Armor Keeper - NPC or HoM Modification

Stop. Search was used. Closest idea found was this thread, started by Linksys. It is similar in idea, but I would like to expound implementing some thoughts I had on the subject. Here is the original thread, so that you may see the difference and yet credit is still given to whom it is due:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10035494

Now, on with the proposal. Let me first say that I am glad for all of the character enhancement options introduced in Eye of the North. My primary character is an Assassin, and as of the GW:EN release, he's sporting some great looking Asuran armor. Also, new weapon skins, new places to fight, and new challenges to face, all great. I'm on my way to get Norn armor soon, so he can stay warm in cold climates.

What I, and I'm sure many of you, were disappointed in was the lack of storage modifications that came with the expansion. The premise of GW:EN was, as per ArenaNet, "Guild Wars: Eye of the North is the first expansion for Guild Wars with content geared exclusively for level 20 characters." Thus, they were *expecting* us to grab a hold of the new items and armor to slap on our favorite characters that hadn't seen any change since Nightfall.

That having been said, I think there are two options that are highly viable for keeping armor outside of Inventory and Xunlai Storage. Note that in EITHER case, the space is limited ONLY to armor to avoid simply giving players more storage space and running into the armor storage problem again. Here are my suggestions:

Proposal One: An "Armor Keeper" NPC Available in Guild Halls

This proposal is beneficial to all of the Guild Wars audience. This NPC would be added just as any other Guild Hall NPC is, and his/her single function would be to hold armor. My idea of how this would look is a window similar to the storage window, 5 columns by X rows, where X represents the number of campaigns the player owns. This could or could not include GW:EN. Any extra armor pieces would still be required to be in the player's inventory or storage. In other words, one full set of any type could go in one row of the storage. Also, depending on how fully embraced the idea is, it could include more space for even more armor sets. However, one from each product/chapter seems logical, as that is the approach that ArenaNet took with storage itself.

The main problem with this being in a Guild Hall is the issue of leaving a guild. If a player is kicked from or leaves a guild, the Armor Keeper NPC will be inaccessible to them. Any suggestions for negation of this would be appreciated =).

Proposal Two: Use the Hall of Monuments as Storage Space Rather than Simply Display

The idea is simple, and it rewards players for "developing their level 20 characters" through the Eye of the North expansion. The ability to further develop and enjoy your characters without eating up storage space... brilliant. The implementation of this would be simple. When viewing the Monument to Resilience, add a third and/or fourth option beyond "Display" and "Rearrange." The added options could be "Place _________ Armor on the monument" and "Place ________ Armor in inventory."

Alternately, a third option could be added to "Manage Stored Armor Sets." Since the AI already distinguishes armor sets as "sets" -- ie it only displays full sets -- it should have no problem being modified to move sets of armor as whole sets. Take my "Asuran Armor" from inventory and put it onto Storage, place my "Ancient Armor" in inventory. Shazam.

The problem with this is twofold. First, this discriminates against people who choose to mix armor sets, as well as those who have non-elite armor. The second is that some folks like to keep different armor sets on them for quick switching between builds or just for convenience. The solutions, in my mind, to this, are to simply keep those specific sets in your storage as previously done. Two armor sets, one for farming and one for group play has not hindered my storage space thus far. What concerns me is in a few weeks when I purchase a third set. Another five slots of inventory or storage gone is a lot for me to sacrifice. Many of you have WELL over 3 pairs of armor, and understand this situation well.

================================================== ====

At any rate, I think that the previous suggestion for an Armor tab in storage is a fantastic starting point, but I wanted to place my own thoughts as well as suggest some new ideas for implementation of the armor storage idea.

As a final thought, I really felt this to be a necessary and useful suggestion, at least something that I know would benefit all of my friends and guildies as well as myself, and something that I do not feel would be overly difficult to put into place. By no means are my ideas perfect, but I hope that instead of negative criticism this thread can be about polishing up the idea into something solid and flawless.

