Guild Wars 2

What is everyone thoughts on making your tomes of knowledge, if level 80, explore a random 1% of the world per the character it was used on. Example: 100 tomes used on one character would explore 100% (not completion, just waypoints). Thoughts? Dev’s any thoughts? Cause I am stacking them up and really have no use.

I’d rather ToKs were used some other way than for Map Exploration. I’m not sure how that would work, anyway. Some areas have lots of Waypoints, some areas have few.

I’d rather keep the exchange as it is, or exchange them for some other currency or mat.

I’d prefer that they gave us more things to buy with Spirit Shards. Like a PvE speed boost or additional magic find for X minutes. That way the ToK could keep the functionality they have and put in a badly needed extra sink for Spirit Shards.

Yes, even better. I have 1000s upon 1000s of Spirit Shards. Give us sinks like we have with Karma now.

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

I wished I could turn them in for something else. Maybe daily login rewards should be tokens for a merchant instead.

like, everyday day you log in you get 5 tokens.
Then you buy Laurels, BL Boxes, ToK, mystic coins etc with them.
The tokens need to be such that allignment is there to the current rewards, so you can’t get 100 mystic coins a month or such, but like, if you don’t need ToK, maybe get 5-10 more laurels, or 1-5 more coins

I wish they were tradable because I would buy at least eight of them every week.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes, even better. I have 1000s upon 1000s of Spirit Shards. Give us sinks like we have with Karma now.

What karma sink are you thinking about?
I’m a returning player.

Thx

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

tyler durdan.6039:

What is everyone thoughts on making your tomes of knowledge, if level 80, explore a random 1% of the world per the character it was used on?

No. This instigates cheating and nullifies the point of the difficulty in acquisition which in turn puts Anet back to square 1. The entire point of Legendaries and so forth is “the journey”. Making that journey significantly easier and completely passive is definitely not the way to go.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

True. But I am talking about a currency, not an item being sold. A currency with only a narrow set of items it can buy is not the same as a good available from many sources being placed on the market for everyone who is interested to buy.

Meehael.8240:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Yes, even better. I have 1000s upon 1000s of Spirit Shards. Give us sinks like we have with Karma now.

What karma sink are you thinking about?
I’m a returning player.

Thx

I’m thinking of the new maps and the (Renown Heart) Vendors within. Lots of items for Karma +.

(Also, in a round-about way, the new Wardrobe Unlock may motivate players to purchase Karma items to fill out their Wardrobe.)

Good luck.

In Guild Wars 1 my skilll points also accumulated but at least they were still valuable. You could use them when crafting perfect salvage kits or various consumables such as summoning stones or boosts that people used in the harder content.

This game should take a look back at that one. Spirit shards could be used to buy boosts or consumables. It would provide a badly needed sink. I have thousands of spirit shards and gain more each time I play. A currency that has so few faucets and is so reliant on people not using the faucets it does have is a currency without value for many players. Giving value to spirit shards would also give value to ToK so that they also don’t accumulate unused.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

True. But I am talking about a currency, not an item being sold. A currency with only a narrow set of items it can buy is not the same as a good available from many sources being placed on the market for everyone who is interested to buy.

Which still doesn’t dispute what I said. Anything that can produce a profit in the MF by using shards can lose that profit if enough people do it just like any item on the TP. There’s no difference.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

True. But I am talking about a currency, not an item being sold. A currency with only a narrow set of items it can buy is not the same as a good available from many sources being placed on the market for everyone who is interested to buy.

Which still doesn’t dispute what I said. Anything that can produce a profit in the MF by using shards can lose that profit if enough people do it just like any item on the TP. There’s no difference.

Yes, but…

It’s a reward for doing content where the value of the reward depends on people not using the reward they got for doing the content. If people used the reward then the value declines because of competion for profits. If they use the reward but they can get more gold in less time by chopping trees or if they actually lose gold because of competion from others using the reward for doing content then the reward isn’t worth much.

Like karma was, the sinks are too small. People had millions of karma stored up because there was nothing they wanted to buy. If they bought karma gear and salvaged it, not only is that not cost efficient per time spent but if everyone did that then there was no profit in it. They put in karma sinks to soak up excess karma. They now should put in Spirit Shard sinks to soak up excess Spirit Shards.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

True. But I am talking about a currency, not an item being sold. A currency with only a narrow set of items it can buy is not the same as a good available from many sources being placed on the market for everyone who is interested to buy.

