How have insignias made anything easier?

Yes you can. It is a nice feature.

I explained why they did this in another thread, or my deduction as to why. The answer is ease of updates and armor creation from now on.

In factions they would have to create in the database an armor merchant with every single variety on them per skin that was being sold. In nightfall they just put the skins on whatever armor merchant they want and add in a new insignia to the database. Much easier and faster and more flexible.

However the problem as others stated is lack of availability making Elonians at a disadvantage compared to their factions / prophecies counterparts.

Gladiators, aka Radiant Insignias are almost impossible to find as they seem to be the most popular, leaving many many players high and dry.

There should have been an insignia merchant by the armor crafters with a standard set of all the insignias, then monster drops should have had insignias with some small added bonus for incentive to go after them.

Do insignia's of various types stack? If so, then there's you advantage right there, you can carry essentially a different type of armor in one slot.

Oh, I'm definitely aware of that. The problem is I don't like the clutter of keeping it open all the time when I'm in town. I have it aligned all the way to the right of the UI, right below the radar and above the party window, and even then, it gets in the way, especially when I'm heading to various vendors. With how some cities are designed, particularly in Cantha, anywhere you have any persistent windows will obstruct a half-dozen different NPCs/vendors or so.

No, no they don't.

EDIT: that being said seeing them stack to 5 would be spiffy

I really like the idea of insignias, but its a huge problem if your one of these players like me who likes to GvG with a pve (yeah i wanna look good not like a PvP drone) then getting the insignias you need is a real problem.

The main cause is the drops system for the insignias its just far to little, let me explain, ok if your a pve player you have 3 characters each character so you would like 5+ insiginas for each one, ok now each one has hero's, say you finish the game with all 3 so you now have 10 hero's that need insignias as well, so to get it all fully kitted out you will need 165 insignias, if you multiply that by the ammout of players playing GW the number of insignias is quite crazy.

Anet could have implemented a collector/exchange system or something, cos currently there is a new GW game in town its called click the rune trader.

If this was true, then why do they want to treat insignia the same as runes?

I mean, why not just have an insignia crafter that could craft you whatever insignia that you want? It would still have all the advantages that you mentioned but none of the "messing with the economics" disadvantage.

Maybe Anet didn't think this through?

Insignias should be able to replace the old inherent mods on armor. At first I thought "WHOOT! I CAN SWAP MY FOW ARMOR'S STATS AROUND WITHOUT SPENDING 1000k!!!". Then I was crushed...

They should really stack to at least 5, what is up with Anet not giving us more storage and giving us a boatload of new stuff, and breaking dye stacking? If they start selling additional storage space for real money in the online store (without fixing the dye, or making insignias stack to 5, etc) I will know that NCsoft has dominated Anet completely, and that will be a sad day indeed.

I personally think if they made Insignias stack, new armors from Tyria and Cantha have insignia slots, and an NPC in the FoW to exchange Obsidian armor for Obsidian armor with Insignia slots, then most people with many armor types would be able to reduce it to their favorite skin and a handful of types of insignias and be covered for almost every build...

Now, if they did all that and THEN started selling storage space, more power to them...

*** Edit : Do insignias, when added to an armor that already has an insignia, overwrite the old insignia or do you keep the other insignia?***

so my fow armor is now obsolete as i cant put any insignias on it at all.

gg anet

I see a new weekend coming: Double Insignia Drop Weekend!

wooow lol

Um, dude, fow armor has always been obsolete.

No it hasn't, it always had the same stats as anything else.

Now you are stuck with a new +1e bonus on a legacy armor headpiece, that can't be replaced with an insignia.

Except only Warrior, Sin, and Rt FoW had a headgear.

Let's not morph this thread into an Obsidian Flame War (I assume that you only hate it because you can't afford it, but I'll excuse myself from the conversation now). let's keep this to an "Insignias are awesome vs. they suck" flame war.

You missed how I was busting his balls and making a point all at the same time. Fow armor has always been obsolete because it has no underlying value in the first place. It's 15k armor that has an ecto cost of a few generations of children. It's flashy, nothing more. Your mistake was expecting it to maintain its value over time, when in fact that would never be the case. You say it's obsolete now, but you're missing that it was obsolete long before Nightfall had beta tests. You paid a stupidly large amount of gold for an armor specifically designed to look flashy. You weren't buying it for the stats, so how can you say it's now obsolete because of the stats?

Simply, you can't. You weren't buying fow armor for the use. You were buying it for the look.

Hahaha, Priest, you're cute. No, I just find it amusing that people are screaming bloody murder because they blew 300k on armor that was never, ever going to have a persistent effectiveness due to the precise reasons why it's in the game.

