Guild Wars 2

What can i say ? with my own experience i learned something…RNG is a joke…and relying on something like this is just an easy way to destroy the fun for everyone who is trying this….ive been doing like 700combination with level 80 rares wich mean over 2800 rares and got NOTHING…i mean this is a joke right…i am done now…dont have in me not even a little bit of joy of playing this game anymore…anyway i had to try it to understand how this game is work and is same way as just playing Swtor…who is based on same RNG sistem…wich by the way is a dead game by now….

Yeah I have to agree Collects. I cannot help but get upset when I am on cursed shore & see a dozen people running around with the precursor I need who don’t have a single piece of dungeon gear, don’t have 100% world completion & are running their mouth in map chat. Meanwhile, there are those of us who have all the components &/or are well on our way to completing our legendary & the only thing we need is the precursor.

Arena needs to change this system soon becouse a lor of hardcore player are quitting….

dropped 200 more rare staves in the forge this morning. 400 total so far. I got 3 named exotics almost in a row, then I bought 60 more staves and got 0 exotics. I’m getting discouraged but i’ve gotta get one soon o.O

Edit bought 80 more and got a few exotics. No Legend. Also i’m running with 230% magic find. Magic find does jack kitten. The Legend is up to 400g. By the time I get 400g it will cost 999,999g.

Agreed Collects and Snow. This burns people out.

I want to go on an epic quest to obtain my legendary… not sit at a forge all day running items through hoping I’d get something back.

I’d rather kill Claw of Jormag, The Sunless, Shatterer 300 times, collect 1k dungeon token from each dungeon, get 1k WvW badges of honor, and kill 1 of each champion in the game than to deal with the mystic forge any more. At least the things I just said can create some wonderful stories of adventure.

Sure you could say I could save up. But as it stands, what I listed above at least makes you feel like you’re doing a variety of things. Right now? You have players in cursed shores, farming Plinx/Tunnels event over and over and over and over. It’s not even about the Karma. It’s literally about the cash farm. It’s boring. It’s bland. It burns people out.

So I have three options here:
1. I RNG my cash hoping to get a precursor
2. I farm Plinx all day hoping I either get a drop of a precursor or spend 300+ hours doing this chain hoping I don’t hit DR to save up for a precursor
3. Don’t bother with progressing the only end-game this game currently has to offer

I’m thinking I’m going to do 3 for now because this just burns me out. I literally had someone today say that they got a Zap on their 5th try on rares to me today. I mean that’s awesome and all, but they’re not even going to bother with a legendary.

I actually know of a friend who blew 200 dollars on some gold to RNG in addition to their saved up gold. They lost it all. It was kind of sad. Needless to say they quit. FYI they tried it on exotics. Roughly 100-120 attempts total (probably more because I had to log off).

They sold everything they had and RNG’d it all. The sad thing is? This person’s been a supporter of Guild Wars since Beta Test weekends of GW1 up until you guys had the final event leading up to GW2 release (Wayfarer’s Reverie).

While he made a hasty and thoughtless decision, it still shows how ridiculousness this system is. He even sold his 250 ecto he needed for another gift as well as his charged lodestones due to the recent price spike lol… I saw this all unfold as he sold everything in his bank. Dumb decision? Yeah. But this mechanic never should have been here. It’s literally worse than Vegas slot machines and just causes rage. And the saddest part? A very dedicated player to the GW franchise ragequitted the game.

Instead of creating epic adventures and memories through some crazy awesome long quest and journey, it’s just bland and boring and plain infuriating, especially since this literally IS the end-game… the only end-game that there is to offer currently.

I’ve read the other forums and I’ve heard that dungeon loot and champion(maybe more) world loot is going to improve, but I have yet to hear anything about precursors being improved, if at all.

So please, any feedback about whether this is being looked at will be appreciated.

Anyone of the staff is reading this? I have the feeling we are all talking to a wall

Not going for the precuror with pistols, but a couple of tries got me a gearbore. The stats aren’t great but it does look cool and it’s good to save for when thief will have useful healing.

This is my first post ever:

A plea to ArenaNet: Please Respond so that we KNOW that you are listening.

This precursor problem is ruining a beautiful game! Don’t let it happen! I love Guild Wars 2, so I am begging you, please don’t ignore us. Don’t let your amazing game be ruined and tainted by this flawed system.

Awaiting an official response.

