Tome Trader

Wow that is probably the laziest suggestion ever. Every elite skill is reachable and cappable. If you don't like standing in one spot spamming WTB, then go cap the damn skill. An elite tome trader would destroy the fun of tracking down and obtaining your own elite skills.

first off it would make the end game elites available to every noob with 3k balthazar faction, and also piss the people off who actually put in the footwork for their skills or skillhunter title. Tomes are supposed to be a special find that is why they are so rare of drops.
Weapon mod trainers would make a little more sense.
What i will agree with is maybe giving tomes a price value in game kinda like gold weapons(you can sell gold weapons at any merch but you cant buy them)

For Elite Tomes only is even worse.

The only trader left missing is the Weapon upgrade trader.

I see more and more completely clueless people in this thread.

Tome Trader would NOT make prices go down!
You would be surprised but some regular tomes would be ABOVE 1k at trader!
That's because all the trader does is reflecting the real market average buy/sell prices, he doesn't manipulate the prices.

And any 'noob' with 3k balthazar faction CAN ALREADY get ANY elite skill by just buying an Elite Tome from someone - it just takes some TIME to go to a town and WTB spam. Trader NPC would only help by saving the TIME. The price of elite tome at trader would be HIGHER than if you bought it from a human seller though.

Still, they are invaluable items, like the Hero armor pieces.
They can't be sold in traders.

What's the problem in giving them a 1g merch value, like dyes have?

Kamadan's flooded with people selling tomes

Dyes drop in normal mode.

And this matters because?

Still the dumbest idea ever, while we are at it, lets add Weapon mod traders, and what about Armbrace traders. What other traders could we think of to nerf actual exploring. Oooh Zkey traders that would be awesome
Elite tomes are supposed to be rare and they are not meant for any noob with 3k balthazar faction. But just like every other rare item, they are able to be purchased from players in town. Adding the trader would totally extinguish the rarity of the item.
With the same line of specious reasoning, Since you can buy minipets from any player in the game(it just takes longer), why not add a minipet trader?
My only point is that Elite tomes were designed to be somewhat of a rare item or trophy for actually playing in HM. Seems to me that people who want HM items to be easily available to everybody in the game are too lazy to go to HM themselves and "Earn them"

/NOTSIGNED because it is a bad idea

Failpost is full of fail.

Give at least 1 solid argument why a *straight trade improvement* is bad.

Trade improvements are just that - trade improvements - they are meant to improve trading of items already tradeable.
Be it a weapon mod trader or skill tome trader or even better - a full blown Auction House or Xunlai Marketplace, they're always improvements, not nerfs.

Even a minipet trader would be a straight improvement from what we got now, but ofcourse it wouldn't be the most elegant solution for that.

Do you really prefer to have all trading to be reduced to primitive WTS/WTB spamming and wasting long long hours for that?
I'd much rather quickly drop everything into a trader and go and actually play the game more than WTB/WTS.

No, But maybe i can word it differently because you obviously missed the point. Even the creator of this thread realizes it would be a slap in the face to Hard mode.

The idea is to not resort all trading to WTS/WTB spammage. The point is This game needs RARE items like Minipets, certain gold items and yes ELITE TOMES.
Im sure that we are all fully aware that they can be purchased from most players in town, but in no way does that mean a merchant should be created for them.
The reasons have already been listed but Failblogger Failed to listen.

1. They are meant to be rare items
2. They would make it too easy to get elite skills which are really meant to be capped. Or on the rare occasion EARNED in hard mode through FINDING a tome.
3. Elite tomes are HARD MODE items which means.... im sure you can figure this out
4. Making Elite tomes too easy to access would result in the whole purpose of the placement of the elite skills being in certain areas totally destroyed. They put certain elite skills at the end of the game for a reason.

In a perfect Guild world, Elite tomes wouldnt even be available for player to player trading, they would be customized.

My point remains unscathed: Leave the rare items to be rare items and let common items be found at the merchants.

I love that you wrote that, It reeks of desperation.

I really dont even know why im wasting my time in this thread anyways. There is no chance of an elite trader ever being added to the game. Good thing ANet realizes it is a stupid idea

You fail...
...to realise that introduction of a trader npc doesn't change the Rarity of items at all! Learn the basics, learn how the traders work. They only sell items players sold to them, they don't generate them out of thin air.
(it's not 100% accurate as under certain circumstances trader npc can do it, but this is not common knowledge, officially he shouldn't, it doesn't unbalance the game and it's not the right time to discuss it).

