When I paid for my Guild Wars 2 prepurchase, I did so under certain assumptions: that we would have 8 professions, dynamic events, personal story, a cash shop with convenience and cosmetic items, and an accumulation of almost seven years of iterative game design. We would finally move to a more account-based MMORPG solution, so that those of us who like playing many different characters would not feel tied down.

As you can tell from this blog’s title, the ‘new’ dye system is, I feel, a step in entirely the wrong direction.

One of the features that sold GW2 to me was Kristen Perry’s incredibly enthusiastic post about dyes and character customisation. 400+ dyes in game to pick from. Account bound. Aesthetic choices showing prestige. These were all features I could get behind.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re getting. I wouldn’t have minded so much if we were told about this before I’d already paid money for the game. Now I’m a tad bitter.

I’ve not written any negative posts about Guild Wars 2 before. There’s a first time for everything, I guess.

The ‘New’ Dye System

First, the facts as they stand as of 12th June 2012.

There are still 400+ dyes in game. The picture to the right shows you a few of them.

You can get dye drops from mobs out in the world. I got at least 5 or 6 in my several hours of play over BWE2.

You can buy packs of 7 random dyes in the Gem Shop for 200 gems. The picture illustrates many that I got through the cash shop to see the variety.

Dyes are character bound: i.e., if you use them on your Necromancer, they are bound specifically to that Necromancer. If you pay for gems and use them on one character and then delete that character, all your gems are wasted (which means potential loss of real money).

It is possible to get duplicate dyes in gem packs.

When you have identified a dye (which you have to do in order to find out what colour it is) you can no longer sell it or trade it to other players. It is impossible to tell what a particular dye looks like on material until you’ve used it as the names, while expressive and dynamic, aren’t actually very descriptive.

My Issue(s)

Let me get this out of the way: I think character bound dyes are a terrible idea, and by the look of the forums, a lot of people feel similar.

These are my personal reasons for this.

1) As an altoholic, I like to develop characters who all have a similar colour aesthetic — a “this is a Demajen™ Character” if you will. If I find a dye/colour I particularly like, chances are I’ll use the colour scheme on all my characters for some time, until I get another colour or set that I like.

2) I’m a collector. If there are 400 dyes available, you can be damned sure I’m going to want to catch ‘em all! Except with character bound dyes, that’s either going to take a ludicrous amount of time, or a lot of luck/disposable income.

3) I’ll repeat the point about duplication. I do not want to pay for a pack of seven random dyes using real money and find that, once I’ve identified them, I already have them all. If the dyes are truly random, this could happen. I am not a gambling man, and while I’m not strapped for cash, I simply will not waste money on chance. [Possible solution: if they were to make identified dyes sellable on the Trading Post, this would alleviate some of the issues.]

To reiterate, I am totally not against the sale of dyes in the Gem Store. This is exactly the kind of stuff I’d find appealing in the Gem Store, in fact. They’re cosmetic. They still drop in game. Perfect Gem Store material. I just don’t like wasting money, and that’s what essentially ArenaNet are asking me to do with this change.

From their point of view I guess it makes good business sense. If they sell me a pack of dyes with 2 colours I want and 5 I don’t, I then have to buy more packs of dyes to try again. It feeds on the Pokémon complex, the desire to get a full set. But it also kinda smells a little bit of Greed.

It boils down to this: I won’t buy anything from the Gem Store that doesn’t apply to my whole account (with the possible exception of Transmutation Stones).

• All of the costumes are account wide, so they’re not an issue.
• I have no intention of buying things like Bank Portals or Experience Boosts as I’m in no rush to do anything in game and waypoints are all the convenience I need, so they’re no issue for me either.
• ‘Novelty’ items like the Box o’ Fun aren’t really a good use of my money either, so I won’t be bothering with those. I don’t pay for ‘temporary’ if I can at all help it.
• I’m not touching bag slot expansions with a barge pole, as they are per character, not per account. As an altoholic this would bankrupt me…
• Character Slots and Bank Tabs are fine by me, as are Minis because they are bound to your account too.

In the original Guild Wars, the white and black dyes were prestigious. They were the ones everyone wanted. And they worked in the game’s economy because you could trade dyes.

In Guild Wars 2, there are degrees of rarity in dyes. I know I got two or three gold-quality dyes, though I confess I didn’t really like any of them so didn’t use them. [As a side note, you can organise your dye panel according to dye rarity. I forgot to take a screenshot of mine since I prefer to organise them by colour as above.]

It has yet to be seen if there will be prestige dyes in GW2, but with the way the game is currently set up, as soon as you identify a dye you can’t make any money off it as they are account bound as soon as you do so.

The Mystic Forge

I haven’t mentioned the Mystic Forge so far in the post as it is a bit of an unknown factor. It has been mentioned that you will be able to make specific dyes using the Mystic Forge‘s interface, and that the devs want aspects of the dye system to remain “in world”. They have said that with the right combination of ingredients, you’ll be able to make the exact colour you want.

I like the idea that you can get a specific colour and not have to rely on luck. If you refer up to that picture of my dyes again, I really liked the green colour that is the top left square. To the extent that I kept my Necromancer dyed that for the majority of the beta after I unlocked that one. Without the Mystic Forge, and without being able to buy specific colours on the Trading Post, I might never get that colour on release… or at least not be lucky enough to have it drop for months. That would make for a Sad Demajen.

In Conclusion: Feedback for ArenaNet

I purchased the GW2 preorder for many reasons, all of them awesome.

One of those awesome features has now become kinda meh.

I’m not going to go and grab my pitchfork and torch just yet, as there is still time for ANet to change their minds on how dyes currently work.

But I do hope they change their minds, because if they don’t, they’ve lost several hundred gems worth of dye pack purchases from me and, by the look of the forums, many other players. I know I’d spend a small fortune on cool dyes if I knew I could use them on every character I ever made on my account, especially if I knew we could sell or trade duplicate dyes — we can’t even give them as gifts to other players at the moment.

So ArenaNet, bring back account bound dyes. Allow us the freedom to customise our characters in the way your originally promised.

~Demajen

PS. I managed to get through an entire post on dyes without making a pun on the word “dye”. It was hard work…