Yours truly

could it be that the rates are adjusted along the average price? mind boggling conspiracy

Leaf of Kudzu of Rage finally…458 attempts.

Don’t know how many bows I crafted for this, all rares given to me by Zamorrah is thrown back into the Mystic Forge.

Also, 0 exotics obtained. In all 458 attempts, I got 457 rare bows returned. 458th attempt was the Leaf.

Edit: in hindsight, so totally not worth it.

The rng needs to go, its just a substitute for real content. The insane amount of mats needed to craft the legendary is ok with me, since you will eventually get them if you work at it. But with rng, you may or may not ever get what is needed since its totally out of your control.

164 rare level 80 staffs (41 attempts) got me 9 exotic weapons and 1 ‘The Legend’

The fact that you need greats amount of karma, badges, ingredients gathered is allot of work but that wouldn’t be so much of an issue and actually gives you something to do if it wasn’t so hard to actually gain a precursor weapon. The people that exploited the godskull bug and whatever else was available sit are currently Scrooge McDuck. While those that didn’t take the bait and avoided the exploit entirely or found out later are stuck enjoying this beautiful RNG system the koreans love. NcSoft employees too much in your team now? I can understand the precursor can be hard to gain but then make it hard in a different way. Gathering 10k tokens from all instances would be less RNG then your current system.

Out of curiosity… Does anyone know if it is possible to get a pre-cursor by sticking in 4 different level 80 rares? Like shield, sword, dagger, and staff all level 80 rare?

I know doing this, you can’t control which pre-cursor you would get, but could you still get one?

Yes, you can get one from combining different types, as well as Mystic Forge Stones (which are still cheaper than most exotics at the moment, I think). The thing is that that some of the precursors you might get aren’t valued very highly at the moment, e.g. Venom which is selling at 17g.

Thanks! I Just was curious because I was just randomly tossing in a few extra rares I had yesterday, (3 shields and 1 dagger) and out popped a named exotic hammer… which made me think a pre-cursor could have popped out too.

Hammer sold for almost 8 gold too :-D was my lucky day.

and funny you mention venom. thats the pre-cursor for the legendary that I want! The Kraitkin! :-D I put an offer for 13.5 gold on the TP last week and someone took my offer, so step 1 is out of the way for me :-)

It’s nice to see that some people are actually going for the water legendaries; Kraitkin is pretty cool-looking I reckon.

Yeah, But… I’m not hard core… I estimate, that with everything else I want being easier and probably coming first, it will take me around 1-2 years to forge Kraitkin. But I’m with GW2 for the long haul! :-)

Dear ANet, please change the way to get Legendary weapons to real challenge not playing stupid games with random. It’s completely unfair when someone gets precursor after his first try and someone can make 1000+ tries and get nothing. Don’t let GW2 be Korean-style game with GREAT KOREAN RANDOM…

Current prices for precursors are unacceptable for the majority of players. We don’t want to grind TP 24/7 to get enough gold and buy precursors for these crazy prices.

The only possible solution here is changing the way to get precursors. Make the challenge. Make it craftable for example (like “250 ectos + 250 T6 type 1 + 250 T6 type 2 + Gift of * = Precursor”). It’s hard enough and w/o stupid random.

florence.1674:

Leaf of Kudzu of Rage finally…458 attempts.

Don’t know how many bows I crafted for this, all rares given to me by Zamorrah is thrown back into the Mystic Forge.

Also, 0 exotics obtained. In all 458 attempts, I got 457 rare bows returned. 458th attempt was the Leaf.

Edit: in hindsight, so totally not worth it.

Ouch! I haven’t even done that many yet on shortbows yet there was a short window where I got three exotics. Not all in a row (well two were) but still a relatively high rate to get back another rare but that’s the nature of these things. Anyway, +1 on your bow =) 0 Exotics in that time sounds unusually unlucky, but at least you got the precursor in the end.

As with the TP, the Mystic Forge is a crucial pillar of the entire in-game economy. In Linsey’s own words (from a different thread):

LinseyMurdock.4165:

I want you guys to think about this a bit. Seriously. Why would we ever want to systematically discourage you from chucking things into the Forge or salvaging them as often or as fast as you want to? It is SO SO SO (I can’t stress this enough) important for items to be leaving the economy at a healthy ratio to the items being created and entering the economy, otherwise, there would be no economy. Everything would pile up and pile up until everything was worth nothing because the supply would be endlessly higher than the demand.

