GW style item sink for GW

Whether it is or is not problem is arguable, but fact is that three years into game, most of supposedly valuable items are worthless inventory clutter. Not only market suffers as people can't sell their loot to other players, also buyers have hard time locating certain items as their sale to other players is no longer profitable enough to keep trading them.

As players no longer need items to equip themselves because they have equipment they need, there needs to be secondary use for such items, use which even fully equipped, rich players will deem worthy, and which provide steady goal for everyone with worthy bonuses

By borrowing "Horadric cube" item recycler from Diablo and Guildwars commendations/collector feature, I suggest this as way to get rid of excess items, revitalize trade and add new long term goal while helping people achieve grind titles a little bit easier to guild wars all in one go.

1) We convert excess items to stackable, tradeable resource, we introduce new type on NPC: [rare item merchant]. This NPC will trade tokens for gold and green weapons, "Golden Token" and "Green Token"
He will have companion NPC which will be [collector], offering green token for three gold item tokens.

This gives us currency in form of "Green Token" which is used in next step:

2) To give players actuall reason to turn their items to convert their items, we will give them collectors:

A) Gold token [collector] - high-potency alcohol, sweets and party items, lockpicks. Other ~1k worth items. This will be the only gold token collector.
B) Green token [collector] - 1 green token for more worthy items, like zaishen-grade keys,
C) [collectors] for more green tokens:
3, 5 tokens - gradually better low end rewards.
25 tokens - set of new weapon skins. (gold inscribables)
75 tokens - minipet(s)
250 tokens - new armor set (= 1250 green tokens for full set).

This gives us wide range of prestige items of all grades: from relatively cheap new weapon skin, through moderatelly priced minipets to armor set which is gargantuan (3750 gold items of 1250 green items removed from game for one set, if price of gold token would be 1k, it would be 3.75 million armor).

pluses:
* adds value to most drops
* encourages player trading, encourages gold flow from rich to poor.
* is item sink that is voluntary
* would cleanse market of excess items upon introduction.
* is worthy even for fully pimped players.
cons:
you tell me.

-I don't really get the 1250 green tokens for a new armor set... uuuh you said before 1 green totem was 1 Z-Key.... why not trade the 1250 green tokens for 1250 Z-Keys... So the 1250 for a new armor set is silly.
-And uhm 1 gold token for alcohol/party/sweet/lockpicks? People will be only buying lockpicks... since lockpicks are around 1,2k and the best alcohol/sweet/party = 300-500g.
-75 tokens for minipet(s), should be gold tokens then
- Why do you want such high prices for *new* armor sets? millions for 1 armor set which can be bought for 100k up to 800k for obsidian armor.

I might be totally not understand, anyway This is what I thought about it.

Rewards are not "set in stone" ideas - more of examples. It can be ballanced.

And high-priced armor is must, because it it would cost less than FoW it will likely be ignored.

zaishen key is a pvp reward is it not?
and green items are uniqe items found in pve is it not?

where is the connection between these two items? i cant see any.

you honestly think an idea like this will be added to a game that is more than three years old?

/notsigned to me it doesnt make enough sense.

Although items sinks sounds good.

I also thing that it would work better to force people to customize items to be able to equip them, like with armor.

That way, item used, item out of market, and new room is made for new items.

@ OP:

I think I get the general idea of what you're trying to sell here and I think it's got potential. However, the items that could be redeemed by such tokens are what I can't make up my mind about (or rather, I couldn't quite agree with what you proposed).

How about if the tokens could only be used to exchange for a limited range of items which are consumables in nature and the token concept applies only to green stuff? Basically, the rules are as follows:

1) Player has an unwanted green item
2) Player interacts with "Used Green" NPC to exchange 1x green item for 1x token
3) Player then takes token(s) and interacts with "Token" NPC(s) with the following options for exchange:
- 1x token for 1x Level 1 Drunk/Sweet/Party item
- 3x token for 1x Level 3 Drunk/Sweet/Party item or Sup ID Kit
- 5x token for 1x Sup Salvage Kit or UW/FoW Scrolls, etc

Basically, what I'm trying to come up with here is an alternative use for unwanted greens (rather than merchanting it for a meagre amount of gold) to exchange for something that is at least useful without causing too much impact to item prices.

