Guild Wars 2

Some of the responses here are just silly. We have two main schools of thought: The evil “Godskull Exploiters” that control everything to keep the precursors out of reach except for those with huge amounts of money, and another which seems to think that the drop chance for the precursors from the forge and other drop points is so ridiculously low that they’ll never drop.

What most of the “Godskull Exploiter” bunch don’t seem to realize is that if this were the case, if there were only a few people controlling the price, it would be rising independently of the materials to create the precursor, which simply isn’t the case. When I first started throwing obscene amounts of weapons into the forge, precursors were at about 300g. But then again, I could buy the materials for about half of what they cost me today, and now dusk is going for about 600-700.

If I were to put the laptop I’m writing this on up on ebay for 400 bucks, it would sell very quickly. It would also likely be re-sold for 800 the next day. This is because there are people out there willing to pay 800 for it. when you’re working with an economy the scale of guildwars’, this kind of thing happens all the time. When they stop selling, the prices will come down. When the materials to make them go up, the prices will rise as well.

I’d like some concrete information, sure. Drop chances, etc. From my point of view, you have to play to win, and really, once you’re established in exotic gear, there isn’t much to spend money on except legendary weapons. I’m probably about 600 Rare greatswords in at this point and while I’d like the drop, I don’t feel cheated that I haven’t seen it. It’ll make getting it all the better.

The difference between the haves and the have-nots wasn’t ever just magically having the money. Its about understanding the market, focus, and time.

Xzy you are absolutely right on the matter of prices. Supply and demand are the top reasons for this rise of prices and then you have those guys that raise the price on their own by placing offers with huge difference from the previous one.

Atm you can see that the offer for Dusk is at 629g and then comes a guy that raises the offer @ 660 instead of just a copper or even a gold. We are the ones to blame for the prices

No it does not mean people are “willing” to pay 800g for a precursor. It means that the supply is so limited that people who have one can demand whatever they want for it because where else are you going to get one? For many people the acquisition of the precursor is the only stumbling block on the road to making a legendary weapon. It is the one thing you cant reliably get anywhere. Charged lodestones are a pain to acquire but the supply on the TP is vastly higher than the supply of all precursors on the TP combined and there are pseudo reliable ways of supplementing the lodestones you buy – i.e. running CoE until your eyes bleed.

When you mention the “cost” of the “materials to create the precursor”, I assume you mean the cost of the materials required to craft rares/exotics that you then dump into the mystic forge. This is not a “cost” anyone can quantify because of the enormous variance in output from flushing rares/exotics into the mystic toilet.

You do not “create” a precursor. You luck out at the mystic roulette wheel (or you don’t, which is the case for the overwhelming majority of people rolling the dice).

All I’m going to say is that its devastating for people that go through prolonged spells of bad luck. To not just get a long series of bad rolls but to lose alot of money on every roll until they can’t afford to do it any more.

Its not about fairness because RNG is RNG but when such a desirable and well publicized thing as wielding a legendary weapon is largely left to chance and the odds of acquiring a necessary ingredient are very bad, thats alot of people who will feel like the joke is on them.

It is a mistake to go down this road. I’ve seen variations on this in games that came before like Diablo II. The RNG in that is so much worse than precursor drop rates in GW2 that its really unbelievable, and one of the main reasons why massive scale ToS violation is a black market industry and has been for years.

On the other hand I’ve seen Guild Wars 1 make something very desirable like a gold trimmed cape achievable only for the very top GvG teams. The skill threshold was enormous. Later on the barrier for entry into this mode of play became exceptionally high. Most guilds did not have the players with the temperament and ability to win a GvG AT. I remember the heated discussions about allowing people who don’t GvG to get fancy cape trims. I have no strong feelings either way but I remember the tone of those discussions. There was always someone who was annoyed and didn’t think it was right. Every proposed solution was devisive (it would diminish the symbolic nature of the gold trim cape as a mark of outstanding skill in GvG).

But most of all, I remember thinking how can Anet make their multiplayer games have staying power if the community is so divided?

Besetment.9187:

No it does not mean people are “willing” to pay 800g for a precursor. It means that the supply is so limited that people who have one can demand whatever they want for it because where else are you going to get one?

