Guild Wars 2

As I sit here waiting for more people to show up at Dwayna I was doing some math.

250 Charged Lodestones for one part of the Infinite Light recipe

250 Charged Lodestones on TP equals roughly 1071 gold at the moment

Lets say an average of 2 Charged Lodestones an hour, that would be 125 hours of farming for one ingredient

Or if you go the Gem route, 1071 gold would cost you at the current average conversion rate

1.48 gold to 100 Gems.
4000 Gems = $50
4000 gems = 59.2 gold
1071 /59.2 = 18.1
18.1 * 50 = $905

My question to the other players and more importantly Anet is this.

Is this really working at intended, is this the kind of grind that is expected of the player base? Do you, Anet, really think this drop rate is “fair”?

For solely cosmetic items? Yea.

Considering they buffed a few items drop rates to decrease their cost on the TP recently(like vial of powerful blood and those other things) I wouldn’t be to surprised to see a buff t the charged ldestones as well. They have been constantly rising and their price is way above the other lodestones if I remember correctly. We’ll just have wait and see.

How about an actual answer instead “cosmetic”.

That doesn’t answer why something “cosmetic” should require such a substantial amount of money or time. Let’s face it, outside of shouting “lfg” and fractals, cosmetic items are part of the end game. A part that is almost counter productive because of DR.

I try to farm for the materials…I’m punished with DR…

It’s a consequence of the naturally uneven wealth distribution in human communities (yes, even online ones), as I once wrote https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Charged-lodestone-drop-rates-solution/first#post946317

WarMacheen.7124:

How about an actual answer instead “cosmetic”.

That doesn’t answer why something “cosmetic” should require such a substantial amount of money or time. Let’s face it, outside of shouting “lfg” and fractals, cosmetic items are part of the end game. A part that is almost counter productive because of DR.

I try to farm for the materials…I’m punished with DR…

The answer is “cosmetic” because cosmetics gives players options without impacting gameplay (stats). If higher stats was involved, then yea, it’s stupid that people have to grind so much for measely stat increases (I’m looking at you ascended gear).

However, for cosmetic weapon/armor skins, since stats are same for everything, it’s the player who chooses the skin he wants to go for. you choose to want a skin that is desired by many, many other people. You’ll have to work towards it.

Anet will provide players with the ability to obtain “max gear” relatively easily. If you want something that is “cosmetic”, then you will need to fulfill the requirements, otherwise known as “grind” or pay someone with gems/gold to grind for you.

It really depends on how “fast” you feel the need to have your cosmetic gear. After all, a year from now those same Charged Lodestones could be available in the TP for a few silver OR by that time you could have received the necessary drop amount from just playing the game naturally.

And this is where the problems with GW2 start to appear. The requirements for alot of items are just ridiculous really, and thats why there is a large and organised group of bot farms/hackers in game.

Legendary items will take time. Not meant to be had in a matter of weeks.

Karizee.8076:

Legendary items will take time. Not meant to be had in a matter of weeks.

I do believe that’s the answer to the question. Honestly I’m surprised to have seen as many legendaries as I have. Yes, the system is working as intended because through normal game-play it could take a year+ to achieve a legendary. I think of it as a built in customer loyalty incentive… Just one man’s opinion

The grind is indeed out of control. There is no creativity in even putting it behind story or other content – just go out and grind grind grind.

And oh yeah, you can’t grind too much because of DR. So we’ll gate you and tell you when it’s time for you to grind some more.

Of course, you can always go to the cash shop to pay money for what you want.

See the trend?

Karizee.8076:

Legendary items will take time. Not meant to be had in a matter of weeks.

Time has nothing to do with it. It’s the decade-old Asian-style grind in the face of “we don’t want players to grind.”

Aside from being artistic, legendary items are status symbols. How much status would they confer have if anyone could buy one for 10g? They are cosmetic and provide no benefit as far as gameplay goes. Also, some players may be dedicated enough to obtain the materials from playing the game, not just buying them from the TP.

Alloy.2839:

Aside from being artistic, legendary items are status symbols. How much status would they confer have if anyone could buy one for 10g? They are cosmetic and provide no benefit as far as gameplay goes. Also, some players may be dedicated enough to obtain the materials from playing the game, not just buying them from the TP.

That’s missing the point – at least my point.

I’m not complaining about the time to acquire, or cost… but the lack of creativity in the quest to obtain them. It’s a grind, only a grind, and a grind of Asian proportions.

and yet Twilight is on the TP for 9500 gold

While i am not a huge fan of Anet recently (the complete lack of communication with patch notes, and community).

