Guild Wars 2

Congratulations Anet,

I say this with all of the respect I have because GW II is so far the best game I have ever played, after 600 hours I didn’t get bored a single minute… But this?

Now Legendaries become WAY more accessible – as you read on the forums => precursor was usually the limiting factor in the creation of a legendary…

The way I interpret this post is that you’ll make it easier to acquire the precursor and thus also ease the process of making a legendary…

This is what ruined WoW imo – and every other MMORPG. The legendary was something to work for. People will cry, they will cry every single time. Be sure that after you “fix” the precursors you’ll be flamed and yelled at for other things that are too hard for most of the casual players.

PLEASE make sure it is still really hard to get legendary . also make it so some mats can only be obtained by skill such as working your but off during events so much that you obtain sigels of courage . or make dragons drop REALLY RARE mats . and the more damage you do alog with how many downed you help or turrets you repair it increases your odds of getting such mats i REALLY don’t want to see bad players with legendary s
. such amazing weapons should be rewarded to only the strong skilled and courage’es players

also i bought this game because it can be hard at times and challenging .. DONT MAKE THIS GAME EASY if some one is bad at the game its their job to get better not yours to dumb down the came for thous players .. this game is here for the non skilled to get skilled and then we can fight along side and kill insanely hard dragons together =) . i tell you this . if you want more players keep your game hard and focused on skill .

So what you are saying is that getting a legendary is easy?

for the 99.999% of the players that do NOT have their legendary would probably disagree.

Making getting 1 out of 9,999,999 things you need to craft a legendary /slightly/ easier to obtain will not make it any less difficult overall.

And one other thing.
Rolling the dice to get a precursor (as it currently is) has NOHTING to do with skill.

And don’t worry. When it comes to making things hard, ANET will deliver. (see also GW1) They added in some of the most insanely difficult content I think I have every played in a game.

I hope this doesn’t mean that Legendaries will end up costing merely a few gold or that they will be easy to obtain otherwise. They are completely unnecessary items added to give people something to strive for, which takes time and effort. However, maybe adding an event inside of a dungeon in which a boss has a chance to drop a legendary or something would be fun.

To everyone who thinks getting a precursor is related to your e-skills, you’re very wrong. Something had to be done about it, and personally, I think getting a legendary should require something more than 50%+ of the components that can just be bought. Hell, at this rate, we’ll see legendary botters any time soon.

What always surprised me is that people complained primarily about the “cost” of precursors. I feel for the people that only needed that one item to complete their legendary and gambled hundreds of times. But how many complained about it and didn’t have the majority of the other mats required? Look at lodestones, their miserable drop rate and their inflated TP price. Look at any of the t6 mats/ecto, which are now 2-3x in price due to bot banning. Sure you can grind these out, but how is this better or worse than gambling in the mystic forge? It’s not fun, and they’re not legendary activities.
People just open the TP, see those prices and complain about something they shouldn’t even be worrying about just over 2 months from release. If you’re telling me the majority of these people have grinded/bought the rest of the mats and grinded up over a million karma and the only thing standing in their way is that they’ve gambled on hundreds of rares in the MF with no luck and their only option left is to buy a precursor… I would be amazed.

Problem is not only precursors. For some weapons you need 100 charged lodestones, and with current prices on TP that is around 300 gold. Their drop rate is just to low, tried farm sparks for them, but after hours of farm and no drop I just give up.
Second problem is Temple of Balthazar, that is always contested on some servers. On some servers there is months that temple is contested all time.

John Smith.4610:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

Thanks John! And the development team. It is nice to have you guys take in feedback (that of course are valid and not just unsubstantiated complains) and try to make this game better. While the details of what will be done is still not known, I still look forward to the change in the system, in particular the RNG within the creation of a precursor.

thank you so much! i might come back to gw2 if they make good changes to the RNG and precursor issue.

The two things that I feel should be changed:

1. Get rid of the RND elements in creation. You can even make getting a legendary harder, but get rid of the gambling requirements.

2. Make them account bound.

WHY! the market will balance it self out when all the “elites” willing to pay a high amount of gold for the precursers have gotten theirs. what do you wanna cheapen the only really difficult thing you have in the game.

am i the only one that hated when blizzard started handing out epics like candy? and now your heading in the same direction? its allready pretty much only about looks and not stats so why ruin the actual feel if it being legendary?

Havana.8625:

The two things that I feel should be changed:

1. Get rid of the RND elements in creation. You can even make getting a legendary harder, but get rid of the gambling requirements.

