So, can we finally get rid of transmutation charges?

[Freya.9075]

40 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

No, I'm expecting them to at least as questions and at most search it up themselves instead of trying to be smart and miss the point entirely.  Sobx didn't contribute to the discussion, they just built a straw man and latched on to a semantics argument when their initial one was proven wrong.

I did not see this at all. I got their point, but failed to see yours. To me it seemed more like you jumped to conclusion rather then answering their questions. Even the first response they did ended with a ? Meaning they were open for you to explain what you meant. But you chose to come with a snarky response about being obtuse which started the whole thing.

40 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

See my prior post as to why this is against the spirit of what I suggested.  The rate of return is absurdly out of order and, with how easy it is to earn them in game (By quite a few accounts in this very thread), removing the requirement for transmutation charges would do little to no harm.

Most players do not need to buy these charges for gold. There are many ways to get these in game. It’s really easy to get hundreds or thousands of them. But there is a reason Anet choose to still have it in gemstore. We do not know the outcome of said changes.

40 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

If it's a proper gold sink (Think TP tax, waypoint cost, etc.), people will have less overall gold, meaning they're more likely to buy gold with gems they purchase.  People already spend a lot more money in small purchases than they do big purchases.  So many people freely waypoint because it costs silvers and so many people post things to the trading post without a care for the tax.  Also on the purchasing of skins, I, for one, would buy more weapon skins if it didn't cost a transmutation charge to change the ones I don't have legendary yet after I use the initial skin.

I fail to see your logic here. If players choose to not buy transmutation charges for a low amount of gems to support the game, why would they buy more gems if this was implemented? It makes no sense that it would make players buy more gems if they paid a few silver for transmutation charges. It will not make players lack so much gold that they will buy gems to cover their silver purchases. And it will never be used like waypoints are. It can’t be compared at all. It would be like saying waypoints are a source of gem purchases right now. I have never heard about any player claiming they have to buy gems to be able to waypoint anywhere. Which is the logic here.

Thing is most players have abundance of these charges. And the players who buy skins with gems will probably have enough of them by playing the game already. If you do not, you’re probably a new player or a very casual player who doesn’t really care about the game and rarely play. And I doubt they will buy much from the gemstore anyways. Which is totally fine, but when you don’t play the game, you cannot expect to get the same as the players who do play.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Freya.9075

[DarcShriek.5829]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if they got rid of them.  Too many people don't (or won't) understand how to get them cheap and I'm tired of hearing whine about how much they cost.  Also I have THOUSANDS of them that I'll never use.  If Anet got rid of them, I wouldn't mind. 

[Krzysztof.5973]

11 hours ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

Are you purposefully being obtuse?  ESO and Champions online have outfit slots that cost real money and you can freely swap between these outfits at no cost while changing your outfit costs ingame currency which just accrues over normal gametime.  I can average about  30k gold a day in ESO which is more than enough to tweak my outfits to my liking.  The most I've ever spent in ESO on an individual outfit is 150k and that was changing everything about it to the more expensive skins I had unlocked. 

In Champions Online, I completely redid an entire character's outfit for 4 globals  (Their version of gold).  I could get that much in a couple days of inefficient farming or a single hour if I did the right content.

Both games make it so your new outfit slot costs nothing to apply a new look to.

Let's look at how much 5 transmutation charges cost.  150 gems.  This is 53g 56s 05c to change 5/6 pieces of armor.  Wow, spending so much gold to not change everything about my outfit sure is appealing.  Your gear slots (Which double as outfit slots here, let's be honest) still require you to acquire  new gear if you want a new look in that slot so you now have the cost of a new armor set, runes, sigils, trinkets; and, if you're bold, infusions.

53g 56s 05c  is nowhere near the same low cost to time as Champions Online or ESO.

