Transmutation charges and content through customizing

[Sinmir.6504]

I play a lot of WvW so have quite a lot of tansmutation charges.

One thing I'd say that will help save them if you only have charges obtained in PvE. Don't use them below level 80. Every few levels you'll be upgrading equipment.  I'd also say don't use them on less than Exotic equipment. Though if you intend to have Ascended soon, save them for when you have it.  No point in using a charge on a piece of equipment you know you won't be using for long.

[Vulture.9351]

Apologists: "Transmutation can't be free because Anet needs to make money off charges"

Also Apologists: "I have eleventy-billion transmutation charges, none of which I paid for."

[DeanBB.4268]

Isn't guild wars the same then? 150 gems gets you 5, proportionally more for higher tiers. Just farm some gold and buy some. /Shrug/

[Intro.1249]

Some people just dont enjoy PvP, should they be forced to grind a game mode they do not enjoy, spending time in the game that they do not get any fun out of just for the sole purpose of enabling the customization of their characters?

I don't see how that's reasonable. WoW, FF14, ESO are direct competitors to GW2 and take up a large slice of the MMO pie. None of them make it as much of a pain in the @ss to transmog/transmute/customize the look of your gear. You just go to an NPC or station, apply the skin of a gear piece you have unlocked at the cost of a tiny sum of gold or equivalent easy to obtain currency for each game. You don't have to play a specific game mode, or a festival/event, or cash in a daily login reward. Gear customization is a baseline feature of those games for every single player, with zero barriers to entry. It's a shame really, because those games either entirely lack or have inferior dyeing systems.

If Anet wants to rival the big boys in the industry and keep growing, they'll eventually have to acquire hardcore PvE players/customers. I'm one of them. I love the levelling, the quests, the story and the voice acting, the profession customization, the feel of combat, grouping up with other players to do events or instanced content. I absolutely do not care about PvP.

At this point I've accepted that any and all transmutation shards I acquire will come out of map completion, and that they'll be a rare treat for me. I refuse to spend money on buying consumable customization tokens. I have the cash mind you, I just don't see how that's a sensible usage of my money. I also refuse to waste my time playing PvP to get the tokens, since I have a limited amount of time to play and way more fun things to do in the game. Finally, I also don't consider swapping gold to gems for them, since that ends up being extremely expensive and I have better uses for gold. If each token was 1-10 silver a piece, I'd consider it.

Since I love playing around with how my character looks, this issue is a big blow and a huge detriment to my enjoyment of the game. The ease and accessibility of gear customization FOR EVERY PLAYER in competitor MMOs will always give them an edge over GW2.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Intro.1249

[Linken.6345]

48 minutes ago, Intro.1249 said:

Some people just dont enjoy PvP, should they be forced to grind a game mode they do not enjoy, spending time in the game that they do not get any fun out of just for the sole purpose of enabling the customization of their characters?

I don't see how that's reasonable. WoW, FF14, ESO are direct competitors to GW2 and take up a large slice of the MMO pie. None of them make it as much of a pain in the @ss to transmog/transmute/customize the look of your gear. You just go to an NPC or station, apply the skin of a gear piece you have unlocked at the cost of a tiny sum of gold or equivalent easy to obtain currency for each game. You don't have to play a specific game mode, or a festival/event, or cash in a daily login reward. Gear customization is a baseline feature of those games for every single player, with zero barriers to entry. It's a shame really, because those games either entirely lack or have inferior dyeing systems.

If Anet wants to rival the big boys in the industry and keep growing, they'll eventually have to acquire hardcore PvE players/customers. I'm one of them. I love the levelling, the quests, the story and the voice acting, the profession customization, the feel of combat, grouping up with other players to do events or instanced content. I absolutely do not care about PvP.

At this point I've accepted that any and all transmutation shards I acquire will come out of map completion, and that they'll be a rare treat for me. I refuse to spend money on buying consumable customization tokens. I have the cash mind you, I just don't see how that's a sensible usage of my money. I also refuse to waste my time playing PvP to get the tokens, since I have a limited amount of time to play and way more fun things to do in the game. Finally, I also don't consider swapping gold to gems for them, since that ends up being extremely expensive and I have better uses for gold. If each token was 1-10 silver a piece, I'd consider it.