Which still doesn’t dispute what I said. Anything that can produce a profit in the MF by using shards can lose that profit if enough people do it just like any item on the TP. There’s no difference.

Yes, but…

It’s a reward for doing content where the value of the reward depends on people not using the reward they got for doing the content. If people used the reward then the value declines because of competion for profits. If they use the reward but they can get more gold in less time by chopping trees or if they actually lose gold because of competion from others using the reward for doing content then the reward isn’t worth much.

Like karma was, the sinks are too small. People had millions of karma stored up because there was nothing they wanted to buy. If they bought karma gear and salvaged it, not only is that not cost efficient per time spent but if everyone did that then there was no profit in it. They put in karma sinks to soak up excess karma. They now should put in Spirit Shard sinks to soak up excess Spirit Shards.

Which still doesn’t change what I said.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ayrilana.1396:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daishi.6027:

It’s a lot of time and effort, but shards are decent money if you play the market with cores.

Your profit is dependent on other people not playing the market with Spirit Shards. A currency that has value if only a minority use it is a currency that only a few can use. For everyone else it will accumulate as they’re not going to want to spend that time and effort and lose gold at the end. Spirit shards are a currency with too few sinks.

Which can be said about everything that can be sold on the market. And yet, players still make profits because not everyone will participate. In most cases, people will not take advantage of anything unless they’re spoon fed on what to specifically do.

True. But I am talking about a currency, not an item being sold. A currency with only a narrow set of items it can buy is not the same as a good available from many sources being placed on the market for everyone who is interested to buy.

Which still doesn’t dispute what I said. Anything that can produce a profit in the MF by using shards can lose that profit if enough people do it just like any item on the TP. There’s no difference.

Yes, but…

It’s a reward for doing content where the value of the reward depends on people not using the reward they got for doing the content. If people used the reward then the value declines because of competion for profits. If they use the reward but they can get more gold in less time by chopping trees or if they actually lose gold because of competion from others using the reward for doing content then the reward isn’t worth much.

Like karma was, the sinks are too small. People had millions of karma stored up because there was nothing they wanted to buy. If they bought karma gear and salvaged it, not only is that not cost efficient per time spent but if everyone did that then there was no profit in it. They put in karma sinks to soak up excess karma. They now should put in Spirit Shard sinks to soak up excess Spirit Shards.

Which still doesn’t change what I said.

Yes. Thanks for explaining that if markets gets saturated then prices drop.

However the topic of this thread is about making ToK worthwhile and also discussion of how to do that by increasing the sinks of Spirit Shards. So, while your observations were accurate they were irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Actually they are relevant. The observations are also a question of whether monetizing Spirit Shards even makes sense. The bigger picture:

You take Spirit Shards and Tomes of Knowledge and make them into a convertible and what happens to the value of Spirit Shards and Tomes of Knowledge? Because you’ve done something economically significant removing the absolute value, that is, the truest utility and monetized it which essentially terminates the value altogether, you’ve undoubtedly created a new problem in the market.

While most people never really think of it “competing currencies” are actually bad in closed-loop systems. You want as few as possible and for the exchange rate to be absolutely terrible to reduce inflation. Offering a new currency with a guaranteed return and a guaranteed acquisition is just bad fiscal policy.

It’s akin to being shocked when the market goes belly up when you sell houses and securities to people who can’t afford them. The only difference here is that instead of houses you’re just producing more and more currencies and convertibles and instead of people who cannot afford them you’ve people who’ve limited utility out of them.

[more stuff about economics that no one gives a kitten about]

DGraves.3720:

Actually they are relevant. The observations are also a question of whether monetizing Spirit Shards even makes sense. The bigger picture:

You take Spirit Shards and Tomes of Knowledge and make them into a convertible and what happens to the value of Spirit Shards and Tomes of Knowledge? Because you’ve done something economically significant removing the absolute value, that is, the truest utility and monetized it which essentially terminates the value altogether, you’ve undoubtedly created a new problem in the market.

While most people never really think of it “competing currencies” are actually bad in closed-loop systems. You want as few as possible and for the exchange rate to be absolutely terrible to reduce inflation. Offering a new currency with a guaranteed return and a guaranteed acquisition is just bad fiscal policy.