2. Make them account bound.

I highly support these ideas. A lot of players are assuming that the changes will make getting a legendary easier. No one knows either way – all that has been mentioned is that some changes will be happening. So some players are translating that to mean that the precursors will be easy to obtain and therefore everyone will have legendary weapons.

This may be so far from what will become the truth. I fully support having legendary precursors being hard to achieve – I just hope they get rid of the RNG aspect to the precursor and make it be about skills and achievements in-game (but don’t make it easy – make it hard…. actually make it hardcore!).

Azelroth.6801:

make it be about skills and achievements in-game (but don’t make it easy – make it hard…. actually make it hardcore!).

For the millionth time, this game does not require any skills. It’s casual. There is NO hardcore content whatsoever.

Well, I knew they were still listening

Legendaries are the dumbest part of this game imo.

How are they “legendary” if you just throw some items into a forge? That’s a brand new item, nothing legendary about it.

They should be a reward. An old weapon that is found or given to you after a long difficult journey. Something that is earned, not bought with gold.

They currently have zero story behind them. Every game I’ve played that has weapons like this always have a story. It’s like this game is missing a spine.

Archer.6485:

Well, I knew they were still listening

Well, casuals are the biggest group of their customers after all.

I hope legendary would not be much easier to obtain, it would be unfair for players who made or almost made it. Precursor is not the biggest problem, it costs less than other crafting materials for legendary

Personally I don’t mind legendaries to be hard to get, but right now I have to agree that it seems mostly to be about how good you are at making gold.

I’m trying to get a legendary for myself, and I really like that simply by having fun with my friends while running dungeons/WvW together, I have gathered enough dungeon tokens within a decent amount of play-time, and am well underway with my second WvW token stack. Getting my crafting profs up to scratch and gathering certain materials for the gifts also doesn’t seem like such an impossible task.

However, I really dread the moment when the only things I still need are those that need extreme amounts of gold/karma. I dislike both Orr and farming in general (won’t go into specifics, that’d be a completely different thread) and I’m not too interested in the trading post, so I’m gathering both very slowly. I barely ever find rares, so I’ll probably need to buy a pre-cursor eventually, and honestly, 300 gold is pretty daunting…

My point (TL;DR), the tokens and crafting level parts are fine. But close to 1000000 karma and somewhere around 400+ gold (unless you get lucky) is just too much, and not at all interesting. I’d much rather have some kind of epic quest/title track alternative for getting the precursor (like having to get world explorer for the gift of the traveler).

Why when i try to post it displays my text repeated 5 times, and cut up, paragraphs not in the right order etc?

This.. this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen.. as previously posted by a few.. the ONLY hard content in the game, remade to cater to people who display unbelievable amounts of jealousy. And only after 3 months the game has come out? Aion did it, after 2 years.. and half the population left… And for Aion it was worse.. the items people were complaining were too hard to get, actually had an advantage over other items, they had way more damage, and many other better stats..
Before you reply to my post, I do know I have no clue whatsoever what these ‘changes’ will be.. But the fact that they will change it.. And make an announcement about it, to my eyes, means something core about the way precursors are obtained will be changed…
When it happens, two things will happen..
1. All the people who worked their buns off for 2-3 months, farming like crazy, throwing thousands of rares into the forge to obtain their precursor (myself included) will feel cheated.
2. Since all people will have their ‘eyes’ on the precursor now, you’ll have thousands of players hoarding lodestones and ectos and T6 mats(provided those are still in the main design… if they change those, even worse lol for the people that obtained them the ‘hard’ way) and the prices for THOSE mats will SOAR, simple supply & demand rules.. lodestones will become 5-6g per piece, ectos 1g per piece..
Then people will cry about that… and A-Net will have to follow up the trend of changing mechanics for the people complaining.. and rares will yield 5-10 ectos, people will get 10 lodestones per instance run… and everyone will be running around with a legendary..
This is all of course basis speculation and cannot hold grounds with the vague announcement made…
One thing they could change however.. that I wouldn’t mind AT all… and bear with me.. I was thinking of this when i was on my journey towards the pre-cursor:
For the Mystic Forge to keep track of how many rares/exotics are thrown in (only the ones that can yield a precursor) and have a scaling increase in chances of obtaining it. This WOULD make it, let’s say slightly easier to obtain, but still remain within the RNG parameters of a good money sink.
If that kind of change is what they have in mind.. I would not mind at all, because I did get quite frustrated a couple of times during my attempts… And i can understand the legitimate people who threw 2000 rares without yielding a precursor.. But I lament the ones who only threw in about 100, and spent more time on the forums complaining, than working towards it.