Since I love playing around with how my character looks, this issue is a big blow and a huge detriment to my enjoyment of the game. The ease and accessibility of gear customization FOR EVERY PLAYER in competitor MMOs will always give them an edge over GW2.

You get money thrown at you in pve so just but the charges if you need them.

[Redfeather.6401]

It would be better if you could store more than one look. Other mmorpgs allow that by default. It would be nice if the system was less clunky. A decade later and the game now has 1000s of skins and no incentive to get them if it means giving up the look I like. If I do like my look and want to go back to it, I have to write down on a paper what my look is and then gain enough charges to change it back and forth, which is not great.

How about for every 100, or 1000, or whatever skins unlocked on an account I can store an extra look on armour pieces. I'm using the charges to apply the look in the first place I just don't want to keep applying it over and over when I want to alternate between some looks.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Redfeather.6401

[Intro.1249]

17 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

You get money thrown at you in pve so just but the charges if you need them.

 

What PvE? Endgame PvE, maybe. I'm not there yet and if I was, I'd still not use my gold for transmutation charges. Did you read the post you quoted? It's a horrible gold sink, relative to other options like gear upgrades and the like.

 

Matter of fact is, no other game does this and for good reason: it's a horrible design decision that seemingly only serves to milk non-PvPers for gold or gems in order to perform a basic function. Oh and, to sell outfits.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Intro.1249

[kharmin.7683]

15 minutes ago, Intro.1249 said:

 

What PvE? Endgame PvE, maybe. I'm not there yet and if I was, I'd still not use my gold for transmutation charges. Did you read the post you quoted? It's a horrible gold sink, relative to other options like gear upgrades and the like.

 

Matter of fact is, no other game does this and for good reason: it's a horrible design decision that seemingly only serves to milk non-PvPers for gold or gems in order to perform a basic function. Oh and, to sell outfits.

Of course it's a gold sink.  That helps keep the economy healthy.  As for other games not doing this, what about their economies?  For me, I've been playing SWToR recently and the economy there sucks.  

I had over 90 of these prior to the latest expansion.  While it's true that I don't swim in them like PvP or WvW players, I accumulated them over time and had more than enough to set up my characters with their new professions.  Also, I don't change my appearance on a weekly (or daily!) basis like some people seem to have a need to do.

One could always purchase gems once in a while to help support the game studio.  Nothing is free.

[Strider Pj.2193]

Maybe have multiple armor sets for each ‘season’ so you can just swap those!

[Intro.1249]

19 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Of course it's a gold sink.  That helps keep the economy healthy.  As for other games not doing this, what about their economies?  For me, I've been playing SWToR recently and the economy there sucks.  

I had over 90 of these prior to the latest expansion.  While it's true that I don't swim in them like PvP or WvW players, I accumulated them over time and had more than enough to set up my characters with their new professions.  Also, I don't change my appearance on a weekly (or daily!) basis like some people seem to have a need to do.

One could always purchase gems once in a while to help support the game studio.  Nothing is free.

 

Yes, like the OP I'm one of those people that if possible, would mess with their characters' apperiance on a daily basis. It's a type of content in itself. Given the current rate of acquisition of transmutation charges outside PvP, it's beyond unsustainable. Heck, I wonder if it would be sustainable even through PvP.

I'd rather support the game through meaningful purchases, i.e. buying the expansions, the living worlds, a copper fed salvage kit, bag/bank unlocks, eventually shared inventory slots and character slots. Buying single-use currency to change my character's appearance feels like a total waste of money and a forced expenditure.

 

Developers worked directly on expansions and I'm paying them for their efforts. Storing each player's characters' items costs money on data storage and processing (given cloud infrastructures, not much nowadays, but still) and I support them by paying for the storage upgrades. What effort am I supporting in paying for transmutation charges? I don't see it and I don't buy it, not one bit.

 

As for the gold sink part, the equivalent of gear transmutation in the other mmos I mentioned also function as gold sinks, but the cost is significantly lower. The gold cost of transmutation charges in GW2 is prohibitive.