Guild Wars 2

I have brought up this topic elsewhere on other posts, most of them just relating to the update in general. But this is a topic that bothers me enough to feel I should post my thoughts on it from the start, instead of in a reply to someone else’s general update thoughts.

The exchange rate of transmute stones to transmute charges is a ripoff, and here is why. (For easier understanding of this message, the regular transmute stone is the yellowish one that works on level 79 items and below, and the special is the whitish-blue one that works on level 80 items.)

Before, if you had a non-80 item and wanted to transmute it, you used one regular stone, and everything worked well. If you had a level 80 item, you had to use the special one. Obviously there was a way to tell within the mechanics of the game if it was a level 80 item so that you couldn’t use a regular transmute stone on it.

Now, Anet, by way of the cost of the exchange rate, is treating every single transmutable item as if it were a level 80, and this is a ripoff.

I have a simple solution to this, along the same lines as what was already in place before, and from my view of things, worked very well. Since there was a way before to tell if an item was level 80 and needed the special transmute stone, keep that identification flag or whatever it was on the level 80 items. Also you could have it on the special skins, including the holiday items, living story rewards and weapons, and the orichalum and ancient wood level crafted gear, and so on. Flip the transmute stone exchange rate around to what it should have been in the first place;

• One regular transmute stone gets one transmute charge. The special transmute stone gets three transmute charges.

Then, when someone wants to transmute a regular item, such as the first crafted level items and a regular level skin associated with it, one transmute charge. For a transmute that has either a level 80 item, a level 80 skin, or any combination of the two, three transmute charges. While doing it this way does not punish anyone who waited until level 80 to reskin their gear because it keeps the “charge” the same as before, the way it happens now DOES punish the people who may want to reskin their gear before it is level 80.

Credit should obviously be automatically given or refunded where needed to those that already changed stones for charges, and also for the 1 or 2 regular transmute stones they were basically directed to delete because of this messed up exchange rate.

I totally agree that this is very frustrating for people who actually used their transmute stones on low level characters. I barely even use crystals/charges on level 80 characters because most of the armor I have on them just IS the item that the skin came from. I may feel more inclined to switch around THEIR gear with charges, but I feel less and less motivated to use them on low level characters. I’ve read a lot of people saying that it doesn’t matter because pre-80 goes through armor so quickly, but that’s exactly why it DOES matter. We’re talking about an item that was ONLY usable on 1-79 level gear. They basically rained from the sky as you leveled up a character. Now, not to much, at all. Charges have become a precious commodity exactly at odds with having something as convenient as a wardrobe.

Here are some various ideas for solutions:

-Free transmutes for pre-80s. This may not make them money, but 95% of people are playing with level 80s at any given time. They will most likely still use charges for those characters, seeing as how transmute crystals were also a more expensive item.

-Infinite transmute charge item. Even if it was just for 1-79, I would buy this from the shop and use it.

-Return the three-charge reward to map completion/story rewards as opposed to only one. That way when I am leveling up a character, I can consistently keep them skinned as before.

-Make every armor change only cost ONE charge for characters under 80, but charge by piece for level 80s. That would still be a change because I would wait until I replaced most of a character’s gear until I transmute, but it’s still a reasonable option.

-Transmutes for characters under level 80 could cost karma/gold.

I know they are probably going to close this thread, but I’ve commented several times in the official one already and seeing as how we’ve heard nothing, I’d like to make my opinion as visible as possible.

This seems fair to me. Some adjustment is needed. The below level 80 should not take as much to apply as the level 80 since you will have to reapply the look over and over as you level.

In my opinion it’s fine. Sure, we lost a cheaper way to transmute level 1-79 gear, however, in the process we gained something far superior.

Transmutation charges let you more readily transfer skins (or have multiple same skins) among characters. Before if you wanted to transfer a rare skin such as the Greatsaw you would need to use a charge to turn it into an account bound weapon and then another charge to turn it into a weapon for your new character (wastes 2 charges and destroys what was most likely an exotic/ascended weapon).

Now, not only can you transfer the skin to another character in a single charge without destroying any items. You can also have an infinite amount of 1.5k gold Greatsaws (or whatever other item skin you want) spread across your alts for the price of a few gold per charge.

