Yes I'd pay $30 to change character appearance and name

count me out of this one. I don't need more reasons for Anet to cut (possible future) features to charge.

slippery slope here -- $ to customize weapons, $ to dye armor, etc

It is funny how heated people seem to get when discussing "real" money. This is almost like the long threads about if GW's or pay-per-month is the cheapest. Many seem to think that "to get most for their moneys worth" is very important and totally forget that the "price-tag" is a very minor part of the total cost for most gamers.

Time is not free, time is the huge cost!

You may have paid $19.99, $100 or even $500 (mulitple accounts, CE, skill unlocks etc). It is still a very small cost compared to the time spent.

Some players invest 500 hours, some 2000, 3000 or even more hours in the game. Take your yearly income, divide it with 8000 (numbers of hours in the year) and you get a very crude number of what your "time is worth".

An average income in my country is maybe $30.000 a year. That would give about $4/hour. If you have spent 1000 hours on the game, you then have invested about $4000 "worth of time" on it. That is a bit scary :-)

So $30 may seem a lot, but for a player who have put maybe 2000 hours in playing and developing a charcter it may not seem much.

Sorry for rampling, I just wanted to get some perspective on "game costs".


Regards,
Cloudbunny

They didn't have Plastic Surgeons in them days >.>

Although a hair stylist might be good

Hi guys, thanks for all the replies.

Well, I'd rather pay less than $30 but that figure was an expression of my desire to see this feature in the game. I get that this feature might be difficult to implement and therefore not something they'd consider for free. I'm just saying that a once off would sort me out, for the same reason as I would get fancy armours and stuff, it's just a personal aesthetics thing.

To other comments on thread:

Rest assured I've taken a great deal of care on my other 9 characters appearance and names, and am very happy with them all.

This character has done so much now on two out of 3 campaigns I'd rather not have to do it all again.

This character's class, given I've almost exclusively played him, is the only one I'll take forward into serious pvp as it's the only one i'm comfortable with. The fact I've built up all those elite captures on him not to mention all the stuff i've put on heroes etc. means I'd rather keep him.

Anyway, glad to see thread isn't dead, I guess I do have more money than time hence my desire to see this character's hard earned stuff stick while the name changes. If I wasn't working so hard and with a young family to look after I'm sure I'd just restart this character class again.

And hey, I work for a games company, I'm quite happy to pay other developers for their time and effort improving customisation options in this game.

Cheers

Adrian

Just remake your char, or uninstall. O.o;

Everyone wants things handed to them.

Well Briana, as I said, remaking character with all my family commitments is hundreds of hours spread over months, that's a rather punitive view, and I also said that I've ensured this isn't a problem on all subsequent characters.

I want nothing handed to me but a change of name and appearance, which has no ingame benefit or play benefit whatsoever. You might argue neither does FoW armour, fine, I'll play some hardcore missions to do it, but I'd also pay to do it.

I'm also suggesting this is a once off, that's all it needs to be. It's not like I've learned the lesson subsequently, but come on, for the sake of a new appearance and name I'd have to play 3 campaigns again, seek out all those elites again (a hell of a lot) earn all the materials for the armour, get my titles back....

You're obviously very hardcore. I'm not, this is a game, and I'm suggesting a benefit to players that has no material impact on any interaction we might have with each other, once off.

Like cloudbunny pointed out, time spent is not free. Can the OP make $30 faster than he can create a new char? You bet he can - and that's the point. It'd actually be cheaper to pay the $30 in cash than to pay for the time spent, which can add up to hundreds of hours just for one title. What's 100 hours x $5.15? Yeah. Ouch.

Sooooo, we need a Plastic Surgeon and Hair Stylist NPC's in Guild Wars?

Here is an idea. Make them the way u want them the first time.

Yes

Good theory, however when they are nearly 2 years old, I want to change some of mine...

It's a good theory, but doesn't always work out that way. Tastes change over time, and there's always Anet, which can come behind you and change your character's face. Tell me how you deal with that. :/

Yeah, but its the fact of the matter is, thats all you can do.