Now if he were to talk about Drok's armor being obsolete, he'd have a point, though I think "obsolete" is even too strong a word here.

Insigs...Hmm...

I dont think they helped the game at all lol.

Someone said "But I can change armor mods when I want!"

As if...When have I ever thought "Hmm...I'm using this build, or fighting in this area...better change armor mods!" ...Never... Most classes only have 1-2 types of armor they'd even consider using anyway.

Even if you could say that you do...Buying new insignas for your armor everytime you want to change your build will quickly add up to a higher cost than just investing in another set of armor with those stats.

Right now its even worse because the only decent armor insignas have to be bought from humans at jacked up prices. The trader is only consistently carrying crap armor noone would ever use.

Actually, I have like 30 different peice of armor on my warrior, for different enemies and builds. I set things up like this:

1 set of armor with X bonus with a +1 strenght or tactics helm, and no superior runes, all major. I always place axe or sword on boots, strength on helm, and tactics on gloves. If I need a build with x armor bonus, and +4 sword, then all I need to do is swap out a +4 helm, and replace my boots with +2 instead of +2 weapon rune. This way, I can basicallly have any superiour rune I need, and only have to change 2 peice of armor. However, doing this for my Knights, Dreadnoughts, sentinals, and gladiators sets takes up a lot of space.

IF insignias worked the way they should, I could reduce the need for armor space by at leas 200%.

But they suck ass, so they are no use to me what so ever.

OK I have 10 PvE characters, one for each profession

10 PvE Characters with 15 heroes each x 5 armour pieces

= WTB 800 Radiant Insignias!!!!

And how many at the rune trader? 0

Not to mention 150 Vigor Runes
30 Healing and 30 Divine Favour
etc

Armour should come with an insignia built in, that you can overwrite if you want to - this should be retrospectivly added to all armour in the game.

Idealy hero armour should also have build in insignia, cos I can't remotely afford any while I'm trying to buy them runes!

Oh and yes I want to play all my PvE characters and want to get all the heroes with all of them to have flexibility.

I'm not sure enough insignias would drop if every single piece of armour that dropped had an insignia.

I love it when people come up with some asinine excuse for anet and think they just closed the entire debate...

You really think they re-wrote all the armor bonuses, made graphics for all the insignias, updated the entire system to incorperate insignias, just to save themselves 5-10 minutes when they set up an armor trader?

Yea, GTFO. The point was to give pver's the flexability pvpers got with the update. They failed.

I think the insignias are an awesome addition to the game. However, I very much hate how we have to buy insignias and runes for our heroes. This should be only for our characters. After all, the heroes take their share of the loot, they should pay for their own upgrades.

We should get a selection menu for the heroes armor that looks similar to the PvP character setup. We can already give them any skills we have unlocked, why not just carry that over to armor selection (and hell, items, too), giving us anything we have unlocked.

I just don't get why they didn't do that. It would be 10x better.

Imo they sould convert all the old armors to the insignia system, it's so unfair with the old players who like bought some fow in the old days & later they made new armor mods & ppl can't change those armors...

No idea why Anet didn't put them on a merchant or crafter of some sort. My guess would be to add more stuff to the economy. That being said my suggestion (and other peoples too), to have insignias that were slightly better then the "Standard Armor function" ones would do just that and let people at least get armor of equil quality as available in other campagins.

The ease for Anet comes in how little they will have to do to add new armors into the game.

Totally agree. This would still stimulate the economy and take money out of the game as people went back to buy that Tyrian armor and add different insignias on to it etc...

Having worked in a few game companies you would be suprised the amount of time spent going through databases and code for things. Everything you can do to streamline your updating is very needed.

PvP armor could have been done the same way it always was at the screen with an additional window for insignias just like runes. All they did was added a nice ingame version of that screen.

So perhaps you should GTFO if you don't know what you're talking about.

As much as I love nightfall (I really think it's superb, bugged but superb) I think the team who worked on armour were smoking some serious high grade drugs during development.

The designs are wacko (Necro haddock of death anyone?) to the point of being laughable and the insignia idea makes upgrading armour a nightmare.

Lay off the crack guys, it's affecting your work. o_O

This whole insignia thing is really a botched oppotunity. Ignoring the supply issues right now, if Anet had made them stackable and made it so you can't lose your own armor when salvaging it would have gone a long, long way for solving a lot of storage issues for folks. One base set of armor, and one storage slot for each other armor bonus you might want to change too. As it is now you have all the shortcomings of the old system with the added frustration of getting the insignias.

