How have insignias made anything easier?

Omega I'm not exactly sure what your pointing to in that link. I already sent a bug complaint in and gotten no word back from ANet about it. Then again they never get back to me on those kind of things so I'm not expecting much. But if someone in the community could tell me if the Insignias overwrite runes that would be nice.

Also whats the deal with the Vitae rune? it gives +10 health but thats less then the minor rune of Vigor.... does that mean the Vitae runes are stackable? (Not that i'd slap 5 vitae runes on when I can get away with a Superior Vigor rune and a butt load of minor runes to up my skills).

By this logic, everything other than 1.5k Drok's armor has "no underlying value", which is clearly false. The fact that people are willing to spend the time getting it and paying for it shows that it has value. It also has the same stats as any other armor, and therefore has the same utility value. To claim that flashy looking armor has "no underlying value" is simply absurd.

Sure, and so is 15k armor, 10k armor, 5k, armor, and basically everything other than baseline Droks armor. You seem to reserve your contempt for people with FoW armor (and no, I don't have any), while ignoring the fact that the difference between spending gobs of money on FoW flashy armor vs the also nice looking 15k/10k/5k armor sets, is only a difference of degree, not of principle.

While you might want to live in some idealized gameworld where everyone does the "right thing" and wears only the cheapest 1.5k Drok's, because it would be "stupid" to spend more money (whether 5k, 10k, 15k, or 150k) on armor that just looks cool, rest assured (and you can prove this to yourself by just taking a look around at the avatars in game), the rest of the players in the game do not live, or want to live, in that type of gameworld.

I don't see any claims from anyone in this thread that anyone expected it to maintain its value forever, as it's obvious that new stuff is always being added to the game.

This is an unsupported statement which happens to be false anyway. It was not obselete before Nightfall because it had the same stats as everything else. Also, people did buy it for the stats; stats that are the same as everything else. You would not see so many people wearing FoW armor if it had inferior stats to regular armor. Now that FoW (and other pre-NF armors) are inferior stat-wise (depending on how you want to configure your armor), they are obselete at the stat level. Whether they are obselete at the looks level to each successive type of armor that comes out in GW, is a subjective decision that FoW-wearers will have to make for themselves.

As for people saying you can just over-write insignias... That's fine if you use the cheap crap kind that is pretty much worthless anyways, but I guarnetee insignias like Radiant, Survivor, and especially warrior will not stay 200-300 ea... that is unless Anet puts a cap on the prices. Just look at popular minor runes... Even before the demand went up because of heros, Minor vigor was 1k ea and warrior minor tactics and strength were around 1k ea, and some other were as well. Minor runes are easy as hell to farm, but when there is a high demand, "saturation" isn't going to do shit.

Further, if people are constantly over-writing their own insignias, that is going to drive supply DOWN, and when supply is down and demand is constant, that means price goes up. Therefore, simply overwriting your insignias, is NOT a viable solution.

Seriously, you can't win here. Insignias are dumb and need to be re-thought.

I say bring back the Factions type armor so we have a choice of type of armor with the different looks, rather then have the insignias, and maybe raise the prices to Factions armor pricing.

Then for each char. give them a weapons and armor locker

You guy's aren't getting it.

Factions type armor:
15k Chest with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Legs with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Gloves with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Boots with +energy mod (15k +resources)
(60k + resources)

Then suddenly you go Ice Impin.
"Oh! I like my armor! BUT, my build requires cold damage protection. I better buy another set!"

15k Chest with ice mod (15k +resources)
15k Legs with ice mod (15k +resources)
15k Gloves with ice mod (15k +resources)
15k Boots with ice mod (15k +resources)
(60k + resources)

TOTAL(120k + resourcesx2)

Now with the Insignias:
15k Chest with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Legs with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Gloves with +energy mod (15k +resources)
15k Boots with +energy mod (15k +resources)
(60k + resources)

Then suddenly you go Ice Impin.
"Oh! I like my armor! BUT, my build requires cold damage protection. Lemme go switch that real quick."

