Equipment Packs

/signed.

Also selling the 3 coin types for balth faction would help alleviate some of the overly excessive costs of the bags.

5000 faction = 1 gold coin
500 faction = 1 silver coin
50 faction = 1 copper coin

zkeys sell for 1 gold coin or 5000 faction
a flame of balthazar sells for 2 silver coins and gives 1k balth faction when clicked.
An elite tome costs 2 gold coins + 1 plat for the sig of capture to get the skill on another character. this is similar in cost to the 3000 faction for an elite pvp skill unlock.

Anet based the costs of these items off of faction already so they should easily be able to put coins up for sale for faction.

/Signed

anet could have done a way job with this update. they wanted this game to be fun? how is this fun? hour upon hours of farming our ass off you get one bag. not fun

/signed.

This is exactly what I was going to post.

7500 copper coins for a heavy equipment bag is asinine especially if you have a complement of 10 or more characters. This high cost wouldn't be an issue if you could trade your balthazar faction for gold z-coins at the same rate as z-keys.

I approve of this.

For something as simple as storage for your character, I do agree there is a pricing issue here, as well as an obvious time sink. I can understand putting in some heavy hours for items that have an actual bearing on gameplay, like armor, weapons, and even titles. But having what is essentially a storage bag, and one that is actually more limited than the rest, require so much time and effort is hard to swallow. At the very least it would make sense to have them upgradable.

Then again, it has only been a couple of days, so perhaps this is something that will be addressed down the line when ANet has gotten enough feedback.

There are some good opinions and suggestions coming out here, people. Keep it up!

As much as I approve of this, this stands to push aside the point of doing zaishen missions if people will be spending their time doing pvp and just think what this will add up for bots in the JQ considering how many we normally deal with.

Actually it doesn't. A non pvp player is very limited in the faction they can earn via "fake" pvp against the computer AI. In order to gain a bag in a reasonable amount of time they will want to be doing coin missions/bounties on top of spending balth faction for coins.

Someone without any sort of pvp cap can only get 2k a day and maybe a few more k if they do the zaishen elite runs and will be limited to 10k faction that they can hold. That's a whopping 2 gold coins that they'd be able to buy in a few days of doing the "fake" pvp vs the computer AI.

I'd surely be doing the Missions/Bounties on top of that to help obtain a larger bag faster.

Anet could always limit it to one gold coin bought a day if needed too.

Currently the time investment for a bag is just ridiculous as is easy to see from the number of people who are not happy over it. It's not like it's going to stop people who are already going to buy the storage tabs for convenience from getting said tabs.

I'd like Anet to come and make a statement on these new equipment bags and the horrifically slow method of gaining them, but I seriously doubt we'll see such a statement/discussion.

/signed

Overall I love the new stuff in the anniversary update (thank you ANet!!), but I do get discouraged envisioning myself nervously surpassing the Large pack milestone 2.5 times over the next 6 months holding out for a single Heavy pack and then kicking myself when either I give up or the rules change.

So please... make the packs upgradeable! I don't mind the long-term aspect of it, but we have enough difficult decisions to make in real life, lol. As it is now, pack grinding feels like that Deal or No Deal game show .

/signed

I like the new updates and things they've added. I do however agree with what others have said - the amount of time involved in getting another bag for a char is pretty ridiculous.

/signed

hard to get to conserve server space until they can expand the servers???

Or maybe a.net is trying to *gasp* encourage people who don't play PvP to actually play it?

The whole point of the zquests is to provide people with something to do and liven up the game with PUGs. Instead of people sitting around all weekend farming raptors, people are actually grouping with players to do missions for the z-quests. Encouraging people who haven't tried PvP to try it is a good thing, because it allows people to experience more of the game.

Now, if you don't like PvP or PvE, that's fine. You can stick to the quests that interest you. But this update is meant to get people to do things. I don't see how encouraging the very thing the update was designed to do is a bad thing.

I am not sure I would want to see trading solely Balthazar for coins, but yes the above model could work. This caters towards a whole different part of the community again, i.e. the Balthazar farmers and hardcore PvPers and might remove people from the Zquests.

The mission-and-reward system is fine as it is, I reckon it is just the scale and value of e-packs that must be adjusted. I don't mind having the different missions. It is quite refreshing to do the different missions - Bounty, Mission and then Combat.