John Smith.4610:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

Thanks for giving everyone a update John. I hope when addressing the precursor issue a fun/challenging alternative is created that does not involve gold or gambling as well as making precursors account bound.

There are many many suggestions on the crafting forum posted by Lindsey, please take some of those into consideration. I would also like to emphasize we are NOT asking for precursors to be handed to us or easy to obtain but rather through a exciting journey/challenge & removing gambling/TP manipulation requirement that is currently necessary.

I’m glad ArenaNet takes the time to read these posts. I truly hope they make this change responsibly, and whatever it is, it is not some kind of fixed recipe.

Personally, my observations of most who were clamoring for change were that they were simply upset at the difficulty. With one paragraph, many claimed they wanted a “legendary quest” and a swift read down the thread shows about 18 pages of suggestions that boiled down to “make a recipe”. Colbear made a good post about this in the main thread.

I truly hope that ANet recognizes
1) The opportunity to motivate players to do things that are rarely being done right now by making them part of this quest and
2) maintaining at least some semblance of the current system for those of us who like it, and
3) retaining the difficulty of creating this item, to make it mean something to those who get it.

A fixed recipe accomplishes none of these things.

With that, I do want to say I am disappointed ANet decided to cave. I think this is one of those cases where the majority were content, and being content lends itself to silence. I’m not saying I believe this is the best system long term, but it’s a system this game may need now. While I’m not pleased by this, I’m at the same time excited to see how ArenaNet plays this. The ability to make responsible adjustments is a quality many game companies lack (example: Diablo III, where everything is only halved and doubled). If ANet shows both design creativity and restraint, then that bodes very well for this game’s future overall.

Be very aware that anyone can threaten to leave the game. They get what they want today, they will cry about something different tomorrow. This is the nature of today’s world. This is not a patient generation of gamers. Many successful games are really nothing more than chasing a carrot on a stick. Look at WoW. It’s only ever just a new tier of gear. Your goals for GW2 likely include the desire to transcend this limitation, but consider carefully if the game is ready for that yet. When people get the carrot and realize there’s nothing else to chase, they move on.

The line between listening to feedback and caving to every demand is what separates the games that endure and games that fizzle. Please tread carefully.

And the epic journey to casual land is gonna start in next build…
That’s so bad…

I agree with LFK.1408

The only thing that keep me playing after lv80 is making legendary.

And I don’t want this process to be easy.

Be careful Anet. You can’t please everyone.

What I dont understand is… why the buttershmackle didn’t A-Net do an in-game survey… to see how many people would want a changed to precursors, lodestones, etc.. And they would have more legit numbers on population’s happiness.. rather than just take into consideration this supposedly ‘large feedback’ which is basically the same people posting on one thread over and over again…

You don’t need to make every content in game “accessible” for every player.

Thinking about players half of the map wielding these “legendaries” ….

And then what’s so special about these items?

You are doing a huge mistake Anet.

So many of my guildmates haven’t had legendaries even precusor.

But they are “HAPPY” to chase for it.

Honestly there should be differen’t ways to obtain a legendary weapon.
Some like PvE and hate PvP.
Some players won’t set foot in PvE but love PvP.

Right now it requires both, and there should be different things. I don’t know how you could go about it, but 3 options would be nice. PvP in WvW for one, or PvE farm, or even the current option which is a mix.

As for legendary’s, currently you have to sit in PvE and farm 24/7 for a week/few weeks, or you have to play the market to get enough gold to afford making one. (The only other way people did it so far other then those 2 options was if they exploited or something. Which is a bannable offense.)

To those angry that other players will get a legendary:
It’ll happen eventually, it’s an achievement/goal for all characters in game.

Please.
About My Transactions “I’ve Sold & I’ve Bought”
I want to have option to remove items in “I’ve Sold & I’ve Bought” same in “I’m Selling & I’m Buying”
It will perfect for edit My transactions.I hope that my request will be considered.Thank you.

Those Halloween skins is a very good example.

Remember the first day of event??

Everyone is crazy about how to make these skins.

Every halloween mats are very expensive.

I saw finished skins sold in tp almost 500g.

Suddenly …. everyone found out that they also drop in chest.

And no once give a … about them anymore…

Why? Becoz those skins are not cool enough??

