What if we could exchange Transmutation Charges?

Since transmutation charges exist as consumable items before becoming a currency, why not make that item tradeable? This would help both PvP players (by giving them access to a new way of earning gold, which they notoriously struggle to do) and PvE players (by allowing them to gain transmutation charges at a reasonable price, since they loot very few of them compared to others game modes).

In short, my suggestion aims to take an outdated mechanic (having to use charges in order to change gear), and transform it into a way of redistributing gold throughout the game, which would also act as a gold sink via market taxes, all by simply making the item exchangeable.

As a bonus, there could be a merchant somewhere who could convert your accumulated transmutation charges back into their consumable version, so people who have thousands of them can sell them right away?

Because so many would appear on the TP, it would negate any need to buy from the gem-store snd generate direct income. If that were to happen, it would make more sense to remove charges altogether, which i am more in favour of.

It will be interesting to see if the build templates are going to bring any fundamental changes to the charges

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/51681/isnt-it-time-for-transmutation-charges-to-disappearhttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/48797/please-get-rid-of-transmute-charges-and-add-a-proper-wardrobe-system/p1

I would like to see them removed altogether, as it seems we partly have to pay for armor twice -- once when you buy it and once when you want to wear it again. Can you imagine going to your real life closet every morning and paying to wear what you already bought? (ETA: I'm not whining because I don't have enough transmutation charges; I have plenty. It's the idea of them that I find annoying.)

No thanks. Let's keep it this way. Aion didn't have that and you had to ACQUIRE any skin all over again just to use it. If they removed them, this would probably be the route to go and you'd have to continuously buy weapon/armor skins from the Gem Store just to keep it on. And don't say "Well, they can let us keep the skins". Yeah, and how are they supposed to profit from that? They wouldn't and they'd have to make that revenue back somehow. Leave charges as they are. They are more than easy to get and if you don't need them, get rid of them. If you do, there are plenty of ways to get them.

@"Kanok.3027" said:No thanks. Let's keep it this way. Aion didn't have that and you had to ACQUIRE any skin all over again just to use it. If they removed them, this would probably be the route to go and you'd have to continuously buy weapon/armor skins from the Gem Store just to keep it on. And don't say "Well, they can let us keep the skins". Yeah, and how are they supposed to profit from that? They wouldn't and they'd have to make that revenue back somehow. Leave charges as they are. They are more than easy to get and if you don't need them, get rid of them. If you do, there are plenty of ways to get them.

Aion's system is garbage. Why would they require us to buy a skin again if they removed transmutation charges? I'm not folowing you. As for profit, I don't think anyone's actually buying any transmutation charge from the gemstore... 60 golds to change 5 armor peices? Might as well spend an hour in WvW. But that's not a good thing. Imagine if WvW players could only get armor skins by playing dungeons? That would be terrible. So why should PvE players have to play WvW in order to benefit from the skins?

I don't think anyone's actually buying any transmutation charge from the gemstoreMaybe you aren't. Maybe the people you know aren't. That doesn't mean it's not a big seller.

You're also ignoring that xmute charges drop from a variety of other sources, adding to their value for some people. BL Chests are designed to have a lot of low-value items (so you always get 'something') and transmutation charges are among them.

I'm not against the idea per se. I'd probably earn a lot of coin, since I transmute at a pace far, far below the rate at which I earn more. I just think that (a) the idea is predicated on mistaken assumptions and/or misunderstandings so that (b) it ignores the costs and benefits as ANet would measure them.

Put another way, the simpler solution if PvP & WvW generate too many unused transmute charges... is to remove those from the reward tracks.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

I don't think anyone's actually buying any transmutation charge from the gemstoreMaybe you aren't. Maybe the people you know aren't. That doesn't mean it's not a big seller.

No, I'm not saying PvP and WvW generate too many, I'm saying PvE doesn't generate enough, and in return PvP and WvW don't receive enough gold.

There's always some manner to gate cosmetics in MMOs. For Blade and Soul, everything is character bound unless you use special items to transfer them to others (and the clan uniforms are quite cool but also very prohibitively expensive and grindy for anyone that is semi-casual). While FFXIV does have the armory and glamour system, it still requires you to buy the dyes and crystals and such and you still need the armor to glamour it onto other stuff. Even CoH had a cost to changing your costumes, costs on costume slots and the need to unlock the pieces on your account.

I find GW2 is pretty liberal with transmutation charges and despite me usually running dry on them, I never run out (probably because most of the options available had never appealed to me more than the equips I already was using).