I have deleted chars with fow armor, who have beaten the game, had tons of hours, experience, skills, you name it. It's just the only thing you can do if you want to change anything about your char, anet is simply not gonna do this.. it just seems irrelevant to them. I think the community asks anet for a BIT to much. who knows what people will want next. EDIT: on a side note, anet messed up my monks hair aswell feminist. But what can you do?

You do what any customer does, express an interest in something you'd like to buy hoping the supplier or merchant will consider selling it.

As it stands, I'm just carrying on with that character because the current situation means i simply don't see a viable alternative in starting from scratch. Like I said, it's a game, not life, so I'll carry on developing this character out to support my guildmates in any part of the campaigns or indeed in pvp when i can find the time.

I've come so far I can't give it up, and hey, I've got 9 other characters that I'd like to take through all the campaigns/elites/ecto gathering/hero levelling/pvp, and that's going to take an age in itself. It isn't like I'm expecting all that hard work to be something you can just buy

Adrian

Yeah, I've spent so much time on this character, there's no way I'm deleting her. I'll just keep voicing my opinions and desires, hopefully without going overboard, and hope that one day Anet decides to do what so many people have asked for. If they don't, well, it's no skin off my upper lip (heh), and I'll survive.

My ele, Fem, is the only one whose appearance bugs me. I might change my necro's hair color a bit if I had the opportunity, but I'm happy with all the rest. So I'll just sit here and hope and dream.
(and wait for my dinner-come on, man, what's the hold up? i'm starving!)

Just check my monk's name
Yes, it was one of my first chars, and yes I want to change it. badly .

just pay 10k gold for a name + apperance change..

it can be done 5 times per account like district changes?

Well paying 30 bucks is way too much. However paying real life money to change your char's name and appearance is not a bad idea (maybe add more skins here or make all skins in the game availlable so say if you dont own NF you can get NF face), I say 5 bucks is reasonable.

I would pay at max £10 (est 18$) for a name change. I wouldn't pay for character appearance..that should be given within the game free of charge; or free of rl money charge.

Bullshit reasoning.

Ever heard of a deed poll?

I would like to see things like: additional dances, emote packs, mini pets, and CE type glowy effects for sale in the GW store. Five or ten bucks per item or pack depending on what you buy. Seems like a no brainer for Anet to do this for additional revenue. Sure, all of that is superficial but still fun stuff and I would buy into some of it.

As for the gender/hair/appearance changing, Runescape has NPCs to do this but that's Runescape, and it is pretty expensive (in game gold), would be nice to have the option though.

NP

I like the idea, but not 30$.

My "Vanguard Huntress" dervish is by far my most accomplished character, earning me up to around 100k luxon faction, more than any of my characters. But "huntress" is a stupid name, and If i had known this dervish would be so successful I would have named her something more appropriate like "Nisai Oril" (already taken by my ranger, damnit...) or something of that princess-y nature.

I like the 4-8 name changed only per account idea.
10k, though it is definately a lot for me, is just pocket change to so many others out there making it kind of pointless. Us poor people who can't get up to like 15k without finding something to buy, NEEDS that precious 10k.

if they have that kind service , i will pay $10----$100 to do it,

i really want to change something with my char.

or they can make store inside the game, where u can go spent gold to change whatever u want to change.that will b fun

I'd like them to add some sort of NPC to the game to change appearance, even if it's just hair style and colour. In prophecies, some of the professions aren't really given the best hair styles, but if you want to play that profession you just have to make do with a fairly decent one. I recently made a ranger in prophecies, so I could play pre-searing for a bit, and it took me about half an hour to decide on which hair style, because in my mind there weren't any outstanding ones. With each release of a new game, there are better hairstyles, but people who start their char in older campaigns still have to live with the old ones. It'd be good if an NPC were added to the main towns of each game to change your hairstyle to the ones from that particular continent.

I wouldn't pay real money though.

I would pay real or in game money. I have 2 characters who really could use a makeover, and the fact that we can't change anything regarding our face/hair/height is disappointing. In a game that caters to how we look with various armors and weapons, changing our characters actual appearance should be an option for us in some capacity.

If anything, create an instance area where only one (1) character can enter where we are allowed to pick the way we want our character to look. Once we are done choosing, have the game logout us out, and when we return, voila, our character has the new appearance. It can't be that hard to implement.