I have seen high-rated GvG guilds and players doing THK on HM and likewise PvE'ers going into TA.
It's good for the game. They did a good job with these missions.
The value / scale will be the easier solution when dealing with the e-packs only. If they had to go adjusting the rewards from the missions, this will screw some of the other exchange items around and put that out of place again.

/signed

Make it a gold sink if you want, but not a time sink. I've sunk almost 4 years into this game and finished all 4 campaigns on 7 pve characters. I even grinded all eotn faction titles (doing book missions to the point I don't want to see them ever again) and prot+guard on my main. I do not want to now have to grind 14 hours a day doing the same missions I've repeated over and over for the next month or two for just a bag. A restricted bag at that.

Lets us buy for balth faction, increase the rewards (give me an option to drop all xp+faction+cash rewards for more z-coins), decrease the cost, get rid of waste by letting us upgrade the bags with runes or let us trade the coins for something else. One gold coin is worth a z-key right? 15 z-keys for a bag then. I'll take it. Hell, if someone's willing to sell me a heavy for 20 z-keys or 20 ecto I'm in. Pm me.

As for encouraging people, that's good in theory but you also got to be practical. Set the bar too high and you'll just do the opposite of what you want. An achievable goal, people will play for, and on multiple characters. Something that'll take you grinding till 2010 to get a full set, very few will do. They'll at most get one heavy for their main and their HoM armour and barely look at this again. Keep things at this level, and we'll see how many are still at this in 4 months time.

Or keep a permanent HA quest for 350 coins on top of whatever daily quest there is. Might bring more people to HA regularly if you want to go that way. Getting to a dungeon in the middle of nowhere and then doing a long slogging dungeon for 105 coins is fail.

But regardless of what gets changed, do it ASAP while few (if any) has a heavy, that way no one will qq about spending 7500 coins on a bag and now the price got dropped on them. Don't leave it like razah till quite a few paid their gems (when they were worth a bundle) and then had to refund the gems (and after they'd dropped to like 1/10 of their original value).

I agree the zoin cost is astonomical.... 7500 for a pack for 1 character... so if you have more than one you play on you have to grind for a few years to get a pack? omg.... no way.

My monk needs the pack for than any other for her 55 and 600 sets to sit in with her weapons, but I want it on my main too.... so that is 10 months down the line or I spend all the time I have doing the zquests.... no way mamma!

I sure hope they drop the cost, even perhaps put in a cost at a merchant.... I'd pay 20K for a heavy pack for sure !

/signed.

They are just way too expensive in Zaishen Coins.

if ur not willing to spend the time to get it, u prolly dont even need the extra space. it is an item that we haven't had for 4 years, how u gonna complain that it is too hard to get when it IS finally implemented? getting 50 iris flowers in pre would take longer than farming 2500g, lmao. if 2500 gold is too much for u, once again, u prolly dont need the extra space anyways unless ur just a packrat.

That's a stupid argument. I need the space and I'm not willing to spend time doing pisant things I've already done 298974 times just to be able to store my stuff.

Seriously, do you Anet nutswingers get paid commission off of each hour spent playing this game? Stop blindly making excuses for the company, they pay people to do that for them.

/signed

I know people are whining that anet could have done nothing. I wish they would, no con sets, no tonics, no everlastings, no inscriptions, zkeys, summoning stones, HoM all this extra useless shit. oh wait you talking about storage being added... They implemented more stuff ingame its there cause and effect to remedy us the situation. They are responsible.

/signed
/agreed
/YES!

Items that offer an advantage in function than just appearance should be able to be acquired by anyone than just hardcore players (with the 20-slot pack).

The packs are useful and should be more readily available. They follow the same line as the backpack, belt pouch and bags. No reason to make them so difficult to get (unless grind is the only way to go nowadays)...

If you consider prices and methods of acquisition of the other bags, you get this:
- Backpack - free upon creation.
- Belt - 100g for 5 slots. Also in some easy quests and collectors with quick-to-get trophies.
- Bags - 100g for 5 slots. 200g for 10 slots. 700g for 15 slots. 1200g for 20 slots. Also available with a few quests, and some collectors and quest reward collectors for 6 trophies in total: (1+2)+(1+2).

So, logically, going from 100g for 5 slots to 2500g for 5 slots it's a bit too much.
I'd rather go with:
- 1K for 5 slots.
- 2K for 10 slots.
- 7K for 15 slots.
- 15K for 20 slots.
That's sounds more reasonable to me.