Weapon mods - should be changeable

It's stupid that as soon as I put a mod on my weapon thats it, it's lost if I wanmt to change it for something else - why can't mods be changeable, so if you apply a new one, you get the old one back to reuse rather than have to salvage the weapon and hope you get it?

Eg. I have a bow with a 20% enchant grip, I now have a better bow that I want a 20% enchant grip for and want to put a +5 armour grip on the bow with the enchant grip - yet the only ways I can do this are A) salvage the bow with the grip I want and hope I get it rather than the string or wood and waste a bow I want to keep or B) buy another one and just right off the 10k the 1st one cost me. This strikes me as plainly stupid, if I put a grip or string on a bow, then surely I should be able to remove it too?

Agreed, If you can put a mod on, should be able to reverse it. I think Anet has it like this to keep the rare ones, rare. At the very least, they should have a npc that could provide this service for a small fee.

/signed

I've been wanting this for a LONG time.

Great idea

/signed

Absolutely. Either a new Weaponsmith NPC or a few new features on the current ones.

He can switch weapon mods for you for a price. I like it. And that would free up a lot of inventory space when you think about it. You wouldn't have to carry around all of those item upgrades in case salvaging goes wrong.

Hell...why not also include a feature for the Weaponsmith salvaging your weapon if you so desire? Give you an option for which mod you'd want, pay a fee, and voila. You could still use Salvage kits and such, of course, but the Weaponsmithy would be an option for those crappy items that happen to have nice mods on them.

/signed, definitely

I would disagree.
It make things too flexible, thus take away that "personal customization". It feel it is making things too easy. It will also devalue the items and mods if you can take it out with ease.

Maybe just have a Weaponsmith at higher zone that offer a paid service of either 1) extrac all your mod but destory the weapon, or 2) "clean" your weapon of all the mods.

There were other things in your post I didn't really anticipate happening if the suggestion were implemented, but this one particular sentence caught my eye.

With weapon prices, mods, runes, etc., exceedingly and sometimes unnecessarily high in some places...with prices becoming so great that players themselves have established their own currencies (ectos, for example)...it seems to me that a system that devalues items and mods would be greatly beneficial to the majority of the playerbase.

Certain weapons are going for 100k+12 ectos. I'm all for devaluing them a bit.

Maybe I should said: It devalue most... but will sky rocket the rares mods even more, no that they can be use more than once. And it decrease even more of the gold outputs, thus making people horde their money further. since you don't need to spend anything extra to get new mods if you want to change weapons (of same type), you got lot more money in your hand. For some, it is good, but for the more "professional" famer, it is mean more, which will just drive up the price of some other stuff even more. Think how much more a 20% enchantment might cost, that now people only need one for their weapon. Also things like renting and lending gold mods would arise. On a side note, even now, I am still iffy about how easy it is to distribute your attribute points (back than there is a thing call refund points).

You would make it so if you can take the mod out, you must customize it first, to prevent resell.

Your post is kind of hard to read at points because of some odd grammatical choices, so I'm going to try to piece together what you said. If I get anything wrong, feel free to correct me.

Now, if I'm understanding you correctly, players being able to keep one rare mod and simply re-use it will...damage the economy because...with all players having that rare mod, and being able to re-use it...there will be much more gold in the economy, thus creating even more inflation.

I don't think that really makes sense, for a few reasons.

One, if the players are able to have a rare mod that they can keep, then the collective demand for such a rare mod will decrease. People won't have to keep amassing gold to buy a 5:1 Vampiric mod, for example, because they already have one. When everyone has a certain mod, nobody will need them, ergo, because the demand is reduced, the prices will be reduced.

Two, if the above begins happening on a larger scale (as would be expected, really), we could see a wider shift occur with all mods and upgrades. When people don't have to worry about losing a mod they really like...they're not going to try to hoard. Most of the economics in this game are based on greed, sure, but I think that greed is based on fear (and not fear in the "OMG scary monster!" type fear).

Three, when there's less demand for most items, because it's easier to acquire (and keep) them, and because many players are finding it easier to properly equip themselves at a reasonable price...I don't think we'd see much inflation at all.

If anything, the occurrences of "WTS Perfect Gold Sundering [insert rare weapon here] for 100k + ectos!!" will steadily decline...being that there just isn't enough demand to justify that type of price-gouging.

I don't even see how "professional" farmers factor in here, or even how they could have any negative effect. They supply the upgrades; people buy them; people only need one under this suggestion's system; therefore, less incentive to exaggerate upgrade prices. The farmers that continue to jack up prices will find themselves "out of a job."