*Note: This is still based on OP's idea.

In my mind, the idea of a 'sink', be it gold, item or what have you, introduces the possibility of loss.

This idea of yours is more a way to get the most out of our limited storage by trading in items that you don't want into a stackable commodity than it is a sink, but we already have that,.. in gold.

So in fact it is only a proposal to introduce more collectors into the game, for whatever your heart desires, be it a mini-pet, armor, or whatever.

You're still going to end up with a glut in the end though, you'll only get to where you want to be, items or title-wise, more quickly and conveniently, but you will still have done nothing to address item glut, you'll only end up trading whatever your storage looks like now with items you'd rather have, which will be made even less valuable, and tabs of these tokens, which will spurn you to come back to Sardelac with an idea to remove the stack limit.

Brilliant.

Zaishen key is pvp reward. Zaishen chest drops PvE items like tomes or title fodder.

where is the connection between these two items? i cant see any.

---

Connection is "desirable reward". Zkey is only PvP reward because it is supposed to give PvP players something they can sell for gold to pvers.

Good idea, but it still leaves in huge amount of items around that are not used, but instead just stored on mules and which clutter market.

For those what we need is a Xunlai Market. Make it easir to sell the stuff, and they will not store it so much.

In my opinion the proper action to revitalize a stalled market is to increase sinks, not to throttle sources which is what ANet defaults to, so although the exact implementation can be discussed further, I'm going to

/sign

this on principle.

Wow, this is definitely one of the better suggestions I've seen. Kudos.

/signed

Not only would this provide a potent item sink, it would give older players a new long term goal. I'm curious about what you mean by "gradually better low end rewards". Do you mean stuff like Salvage/ID Kits/Lockpicks?

Also, new armor is always appreciated, especially with non-core professions.

Yes, that kind of stuff.

There is huge potential for "new cool stuff" in that range too. stuff worth ~10k in tokens should really be something - i.e. 25 charge perfect salvage kit.

So, it's like adding another form of currency?

Sounds pretty good, but I'd suggest more of a gap between Green and Gold status items, and make sure that greens from starter islands can't be thrown into the mix.

Unfortunately, with all new suggestions, I'd be skeptical with how much new stuff would be potentially added through something like this.

Srsly guys... Srsly to me another gold sink in an already bad economy. (rofl sounds like real life) But if you want to spend your money. Z keys - Obby Armor - Mini's. There are plenty of ways to spend all your cash.

/notsigned (not another sink pl0xors)

Sell stuff to the merchant.

Although it hurts to sell that weapon that used to be worth 100k+ for 452g, you already have a very easy way to get rid of items. I know it hurts, but there is NO reason to keep an item you aren't using and can't sell.

/agree with selling to merchant. Plus, maybe I misunderstand but you would get the same green token for trading in a non-max green (they're out there, I've gotten them) as you would, say, for a spear of the hierophant or something? Nonsensical. There's already a sink for junk weapons. Merchants. Guildies. Heroes. And, if all else fails, the trash bin.

Well, nonmax greens (and non-maxdamage/armor/energy golds) don't necessarily have to "qualify" for this. In fact that would be stupid.

Idea is to give alternative to merching for decent-ish stuff in economy where demand for it died out.

One of the better ideas I have seen - I'm all for anything that will help bring the market for items back to where it was a year or two ago. What you said about items not being valuable enough to make them worth selling to other players is true, I quit power trading because of that... Overall a good idea, probably will never happen, but kudos for offering a legitimate (with a little work) solution to a problem.

sounds like a good idea, but it may have just been me seeing "new armor set" and hoping for non-spiky assassin armor

/notsigned, I see this suggestion as a short term fix, I want a long term fix.

I think we need someway to get items out of the market.

I say give players a reason to customize stuff because the current system isn't working, especially in caster area. How about customize for the account, not the character.

Have equipment degrade over time, not by much, something like 10% max. The equipment is still useful but a new one would be better.

Anet needs to stop destroying the game's original item sinks. We used to have:

1: There were no inscriptions.
2: Things broke when you salvaged.
3: Things are customized.