It’s akin to being shocked when the market goes belly up when you sell houses and securities to people who can’t afford them. The only difference here is that instead of houses you’re just producing more and more currencies and convertibles and instead of people who cannot afford them you’ve people who’ve limited utility out of them.

[more stuff about economics that no one gives a kitten about]

Which is why my suggestion wasn’t for items that could be bought and sold but for consumables such as boosts and possibly items like summoning stones. it was to give value to Shards without bringing in economic factors such as additional mat generation.

Another possibility, a lot of shards to buy a one time use sigil/rune extractor.

Both examples turn ToK/Shards into Gems which is essentially converted back into Gold through gameplay.

Which is my point about “competing currencies”.

DGraves.3720:

Both examples turn ToK/Shards into Gems which is essentially converted back into Gold through gameplay.

Which is my point about “competing currencies”.

How is using a Spirit Shard to buy a boost, such as a magic find or a speed boost turn Spirit Shards into gems?

Edit:
To clarify in case there is confusion. I mean purchase of items/boosts from an NPC vendor.

I think DGraves means that allowing ToK to buy boosters competes directly with ANet’s interests in selling boosters for gems; it turns ToK into a gem-equivalent currency.

On the other hand, I can use 39 tomes to level up a new toon and get a couple of boosters already, so maybe it’s not entirely crazy to charge 40 tomes per booster, or even double that.

Some people will use their surplus for whatever-that-is-better-than-nothing, and eventually they’ll start to run out.

In general, I don’t accept the notion that every thing we get has to be converted into something we can use. The vast majority of loot in GW1 was worthless to me in every way, shape, or form. I’m ok with that.

You’re circumventing the gem store. The items that you have to be able to buy cannot be bought anywhere else and have no similar replacements in order to not have a competing currency.

Perhaps Tomes of Knowledge could be turned in for something that granted Mastery Points instead? That would be your best bet since no currency currently effects that and the item itself is not tradeable or replicable.

DGraves.3720:

You’re circumventing the gem store. The items that you have to be able to buy cannot be bought anywhere else and have no similar replacements in order to not have a competing currency.

Perhaps Tomes of Knowledge could be turned in for something that granted Mastery Points instead? That would be your best bet since no currency currently effects that and the item itself is not tradeable or replicable.

You can buy boosts from a guild NPC. Harvesting, magic find etc.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Enhancements

Another source could allow us to use 2 different ones at once, such as karma and harvesting

“Guild Enhancements.png Guild Enhancements are 24-hour buffs that, once unlocked by a guild, can be obtained free of charge from a vendor in guild halls.”

This is a perk of being part of a guild. It is not equivalent because it is not available those who are not part of guilds. This isn’t the same. There’s no exchange of currency.

You’re talking specifically about turning something into a currency.

DGraves.3720:

“Guild Enhancements.png Guild Enhancements are 24-hour buffs that, once unlocked by a guild, can be obtained free of charge from a vendor in guild halls.”

This is a perk of being part of a guild. It is not equivalent because it is not available those who are not part of guilds. This isn’t the same. There’s no exchange of currency.

You’re talking specifically about turning something into a currency.

With my suggestion the perk of having a guild would be the ability to have 2 different buffs at once, one of them free (the guild buff). Is there some real reason why buffs can’t be bought with an in game currency?

Well, “Gems” and “Gold” are in-game currencies.

What you’re asking is whether you can have multiple sources of currency for a specific type of item or service. The answer to that is “yes, but at a price”. The price being that every manner in which you open the avenue to acquisition cheapens the value of the item in question.

An example would be ascended trinkets. You now have five avenues to get them? One of those avenues includes three types of currency? The truth becomes that not having ascended trinkets becomes more and more inexcusable because of the numbers of means of acquisition.

The boosts and other elements can’t afford to suffer the same fate. For instance if everyone could just stack their own harvesting boons from every source possible with little to no cost (because of excess tomes / spirit shards gained naturally through gameplay) this directly effects the market.

When you have competing currencies you open yourself to a world of trouble because both direct and indirect effects occur. Indirect effects of ascended trinkets for instance will be players acquiring more loot faster because they are killing things that much faster and having an easier go at the content ascending through the ranks on their own that much faster. Direct effects like harvesters are a bit more tangible and obvious and don’t require an explanation.