Tomes aren't meant to be rare. They never said they are. Loads of overfarmed tomes in my inventory don't agree with you.
If tomes are really meant to be rare, then analogically Black Dyes certainly are meant to be rare aswell, but they aren't excluded from Trader. Oh, and Lightbringer Scrolls got added to Scroll Trader despite being 'rare' and Exclusive reward from an Elite Area.

Tomes already changed the way people acquire their already unlocked skills - adding a trader wouldn't change this any further - it would only save us some time we now have to waste on WTB spam.

Tomes and Elite Tomes aren't only Hard Mode items - they also drop from Zaishen Chest.
And guess what - PvP players don't usually want to waste time on WTS'ing them, they would much rather sell them to an npc for a price based on real market price, or even better, sell them in something like an Auction House.

Oh and your vision of a 'perfect Guild world' sound terribly uncool. Imho it should be more like this:

In a perfect GW world there would be a fullblown Auction House / Xunlai Marketplace - a fast and easily accessible trading solution allowing trading of everything that can be put into trade window, and WTB/WTS spamming would not be necessary for anything.

i agree with yawgmoth.
having a more convenient way to buy and sell things is not bad.

the auction house is a great idea.
But i have my opinion on what should remain a rare items. Just because you may or may not have tons of tomes in your inventory that would say i am wrong. I have a storage full of rare items.

Answer this question and then i will really see where you come from

Do you think that there should be a green weapon trader? My reason that there should be one is because you can already get them from spamming WTB/WTS so why not add a green weapon trader. They are obviously not rare items because my storage is full of them.
Now if your answer is yes there should be a green weapons trader then i am done with you and this silly thread.
And if your answer is no there shouldnt be a green weapons trader then you are nothing more than a hypocrite.
for the record i dont agree with anything i said in that previous paragraph, im just using the same argument as failboy.


Im sorry but that example is a failure as well. The big difference between Elite tomes and black dyes is that any monster from any area in any campaign can drop a black dye, while only a boss in HM can drop an elite tome.

i absolutely agree that there should be a green weapon trader. i would not be opposed to a trader for every single tradable item in the game. convenient, consistent trading options are always an improvement.

implementing a trader would NOT in any way change the rarity of the items that they sell. traders do not just poof up items that they sell; they get them from players that sell stuff to them. tomes are already obtainable for anybody with enough money in kamadan. a trader would simply change the tome-buying process from spamming "WTB Elite Ele Tome!!!!" to talking to the trader and buying a tome that somebody else sold at some other time. more convenient ways to buy and sell are good for an economy.

I see where you are coming from, It is very logical and viable. I also respect you for not flaming or disrespecting someone with a difference of opinion by calling them "clueless' or whatever.
It seems like what you are suggesting is more like an auction trader. Sounds like a good alternative to player to player interactions. I am curious how you think that would go. Lets say i have a green ghostly staff i want to auction off. Do you think that i would get paid a fixed amount upon depositing item to the trader, or would i get paid after the highest bidder "won" the item?

Don't compare a Green item trader with a Tome trader, they're sooo much different things it's beyond any comparison.

Just imagine a completely new player starting his adventure with GW.

He goes to a big town and sees many Trader NPCs. He sees a Skill Tome Trader, but he quickly realises that he needs to have the skills unlocked first and that Elite Tomes prices are way out of his range. So he moves forward, nothing bad happened, his gameplay experience not affected.

Now he gets to an Unique Weapon Trader NPC. Even this name makes him think 'wtf?'. He looks closely and sees a long long list of 100s of different perfect Green items, most of which come as cheap as 500-2,000g. He can afford to buy 2 or 3 of them right away! He so quickly realises how terrible the economy of this game is. When that player will get his first Green drop himself, the coolness factor of it will be greatly diminished by him already knowing that it's just "oh, that 650g greenie"...

And I'm not even getting into how terrible would be it's effect on low-end and mid-range Gold item market... as if it wasn't already in ruins...