One of the main problems with insignias is they are not compatible with C1/C2 armor. Luckily for me, I only have to re-craft a headpiece, but for others I'm sure it's a much more expensive process.

ok I admit, I only read the first page, but here is my view on it.

From what I can see, for PvP this is great (look cool with what bonuses you want, much like the runes you can choose). PvE its pointless. We basically already had this exact same system in Factions; you choose the look by going to the armourer that you want, then choose the piece of armour with what bonus you already want.

So lets see. Possible benefits. You can swap around sets of armour more easily (providing the armour doesn't break). Well yes, this is true, but you could anyway. Previously you may have, say, 5 pieces of Druids armour and 5 pieces of Frostbound. That's 10 slots taken up; 5 on your character and 5 in storage/inventory. Now you have one set of armour with 5 Frostbound Insignia's and 5 Druid Insignias... that makes 10 slots still. So no storage saved.

If you salvage to get an insignia from your armour, I'm assuming you can only choose that or your rune (or does the rune stay there?) I've not done this yet (not even applied an insignia). If you have to choose, this is an added cost. If it stays there (providing armour doesn't break), well then fair play. But people will still want different armour sets for different runes.

And the main reason I can think of: equality. Previously, its always been about equipment not being important. It still is that way, of course it is. But if Insignias rely on drops and being sold on, either to the trader or direct to a player, some will be expensive, others won't be. We can see this with runes. Not only this, but we already get snobs who won't let you in the group unless you have x armour with x runes, x attributes and x weapon; this will only get worse if you don't have the correct (or any) insignias. Plus those who go for looks over anything will again be penalised (Necro who prefers Canthan armour gets bonus for 'free', Necro who prefers Elite Sunspear has to pay to add it on/grind to find it) Plus this has always been touted as a casual game...

Those are just my thoughts for now; so far Anet have been pretty smart in what they do. Runes generally arent too hard to come by, so I'm assuming Insignias won't be either, especially with these double drop weekends they keep putting up. Perhaps they'll later add a separate Insignia trader, or offer them at the Armourer, or maybe it'll all work out. We'll just wait and see.

So yesterday I was dicking around with my Mesmer, turned her into a Mesmer monk so i could try doing a total Signet build. The reason? I came up with this Artificers Insignia which hands over 3 armor per Signet or some such nonsense. I was like cool first insignia, I have 40 hours already logged in but this is sweet maybe its worth it. So I go and attach it to my 15k Enchtress chest piece, the piece with my superior vigor rune.... and poof my vigor rune disappeared. Needless to say I am about ready to kill someone or something. If this is how insignias are going to work screw it I'll take my superiors and go back to prophecies and cantha. I don't need the hassle of this crazy ass nightfall system.

/endrant

As a minor notice, the whole One look multiple stats thing was already in FoW armor before factions came out. Remember all those people wondering when they would change the skins of some of the FoW armor because they were all the same?

//

QFT

http://support.plaync.com/cgi-bin/pl...p_new_search=1

Drok's armor has been obsolete for a while now, actually, since Factions max armor can have any stat on any skin and NF armor is more flexible still...

as of right now the insignias thing is a screw up, perhaps it will get better in the next few weeks when insignias saturate the market...

does anyone know if you can apply a new insignia onto the armour to replace the one already on there without having to pull it off? if so then the cost of changing your armour stats is just the cost of the insignia (assuming they sell at some point) and is probably just a small charge considering the benefit. That way you can carry one piece of armour and change the stats at one point if you try a new build or something.. cheaper than Tyria or Cantha. remember, Cantha costs just as much as Tyria if you decide on different stats. If you have to rip the insignias off before applying a new one, well that kinda sucks. You don't have to pull runes off before a enw one so I'd think insignias are the same.

if insignias apply the same as runes (don't have to pull a previous one off to apply a new one) then Elona armour is much cheaper than either of the two.

I personally insignias, the way you got armor in factions was MUCH better, this is just anoying.

But it's a valid point about Drok's armor because you buy Drok's armor for the stats. Well, the smart players do, anyway. The ones who buy certain armor just for the look alone trip into that fow trap.

No, I think you have it a bit backwards. Those who buy it for bragging rights and "leet-ness" fall into the FoW trap. Those who buy it just for the look are a different crew entirely.

I would like to point out that currently the insignias are beginning to saturate the market in many instances. At this rate, all of them will be available by the end of next week for less than 200 gold apiece and this issue will be dead.

I would recommend however that in the future ArenaNet give the traders a larger number of insignias to begin with so that the initial demand is better satisfied.