/shrug. You can already stack boosts in this game. Guild hall boosts, food, oils, boosters, bonfires, gobblers, banners, WvW boosts in PvE and in WvW, other players, account bonuses, fireworks, map specific bonuses, PvP boosts, enrichments and crystals. You’re saying the ability to stack one more will cheapen it or be that critical a difference? I have my doubts.

Guild Wars used the equivalent item (skill points) to buy items that gave your whole party a boost in PvE. You could use all of these together so it’s something that is already possible in this franchise (I’m not saying that we could use these boosts. I’m saying that the concept of buying boosts with Spirit Shards is already in this franchise).

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Powerstone_of_Courage
Double-click to remove all Death Penalty from your party. Your entire party then receives a 10% Morale Boost.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Armor_of_Salvation
Double-click to grant your party members immunity to 50% of critical hits, +10 armor, +1 Health regeneration, and damage reduction of 5 for the next 30 minutes.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Essence_of_Celerity
Double-click to grant your party members 20% faster movement and attack speeds, and to reduce their skill activation and recharge times by 20% for the next 30 minutes.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Grail_of_Might
When used, this item grants your party members +100 maximum health, +10 maximum energy, and +1 to all of their attributes for 30 minutes.

i have 300-400 tomes (i haven’t kept tabs lately)
i’d welcome any sink for them

First GW1 is not GW2. It requires an elite class to even get something mildly like Essence of Celerity (Alacrity) with quicker cooldowns so a 20% difference is far greater here than it would be in GW1.

Taking an old economy from an essentially totally different game isn’t going to work. We know that +1 health regeneration and +10 armor is not going to break the bank in GW2 and making adjusted equivalents just to sink spirit shards/tomes and retro back to the original isn’t, in my opinion, good development.

Also if you want to discuss “boosts” you should pick a specific one. Yes, you can get many types from many sources but I don’t think there’s a food that boosts harvesting. For instance: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering There are 5 listed here. Not all of those 5 stack for harvesting. So now we have to look at what it really means to add one more a bit more carefully.

On the other hand boosting power and damage can be done in a myriad of ways and one more boost to that won’t break the game because enemies that have higher resilience are typically built for multiple players anyway so their HP will always outperform your damage increases. You cannot produce enough damage to greatly shift the outcome of a battle through boosts alone on a single character in normal gameplay.

Which brings us full circle. You need something that isn’t currently offered because of how you’ll either create a replica of little impact or something that is purposefully not present.

Or….

We are giving ANet suggestions as to something else they can do with Spirit Shards and ToK to make them more valuable/useful. You could do the same and let ANet decide whether or not adding one more buff on top of the others is a relevant worry since they have the metrics and you don’t.

“Which brings us full circle. You need something that isn’t currently offered because of how you’ll either create a replica of little impact or something that is purposefully not present.”

So, what are your suggestions then?

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

I don’t think they will ever go for a way to reduce map exploration and I agree with that. Still having earned stacks of TOKs is truly earning a pointless reward. We reach a place where there is no point in making more characters we will likely never play. There should be more uses for ToKs, like maybe get another character for a stack, or earn more bank storage, which is what they are basically used for now.

I don’t believe spirit shards should be part of this discussion, as it only confuses the issue and has other issues of it’s own..

DGraves.3720:

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

That’s a truly bad idea. It would allow people to bypass doing content that the devs have made for us and advance their mastery track by simply logging on every day to get ToK and by visiting the same vistas/harvesting/mining as dailies in low level areas

At any rate ANet said before HoT that ToK and mastery tracks was not an option. I expect they would say the same for the Mastery points.

I would have to agree that acquiring Mastery Points for Spirit Shards or Tomes of Knowledge sounds like an idea ArenaNet would never consider.

I think whatever one could acquire, should be through Spirit Shards, and not Tomes of Knowledge (because one can convert ToKs to Spirit Shards, but not vice-versa), and it should be something the entire player-base could attain, rather than just part of it. Though, I suppose that could be another thing that could be used to entice players to upgrade accounts.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DGraves.3720:

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

That’s a truly bad idea. It would allow people to bypass doing content that the devs have made for us and advance their mastery track by simply logging on every day to get ToK and by visiting the same vistas/harvesting/mining as dailies in low level areas

At any rate ANet said before HoT that ToK and mastery tracks was not an option. I expect they would say the same for the Mastery points.