It was ArenaNet’s intention that something like 3000 rare weapons would be dumped into the Mystic Forge for every precursor that comes out; doing this helps to keep a healthy market going for many types of weapons.

One might argue that a lot of these weapons are being created specifically to be thrown into the Forge, but then you have to consider that they’re created with other materials; in the case of the greatswords it’s Mithril Ore, Elder Wood Logs, and most commonly Large Bones. As low as the prices for those materials are, they’re much higher than they would be if it wasn’t for people wanting precursors.

It’s true that you could put some of these crafting materials into a fixed recipe, but then there would be less demand for many rare and exotic weapons, which would also be a problem.

I guess you could make a recipe that consists of, say, 3000 rare swords, but given that swords don’t stack, that would be rather inconvenient and would require lots of intermediate steps.

Using an extremely conservative estimate of 10% chance for an exotic, the probability that you get 0 exotics in 457 attempts is:

0.0000000000000000000012269

If we use a more accurate estimate of 18%-20%, that probability only decreases.

Were you using level 80 rates?

As to the post which mentioned this, interestingly, i’d rather earn ~300 gold than 10,000 × 8 dungeon tokens. Assuming 45 mins/run average (which is fast given some dungeons like Arah, but AC/TA can be done in less than 30), and only “60 token” runs being done, it would take 80,000 / 60 = 1333.33 runs * 0.75 = 1000 hours doing nothing but dungeons, or more than 4x my total time spent in the game to date.

I imagine after that many runs, it can’t possibly be more exciting than farming gold, right? Be careful what you wish for. Maybe ask for 5,000 of each dungeon token.

One of the funny inconsistencies I also want to note: Why is the RNG a korean thing? I never played/liked WoW, but it seems to be getting a pass. I’ve had MANY friends talk about the game, and I know more than I wish i did. How many desirable items were <1% drops from boss-level monsters that spawned randomly within a given time frame, in a randomly selected region of a zone? (Edit: I should answer this. A lot.).

To make thing worse those items in WoW made you stronger, so not getting them did put you at a competitive disadvantage.

This criticism of the RNG is also exactly like the Diablo III forums on their Legendary drop rate (OMG TOO LOW, CANT GET), which big surprise, is also another RNG boondoggle.

By all means, criticize the extremely harsh RNG for the top tier of items in this game, but c’mon, PLEASE be realistic. Don’t isolate it to K-RPGs. Very steep RNGs are omnipresent in all MMOs. If ANet were to remove the RNG from getting the highest tier of item in the game, they would certainly be the first major company in the entire MMORPG industry to do so.

Personally, I’m not really at all bothered by the RNG, but if the RNG system is a serious problem for a large proportion of players, then I guess ArenaNet will have to change it. It is, however, a change that has to be done with great care, given the purpose the Mystic Forge serves in the game’s economy. As such, even if they do want to change the system, it’s unreasonable to expect it to change within any short period of time.

That being said, you don’t have to rely on RNG to get a precursor. They are bought and sold on the trading post, and, given the low odds of getting one, the current TP prices are pretty decent, especially for some of the less-wanted precursors like Chaos Gun or Leaf of Kudzu – from what I’ve seen, less than 200g is a bargain. Despite the scaremongering I’ve seen over the past weeks, suggesting that precursors were in a rapid and never-ending upwards price spiral, the facts contradict this idea – as I have been saying they would. For example, the price of Dusk has, in fact, gone down in the past week.

As such, saving up and buying one on the TP is an entirely viable option. Yes, you’ll probably get a better deal on average with the RNG, but if you can’t handle RNG, no one is forcing you to do it. Some might argue that the price is too high, but that’s not what people have been complaining about, and nor have I seen a reasonable argument as to what the price actually ought to be. In particular, a price of several hundred gold is entirely in line with the rest of the components you need to make a legendary.

@lackofcheese: Yep. Pretty much.

But you know what? As much as I lobby for ANet to keep the precursors rare, heck, i’ve already sold all the precursors i’ve gotten, so i’m not sitting on any.

If they make an easier route to get one, I’ll shrug and take it.

Legendaries in general have gotten cheaper to make in all aspects save for the precursor. T6 mats for gifts are now widely available for pennies, ectos have only gone down, skill points are easier than ever with very established DE routes (plinx). The karma is still a slight grind, but nothing particularly arduous. The precursors are pretty much the last thing standing, and some of them are actually worth less than 80g, which is very cheap and reasonable.