No… Because they are too easy to get.

Ravax.1205:

What I dont understand is… why the buttershmackle didn’t A-Net do an in-game survey… to see how many people would want a changed to precursors, lodestones, etc.. And they would have more legit numbers on population’s happiness.. rather than just take into consideration this supposedly ‘large feedback’ which is basically the same people posting on one thread over and over again…

I don’t judge them too harshly.

Even as a player who is against the change, I tried to input some suggestions.

There’s always a way to do a little better, so I don’t necessarily assume because I didn’t get what I want, that this game is going to the dogs.

What I am highly against, is the vast majority of the suggestions that WERE proposed in the forums. All of them would result in the legendary being obtained in the same way they are today: by grinding. Just grinding something different. (This is based off the most popular suggestion: dungeon tokens.)

As the eternal optimist, my hope is this: That ArenaNet listened to the spirit of the discussion (which is to make a change), but completely disregarded the actual discussion itself to implement their own novel solution. I personally submitted 2 suggestions I believe are more thinking outside the box (costs something besides gold, tokens, etc). The tie-in to achievement requirements is my favorite.

Of course, I also urge them to leave the current system in place for those who want to use it as an option. Many players have been building toward using the current system as a way to make the legendary. To pull the rug out from under them seems a bit harsh.

I have a similar hatred for surveys.

Fine-tuning the sampling method is something that is difficult to ever get right.

You can conduct them, but you always have difficulty trusting them, which loops me around to wondering why they were conducted in the first place.

No doubt asking about positives is orders of magnitude better than asking about negatives.

However, I always experience that the same problem persists, which is that being content is very likely to cause silence. When something is being done right, people tend to not concern themselves with making sure someone knows that it is being done right.

Those who respond to the survey are still more likely to be those desiring some kind of shift or change. Surveys never favor the status quo, which is my biggest beef with them.

Edit: I don’t mean to sound like I believe they are a complete waste of time, but merely that my opinion of them is pretty sour. Many of the ‘facts’ we have and use today are based off of surveys, things like census data. I dislike them more in a setting where passions are likely to mingle into survey answers, as this impacts probability of response.

I have a harder time imagining people are quite so passionate about census data

neoxide.7320:

I spent 350g on my precursor last week, would suck if they became freebies next update.

They’re a little rarer than most would like but their price is due to the high demand for legendaries. If they nerf precursors it would really be a slap in the face to anyone who worked to get a precursor the hard way when compared to those who sat and cried until it was made easier.

It’s a slap in the face to me that you got your precursor at 350 but I have to pay 400 now and possibly even higher in a month’s time. imo they need to add an NPC that just sells it outright at 350.

John Smith.4610:

Ravax.1205:

What I dont understand is… why the buttershmackle didn’t A-Net do an in-game survey… to see how many people would want a changed to precursors, lodestones, etc.. And they would have more legit numbers on population’s happiness.. rather than just take into consideration this supposedly ‘large feedback’ which is basically the same people posting on one thread over and over again…

Actually we have pretty scientific methods for determining how players feel.

Surveys have a tendency to have two major flaws:
1. There is a massive sample bias in those willing to fill out a survey
2. People don’t say what they feel on surveys

Secondarily, all can rest assured that Legendaries will remain legendary.

What I had seen in Aion (NCSoft as well) with the ingame surveys, was multiple choice, simple, pop up on the screen upon log-in, and a reward when clicking a choice, and ‘ok’.. could have done it with a ‘jug of karma’ for example, everyone would fill out the survey..

The choices would be something like this:

What are your thoughts on current design/mechanics of Pre-cursor:
1. Ok as it is.
2. Needs a change to make easier to obtain
3. I dont know what a precursor is.

I can try a tie-in

If this were a survey, I do want ANet to know that I like the Mystic Forge, I like the current rarity of legendary items, and overall, am very content with the way things are now.

I do not personally have a legendary. The fact that I can afford one (or five, depending on which one I want), though, is likely impacting the way I feel about it right now.

I am not against a change, as I’ve expressed above. Everything can always be done better. I’m excited to see what’s planned, regardless of whether I like it or not.

Yay! I’m nowhere near my legendary, but I’m slowly working my way there. For those who are maintaining that getting a legendary should be nigh impossible for most people… If that is the intent, it really shouldn’t be one of the 7 achievements displayed on the character select screen. You’ve got explore, make alts, play WvW, play PvP, and get a legendary advertised and things that players should try to accomplish waved in their face every time the log in…

John Smith.4610:

Very true. It’s also quite difficult to write a survey that doesn’t produce biased results via the wording or method of the questioning.
I think we may have derailed this thread, as it’s about precursors

John, I do realize there are certain NDA’s regarding upcoming patches, changes, etc.. But could you give a subtle hint as to what part of the precursor mechanic will be altered?