If people refuse to pay 800 gold, then this item won’t sell. It’ that simple. Just like completed Legendaries aren’t selling for 3k or 2.7k or 2.3k or… Sellers asked too much for them and the item is still sitting on the AH for that price while other people are under cutting them.

This isn’t a sellers market if buyers refuse to purchase them.

This is basic supply and demand were supply is inelastic and demand has a steady increase. That being said legendaries are suppose to take forever to create I mean one is called eternity because it take a eternity to build. Come on lets says the casual person spends says I don’t know a hour a day on the game and lets say that a person can make about 1 g a day. So that is 12 hours a week times 52 so 624 g in a year. and lets say a expansion that you have to pay for comes out at about 1.5-2.5 years. So you have enough time to get one if you really want one. And no I don’t have a legendary but I plan to get one eventually and if a precursors falls from the sky during the 2ish years I play before the next expansion all the better.

I’d just like to point out a few facts.
1) If you’re “saving up” gold to buy a precursor, you’re contributing to high prices by adding demand without increasing supply of any kind.
2) Gold farming directly contributes to price inflation across the board.

The only reliable way for the community (obviously devs can do something about it too) to improve the situation is to focus on farming uniques/exotics via MF/dungeon tokens etc. to increase the supply of precursor “components”.

In other words, the supply of legendaries is gated by the number/effectiveness of people willing to farm the mats for building them.

and now its 700G lol, cap on price lol

The only way to fix the ridiculous pre prices is for people to stop ordering precursors. But that’ll never happen

For people after the legendaries, I’m sorry but GW2 only caters to people who use real $$ – they don’t care about the rest of us who don’t. You will be sick & tired of GW2 by the time you’re halfway done.
But Kudos to you who entirely farmed for them & actually made them. Lemme know what it’s like to not have a life.

Just find a different MMO to play. easy fix

Chasind.3128:

For people after the legendaries, I’m sorry but GW2 only caters to people who use real $$ – they don’t care about the rest of us who don’t. You will be sick & tired of GW2 by the time you’re halfway done.
But Kudos to you who entirely farmed for them & actually made them. Lemme know what it’s like to not have a life.

That is a rather unconstructive and misleading way to frame the issue. There are indeed games that blatantly cater to real money spenders, but GW2 is not one of those.

I decided to go for a legendary shortly after Halloween, and got it (Kudzu) finished during Wintersday, so it took me exactly two months (since I had just before that spent all my gold to cultural armor) to farm the materials and gold (I bought the precursor). No real money was involved, and I spent around 3 hours per day for farming and related activities, all the while having a completely normal and satisfying real life (including work, family and friends), thank you very much for asking.

Now, the real issue with the precursors is that RNG doesn’t have memory. If the best probability for a precursor is denoted by p then the change in the part of population that is trying to acquire one is

dN / dt = – pN

where N is the number of people and t is the number of tries. This is the exponential decay equation, alternatively written as

N(t) = N_0 exp(- pt)

where N_0 is the initial size of the population. The expectation value of the distribution is

/tau = 1 / p

which means that in average a player will get a precursor after /tau tries. The developers can adjust both p and the cost C of a single try to ‘fix’ the expected price of a precursor. Assuming values that are roughly representative, p = 0.025 and C = 6g it leads to an expected (intrinsic) value of 240g for any precursor, a number that is certainly in the right ball park.

It might appear fair at the first glance, as one can either spend the gold in MF for a fair chance at a precursor, or somewhat more money for a guaranteed precursor from TP. However, the fairness is only illusionary because of the long tail of the exponential distribution (which is just a fancy way of re-stating that RNG doesn’t have memory). Because of that, some people will have to pay much more than the expected value for their precursor if they use MF, and nobody knows in advance whether they are one of those unlucky. How much more is the price of bad luck, then? In given terms, there will be people who end up paying ln(N_0) times more than the average value. With the current in-game population, that is about ten times the inherent price, or something south of 2,000g which is, in my not so humble opinion, a crazy proposition.