A legendary should take a ton of effort and time. It should never be easy it should be a huge grind, it should make you go nutso trying to gather all the crap for it.

I picture a crazed Dwarf running through mines trying to get that one last gem to complete his life’s work. Its that kind of mentality that your striving for, and its that kind of dedication thats needed.

Problem is alot of the early farmers got an easy ride to Legendary in the beginning, while the rest of us slower players kinda get hosed int he end.

Can’t people just stop moaning about legendary ?

Yes it will take a lot of time, so stop trying to rush just because you saw one or two people on your server with a legendary already.

This is supposed to take a long, long time. Not 1 month, not 2, not 3. Not 6, and probably a year would be cutting it short.
I’ve got just about 15-25 in most of the items categories (claws, etc..) to make the basic gifts, and that’s from me just playing the game without farming. Stop rushing things, it ruins it.

I personally don’t care for legendary and when I turn around to look at my bank inventory a year or two down the line, then maybe I’ll contemplate it seeing what I’ve got in store.

You don’t need exotic or legendary to be able to clear content,you just want it because it looks cool and makes other players drool with envy.

As Zimbolo above said, it’s probably somekind of loyalty incentive.
Super hardcore players probably already have theirs OR are close to getting it done…then what ?
The game is pretty much over for them. Until new content gets released and then they’ll log off again.
But for the 95% of other players who are between casual and hardcore, this will take much longer AND it was intended for us, so ignore the “crazy hardcores” who dedicated hundreds of hours to their legendary. Getting the coolest weapon in the game through sleep deprivation and/or old exploits isn’t rewarding.
Getting your legendary after a year or two of playing the game IS rewarding. You can get the mats just from playing the game and then banking them. That’s all that’s required of you ! Ah well I forgot, patience is required but surely for something that’s purely cosmetic, it can’t be such a bad thing, no ?
They are supposed to be the bestest of bestest of skins so please lower your expectations and do not scream outrage simply because it isn’t handed out to you immediately on a silver platter.

Two options :
1)Accept it will take a long time so just play the game, and enjoy yourself.

2)Refuse to be patient, and leave the game OR start grinding like a madman.

You’re acting entitled because you are being refused the coolest looking items in the game and cannot stand the idea of having to wait to get there.
Everyone can see that. So please get over yourself and realise ANet made the conscious decision of making legendaries REALLY hard to get. Period.

So, to answer your original question : Yes, it is what is expected of us.

And no amount of forum whining is ever going to change that.

It’s not like the game said you must acquire a legendary to kill the elder dragons. At least not currently.

I agree with those who believe it’s supposed to take a long, long time of “standard”, daily game play (I.E. non-12 hours gameplay days, though there’s no true “standard” for how much/when you should play.) If I go for The Chosen, it will take me 250 Onyx Lodestones-only one has dropped for me, a long time ago. What will I do? Play more or less normally until I get enough of them one lucky day, one or two years ahead of me (totally honest statement.)

We don’t need Legendary weapons, much less pay a penny for them. They are cool, but they will take time and dedication for those so interested.

As for me, I will let the grind happen rather than actively grind-I spent 20 minutes+ killing Earth elementals on Malchor’s leap lat week, but I got bored while doing so-will farm them when I am in the mood only, not JUST to get the Legendary.

For all of you people that missed it

Infinite Light is….exotic, not legendary

Thanks for reading though.

The point of the post is to point out that the drop rate on items, that are used for quite a few recipes are way to low.

Who cares?

it is a skin.. nothing more..

If you are SO worried about that, then spend the time/money for it..

99% of the rest of us don’t care. Stand in LA with your shiny skin that you blew 1000 hours on, or 500 bucks and think you matter. Rest of us have lives and just snicker and move on..

Lysico.4906:

Who cares?

it is a skin.. nothing more..

If you are SO worried about that, then spend the time/money for it..

99% of the rest of us don’t care. Stand in LA with your shiny skin that you blew 1000 hours on, or 500 bucks and think you matter. Rest of us have lives and just snicker and move on..

Thanks for posting, your comment was valid and insightful.

WarMacheen.7124:

The point of the post is to point out that the drop rate on items, that are used for quite a few recipes are way to low.

I do agree that these Charged/Onyx/etc. stones should drop a bit more frequently, but IMHO, should still be rare enough. Some rare Exotics (such as what you mentioned) are too expensive for me to even think about getting them EVER (I may as well go all the way with a Legendary.) As it is, many of these mats are a true rarity-who knows how minuscule that drop rate must be.

