Resellable Armor

Maybe not a perfect armor:mats and plat tradeoff, but it'd be nice to get some of your stuff back. Maybe 50%. Anyway, I'd mostly like to be able to swap common armor items around on my own personal account, but absolutely /notsigned to being able to sell your armor off.

YESSSSSSS!! Or no... wait... I see plenty of completely different ideas in this thread :S

But I have my own vision!

It a HUGE potential of being something completely AWESOME, but it can also be screwed up easily so it has to be designed well.

Droppable+tradeable armor pieces.
Could bring a new life to many areas of the game and could even bring back the aspect of collecting cool rare items and a large part of the economy from death.

Note that it wouldn't require a major game engine update - the game already CAN handle not customized trade'able armor pieces - I know that, I had one myself - a leggings piece from a PreSearing collector missed the customization, can't remember if it was before or shortly after release, but they got fixed soon after.
...but ofcourse designing the new drop generation tables and balancing things would take a TON of work likely, and the new stat distribution algorithms I dream of may also be hard to code... but I'd say it can be worth it!

But first: IMPORTANT STUFF:

- Crafting armors should remain the primary way of getting armors - gold and material sinks should keep their important roles and shouldn't be made weaker.
- Crafted armor pieces should remain customized - they shouldn't be something traded.
- NEW tradeable armor pieces should get added, they would be obtained as drops from specific selected mobs, bosses, locked chests, victory chests.
- Existing sets of prestige armor shouldn't be obtainable as drops.
- Dropped armor should all be new items. Can be reskins or use existing models already used on npc's or mobs.
- Dropped armor pieces don't even need to be parts of whole armor sets - it could be better if they were just a bunch of standalone pieces (like headgear, gloves or boots) instead.
- The dropped armor pieces should be functionally different than craftable armor. They should offer some new PvE only functionality but it's important to have them NOT obsolete the existing armors and NOT encourage armor swapping during battles more than it's done now.
- They can't all be perfect and fully moddable. And even more - it would be GODAWESOME if there was no strictly defined and obtainable perfect at all! New armor drops would be a great opportunity to fix the weakest aspect of the game since ever (easy perfection available as basic items from npcs, then almost all the rares are worse and the best ones are just equal, nothing to improve) - and it can be done without impacting the game balance or causing power creep! :O

To clearly ilustrate what I'm talking about, a design example:

** Droppable Headgear for All professions **



A Mursaat Mask, dropping from all Mursaat, replacing some of their other unequippable armor drops. It would be a headgear for all professions, would have have *variable* base properties:
-base armor (10..40)
-level requirement needed to get that base armor, otherwise get 0.
(additional base armor is granted upon customization, based on the class of character that customizes it - +20 for casters, +30 for Ranger/Assa/Derv, +40 for Para, +40+20(phys) for War, which is shown on the item)

-inherent mod based on popular common insignia (not salvagable, not changable)

-may contain a Rune which can be salvaged, can always be upgraded by another rune.

-either "+1 of item's attribute" (golds only) OR 1-2 random inherent mods instead, providing small bonuses to make up for the lack of attribute increase which is normally present on a headgear.

There are many possibilities here, and since there are NO strict max values for those mods defined by other items, it can have a seemingly open-ended stat distribution, where high values get exponentially more rare as they increase. The point is the ultimate max one will never get found and nobody may even know how would it look like. And even when one close to that would drop, it would still be *balanced* by design - those mods will still have small enough effects that they won't clearly beat the negative of -35hp from a Major rune (making up for the loss of +1attr), so it won't obsolete the standard headgear.

More examples:


Customized on a Warrior adds appropriate armor bonuses, the last line gets replaced with standard customization info.

Some of them would drop ONLY from chests.

Low level stuff also possible.

There could also be Greens, but they shouldn't work as max stat definers, ruining value of 99% golds. They should be unique - use only mods or combinations not possible on golds. Like this example:

Includes a sup vigor effect which can't be removed.
Greens would require even more careful design, to make them real unique, somewhat useful, but not directly interfering with golds value.

Oh, my, that sure helps to decide against the idea.

If a Mursaat or Margonite mask are ever to be added, what would be cool, it should be crafter or given by collectors of their trofies like destroyer gauntlets.

So many random stuff is SO non-GW.

A PvE property won't be so bad, as long as is just ONE for any kind of item regardless of prestige status, and is added as slot for a replaceable upgrade like insignia and runes.

Personally, I feel that anet tries to make guild wars seem as if it had an actual economy, but it doesn't. Anet could raise the price of ectos with the touch of a key if they wanted, which is why this "it will ruin the economy" talk is pish posh nonsense.

So, /signed. Why not make it easier for people to have fun? People like armor, let them have it.

They can have it, and it's way easier to get than waiting for a drop or paying a farmer. Al you need is the materials and gold, and the crafter does the rest for you.

Well, considering Fissure of Woe armor, the materials and gold cost a little under, sometimes over 1 million gold. So that's a generous amount of time spent playing the game, saving up for one set of armor...and then of course there's the regular Elite armors along the way.

The game is meant for amusement, not getting frustrated and grinding your life away for that oh so expensive FoW armor. I have a set, and I worked for it, but I think it should be easier to achieve for those people who don't spend too much time on Guild Wars.

That's quite a margin for error you have there.

I don't agree with the idea. The armour system works perfectly well as it is just now. There is already "too much money" in the game...taking away more money sinks would be a bad idea.

Then they should take a look at all those farming builds and speed clears.
The only thing that keeps most people from getting down there and making things is that most people will only do speed clears with farming builds.

I rarely see more than one party being formed to go down there and complete stuff other than ZQuests, that is not formed by speed farmers. Once every 30 minutes or so, and WAAAAAAAAAY much less in some districts.

That's the thing to look at, make the area for parties again, not just for specialized speed farmers.

To get a FoW armor, you either spend lots of PvP torunament points or play in FoW. To get a Raibow Phoenix, you either play lots of PvP or some statues in PvE.

I think this idea is way too late for GW1.

/notsigned anyway

This is gonna be in guild wars 2 i think.
No it's impossible. You don't consider special equip like 100 physical armor from war or 100 elemental armor of ranger etc etc