Based on that assessment, it is quite obvious that MF is not a reasonable nor a fair method for acquiring a precursor. Difficulty doesn’t have anything to do with it, when the primary source of an item is not a viable option, the supply side crashes as can be observed.

“Higher level and rarity increases chances of Precursor chance.” Hmmm……well that can’t be true. Ms. Arena Net Agent I would like to tell you that I’ve spent 400 gold (FOUR HUNDRED) buying mats and making them into LEVEL 80 rares. That’s how you’re “supposed” to do it right? Well…that method is wrong. It’s also not like I’ve delved into my crazy mind thinking of patterns and ways to get better precursor chances or anything, right? Well I did, and by doing so made me buy TONS of Potent Blood (the most expensive t5 mat) THINKING that rares with zerker stats, which are most valuable in the game (yes I’m reffering to Ms Arena Net Agent’s statement of rarity and level) will have a better chance to attain Precursors since they have zerker stats. But I guess it’s not that either since I still have nothing to show the family or to my guild who are always asking me why I don’t have any legendaries yet. So NOW, I’ve moved to the decision of throwing the exotics I’ve gotten from my crappy luck I guess, and throw those into the forge to see if anything pops out. I close my eyes, and click. What comes out? A weapon that costs less than any of the 4 I’ve put in. LIKE REALLY!? So…for the Arena Net agent reading and sometimes replying to some of our comments. WHAT AM I TO DO NOW? I mean those caps b/c I’m sincerely asking, “What the hell do I have to do to attain the precursor I want so I can start my end game in Guild Wars 2.” No I’m not buying it, because I am NOT falling prey into those scumbag’s scheme for making more money than what they already have. I’m really running out of options. Every time I come back to read to an arena agent’s replies in this thread, the more I believe that there have been alterations in the Mystic Forge. Which ultimately discourages players as I have known some to completely quit this “Best Game of The Year” to go off and play a childish MMORPG saying that it is a much better lifestyle there.

So, Ms. Arena Net Agent, what should I do now? Now that I’m almost completely broke and dumbfounded as to what I am supposed to do to attain what I want. Please enlighten me.

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item → 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item → precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff → precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

If only this great institution of higher gaming could accept that probable equation of probability.

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

+1. Someone else made this suggestion earlier, but this post quantifies why it’s better.

Emissary.3792:

+1. Someone else made this suggestion earlier, but this post quantifies why it’s better.

If we want to quantify the difference, then how about these numbers:

In the current system, the unluckiest player will have to pay about 400 times more for his precursor than the luckiest one. That is more than the going price for a finished legendary!

In the suggested system, if we use m = 10 (i.e., 10 shards will make a precursor) then the unluckiest player will have to pay about ten times more for his precursor than the luckiest one. While the difference is still significant, it’s not outrageous like in the first example.

The title of this thread is a bit misleading. There’s nothing wrong with the drop rate itself, the variance is the problem.

Well i’ve calmed down sort of in throwing level 80 rareas and exotics into the forge i think i’m up to around 150 attempts at trying to get one, really does get frustrating sometimes but then again if i do finally get one, i’m never doing it AGAIN.

I have started a question asigned to Anet about if they have a team dedicated to precursers or another way to obtain them so far no reply from anet. here is the link to it and hopefully well have an answer cause this forum has 28 pages and over 1000 posts.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Q-is-there-a-team-working-on-precursers/first#post1820686

Chasind.3128:

The only way to fix the ridiculous pre prices is for people to stop ordering precursors. But that’ll never happen

For people after the legendaries, I’m sorry but GW2 only caters to people who use real $$ – they don’t care about the rest of us who don’t. You will be sick & tired of GW2 by the time you’re halfway done.
But Kudos to you who entirely farmed for them & actually made them. Lemme know what it’s like to not have a life.

Just find a different MMO to play. easy fix

Only problem with your answer of find a different MMO is that every MMO I’ve played since EQ1 are gear grinds and I really don’t expect the “dangling carrot” strategy to really change much.

Saraya Nightbreeze.3907:

If people refuse to pay 800 gold, then this item won’t sell. It’ that simple. Just like completed Legendaries aren’t selling for 3k or 2.7k or 2.3k or… Sellers asked too much for them and the item is still sitting on the AH for that price while other people are under cutting them.

