57 replies to this topic

[GrandmaFunk]

turbo234, on 10 September 2012 - 04:34 PM, said:

That doesn't work, it automatically withdraws from the bank then.

Odd, Im pretty sure I was able to do this earlier, maybe it got patched out.

Transfer money to other characters then?

[chuckles79]

Actually I agree that WP should be based on the zone.  It should not cost much to go to Queensdale, but if you have someone waiting for the Shatterer to spawn, that should cost you a few silver instead of the flat rate.

[Ku Ku]

I have to say I don't agree that a waypoint is a convenience as that implies you can live without them, they're a way of travelling around the world. They are this games version of a mount and if you want to complete maps or have a game to play at level 80 you kind of need them!

I feel that workarounds like leaving money in a bank or travelling to the mists are just that - they are a workaround to a problem / a 'cheat' to avoid something that you cannot afford!

And yes I did do a search on waypoint costs and got 'no results found' so maybe my search function is broken, apologies for being a broken record!

I love the idea of the waypoint prices being slashed if you have completed the map as that adds another nice incentive to play and explore but not everyone enjoys that place style so I think the problem needs to be sorted out for every kind of player.

It is fair enough that it is more expensive to move around in a higher level area, after all you earn more gold by being there. However giving the waypoints in a low level area the same cost makes no sense - you won't be making enough gold in that area to equal it out! Travelling long distances also should be subject to a higher cost than just moving across a single map but they need to be capped in my opinion!

There are some incentives to play with low level friends other than companionship such as level-based drops and small experience gains and its been talked about how the devs want us to feel we can go and potter about with low level friends and still have fun. At the moment that mechanic is not working as well as it should because people are having to pay out a lot of money to go and help out lower leveled friends and that is not fun at all!

[Redhawk2007]

I agree absolutely. Waypoint costs are absurd and discourage people from traveling, and it is becoming a game-breaking element for many people that really doesn't need to be there. What's the point of having waypoints if they are too expensive to use regularly?

Waypoints should be free or low cost. At the very least they should be free within zones so people can easily bounce from even to event without it costing more than they get from the event.

[DarkWalker]

Yep, the costs of repairs and waypoints when doing any low level zone are prohibitive compared with the rewards. I'm not sure there is an easy way to fix repair costs when doing low level content, but the costs for travel should be based on the zone, not the player level.

I also agree that porting to any city should be free. Since players already can get to the cities for free anyway simply by going to the mists and taking the gate there, I don't see any harm in making city waypoints free no matter where the player is porting from.

[mikejr]

I too agree that waypoint costs are too high.

It's essentially a tax on time, supposedly something they were created to eliminate.  If you have a limited amount of time, it's highly likely you'll wp to a location and not be be able to cover the cost of travel in the time spent.  This is significantly compounded when travelling to lower level areas (for ore gathering, etc) to the end that you're better off using an alt.

You're better off using an alt in low level areas than your main.

Unless I misunderstand the premise of downlevelling, this is in direct conflict of the purpose of that system.  Want to play with your friend, roll an alt.

When does it matter?

This really starts to have an effect in the 50s - and to those that are keen to dismiss it out of hand it truly is becoming a game-breaking issue.  Unless you're extremely lucky with drops, you're going to be spending some silver on the AH every ten levels or so.  It is very easy to find yourself operating at under a single gold or less.

Suggestion: Reduce them by half to 2/3rds - or make them flat

With the current system you find yourself able to travel willy nilly as a new character, yet as time progresses you're forced to restrict your ability to travel - with great power comes... less travel?

Edited by mikejr, 10 September 2012 - 08:39 PM.

[Futabot]

I dunno', I actually like it when the game forces me to commit to an area out of avarice.

You make so much bank at 80 that it becomes trivial though.

[Neato]

By the way, just adding this in to emphasize since it keeps being mentioned...

Putting gold in your bank does not prevent waypoint costs. You gotta put it on another character, not just in bank. But as I said, you make money while out and about so you still end up having to pay in the end.

Futabot, on 10 September 2012 - 08:40 PM, said:

You make so much bank at 80 that it becomes trivial though.

No you really don't... Not to mention everything at 80 is ridiculously expensive.

[Brine]

I agree. Way too expensive right now at 80

[xarallei]

I do think wp costs are way too high, especially at higher levels. It would be great if Anet lowered them.

