How have insignias made anything easier?

I'm editing this to more clearly outline the problems with insignias and why they have served absolutely no benefiet to any player who wants to buy pve armor. In fact, all they have done is complicate the process of buying armor, if only slightly. My orignial post was more of a rant, but I'll leave it anyways, at the bottom, for reference purposes I guess. I am actually attempting to make this post constructive rather than an outlet for my distaste and annoyance with the system, and maybe to shut up the cheerleaders waving their "GO ANET" palm palms around here.

Taken from Guildwars.com, the official website for the game, under the updates sections for the 10/25 update. (and I'm not trying to nit-pick here, rather I'm just trying to validate my points by directly citing them.)

We are not talking about pvp armor here, so disregard that for a second. Here is what anet thinks is good about the system that should affect pve.

Oh-my-gawd. You mean we can have different peices of armor, that not only look different, but give differnet bonuses?? Oh wait, this was possible and commonly done since prophecies. So, insignias haven't really changed anything in that aspect...

Now, what we could benefit from here, is updating old armor we bought way back when, that we really like the appearence of, but want to change the armor bonus. Now THAT would be useful, would it not? Woot go insignias!!!
o... You can't use insignias on any armor crafted in cantha, tyria, or the fissure of woe. Ok then, well at least insignias will revolutionize the way we use our new armor and all the armor we will craft in the future, right? Let us not look back upon the failures of the past, but rather foward, to a bring new future. Well, the problem lies in the following statement which is very misleading.
Sure, insignias are swappable, you can swap them all over the place, if you don't mind destroying your armor 40% of the time. Unless you don't mind replacing that 15K chest peice to grab that radiant insigia, then they are NOT swappable, and might as well remain fixed components of the armor.




So, this takes us back to square one. We can't change old armor, and we can't freely change the armor bonus of new armor with destroying parts of it.
Actually, I'm wrong. This takes us back FARTHER than step 1, because we now have to, in addition to buying the armor, buy the insignias which are conviently part of a supply and demand market. Lovely! Well all know that highly prized runes/mods/upgrades in a supply/demand market are dirt cheap right?

So, what are the advantages of insignias again?



Ok, enough sarcasm and dissent. Here is what needs to be done if pve wants to see any benefiet from this system.

1) Update armor to have a 0% chance of breaking when salvaging components from it. It's customized, you paid for it, it doesn't effect the economy, there is no valid arguement against this. Period.

2) Update system to encompass old armor from C1 and C2. Find a way to make it so you have to buy nightfall to do it if thats so important to anet, I don't care... but it's simply ridiculous to split the game in half like this where there are completely different systems of armor depending upon when you bought the game. We need some form of consistancy here.

3) Creat a crafter that will create any insignia compitable with your profession, AT A FIXED PRICE. Again, there is no valid arguement against this. These bonuses used to be FREE, don't give me your crack-pot economic theories about how the game will explode.

Either fix the system, or scap it. It was fine in faction, but if you want to try and improve upon perfection, try not to actually make things worse, ok Anet?


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Original rant

Yeah, I agree. It took me a while to realize that there no longer is ANY armor with innate mods. It's all just blank and you gotta fill in them yourself. Why?

Factions did it as it should have been, and should still be.
For my Elonian Necromancer I just went to Kaineng to buy armor.
For my Paragon, different deal altogether. The armor is blank.
It has nothing to it. I have to go scour the valleys and fields or the rune trader, if it actually had any useful insignias than just +15 AL vs Cold damage for Ranger armor.
So far it seems most people will be forced to wear downgraded armor that costs still the same as the previous Chapters' armors.
Only the lucky and rich will be able to buy insignias they want.
I just hope that won't come true, I don't want to see some monk insignias cost 12k at the trader like their runes used to. Not to mention the runes of attunement and such.

All in all, this whole insignia business sounds like Socketing in Diablo2 and soon to come The Burning Crusade, a grind in essence.

How to improve:
A. Either offer Factions type of armor deals at the crafter.
B. Either increase the drop rate of Insignias and why not all runes while at it to lower their prices, they shouldn't be luxury items in my opinion.
C. Either give the players an Insignia trader so they can at least not have to clickety click and scroll the rune trader who is so full of stuff already with no way to sort the browsing.

Runes are cheap as hell already; look at the attunements and the reduction runes. They're brand new and they already sell to the trader for about 150g. I imagine that the prices for insignias should go down substantially after a while.