This isn’t a sellers market if buyers refuse to purchase them.

To be honest, we (me and 2 friends) did calculations on, if we made Twilight (since i got lucky and got dusk from forge) and sold it for 2100g how much profit would we make, with the current TP prices for t6 materials etc. and the TP tax you need to pay (listing fee etc.). The outcome was around +20-40g (which could also drop to minus depends how lucky/unlucky you are with clovers) if i remember correctly. So we pretty much gave up on that idea and i simply sold dusk for 680 getting around 615g. So to be honest those who are selling legendarys are selling them for to little, they do cover the costs for t6 mats but they dont cover the time spent on completing 100% world completion, getting karma together and all the other tokens.

instead of world rng where if i try 30 times and this 1 other person was faster then me doig the 31st try he gets it where instead its a personal rng with guareted # and by the x amount of tries that person gets a precurser
another idea i have is if you throw rares in mysic toilet you can decline and try again with what zummeriors gives you either nothing or guerented exotic with a possiable precurser and if you throw 4 exotic’s in and try again you have nothing or guerented precurser

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

+1 I wouldn’t mind if I had to spend a ridiculous amount of resources if I could have a sense of progress over time. It’s possible to suck the same amount of resources and gold with the current system without the stressful thing we have now.
And if you want to make it long term progress add the use of materials you cannot obtain with gold like skill points, laurels and karma among with the other mats that zomoros needs to suck out of the game.

Guys, ANYTHING will be better than RNG in case of getting precursors. But the twist is that ANet just don’t care. How many posts of devs do we have in this thread? 1? 2? Over 1200 answers and they still don’t want to do anything about their bad system that is kitten off people all over the game. I’d appreciate any dev to answer and close this topic because I’m sure that lots of people are in same situation as me (all gifts crafted, no precursor because of lolprice). We can burn money out of game in different ways than wasting it in MF.

Edit: if you want to do something about case of money IG, make CoF P1 harder so it can’t be done in 8 minutes because it’s hilarious. The worst thing is that ANet knows about all bad stuff that is happening in game but they seem not to do anything about it. (excluding “exploits” that noone really knew they existed)

If they dont add scavenger hunt and they fix all speed clears then prepare for a big attack here.

Theres really no reason to stop the gold income if you dont have another solution for the pre’s. We all agree Rng for the Legendary is bs so you have 2 options atm (drop from chest is not one of them) You either try your luck in Mystic,F or farm Cof for the gold.

Took me 40 days to gather all the gold needed to buy dusk after i lost 200g in the mystic forge. Run Cof 1+h then 3-4 slow runs with an alt every day. And now i have my Twilight.

I know its bs.I am waiting for the scavenger now to get my second Legendary.

tmakinen.1048 I love what you’ve done. You’ve put your finger on exactly what the problem is: not the difficulty, but the variance. Thank you for your time and expertise in giving a great proposed solution a mathematical backing.

I hope the devs are still watching, because I certainly am. (Still sitting on everything-but-my-precursor. Thrown ~350 rare and exotic staffs in the forge, but out of principal I don’t want to support market manipulators and gold sellers. Really painful boycott.)

I spent some time recently working out the details, for myself, on what I need to do in order to craft The Dreamer. After reading through this thread, it’s pretty obvious that my time would be best spent selling the materials and things I find and just buying the bow outright off the TP.

There is no point at all in gathering all the required materials if the entire build is balanced on the almost non-existent chance of obtaining a single key component.

With my luck, the gold value of everything I’d have to throw in would exceed the outright purchase cost of any legendary on the market by a factor of 5 or more.

I am presently at 836 level 80 rares that I flushed in the mystic toilet, it seems it might be smarter to buy the precursor in spite of the price.

Oh I also farm world events and fractals, no luck there either.

wow they need to either update the drop rates or personally look into peoples personal drops to see how it is right now. There should be at least 1 of each precurser drop a day from all the ways it drops accross the board. The only way to compensate people’s hour’s is gold and at 26s -bags from dungeon chests your really not making much unlesss you get alot of runs in and then some people see’s running the same dungeon 50+ times a day is a exploit when its not if thats what you want to do but people dont

Well It’s their company they can do anything they want to i don’t care.