Cool, non Legendary-Exotics shouldn’t be THAT expensive-I guess their thinking should be that it’s for those who don’t want to go for the Legendary but still want something “cool” to use that is theoretically more “attainable”, as it were.

The same point applies. This exotic/legendary is unusual and has a special skin that sets it apart from the rest (by this I mean all the other exotics that people generally have).

You are farming it because it looks amazing. And the devs know this, hence they made getting it really difficult to get.
It is the same as volcanus or others “almost legendary” exotics. Their skins is what make them special. The most likely scenario is that you’re going to use a transmutation skin on it anyway so it matches your spec (it might do already, am just guessing).

100% cosmetic. Skin is amazing hence challenging to get. Nothing more to it than that.
You’re never going to get locked out of a dungeon because you weren’t trendy enough.

not only drop rate is a joke (below a joke actually) but there’s no proper places to farm those. Am i here to spam 500 sparks per 1 lodestone? Add a challenging zone/dungeon with much higher drop rate on all these needed mats, but nooooooo they want you to buy gems, gg but i ain’t spending rlm for a game i already payed for.

Groovy.6749:

100% cosmetic. Skin is amazing hence challenging to get. Nothing more to it than that.
You’re never going to get locked out of a dungeon because you weren’t trendy enough.

“Challenging” to get?

Also, aesthetics is subjective… they are not “amazing” to everyone. Very dangerous hanging “end game” on the look of a weapon.

Zeldain.5710:

Alloy.2839:

Aside from being artistic, legendary items are status symbols. How much status would they confer have if anyone could buy one for 10g? They are cosmetic and provide no benefit as far as gameplay goes. Also, some players may be dedicated enough to obtain the materials from playing the game, not just buying them from the TP.

That’s missing the point – at least my point.

I’m not complaining about the time to acquire, or cost… but the lack of creativity in the quest to obtain them. It’s a grind, only a grind, and a grind of Asian proportions.

I wouldn’t think of it as a “grind of Asian proportions” as that grind, for an item like that, would be a lot worse. And probably have a very, very healthy dose of RNG stat bonuses (that contains numerous grinds in and of itself).

But it’s a grind, yeah. It’s not one you need to subject yourself to, though. If you want a Legendary, then you’ll have to work (grind) for it, and if you feel you can live without for a bit, then wait until you can normally acquire all the materials. (Or until you meet the nicest guild member you will ever, ever meet).

Some people find grinding fun. I mean, if I’m horrendously bored and am just chatting with guild friends, I can stomach killing the same thing for hours (while also playing my own music). Assuming I need to kill hours of time (Like being snowed in, for one thing). I did it in Aion and Tera, and it was pretty fun sometimes. Even more fun with a party and you’re all just goofing off as you kill things. ANet’s constantly advertised this as a “game for everyone” and people who like grinding fall into that “everyone” category.

It’s a long term goal intended for people who either really, really want it, or who enjoy the gamestyle it takes to get there. I probably won’t get legendaries for a very long while, and I’m okay with this (I’m working on getting exotics now), unless I get obscenely lucky.

Additionally, I’d find it a negative thing if these items were obtainable by anyone in a week or two. It’d kill the point behind them.

But hey, at least you can’t fail at crafting. (As in, your legendary you spent months grinding the mats for won’t go “poof” because RNG says so).

The equivalent of gems required to craft an item is irrelevant. If you have the option to get gold with real money doesn’t mean you are forced to.

WarMacheen.7124:

As I sit here waiting for more people to show up at Dwayna I was doing some math.

250 Charged Lodestones for one part of the Infinite Light recipe

250 Charged Lodestones on TP equals roughly 1071 gold at the moment

Lets say an average of 2 Charged Lodestones an hour, that would be 125 hours of farming for one ingredient

Or if you go the Gem route, 1071 gold would cost you at the current average conversion rate

1.48 gold to 100 Gems.
4000 Gems = $50
4000 gems = 59.2 gold
1071 /59.2 = 18.1
18.1 * 50 = $905

My question to the other players and more importantly Anet is this.

Is this really working at intended, is this the kind of grind that is expected of the player base? Do you, Anet, really think this drop rate is “fair”?

You’re crazy if you think you can get 2 lodestones per hour. The actual farming rate is much lower than that.

