Do you buy transmutation charges with gems or the gold to gem exchange?

As per the title, does anyone actually buy transmutation charges from the gemstore?

Everyone I know in game gets more than enough from map completion or reward tracks, and never has to purchase them from the gemstore. Which begs the question, why are transmutation charges and the transmutation system even in the game at all? It isn't profitable for the developers, doesn't serve as a gold sink, and requires neither skill check nor investment from players. All in all it seems like the system is so completely arbitrary that it could be removed entirely with no noticable affect on the game at all.

I didn't even know you can buy them...

WvW rewards ALL the way. I have like 100 at all times, while changing my equip daily.

@Blocki.4931 said:I didn't even know you can buy them...

WvW rewards ALL the way. I have like 100 at all times, while changing my equip daily.

You must not have been around at launch, because you pretty much HAD to buy them back then. There were two types, Basic and Fine, basic worked for sub-80 equipment and fine was required for level 80 equipment. Map completion ONLY gave the fine stones for level 80 areas, PvP and WvW didn't give any at all, there was no daily login reward, and you only got a few from personal story. Meaning you really only got enough to transmute your level 80 gear once or twice, and then you had to go to the gemstore or never transmute your gear again. They fixed it fairly quick though by adding them to the dailies rewards, before moving them elsewhere when they revamped the dailies.

I was around at launch and to the best of my recollection I never paid gems for them back then either. Just did a ton of exploration. I suppose I should say I never directly paid gems for them -- they were one byproduct of my BL Keys habit, and those I did buy quite a lot of when I had income.

I generally reserve my gems for things I can't get in game, and not for consumables. Technically keys are consumables but they lead to permanent unlocks, so I give them a pass.

@Conncept.7638 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:I didn't even know you can buy them...

WvW rewards ALL the way. I have like 100 at all times, while changing my equip daily.

I definitely remember getting them from dailies, back when there were also weekly and monthlies, though I don't remember much of that time (oh hey, I once did the monthlies in 1 day.. killing 100 veterans in queensdale took a while)

But yeah, maybe it used to be worse. That's long ago though

I bought a few at the start, but after establishing a look.. I kinda stopped playing with my wardrobe, so, I quickly began to collect them up.

I earn these so much faster than I can use them that I can't envision why anyone would even consider needing to buy them. Between PvP & WvW tracks & map completions, I'm swimming in them. Currently at 620 and steadily increasing...

I think I've acquired most of mine through Black Lion Chests, so I guess they are sort of purchased. I use them for Gathering Tool Skins, now.

Oh, and Map Completion...darn hardly ever get a BL Key.

You get a ton from exploring, plus a ton from dailies, another ton from achievement point rewards...I have hundreds of them...

I find the current system off-putting. Changing a look is time-consuming. Dyes need to be adjusted almost every time I do. Finally, the "expense" of charges is a little annoyance. So, I change seldom, and never buy charges.

What I'd prefer would be:

• Wardrobe slots, into which we could slot gear pieces as desired. Each slot would save the look, including dyes, essentially making our own outfits. We would be able to switch between wardrobe slots at will with no Transmutation Charge cost, with just one click.
• Charges would be used to set or change a gear skin in a wardrobe slot.
• ANet could sell wardrobe slots.

Psychologically, there would be more perceived value to using charges to set skins in a "wardrobe slot" than there is in having to use them one by one as is. Also psychologically, people would likely be more inclined to pursue multiple looks for each character.

Ummmm..... i voted no, because i'll be honest i think the only time i bought charges was the first year when we had 1-79 / 80 transmute charge consumables. Otherwise with how you get from spvp/WvW i don't see the point of buying them. Take into account i have 1k+/- atm.

Not only do I have a basically unlimited amount of them from reward tracks, I change my appearance like once every three years.

I have technically never purchased "Transmutation Charges" (I have a T Charge Run character to get them when I need some), but I recall buying "Transmutation Crystals" several times very early in the game when those were required in transmuting items.

I definitely prefer the current Transmutation Charge design over the horrid Transmutation Crystal functionality the game launched with, but I would prefer @IndigoSundown.5419's suggested design even more - it reminds me a little of how character appearance was handled years ago when I played Rift, but in a much more convenient way.

(in Rift, you had armor slots and appearance slots. If an appearance slot is empty then the appearance of the equipped armor is used, if you slot a piece of armor with an appearance you want into the armor's appearance slot, its appearance overrides the equipped armor appearance).

! Of course I would much prefer all elements of appearance to be separated from items entirely, as well as stats from armor, but that's another discussion.

! Infusions, armor, weapons and gathering tool appearances moved to the wardrobe that can be activated on dedicated areas of your character via the hero panel wardrobe tab. I believe it would help to finally stop people from being able to abuse the system as it is now with their horrid stacking of effects just to annoy others.