I’m more referring to the Central Tyria mastery tracks but ( most of which aren’t listed in-game ) considering people are already just looking up the information as it is publicly available ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks#Central_Tyria_mastery_points ) it is hardly any different. To complete Central Tyria would require 48/67 so damaging the tracks would be almost impossible and forcing players to replay the central story to earn said track progression wouldn’t necessary since 22 of the 67 available are all tied to personal story and some to ultimately character race.

Negating content is what players do. If we were to be so sanct abount content there wouldn’t be a need to monetize ToK or Shards. (Or sell Dungeon Runs or Jumping Puzzle “Solutions” [portals] to other players ).

One can only earn 8 Mastery Points from the Core Personal Story, and none of the points are tied to Race. I’m confused about the 22 points you reference.

DGraves.3720:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DGraves.3720:

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

That’s a truly bad idea. It would allow people to bypass doing content that the devs have made for us and advance their mastery track by simply logging on every day to get ToK and by visiting the same vistas/harvesting/mining as dailies in low level areas

At any rate ANet said before HoT that ToK and mastery tracks was not an option. I expect they would say the same for the Mastery points.

I’m more referring to the Central Tyria mastery tracks but ( most of which aren’t listed in-game ) considering people are already just looking up the information as it is publicly available ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks#Central_Tyria_mastery_points ) it is hardly any different. To complete Central Tyria would require 48/67 so damaging the tracks would be almost impossible and forcing players to replay the central story to earn said track progression wouldn’t necessary since 22 of the 67 available are all tied to personal story and some to ultimately character race.

Negating content is what players do. If we were to be so sanct abount content there wouldn’t be a need to monetize ToK or Shards. (Or sell Dungeon Runs or Jumping Puzzle “Solutions” [portals] to other players ).

With your idea someone could max out central tryrian mastery lines and never leave a starting zone.

Level to 80. Do the minimum necessary to start masteries.
Do dailies in that starting map to get XP and writs of experience.
Turn the writs into tomes and get tomes from daily login bonuses.
Continue to get XP on mastery lines. Use tomes to buy mastery points per your suggestion. Complete all Tyrian mastery lines this way.

At any rate, ANet has already ruled this out as they could see what a bad idea it is to allow people to bypass the whole mastery leveling experience this way.

Edit: as Inculpatus said, you’re misinformed about the number of Mastery points available from doing the personal story.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

With your idea someone could max out central tryrian mastery lines and never leave a starting zone.

Level to 80. Do the minimum necessary to start masteries.
Do dailies in that starting map to get XP and writs of experience.
Turn the writs into tomes and get tomes from daily login bonuses.
Continue to get XP on mastery lines. Use tomes to buy mastery points per your suggestion. Complete all Tyrian mastery lines this way.

At any rate, ANet has already ruled this out as they could see what a bad idea it is to allow people to bypass the whole mastery leveling experience this way.

As it stands with Tomes not being tradeable and no stated conversion rate I highly doubt players would have enough. If it were 10 tomes to 1 mastery point even those with 300 or 400 would only get 30 to 40 so you couldn’t max out unless you had 670 + 80 to max the character.

Keep in mind that Mastery Points are account-wide so if you’re really worried about someone doing that having a completely new account that would be impossible. You would likely find the player trying to raise their character level versus their mastery points which don’t even unlock until 80. It is not possible to do this without leaving a starting zone unless you logged in everyday for months, did no other content whatsoever and already achieved 80 of them from the same process.

Mind you that’s strong dedication. <3

Not that I am defending the idea tooth and nail. Since I’ve not paid attention to the mastery lines myself even when they came out because I’ll never bother to build precursors and stopped Fractals over a year ago if you’re right, you’re right. However I digress instead to the main point behind the suggestion:

You would need something in the game that is not competed for regarding your currency idea. Turning ToKs into something else requires that something else to truly be unique or at least not acquirable through other popular means.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can only earn 8 Mastery Points from the Core Personal Story, and none of the points are tied to Race. I’m confused about the 22 points you reference.

“Complete the sylvari personal story step “A Vision of Darkness”, “Eye of the Sun”, “Shattered Light”, or “Snuffing Out Embers”."

Same source.

You can earn 8 at a time from a specific story. You can actually earn I think 22 total if you did all the stories on all the races. 11 of them are actually “takeable” because you can’t repeat Victory or Death or any of the non-racial ones.

