Guild Wars 2

Now that the infrastructure is in place for armor skins to be unlocked through the achievement window, I was wondering if it would be possible to expand this feature beyond its current state.

Right now we’re given all kinds of new armor skins from events, but they are one time use items that reskin one item for one character. This problem is even more of an issue if you buy that shiny new armor skin from the gem store, only to find you can use it once and from then on you have to transmute it if you change armor. Even worse, only one character can use it.

What about permanent unlocks that, instead of simply applying the skin to one armor piece, add the armor skin to your collection in your achievement window? This could be expanded even further by adding a rare ‘skin’ drop that you can use to unlock any skin in the game to use in the same fashion.

This would provide GW2 with a unique take on the ‘wardrobe’ feature that so many want.

For example, say I’m going through my inventory salvaging all of these items, what if salvaging had a rare chance of unlocking that item’s skin? This would make salvaging a little more interesting beyond the ideas already discussed about it such as having a chance to add MF to the account.

But let’s take this idea further. Instead of simply adding the armor and weapon skins to the existing panel, why don’t we add a little organization? A wardrobe, if you will. The way this would work is you would have a preview window much like the one that already exists in the Black Lion trading Post for previewing the skins in the market place.

You would have the list on the left, however, and it would be categorized by slot. Head, shoulders, chest, gloves, pants, boots, and weapons. Each of these menus would have an expansion arrow (like the current menus work in the achievement window) that would show a list of your unlocked armors. There would be filters of course, for light, medium, and heavy. You could then click on a piece and see an immediate preview of that item.

For convenience factor, let’s take it a bit further. Say you’ve picked out the piece you want, now you have a choice. Two buttons. Apply now or add to inventory.

The add to inventory would work exactly like current skins. It would open the transmute window so you could pick which armor piece you want.

Apply now would skip this process and simply apply the style directly to whatever piece you currently have in slot. Since there are no stats applied with the skin, this wouldn’t cause any issues like transmutation does with stat and rune/sigil selection.

The image added gives a rough idea.

Heh I thought this topic would generate a little more interest instead of making a b-line for page 3+… Ah well. Hopefully someone at Anet saw it

I would like to add, I feel that instead of hurting sales of skins in the gem store this would actually promote them. If people knew that skins were unlockable for more than one character and that they could be reused, you would find the number of sales for current skin offerings would sky rocket.

Part of the reason why people hesitate to by the skins as they are now is it’s 10$ for a skin you can use once, then you want more money to get the transmutation stones to keep that skin that they already paid for when they level up. Not to mention that they can only use one piece of the skin on one character. Once it’s used it’s soulbound.

I know me and my fiancee both would be willing to buy more armor skins in the gem store if we knew that they were reusable and went into a skin locker type storage.

This of course would mean ArenaNet would have to keep coming out with new skins, but I don’t really see how that’s a problem. I rather see it as a positive. New skins mean new styles and new things to collect for the players, and more potential earnings for ArenaNet in the process.

Faves would be great, even at least dye favourites. All pieces have the same dye slots so why not save them.