Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m here to share my thoughts about the “legendary quest”, ie the different thing that we have to do in order to craft a legendary as a whole.
I will say a lot of things, so don’t reject my entire post because you disagree on just one (or even several) point(s).

My general feeling is that this “quest” was, after game release, something balanced between several different aspects of the game. And now, is isn’t balanced anymore : the “money” aspect took a much too large share.

This quest was supposed to be a long term objective (maybe mid term for hardcode gamers, long term for “normal”, and not an objective at all for very casual). Every aspect of it took a share in this.
But the gold aspect grew a lot while the other aspects became merely insignificant : the goal of this thread is not to say “foo, coo, quagaan isn’t happy he can’t get a legendary because of its money price”, but to explain why the balance has bee broken and what can be done to make it balanced again, not to make it easier (btw I crafter in january the one I wanted – Kudzu – so I’m not here to complain :-) )

Original aspects
Legendary quest implied a reasonable commitment in a lot of aspects of the game.

→ Karma : our character is a hero, helping a lot everywhere in live events. We would need around 1 millions Karma points, earned only through open world/WvW events. 1M was a huge amount and you has to either play for a very long time, or focus on events for a while.

→ Skill points : our character has to be skilled ! getting around 350 skill points including 200 on a single character isn’t done in a single day.

→ Map completion : our character has completed the map.

→ 500 Badge of honor : our character also fought a lot for his world. 500 were long to get, even if doing the jumping puzzle could help

→ 2 x lvl 400 crafting profession : our character is also a skilled artisan

→ Mystic coins : playing regularly

→ Dungeons : our character is a hero in a specific dungeon 500 tokens meant 25 runs at the time

→ 120 gold coins of cash : also needs to be “rich”, saving money for the “quest”. a set amont proving that legendary implies gold and preventing it from costing nothing, and giving an idea about the total amount of gold that was supposed to be implied : probably not more than 2×120g

→ Ectos, Precursor, T6 : either a lot of farm, or the use of more money, but not making the fixed amount of 120g ridiculous

As we can see, there were a lot of aspects, each of them being significant even if they were never equal.

The changes
A lot of game updates have changed these aspects.

-> Karma : karma rewards have been added everywhere. We gain karma in dungeons, karma from hearts, karma from fractals, more karma than before from events (because event rewards now scales to the character level). And most of all : incredible amounts of karma from daily/monthly achievement, very high compared to what we would get from (not farmed) events after game release.
Nowadays, anyone – even casual – gets easily more than enough karma for a legendary, without ever committing ourselves into getting karma.
(btw, not adding all these karma sources, in addition to avoid unbalancing the Legendary Quest, would have helped keeping players running around in open world, doing events.)
And in case this was not enough, Anet also added other ways of getting those Obsidian Shards : fractal relics, baubles, laurels …
So; the “karma” aspect became insignificant in the Legendary Quest.

-> Skill points : they became overall easier to get, using fractal relics, or the increase of open world events rewards … and especially the champions which now simply loot skill points (in any case this makes the “skill points” aspect easier, but if you farm the Scarlet events the “issue” is much worse^^).
350 skill points are still a lot (I will not say “insignificant” this time), but getting them now plays a much smaller role in the Legendary Quest.

-> Badge of honor : loot rate has been increased long ago. But recently they started coming in HUGE amounts from achievement rewards. Getting 500 of them is now insignificant in regards to the Legendary Quest.

-> Crafting : this is probably easier than intended. Getting a lvl400 costs nothing to a few GC, and is done very fast – even people who don’t use their brains to understand how crafting works can use one of the thousants of tutorials out there to get lvl400 in 30 mere minutes.
Again, this aspect is insignificant in Legendary Quest.

-> Mystic coins : can be bought for a low price.

-> Dungeons : token rewards are much higher, so we still need to seriouly stride along a dungeon but less than before. And much less if it is a “farmed” dungeon like CoF (runs are fast). Dungeon didn’t become an insignificant aspect of the quest, but this aspect’s importance has been lowered too.

> Gold : there is still a fixed amount of 120g. But the total amount of gold needed to a legendary has dramatically increased. Precursors price have never stopped increasing, much more than in october when Anet already said that the price was higher than intended (see here for example : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Official-Response-Drop-Rate-of-Legendary-Precursors). At this time they were around 200g. If 200g for precursor is higher than intended, it confirms that the fixed 120g can give an idea of the total price for the “gold” aspect : it was probably intended around 250g ?
Now the price is much higher than 200g …
Also, other parts are now very high : buying all T6 mats would cost 600g !!! (and even if you already have some of them : they are worth 600g).