This appears to be the new way of Guild Wars. Its the same with the bonus to your salvage ability with treasure hunter / wisdom titles. I would certianly say that 21% better salvaging is a real advantage, even debatable on wether its an advantage over players. I certainly don't have the 6,000,000g to spend on keys to get there, nor would many casual players. As with that and the armor upgrades, advantages are now given to those who spend hours grinding for them.

Just give it a while, I'm sure you'll get used to it.

Eventually the traders will have them so masses can buy from, until then, catch me in the realm of Oblivion if you can muhahahha

its not the price that is the problem it is that they are never in stock. i honestly think that the armor system in factions was much better but i guess i will just have to wait and see how this pans out.

I must agree the insignia thing is one crazy arsed mess. The way they had it in faction was the perfect solution any style any stats one stop shop for all your armor needs. Only the lucky ones in Elona will have porper armor for months the rest will have no stats besides the base that comes with the armor.
STUPID, STUPID STUPID ANET

*sigh* Just wait a week people, the rune trader will be flooded with cheap insignias. Heck even most of the core class runes are all sold out at the minute, simply because so many people are creating new sets of armour. In time, the dust will settle, the economy will stabalise, and people will realise the insignia system is a boon. It allows flexibility of armour within each set. If you decide you don't want your +HP set, simple, buy a new set of insignias and overwrite the old ones.

Now all we need is an inscriptions and weapon mod trader, and we're set!

insignias should be sold by armorers so you can actually build armor you want like previous chapters. But if they aren't going to upgrade the old tyrian skins to accept insignias (which is what people wanted to change the stats of) then the Factions system is better. Insignia removal and replacement should not risk the armor either or else we will still need multiple sets in order to reliably change setups for different builds.

Oh noes! Only those who planned ahead and bought minor runes before nightfall came out have them! H4xors! In case you haven't noticed, right now is a BAD TIME to judge the effectiveness of insignias, since minor vigor is over 1k, and you can't get a useful minor rune to save your life. That's absolutely ridiculous. Settle down, and wait for a while before you say OMFG TEH SUCK.

Another, Anet is stupid, what were they thinking thread.

The game is not even a week old.
It will take some time for inventory to build and then there will not be an issue.
After sitting in your chair and playing for 70 of the possible 72 hours and complaining that there is not enough of this or that, get some sleep take a shower and relax.
Remember, you are in the minority, once the majority of the community catches up, there will not be any supply issues.
Patience is a virtue.

Yeah, insignia on armor is one of the worst things yet done in Guild Wars. There are 10 classes in the game now. And lots of permutations for each class. How is one supposed to unlock these for use, let alone try to collect a set to use on their armor when they buy it?

Moreso since there isn't an insignia trader.

What was so terribly wrong with the way it worked in Factions? That worked really well.

All weekend and I saw one insignia drop, for a wildly different job. None of my friends playing saw any drop.

As if armor weren't already expensive enough (on top of skills), especially since so many of the rare materials in the game can't be crafted but only rarely salvage or drop. I wish they'd stop making the game cater to the people who farm their lives away andor buy gold.

Rune’s and insignia are two different things who cares if anyone bought minor runes before nightfall they still are abundant supply other then the few new runes. I like the new armor options but I really dislike they way they implemented it. Dervish and Pargons are at a disadvantage when it comes to armor, for energy they need Rune of attunements or Radiant insignia. So I have to agree the with others even though I like the armor options to add what mods I want, but as is stand they didn’t stock insignia’s so it sucks

This insignia stuff for armor is terrible. Factions armor team had it right. Different collectors and armorers with every armor bonus for each look of armor.

I agree that factions had the better idea providing the same designs with different mods, but I don't think the Nightfalls one is really that bad, maybe because I easily found two Survivor Mods for my armor (I am certain that using a Superior Identifying kit gives you better results). woo! lol but really...time will definitely increase the insignias and people will learn to live with it.

I think the idea of insignias is really good, but the problem comes with having blank armor at the crafters. I think the crafters should continue to give "built-in" stats that can be over written with other insignias later on.

Personally, I like this because if I find a better way to play a class, I don't have to spend 1500p to re-craft the piece with different effects. I can just buy/salvage the insignia now. Even better for 15k gear.

So yeah, I'm gonna fall into the category of "Good idea, implemented poorly"

Oh, and kinda off-topic: I don't know if I like how all new gear comes gray. It's kind of depressing to see an "ocean of gray" in each city early in the game. Nobody wants to waste dye on gear that's not a 1,500p set. At least, I know I don't and that seems to be the majority of players' positions based on my observations this weekend.