These three things together did a fairly good job as an item sink. The fact that thigns weren't inscribable made it much harder to obtain a 'perfect' anything. You'd have a sword with 15-22 req9 fall, but "omg it's damage plus 18% while HP is blow 50%? This isn't a good weapon." *merched* Or... "Oh, a 15-22 req9 sword with 15^50 just dropped, sweet, I'm keeping it. But now I have to remove the 20/20 and the +30HP from my 15-22 req9 14^50 sword. That means I have a 50% chance of losing a mod." *Salvage* "Drat! Got my 20/20 but the sword broke, now I need to buy or find a new +30HP."

The added effects being inherent to the weapon made it hard to get perfect ones, and in combination with customization and things breaking when salvaged, did a good job of keeping supply in check. But then came inscriptions, wand wraps, shield handles, and focus cores. Suddenly it was much easier to obtain a perfect anything. Sword has 15-22 req9, but only 14^Enchanted? No big deal, oh look this non-max req11 axe has the 15^50 I want. *salvaged* Since it was suddenly much easier to obtain perfect weapons, the market just as suddenly was flooded with way more of them, and so, the value of perfect weapons dropped greatly.

We still had customization and things breaking when salvaged... but then EotN introduced soemthing which would cause the weapon market to take a second major nose dive: Perfect Salvage Kits, which are guarenteed to not break the item, and thus you have a 100% chance of retriving all maxed mods. So suddenly the weapon market gets flooded with a greater number of maxed mods than ever before, and *POW* the value of stuff takes a hit. Basic law of supply and demand: supply goes up and demand remains the same? Price goes down.

Now we're holding on by a thread, customization is the only one of the three which hasn't been utterly destroyed by some added feature... they need to stop breaking the already existing item sinks is what needs to happen, before the weapon market falls through the basement altogether.

And conversely, make it easier to buy the stuff, and people would be less likely to clog up their inventory with stuff they're hanging onto 'just in case'.

Which is also, for the record, why item degradation is bad. It'd just lead to more inventory clogging as people hold onto what they've got so they have a replacement for a degraded weapon, and may actually deflate the market for top-end skins - would you REALLY pay 100k+ecto for a voltaic spear that's going to become useless after a few months due to degradation? At best, such equipment would be PURELY vanity items that are just shown off because they're too valuable to actually USE, and then who cares if they were req13 non-max-damage in the first place?

Well this IS way to get em out of market. IDK, but it does not seem like short term solution for me as market for high-end armor components is quite stable over years: ectos and shards are still valuable (less, but they are still traded) and those armors are still being crafted.

(anyhow: what about weapons that degrade, but customizing them restores them to max and prevents any further degradation?... but degradation is still bad idea imho.)

Problem with degradation and other item sink schemes is that it pisses people off and its not fun ... why do that when we can give them something that doubles as goal and as new cool stuff and something they would do off their free will?

Besides, adding even stronger incentive to coverting items to tokens and leghtening lifespan of this scheme is only matter of new token collector.

I would use it. Aspecially for things mentioned here...all consumable items, (consumable meaning, things that dont last, that have to be replaced on a regular basis)

How long do you think it will take before players have stacks of these tokens and nothing they want to spend them on? Then we will see the price of tokens take a dive. It will be the same problem all over again, too many items on the market.

The only way the token suggestion would last is if anet kept adding skins and I don’t see this happening. If anet adds something like the 100k+e skins you are just going to upset the power traders when their 100k+e item is now worth 20k, wait that is a good thing. I am all for upsetting the power traders and watching them whine because their e-pen is shrinking.

I say just use the NPC Merchant to get ride of unwanted gold items then use the gold to buy what you want, gold is the only thing not dropping in value (and lock picks).

I agree with OP although numbers can obviously be tweaked.

Its an interesting idea.. only problem is that you would only get rid of the very high amount of low-end golds/greens which doesn't really help since they are mainly merched already.. Find me a solution to the over-supply of the somewhat more high-end items and I'll be happy .

(obviously there are also some flaws in your system, maar een kniesoor die daar op let.)

if items from collectors are customized then
yeh
otherwise ud get tons of zkeys sell em n b rich. :|