
Won’t hurt the market.