Curse

Zoolooman · Jun 13, 2005, 12:09 AM // 00:09

I'd pay five bucks for a triple-sized storage vault and another three character slots on my account. I'm tired of having to delete old characters when I want to try a different primary profession, and I want a spare slot for a PvP character at all times. :/

Simply put:

I pay five bucks to A.net.

They make my single account less restrictive by adding three character slots and a larger storage vault.

Deal?

Anarchist_Monk · Jun 13, 2005, 12:22 AM // 00:22

I agree with you on the fact about having more characters and a larger storage vault, but ANet's whole big thing about Guild Wars is the fact its free. I don't think they would want to go and change that being as that has been their big atraction since the betas. Going back on this, I believe they might not get a big positive responce from it.

Magus · Jun 13, 2005, 12:24 AM // 00:24

I do not agree with increased storage space (it would only lead to hoarding and all of the crap associated with it), but increased character slots would definitely be nice. Arenanet kept these things low for a reason.

However, characters themselves are pack mules, but I think this could be balanced by making it so that you cannot purchase more character slots unless you beat the game (or reach some other benchmark in-game such as ascension) with all but one of your currently available slots, this would make it more difficult for farmers to simply buy 10 characters to store all of their loot, but would also leave open a free slot for a PvP character at all times. As for the cost of an extra character slot, I'd be willing to pay $5 for each character slot, but that's really up to Arenanet to decide, if they implement this at all.

Zoolooman · Jun 13, 2005, 12:34 AM // 00:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anarchist_Monk

I agree with you on the fact about having more characters and a larger storage vault, but ANet's whole big thing about Guild Wars is the fact its free. I don't think they would want to go and change that being as that has been their big atraction since the betas. Going back on this, I believe they might not get a big positive responce from it.

I'm not suggesting a monthly payment. I initially paid fifty bucks for permanent access to the game's content. Now I want to pay another five for permanent access to three more character slots and a larger vault.

Pretty simple in concept, not at all mandatory, not much of an advantage, and yet very useful for people who play often.

Jigs · Jun 13, 2005, 01:56 AM // 01:56

i agree w/ the larger storage vault. like mentioned earlier, if you want to create another character w/ different profession, they have different items for armor and weapons. My storage vault is not even enough for my items. i have about 8 runes in there and armor materials and dyes crowding my vault. i am saving my runes and dyes for my final armor so i cant use them now. i know that we have bags that can hold like more than 40 items there are just somethings that you cannot let go coz they still have uses to you.

Xinaya · Jun 13, 2005, 03:27 AM // 03:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoolooman

I'm not suggesting a monthly payment. I initially paid fifty bucks for permanent access to the game's content. Now I want to pay another five for permanent access to three more character slots and a larger vault.

If part of the game content was 4 characters for 50 bucks, how do you think $5 justifies another 3? If you really want more characters and storage, throw down for the extra account.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zoolooman

Pretty simple in concept, not at all mandatory, not much of an advantage, and yet very useful for people who play often.

Very easy to horde and otherwise screw up the economy, too. $5 is a tiny price to pay in order to powerplay. If people really have the time to play that much, they should have to pay more than the average joe to even the playing field a little. After all... My average cost of lunch per day is 5 bucks. If I could pay a one-time fee and get lunch everyday forever, I think the food industry would go bankrupt. Anet's gotta get their money somehow. This game is free to keep on playing, so you won't go broke buying a second account.

It may be possible that you can get "1" extra character in the next chapter. And it expands as it goes... since you have to pay for the expansions anyway.

theclam · Jun 13, 2005, 04:11 AM // 04:11

Quote:

If part of the game content was 4 characters for 50 bucks, how do you think $5 justifies another 3? If you really want more characters and storage, throw down for the extra account.

The $50 is for several dozen mission, several dozen explorable areas, several hundred skills, several hundred quests, 6 classes, and all the programming that ties that content together. It doesn't cost ArenaNet $50/person to double the amount of characters that an account can have. I doubt it even costs them $1/person.

Quote:

Very easy to horde and otherwise screw up the economy, too. $5 is a tiny price to pay in order to powerplay. If people really have the time to play that much, they should have to pay more than the average joe to even the playing field a little. After all... My average cost of lunch per day is 5 bucks. If I could pay a one-time fee and get lunch everyday forever, I think the food industry would go bankrupt. Anet's gotta get their money somehow. This game is free to keep on playing, so you won't go broke buying a second account.

That's a bad analogy. If you already get a medium sized lunch forever for $50, it's like paying $5 to get your fries supersized forever. Food costs a lot of money to make, whereas additional characters cost very little.

Powerplayers wouldn't even get an advantage over other players if this was put in. Their characters would be not one bit stronger. The game becomes not one bit less fun for casual gamers, but it removes a major annoyance for people who play a lot, or like to use many different characters.

It won't screw up the economy significantly, since 3 more characters would only add 300 plat per account. Compared to the 1000 plat that your storage vault holds, that's very little. Because of NPC Traders, Crafters, and Collectors, no items can get too expensive, except for weapons, shields, and foci. Everything else can be bought easily. Because of the 100 plat limit per character, nothing can ever be worth more than 100 plat. In addition, the PvP character dynamic means that once someone unlocks a rune in PvE, their account gets that rune for free, permanently. Demand will go down, supply will go up, so even if the amount of money in the marketplace is high, inflation won't be too bad.