WORST CASE SCENARIO (Insignias climb to 2000)
Ice mod (2k)
Ice mod (2k)
Ice mod (2k)
Ice mod (2k)
(8k)

TOTAL(68k + resouces)


Make sense now?

(When the economy blanances out, I expect the Insignias not to exceed 500 gold)

as long as they stay less than 15k+materials each then it's cheaper than crafting a new piece of 15k armour. I don't have 15k armour, so for me as long as it's cheaper than 1k+materials then I make out better than having to re-craft it. That is, of course, if I need to change it.

of course for a new set, then yes it may indeed cost more if you aren't planning on changing your stats. I guess the break-even price is 500gp for each insignia since previous armours were 1.5k instead of 1k. for the higher end armours, well, you're paying a premium for looks anyway.

the guy right above me hit it I think.. good job on the numbers. I think some people are just wanting either free or nothing at all. there's the middle ground you show (not free, but still cheaper). of course all this really only applies to 5/10/15k armour if the insignias go up in price. for it to be viable to 1k armour they need to stay down.

good display.

in other words, if the prized insignias are 900gp then you still save 100gp+materials over crafting a new piece of 1k (Elona) armour, and over 14k over a new piece of 15k Elona armour... you win, regardless... the old way would cost you the full price of the new armour. just because it's not free doesn't mean you can't get a good deal and save...

QFT
I just came to basically say that same thing and it was already posted.

I have to admit that I didnot get the insignia thing at first, I was like ok so they gave us upgrades for blank armors instead of getting the armor ready to go from the get go.

But to think of it, it makes things way better.
Armors with runes/insignias in them drop like crazy.
After a couple of weeks, the trader would have them all and they will be cheap.
I think its a great system for people with limited space or money that do not want to buy a set of armor for each condition.

Although that wont stop us from buying nice pretty new armor to strut our stuff in it

Its kind of weak that you can buy them in Cantha and Tyria yet you can't apply them to any armor made there. At least thats what GuildWiki said. I'm going to test it with collector armor and report back.

It is a very nice shrubbery- uh, I mean system, however, there is one small problem:

We are no long- no, no, it's that radiant insignias currently sell for upwards of 5k. This isn't good, as even for a person with just nightfall, to kit out all 4 characters + heroes with radiant insignia will cost them 1500k. taken to extreme levels - I have 22 characters*, as an example - 8,250,000g would be needed to kit out each of them with radiant insignia - an insane amount, I'm sure everyone will agree.

The current situation seems to be that class specific stocks of insignia are improving, but multi class stocks are still hard to come by. It will improve, I'm sure of it, but at the moment, it is unworkable, as displayed above. NOBODY has 8,250k, and even if they did, there's no way they'd spend it like that.

*1: I'm crazy, 2: Theres no way I can be bothered to take all of them through nightfall.

I look at the example above and who the hell is crazy enough to buy 15k armor for farming purposes... The only people who are going to buy sets of 15k armor for farming purposes are those who can and want to spend the money, after all 15k armor is ANets gold sink. There in if your insignias increase to 2k a piece then you go out and buy lets say 1.5k armor well you not only saved yourself a bit of cash on the first go but oh look you won't have to buy another set of 2k insignias when you decide that farming ice imps is boring. Come on people don't look at it from just one side when you through out your examples.

Is anyone else a little fustrated that while we have to provide for the armor and weapons of our heroes that their not bringing anything to the party to support themselves fincially? I'm willing to bet Koss has a few insignia drops squirrelled away all to himself. No better then a corsair indeed! SHARE THE WEALTH! Alright so its not really that bad but if we have to shell out massive amounts of gold to keep them equipped with insignias then why are we still getting shafted on their drops? Henchs I can understand, they bring their own beer to the party so they get to keep what ever is theres but these heroes.... like that uncle that won't leave and keeps mooching I say!