I don't get why everyone is complaining about armor prices... Unless you're going for the 15k armor (which is meant to be a gold sink), you shouldn't have any problems upgrading your armor whenever the next best set becomes available.

I will agree wholeheartedly with the insignia complaint. Although I do think that it's a nift feature, it has it's down points. Especially when you put both a rune and an insignia into an armor piece, then want to take them back out to put them into another piece with better armor. Unless you're lucky, you'll only get one of the two mods. With the Factions system, you only have to worry about your rune since the insignia stats are part of the base armor stats.

We'll just have to wait and see how things pan out once the arms race is over.

Waaaaaaah! I have to work for everything now... Waaaaah! My armor isn't pre-equiped! Waaaaah! I have to go farm! Waaaaaah! I can't farm solo anymore against trolls Waaaaaah! AI.....

Seriously people, just adjust. It's a game. It would be seriously boring as shit if they kept everything the same always. Change is what makes a game like this keep going on for a long time. If you can't handle that, then find another game to play. If you like consistancy go play CS or some FPS like that, don't waste your time on some RPG that is gong to be always changing. Adapt, grown learn. and stop whining, it does no good and your whining won't change anything.

On the actual topic, all the new stuff is common. As others have said wait a week ro 2 and it'll all be there. It's just like when Runes ran out when Factions first came out or when Steel and stuff ran out for awhile.. a week or two later and all was back to normal.. and all the bitching was wasted.

"The irony of the human mind is that it hates change but loves variety." - Maarten Laene

Yeah, that is why no one plays those non-inherent game part changing games like World of Warcraft.

No. A competent GM team that works with and for the players keeps a game like this going for a long time.

Thanks for proving my point idiot.

Or every other RPG ever made.

I'm not particularly rich but I've had no trouble buying insignias. I bought one for my A/Wa the other day. Only $260g. I am having a hard time finding Necro insignias. As for the new runes...I bought one and then I went into a mission(Sanctum Cay) and got another one!! I expect that sometime soon I will get an insignia drop too. I wonder if you can apply the insignia to armor that has the same stats. Example, I have a MM tunic. Could I apply the MM insignia and if so would it stack?

I don't think that it will be a problem eventually. RIght now is a bad time to try and draw conclusions about the way insignias are going to work, because EVERYONE needs them for heros in Elona, and for any characters with Elonan armor.

Me? I'm keeping my Factions armors for any character that can get them. I'd rather carry a few extra pieces than have to constantly re-buy insignias to overwrite the old ones. I got used to carrying around 2 sets of armor per character, and making do with what I had available. It's not absolute flexibility, but with one set of +armor and one set of +energy, most PvE is doable. And now that switching armors is disabled in PvE, you don't NEED to carry multiple sets for every possible situation.

Anyway, give it a few weeks to stabilize. I think it will wind up a bit more expensive than the factions armors, but you could always just buy one set of insignias and learn to work around their shortcomings.

Personally, I love the idea that I can craft a set of elonian 15k armor that I can respec without crafting a new set of armor.

The market for the new runes and insignias just hasn't been flooded yet. After a few weeks, supply will far outstrip the demand, and you'll be able to get all of the insignias you need.

With Insignias you can now change the bonus of your armor without having to craft new pieces of armor. That's definitely an advantage for expensive armor.
Although it would be nice if all Elonian armor would come with a +Energy bonus by default.

Now you see, you say that! But up here around Inverness they have felt the need to put speed cameras up. Now I don't speed...yet them being there is an annoyance...so I complain about it. Change is not always good. Also it is not necessary to do anything other than play through the game to get enough money for that 1k armor at the Sunspear Sanctuary...

Some people may like the new system...in fact I know a few that do, but I don't. I also don't like the choice of NF armors for my Elonian monk...so, me and Miss Monk went on a great adventure to Cantha! In Cantha we paid a visit to a good friend in the Wajjun Bazaar who kitted us out with the latest Tryian attire with no hastle, no fuss...just straight up 'pick and choose what bonuses you want and get out of my face'.

GG Cantha, GG.

I dunno, maybe it will grow on me but at the moment that looks unlikely.