I don't see any reason that the limit is only 4 characters.

Magus · Jun 13, 2005, 04:53 AM // 04:53

I get your point, but actually, extra characters will still mess up the economy. People, namely farmers hoard all sorts of things. We're lucky that godly equipment is relatively cheap now, since farmers usually don't have a means to hoard them, meaning that they have to sell them quickly. Aside from the gold storage of 100 platinum, people can hold well more in items. I've known someone who's had about 60 celestial sigils at one time. A character can hold 45 items, and a sigil sells for about 75K, so that's 45*75+100=3475 plat per character.

Of course, I was using the worst case scenario there, and there's no way that any more than a handful of people are going to hoard that much, but I was just trying to point out that people can hoard much more than 100 plat in the value of items.

With no real limit on the amount of items someone can hold, people have no desire to quickly sell their items and it becomes much easier for select people to monopolize items.

Zoolooman · Jun 13, 2005, 05:27 AM // 05:27

I don't think a handful of hoarders will gain that much power from a few more character slots. I also think that the benefits--money for A.net and characters for me--will easily outweigh the small, potential economic problems.

As for buying a second account: what's the point? Nothing I've unlocked here will help me there. I'd rather pay to expand this account so that my progress continues to accumulate as I play.

Anarchist_Monk · Jun 13, 2005, 05:27 AM // 05:27

I don't see where you get those numbers. You are using 45 as the amount of items one can hold, but then in the equation you use it as 45,000 since the end result is plat. And as far as I know celestial sigils are not stackable, so you could only hold 45 of them. I may be wrong about that though. I never had the urge to buy and hord sigils like crazy.

Magus · Jun 13, 2005, 06:00 AM // 06:00

About not many farmers abusing the extra slots, I hope that's true, but Arenanet apparently doesn't think so (the Wednesday update with nerfing drops was a direct response to reduce the farming) and they have better knowledge of the data, such as where people go, how many monsters are killed, etc.

The 45 is the amount of item slots someone has (and the last time I checked, sigils do not stack), and the 75 is the cost per sigil (this may be a bit too low or high) and the +100 is because a character can hold 100 platinum on them in raw form. So it's about 3,475 platinum per character or 3,475,000 gold. This doesn't really have much meaning though, as most players won't have nearly that much, but I was just demonstrating how much abuse can come out of it.

I'm not saying more character slots should not be added at all, I just think that there should be some type of restraint over how many people can get at one time to reduce this kind of hoarding.

RTSFirebat · Jun 13, 2005, 08:25 AM // 08:25

Ok not to be negative about this idea but:

$5 would not cut it... this game requires servers and bandwidth... servers have to be keep up and running and cost loads. Bandwidth is not unlimited and again requires more money.

If A.net each all users who paid $5 for additional character and vault space it would require more storage space being used up on the servers. Simply put a on off payment of $5 most likely would not cut it.

However you will find that a.net has already estimated costs till the next expansion pack is released... so what I'm saying is the $50 or in my case $20 I paided for the game (Yes brand new!) will cover the costs of the game for some time.

So really there more to it then just paying and getting more space... there are long term costs to consider as well.

If you lacking space delete the character you use the least and try another one.

Zoolooman · Jun 13, 2005, 08:36 AM // 08:36

It would cut it.

The fifty dollars I paid mostly covered their initial investment in coding, design, hardware, and art. It is highly unlikely that twenty dollars of that was set aside to pay for my storage costs on the A.net servers. It is more likely that two or three dollars was set aside.

And in any case, storage is a one-time cost. It's very unlikely that three more characters and a larger vault would require more than a few megabytes of their disk space. Currently you can buy raided SCSI storage at three to ten dollars a GIGABYTE. Do you really think that they'd lose money if they stored a few more megs of data for five dollars?

I don't want to delete my characters. I want to pay for more character space for my account; not just in general, because I could buy another copy if I wanted more space; no, I want to expand my account.

RTSFirebat · Jun 13, 2005, 08:49 AM // 08:49

Maybe it will cut it... more likely it won't.

It sounds simple on paper, but having worked for a storage solutions company in the past I can say its really not that simple.

Do you really believe that companies just install things and away they go? If you do then your wrong.

The implementation of any new items to a existing networked system such as A.net would require planning, implementation, testing, evaulation to name a few things.

These things require people to handle them, those people require payment, can you see the cost building up yet?

Upgrading storage would require server down time as well... and to make matters even more interesting maybe A.net has good reasons to why it doesn't want players to have more access to storage space.

Really at the end of the day since none of us here work for A.net we really cannot comment on their business and future plans for server + storage space.

Again since we don't work for them, no one knows how much each character in a user's account takes up... nor do we have any understanding of what load it would put on the servers processors.

Yes storage is cheap and general easy to implement on small scale... but Guild Wars has a massive number of players across the world and its really not a simply matter of adding another harddisk in.