Which makes the “money” aspect of the Legendary quest, the only one that most players will worry about; especially the ones who are not grind farmers (gw2 isn’t supposed to include grind) or do not vampirize money out of the community through TP manipulation.

Conclusion
Legendary Quest at launch : 30-40% MAX concerns about money (probably closer to 25%), the rest being split up between karma, skill points, map completion, crafts, dungeon, WvW, dailies …
Legendary now : 90% concerns about money, 10% split up between map completion, dungeons, and crumbs of the rest.

What can be done
As I told earlier, I’m not here to whine. So let’s talk about solutions.

→ Karma : you can’t remove all those karma reward, it would angry the playerbase. Instead, increase the amounts of karma needed to get Obsi Shards.
Or : increase the amount of karma needed for shards (5k/each ?), have them be available only through Karma and use them only for the Gift of Mastery. Replace the shards available from other sources (fractals, laurels, baubles) with a new item that will be needed for the Mystic Clovers recipes.

→ Skill points : add the skill points scrolls to some new reciepe (for example as a part of the future Precursor Quest !), so that players will keep some scrolls for it and stop being overloaded with more skill points than needed for Legendary Weapons.

→ Badges of Honor : increase the amount needed for a gift of battle, OR increase the number of gifts of battle needed for the gift of mastery OR add new uses for badges (for example : buy World Ability Points) so that players use them for other purposes and keeping 500 for the Legendary becomes an effort or a real choice.

→ Crafting : move the Gifts recipes to lvl500. After all, legendary weapons will have the level of Ascended weapons … . And lvl500 will not be easy to reach, so getting 2xlvl500 will be a real part of the Legendary Quest.

→ Dungeons : replace the simple “dungeon gift” with something similar to the gift of Fortune : use 100 tokens of dungeons 1-4 to get Gift1, 100 tokens of dungeons 5-8 to get Gift2, use [Gift1 + Gift2 + 250 fractals relics + Usual dungeon gift for 500 specific tokens] in mystic forge for to get a “super dungeon gift of [dungeon specific to each legendary]” which will replace the usual one in the recipe for the weapon-specific Gift.

→ Money : implement the Precursor Quest :-)
Also, you may modify the trading post in order to be able to forbid market manipulation on some items (those items, once bought through the TP, will not be able to be sold in the TP a second time – or not before 6 months. Add an alert on buying : “are you sure you want to buy this ? You will not be able to sell it again”). Use this new tool on precursors and especially t6 mats.

Thank you for reading !
As I said in introduction, don’t reject the whole thing is you disagree with only parts of it : there are a lot of distinct claims, a lot of distinct solutions … only implementing one of them would be a step in the right direction : making the Legendary Quest more balanced between its aspects !

Eowyn

ps : I really have no time to read what I just wrote – must go back to work. I hope I havn’t done too many mistakes, and havn’t typed to many words in place of others.
Forgive me for mistakes, I’ll correct them this evening !
I also hope that I havn’t forgotten some aspects … there were so many things to say

All those ideas are terrible, the last thing legendaries need is to be even more grindy.

Though I see the gold issue (as in too important, not only when it comes to a legendary btw. but other aspects of the game as well – think C3 for example) as a major problem just like you, I don’t think making the other parts for the legendary more difficult to obtain is a good solution.
This will only make it an even longer prospect and more difficult to acquire a legendary. Especially punishing players joining the game later.
The sheer amount of gold required these days makes it hard enough for them already. Yes, you could probably farm all materials yourself, but seriously, if you already have to grind for the thing, grind the most efficient way. Which means grind for money since even with the current inflation rate in GW2 that will still be faster than trying to get all the T6 materials, lodestones and other oddities yourself. Not to mention the precursor.

That being said, I don’t see a good solution to the gold-grind GW2 has become in general. GW2 PvE is basically all about skins. Yet acquiring many of those skins requires a large amount of gold since there are very few effective ways to farm certain materials, lodestones for example. Thus you are “forced” to buy them. Others are simply only obtainable via gold (again as a splendid example: cultural armor skins).