Now if Greens were actually Rare, valuable and highly demanded items, a trader NPC for them wouldn't be such a catastrophe. It would be a straight trading improvement without negative sides. Just like a Skill Tome trader would be, if added right now. That's because Skill Tomes are something completely different than greens - they are consumables - they get removed from the game upon use, they're always in demand and they're traded in large quantities.

I wouldn't be surprised if the trader was sold out of Elite tomes of certain professions most of the time, and I'd expect the npc sell prices of those to stabilise a few plat higher than the average prices in direct player-player trades.
So if the Elite tomes remain as rare as they are now, having a trader won't make less rare or easy to get.

Whoever actually remembers the early days, before Rune Trader was added, should know well how great addition he was and should easily understand why a Tome trader would be just like that.

Not signed.

You should earn the elites you get. Going out and and capping them, not buying a elite tome. People survied before they were introduced did they not?

As for normal tomes you can earn those as well. You get them as drops from monsters.

Wait, you're telling me these AREN'T mean to be traded? Is that why you can't give them to merchants?

I still agree with you i think elite skills should be earned. And any elite tome should be customized when found. 3k Balthazar faction is very easy for anybody to obtain (especially with factons) and that is all anybody needs to unlock the elite they want.
You can get 3k balth faction before you even hit lvl 20 so elite tomes would be accessible to the newest people in the game.
But having everything just handed to you on a silver platter is the American way right? Convenience is what society strives for. TV dinners, remote controls, delivery, housekeepers, landscapers, cruise control, and then jenny craig so that when your laziness makes you overly obese, you can lose the weight without having to excercise.
That reminds me of a joke... Why cant lesbians diet and wear makeup at the same time???
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Because you cant eat Jenny Craig with Mary Kay on your face

Tomes do not drop in normal mode.

So what?
They drop in HM and from Zaishen Chest, but it doesn't fkin matter. They're common trade goods, they're traded in large quantities and they deserve an improved trading solution, like a trader npc.

Seriously, go make a separate thread with this as an update suggestion. Such a fantastic idea would certainly be loved by everyone with passion.

Although you understanding it would mke thing easier, it is not required.

Tomes are a hard mode only drop.

They are a reward fro playing hard mode. After getting them, you can do whatever you like with them.
But they are not a commodity. They are not like upgrades or scrolls.
They are a BONUS. Something extra you get for doing something especial.

There are no traders for Hero armor pieces, Weapons, trophies, festival tokens, miniatures...

For those we need the Xunlai Marketplace, but NOT a trader.

The ONLY trader left is the Weapon upgrade trader. NO ONE ELSE.

You can try harder to understad why or not, but it doesn't matter. That's how it is.

Hmm...well I do see your point and I hate going into HM but I find it better to just buy tomes using the forums right here. Just post in the Buy section in Ventari's Corner and you'll definately get a seller. I've seen too many people QQ about HM and how it's too easy, this will just increase that. The one thing about tomes is that they are unique to HM so they shouldn't be allowed to just purchase from a trader like a rare material. And the overpriced thing? Forget it, several things in the game are too expensive already. Blegh.

Id give up the fight. some people are just so one sided that they can not even begin to se another persons point of view.

Tomes are NOT difficult to get, elite tomes arent either. Any noob with a net connection can open up PVX wiki, get a permaform build, and go farm any elite tome.

As well as this there are a myriad of builds that kill mobs in NM. 600/Smite CoF runs result in tome drops etc. Hell, tomes drop more then Dyes & Runes. Why where these traders added in, as you could get them from people... oh thats right to make it EASIER to get them, so if you're willing to spend the little bit extra, then you save time. Remember the trader DOES NOT make items cheaper. The value of these tomes is already set by how much they are wanted, and how many there are. Giving them an outlet wont kill the price, itll just make it easier to dump them.

All you people complaining it will kill HM & kill the point of the skill trainer:
a) HM is NOT about tomes. If you're doing HM you will get tomes, but its there for the CHALLENGE of it.
b) The skill trainer is already dead. If you're patient its worth buying tomes to get the skill. A normal tome should NEVER be worth more then 1k. This is because to use a tome the skill must be unlocked. An unlocked skill can be bought at any trainer in that skill's campaign for 1k. Therefore anyone buying tomes for over 1k is an idiot.
c) Elite tomes are still gonna be worth the same. People who need a skill fast will buy them, people who feel they are too much will still buy a cap sig and buy it the old fashioned way. There is no reason not to have a tome trader. It will also provide a gold sink in that they could charge 50-100k to have one in the GH, like with rune traders etc. Also tomes already mostly removed the gold sink of skill trainers, along with hero skill trainers.