Actually the worst case scenario should include losing all your armor and runes to the salvage and being left with only the insignias you wanted to change in the first place. Unless you are just going to overwrite the insignias which would get so expensive you'll end up having to own multiple sets anyway.

The only way insignias make sense is if there are lots of different skins like in Prophecies. So far Nightfall appears to have about the same number of skins as Factions so there is absolutely no benefit currently to insignias.

That's fine for a one time change... the system is still flawed nonethe less. And for someone who has a set of 15k money ususaully isn't an issue... There was a time when we all struggled for 1.5k armor though, (unless you got lucky and had a bunch of black dye drops or something). Should we just kick people who haven't been farming for months in the face? Insignias should be readily available and dirt cheap. Relying on a player controlled market offers neither of those.

I'm just thankful I have factions and prophecies and could get nice +energy armors for my casters over there... shelling out an extra 20-25k for Elonian-only players is ridiculous.

I agree that insignias should be provided WITH the cost of the armor just as before or be very cheap, have a fixed price & have a NPC vendor that never runs out. Pretty sad that my very first 15k armor for my warrior is the Sunspear Elite & half the time I have to take it off because my 1.5k Canthan is better.....I think it's a good effort, just poor execution. I think this should have only been implemented in PvP toons & they should have made the Nightfall armor just like the Factions....I was SO happy when I got to Kaineng & was able to get a variety of armor mods & yet still have a uniform set of armor that went together. There are only a few armors that are able to mix & still look like it goes together.....but, if you are going to keep the Insignias....let us be able to remove & replace them as needed with no chance of ruining our armor. If it's just an 'insignia'....it's just like a patch or something sewn onto the armor which would not tear it up if you took it off....if you made it like this, I would even be willing to pay a substantial amount more for the insignias because I would just keep the ones I needed & have the flexibility to change my setup for different types of mobs/pvp.

QFT, I was thinking about picking up a couple (literally) of shoddy insignias for my warrior hero's armor while I wait for the decent ones to become available, and the little fella trying to sell em quoted me one price on them, and when we agreed he tried to sell them to me for that much apiece, when I asked how much he wanted for both. So I cancelled the trade and I guess I'll have to wait a month or more to get any insignias for my heroes. I have to get 126 heroes insignas if I want to have the potential to use any hero on any of my 9 characters... That's 630 insignias, minimum, if I want all my heroes to have insignias. That's between 630k and 6.3 million on todays market depending on what insignias I want, that's just outrageous. Especially considering I didn't have the foresight to farm up 6.3 million gold in the last eighteen months, I didn't think that the words "casual" and "rich" went hand in hand. In the past I've been able to be comfortable @ about 20k, getting more when I saw something I wanted that cost more. Now farming is more difficult and I have more to spend my money on, not to mention I'd like to get 10 Radiant insignias for my monk and necro elonian armors, so lets bump up the inscription count to 640.

I guess I can roll PVP characters instead of using my PVE characters, I don't have much choice if I truely want to be competitive, my necro would be at a severe disadvantage without insignias on himself or any of his heroes...

Player run economies are made of unstable supply, price gouging, and failure.

Most players won't be buying multiple armor sets. At most, they'll buy extra headpieces and gloves/boots to change builds around.

So insignias become a pricey proposition for the majority of players since they would just buy the 1.5k +energy armor in Factions/Proph. But now we have to pay a large amount for radiant insignias, which I don't think will go as low as the 500g u expect. If the majority of players are buying 5 radiant insignias per character, the price will be way above that of a minor vigor (which is 1 per character).

Why not have the armor crafters allow you to choose a free insignia for each piece when you craft your armor? Then if you want to change things later, fine, shell out for an insignia. However, the way it is now, your first set of armor costs way more than it did before the introduction of insignias.

I think the worst thing at the moment is that it's tough to create a budget suit of armour.