I also agree that it was almost never easier to farm gold than it is now (the only exception was to do CoF1 until your brain melted).
Still the inflation is hitting GW2 pretty hard right now but there are no simple solutions (imho at least) to counter this at the current state of the game and even less possibilities to revert the game to a former state.
GW2 is steadfastly degenerating into a grindfest. What was originally one of the aspects that made me pick GW2, the promise that GW2 will have less grinding required than other mmorpgs. (I won’t say no grinding, because anyone thinking a mmorpg would work without grinding is delusional…)

“Legendary” weapons… have nothing legendary. The name comes as a marketing strategy.

Hi,

@Hyper Cutter :
The idea is not to make it “more grindy”. It is to rebalance the whole thing between the different aspects of it, the Legendary being something that requires some commitment in most aspects of the game (except pvp, puzzles and living story).
So, make the money part easier (less grind) and the other parts harder (not as much as they were 1 year ago before updates made them easier, but hard enough for them to really play a role in the legendary crafting process). Not hard enough to make any of them deserve to be called “grind” , if possible :-)
(look at my example for dungeons : that’s 2 paths/dungeon + 10 paths for the one specific to your weapon – not much more than currently for the latter. Would make the “dungeon” aspect harder, but I don’t see how it could be called “grind”. Same goes for my other examples : no grind implied).
In any case, I don’t mean making the whole thing harder or take longer. The time needed because of changes to other aspects would be compensated by the time freed on the money aspect (on the basis of “normal” money income, not brainless cof farm or TP manipulations).
In this shape, it would be less grindy. As long as before, but with a better variety of things to do. (for me, “grind” = repeat the same thing again and again)

@kRiza krimos
Do you mean “She” ?

@Silberfisch
The response to Hyper Cutter works for you too : the idea is not to make it harder.
And as new players are concerned, I don’t think there is an issue because (a) legendaries will remain hard to get, but not harder . (b) In any case, new players will never have the exact same experience than early players : they benefit from a lot of things that have been added or made easier, and they suffer from some things that have been removed or made harder. This is the law of all games, and I know it well for having bought GW1 2.5 years after everyone.

I think the overuse of the term “grind” is part of the problem. There is a difference between “grind” and “work” there is a difference between “farm” and “grind”. And I think it would help us as a whole to define them and understand them as a community.

Back when I first entered the great MMO world, I began in FFXI. And it left a mark on me. Because back in the day, Artifact Armor, the classic armor sets that were powerful and iconic were not easily obtained. You had to farm rare spawns for even rarer drops, and travel to the dark corners of the continent to complete quests for NPC Crafters to make the pieces for you. Getting your full set of AF armor was an accomplishment, and usually took several people several weeks to complete for just 1 persons set.

I feel thats what the legendary items should be and stay. And I think they should move closer to becoming that than they currently are. The OP refered to it as a quest and I like that. I think these coveted items with 1000g+ price tags should require long hours of hunting, scavenging, and traveling to complete. That, I don’t consider a grind.

((Granted I think few people log into a game to “work”, but the more effort you put in, the greater the experience completing it becomes))

OP, I agree with your intent, but only some of your solutions.

I like the idea of having to do all dungeons (and maybe fractals) to make a gift. If you only needed ~100-200 of each token, you can get all the required tokens in almost a single day, but it requires you to do all paths (or take long doing the same path over multiple days).

I don’t like the idea of increasing the karma cost. Sure most of us have a lot of karma, but that really punishes everyone who comes after us (or people like me that are still working towards their first legendary). Making it cost 2 million instead of 1 just increases the grind for it (though it is still one of the least grindy parts).

The same philosophy with skill points and badges. Why punish the people that come later? Yes we have a large influx, but the solution shouldn’t be to increase the amount we need.

The solution should be to offer better rewards for karma, badges, and skill points so people will need to make a conscious effort to save up. Right now karma, badges, and skill points all have only have 1-3 uses. 1 is saving them for a legendary. For karma you can only get specific gear (if you’re lucky enough to have those vendors open) or Orrian boxes. Badges you can also get gear (armor and cheaper ascended accessories) or siege weapons. Skill points you can just really give to alts. So really the main use of all of these things are to help an alt (or get your first gear set) or save for a legendary.

We need better options to spend these other currencies on, not increase the cost of the legendary just because their acquisition became easier. (Have the new skills they introduce cost a decent number of skill points and have another thing to buy for spending karma and badges)

For crafting, you’re somewhat right. If they moved it up to 500 I wouldn’t be too angry (unless the time gating for the t7 mats is even worse than charged quartz). On the plus side we will soon (by the end of the year) be able to craft precursors.