I don't know. It's just bothersome to see people complain about such pety little things. Sure you may have to ork a bit more but it is an RPG. You are role playing.. The whole point is, you can still take X Char to X region and get the pre-fitted armor, for other characters. Now for a Dervish,etc.. I'm sure you're stuck in Elonia buying the armor there, BUT that's part of THAT game. Sure Nightfallis an expansion of "Guild Wars" but it is also its own entity and has its own way of doing things, I think that's what people seem for forget on this armor issue. New characters, new way of doign thigns with them. It keeps it new and refreshed. You can still take your monk, your necro, warrior, etc.. and go buy their type of armor elsewhere, but if you want to play an Elonian based character, you should epect to do it the elonian way. For people who only have/bought nigthfall as their first, they don't know any differently, so it all balances out there too. If you have access to everywhere else though, then you have nothign to worry about. Sure you may have to take that char and run to the armor shops there, but hey you do have that option, and more than likely you'd end up there eventually anyway.

It'll be a perfectly fine system in a week or two when the trader finally starts selling them. Runes have the exact same problem right now. It'll get better soon. In fact, once the rune trader starts selling insignias, the system will definatly be better than the canthan system.

It is not the price it is the availability. You can NOT create the armor you want at all currently due to the insignias not being available. Not being able to salvage insignias out of your old armor is also a huge turn off for the new armors.

What is the incentive, outside of whatever look there is in Elonia, for buying blank armor when you can go to Kaening center and buy max armor with whatever mods you want right on it?

I buy energy armor for the most part for many of my characters and have only seen TWO energy armor insignia on the rune trader, one I was able to get. How does this let me make the elonian version of Gladiators? I need FOUR more and thats just for one character!

I would have rather seen an insignia merchant who sold these for 250g per insignia so I could make my armor for any level character, though even at 250g per that is going to exclude new players at lower levels from adding these to all parts of their armor as they would need 1,250 gold per armor and you are not guaranteed in getting all of your runes out of your armor, only one item is guaranteed.

Why was this not done in this manner?:

• Insignia Merchant for selling insignias at a reasonable cost or with scaling insignias for different AL's (up to 30 AL 25g, Up to 40 AL 100g, up to 50 AL 200g, max 500g or something!).
• Old armors able to be salvaged for their inherent mods, which were now turned into Insignias. These insignias would sell for 0 gold and be flagged slightly different. (Stalwart Insignia would be called something like Old Stalwart Insignia).
• Alternate idea from just being able to salvage them off an old world armor would be a craftsperson who can convert your old world armor to the new style insignia with the condition above, for a fee.

For that matter Inscriptions should have worked similar to the above, even if there was no merchant.

I find it disgusting that I can't add a sheild mod to any of the older shields whose look I like and that don't have any insignias on them, or that I can't extract what would have been an insignia off of them.

Old world items should have something like:

• Craftsperson who can Convert an Old weapon / item / sheild to the new system for a fee, letting you extract them. These could also have a slightly different tag on them and sell to merchants for 0 gold. "Don't Fear the Reaper" becomes "Don't Fear the Reaper (Used)".

The additional tag should not add much to the database at all and still keeps the clean armor/weapons/items/sheilds new way of doing things intact. This also lets people add stuff to a favored skin and with the new tag for a converted item, will stops people from scamming others or just extracting and selling to a merchant to make money.

This also keeps all of the old chapters up to date with the new way of doing things in Guild Wars.

Also, for those complaining about the price, you might want to note that the base armour is actually cheaper than previous chapters now. Sunspear, Elonian and Istani armour all costs 1k, as opposed to the 1.5k of droks. I'd imagine that once the economy settles, you will be able to buy most insignias for 500g or under. Thus eventually, I'd imagine armour will be cheaper, not more expensive.

The only reason I can see them for doing this is expediancy in creating a new chapter and ease of adding in new armor type of mods.

Tyria: Tons of armor stats bound to looks. Look good or Get the stats you feel you need.

Cantha: Armor look partially divorced from stats. Now there must be Many Armor merchants to get the armor you want. One look Per merchant with every variation in the database per armor stat. Look the way you want with the stat you want, more work for anet for adding armors.

Elonia: Stats divorced from armor totally. One merchant for armor look, then just add Insignia of your choice. Anet now only needs to add insignias to the game for added armors, not have to do a ton of armors per merchant per look. Look the way you want, fast creation for Anet and ease of new additions.

Example:

Tyrian City Armor Guy:
Warrior armor 1 - stat A.
Warrior armor 2 - stat B.
Warrior armor 3 - stat C.

A looks cool, B's stats are the best, no one really wears C but its ok looking.

Canthan City Armor Guy 1:
Warrior armor 1 - stat A.
Warrior armor 1 - stat B.
Warrior armor 1 - stat C.

