ArenaNet talk:Guild Wars 2 suggestions/we should be able to trade armor

I think armor trading, with certain restrictions, is very necessary for GW2. In the original Guild Wars the economy is very shallow, and players basically keep to themselves and NPC merchants or item crafters in order to gain needed items, instead of buying them from other real players. Because the damage max for weapons is reached so early in the game, a player may go out and buy their desired weapon once, but once they have gotten a max weapon they use their own runes and mods (or ones bought from NPCs) and never have the need to buy a new weapon again. Also, you can completely avoid the player market by getting weapons by drops, unique drops, or collectors. This makes it very difficult to sell a weapon unless you have gotten a perfect weapon with an extremely rare skin. With armor untradable as a whole the player trading economy of the game is based nearly entirely on mini-pets and various quest related trophies.

Tradable armor ties in with a lot of other commonly approached concepts for GW2. In order to make armor tradable the game would have to make the difference in beginner armor and max armor much wider, making armor trading actually necessary. For example, whereas the lowest armor in GW is 5-10 and the absolute highest is 80, I think a greater margin would be more appreciated, maybe starting at 5-10 and ending at 200 or so, progressingly slowly so that new armor was there to tempt you commonly, but not so that you would have to buy the new max every time just to keep up and not die. Armor would also need to be slightly harder to obtain, so that you actually take a break from the story to gain items or money to buy armor as opposed to just going to your bank and getting some of your materials and a bit of cash to buy the new armor in the city you just reached. Overall, if armor margin is increased then the weapon damage would have to be increased too, giving the game more variety all in all, and who doesn't want more variety? It's more customization, another chance to make your player different than that player.

It always comes back to the developers main opposition to a wider margin in weapon damage and armor, as well as level cap: GW is built to avoid grinding. If you're going to increase the level cap though, grinding is inevitable. It's pretty much going to be in every good MMORPG there is that is deep. Players always like to have the feeling of just having broke the surface of something new, and that there is still much more to be explored or discovered, because the ultimate point of almost every game is to achieve something, and become better than others. The PvP in GW is significantly better than other MMORPGs, but i feel the PvE of GW lacks the consistent thrill of other games. In both PvP and PvE the object is to prove yourself better than others, whether by defeating them or by being richer and having better items. There is of course the problem of low level players getting far too strong armor early on via trading, but the simple solution to that is making armor require a certain overall level, or a level in an attribute, just like weapons. The overall level approach would it completely inaccessible to under leveled characters, whereas the attribute idea would balance it out if a player piled all their points into one attribute to wear that armor, because they would be very difficult to kill, but as a result would do a small amount of damage, balancing the player out.

You may say that its unrealistic for a large charr to drop armor and a human character to wear it. Armor drops would be extremely rare and it could possibly be tradable but not equippable until one of the people who has bought it decides they want to actually be able to wield the armor and therefore takes it to a blacksmith and gets the armor customized for them, making it so the armor is no longer tradable.

Grind is very annoying, but if you want to become better than another player in PvE you will have to do it anyway in GW2, so it might as well be more rewarding with tradable armor. One thing the sequel definitely needs as an improvement to the PvE game is tradable armor. It will increase game market and economy, compliment the new level cap, and also add variety to the game that PvE players love to work for.

                                    Drummertdog 07:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)--Drummertdog 07:08, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It would indeed be great to trade armor. but then with a req. level 8 or 9 or something, like weapons toa void great power for starters.