And even though I don't quite see how renting and lending would come in...it seems to me that if something like that were to occur, that would increase upgrade accessibility for the playerbase, rather than limiting the accessibility (and it should be noted that the current upgrade accessibility is the complete opposite of accessibility).

Based on what I anticipate happening, I don't think preventing re-selling is necessary. In fact, I'd encourage it, because I see this suggestion as opening up the market (in the sense that all players can access items more easily), rather than narrowing the scope of the market.

I think this suggestion is golden, really, and serious consideration should be given to implementing it, because I see it quite possibly doing some damn good things for the playerbase.

I also agree... this situation is very similar to salvaging runes IMO.

At the very least, you should be able to choose what you salvage from the bow... its not like you're a retard randomly swinging a hammer at your bow hoping you take the grip off.

100% agree.

I always wondered why people couldn't just unwind thier staff wraps from thier staves. It's kinda wierd.

I like the idea, and have thought similarly at times. But I feel this is a bit like adding more storage. While a good thought, these ideas seem it would make things a bit too easy. I actually like when I have to make the decision whether or not to "make that sacrifice" of losing one item/upgrade to use another. If I could hang on to all of my aquired mods, I would then start wanting more storage space. Soon enough my GW account would start looking like my D2 accounts - full of stuff I basically never use.

I see your point, and it is a hard agrument, especially with my poor english.
But with reduce in sells, that means people will just keep their money. With more money in the pocket, that would drive up the rares, the "hottest thing", even more, since more rich player can afford it, but will also devaluse all the "lesser" weapons to dirt cheap, becuase you don't need it at all. And also people would just put the best mod on low end weapons, and give it to their new character, which, like the forge run, will ruin the game (atleast to me)

I see it as something nice to have, but make the game too easy and cheapen it. Like asking for Unlimited storage space, or reduce price on 75k armor.

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to Pie below...
the Price will still go up doing the first short term period, as the gold mod just become lot more valuable. Later on, this will die down, but might leave the rich or old player better off than the new and the poor. Also when I said rare, does not mean just the rare mods, but also any other rares (dye, runes, greeen, new stuff), which make it hard for dev to put any new and universal stuff in.

Actionjack, what he means is simply that the reason it won't drive up the price of rare items is because there will be more of them available. If more people can keep the rare mods they find and use them more than once, there will not only be less demand for them, but there will be more around to get.

I think it's a decent idea as a whole. I can see it being implemented in such a way that it'd somehow screw something up, though. That seems to happen with a lot of decent ideas. (Then a patch comes out a few days later fixing everything. )

I definately wouldn't mind being able to keep some wicked mods when I find a better item, I HATE playing the market and trying to buy them from people.

yeah, this is DEFINATLY needed in the game. if not, we should be allowed to salvage certain parts off a weapon.

They do need to make them changeable.

Forget having your 'oh this is rare and it adds to the rarity' and what not crap. Seriously, PVP characters can mod their weapons any way they want, I don't see why PVE should be deprived of so many things like this.

I think this is a good solution. I was thinking about this last night, and got thinking that many mod types would likely call for a physical modification to the weapon and/or mod that would likely restrict it's future useability.

For instance: Think about a bow string. That's an easy change-out, one would think - but remember that different types of bows would require different lengths of bowstrings. Theoretically, th best you could hope for after putting a string on a short bow would be to put it on another short bow. - but it would be too short to put on a longbow.

Another idea - to put a custom hilt on a sword would require modifications to both the sword and the hilt to make them fit right. To remove that hilt for another sword would likely require that the hilt be refitted for the new sword - and if you want to re-use the old sword, then you would need more weaponsmithing work to fit a standard (or other) custom hilt.

In fact - one of the few things that I can think of that wouldn't call for serious modifications to the weapon and/or mod would be staff wrappings....

So yeah - I think it's a good idea to do this as a weaponsmith deal where it would cost money to have it done.

People farming are constantly bringing new weapon mods into the economy. If mods could be applied reapplied and salvaged without anything being destroyed then there would be an infinite number of perfect mods.

Expensive armour and Dyes are a sink for gold, in the same way that mods, mod-salvage and customisation are a sink for weapons.



mish

Yep, and look at the prices for most of those weapon mods right now. If everyone can get a mod and keep it...we'd see a change in the market. And not to get into a debate over the finer points of it, but I don't think farming is exactly altruistic in the "I'm going to supply everyone with new weapon mods!" way.