We want to play cheap game without monthly subscription so we are playing.

Also from now I’ll never buy anything from their item market since i have no reason, I worked hard, I played hard but they simply can’t solve simple problem.

Why i should buy anything from them. I’m consumer and i can choose anything i want.

There is a new mmo game coming, hopefully with monthly subscription so best of luck with scavenger hunt since i was expecting “One day my patience will run out” so thank you for testing my patience.. this is all i can take.

Make Precursors Soul bound on acquire. Make Legendarys Account bound (no more selling on the TP). Now, leave the current system of rolling in the MF for a precursor if you get one it’s Soul bound (So don’t roll for one you don’t want). Change the drop system from Chests, open World, WvW etc. Instead of Precursors droping you get a token/ticket (with the current drop rate) that you can then take to a vendor to get the Soul bound Precursor of your choice. This keeps everything just as rare as it currently is but it’s a little more resonable IMO.

every one is telling me diffrents things :o so i ask it here what is the best way to get a precursor? justt farm for it and buy it or do the mystic forge trick? i want my dreamer for my ranger i played a lot on a thief, but dont have that mutch time to farm and farm and farm… but i realy want it. so whats the best way to get one?

Pwnzor.5682:

every one is telling me diffrents things :o so i ask it here what is the best way to get a precursor? justt farm for it and buy it or do the mystic forge trick? i want my dreamer for my ranger i played a lot on a thief, but dont have that mutch time to farm and farm and farm… but i realy want it. so whats the best way to get one?

wrong place Pwnzor.5682…

This is Awesome.

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

Angel.3972:

tmakinen.1048 I love what you’ve done. You’ve put your finger on exactly what the problem is: not the difficulty, but the variance. Thank you for your time and expertise in giving a great proposed solution a mathematical backing.

I hope the devs are still watching, because I certainly am. (Still sitting on everything-but-my-precursor. Thrown ~350 rare and exotic staffs in the forge, but out of principal I don’t want to support market manipulators and gold sellers. Really painful boycott.)

I second this. Tmakinen, thank you so much for addressing this issue the way you did. I’m just beginning my journey to get my precursor. It will take me a while to make the 600 odd gold I need so I’m just going to play the game and throw rares into the forge when I get them. I hope they improve upon the current system. Thanks.

cdunning.6815:

This is Awesome.

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

my god this is genious, the devs NEED to see this, i really enjoy doing things in steps and would honestly make getting my pre-cursor fun

I think in some games developers are hesitant to institute player-generated ideas from whole cloth, choosing instead to only nudge their core design decisions in popular directions such as “higher” (drop rate) or “less” (arrow cart damage).

This case however, is one where the devs basically have the perfect solution laying right in front of them, all they need to do is have the legal department contact tmakinen and sort out any possible intellectual property unpleasantness, then implement that solution just as it is.

+1. + all the 1s.

Hi there,

I stopped playing several months ago after realizing that Arena.net was fooling us day by day and patch after patch and therefore stopped following the news. However, back to that time, i was gathering some ingredients for a legendary but didn’t want to waste my gold on buying a precursor.
Before uninstalling the game from my PC, i started it and saw many improvements (yet, not about the game basis but just something to make it look better). So i was wondering : is there any new way to get a precursor other than wasting your time in the Mystic Toilets ?

Thanks

sadly no but i would like to drive some attention to a legendary hunt. in this forum it actually a story that preset to your legendary and at the end there is a huge show down with your doppelganger for a precursor.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/The-Legendary-Quest/first#post2062566
that is the link to the legendary quest.

Already got one, so i know how it works, but thanks for the info anyway

“The best leaders are the ones that can accept they’re not the best at everything.” I don’t know if that’s someone else’s quote or not, but it is true. Making the decision and working out the intellectual property issues with tmakinen with what seems like a most perfect change, would go a long way to validating the people who like to think that ArenaNet is a wise and benevolent company at heart.

