PVE Skin Locker
I would like to suggest some ideas for a PVP style locker available for the skins of items currently available in PVE.
The current implementation of the PVP locker for skins is a fantastic way of being able to store your items obtained from PVP chests, and gives people with a collector mentality a drive to collect every available piece of equipment.
From a PVE perspective skins for each item needs to be collected and then combined with items of the appropriate stat make up. In the process one of the items is effectively destroyed. This severely limits people’s desire to chop and change their appearance, as they need to regrind / purchase the item that was effectively destroyed in the combination process.
I understand that the current system is in place partly as a way for Anet to make money from the purchase of both the transmutation crystal, and bank space to store the armour / weapon pieces. I fully support their current model to make money, and find it a much better way than a monthly subscription.
What I propose is a PVE locker system, that you can use a transmutation crystal (or something similar) to save the items current skin, as well as stat combination into a bank. The price of the item required to enter the skin in the bank should be commensurate with the current cost of storing that item in your personal bank / use of transmutation crystal as it is now.
This will give a powerful drive to those PVE players who have a compulsion to acquire every skin available in the game. This will lead to a higher income for Anet, as I can guarantee that my use of the transmutation crystal would increase dramatically (I am sure I am not the only one!).
From the PVE skin locker, skins of items already saved can be combined with stat combinations in the bank to create armour items with a transmutation crystal (or something similar). This will make it less arduous in swapping specs that require different stat allocations.
Given Arena nets current implantation is that most gear becomes character bound, the PVE locker will probably be character bound, but I would like to see discussion about whether skins can be available account wide, but may be stats for each armour slot being character bound – so that you can make your alts look great, but still need to work to get exotic / ascended level of armour for them.
Recombined armour probably should be non-salvageable to prevent their conversion into ecto’s but given the cost of the transmutation crystal this wouldn’t be a viable gold making strategy
Suggested Pricing
I have run some numbers for the cost of each step of the process that will give an idea of how much we are currently paying to store items in the bank.
I would suggest that they make a new item, that will allow you to take an item and break it into:
Skin for that slot
Stats for that slot
and store those into your PVE locker. It would use an item that cost 100 Gems for an item with 5 uses (half what a transmutation crystal costs)
This equates to 20 gems per item stored – which is what we are currently paying for a single bank slot i.e. – 600 gems buys you 30 bank slots.
For use the skin – keep the transmutation crystal at the current cost of 200 gems / 5 uses.
(edited by Sidieon.4198)