Why do you compare these games to GW2 that has horizontal progression? There is only QoL past ascended gear. Obviously the structure of the game will have to be focused on different things like fashion, masteries, achievements etc. You don't want to waste gold on transmutation charges?  Get legendary gear. As many people already pointed out, there already are multiple avenues for acquiring transmutation charges for free, if you are not willing to put effort by actually playing the game then you don't really get to complain. 
Let's not chop off pieces of the game to dumb it down, to later read another post that there is nothing to do in the game. It's already easy as it stands right now. 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

9 hours ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

Why do you compare these games to GW2 that has horizontal progression? There is only QoL past ascended gear. Obviously the structure of the game will have to be focused on different things like fashion, masteries, achievements etc. You don't want to waste gold on transmutation charges?  Get legendary gear. As many people already pointed out, there already are multiple avenues for acquiring transmutation charges for free, if you are not willing to put effort by actually playing the game then you don't really get to complain. 
Let's not chop off pieces of the game to dumb it down, to later read another post that there is nothing to do in the game. It's already easy as it stands right now. 

ESO doesn't have traditional gear progression, they release new armor sets every DLC/chapter for people to farm and play around with.  This is like ANet releasing new attribute combinations and runes every expansion.  ESO has skill lines which is very comparable to the mastery system in GW2.  Champion's Online went to 40 and never had any level increases post.  In fact, one of the major rewards there streamlined gear as the drop always boosted your primary, secondary, and tertiary attributes.

9 hours ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

 You don't want to waste gold on transmutation charges?  Get legendary gear. As many people already pointed out, there already are multiple avenues for acquiring transmutation charges for free, if you are not willing to put effort by actually playing the game then you don't really get to complain. 
Let's not chop off pieces of the game to dumb it down, to later read another post that there is nothing to do in the game. It's already easy as it stands right now. 

I already have basically full legendary gear (Minus a few weapons) so this doesn't bother me one way or the other.  It's still a bit annoying to run out when trying to change weapons or swap aqua breathers though.

9 hours ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

Let's not chop off pieces of the game to dumb it down, to later read another post that there is nothing to do in the game. It's already easy as it stands right now. 

This isn't dumbing it down. (IDK how removing a currency that's given away for free so much is dumbing it down, but you do you). Here's the real issue; ANet practically gives away 23 of these every month when there's a festival going on.  Up to 5 weekly transmutation charges  can be claimed from festivals and the 3 you get from daily login rewards.  Every festival appears to have the same weekly vendor and the charges are relatively cheap and can be obtained in a couple days of doing the festival related dailies and playing in the festival related content.  So, if they're already giving away what's basically $8 worth of charges every time there's a festival, why are the charges still here? 

If PvP and WvW players never have to worry about transmutation anymore due to the reward structure favoring dumping charges onto their lap, why are the charges still here? 

If I could just sit and speedily complete each city on a new character to get 6 charges for free, why are the charges still here? 

 

If these charges are given out so frequently, for free, with just game time requirements behind them already (Rank ups and reward tracks in wvw, reward tracks in pvp, map completion & festival weekly vendors in pve), why not just cut out the middleman and charge gold (Which is really just a gauge of playtime)?  It doesn't even have to be  gold nor get rid of charges, either.  ANet could quite easily put in an NPC that asks for massive amounts of materials that changes every week to sink some over-supplied materials and give them value (Such as Mithril ingots/ore, elder wood logs/planks, t5  and select t6 intermediate crafting materials such a s claws, venom sacs, ectoplasm, and low value lodestones) in exchange for transmutation charges.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Epsilon Indi.2031

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

16 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

Most players do not need to buy these charges for gold. There are many ways to get these in game. It’s really easy to get hundreds or thousands of them. But there is a reason Anet choose to still have it in gemstore. We do not know the outcome of said changes.

Then there shouldn't be much, if any problem to get rid of them in favor of something else.

16 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

I fail to see your logic here. If players choose to not buy transmutation charges for a low amount of gems to support the game, why would they buy more gems if this was implemented? It makes no sense that it would make players buy more gems if they paid a few silver for transmutation charges. It will not make players lack so much gold that they will buy gems to cover their silver purchases. And it will never be used like waypoints are. It can’t be compared at all. It would be like saying waypoints are a source of gem purchases right now. I have never heard about any player claiming they have to buy gems to be able to waypoint anywhere. Which is the logic here.

Thing is most players have abundance of these charges. And the players who buy skins with gems will probably have enough of them by playing the game already. If you do not, you’re probably a new player or a very casual player who doesn’t really care about the game and rarely play. And I doubt they will buy much from the gemstore anyways. Which is totally fine, but when you don’t play the game, you cannot expect to get the same as the players who do play.