That being said, an idea I just thought of...what if a new craft was created called "Aesthetician" who could present goods for changing the looks of a character. For example, one mid-level recipe could use several transmutation charges + 2 grey dyes (doesn't matter which) to create "Black Hairdye Kit" that anyone can use to dye their hair any available shade of grey-to-black and similar for "Green Hairdye Kit", etc etc. Another example for a min-level recipe could be "Re-Tailor Kit" that uses transmutation charges and likely some kind of Tailor crafted material that can allow a player to essentially do what a transmutation charge does but for light armor only (same thing for Re-Armorer and Re-Tanner kits). But this would only be part of the addition. Sort of like in other MMOs where you can set up personal shops to sell items, the Aesthetician can open up their services, depending on what level and available materials they have, to help players by giving haircuts and make-overs at the cost of gold + transmutation charges.

Would also be a cool thing if the rest of the crafts could do something similar, like maybe a Artificer could appraise other players' junk items that could net them some special materials for some other use or a Jeweler could specialize in extraction of precious materials like removing the gems from jewelry and runes/sigils from equipment.

[EDIT]To clarify, the services of Gold+transmutation charges goes to the Aesthetician. So if you got a haircut, the Aesthetician would gain gold and charges for other aesthetic stuff like crafting or just having charges to change your characters' armor via wardrobe.

@ROMANG.1903 said:No, I'm not saying PvP and WvW generate too many, I'm saying PvE doesn't generate enough, and in return PvP and WvW don't receive enough gold.PvP & WvW generate plenty of rewards (comparable to open-world, non-farmed PvE). And PvE generates sufficient transmute charges for those who aren't changing looks frequently, i.e. the ones unlikely to spend on transmutation charges. In contrast, the people who feel there aren't enough charges via PvE are those that feel a need to re-wardrobe often, and thus are closer to ANet's target audience.

My point is that you've adequately explained how this change would benefit you (and me, for that matter). That's a good start. Now think about how it looks from ANet's perspective.

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:I would like to see them removed altogether, as it seems we partly have to pay for armor twice -- once when you buy it and once when you want to wear it again. Can you imagine going to your real life closet every morning and paying to wear what you already bought? (ETA: I'm not whining because I don't have enough transmutation charges; I have plenty. It's the idea of them that I find annoying.)

Not exactly.

Do you go to your real life closet, put on something to wear, go outside and the article of clothing gets dirty or ripped so you just...put on another one of them? Or do have to pay for that article of clothing to get cleaned, fixed or buy a new one?

Also, when you go to your closet and go through your clothes with a friend (who is a completely different build/height from yourself), can your friend wear all those clothes too?

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:I would like to see them removed altogether, as it seems we partly have to pay for armor twice -- once when you buy it and once when you want to wear it again. Can you imagine going to your real life closet every morning and paying to wear what you already bought? (ETA: I'm not whining because I don't have enough transmutation charges; I have plenty. It's the idea of them that I find annoying.)

This doesn't make any sense. Armor is damaged, and doesn't change appearance. If I want a look, I wear the thing I bought. I can wash it, and wear it multiple times. Damage rarely happens to clothing of an adult, so that point is moot. If I want the same look multiple times, I wear the thing I paid for once. I dont have to pay for it every time i wear it. Also, just about all of my friends are my size, just like all of my characters are about the same size.

@Klowdy.3126 said:

@Leo G.4501 said:

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:I would like to see them removed altogether, as it seems we partly have to pay for armor twice -- once when you buy it and once when you want to wear it again. Can you imagine going to your real life closet every morning and paying to wear what you already bought? (ETA: I'm not whining because I don't have enough transmutation charges; I have plenty. It's the idea of them that I find annoying.)

I'll make more sense to you then:

Can clothes be damaged? Yes, if they aren't cared for properly, are put under stress, they can be damaged or suffer wear. So what do you do when that happens? Clothes don't last forever even when you care for them properly. Some cost is incurred regardless of if you take care of clothes or if you don't.

Also, you and your friends are the same size... So what happens when your friends wear your clothes? Answer: you can't wear them if they are wearing them.

Also also, I don't have to pay twice to wear my armor in GW2. If I just have a set of the gear in my inventory, I can just put it on. In fact, you can do that with everything in your wardrobe, you just have to deal with finding room to store it. It's the same as in the real world if you're traveling. You can wear what you take with you and if you want something else, you can go but new clothes.