If you want a suit of Druid's for your ranger for instance, you have to buy a stack of Radiant insignias for your suit - and because all classes use the same insignia for +energy AND they're really popular, they're expensive. That means even basic sets of NF armour can be expensive for what I used to consider basic bonusses!

Also I agree that salvaging insignias and runes off your own customised armour and weapons is a broken mechanic. 50% chance to destroy the piece? Fine for pulling something off an armour drop, but no way am I taking even a 1% chance with any piece of 15k. It's a really cool system in theory, and I'll give Anet credit for adding it, but it doesn't give anyone any freedoms to switch insignias in and out when there's a chance to loose a really expensive piece of kit.

The best use I have for it is on Hero armour, which is indestructible - I swap runes and insignias out all the time on them, but I wouldn't dare try that on my armour - I've already lost 2 15^50 collector bows swapping strings and I gave up on the system after that.

I think if Anet changed it so that only armour drops (or uncustomised items maybe) had a chance to break - that would be a better system.

That is ingenious! I vote /signed for that! All non-customized items have a chance to break, while customized items can be swapped out like crazy. With that, we need a way to customize shields and off-hands, as well.

I love the new armor system, i also found most of the insignias for my hero's and my self.
the prices are always high at the start of a new chapter but the drop rate is this time very high, even when i do a quest with henche I always find insignias.
I also want to see my old armors updated into this system, that would be great, specially for my fow and other 15k sets.

Minor vigor is around 2K now, no?

Why can't we just put different insignias in one set and then switch them in some kind of menu ? Insignia system in its current form isn't bad but it doesn't simplify anything.

I like the change, but then I like any change In this case it simply provides a new level of depth to Guildwars, something else to do - which is good!

I am in agreement about the complains however, especially that the insignia's arnt "swappable" as advertised.

As usual, I disagree with Akh's point of view.

This is a point of view of a trader, someone who likes playing the trade minigame inside the main game, and can remain acceptable provided that he/she doesn't want to give lessons on how to approach the game, or say that other players should adapt to his/own system to play the game.

To clarify where I speak from, I have 8 playing chars (soon I will have 10) 5x15k armors, sup. vigor on all of them, all valuable greens for each class, 1.2M in storage (and probably 1M spent in 1337 gold weaps) and 5 mule chars to store all kind of common/rare crafting materials, collectibles, dyes, weapons and runes.

But I don't store materials and other to make speculations on new players, I store for my personal usage, because the day I decide to get a new armor and need 50 steel I don't want to discover that they are 1k each at trader. And when a friend needs material for his/her armor, I normally give him/her for free, or if I feel that it could seem a manifestation of superiority to give something for free, I ask him/her the price I would sell to the merchant.

That said, I think that the insignia system is flawed.
Consider the situation of a new player, for who the words "speculation" is a nonsense: if NF is the 1st chapter he/she buys, he/she will have a huge additional difficulty in getting a basic decent armor, differently from what happened in GWP and GWF.

Before NF, insignias (= inherent bonuses) were crafted, thus available in unlimited number and not subject to market speculations. Now they are "luxury items", human traders exploit the need of those items camping the trader, hoarding and abusing of new players.

If the trend continues, in GW4 we'll not have armor crafters, but armor traders. Old players will camp the traders, buy all armors they can and speculate on the newbies, who will have to hope they can drop pieces of armors from monsters or play through the game with their tutorial armors.

Though deprecable, I think that abusers are legitimate, they behave the way the game allows them to behave.
A.net has designed the game in a way that rewards and encourages such kind of abuses, and so players are in their right to commit every kind of possible abuse allowed by the game.
Let's call things with their name, hoarding is not "making profitable and wise investment" as Akh says, is ABUSE. Point.


What I criticize in the game design is essentially this:

In PvP, all basic equipment are available for fixed "gold" (that in PvP are Balth points) and provided that you have the right amount of points you can get all the armors, runes, upgrades and gear needed. You don't have shortage of items because other players have hoarded them.