/signed



12 characters

yep.. would be nice for some-1 who would hold your weapons and armor... and possibly dye O.0

/signed

I realized yesterday that I couldn't fit all of my necro's armors in my inventory lol.

/signed

i also would like a wardrobe to get all armors available
dye id love 1 of that too
tomes also is something i collect
and for each proffession id like a greencollectable storage
like for rangers 1 storage to add all green bows just 1 of each would be enough imo
also a minipet storage so i can put them aside
and a petfarm for rangers would be good to have so i can take what ever pet i want to bring
it would give me more goals to play the game to get every item into storage
as u can see im a collector of things
so anet plz add some of these

/signed

Although, Gaile has stated that ANet has no interest in makining Armor Storage of any kind at this time (near Wintersday fest, I believe is when this convo took place) I still believe it would be a great idea.

As for getting kicked/leaving your guild, why not the good ol' Temple of Balthazaar?

/signed for anything that gives us more space.. Can you ever really have too much ?

/Not Signed

GW2 Is Coming... Why Bother... Haha

/signed

I waste at least 1 and a half of my Storage for armors. 2 armors from ranger, 3 from monk, 1 from mesmer and ritualist... Okay, even 1 and 3/4. Too much.

/signed

there are many armors i'd buy if i only had more place to store them...

How is this better than just having more storage space??

/notsigned

It's official, time to shutdown sardelac sanitarium, oh wait, I forgot, GW will still exist and we have at least a year until GW2 is out.

/signed (been waiting for some type of armor storage for over 2 years)

/signed

Need moar armour storage!

I would love this...heck, create a new tab in the normal storage space for armor and/or runes/insignia and I'd be thrilled.

I have no place to put all the armors I want to get.

I would have no place even if I had 26 character slots.

This is a must, specially since they 'force' people to buy armors to fill HoM.

Even if they just savend which pieces you bought and you could acquire them again for reduced prices in the same crafter it would be enough.

/signed

ty so much dove

i need a place to put my armors their taking up my storage ><

Ah... and never forget the HUGE gold sink this would mean.

Currently storage is what mostly stops people from getting more armors.

/signed

Any extra storage is welcome, especially for armour which takes 4-5 slots per set.

If I see one more "I need moar storagez pl0x!!!" thread, I may flip out.

Seriously, stuff like this has been suggested millions of times, and the answer is always the same.

Don't be a pack rat and sell your 5-7dmg white short swords to the merchant. Don't hoard everything in the game. You won't have storage problems then. I currently have about 2-3 armor sets per character on average. I have about 8 weapon sets per character. I used to have about 20 minipets. I have about 1 1/2 storage tabs devoted entirely to inscriptions and weapon mods. I've never had a storage issue, so you must be keeping loads of stuff that is completely useless.

Word. I wish they'd given us more. D:

/signed even though it's a lost cause; I like this idea. I hate having to cart around multiple armor sets.

Less space in the database, therefor less cost in resources from ANet's part.

A single inventory space requires a relatively large amount of space in the database - it needs have the space to record any item that can possibly exist in Guild Wars. More specialised slots, however, can take up much less space. Consider the material storage tab - all that requires per account is a number for each material - and as that number not coincidentally happens to be just under 255, it can be stored in a single byte. It's possible that the entire materials storage tab takes less space in ANet's database than a single regular storage space. (Unlikely, though. 2^8^36 is a large number, and I would guess that the total number of items possible in Guild Wars, while large, is still less than 10^86.)

In specialised armour storage, each space doesn't need to be capable of tracking any possible item in Guild Wars - just any possible armour (and if you restrict it to armours of that character's profession, the number of possibilities that need to be covered, and thus the amount of information that needs to be recorded for the space, drops significantly).