Also also also, can you just recolor your clothes on the fly? I doubt it...

What I'm saying is, I do not agree with your real-life analogy. It doesn't match up lol

I'd rather see Anet sell say a Silver-Fed Transmute-o-Matic in the gem store. Cost a silver to use per transmute so it would sink a little bit of coin. I'm guessing something like that would sell more in gems than they make off selling transmutation charges, but I could be wrong. I have no data on how many people actually buy transmutation charges.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@ROMANG.1903 said:No, I'm not saying PvP and WvW generate too many, I'm saying PvE doesn't generate enough, and in return PvP and WvW don't receive enough gold.PvP & WvW generate plenty of rewards (comparable to open-world, non-farmed PvE). And PvE generates

sufficient

transmute charges for those who aren't changing looks frequently, i.e. the ones unlikely to spend on transmutation charges. In contrast, the people who feel there aren't enough charges via PvE are those that feel a need to re-wardrobe often, and thus are closer to ANet's target audience.

Better general experience keeping people in the game, more interest in buying gemstore cosmetics, healthier WvW and PvP with that new gold income. And honnestly, if they really still had that idea of having to use transmutation charges to change look, why didn't they make gliders, outfits, and mounts require transmutation charges? It is clearly an outdated mechanic, even for them.

@ROMANG.1903 said:why didn't they make gliders, outfits, and mounts require transmutation chargesOutfits are easy: that's the compromise for not being mix & match. And MountFits are, well, outfits for mounts (hence the portmanteau). Gliders... good question. I don't know why they decided to skip transmutation costs for those.

It is clearly an outdated mechanic, even for them.I'm glad it's clear for you.That doesn't change the fact that it's not zero cost for them to scrap the existing system.

I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be done. I'm saying that so far, I don't see that anyone has justified the expense.

I changy my looks often and I've never bought any from the store. I think the current system could be improved a lot. In ESO it costs in game gold, and it's pretty cheap. In ffxiv you have plenty by doing regular content and if not you just have to do a few fates to get them. In dcuo it's free. In here I have to either do pvp or wvw which I hate, wait a while month for the login rewards or make a new character specifically to do map competition whick could take me a while to do each time.The system must be improved, simple as that.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be done. I'm saying that so far, I don't see that anyone has justified the expense.You are exactly saying that it shouldn't be done because ANet would loose income, despite all my arguments of the contrary...

@coso.9173 said:I changy my looks often and I've never bought any from the store. I think the current system could be improved a lot. In ESO it costs in game gold, and it's pretty cheap. In ffxiv you have plenty by doing regular content and if not you just have to do a few fates to get them. In dcuo it's free. In here I have to either do pvp or wvw which I hate, wait a while month for the login rewards or make a new character specifically to do map competition whick could take me a while to do each time.

Or use in-game gold to purchase gems to then obtain transmutation charges. Sound pretty similar to your ESO example.

The system must be improved, simple as that.This is your opinion. Others believe that the current system does not need improvement.

Transmutation charges are annoying when you run out but are not really hard to get. They do cost around 7.5 gold per though which to me seems ridiculous. 52g to completely change my outfit? No thank you. I wouldn't miss them if they just removed them all together.

@kharmin.7683 said:

@coso.9173 said:I changy my looks often and I've never bought any from the store. I think the current system could be improved a lot. In ESO it costs in game gold, and it's pretty cheap. In ffxiv you have plenty by doing regular content and if not you just have to do a few fates to get them. In dcuo it's free. In here I have to either do pvp or wvw which I hate, wait a while month for the login rewards or make a new character specifically to do map competition whick could take me a while to do each time.

The system must be improved, simple as that.This is your opinion. Others believe that the current system does not need improvement.

Not cheap?? Everyone talks about how much gold GW2 just throws at us.

50G is not cheap. i got 1k as a lv 6 characer in ESO just by selling loot. i don't get 50 g as a lv 6 character just by selling low lv loot.

They could use some sinks since people tend to hoard a lot of them from wvw and pvp, but trading them should not be it.

For example, we could pay several charges to make a skin 'free to apply' like the skins from HoM and AP rewards.Spend 5, 10, 25 charges or something like that on a pair of glasses, you can then apply them freely on any character without charges from then on.

There could also be 'custom outfits'. Buy a cutom outfit slot in the gemstore, equip a character with the appearance you want, store its appearance in the outfit slot by paying several charges, then any character can equip that custom outfit regardless of their armor class.

Why would anyone be transmuting on a level 6 toon?