Sadly, this ties into the last thing. It’s really the mats that are the main problem. The lodestones and the t6 mats are what raise the cost so high. Even if we can craft precursors, how expensive will it be compared to just buying it outright?

Here’s a suggestion off the top of my head (so I have a feeling it’s really unbalanced). Just let us buy the fine t6 mats and lodestones (and I guess lower tiers too) for either karma or badges. That solves the issue of having too much karma or badges with nothing to spend it on, and the issue of not being able to get lodestones or t6 mats without extensive grind or being “forced” to buy it off the tp. The real issue is the cost. It has to be high enough that the market won’t just crash on day 1, but not so high to make it not viable (like 1mil karma for 1 lodestone), and either way it shouldn’t completely replace the options for grinding or buying. Maybe make the initial cost high, but give multiple (say 1mil karma for 10 lodestones), it makes 1 lodestone cost more than two temple armor pieces, but gives another (and reliable) way to actually get them.

Also, for precursors, I would much prefer a long, hard, solo instanced quest with multiple parts, that just can’t be zerked. I liked the idea of the queen’s gauntlet, but people quickly realized that you could forgo most tactics and just zerk your way to victory in mer seconds (the time limit didn’t help much either in promoting non-zerk strategies). I just hate how the game seems to keep rewarding the zerk (and zerg) mentality, but that’s mostly a separate conversation.

But if there was a 5-10 hour long quest (over multiple instances) that was hard and either limit it to 2 times per character (same as gift of exploration) that made you think on your feet (and couldn’t be zerked) it could be reliable way to get a precursor. Just need to make sure it was account bound.

I don’t think most people care about the grind/work required to get a legendary. Most just don’t like all the uncertainty involved (XX% chance to get ectos from rares/exotics, 33% chance to get clovers, 0.00000X% chance to get a precursor from a drop/MF/chest, 0.X% chance to get a lodestone or t6 mat). With a little over 1k hours of PvE casual (non-grindy) play I only have about 50-60 of each t6 mat and <10 of each lodestone. If that’s too high or low, I’m not sure. It’s just disheartening that the main way to get anything is just farm/buy gold and you can just ignore almost everything else.

I would also prefer to have to do real game content to earn a legendary, cool, rare quests for example and stuff like that. I think everyone who wants a legendary should work for it, and not just buying precursors and all requireded mats from auction house.

I also believe the high prices for precursors are because of illegal gold sellers and the amount of stuff you can buy for your legendary. People go crazy when it’s about “status symbols” like legendaries in games.

It’s right, too much gold involved in the process… make it less gold and farming dependent.

Earning a legendary should be a real story-driven gameplay adventure, and no buying and farming adventure.

FXHell.3217:

I would also prefer to have to do real game content to earn a legendary, cool, rare quests for example and stuff like that. I think everyone who wants a legendary should work for it, and not just buying precursors and all requireded mats from auction house.

I also believe the high prices for precursors are because of illegal gold sellers and the amount of stuff you can buy for your legendary. People go crazy when it’s about “status symbols” like legendaries in games.

It’s right, too much gold involved in the process… make it less gold and farming dependent.

Earning a legendary should be a real story-driven gameplay adventure, and no buying and farming adventure.

I wouldn’t say illegal gold sellers. I mean I saw those posts a lot in /map at launch, but in the past 3-5 months I think I’ve only seen 1-3 gold farmers posting (I think one even whispered anyone that wp’ed in) and everyone else in map (along with myself) just talked about reporting them. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but it feels that way.

If anything the inflation is from all the farming going on for the past 3 weeks, and in general the high gold cost of almost every part of the legendary (the static 120g cost is actually the cheapest part of a legendary now, which is just depressing).

Edit: Don’t forget, some people also have a lot of disposable income. If some people can spend >$150 on the rnd boxes from the various events just to try to get 1 skin, others that have over 40 character slots, some must buy their gold directly (and there’s nothing wrong with that). Heck that’s the reason that gold—>gem was so stable until the recent (maybe 2? months) influx of better gem shop items and a metric ton of farmable events. This inflation in the gem prices just helps people with more money get a lot more gold. Again nothing wrong with that, but when so much of a legendary is tied in gold it just makes it more tempting to throw $X0 at the problem compared to X hours.

