16 replies to this topic

[Captain Bulldozer]

Simple question, as stated in the topic:  Should gear bought with karma be salvagable?  Why or why not?  How would this affect the trading market, etc.  Discuss.



My two cents:  At present those who are choosing not to pursue a legendary don't have much need for massive amounts of Karma, yet have limited worthwhile options to spend it on (exotic armor from Orr temples, cooking materials, items needed for legendary weapons and other random junk).  However, obtaining high amounts of karma is fairly easy, even for casual players.

At the high end, the karma cost is sufficient in my opinion to prevent the T.P. from being swamped with things like Superior runes, ectos from salvaging, etc. but am not sure about the low level junk.  I do think that having to simply destroy something that cost 42000 karma rather than salvage it for a little bit of cash is kinda stupid, but maybe I'm missing an important point here.  It would be nice if there were more worthwhile items to buy with karma (crafting mats would be nice, though would certainly affect the market)

[azurrei]

simple answer: no

simple question: should a significant increase in variety and scope of exotic karma gear be available?

simple answer: yes

[Craywulf]

Karma gear is deliberately unsalvageable because Karma itself is not a tradeable currency. If Karma gear were to be salvageable then players would exploit it as way of bypassing the trade embargo of Karma.

[matsif]

I vote yes, as since I've gotten almost all the clovers I need for a legendary and already have gift of mastery, I really have nothing else to spend karma on (7 alts at 80 all geared in exotics already, mainly from dungeons), and still have like 400k left over between those characters and my other character at level 43 with absolutely nothing to spend karma on outside of ori picks.  

will it ever happen?  probably not.  does karma need more markets for use?  definitely yes.  Not sure what other uses it could have, but it needs more uses as outside of a few niche things (some karma armor skins from hearts otherwise unobtainable, exotic karma armor, obby shards, etc.).

[Bonana]

matsif, on 24 January 2013 - 05:06 AM, said:

I vote yes, as since I've gotten almost all the clovers I need for a legendary and already have gift of mastery, I really have nothing else to spend karma on (7 alts at 80 all geared in exotics already, mainly from dungeons), and still have like 400k left over between those characters and my other character at level 43 with absolutely nothing to spend karma on outside of ori picks.  

will it ever happen?  probably not.  does karma need more markets for use?  definitely yes.  Not sure what other uses it could have, but it needs more uses as outside of a few niche things (some karma armor skins from hearts otherwise unobtainable, exotic karma armor, obby shards, etc.)

1)save karma
2)make another legendary
3)sell in tp
4)profit!??!??!??!

[Ritualist]

The fact that you have nothing to spend karma on is probably by design (well, one of the design ideas, at least) - by giving players karma the gold rewards given can be smaller, which means the game doesn't interfere with the idea of selling gold. Yet at the same time, giving karma to players means we are still being given a reward, despite the fact that we can't actually use it.
Also, it increases the grind.

Probably the same reason why also got a new currency with laurels.

Edited by Protoss, 24 January 2013 - 08:00 AM.

[Illein]

You can just buy yourself Exotic Weapons from WvW Vendors and throw them into the Forge for the chance of a precursor - or just receive any random exotic back in return that you can put on the auction house for 3-n gold a piece.

They're rather cheap as well, 34.000 Karma a pop if I remember correctly.

However, since ArenaNet said that they do NOT want Karma to be something you can profit of, you're probably best advised not to make excessive use of this. Don't say I didn't warn you if you get a temp suspension

[matsif]

Bonana, on 24 January 2013 - 05:14 AM, said:

1)save karma
2)make another legendary
3)sell in tp
4)profit!??!??!??!

if you're willing to give me the 1000g I need to finish my first, I'll get right on that.  With prices spiking across the board on what I need for the rest of my first legendary, why should I even think about a 2nd right now?

[Fizzypop]

Not so sure on salvaged, but I do believe we should be able to sell them back to vendor for $$.

[Humfly]

Yes it should be salvagable to be able to recover upgrades. I could live with it not recovering ecto and recovered material value would be trvial.

On a character recently equiped I deliberately avoided Karma armor because the runes I wanted to use cost as much as the armor. At least with crafted armor I can get half the value back should I want to switch to something else.

[Captain Bulldozer]

I think my biggest annoyance is that you can't recover upgrades from Karma gear, even if you apply the upgrade yourself.  Suppose for example that you bought Temple exotic armor for 42000 karma a piece and then replaced the runes on each to suit your needs.  You can no longer get those runes off, even though THEY were not purchased with karma... making karma gear an actual gold sink.  I find that silly and unnecessary.  At the very least I'd like to see us able to get upgrades from the gear, even if it can't be salvaged for materials.

[Illein]

Captain Bulldozer, on 31 January 2013 - 06:20 PM, said:

I think my biggest annoyance is that you can't recover upgrades from Karma gear, even if you apply the upgrade yourself.  Suppose for example that you bought Temple exotic armor for 42000 karma a piece and then replaced the runes on each to suit your needs.  You can no longer get those runes off, even though THEY were not purchased with karma... making karma gear an actual gold sink.  I find that silly and unnecessary.  At the very least I'd like to see us able to get upgrades from the gear, even if it can't be salvaged for materials.

Something to try: You might be able to transmute that rune onto another 80s item and salvage that then.

[MisterB]

Illein, on 31 January 2013 - 07:11 PM, said:

Something to try: You might be able to transmute that rune onto another 80s item and salvage that then.

Right, but buying the solution to the problem in the design is a poor workaround. I'd rather see ANet allow salvage from karma, and then bind upgrades on acquire. They could set material salvage to zero if that is a perceived problem.

[Jump_N_Move]

Its not a problem. It just drives you back to the gemstore for more transmute stones.

I think that the karma exotics should be able to be salvaged though honestly. With the Orrian jewel boxes karma is basically exchangable for gold, with crafting materials being an intermediate step. The rares and lower can be ignored, but dropping 42k in karma plus 1-5gold in runes on a piece and being unable to get any of that back is idiotic. Frankly its one of the reason I never bothered with karma armor.

Oh well chaulk it up to the #shitAnetdoesthatmakesyouWTF. Just like back pieces, why can't I salvage those? What suddenly makes them different from all other armor/accessory pieces. And exotics from Fractal chests being account bound, least those are salvageable.

[Falfyrel]

Allowing karma armor to be salvaged would be devastating to the ingame price of materials. While one could argue that it shouldn't matter, there are still a very large amount of materials that would be affected by this that are already at the very lowest price they can sell at on the TP.

If we could turn random blue karma armor in Orr into orichalcum I'd expect the price on those to plummet.

[Azure Skye]

can we throw them into the mystic toilet? o.O

[HawkofStorms]

Azure Skye, on 01 February 2013 - 04:39 AM, said:

can we throw them into the mystic toilet? o.O

Yes.
Which then gets you items that can be salvaged/sold.
Which is why the current system really makes very little sense.  You can still convert karma to money, just not as effectively when it was more direct.