Saw someone (probably new) get The Colossus from Claw of Jormag treasure chest today. Stupid rng always rewards the people who put the least effort into the game.

Another thing that bothers me is the attitude people seem to be taking towards precursors, exemplified by the many stories of people throwing lots of gold into weapons to throw into the forge, and then quitting the game when they don’t get a precursor. It seems to me that this kind of single-minded attitude isn’t a particularly good way to approach any game, though I guess it’s an attitude that’s very common among many MMOs.

If getting a legendary is in fact “the only endgame”, as some people claim it is, what are you going to do after you’ve got your legendary? Just stop playing? If so, what’s the point of getting one if you’re just going to stop playing as soon as you have it anyway? How long can you spend sitting around in Lion’s arch with your legendary weapon before you get bored?

Or maybe you would keep, you know, playing the game even after you have your legendary? The whole point of GW2 is that almost everything you can do in the game is part of the so-called “endgame”. PvP in particular is perhaps the most enduring endgame content in this game, because unlike in PvE where it’s mostly just the exact same thing every time, people aren’t simple, predictable bits of code (although they do often act like it…). Other than that, though, everywhere you can go in this world, and everything you can do, is supposed to be part of the so-called “endgame”. Yes, there are a few ways in which the difficulty and the loot system don’t live up to this design philosophy, but that is still a core element of the design philosophy of this game.

Now, it may well be the case that many people are playing with the sole purpose of getting a precursor, and that would indicate that the content of GW2 simply isn’t up to scratch. That may well be true, but if so, then the problem isn’t really the precursor RNG, is it? If the content of the game isn’t actually enjoyable, changing the mechanics of getting a precursor just isn’t going to solve the problem. Moreover, if the content sucks, then the only way to win is not to play.

To me, it seems that the thing to do is just play the game however you want to play it, and enjoy doing it. Whatever it is you want to do, you’ll earn gold, and if you’re earning gold you’re getting closer to your precursor. Of course, you can choose to throw weapons into the forge as well; there’s a decent chance you’ll get lucky and get one for less than it would cost you on the TP. It’s gambling, of course, and of course you can end up throwing away hundreds of gold, but that’s something you know about before you go into it; it’s entirely your choice.

If you do want to gamble for a precursor, at least do it on a sensible basis, rather than dumping all your gold in and then quitting the game. Don’t just spend all your gold – leave yourself some to spend on doing whatever else you want to do in-game. You could also choose to keep saving up gold while doing a smallish number of Mystic Forgings each week; that way you’ve got decent odds of getting one, while having the “insurance” of getting one even if you keep getting unlucky.

Yeah, 0 exotics from 458 attempts is very difficult to believe, especially given that the evidence indicates that the probability is indeed ~20%.

If that really did happen to you, it’s more likely a bug in the game than simple bad luck.

I’m not of this kind of players yelling : “I’ll leave the game” or “I spent all my money and did’nt get anything” or “It’s the only end-game content”. For me, the game will only start after getting my first legendary.
I threw around 2400 golds items in the forge (even if i play the game normally too with making some dungeons, jumping puzzles, wvw,etc) but i keep saving some gold (100g). I have no problem with RNG, but i refuse this unfair/inequal system.
You can play more than 1000 hours and never get a single precursor while another guy who has played 150 hours will have 2 of them.
Is the game rewarding ppl for their skills ? Absolutely not, and It should be the case..

Well, if you play for 1000 hours trying to get a precursor and don’t get one, you only have yourself to blame; that’s more than enough time to save up the gold for one.

As for rewarding skill, the fact is that PvE content of MMOs simply isn’t about rewarding skill. Your only reward for skill is doing content faster or getting more loot. What MMOs reward is time or money, and that’s the way it always is, in every MMO – either you grind for a very long time, or you buy gold (hopefully through developer-sanctioned means).

In any case, the RNG in GW2 is fair in the usual sense – everyone has the same chances going into something, and things tend towards averaging out in the long run. On the other hand, in terms of results, all RNG is unfair – different people will get different results for doing the same thing. It’s also unfair for someone to kill a mob, have it drop an Unidentified Dye, and open it to get an Abyss Dye, while you kill the same mob and get a white item.