Canthan City Armor Guy 2:
Warrior armor 2 - stat A.
Warrior armor 2 - stat B.
Warrior armor 2 - stat C.

Canthan City Armor Guy 3:
Warrior armor 3 - stat A.
Warrior armor 3 - stat B.
Warrior armor 3 - stat C.

Now you can look however but there are many armor merchants.

Elonian City Armor Guy:
Warrior armor 1
Warrior armor 2
Warrior armor 3

Elonian Ingame Inscriptions:
stat A.
stat B.
stat C.

Just add inscription for whatever stat you want. Stats are easy to add to now with less database entries.

EDIT:

Now Anet adds in 2 new armor types and for some reason adds them to all the chapters (Lucy you Tyria)

We now have...

Tyrian City Armor Guy:
Warrior armor 1 - stat A.
Warrior armor 2 - stat B.
Warrior armor 3 - stat C.
Warrior armor 4 - stat D.
Warrior armor 5 - stat E.

A looks cool, B's stats are the best, no one really wears C but its ok looking...E is the bomb but OMG its SO ugly. D has a super sweet look but the stat is barely ok.

Canthan City Armor Guy 1:
Warrior armor 1 - stat A.
Warrior armor 1 - stat B.
Warrior armor 1 - stat C.
Warrior armor 1 - stat D.
Warrior armor 1 - stat E.

Canthan City Armor Guy 2:
Warrior armor 2 - stat A.
Warrior armor 2 - stat B.
Warrior armor 2 - stat C.
Warrior armor 2 - stat D.
Warrior armor 2 - stat E.

Canthan City Armor Guy 3:
Warrior armor 3 - stat A.
Warrior armor 3 - stat B.
Warrior armor 3 - stat C.
Warrior armor 2 - stat D.
Warrior armor 2 - stat E.

Canthan City Armor Guy 4:
Warrior armor 4 - stat A.
Warrior armor 4 - stat B.
Warrior armor 4 - stat C.
Warrior armor 4 - stat D.
Warrior armor 4 - stat E.

Canthan City Armor Guy 5:
Warrior armor 5 - stat A.
Warrior armor 5 - stat B.
Warrior armor 5 - stat C.
Warrior armor 5 - stat D.
Warrior armor 5 - stat E.

Now you can look however but there are many armor merchants...look how much had to be added for the new armors. lots of work.

Elonian City Armor Guy:
Warrior armor 1
Warrior armor 2
Warrior armor 3
Warrior armor 4
Warrior armor 5

Elonian Ingame Inscriptions:
stat A.
stat B.
stat C.
stat D.
stat E.

Just add inscription for whatever stat you want. Stats are easy to add to now with less database entries....2 new inscriptions added to database, 2 new looks dumped on one merchant and, we're done!

My elite armor was still 15k & didn't come with insignias included. So its more expensive.

insignias are the most stupid idea ever...

can someone explain the advantage of those?

Would you have a problem with the system if this wasn't the case? What if the trader did have the insgnias that you wanted?

Patience!

Presumably they did it because people complained about having so many different armor sets, predictably, they took a bad situation and made it even worse.

The insignias system is ok, but not adding insignias npc traders with HUGE stocks is just stupid.
Thought it was obvious to add some dedicated npc's...

What I choose to do in my free time has NOTHING to do with you!

IMO the best system would be for all three continents to have Canthan-style armorers where you can choose your skin and your mod, and instead of inherent mods all armors would have insignias that you can salvage and replace.

Having three different systems just makes things needlessly confusing. And I hate how so many nice Tyrian skins go unused because they are tied to lousy mods. When I first read the game update I was really psyched because I thought I could now start wearing some of my favorite Tyrian armors. But no.

If they had been on a merchant from the get go, as I suggested above, not at all. They aren't and so I do :P

Now Anet could have made some dropped insignias slightly better then the standard armor ones to add variety and people would still have been able to create new armor with the same stats as their old armor, then upgrade to the new later.

Like they could add small mods to existing drops if they had a merchant for standard insignias.

Standard Insignia on Merchant: Hearty +15 health chest, +10 legs, +5 other.
Dropped Insignia Version: Hearty +15 health chest, +10 legs, +5 other. -1 damage.

or
Dropped Insignia Version: Hearty +17 health chest, +13 legs, +7 other. etc..

anything small to make the dropped versions stand out a tad, yet not overpower them compared to the standard ones.

I too would like to see all the old armors redone to the new style, with an insignia merchant.