And you know that one about gaining a new customer costing a number of times more than retaining an existing customer? This would be a practically risk-free way of preventing a potentially huge amount of customer loss.

I have thrown about 220 rare gs into the MF and got nothing. 4 days ago, after thrown 16 random rares (from SC event), I got Rodgort’s Flame

I know it’s been thrown around before, but I personally think the RNG system of getting a legendary precursor should be thrown out completely.
If people don’t want there to be a recipe for them, why not have a precursor be achieved through a series of difficult tasks such as going through all the dungeon instances without downing, or doing specific world events or killing enemies that relate to your weapon (i.e. icebrood for the axe, fire enemies for the dagger, ect.) and then reward the precursor through that?
If a new system is implemented, I definitely agree with the previous poster about making them account bound. It takes away the possibility of grinding 500+ gold for items like spark or dawn.
I just find the fact that gw2 claims to be a game without grinding hilarious. The precursor is, in my opinion, the biggest grind. Whether you buy it or you use the mystic forge.

I think you have misunderstood their claim of being grind free. They claimed that you do not need to grind for higher level gear (lvl 80 exotics), since they all have the same stats. This is true for the most part, but if a player would like a specific look on their character, the skins that a player want may require a substantial amount of grinding to obtain. Whether someone chooses to grind for a specific skin is up to the player, but NOT required to do well within the game as there are easy ways of obtaining max stats for weapons/armor. The precursor is the biggest grind because its not required for you to do well in the game, but it acts as an accessory. If you do not like grinding, then do not attempt to get a legendary and play with the other lvl 80 exotics which you would not have to grind for.

Reloading.3260:

Well I’m currently at 1600+ rare greatswords 40+ exo greatswords flushed for nothing.

I’m also around 1750 crafted rare staves into the Mystic Toilets and got no precs too… its been two months since I completed all of the gifts and now throwing all of my money into this.

On one side I’d be happy if they add an sort of reliable quest/grind/something to get the precursor.
On the other side, I’d be disappointed to have had to much pain getting the precursor and now everyonecan have it… (or not )

PS.: Sorry for my approximative english ^^

It can’t ALL be based on RNG if everyone has a CHOICE to either show the skill and commitment to buy a precursor (for yes: a VERY high price, but it’s logical, because they’re in VERY high demand) or test their luck in the MF (and become frustrated and vent it on a forum if they were unlucky:p). If there was a fixed way of getting one, EVERYONE would have one and that takes all the awesomeness away from it, so RNG has to be part of the process to keep up the price and the awesomeness. I hope i’m repeating what someone else said already, because it’s sad to see people who seem to only play this game to get a precursor asap and get frustrated when it fails, and even mention quitting. (for that childish reason imo^^)

If you dislike RNG and getting precursor so much, why you do it? There is no one forcing you to do it… People are stupid if they do stuff they dont like.
I’m also “going for legendary” but I decided it can take anywhere from 2-3 years. So I’m not getting any pressure from not getting precursor when I try my luck at mystic forge.
Playing casual ftw

presently at 1084 rare level 80 sta kitten down the mystic forge, no luck yet.