And another question more important to me actually, I for example, have the precursor, and am have been working on gifts for a month already, i am just missing Icy Runestones, 44 clovers, Gift of exploration, and a few elaborate totems.. Will I (and probably many many others as well) still be able to obtain the legendary with the current design?

John Smith.4610:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

Now instead of a 0.0000000000000001% chance you’ll have a 0.000000000000001% of getting one.

NeedsFoodBadly.2671:

John Smith.4610:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

Now instead of a 0.0000000000000001% chance you’ll have a 0.000000000000001% of getting one.

I dunno why but its what I think they will do. Unless something is REALLY broken, like something or an item is preventing people from getting a precursor while trying to get it in mystic forge.

Or even removing the mystic forge DR and allowing magic find to change chances to find one in mystic forge

Or just put some precursors selling in LA for like 500 skill points lol

edit: typo

NeedsFoodBadly.2671:

Now instead of a 0.0000000000000001% chance you’ll have a 0.000000000000001% of getting one.

If i’m reading that correctly, that change is on a scale of 10.

If this is affects all current applicable methods of acquiring one, that would effectively decuple the supply.

This is actually an example of a change I regard to be too big.

Are these changes going to be aimed at precursors only, or at other aspects of Legendaries as well?

The lodestones in particular – the more popular ones are going are currently running up 200g or more on top of the 100g for Icy Runestones and 200g+ for T6 materials. Doing something bring down the price of Charged lodestones in particular would go a long way to help.

Also have to ask how RNG plays into this, both in terms of precursors and in terms of the Mystic Clovers.

After mathing it out, Sunrise would cost me at minimum something on the order of 800g, which is pretty insane. Something in the realm of 400-500g would be much more reasonable, without being super accessible. I can see that being possible if the price of the precursors and lodestones come down – they’re the heavy hitters here. It also is more aligned with the amount of time it takes to save up 1 million karma, assuming you’re doing Cursed Shore for both Karma and Gold/Mat farming.

Darmikau.9413:

The lodestones in particular – the more popular ones are going are currently running up 200g or more on top of the 100g for Icy Runestones and 200g+ for T6 materials.

Charged lodestones is the only problem for Legendary I see. You can’t farm them, because there is only a dozen of Sparks in whole game and CoE dungeon is not a solution either, because you need to find additional 4 people, willing to farm for these stones.

John Smith.4610:

Ravax.1205:

What I dont understand is… why the buttershmackle didn’t A-Net do an in-game survey… to see how many people would want a changed to precursors, lodestones, etc.. And they would have more legit numbers on population’s happiness.. rather than just take into consideration this supposedly ‘large feedback’ which is basically the same people posting on one thread over and over again…

Actually we have pretty scientific methods for determining how players feel.

Surveys have a tendency to have two major flaws:
1. There is a massive sample bias in those willing to fill out a survey
2. People don’t say what they feel on surveys

Secondarily, all can rest assured that Legendaries will remain legendary.

I’d guess that the method you used has to do with how many searches the players did for a specific list of items (that involve the legendaries, like the precursors). That, or how many players created the gifts – this would eliminate a bias towards selling, but I’m not sure you guys can track that.

Secondarily, all can rest assured that Legendaries will remain legendary.

I’m happy to see that.

Hopefully getting a legendary base will be tied into some kind of accomplishment, rather than just making them more common for lucky people. And if it’s still going to be something like that, I hope at least the precursors are made soulbound.

Here’s what’s going to happen if they make the same mistake they did with halloween

1. Base weapons now made a more common drop, but you can only get 1 chance per day or whatever
2. A random 1% of the playerbase gets a base weapon to drop for them and they instantly put it on the trading post
3. That random 1% of the playerbase is now 200-400 gold richer, which is more money than 98% of the playerbase will have even after thousands of hours of playing, just from dumb luck.
4. The 98% of the playerbase that didn’t get their name picked out of a hat is now even further separated from the people who did, and have to work even harder to catch up if they ever want to participate in the economy, but they probably never will

Base weapons are one of the most broken aspects of the ecnomy right now. Partially because of the “21 karma” exploit putting a lot of money in the hands of a few people(many RMT companies were involved with this), another reason is because getting a base weapon right now is a factor of dumb luck and nothing else. Compare this to Diablo 3 where you have to somehow earn milions of gold before you can start getting the best items in the game because otherwise everything will kill you. Diablo 3 is a horrible example because the game is completely broken on every level and it costs about $5 to get millions of gold using the real money AH, but it’s an example of how the price of things correlates with the difficulty of getting one instead of just nothing but dumb luck.

