Ability to reclaim old armor sets

I don't know about the rest of you, but my storage has a lot of prestige armor in it that I bought for HoM. Right now it takes up a ton of space and I can either sell it for a couple hundred gold a piece, or salvage it for maybe half a stack of crafting materials. Both of these options mean I am out a LOT of money. Or I can keep it rotting in my storage on the off chance that I might want to use it again some day, which is also not ideal.

So my idea is this: Implement a "crafter" that will recraft any armor piece you have already acquired for free, but make it unsalvagable so you can't abuse it to get a ton of materials. (Obviously allow expert salvage to remove runes / insignia only). So say for instance I buy Primeval armor, decide I like another set better or I need space, and delete it / salvage it / merch it, etc. Now if I change my mind down the road, instead of having to buy it all over again, I could just recraft it and add my runes and insigs to it.

This would have the small added benefit of helping those of us who have ever been hacked. Since the general MO is to clear your characters of anything valuable, including armor, it would save a huge headache for people that need to start from scratch after recovering their accounts.

Right now I can't see any downside to this idea, but I'd be curious to hear some other opinions on this.

It would help me out, I cannot think of a downside either.

I can see this being implemented like the festival hat keeper. However I think a fee of x plat per item would be wise to prevent abuse. Also, I think headpieces can only be recreated if they are the same attribute as original. (Example: I have a bandana, gave it to npc, now I can craft 3 additional bandanas for headpieces for less than 10k + 50 cloth? = unfair)

Maybe a way to prevent someone from having multiple sets of the same armor? Because if I like my Obsidian, but I have to rune it a certain way because of a build, wouldn't it be nice to have another set of Obsidian runed for farming? Or runed for PVP? Etc... just some thoughts

Wouldn't mind as long as the armour was destroyed in either adding it to the hom or ai armour creator.

Would hate to think of people endlessly salvaging their armour for profit.
Alternative once dedicated customised costume replicas can be created.

Depends really on the work needed to implement it and the abuse protections.
Since you only needed 7 armours for the hom I just stuck one on each character.
Don't take up storage I just wear em.

Perhaps now you can see where that idea I suggested to you folks awhile back would come in handy... you know, the one about combining pieces together in 1 slot for saving space in your inventory?!?

How about it failnet??

I got hacked and my 3 of my fow armors got salvaged, so i'd not be against this.

/signed
Lost 6 obbys, 3 chaos gloves due to getting hacked, so I could see some use for this.

But, since they sell storage panes, I really doubt they will add a new way to get storage.

I had a similar idea a while back, but it involved getting a discount for armor crafting after getting one set. The discount would apply to the plat and material required to make them, then have it scale-able the more you make it, the better the armor-smith gets at making it. up to a certain cap of course (50-60% discount).
This would all be account wide.

Anyways your idea seems much better, and I too can't see a downside to it.

/signed

I'm always short on space and I didn't care for my first two elite armors so I sold them after adding them to the monument (didn't even think of salvaging them LOL).

I think this is a great idea. Maybe even a way to show off your armour to other people would be good, a bit like an armoury. Maybe just speaking to the correct statue in you HoM (I can't remember the name of the armour one) could give you back your armour sets, unsalvageable of course.

I really doubt this will happen for 2 reasons:

1) The fact that Anet sells storage tabs, and spending money to implement this change would mean they would lose out on at least a couple hundred sales of storage tabs, so they'd be spending money to provide a service they already have for you to pay for.

2) Unless they made Armor Keeper nearly as expensive as buying the armor from an Armorer, I can see people salvaging unlimited copies of their FOW armor for massive free moneyz.
The only way to prevent this from happening would be to make reclaiming an armor pretty much as expensive as buying it, which defeats the whole purpose of having this NPC in the first place.

The only way I'd agree with putting this in would be if they could somehow make reclaimed armor unsalvageable. And as someone mentioned, making you unable to change the attributes on headpieces. And it would make sense if it only worked for the profession (or maybe even character) you bought the armor for.

Easy way out is to have any armour you own be creatable as a costume.

So you get your elite armour dedicate it in the HOM and then can buy for a nominal sum a replica costume.
Ok there is a downside in that you could then salvage your old armour but its not as if you get anywhere near every material you put into constructing it and its a once only salvage.

As for this reducing the number of storage slots sold I don't think this is much of a problem.
Players always need more storage no matter how many they give us and if they were that worried they wouldn't have added the festival hat guy.

I wish armors were unlocked instead just bought, and that players had something like the PvP item creation panel to pick and choose the ones that they have unlocked.

You wouldn't even need a crafter then, just a way to store an bit array for all the unlocks. Bit arrays can be easily compressed, so the extra storage shouldn't be too much of a strain on servers.

Very good idea, I think 1 platinum per piece is fair if anything at all.

/signed

i'm not sure if the majority of you even read the OP... he clearly stated this "but make it unsalvagable so you can't abuse it to get a ton of materials. (Obviously allow expert salvage to remove runes / insignia only)."

/signed completely for obvious reasons.

/signed

Would literally let me open up 2 or 3 characters that I could actually play and not use as an armor mule.

/signed

Perhaps with a small fee (such as with festival hat creation). It could even work similar to hero armour: you talk to an NPC to switch between sets you've already "unlocked" (bought on that character), and it changes your armour set with runes staying the same.

Then every crafting material would have been worth the minumum before faction was introduced with a small spike in price after each campaign/expension for 4 weeks lol

And how many prestige armor do you really keep that take so much time to craft? Obsi, vabbi, luxon/kurzick, Primeval, Ancient. Thats just a storage tab. And if you need all your chars with all prestige armor then store them on your least played character wich can hold 65 slots (13 sets excluding head pieces)

Yeah, because that's convenient...

I'm not saying that they should get an account-wide PvP item creation panel.

I'm saying that each character should UNLOCK their armors instead just keeping them as items, that is, by paying for the armor, with materials, golds and such, the armor would get unlocked to the character.

Currently people make 2..5 sets of armor for a character, and that's it.
That's what most people do. No one with half a brain makes an obsidian set, deletes it, and then makes another obsidian set, since they can perfect-salvage the mods to modify it without losing it.
Why most people make just a few armor sets? Because there's no room for more.
Even if you get all storage tabs, it's literally impossible to get all armors in 10 characters.
Even with Heavy packs and mules, there's just no room for all of that.

Remove the need for storage, and you can get ALL armors with ALL characters. Not just prestige ones. ALL of them, including standalone parts like gloves, headgear and the dwarven armor parts.
You would no longer sell the remaining materials once all your character have 2..5 armor sets, you'll be able to keep making more armors.

So prices won't be reduced. On the contrary, prices may rise a little bit, since more armors would being made, since people won't just make the few they like the most and stop there, they could keep getting more and more armors.

And I never talked about time. I don't know why you mention time.