If people aren't going to buy gems, they're not going to buy gems to begin with.  They'll do the map completion, do the current festival for the weekly charges, and/or suffer through pvp & wvw before they drop money on transmutation charges.  ANet also wants you, the player, to log on at least once a week to see the new gemstore offerings, otherwise, they make no sale.

The logic is Less gold in the game = higher value per gold = more people buying gold with gems because their money can go farther and buy more things.

16 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

Thing is most players have abundance of these charges. And the players who buy skins with gems will probably have enough of them by playing the game already. If you do not, you’re probably a new player or a very casual player who doesn’t really care about the game and rarely play. And I doubt they will buy much from the gemstore anyways. Which is totally fine, but when you don’t play the game, you cannot expect to get the same as the players who do play.

If there's already an abundance of charges for players who play this game even semi-casually, especially for those who play wvw and pvp, why bother having this middleman system that essentially tells the player 'no, you can't change your look'  when they run out of said charges?  It's literally not making money off of veterans, and, as you're seeing it, it's not making money off of the casual playerbase either, and from my experience with other people, they'd rather spend their time farming them and buying skins rather than buying permission to reuse the skins they already have.

[kharmin.7683]

27 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

If these charges are given out so frequently, for free, with just game time requirements behind them already (Rank ups and reward tracks in wvw, reward tracks in pvp, map completion & festival weekly vendors in pve), why not just cut out the middleman and charge gold (Which is really just a gauge of playtime)?  It doesn't even have to be  gold nor get rid of charges, either.  ANet could quite easily put in an NPC that asks for massive amounts of materials that changes every week to sink some over-supplied materials and give them value (Such as Mithril ingots/ore, elder wood logs/planks, t5  and select t6 intermediate crafting materials such a s claws, venom sacs, ectoplasm, and low value lodestones) in exchange for transmutation charges.

Why not?  Maybe Anet knows exactly how much profit they make on these and they would like to maintain the revenue stream.  Why would they make this suggested change which may well reduce their income?

[Sobx.1758]

29 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

It's literally not making money off of veterans, and, as you're seeing it, it's not making money off of the casual playerbase either

You literally have no insight into what and how much exactly anet makes money off of in gemstore. On the bright side, there was a transmutation charge sale not long ago, so whatever guess you want to make about"players not buying them from gemstore!", anet already has all the numbers they need and no amount of your guessing on the forum will influence their decision about that part of monetization.

29 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

If people aren't going to buy gems, they're not going to buy gems to begin with.  They'll do the map completion, do the current festival for the weekly charges, and/or suffer through pvp & wvw before they drop money on transmutation charges. 

So the players either spend money or actively populate maps in an mmorpg. I don't see a downside here?

 

Adding vanity tabs can be a good idea, but that has nothing to do with charges removal. If anything, it would probably be a feature on top of current charges (except you'd be using them in vanity tab instead of items in gear tabs).

Edited April 7, 2023 by Sobx.1758

[Freya.9075]

32 minutes ago, Epsilon Indi.2031 said:

Then there shouldn't be much, if any problem to get rid of them in favor of something else.

If people aren't going to buy gems, they're not going to buy gems to begin with.  They'll do the map completion, do the current festival for the weekly charges, and/or suffer through pvp & wvw before they drop money on transmutation charges.  ANet also wants you, the player, to log on at least once a week to see the new gemstore offerings, otherwise, they make no sale.

The logic is Less gold in the game = higher value per gold = more people buying gold with gems because their money can go farther and buy more things.

If there's already an abundance of charges for players who play this game even semi-casually, especially for those who play wvw and pvp, why bother having this middleman system that essentially tells the player 'no, you can't change your look'  when they run out of said charges?  It's literally not making money off of veterans, and, as you're seeing it, it's not making money off of the casual playerbase either, and from my experience with other people, they'd rather spend their time farming them and buying skins rather than buying permission to reuse the skins they already have.

All I read here is speculations and straw man arguments. You clearly missed the point that anet choose to have these charges like they are for a reason. They have the data. We do not. And they keep them in gemstore for a reason. As already said, we do not know the impact it would have to remove them. Or how easy it would be to implement. And none of your arguments change that it’s really easy to get charges for free. You may choose to not do content that gives them for free, but that’s a you problem. Not a game problem. 