No. If you do the level 10 story with a Sylvari, you don’t get a MP for later doing the lvl 10 Charr story.

As for ToK for MP – The only way i could see that happen is something like Proofs of Heroics: complete a random Mastery Insight. Anything else would autocomplete specific achievements, which would create a nightmare to sort out from meta achievements etc. This would of course leave out Core as there are no Insights there.

I strongly doubt the system can handle MPs that aren’t discreet – a source can’t be endlessly repeatable even in theory.

I sure miss when we just got Skill Points from leveling up and could level indefinitely and used spare skill points to buy Mystic Forge things. Gave you a reason to keep accumulating them after Level 80 and push for map completion as well to get all the extra ones (while leveling more in the process and further gaining points).

And if you were like me and had some 300 extra skill points sitting around unused, well, no big deal.

Makes you wonder why the decided to completely revamp the entire skill and trait system just to shove “Hero Points” in place of everything (and then muck it up further with Elite Specs that can already only be unlocked at Level 80). We didn’t have these issues before.

I have stacks of tomes and stacks of writs I can turn into tomes. There are lots of people with more tomes than me.

I can just see a future conversation between 2 friends now…

Friend A: hey Friend B. I got 8 mastery points this week! I did part of the personal story then I did achievements tied to the Living Story. I had to go all over the world. Man, they were hard! I needed help with a few of them. Lol.
Friend B: congrats. I got 10 mastery points.
Friend A: what did you do for them?
Friend B: oh, I never left Queensdale. I chopped wood, mined copper, did my vista daily. Harvested some lettuce and did events. Every once in a while I had to pop some tomes to buy Mastery points. I’m bushed. Lol.

Let’s get back to the matter at hand since, again, in order to even unlock the Mastery Points you have to be level 80 and complete an event related to HoT. You have to leave Queensdale.

( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Torn_from_the_Sky )

You have to do Torn from the Sky to even open Mastery lines.

not only does that not make sense, some people have hundreds of tomes.

Stand The Wall.6987:

not only does that not make sense, some people have hundreds of tomes.

Which now begs the question of how many can even be adequately and properly traded? This is an interesting aspect as well. Is it going to be 20:1? 80:1? Whatever we buy with them it probably cannot be a 1:1 relationship so what’s the price and how do you set it?

So now we have no product and no price.

DGraves.3720:

Let’s get back to the matter at hand since, again, in order to even unlock the Mastery Points you have to be level 80 and complete an event related to HoT. You have to leave Queensdale.

( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Torn_from_the_Sky )

You have to do Torn from the Sky to even open Mastery lines.

If you had actually read what I said….

First: level to 80 and start up the mastery system.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Level to 80. Do the minimum necessary to start masteries.

Second: Then its stay in Queensdale to max out masteries.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Do dailies in that starting map to get XP and writs of experience.
Turn the writs into tomes and get tomes from daily login bonuses.
Continue to get XP on mastery lines. Use tomes to buy mastery points per your suggestion. Complete all Tyrian mastery lines this way.

We are talking about maxing masteries, not the process of leveling to 80 first. Those are 2 separate things.

The Devs have already ruled out using ToK to advance mastery tracks. I doubt they’ll change their minds to let people buy Mastery points to bypass doing the content they designed to give mastery points. Instead of doing challenging content, people would simply pop tomes.

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=35818&storypage=2
“The masteries seen in the demo are just the tip of what masteries will be available at launch, and the team will have more surprises for players. We wanted to know if all those consumables, like Tomes of Knowledge and Writs of Experience, would help players unlock all of these masteries faster. The short answer is that they won’t. The experience bar is going away and is being replaced by the mastery training bar. This training bar is in no way tied to experience, but fills up by going out and doing stuff in the world. So any item that gives you experience won’t help you train masteries.”

You are aware that no one is arguing with you, right?

I probably shouldn’t have used the example because you’re stuck on it but the point was pretty simple: You need something unique.

DGraves.3720:

You are aware that no one is arguing with you, right?

I probably shouldn’t have used the example because you’re stuck on it but the point was pretty simple: You need something unique.

I said earlier that the devs had already said no to using ToK with the mastery system so I found the quote and posted it. That post did not speak to you directly. You could easily have ignored it and not responded.

But I’m glad you realize it’s a bad idea. Maybe you can suggest something else that’s not so flawed.