Yea, this does kindof go with the (so far unanswered) complaints that waypoints cost too much. I walk everywhere so that I have money to craft, make armor/weapons, upgrade bag space, etc. GW1 was perfect in allowing you to freely port to any outpost. While free wouldn’t work in GW2, reasonable reductions should be made to restore that feeling from GW1 that you could be anywhere you needed to be.
I remember an argument somewhere against mounts that the waypoint system was superior and made mounts unnecessary. Well, not at the current wp prices!
1. Porting to cities should always be free.
HotM -> LA -> any city (including Ebonhawke). Its really just a matter of saving us some load screens. Personally, all my characters live in LA when I’m not actively doing something with them, and I suspect by the place’s population I’m not the only person that does that. It may help clean up some of the congestion of the area.
It would be handy if you could also port to the Order headquarters for free (Vigil/Priory/Whispers).
The exception to this is that you should not be able to port for free to a city while downed (unless you are in a city).
2. Waypointing after death from Falling Damage should cost less.
You were tired, distracted, afk, etc. You ran off a cliff. Oops. You wanted to feel like you were flying. You misjudged what should have been a safe jump.
But its not really a combat death, now is it? You didn’t take on too many mobs or try to toe-to-toe that champion. So why are you penalized as if you did? It shouldn’t cost as much.
This would make jumping puzzles (which reward laughably bad) much more palatable at high levels.
3. Cost of travel between zones should scale with the effective level of the zone you’re traveling to.
That probably sounds a bit confusing. What I mean is, I’m going to Orr from LA (at lvl 80) and it costs say 3.5s? That’s pretty stiff, but I will at least make the money back if I play there just a little bit. Now I’m going to port to Brisban from the Grove (still at lvl 80), it costs say 2s. That is a far steeper fare. Why? Because Brisban is going to give me low level loot that sells for 10-50c. Yes, there is scaling so I can get lvl 80 drops, but they are very infrequent. Additionally, the xp (and karma and gold drops) do not scale to level very well. Currently, travel scales off of your level and distance. I will have to do significantly more in Brisban to earn back the cost of porting there.
Instead, travel should scale off of the level that you will be scaled to at that waypoint. So going to Orr should cost as if I’m lvl 75-80. But going to, say, Brisban should only cost as if I’m lvl 15-25. Distance can still be a factor, but it should be factored as the level you’re scaled to instead of your actual level (or whichever is lower in the case of leveling characters.
The level you’re currently scaled to should not be a factor, or everyone will go to starter zones and get scaled to lvl 4 before porting, which would be exploitable (and defeat the spirit of all these suggestions).
4. Waypoint travel within the same zone (while not downed) should be drastically reduced.
Remember when you were lvl 4 and you ported across the zone to get to a dynamic event? Wasn’t that nice? Remember around lvl 20 or so when you realized you couldn’t do that anymore (even though the events were spread much more thinly) because you were paying more than you earned? Yea, that was not a nice feeling.
Distance should still be a factor here, but 1s+ to port to a waypoint that’s right next to you is so absurd its comical. It should still cost to port within the same zone, yes, but it should be so small that you can afford to do it a dozen times without thinking about “well, It’d be nice to be there now, but I really need to upgrade my armor…”
Currently, waypoint travel looks like its ‘cost of character lvl’+’distance’. If porting within the same zone and alive the only factor were distance, at the current rates it would be much more fair.