I dont think this will damage GW in any way, but I personally dont really find a benefit for it. Ill still use all my normal tomes, and sell all my elite tomes.

/signed

You're making stuff up for no reason.

Tomes ARE a common trade'able commodity. Just like weapon upgrades or scrolls. The fact they drop only in Hard Mode and Zaishen Chest doesn't change anything.

Celestial Sigils drop only from HoH chest but they are a commodity and got a trader.
Lightbringer Scrolls can only be obtained in DoA, yet you can sell them to trader and a newbie with only Prophecies can buy them from trader in LA. Is that a problem? No. It's just free market, and an NPC making trading faster, easier.

Tomes are not different.
They're just relatively new and some people apparently didn't get used to thinking of them as a core part of the game.

And Tomes deserve a trader much more than weapon upgrades or inscriptions, those would much better be traded through a Xunlai Marketplace-like solution.
That's because Tomes are always the same, only 20 types, they're heavily traded items, always in demand, often traded in large quantities. As opposed to weapon mods, with a lot more different types and large variety in ranges, with only very few of them being in demand.

Weapon and trophies can also be trader, but do not and will not have traders.
Trophies like the Ansguis gems are also always the same.
Same goes for hero armor.

As I said, you don't seem to understand. They are not like lockpicks, dyes, runes or scrolls.
They are not expendables that can be used infinite times.
Once you have all skills, there are is no reason to get more tomes.
Once you get complete equipment, you may have to get more upgrades later.
Once you max the titles, you may still keep using lockpicks.
Even if you need no more skill points nor exp, you may still keep earning experience to get consumables.
No matter how many times you have entered the core and factions elite areas, you may want to enter later.
No mater how many times you die an item, you may still dye it again later.

Tomes are not the same. Once you know all skills, they have no use for you. They have value: 0 and will never have a trader.

You can make your mid up, but that doesn't change the facts and the design behind the tomes. As I said, the only thing left for you is understand it. You may or may not, but that will not change a thing. As they say in japanese: muri desu.

Even a trader for Tonics would make more sense that this.

Skill Tomes are the first and most obvious choice for a common commodity that deserves a trader right now.

The demand for tomes is close to infinite - you can reroll characters over and over and learn skills again just as you can dye the same item over and over.
Even without the extreme behavior there's one thing we can be completely sure of - the demand for tomes will remain high and they will keep being wanted and traded no matter what.

The sheer volume of tome trades is also beyond other commodities. There are no other standardized mass goods that are both traded in such a large scale and where having a trader would really benefit both buyers and sellers so much.

For most other goods that don't have a trader yet there are solid reasons against them. For tomes there are none.

For some unknown reason you WANT to think tomes are different and not accept the reality. No idea why.

So many posts and you still haven't provided any reasonable argument, anything that would prove Tomes are different where they are not, and any single good reason a straight trading improvement in the form of a trader npc for Tomes would be bad. Try harder or admit your failure.

The skill trainer is already a tome seller... the only difference is that he does the double clicking for you. That in itself saves you time, which seems to be what you want anyway.

And selling to a tome trader would take longer anyway. Say you have 20 tomes to sell. You could go through and request a quote 20 times and then accept that each of those 20 times, or you could go to a major hub (which is where the tome trader would be placed anyway), spend 4 seconds advertising in the trade channel and sell all 20 at once. Again, the trader only makes things take longer, which is exactly what you don't want

No. Weapon upgrade traders is the only one left.
PvP-only accounts can't easily get upgrades for items like Zaishen chest rewards.
That's the main reason for the need of a weapon upgrade trader.
But Tomes?
They are useless for PvP characters, and PvE characters can get skills easily in trainers.
The only thing left would be the Elite tomes, and there is no need to turn Skill Hunter in a farm-10-hours-then-buy-in-1-minutes title rank.