With GW2, you just need to be like level 75 and you can randomly get your name drawn out of a hat to become one of the top percentile richest people in the game. This reminds me more of games like Ludo and Snakes and Ladders. Your “success” in this games is based entirely on how many times you get a good dice roll. The problem with this is is that the “success” becomes completely meaningless.

There are a lot of fun things in the game, but for me the main two aspects of the game I view with a “lasting appeal” are PvP and making accumulating currency. And if the money making aspect is reduced to “if your name is drawn out of a hat you win GW2” then it kinda loses its appeal for me and then all that’s left is PvP. It would really suck to see that happen.

GW1 might have been a better example. The people who played that game for PvE were mostly in it to get titles and to get expensive gear. A lot of people aimed for things like being able to buy obsidian armor, and being able to buy chaos gloves. This system works every well and still seems far superior to GW2 to me.

The way I feel it works in GW2 is like Chaos Gloves being a random drop you can get with a 0.1% chance once per character after killing the lich in prophecies as a replacement for the droknar’s key. Having that in place would have completely trivialized Chaos Gloves as a goal people pursue in the game.

GW1 did have a very good example of having a bad implementation of RNG though, the miniature Jingle Bear. If you get a mini jingle bear you instantly become richer than 99.9% of the GW1 players and completely trivialize every other way of trying to get expensive stuff in the game. The only part that prevented this from destroying the entire economy is that it only dropped if you farmed 2 very specific locations in the game, so only a few people who were actually insane enough to try to farm it actually had a chance to get it, sane people didn’t have to have any interaction with the mini.

I hope A-net does something about precursors that involves jumping puzzles.
The most amazing and thrilling part of the game for me is so ignored or not much bothered with that i don’t really know…

I hoped that there would be some connection made, but if not, I hope you guys make jump puzzles more interesting(bear with me for this derail) like adding a token for a puzzle made and making a puzzle master armor set or some thing.

IMO, Legendaries were done significantly better in GW2 than the equivalent in GW1. In the original Guild Wars, the hardest to get item was Fissure of Woe armor, which required a very expensive crafting material (Globs of Ectoplasm). It could be entirely bought, though. As such, acquiring FoW armor required no skill – it was just a matter of farming gold. A bot could get it if wanted to.

In GW2, in other hand, the idea behind Legendaries is to require proficiency in almost all aspects of the game:

• Proficiency in exploration: the Gift of Exploration requires 100% world completition.

• Proficiency in WvW: the Gift of Battles requires 500 Badges of Honor.

• Proficiency in Crafting: a player needs two maxed crafting disciplines to get a Legendary.

• Proficiency in dungeons: the dungeon gifts require some dungeon tokens.

• Proficiency in earning experience: more than 200 skill points are needed.

• Proficiency in earning karma: Obsidian Shards require a lot of karma.

• Proficiency in luck: the clovers are a symbol of luck.

• Proficiency in earning gold: Gift of Fortune plus Icy Runestones plus a lot of other things.

It’s definitely more balanced than just being able to farm. The issue with precursors and lodestones is that they are just more of the same, and in fact reward the worst aspect of the game – earning gold. This is something that doesn’t require skill, as any bot can do it. Those saying that they want precursors to continue to be as they are in order to keep legendaries hard to get are lying – precursors are not hard to get, in that they do not require skill. They simply require a lot of time, due to requiring a lot of gold. Having a lot of time in order to grind is not something that deserves a reward; something skill based would deserve it, though.

There are two aspects of the game that are not rewarded as far as Legendaries go:

• Proficiency in the personal storyline

• Proficiency in structured PvP

I would give people the option of getting an account bound precursor after finishing the main storyline (which would laughably break those playing the market). I would avoid giving legendary rewards to structured PvP in order to not make people exploit that game mode (see Hero Battles and the “red resigns” issue in GW1), although I would allow people to unlock legendary skins in PvP equipment through sPvP rewards. I would, too, make Lodestones a reward for some difficult content in the game, rewarding thus skill, not time spent.