In PvE, most of the BASIC, STANDARD equipment are subject to market speculations, now with NF even the basic armors, previously available from crafters, have become market items.


GW is becoming more and more an imitation of all other WoW-ish style grind games, and maybe because the developers listen to players who want GW to be a WoW without the monthly fee that their dad is not willing to pay for.

You guys are forgetting you don't HAVE to buy new armor unless the only chapter you have is NF...or if you roll all new characters there. Most people will roll 1 or 2 new toons there & keep the existing ones they have. My heros do fine without insignias...and when I loot a random rune, I just pop it on the hero I see fit if it's not one I'll use. Keep playing & you will gradually get more items that you would normally just sell to the merchant that will work well for your heros....also they are already better than henchies since you can control builds, secondary, weapons, off hands....be happy you CAN customize the armor they wear.

On the other hand, I do agree that since these mods were included in the previous system, they should still be easily attained. Make a trader with set prices for all insignias & then reduce the cost of the armor by however much an insignia costs. *edit* A trader that has unlimited supply, not one that is based on what is sold to him! *

Example:
A Gladiator Canthan chest in Kaineng would cost 1.5k to craft....plus materials. If came with +3 energy. The Knights also cost the same & had -3 damage.....so price insignias super cheap, or charge 500g for them but reduce the cost of the armor parts in NF by 500g each to compensate.

But in practice, the armor in the command post is 1k, so that is nice, since you can get max armor for 1k....but there is no static vendor for the insignias. As long as people can get max armor cheap with the stats they need, the higher priced armor doesn't matter, that is a luxury.

I'd like to see that myself. Apply an insigina to a piece of armor and it's "Saved" on the armor. Apply another and it too is saved, then you can use a drop down list for that armor part to choose what insignia you want active.

I also agree with this...especially since they haven't done crap about our shrinking storage space....imagine now that we can have differen weapon/gear setups on heros how it will shrink storage even more

/signed for the drop down menu for armor! (also /signed for added storage!)

The problem is not the price, but the availability.

Basically, all what appears in the PvP creation screen should be available from crafters, and when I say "available" I don't mean "cheap", but craftable for a fixed price, like in PvP you can get all basic gear for fixed "PvP prices".

So, let's say that all insignias would cost 1.5k, so every piece of the basic NF armor would cost 2.5k (1k more than Kaineng of Droknar). That would be much better then the current system with it's unperdictable prices, even for the basic equipment.

I don't think you understood my post.....I don't think the new armor should cost more than 1.5k each for basic max armor WITH mods. I did edit & say a trader with unlimited supplies, that covers availability. The way i'm suggesting it work would come out with the armor costing the same as the GWF & GWP max 1.5k armors, after you have put insignias on them.

Every single one of your points here is exactly correct and there is no reason why they shold not all be implemented immediately.

Yea, but I can deal paying 2k per hero. What I can't deal with is paying 2k X 5 +2k per hero.

To the OP:

IMO, Insignias is a great idea from a design standpoint.

And, in the end, from a playing standpoint, it also works well -- you craft only as much armor as you need, with the look you need, and you can change it later if you desire. It's all about flexibility and versatility.

I haven't had any problems with it; your points were written relatively eloquently but it's only been one week after nightfall release. I expect that insignia prices will fall as time goes on, and replacing a 1k insignia is still better than re-crafting a 15k piece of armor when you want to switch.

So, sorry, but I disagree -- insignias are a good thing.

The only thing I personally object to is that ch1/ch2 armor can't use insignias -- this makes it look like insignias and inscriptions are being used only as a selling point to sell units of ch3.

To ANET: I really hope you add an "Armor Conversion" tab to the Armorsmith NPC's so that people can convert their older, existing armors (for a small fee, say 150gp) to be able to use inscriptions. Same goes for Weapons.

cheers,
eudas