[Stormcrow.7513]

As Starsky and Hutch would say...do it....

[Linken.6345]

8 hours ago, Stormcrow.7513 said:

As Starsky and Hutch would say...do it....

Aint that the Nike **Just do it** thing?

[Izzy.2951]

I think transmuation charges are important so you play the game, and fill the servers, and potentially buy stuff either expansions or gemstore stuff.

You already have the chance to change your apparience with any skin you have unlocked in your life for nearly free, that is something imposible in most MMOs.

[atomstrike.7086]

In Destiny 2, transmog also requires a similar currency, but instead of spending the currency every time you apply the skin, you only need to spend it once to permanently unlock a skin, allowing you to apply it to whatever armor you want for free. This system might actually work better for GW2 than just outright removing transmutation charges. Just make the transmutation charges "unlock" an equipment piece in your wardrobe collection for permanent free transmutation. That way, the incentives of earning them are still there, especially after an update, but it wouldn't be so expensive to do frequent/low level fashion.

Edited June 18, 2023 by atomstrike.7086
Made explanation clearer. I'm notoriously bad at explaining things.

[kharmin.7683]

5 hours ago, atomstrike.7086 said:

In Destiny 2, transmog also requires a similar currency, but instead of spending the currency every time you apply the skin, you only need to spend it once to permanently unlock a skin, allowing you to apply it to whatever armor you want for free. This system might actually work better for GW2 than just outright removing transmutation charges. Just make the transmutation charges "unlock" an equipment piece in your wardrobe collection for permanent free transmutation. That way, the incentives of earning them are still there, especially after an update, but it wouldn't be so expensive to do frequent/low level fashion.

Not familiar myself with Destiny 2.  Is it F2P/B2P or sub based?

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Imagine if transmuting was a coin cost instead of using charges.

[Fairlight.2904]

I'd dig it if a transmutation charge allowed for a total wardrobe change, not expending a transmutation charge per item that's transmogrified/transmuted. In this way, it would act more like the appearance change kit, where the kit itself permits the changing of multiple things but always costs "1 kit." 

If I wanted to change just my chest and boots, that would be "1 transmute charge" per "purchase," e.g., I'd have to decide if I really wanted to spend 1 charge on just changing a helm, whereas the entire charge could transmute all "transmutable" items. It would retain the currency, ensure it has a limit, but expand the "purchasing power" of the charge.

[Quench.7091]

Transmutation charges are in an odd spot conceptually. If they are valuable and more rare, then they discourage players changing armor appearances. If they are too common, then nobody would buy them from the gem store. They should find a better system for the charges.

[Lucy.3728]

On 2/14/2023 at 8:09 PM, vares.8457 said:

No. That would take away one advantage of legendary gear.

Häh?

Why do those charges even exist in the first place? It makes no sense.
Why can I not change my look just like  that? Why?
Without to first double click one of my stacks on every character. Boring and annoying.
So useless that system.
And it really only penalizes new players.
Everybody else has stacks of them.

Get rid of that system.

Best with presets for every biome, festival and race! (And WvW and worldboss... and a different underwater look)
Just image how that would boost gear skin selling.

I belong to those who, once set with a look, stay with that look for years. I've about 5 chars that still wear the same from 9 years ago xD Same gear, same look.

But such a preset system that lets me set up looks for different occasions, now that would motivate me to get more lovely skins :3

[Lucy.3728]

On 6/18/2023 at 7:20 AM, atomstrike.7086 said:

In Destiny 2, transmog also requires a similar currency, but instead of spending the currency every time you apply the skin, you only need to spend it once to permanently unlock a skin, allowing you to apply it to whatever armor you want for free. This system might actually work better for GW2 than just outright removing transmutation charges. Just make the transmutation charges "unlock" an equipment piece in your wardrobe collection for permanent free transmutation. That way, the incentives of earning them are still there, especially after an update, but it wouldn't be so expensive to do frequent/low level fashion.

Isn't that even worse for new players/accounts than the current system?

Veterans can afford to unlock their hundreds of skins with a charge each, for good. But new players may already struggle to change the look of 2 chars which only needs 12-16 charges. At least I struggled on my second account and felt ridiculous.