For luxury items, there needs to be a gate. What do I mean? While Legendary weapons should be made so that any player who wants one can work for it, we need to ensure that it’s difficult enough to keep the weapons rare.

The current gate is the Precursor. The market helps to determine the high price for them, so that helps to keep these as luxury items. The low drop rate for chest loot or Mystic Forge is also a gate. If players, en masse, decide to sell Precursors for cheap, or an increase in drop rates causes the item to become more available, the status of having a Legendary will be negatively affected. Imagine Lion’s Arch full of Twilights. The awe factor would be gone, and owning one would turn into “meh”.

The idea for a Precursor Scavenger Hunt or Quest is interesting. I’m currently against that idea, based on my assumptions that it’ll make Precursors too easy to get. What I would hope is that if Anet implements this idea, it should be along the lines of Liadri + Clockwork JP hard. If you want to use the word “punishing”, that’s fine, I’ll call it “Challenging”. But the point here is that luxury items, like Legendary weapons, need an artificial gate so they can retain rarity. Anyone can farm in zergs to make money to eventually buy a Precursor or Legendary, but mastery of game mechanics would truly set the bar for “Legendary requirements”.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Also, for precursors, I would much prefer a long, hard, solo instanced quest with multiple parts, that just can’t be zerked. I liked the idea of the queen’s gauntlet, but people quickly realized that you could forgo most tactics and just zerk your way to victory in mer seconds (the time limit didn’t help much either in promoting non-zerk strategies). I just hate how the game seems to keep rewarding the zerk (and zerg) mentality, but that’s mostly a separate conversation.

But if there was a 5-10 hour long quest (over multiple instances) that was hard and either limit it to 2 times per character (same as gift of exploration) that made you think on your feet (and couldn’t be zerked) it could be reliable way to get a precursor. Just need to make sure it was account bound.

I don’t think most people care about the grind/work required to get a legendary. Most just don’t like all the uncertainty involved (XX% chance to get ectos from rares/exotics, 33% chance to get clovers, 0.00000X% chance to get a precursor from a drop/MF/chest, 0.X% chance to get a lodestone or t6 mat). With a little over 1k hours of PvE casual (non-grindy) play I only have about 50-60 of each t6 mat and <10 of each lodestone. If that’s too high or low, I’m not sure. It’s just disheartening that the main way to get anything is just farm/buy gold and you can just ignore almost everything else.

I think changing the whole system would be unfair to previous legendary owners.
However, I think that it is fair to have an alternative method to obtain a precursor. This already will make things more balanced (rather than gambling at the MF or hoping for drops). Let’s be honest: nowadays if you have the precursor and map completion it will be relatively smooth sailing.

I wouldn’t mind a quest chain to get a precursor, like the personal story.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

FXHell.3217:

I would also prefer to have to do real game content to earn a legendary, cool, rare quests for example and stuff like that. I think everyone who wants a legendary should work for it, and not just buying precursors and all requireded mats from auction house.

I also believe the high prices for precursors are because of illegal gold sellers and the amount of stuff you can buy for your legendary. People go crazy when it’s about “status symbols” like legendaries in games.

It’s right, too much gold involved in the process… make it less gold and farming dependent.

Earning a legendary should be a real story-driven gameplay adventure, and no buying and farming adventure.

I wouldn’t say illegal gold sellers. I mean I saw those posts a lot in /map at launch, but in the past 3-5 months I think I’ve only seen 1-3 gold farmers posting (I think one even whispered anyone that wp’ed in) and everyone else in map (along with myself) just talked about reporting them. I’m not saying there aren’t any, but it feels that way.

sry, but it’s really not about mails or spam you see ingame. There are well-known pages where you can (illegal) buy gold for every current MMO and it’s a massive booming industry.

The prices went so high because people were able to pay these high prices and stuff was sold overpriced… and pretty sure that most of this stuff was bought with illegal gold bought for real money frome these pages. Sellers recognized that people were buying stuff for crazy prices and so prices went even higher.

Since the very beginning, it was 100% Luck/RNG based and none of that has changed.
I don’t see why you needed 5 chain posts for such insubstantial revisionism

Smarter people just took one look at it when it was first announced and said to themselves: “Well that’s just dumb and I don’t need this trinket”. And other smart people who’s greed outpaced their patience just decided they’d flip the TP until everyone else payed for theirs.