Your mistake was thinking that you could get the cool items in this game through normal gameplay. The only realistic way to get these items is to exploit the trading post (e.g. market speculation) or getting extremely lucky (get a permanent banking express and make more gold in an instant than someone can make in 800 hours played).

WarMacheen.7124:

For all of you people that missed it

Infinite Light is….exotic, not legendary

Thanks for reading though.

The point of the post is to point out that the drop rate on items, that are used for quite a few recipes are way to low.

Have you ever played the original RO client?

0.01% drop rate for many items. That means you have to kill the mob about 10,000 times to have around 80% chance to acquire the item. Now, that is the true definition of low for an mmorpg.

That being said, has it ever occur to you that you can max level weaponsmithing in a week and craft another exotic item with THE SAME stats?

Their lower price of high mats isn’t working either because if you try to grind these things out of sparks/elementals they think your a bot, cut you down to 0 per hit and then your screwed…

WarMacheen.7124:

How about an actual answer instead “cosmetic”.

That doesn’t answer why something “cosmetic” should require such a substantial amount of money or time. Let’s face it, outside of shouting “lfg” and fractals, cosmetic items are part of the end game. A part that is almost counter productive because of DR.

I try to farm for the materials…I’m punished with DR…

Exactly, and no these items aren’t cosmetic now that their stats are on par with the new Tier 7 gear, aka ascended.

I won’t get into how long cosmetic items should take to get, but I do agree this particular item (charged lodestones) should be made slightly more common, just to be in line with other similar things.

If the drop rate were improved such that people were able to buy them for 1.5g each or something, that’d probably be more appropriate.

Karizee.8076:

Legendary items will take time. Not meant to be had in a matter of weeks.

While I am inclined to agree, the number I’ve seen on my server seems to suggest otherwise.

Well If you ask me there doing nothing about any of it, except they made drops even rarer from taking it away from those who like to get it by playing. bots are still populating the game and it’s getting worse every day, if they make the drop more commen it will only result in that you never get one because bots will flood the places in no time where you can get them, look at the bloody corrupted lodestones! they got jormag droppings gone (the only place where players where to get them) and the places who drop the bloody things on a rarer scale are populated by bots. and they get so bloody many that the whole price of those lods went to kitten.

I even start concidering stop playing the game, the items you and all want need insane dropping collecting and they make droppings harder to get every day, only become a sort of bot will make it possible to get it.

Good luck,

It’s hard to believe this is the expectation. One of the biggest points of the ascended gear was to “bridge the gap between exotics and legendaries”, and yet exotics like mjolnir and infinite light cost as much, if not more, than some legendaries.

I love this game, but it needs some serious rework on the rare crafting materials. The prices are just incredulous for some of the exotics.

From the drops of FotM, especially the higher levels, it looks like this was supposed to help the price of lodestones. But it hasn’t. Two reasons probably: one, they don’t drop enough still, and two, it requires higher FotM level to consistently see lodestone drops, and with the current level system coupled with the no LFG system, people aren’t progressing in FotM very fast (of course I mean in the average sense. I know there are people on FotM 40+).

I wouldn’t expect a response from Anet on this though. Just how gaming companies work.

We all realized that after the bot culling of recent weeks that certain tier6 materials were going to need an adjustment. We received said adjustment in this Wintersday patch.

However, currently we are seeing Lodestone prices triple.

With Onyx and Charged over 3g a piece and Corrupted and Destroyer well over 1g we have seen supply of these items go through the roof. Both lodestone prices had been semi stable (but expensive). I am going to guess this is a side effect of the implementation of fractals and the shift of players away from the dungeons in which lodestones drop.

Are we going to see an adjustment to the method of obtaining these lodestones?

Can we see these become purchasable from dungeon tokens?

Its extremely disheartening to see your plans to create an item tossed asunder because the insanely high price of these lodestones. I hope that no one ever thought that these prices were “ok” for the economy or the game in general.

Wow I came to post the exact same thing!

I just finished “farming” sparks in Malchor’s deep for over an hour with 0 charged lodestones to show for it. I don’t mind that they are hard to get since they are a major time/gold sink in the game. What I do mind is that there is no way I as a regular player have a chance of getting a legendary within six months of 1 hour a day farming sparks If I had to rely on this current drop rate and couldn’t get them off the tp.

I didn’t rush a legendary like the most hard core gamers, but I am what most would call a no lifer. I play more then I should =) Its discouraging to feel like I have to do X amount of dungeon runs to buy lodestones because farming them is completely out of the question.