This legendary talk reading back a few pages some of you people are dumb as my cat that thinks its a dog. Legendary is COMPLETE gold sink I agree with others that it should be achievement based 100% map being the first steping stone or something but this 600 ecto a 700g precursor that NEVER drops for legit people. I know a guy that exploited the hell out of the game had Bifrost Twilight sunrise 2 incenerators a dreamer kudzu t3 on all characters he had 12 btw and commander on 8 of them in 5 months. Basically if you didnt exploit the karma screw ups and chilli pepper karma screw up and made 1000’s of gold off of it you’re going to spend about a year as a casual player to get some of the more sought after legendaries ie greatswords staff dagger. currently 70g for 250 powerful blood that’s real nice anet since u have deminishing returns for farming. you push us to grind the ….. out of event chains that stretch a distance for our karma and gold what part of the game wouldnt be a grind did you actually impliment? yea the elitist or people that haven’t had to work for shhhh in their life will have it either mommy buys them gems or they buy gold itself or maybe even the freaking legendary cuz they can just blow the money to get another game. I have put in over 1500 usd in gems getting exclusive release items but I work a full time job and have a lil money I can throw around but I also have less than half of the hours of most of the people in my guild. I’m getting close to 700 hours now. I’ve spent $550 in gems to turn to rares and exotic greatswords for the toilet nothing it was a good 1500 swords I am getting sick and tired of getting on after working all day and not having a kittenING COSMETIC you literally gave NO EDGE to obtaining a legendary other than the fact people are going to look at you like me and go ‘kitten’ or ‘oooooo pretty colors’ I go oooo at twilight and bifrost the 2 that I want but even so I still dispise everyone with them or any legendary. I had to work the night of the lost shore closing event so I missed out that sucks major eggs but the fact the prices just skyrocketed after that kitten es me off. gw1 anything cosmetic you wanted micro purchase except for obby armor which wasn’t hard to get 120 ecto? heck you had the 55 ss farm forever once u nerfed that there was perma sf and obby tank get 7-21 per run depending on luck and personal skill on how much you could do and it easily converted to cash and obby shards.

OMG stop with the QQ. If it troubles you so much of how legendaries are obtained then don’t get one.
If it frustrates you that you get nothing from mystic forge then don’t throw stuff in it and buy precursor from the trading post. So far I have dumped about 4k rares into mystic forge got Legend, 3 Dawns and a Dusk. Gifted Legend away sold Dawns kept Dusk for myself. It’s really simple don’t expect to get anything from Mystic Forge, that way you can only be positively suprised when you actualy get something.

Lol.. cant help but not laugh at all of this.

Here we are yet again, 10 months has it been? And yet the talk of legendary wages on like a battle cry in the distance of a long war saying “its not over yet!”

Like many of u I have wasted gold into the mf sink.
And after soo many hours 1000+ after soo much reading after so much frustration. I have just decided to just play and have fun.

We should be learning from others mistakes however the thrill of chance is sometimes too good to give up.

Easiest solution is to make a precursor achievement based.

Eg: once at 9k points then that is the start of journey;
1. 100% world
2. 100k kills with particular weap.
3. New story quests once above is completed making u do at least 100 episodes.
4. Crafting all materials required. U can make some of the materials come from ONLY story episodes rewards.
5. After all above completed that will let u craft the precursor to which;
5.1. 100k kills
5.2. Story episodes at least 50
5.3. Demonstrate ur abilities with precursor via wvw eg 1000kills, camps taken, vets kills, champ kills.
6. Once above completed u can craft legendary. To which u need to destroy a champion boss solo. Making this some giant creature.

After all the above I think that should give somewhat of an entitlement to legendary status.

What do we do with those already aquired legendary. Cannot equip until all above requirements are met. Which means most will try to sell it to which we will be at the samr spot as now. However we give the rest of the user base chance to acquire over time with effort rather than gold.

Just my 2 cents worth….. thats alot of 2 cents lol imagine 2$….

But like some posted previously, its not going to change.

This is still broken and stupid.

tmakinen.1048:

After thinking about it for a while a simple solution would be to change the system as following:

Instead of the current recipe

4 x item -> 1 x item

with a probability of p for the resulting item being a precursor, make it as

4 x item -> precursor_shard (probability q) OR 1 x (non-precursor) item (probability 1 – q)

and make precursors available through the recipe

m x precursor_shard + fancy_stuff -> precursor (guaranteed)

By setting q / m = p the expectation value of a precursor stays the same as before. However, instead of an exponential distribution, the system now follows a binomial distribution, with a significantly smaller variance.

In simpler terms, it would be just like the system used for crafting mystic clovers. Can you imagine what it would be like if the only mystic clover recipe had a 1/250 chance of producing 77 clovers in one go, and 249/250 chance of producing random junk?

The suggested solution gives the system a coarse memory through the accumulation of shards, and cuts out worst excesses in both directions. In that system it’s still in average just as hard to get a precursor as before, but now that hardness is reasonably fair.

+1, a million times +1
Everyone should +1 this until the forums are a sea of this post and Anet is forced to notice it.