[Suggestion] Only Exotics and above should have Sigils/Runes

No one uses the Minor/Major Sigils/Runes. They are of no value. Just make it so that only Exotics and above have Sigils/Runes.

Instead of:

• Minor Sigil of Strength -- drop from green
• Major Sigil of Strength -- drop from rare
• Superior Sigil of Strength -- drop from exotics

It becomes:

• Sigil of Strength -- drop from exotics, can be applied to all gear level

Now we have much less inventory clutter.

I use them.I'd rather see sigils salvage into something. Dust, perhaps. Or whatever materials they are crafted from.

Yes. Bagwars is a terrible Meta. I agree with any idea to resolve this.

Interesting. I would actually make the case that a more interesting change would be to reduce the over-proliferation of gear by removing gear levels and to base armor/attack/attribute bonuses on character level and gear rarity. Then you'd have fewer mandatory gear upgrades as you level (only upgrading rarities unless you want to experiment with different stats), which would increase the value of lower level sigils and runes and make build experimentation in general more enticing for pre-80 toons.

With the current system of gear having levels, it isn't worth investing anything in gear because it isn't possible to optimize - gear becomes suboptimal every time you level, and you get pushed to replace it every 5-10 levels. So, therefore, having fun with gear just isn't a worthwhile investment. I think that sucks, and the I think the best solution is to just remove gear levels, and only have rarity, bonus attributes, and skin differentiating pieces of gear.

This would also decrease the amount of mundane gear that drops, which would create an opportunity to revise rewards in general to be more, well, fun and rewarding.

I use them on new chars when leveling.

Have not leveled a character the slow way in a long time I take it? :)

@Menadena.7482 said:Have not leveled a character the slow way in a long time I take it? :)

Yup, you got me, I have all classes at max level :). But that's beside the point. Instead of having to manage all the minor/major/superior sigil/runes, with this suggestion you can use the (old Superior) Sigils/Runes on all your new chars, the slow way too! With the added benefit of much less inventory clutter.

Are you in? :)

Minor & Major runes are currently of little value -- historically, they have been more valuable. And they don't get used by all sorts of people.

The issue is that the supply is practically endless while the demand is limited severely by the number of actively-played characters. There are tons of ways to address that besides changing whether fine/masterwork gear contains runes. It's likely that the new "unidentified" gear in PoF is the first step in doing so, one that is part of holistically addressing a large number of other issues with loot and rewards generally.

Currently, every foe has its own table for dropping loot. Further, these tables are overly-specific, so even a minor change to the philosophy of what loot should drop would require ages to overhaul. Both these things can be simplified greatly by the addition of unID gear, which can also help address the oversupply of runes & sigils.

tl;dr the problem isn't that fine & masterwork gear includes upgrades; that's a symptom of several other issues. It makes more sense to address it through other methods than "just" changing gear.

Imo, the best way to deal with the minor rune/sigil inventory choke issue would be for basic salvage kits (and also copper-fed) to have a zero percent chance to salvage runes and sigils.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:tl;dr the problem isn't that fine & masterwork gear includes upgrades; that's a symptom of several other issues. It makes more sense to address it through other methods than "just" changing gear.

You practically receive hundreds of greens/blues with a couple hours of gameplay. That's a lot of sigils that will go to waste. All my friends only vendor minor/major sigils/runes and I bet a lot of people do too. Even with that, the price of them on TP for the majority of them are at the vendor price. Which means, it's a waste and a hassle.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:The issue is that the supply is practically endless while the demand is limited severely by the number of actively-played characters. There are tons of ways to address that besides changing whether fine/masterwork gear contains runes.I don't agree with this assessment. If you're saying the problem is with the supply/demand for those, then there are only 2 ways you can solve it: edit the loot table and reduce supply, or add a bunch of new sinks for demand. The first one requires a lot of development work for very little benefit (and you have to keep adjusting the loot table to keep the equilibrium). The second one is a lot of work for virtually the same result. And most importantly, neither of them solves the inventory clutter we're having.

Removing minor/major Sigils/Runes is the proper way to fix this inventory clutter. It also comes with the added benefit that all chars leveling up can use the same Sigils/Runes.

@Sunshine.5014 said:No one uses the Minor/Major Sigils/Runes. They are of no value.

That's not quite correct. There are still people leveling their characters naturally (i.e., without a Level 80 Boost), and those do use Minor and Major Sigils and Runes.

Furthermore, even though those items might be of a low value, they still add to your profit. Any type of profit is good (especially for new players). ;)

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Sunshine.5014 said:No one uses the Minor/Major Sigils/Runes. They are of no value.

My suggestion allows you to use the (former Superior) Sigils/Runes for all gear levels. That's a lot better than managing all the minor/major Sigils/Runes.

Totally agree.

And your idea of consolidating everything won't take a lot of effort and is all totally worth it just so you don't have to vendor runes/sigils after a play session?

So, in your example, there is now only Sigil of Strength which is salvaged from exotics, usable in all weapons regardless of weapon level. So, does it have a 60% proc like Superior Sigil of Strength regardless of level or does it now have to scale down based on the level of the player or piece of gear it is slotted into? What about all of the recipes to create these lower level sigils/rules? Are those now no longer available to players to discover while crafting or can people make every powerful sigils/runes at low levels? What happens to the supply of these sigils/runes on the TP? Are they a lot more rare since they only drop from exotics (or whatever the deal with crafting them is now)? Are the prices now soaring? Are new players using them even less than you assume they are because they can't afford them anymore? Now Sigil Bags have to be removed or reevaluated to make sure they are not giving out way too much reward for those 25 Airship Parts you have thousands of.