I don’t want them to be cheap or common. That’s the point of the cosmetic skins. But I do want them to at least be close to on par with the other lodestones and I think thats what the OP was saying.

With out knowing the drop rate info, I would assume that the price is so high due to demand. With charged LS being used in many recipes and in large quantities is tough to think that there are LS that are even close to the same price so maybe we are all wrong.

All I want is to be able to make 1 <———- ONE skin w/o spending over 300 hours farming the same area for 1 piece of the item. god forbid I wanted to make multiple!

see… another bad effect of Fractals…..

Ursan.7846:

For solely cosmetic items? Yea.

Legendary items are no longer cosmetic items. They will scale to always be ‘best in class’ as time goes on.

Reqs are insane for crafting these weapons.

I’ve looked at the cosmetics weapons, yeah, while they’re nice to have – they’re pretty bad returns for time / money invested.

I hope they relook into this – but I doubt they would, it’s a good cash cow for them.
Acquiring Precursor itself is already a random chance..
You compound the randomness further by making its materials drop rate extremely rare.

I’d say people who complained it’s too hard is just stating the obvious. You’re not meant to craft this. This is a ’spender’s toy’ – you’re just gonna have to consign yourself to low cost – exo stats. There’s plenty of cheaper skins in the TP.

If you can’t resist and open your wallets, then more power to you.
That’ll just encourage A.net to keep making these uber-expensive skins to generate profits instead of better content.

Lynne.8416:

Anet will provide players with the ability to obtain “max gear” relatively easily.

Their current definition of “relatively easy” seems to be significantly different than the common one. Getting ascended rings and backpieces is still an insane grind – and some stat configurations aren’t even supported. And there seems to be no big hope that they’ll do something about it anytime soon.
Apparently nerfing drops in open world is a bigger priority.

to everyone thinking or saying that infinite light is a legendary, you are wrong!!!!

kittenit look up what is requirerd for an actul legendary you noobs!
and then look whats requierd for infinite light (WHICH in fact is a UNIQUE exotic and NOT a legendary) .

the difference in mats requiered and more is MASSIVE.
i get pisst when you all think you know what you are talking about when in fact you got it all wrong.

LOOK IT UP!!!!!

Edit; and I agree that the money and time requierd in the game right now to even get a unique exotic like infinite light (NOT a legendary) is completely absurd!
if they would make infinite light a legendary than it would be okey, a unique exotic should not cost more in gold (and maybe time) than Bolt!

WarMacheen.7124:

Is this really working at intended, is this the kind of grind that is expected of the player base? Do you, Anet, really think this drop rate is “fair”?

Anet are gone, you should be asking Nexon/NCSoft and they don’t give a kittycat unless you use the cash shop

Noobkaka.5067:

to everyone thinking or saying that infinite light is a legendary, you are wrong!!!!

kittenit look up what is requirerd for an actul legendary you noobs!
and then look whats requierd for infinite light (WHICH in fact is a UNIQUE exotic and NOT a legendary) .

the difference in mats requiered and more is MASSIVE.
i get pisst when you all think you know what you are talking about when in fact you got it all wrong.

LOOK IT UP!!!!!

Careful, mate. You don’t wanna have an aneurysm.

Now, to stay on topic – I’m not sure we can really judge until we find out when they’re going to release Ascended weapons, and what kind of grind it’ll take to get them.

moirweyn.9872:

Ursan.7846:

For solely cosmetic items? Yea.

Legendary items are no longer cosmetic items. They will scale to always be ‘best in class’ as time goes on.

Reqs are insane for crafting these weapons.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infinite_Light

Exotic.

If this isn’t the most obvious sign of market manipulation I don’t know what is.

Please do something about this. A month was more than enough time to find some way to help the problem. It’s going to be seriously upsetting if something isn’t done about this by the next major patch.

EDIT: Got merged. Post content in reference to the fact that someone bought all charged lodestones up until the minimum sell offer was 6g. Pretty obvious it was someone with too much money clearing the market supply in attempt to raise the base buy offers.

If I told friends who haven’t played MMOs, and who haven’t been trained to slowly accept ridiculous things, they would say that is absokitteninglutely insane and a waste of life.

I just pretend that ascended items and forge unique weapons don’t exist. I won’t ever get them intentionally. Yes there is cheese there but it’s not worth breaking my neck to eat it.

:O so… we’ll see 10g/lodestone? :O

Really? Because it sure looks like it’s at 3g50s not 6g…