@ the OP: In my humble opinion, naming your character with a joke name is entirely your own fault. We have all been there as noobs, and some of us knew that we'd make that char our main throughout our gameplay time in GW and named our first (and probably main) chars accordingly.

I certainly agree with hairdresser NPC's but even irl you have to go thru a lot to change your own name.

PS: I will never understand why ppl use joke names for their pve chars. I mean "Mr Plebadoodledoo is using Meteor Shower!" ? Geez.

An option to change looks: Yes, if only to stop these suggestions from cropping up so often.

An option to change names: No. Why? So that you can be rude and offensive and then change your name? And then there's all the problems with friends list, ignore list, name reservation... pointless. If you don't like the name, then you shouldn't have used it in the first place...

Gaile once said they will not implement name change for security reasons, but I think this ain't much o a problem and there are some clever ways to provide community with name change system w/o making it easier to scam and lagging servers. Here are my propositions:

1. Name change only possible for PvE characters.
PvP characters are easily replecable, there's no reason to change PvP char's name, it's easier to remake it. True, one might have one PvP char for a long time and waiting for Birthday Gift or something, but I think that this would be asking for too much. After all the real issue are PvE characters that ain't replacable w/o huge ammount of time used to beat game again, gain titles etc etc.

2. Limited number of name changes aviable per character
Being able to change their name every 5 mins ain't the point. When someone is changing name to something else, he should spend some time and figure a name he wouldnt like to change again too soon. Also, this would go along with security policy and would limit the nr of name changes limiting the possible lag.
The limit may be either: 1/2/any number of changes per character or once ever xx ammount of time, or a combination of the above.
I also think that at least first name change should be out of real money charge.

3. Name change only possible for characters that exist for some time already (f/e 3 months - basicly any period)
This is also to prevent lag caused by malicious behaviour: noone will create a character just to go, change it name, and delete again. Also, it will give players a chance to actually think about the name they've chosen and think of a next one.

4. Previous character name stays linked with the character for x ammount of time, tho is unvisible
For security reasons

5. Friendlist, guildlists etc actually list account, not an existing character, only giving in a nick that is the name of character added to the list.
I think it might already work like this, but I'm not 100% sure. Noe that once you recreate a character with same name, even of same proffesion, customized items won't fit, tho the name is same. My guess is that characters might be identified by some sort of an ID and name is only linked to them.


And now, anwsering the topic: I think 30$ is a bit too much for a name change... I'd pay 30$, but for Divine Aura f/e, but not for a name change.... But if there would be no other way to change my fav char's name (but the price was a little lower), I'd look for a way to pay for the change.

They definitely need the ability to change character name and appearance. I like the idea of being allowed to do it only under certain conditions (like only once after each birthday or something) to prevent abuse. I definitely would not pay for it though. Would rather just create a new character than spend money on something like that.

My single and only request for character ingame change of appearance is to allow colored dyes to change hair color. It seems simple enough and would be a more flexible visual give to the game to match armors etc etc. Silver hair ele sign me up!

I wouldn't pay ANet a dime for either feature. The only char whose appearance I want to change is my ranger whose appearance was screwed up by one of ANet's own updates. Appearance changes should all be free. Name changes... IDC!

I think we should be able to change our character's appearance but only on their birthdays. Then it would really be a decent birthday:

mini pet + xtreme makeover (haha)

If not I wouldn't mind paying gold to modify some character traits (5k for lip augmentation anyone?). The whole character vanity concept is kinda funny, I'd do it just for sh**s and giggles, but not with real money. Anet has received enough of my money already.


I'm not that interested in name change, though. I agree with the previous poster that said we should choose that carefully from the beginning. Looks, otoh, are a trivial matter.

@Kryth, at the time mate, I didn't expect Guild Wars to be as much of a deal as it is to me now. If I'd known then what I know now etc. etc.

And again, it's why I'm suggesting I pay for my mistake, and suggesting I'm happy to pay a lot for it, it matters to me that much (or $30 isn't that big a deal to me

Sure I regret it. Sure we've all been there. Sure nothing can be done for those earnest enough and willing to put their money where their mistake is? Hopefully not