How have insignias made anything easier?

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.