[Anathema123]

Yeah I'm honestly getting slightly annoyed by the cost of waypoints at the moment.

I haven't done my personal story at all. It's at lvl 26 and I've been lvl 80 for a while now.
I had too much fun exploring with friends to stop and do the personal story whenever I had the correct level for it.
Now I'd quite like to do it, but it will simply end up costing me too much money.

Same story with dungeons, btw. It costs me 6 silver to teleport to a dungeon and back to where I was. That 10 silver reward from AC suddenly doesn't look too great...

Repair costs are absolutely idiotic in WvW. It's also quite frustrating to have to pay if you die through no fault of your own. (Priest of Balthazar fear into AoE circle of insta-death anyone?)

[Aetou]

DarkWalker, on 10 September 2012 - 08:27 PM, said:

Yep, the costs of repairs and waypoints when doing any low level zone are prohibitive compared with the rewards. I'm not sure there is an easy way to fix repair costs when doing low level content, but the costs for travel should be based on the zone, not the player level.

Easy solution: rather than calculating the costs using your actual level they should always be calculated based on your effective level.  If you're in a L25 zone your armor costs the same to repair as if you were L25.  With waypoints the cost is based on whichever is higher out of your current effective level and the effective level you'll have at the destination.

[Aaren]

3 silver is nothing .

[Tavern]

Short distance travels for me are only around 1s50c

I travel around like crazy just to save time, yet I've gained 10 gold in the past few days.

Edited by Tavern, 11 September 2012 - 12:02 AM.

[Garnatian]

There are so many money sinks to make purchasing gems a more attractive option and then converting them to gold. I don't really play my Engineer much these days because it's simply to expensive. It's funny that I quite literally don't have the money to run content such as Explorable dungeons.

The money sinks in this game just have F2P written all over them. It's just too much.

Edited by Garnatian, 11 September 2012 - 12:17 AM.

[rukh]

Repair costs are a good gold sink because they punish failure.  Travel costs punish us for playing the parts of the game we feel like playing atm.  They hurt even more for playing old zones with low level buddies.  Mists -> LA -> Gate -> WP is an annoying solution that wastes my time.  Not all of us have fast computers

[God Of Fissures]

I feel exactly the way you do.

My recommendation to the developers is to make waypoint cost based solely on the linear distance between the origin and the destination.

Due to the fact that you make more money in higher-level areas, the developers can raise the price a tad as you gain levels.  As it is currently, however, high-level characters have to dish out way too much cash.

[Quietwulf]

Eh, we've been over this again and again.

Currency in the game needs to remain valuable.  If "required" services become too cheap, then we will see the value of gold drop, because it is easy to acquire.

That gold can then be used to purchase Gems.. thus removing potential sales from the Gem Store.

If gold was easy to come by, why would people trade gems for gold?
I think as the game matures, they'll take another look at costs.

But I think currency is suppose to remain scarce. It's the only way for virtual currency to retain it's value.
Look at Diablo 3 if you want an example of hyper inflation.

[rainede]

It's aggravating for me because every time I try to enter the mists, there's a queue and if I click to join the queue, then I get disconnected and sent back to the character select screen.

So much for a cheap and easy way to get - anywhere.

I don't do dungeons either - I dread the repair costs, I simply can't afford them. And I have to spend a good deal of time in lower level areas because it's the only way to farm rare crafting mats - can't afford to buy those either.

When you're high level in a game and the gold sinks are restricting your play that much (not playing with friends, unable to go to other areas, unable to do PvP because you can't afford it, etc.) something's very wrong with how it's all working.

[Quietwulf]

rainede, on 11 September 2012 - 02:03 AM, said:

When you're high level in a game and the gold sinks are restricting your play that much (not playing with friends, unable to go to other areas, unable to do PvP because you can't afford it, etc.) something's very wrong with how it's all working.

Can you login right now and tell me how much gold your character currently has?
Because I keep hearing "I can't afford it", but no one posts how much gold their characters actually have in the bank?

Actually, I wonder if they'll implement a timed cost metric.

For example, you get the first teleport for 50% of the normal cost.
If you teleport again within a certain time frame, that discount drops to 25%... for each time you use it, the cost goes up until you're paying full price.

That would address the "I want to go help my buddies out in low level zones" issue, but still allow the waypoints to draw money from the economy.