Tomes are an alternate way to get skills, a bonus that requires no skill points.
They are not THE way to get the skills, they are an extra way to get them, like Hero Skill points.
Tomes are a bonus item with no merchant value that can be found only in Hard Mode (and the Zaishen Chest).
For some unknown reason you WANT to think tomes are different and not accept the reality. Probably you want to buy them faster without having to spam in towns.

But, as I said, for that we need the Xunlai Marketplace, NOT a trader.
The only trader missing left is the weapon upgrade trader.

無理です

i would much rather have a weapon upgrade trader than a tome trader. after a skill is unlocked, anyone character on that account can purchase that skill from any skill trainer in that campaign. it's impossible to do that with weapon upgrades. if you don't already have it, you have to spend time trying to find it. and in my opinion it shouldn't be easy to learn elite skills. they're elite for a reason. (most of them anyway)

the solid reason for not having a tome trader is that it isn't necessary because all unlocked skills are already available to all characters on that account for the cost of a skill point and up to 1000g. the only time it costs your character to learn an unlocked skill is the time it takes to get from one campaign to another. tome traders are not as beneficial to the formation of characters as a weapon upgrade trader would be.

making a trader would ruin the point of tomes
and make them basicly into a skill trainer that teaches u anything that you've got unlocked via hero skills/other character/priest of baltz
we could just say make skill trainers teach all unlocked skills

And if elite tomes were sold why not just remove cap sigs and give us 1baltz point per every 10enemys killed

i like that you are trying to contribute but this is a bad idea

Omfg, people, think before posting.

Weapon upgrade trader is not the subject of this thread. It's a far far more complicated case, a standard trader npc for mods is a wrong way to do it. Mods should be sold through a Xunlai Marketplace-like thing instead, for many reasons.
Oh, those few PvP-only accounts are screwed anyway when it comes to trading.
They can't easily sell items they get from Zaishen or HoH chest, including, for crying out loud, tons of random Skill Tomes they get but can't use.

Legendary Skill Hunter is already an entirely buyable title - Trader wouldn't change anything in this matter.
Oh, and talking about farming, skill tomes are totally farmable drops - you don't need a single trade or a single use of Cap Sig to max this title!
Next time think more before posting bs.

You need to accept that they already are a viable alternative way of obtaining skills, in many cases the most efficient way. It's the way based on a free market. And all the trader would do is helping to speed up the market.

They aren't some sort of a mysterious 'bonus item' disguised in a form of standard common tradeable commodity you keep thinking they are. Don't try to make up bs to hide the truth, for most players they ARE the number 1 way of getting skills.

And my personal reason I really want this thing is not buying but selling, to save time and storage... although an occassional quick buy would be great aswell.

fail at understanding of most basic stuff.
Xunlai Marketplace should be used for single rare items, not for standardized stackable mass goods, traded in bulk, like materials or tomes. Do you even understand the difference between it and a trader npc? You keep getting it mixed up.


Wrong. You fail to realise that all the trader would do is provide an option of cutting time normally wasted on WTS or WTB spamming at the cost of him being a gold sink (difference between buy and sell prices), which is also a positive change - the existance of tomes greatly reduced the gold sink effect of skill trainers
...oh, and I forgot to mention saving us some storage space random single unwanted tomes take (in my case it's usually 6-12 slots taken by tomes I don't have time to WTS)
they already do that.
Elite tomes are already in the game and are heavily traded between people. That fact didn't remove the viability of traditional skill capping - they're pretty expensive. Trader wouldn't make them cheaper - in fact trader selling price would be even higher than average market price.

Correct. The price for tomes would settle at exactly 1k each. 1k as in the cost of a skill from the already existent skill trainer (I realize skills initially cost less, but seriously, is anyone going to get a max character with every skill for every profession without buying 19 skills or cap sigs? No, it's simply not fiscally intelligtent.). As long as tomes were less than 1k people would buy them from the trader. However, as more people buy, the price would go up (as basic supply and demand as you can possibly get). The price would rise like this until it reached at least 1k... at this point there would be no purpose in purchasing skills via a tome trader as it becomes easier and faster to use a skill trainer, since tomes only allow you to get skills you've already unlocked (just like a skill trainer). If for whatever reason the cost of a tome exceeded 1k, well, as someone else has already stated, only a moron would actually choose to buy one.