Transmutation charges also free up bank space and make it so you can use your living story skins without fear that you can’t re-use them.

I am not sure if people understand that I am not against having the ability to have multiple skins accesible or not, I am not against that idea at all. Besides the obvious benefit of clearing up bank space of transmute stones, it does make more sense to have the skins across the account. But the bank space issue could have been cleared up with a solution that they already implemented, the account wallet.

My issue is that while the obvious benefit of having the skins available to every character is a good one, being taken to the cleaners (it wouldn’t let me post what I wanted to say) on transmute charges’ “cost” for exchanging the stones for that privilege is not a palatable price to me. I am against the karma/coin charge idea because these stones have already been earned by everyone that played the game up to this point, some more than others.

I would think from a programming stand point, the 1:1 regular transmute stone to charge would have been the easiest to implement, as it appears to be how the game worked before hand, and now, could be properly implemented to replace the screwing over on the stones that people are getting. There would have to be some correction done to clear the credit from the stones already exchanged, but from this point forward, it would be much better, just using the charges instead of the stones, everything else would stay the same.

No, it gave us, those who no longer leveled characters, the ability to use those worthless trans stones to skin gear above level 79. Additionally, you still get trans charges for city completion, and most cities can be completed in as little as 10 minutes.

You know how rare was the blue transmutatios stones? Now you can get free transmutations charges from dialys, doing pvp, world completion. Now is way easy and cheaper transmute your armors. I transmuted a lot of armors, and still having 60 charges, and are very near of get a new one from pvp.

Why people like complain about everything?

PD: sorry for my bad english.

The problem is that many skins share the exact same look at Levels 1-79 and 80. How shall the game tell the difference? The stats of an item determine its level, not the skin. So, if a Level 80 character uses a skin that is shared by Pre-Level 80 items and Level 80 items, what price in Charges should be charged? Same question if the character is Pre-Level 80? Should Pre-Level 80 characters be barred from using any skin that is shared by a Level 80 item, until they reach Level 80? Should Level 80s be charged a lower amount if the skin can be found on a lower level item? How does the system tell the difference?

All transmutations cost 1 transmutation charge, don’t matter the level or rarity of the item/skin.
And I realize that 2 items can have different names but shared the same skin, went you unlock the skin, the name of the skin appear on your wardrobe. You can see all the skins if you check your wardrobe in your bank. This make a little confuse search for a respective skin, because the items that have that skin have a very different name.

I thought it was weird they used a charge system and could have easily made sub-80 items consume 1 charge and level 80 items consume 2 or three charges (and adjust the conversion of transmutation stones accordingly) but they make more money this way. Honestly, GW2 leveling is so far, it’s a waste to transmute anything before reaching level 80 (even more so now that it costs the same).

If your opposition to this reasoning is strictly because it is not something that you would do, then you really do not have a valid point. If you have other reasons for opposing this, by all means, post them.

I do not disagree that some people think transmuting before 80 is a waste, that is fine. I get that. No one says that with the way I am saying that you would HAVE to transmute items before you get to level 80.

Shiren, I am fine with people who wait until level 80 to transmute armor and weapons, I am not trying to take that away from them at all. And I agree that it now costs the same, but that is my point! It shouldn’t!

There are people like me who do not feel the need to wait until level 80 to transmute gear. The point is this exchange rate in effect punishes people who wish to transmute stuff either before they get to level 80 or the item they want to use is not a level 80.

Aidan, I am not saying take away the current method of using charges instead of stones, and have different charges for 80 gear, I am saying make it so it uses 1 charge for non-80 gear, and 3 charges for 80 and special items. How you get those charges, 1 at a time or however doesn’t matter, you can still use up multiple charges (you would still in effect be able to use 3 regular stones) to transmute the high end gear.