I can understand why you are annoyed... but not everyone has the time to play 4 full characters... where do you find the time to? Also I can understand you feel hard done by, but since you getting so much for a one off payment of $50 (£25) I fail to see how you can still be complaining?

World of Warcraft allows many characters over many servers... however they charge for that... again storage space is not free... and it not that easy to implement on large scale.

Deagol · Jun 13, 2005, 08:55 AM // 08:55

I think that if you entered another retail game key to your account, you should get 4 aditional character slots and double the vault storage.

The advantage over opening two seperate accounts would be that you would only have to buy one expansion key to give all 8 characters access to the next chapter.

The disadvantage would be that could only be member of one guild, and you would not be able to play on two computers simultaniously.

RTSFirebat · Jun 13, 2005, 08:56 AM // 08:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deagol

I think that if you entered another retail game key to your account, you should get 4 aditional character slots and double the vault storage.

The advantage over opening two seperate accounts would be that you would only have to buy one expansion key to give all 8 characters access to the next chapter.

The disadvantage would be that could only be member of one guild, and you would not be able to play on two computers simultaniously.

With that idea it would make more sense just to play two different accounts.... why combine them?

Vangor · Jun 13, 2005, 10:28 AM // 10:28

He did say, "The Advantage over opening" right between those two big opening and closing sentences Firebat, the fact that you'd only have to purchase one expansion slot, so, if you are fine with a single guild, which I'd guess most are, and don't possess another computer or have no one playing who may want to jump onto your character, which seems rather pointless since it isn't as though you are raiding with stringent class demands, then combine em.

Personally, I would like to see an expansion of three slots, six for all primaries, one for PvP remakes, and the information for most characters is actually very small, as are items themselves, it costs them more to constantly open and close instances probably, nevermind maintain them, than it would to do such things. As for storage space, it is merely convenient to be able to have supplies tucked away, and be able to transfer without having to actually move items back and forth.

This thought of hoarding is pointless, most of us who want it don't plan to, and besides, if you are truly to do this, create three characters, give them bags and holding, and let them keep it on them, the problem is that the storage space itself is limited to all four characters, which can make it convenient, but, having to stock all crafting materials, especially lower and high end ones, with various runes you may wish to later apply, a few upgrades, and then dyes, you may have space for two rare items, and I wouldn't drop them to pick up a random white while adventuring anyway, especially when it was a personallized instance drop and realistically has no highest tier value, I've had a low req highest damage axe since before Henge, and it isn't as though anyone is selling armor...

Just can't believe I'd even have to pay for it, would seem a great gesture to give it for free, though I can say, I would pay for it.

Diplo · Jun 13, 2005, 11:24 AM // 11:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by RTSFirebat

$5 would not cut it... this game requires servers and bandwidth... servers have to be keep up and running and cost loads. Bandwidth is not unlimited and again requires more money.

As you can only use one active character at a time then your point about bandwidth is redundant. Being able to create a thousand characters would not use any more bandwidth than being able to create one character, as you can only play with one character at once.

Quote:

If A.net each all users who paid $5 for additional character and vault space it would require more storage space being used up on the servers. Simply put a on off payment of $5 most likely would not cut it.

Each item wouldn't take more than a few bytes of data - probably no more than 8 bytes per item. This could probably be reduced even more by compression. Even a tiny hard-disk could hold a few million items. In otherwords, the disk space would be virtually negligible. If you think $5 is expensive for 1Kb of disk space then, well, you don't really understand much about how data is stored

BrokenSymmetry · Jun 13, 2005, 11:46 AM // 11:46

I would pay for extra characters, simply because I like to try out many different classes and playing styles, and I get too attached to my characters to delete them...

RTSFirebat · Jun 13, 2005, 12:00 PM // 12:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diplo

As you can only use one active character at a time then your point about bandwidth is redundant. Being able to create a thousand characters would not use any more bandwidth than being able to create one character, as you can only play with one character at once.
Each item wouldn't take more than a few bytes of data - probably no more than 8 bytes per item. This could probably be reduced even more by compression. Even a tiny hard-disk could hold a few million items. In otherwords, the disk space would be virtually negligible. If you think $5 is expensive for 1Kb of disk space then, well, you don't really understand much about how data is stored

Read my above post, the long one: As quoted:

Quote:

Originally Posted by RTSFirebat

Maybe it will cut it... more likely it won't.

It sounds simple on paper, but having worked for a storage solutions company in the past I can say its really not that simple.

Do you really believe that companies just install things and away they go? If you do then your wrong.

The implementation of any new items to a existing networked system such as A.net would require planning, implementation, testing, evaulation to name a few things.

These things require people to handle them, those people require payment, can you see the cost building up yet?

Upgrading storage would require server down time as well... and to make matters even more interesting maybe A.net has good reasons to why it doesn't want players to have more access to storage space.

As I'ved stated many times before in other threads... since NONE of us here work for A.net... we cannot really comment on their costs, data storage methods, file sizes or bandwidth costs.

But I do know for a fact (Having worked in IT for a few years), its not as cheap as one would make it out to be.

And again A.net has its reasons (Private ones) for not giving people more space...