[Luthan.5236]

I mean ... with the recent additions it should be clear they are not planning to get rid of them. Not too long ago they were even on sale if I remember correctly. Now we got the Spec Ops armor set where I first thought you'd have to unlock the other weight classes by buying the item from the vendor.

They unlock automatically though and the items there are instead to be used to save a transumtation charge. If they had plans to remove them they would not have created such a design for this armor set and that vendor.

[TashaFoxx.7862]

On 6/18/2023 at 12:22 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

Not familiar myself with Destiny 2.  Is it F2P/B2P or sub based?

The base game is free, expansions cost money. Very similar to GW2.

The difference is, every once in a while a new season starts where you can buy a season pass that progresses as you earn exp in any way, giving you some currencies, crafting materials, weapon skins, etc.

[Gravitron.7982]

On 4/6/2023 at 9:37 PM, Krzysztof.5973 said:

Why do you compare these games to GW2 that has horizontal progression? There is only QoL past ascended gear. Obviously the structure of the game will have to be focused on different things like fashion, masteries, achievements etc. You don't want to waste gold on transmutation charges?  Get legendary gear. As many people already pointed out, there already are multiple avenues for acquiring transmutation charges for free, if you are not willing to put effort by actually playing the game then you don't really get to complain. 
Let's not chop off pieces of the game to dumb it down, to later read another post that there is nothing to do in the game. It's already easy as it stands right now. 

Uh because ESO is a horizontal progression MMORPG? Even moreso than GW2 I'd argue.  All of the gear in ESO Caps out at CP160. It has been like that since champion points were introduced many many years ago, and it will always b that way. There is no higher tier gear to obtain in ESO than Cp160. When new gear is released in ESO, they don't release gear at a higher power level like WoW does, or FF14, or other themepark MMORPG's. There is no Tier 20 then Tier 21 then Tier 22 gear grind in ESO. End game gear is CP160, much like in GW2 ascended gear is essentially "end game" gear stats wise. 

So why wouldn't ESO and GW2 be compared to each other? They both use a form of horizontal gear progression! What, did you think GW2 was the only one doing that lol? Even SWG was doing it years before GW2 or ESO existed.....GW2 didn't create horizontal progression lol.... 

The main difference between then though, is that ESO has no restrictions on gear weights or weapon types. Any class in ESO can wear heavy, or medium, or light armor. Any class can also equip any weapon they want on their front or back bars. In fact, you can mix and match heavy with light with medium armor. Most people usually run something like 2 heavy, 3 medium, 2 light for PVP, and usually something like 5 light 2 medium or 7 medium etc for PVE. It's actually pretty awesome, it enables some of the best theory crafting in the genre when it comes to build diversity, something that GW2 is just shy of achieving. 

[Duke Nukem.6783]

getting rid of them would be good. i might play more often because i would have an incentive to get more skin unlocks

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Duke Nukem.6783 said:

getting rid of them would be good. i might play more often because i would have an incentive to get more skin unlocks

Skin unlocks would be an incentive for you (not sure why now they're not), but the possibility of getting more charges through gameplay somehow isn't?

7 hours ago, Lucy.3728 said:

Just image how that would boost gear skin selling.

tbh, I doubt that.

[lezbefriends.7516]

But it would give players less reason to wear outfits! /s

[babana.7521]

On 2/15/2023 at 3:02 AM, Gibson.4036 said:

Without vertical progression, we know one of the major endgames for GW2 is Fashion Wars(tm). Over the years we've built up an impressive array of skins, to the point that you can race in raciing gear, visit the Shiverpeaks in fur-lined warmth, and swim in a chainmail bikini (yeah, the one thing we don't have is actual swimwear, smh).

Transmutation charges are clunky, largely penalizing new players and rpers, because veterans are more likely to have settled into looks and acquired a hoard of the things. But even veterans like myself would burn through our stack if we took fashion wars to the limit and changed looks each time we entered a new biome or jumped into one of the many... many... many festivals.

Now, with the new ability to randomize armor choices, we have the perfect time to do away with transmutation charges altogether. It'd be great to cut us free to frequently roll the dice on all those wonderful skins we've collected over the years without counting down the number of charges we've got stored.

So how about it, ArenaNet? Unleash the fashion!

Get Legendary Armor.