My solution has the following points:

• The transmute system was already in place to determine if an item is level 80 (needs the special stones) or not. I am pretty sure that it could be adapted to include skins with little issue (if not, Anet, then please let us know. I will gladly admit that could trump my points.)
• The actual item used to start that transmute process really is irrelevant, stones, charges, or even widgets if that is what they want to call them. On a sub-note to this, the wallet system was already in place, so the storage for the stones is not really an issue. They just as easily could have been added to a spot in the wallet.
• The special items (holiday skins, special armor sets, ori level crafted items, etc.) could be tweaked by adding whatever that tag used before that makes the game deal with them as if they were level 80. Keep it like before, so that the first use of adding it to another item, like the Wintersday weapon skins, would be basically the destruction of the skin and unlocking it in the vault. And then any re-uses on other items would get the 3 charge fee.
• The charge cost for the transactions could be adjusted as has already been shown by having no charge for dye usage, using the previously, and already in use (before this update) cost factor of 1 charge (regular stone in the previous method) for non-80/special items, and 3 charges (blue stone) for the 80/special items. I presume that there is still some sort of flag that identifies dye changes as no charge.
• This does not adversely affect the people who wish to wait to level 80 to transmute gear because they still have the same equivalent cost as before. And it also does not adversely affect the people who DO wish to transmute their gear before level 80.

XPilo, you do have a valid point on the cost, but before, on map completion, you got 3 regular transmute stones, which currently is the exchange rate for 1 transmute charge. No big deal, bump it to 3 for map completion, and fix the broke (yes it IS broke) exchange rate.

One specific example I saw before, happened to be on a level 80 item, but I think could reasonably be argued that if you had to classify skins on a level system, was NOT a level 80 skin by any means. It was a regular warrior/guardian type iron helm, I forget if it was plate or chain, but at that level, does it really matter? I saw some scepters and other weapons that were at the soft wood crafting level, wouldn’t it be reasonable to presume that they should not be charged a level 80 transmute fee for their skin? I could go through every single item on every single level but if you do not get the point about the different level of the skins by now, that will not help.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The problem is that many skins share the exact same look at Levels 1-79 and 80. How shall the game tell the difference? The stats of an item determine its level, not the skin. So, if a Level 80 character uses a skin that is shared by Pre-Level 80 items and Level 80 items, what price in Charges should be charged? Same question if the character is Pre-Level 80? Should Pre-Level 80 characters be barred from using any skin that is shared by a Level 80 item, until they reach Level 80? Should Level 80s be charged a lower amount if the skin can be found on a lower level item? How does the system tell the difference?

The game has methods I am sure to determine if something is level 80 or not, this process could be added to the skins. See my previous post about how an iron helm skin, despite being on a level 80 item, would arguably NOT be a level 80 skin. Each skin item would be gone through, and skins like they have on legendary or ascended items would be considered specials, or skins from holiday items, or living story special rewards, and would have that flag that says if you use this, the cost is 3 charges, just as it would be for a level 80 item.

Lyssan.3768:

XPilo, you do have a valid point on the cost, but before, on map completion, you got 3 regular transmute stones, which currently is the exchange rate for 1 transmute charge. No big deal, bump it to 3 for map completion, and fix the broke (yes it IS broke) exchange rate.

That’s pretty much what the “exchange rate” was before as well. On a higher level map completion you could get one blue stone. It seems that in Anet’s mind it was already a three to one deal.

The issue i have is that i dont think ANet took into consideration the people who transmute their gear ( 6-8 peices) 6-7 times while lvling. I would hit lvl 11 find gear i like and how i wanted my char to look and the that is how my char would look while i lvl’ed . That was one of the things i loved about this game, you could be a lvl 15 but still look good as opposed to other games where you look like a clown while you lvl’ed up.

While i lvl’ed, i got 3 stones for exploration of cities and countless others through other means so i had plenty to transmute my gear a number of times while i lvl’ed. Now if i want to do that i have to keep remaking chars and mindlessly explore cities for hours to get the number of charges i would need to do the same thing that i have been doing or i can buy them in the gem store and since i dont spend real money on this stuff i have to use gold.

Now the exchange for gold to gems is ridiculous and the amount of gold i would have spend converting it to gems is equally ridiculous. i love lvling alts and doing it the way ive grown used to while i played this game and ANet has taken that from me and killed an aspect of the game that i enjoyed. Way to go.

Hey there, since we are getting a lot of feedback on this topic right now, we are collecting it all in dedicated threads. You are very welcome to repost your questions comments and concerns here “https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Wardrobe-Transmutation-Outfits”