If you use the monument statues as armour storage, disallow storage of headgear, require the rest of the set to be stored or removed at once and have all runes, dyes and inscriptions removed when the armour goes into storage, than allowing the statue to act as storage may only require a single extra bit per armour statue per account - reading a 0 if the armour is not being stored in the statue and a 1 if it is. If we allow a bit more flexibility and allow (non-headgear) pieces to be stored separately, this expands to four bits per statue - one to track the presence or absence of each piece. Adding the headgear could simply require an extra bit if we choose to allow this to be a means of changing the inherent bonus on the headgear, or if the inherent bonus is stored as well this expands to three bits - giving eight possible states, when even the Elementalist and Warrior only need six (no headgear, and one for each type of headgear).

So, if you don't store runes, insignias or colour, once a statue is raised in the Hall of Monuments it can be converted to armour storage by only adding up to seven bits to the database space required to track the statue. For the sake of argument, and because most information storage devices do, let's round this up to a byte.

Now, consider the number of armour types that it is possible to have. Running through the professions, there are the following numbers of armour sets eligible to be stored in the HoM:

Warrior: 17
Ranger: 15
Monk: 16
Necromancer: 16
Mesmer: 15
Elementalist: 15
Assassin: 11
Ritualist: 11
Paragon: 8
Dervish: 8

Total: 132.

Compared to the 36 types of materials to track for the material storage tab (each of which requires one byte), this implies that this form of storage would allow all HoM-eligible armour types to be stored on an account with ten characters for only four times the space required for material storage. If we assume that the database requires the same amount of space for each character regardless of whether it uses all that space, we can still fit 2 characters in the space required for the materials storage tab.

In short, what it boils down to is that, while more generic storage spaces might be more desirable on the long run, specialised storage may allow some of the strain to be taken from them without adding as much strain on ANet's resources as more generic spaces - hence, it's possible that a request for a form of specialised storage might be accepted where a request for generic storage might not.

All that said, though, while specialised storage may be cheaper to keep track of, it probably does require more work to implement than simply adding another tab to the Xunlai, which may explain why, with GW2 being the main focus, the developers aren't interested in going back and creating more forms of specialised storage.

As I stated, Gaile has already said the Dev Team is against giving us more storage space, even armor-specific space, at this time... perhaps after GW 2 is out, lol.

Idea #2 /signed
I dislike the guildhall NPC, but the HoM ideas are good.
Currently, I have 4 mules to carry my armor, spare weapons, mods, and other stuff because there is STILL not enough space >.<

/signed

if Anet/GW promotes buying more armor(HoM armor display) they should supply more storage space.



wraithe

What about the manpower and work hours needed to program all that crap when instead adding a single storage tab would be done very easily.

/mega totally signed

/signed again, i so want to clear my bags of elite armor, its unfair you cant have a storage for customized stuff like armors.

id love a custom weapon storage too

/signed for Proposal One.

Note I've read the idea a few times before and have signed onto the idea in another thread. Not a "use search" criticism as I am happy to have the topic raised again, so I can sign it again.

/signed

People against any form of more storage space should get shot.

Turning HoM into a Miniature, Armor Set, and/or Destroyer Weapon storage would be a great idea, anytime.

/signed

/Signed

Something like this gives players something else to work for after they've got everything else maxed. Armor collection. You could even make it cost some amount of money per "set" stored (1K per set, and 1K for unasigned masks), which is still significantly cheaper than having to buy the entire armor each time you want to wear it if you don't have the space.

/signed
I am completely up for this. I'm really sick of my armor taking my storage space or the little "Inventory is Full" pop-up.

/signed. Armor storage is overdue especially with HOM. Also agree with Draxynnic on database resources.

just add a HoM storage chest, separate from Xunlai. I'd probably even pay for it.

I always say that the key to the better storage is removing the need of storage.

In one side we have the traders. Thanks to them there's no need to store the items available in them.
In the other side we have unlocking. If items are unlocked, there's no need to store them for later use. Which items should be unlockable? Those that are more meant to be purchased only once, like armor.

Character-based armor unlocking would be both a gold sink and one of the best ways to save storage space.

/signed.....3456987u6y54t