Similarly, selling tomes to a trader would be equally pointless. Go to any trader already in existence (perhaps a materials one) and you'll see that the quoted price for selling is much much lower than the purchase cost that will be quoted. As in any other case, people would sell at a point somewhere below the purchase price and above the sell price. While there would be disparities in the sell (to the trader) values of the professions (assassin and warriors being lowest, with the caster ones being progressively higher) people would still split the difference. The resulting values for person to person trade would be quite close (if not exactly) what the generally accepted prices would be as they stand today (check the pc forums here if you don't already know them for whatever reason).

In short, it wouldn't make sense to sell them for very low prices to the trader when you could easily sell them for substantially more to other players with minimal effort; It similarly would not be justifiable to add a tome trader to the game when the purchase (from the trader) value would undoubtedly settle at the already established prices set at the already established skill trainers. Besides, as I already pointed out a few posts ago, the concept of saving time really doesn't work out either.

Mithran your whole post was a great example of why the bad idea for an elite tome trader is a bad idea, but this is (in my opinion) the best example. And it shows how Yawmouth is incapable of looking beneath the surface so i would just give up. He is set on countering any valid arguments with insults and disrespect.
Yes, Elite tomes can still be bought and Legendary skill hunter (among most other titles) can be fully purchased(with the correct amount of funds). But the difference is being able to buy 290 elite tomes within a 5 minute period as opposed to Trying to find 290 elite tomes from players which would take much, much, much, much, much longer. (Hey i just got Legendary skill title in under 10 minutes from first skill to last! Next nerfed legendary skill will have me doing Dwarven boxing for 10 hours. wOOt!)
The bad idea is a bad idea still. Frankly I'm surprised that this thread is still going. Its like you are trying to prove something to someone who is wearing blinders.

I am curious if ANet places certain skills in certain locations for a reason. Or is it just random? Why place end game skills at the end of the game? This really doesn't require much thinking. But i already know your argument to this. (They can just be bought from other players anyways) As can EVERY other item in the game. Sofa king what.

Anyone that agrees with such a thing, would agree with a trader for Stars of Transference.
And agreeing with stars of transference would also be an agreement for all the other consumables.

Just because people already trade with them does not mean that it should have a trader.

The items that have traders are:
- EXPENDABLE ITEMS WITH NO VARIABLE PROPERTIES THAT ARE NOT SOLD BY MERCHANTS AND CAN BE FOUND MOSTLY AS HOSTILE NPC DROPS IN BOTH NORMAL AND HARD MODE. AND WHICH CAN BE USED INDEFINITELY BY EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER.

Runes? You can salvage and put as many runes in the armors you have as you want. Sell them and get others.
Dyes? You can dye any dyable item as many times as you want. Gray dyes do not appear in traders because they can be bought in merchants.
Materials and Rare Materials? You can make as many items with them as you want. You can get them in artisans, but artisans are NOT merchants.
Scrolls? You can use them again and again indefinitely. Scrolls that appear in merchant DO NOT appear in traders.
Sigils? You can disband and make as many guilds as you want.

But...
Lockpicks? They can be bought in merchants.
Tomes? Once you have all skills they are useles for a character and you must sell them, use them in other characters or give them away. They also drop only in hard mode.
Consumables? They are "standarized stackable stuff", but they do NOT drop from monsters.
Trophies? They are not expendable, they are tokens exchanged in collectors.
Miniatures? Do I need to explain this one?
Weapons? They have variable properties.
Weapon upgrades? The variable properties they have are the reason they do not have a trader, and something to be fixed, by the way.
Alcohol? Bought in merchants.
Sweets? Bought in merchants.
Party items? Hey, they fit the description, but since there are a bit pointless and the only ones usefull in PvE, alchohol for PvE skills, can be bough from merchants, there's no need for a trader. And they will probably be sold in merchants too, sooner or later, probably Factions merchants.

And, to put it simply: A tome trader would be much like a skill point vending machine.

why not more skills learned right off the bat the better

You should probably mention that they drop from ZChests and HM only or risk getting called stupid by yagmouth.

I would much rather having a four-leaf-clover trader or candy cane trader than an Elite tome trader anyways.

weapon mod trader, would be better :P
i hate looking for inscription's or for +30's for over an hour