Edited by Quietwulf, 11 September 2012 - 04:05 AM.

[Ardeni]

The waypoint costs are indeed quite high even for a level 69 player such as myself. They've been high enough for me to avoid them ever since I was level 25 and thus I have more money than any of my friends at the moment even though I haven't been farming gold at all. Somebody might think that the high price is a problem, but it seems like a problem to me.

So, why is it a problem? Due to the high price, hardly any high level players even use the waypoints and thus the system is rather useless. Also, Arenanet's original message for dying was that it should not punish players other than giving them the feeling of being defeated. However, if you have to pay 5s for waypoints and repairs every time you die, it gets quite punishing. Not to even mention the 100k exp survivor on lower levels. I guess that I would be fine with having high prices on waypoints in high level maps, but having to pay 2s for getting from the Grove to Brisban Wildlands on my ranger (level 69) copared to the 20c it takes on my mesmer (level 20) is quite unacceptable.

[rainede]

Quietwulf, on 11 September 2012 - 04:02 AM, said:

Can you login right now and tell me how much gold your character currently has?

Yup - 1 gold, 13 silver.

[Danael]

Quietwulf, on 11 September 2012 - 04:02 AM, said:

Can you login right now and tell me how much gold your character currently has?
Because I keep hearing "I can't afford it", but no one posts how much gold their characters actually have in the bank?

3 Gold, 28 silver at level 61 in Harathi Hinterlands

[DarkWalker]

Aetou, on 10 September 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

Easy solution: rather than calculating the costs using your actual level they should always be calculated based on your effective level.  If you're in a L25 zone your armor costs the same to repair as if you were L25.  With waypoints the cost is based on whichever is higher out of your current effective level and the effective level you'll have at the destination.

Exploit: after getting damaged armor, travel to the starter zone, repair for a pittance, get back.
Another issue: repairs in WvW, where everyone is at effective level 80.

There could be ways around that, but I can't think of a simple way to solve this problem, and a complex one might not be desirable.

Example of a complex way to solve it: have the repair cost determined by where the player was when the armor got damaged. It would require storing not only the fact the armor was damaged, but which level of content the player was doing at the time, though, and might confuse the player with seemingly random repair costs.

[Tallenn]

Aetou, on 10 September 2012 - 11:56 PM, said:

Easy solution: rather than calculating the costs using your actual level they should always be calculated based on your effective level.  If you're in a L25 zone your armor costs the same to repair as if you were L25.  With waypoints the cost is based on whichever is higher out of your current effective level and the effective level you'll have at the destination.

I like this solution.

[GrrBabble]

I think they have done well with options. I cringe at WP costs myself. However, I also recognize their reasons. For several it makes sense, gold sink to keep money valuable, which helps economy health. Gem considerations for Arena Net monetary support. Keep fast travel accessible while not making it trivial.

People still playing in 6-8 months from now at level 80 are not going to care about ~5 silver for 10 WP's a day. If anything I bet they will have to find additional "reasonable" gold sinks. Or we are may have an Ecto economy - and I believe they want to avoid that to keep Gem sales healthy.

I don't know if simply lowering the cost of a WP is that simple to the rest of the game systems.

[RShara]

DarkWalker, on 11 September 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

Exploit: after getting damaged armor, travel to the starter zone, repair for a pittance, get back.
Another issue: repairs in WvW, where everyone is at effective level 80.

There could be ways around that, but I can't think of a simple way to solve this problem, and a complex one might not be desirable.

Example of a complex way to solve it: have the repair cost determined by where the player was when the armor got damaged. It would require storing not only the fact the armor was damaged, but which level of content the player was doing at the time, though, and might confuse the player with seemingly random repair costs.

I believe repair costs are tied to the level of your armor.  Thus, the higher level your armor is, the more expensive it is to repair, regardless of location.  Which actually is fine, I have no complaints about that (and I don't see very many people complaining that the repair costs are too high--just don't die like they said )

I like the idea of the wp costs tied to the level of the zone you're teleporting to.

[garrywong]

If your guildmate Ele went bankrupt because he paid 2-3 silver every death then he has done something very, very wrong. I am only lvl 30 and 2-3 silver is pennies for me right now. I'd have to die literally thousands of times before I went bankrupt with have around 45g between all my characters right now.