! (Sitting at the TP in the Captain's Airship and this one person always comes in with an absurdly large radius green glow - causes my FPS to drop by over 30 frames just from their glow being partially on my screen. Sadly, Look At ME is horrible in this game and, based on the stuff ANet adds to the game and how the systems are designed (and limited), it appears they not only encourage, but actually put effort into offering new items whose sole purpose is to allow people to negatively impact others' gameplay as much as possible in addition to not implementing options that would give players the ability to turn that stuff off on other people. It is all around disappointing and the main reason I do not log in for as long or as often as I would like to.)

It is only on rare occasion that I'll actually buy transmutation charges. Mostly because I don't change around my characters outfits much, and also I don't make new characters. I sort of just have a bunch of them sitting around. But, on those rare occasions where I do need transmutation charges, I just convert my gold to gems.

For myself: Never bought.For my partner: I've gifted charges once or twice, and they've similarily purchased once or twice.

We've soon played 3 years, all of these were within the first 1-1.5 years of playing. Now their gain has outstripped their spending.

Can’t make my vote, never bought any unless they had a big discount.Like, -40%

I don't buy them. I have 108 trans charges right now (burned through 30 recently when my Guardian had fashion issues lol), I get plenty from PvP, map completion and BL chests. Whenever I run out and need some charges quickly, I just farm Rata Sum.

I've never bought them because I've always had enough free ones.

Although that's partially because I set myself a rule that if I don't really "need" them - if I'm just changing around a look I'm bored with or covering an ugly skin on a low level character (as opposed to getting a new set of equipment on a level 80 and then picking the skins I want for it) - I have to make sure I'll have at least 11 left over. Which is enough to completely re-skin one character (6 armour slots, 1 back piece, 4 weapons). It helps that I started this game with all the Hall of Monuments skins from GW1, which have always been free to apply, so I always had 2 choices (the items default skin + the HoM skin) which didn't cost transmutation charges.

These days I mainly get them from map completion and login rewards. Other than map completion I don't remember where they came from before login rewards.

Even though I've never bought them I like knowing I have the option to buy them if I ever want to. If they were removed from the gem store I'd want there to be another way to buy them, either with gold or some other currency. (I know you can do city map completion on a new character, but that's not practical for everyone because you need an empty character slot to do it.)

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:I find the current system off-putting. Changing a look is time-consuming. Dyes need to be adjusted almost every time I do. Finally, the "expense" of charges is a little annoyance. So, I change seldom, and never buy charges.

What I'd prefer would be:

• Wardrobe slots, into which we could slot gear pieces as desired. Each slot would save the look, including dyes, essentially making our own outfits. We would be able to switch between wardrobe slots at will with no Transmutation Charge cost, with just one click.
• Charges would be used to set or change a gear skin in a wardrobe slot.
• ANet could sell wardrobe slots.

Psychologically, there would be more perceived value to using charges to set skins in a "wardrobe slot" than there is in having to use them one by one as is. Also psychologically, people would likely be more inclined to pursue multiple looks for each character.

Honestly it wouldn't.... Psychologically. It comes off as attempting to double charge on the existing system, and would make people wonder why they wouldn't just sell build templates instead; seeing as how that has clear practical value, and doesn't double down on the already strained acceptance of outfits.

At this point, transmutation charges are a legacy system that never panned out, but still manages affect to their monotization strategy moving forward. Reskinning should be a character UI concern, with the desired skin superseding the item's normal skin, and changed at will. This gets rid of the awkwardness of transmutation charges entirely, and paves the way for build templates/gear saves to include a cosmetics sub-section that will follow which build you have loaded.

And while I realize this doesn't completely satisfy your one desired use case, I rebut with your proposed solution to be more obtuse, and not nearly as justifiable as a Gem store upgrade.

@Conncept.7638 said:

@Blocki.4931 said:I didn't even know you can buy them...

WvW rewards ALL the way. I have like 100 at all times, while changing my equip daily.

ImO getting transmutation stones back then was even easyer than it is today. From the surplus of trans-stones that I converted to charges when the new system was released, I can transmute skins to this day.

No, never. All of mine are from PvP and Daily rewards. I think I have over 300 now, and I've used more than a few quite liberally.

Who the 'bleep' buys transmutation charges?

As an RPer who also does a lot of map exploration, I've never bought any. With new characters, I just use an outfit to hide the rapidly changing armors until they reach level 80, so the charges stack up much faster than I spend them.

Back in the day when I was making new characters all the time, I was constantly running out of TM charges and bought quite a bit of them with cash/gold. These days not so much, I rarely change my character appearances and WvW chests basically throw them at me anyway.

If they introduced a permanent TM stone in the gemstore with unlimited uses, I'd probably grab that though.

As they are now, and since they have such a limited use, I just stick to 1 appearance per character and hardly ever change them again.

I could consider getting more and using them more if we had something like "custom outfits" we save in "custom outfit slots" we'd buy in the gemstore, spending charges to save skins presets.Or to fully unlock skins to make them "free to apply" like AP and HoM skins by paying 10 charges instead of 1. Want to switch between glasses and a hat very often but that would cost way too many charges? Spend 10 charges on each, you can now switch between them freely.