In other words, revamping the entire upgrade system is neither a simple change nor a proper solution to reduce inventory clutter.

This affect has a minimal impact on veteran players and a general harming experience for newer players. This makes end-game sigils and runes exclusive to approximately level 80 characters which gives certain players an advantage over the other. Having low level runes and sigils also gives a sense of customizability to new players which is essential of the MMORPG experience. While it would be convenient for veteran players, ANet is already struggling to promote their game hereby wanting to obtain and retain a new player base, which I believe this suggestion would harm. I haven't played the PoF beta so I can't comment on the unidentified gear, but I believe that should help a bit with the issue at hand.

@Venguard.2640 said:This affect has a minimal impact on veteran players and a general harming experience for newer players. This makes end-game sigils and runes exclusive to approximately level 80 characters which gives certain players an advantage over the other. Having low level runes and sigils also gives a sense of customizability to new players which is essential of the MMORPG experience. While it would be convenient for veteran players, ANet is already struggling to promote their game hereby wanting to obtain and retain a new player base, which I believe this suggestion would harm. I haven't played the PoF beta so I can't comment on the unidentified gear, but I believe that should help a bit with the issue at hand.

At least a specific Coffer salvageomatic which does not drop runes upon salvage.I know it would affect the playstile of new entries, but for a veteran is a pain.

I personally like to earn Gold. A part of earning that Gold, is to vendor the Minor and Major Runes I get, together with any Minor Sigils, and to list the Major Sigils on the Trading Post. What you see as junk, I see as an additional 20-30 Gold per month, as I tend to vendor and trade Runes and Sigils for around a Gold each day. I'd hate to lose that extra income, regardless of how small it may seem.

What if we got a non-rng formula that allowed us to turn minors into majors and then into superiors?

Want to point out that some major and even minor runes/sigils are actually in high demand, and sells for more than most superior ones does on the TP. Ex:

Major Sigil of Malice: 2g13sMajor Sigil of Bursting: 3g13s

And removing the Minor/Major for Sigils/Runes would only increase the cost for the superiors, as there would be more demand for them for more people (Unless people are spending BL salvage kits to get runes costing tpically under 5s each to recycle them).

@Einlanzer.1627 said:Interesting. I would actually make the case that a more interesting change would be to reduce the over-proliferation of gear by removing gear levels and to base armor/attack/attribute bonuses on character level and gear rarity. Then you'd have fewer mandatory gear upgrades as you level (only upgrading rarities unless you want to experiment with different stats), which would increase the value of lower level sigils and runes and make build experimentation in general more enticing for pre-80 toons.

With the current system of gear having levels, it isn't worth investing anything in gear because it isn't possible to optimize - gear becomes suboptimal every time you level, and you get pushed to replace it every 5-10 levels. So, therefore, having fun with gear just isn't a worthwhile investment. I think that kitten, and the I think the best solution is to just remove gear levels, and only have rarity, bonus attributes, and skin differentiating pieces of gear.

This would also decrease the amount of mundane gear that drops, which would create an opportunity to revise rewards in general to be more, well, fun and rewarding.

Want to highlight this post, because this is a very good design idea. Unfortunately I think ANet has already built themselves into a corner with the current gearing system. I would have loved to see something like this, though it would likely be comboed up with some restrictions like being allowed to equip masterwork at level 10, rares at level 40, exotic at level 60, ascended at 80 etc (example numbers).

The reason I don't think they will ever change this, is because it will require too many changes to the crafting systems (which I would have loved), and a large part of their TP economy calculations seems to be based around the recycling of generic items over the TP. Probably a few other things I can't think of right now.

@Sunshine.5014 said:

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Sunshine.5014 said:No one uses the Minor/Major Sigils/Runes. They are of no value.

You could use them on a lower level character, sure. But lower level characters wouldn't be GETTING them. Exotic gear drops so infrequently it may as well not even happen at all. You'd have to buy every sigil and rune from the TP, and no one is going to buy sigils and runes (aside from the terrible ones like Vs. Enemy stuff) for gear they'd be tossing out in 5 levels anyway.

You get enough minor and major sigils from loot that you can at least shove random stuff on your gear as you level and not feel like you're wasting anything. Its not going to be ideal gear, mostly just mismatched crap, but its something.

I'd rather just have lvl 70+ gear that we get as drops not have minor/major runes in it period. There's no point for my level 80 char, already in full ascended anyway, to be getting a minor/major rune out of trash gear when I salvage it.

Making a change that big to the loot tables would be a huge undertaking. It would be much easier to just give us a way to dispose of them, like a new consumer that just eats upgrades.

Having the low level sigils and runes teaches new people about the mechanics of the game as they are leveling up, and they add some value to existing items that are merched or sold on the trading post. Rare sigils and often runes too are usually sellable at above merchant price on the TP, so someone must be buying them. I don't think it makes sense to remove something from the game which is both useful for its intended audience and adds some extra money to the veteran players over time.

Note: I haven't yet played any PoF stuff, so I don't know if the unidentified items will affect this issue or not.

Why not make those sigils/runes be able to dismantle into a crafting material? It could be something entirely new that we could use for random recipes.