I guess the issue that people have is that “the long run” for the above situation is much shorter than “the long run” for precursors, due to the odds being so small, but precursors are supposed to, on average, take a long time to get, so “the long run” in question is made up of months as opposed to hours.

Either way, I don’t go into an MMO expecting things to be “fair”. If fairness was the only thing I wanted from a game, I’d play something like Counter-Strike (though even then some players have an advantage due to having faster internet connections, faster hardware, or better peripherals – the same goes for MMOs, of course).

By MMO standards, GW2 is right up there in terms of fairness, because it’s not at all difficult to get gear with maximum stats, which means that most people are genuinely on a level playing field, unlike in all too many other MMOs. The sPVP system is especially great in this regard, because it is genuinely fair – everyone can go straight into sPVP as soon as they start playing, and not be at a disadvantage with respect to gear.

Moreover, due to the gold:gem trading system, unlike in many MMOs there isn’t any content that’s exclusive to people who pay more money than you, which is also reasonably fair. Nonetheless, it’s still the case that someone can pay money to get more gold and get items more easily – that is simply part of the stark reality of MMOs.

what if rng is rng, but instead for every acheivement (hard ones) like doing all arah runs or every single dungeon runs, WvW etc it increases your chance to attain your precursor from forge. obv not by alot but it atleast keeps the Rng factors that you seem to love, but slightly rewards skilled players. just free balling here, better than no idea x.x

Okay, about this “fairness” argument.

No MMORPG’s PvE content has been ‘fair’, ever.
I’d ask someone to find me one (reasonably successful) MMORPG that didn’t have at least one very desirable object generated with a small % chance roll.

I actually hope someone can find me one, because I’m indeed curious about how that worked out. I can tell you flat out that NONE of the major titles would qualify. Certainly all of blizzard’s RPGs are out. Everything Nexon ever made is out.

In fact, I would call Guild Wars 2’s PvE content the “fairest” I have ever seen in an MMO. You can get the best stats that you can possibly have on an item, with relatively little hassle. Can you say the same for WoW? SWTOR? What game can you cite that is inherently more equitable and player-friendly?

If you enjoy fair, skill-based games, I played DOTA for many years. That was a fair game, mechanics-wise. FPS games are inherently fair, though I have little interest/experience at them. RTS games are also modeled to be fair.

If your argument is that the game is bad because someone can get (ITEM) off a X% roll in one try while it may take you Y tries, then you really need to look outside the MMORPG genre as it is today, or hope for a huge revolution of the genre as a whole. Because people: this describes every. single. MMORPG.

And what was Anet’s stated goal for GW2 from inception? That it break the mold of generic mmo’s.

I notice in one of your posts you mentioned “an easier way” to get a precursor but I honestly do not think you are really reading all the posts. Not a single person has asked for an easier way to get them. Just a way that doesn’t rely on RNG or a fickle market.

Keep advocating a system that only rewards the lucky though. We all saw how well that worked in Aion and how full their servers stayed.

The core concept and mechanics of what makes an MMO are directly in opposition to what I would call “fair”. However you slice it, MMO mechanics predominantly reward time and/or money rather than skill, and I don’t think either of those things is fair. Some players will have a lot more time to play the game than others, and some will have a lot more money, and it’s not really “fair” for those players to have an advantage simply because of those things.

In my view, a “fair” game would be one where the outcomes are determined mostly by player skill – this clearly isn’t the case in MMOs. Moreover, I would say that randomness still counts as fair, as long as every player gets the same chances. I think many people would agree that Yahtzee is a fair game, and so is a poker tournament, for the most part, yet those games involve significant elements of chance.

I think it’s great that GW2 gets around a lot of the issues with MMOs by making it very easy to get max-stat gear (especially in PvP), and to me that’s a great change with respect to typical MMOs. Only cosmetic items have a big divide, but frankly I don’t see why it’s important at all for the game to be “fair” when it comes to cosmetic items.

That being said, if the majority of players have a serious problem with the way precursors are now, then I guess it’s a flaw in the game, and one ANet to fix. I’m not convinced that it is really a majority, and I haven’t seen a convincing argument as to what exactly is wrong with the system the way it is now. Even so, if there’s a serious outrcy about it, I would expect ArenaNet to fix it. Just be aware that the current system has a very important role in the economy, so it’s not something that can be fixed easily or quickly.

A system like rng isn’t necessarily bad by default. It only becomes bad when it’s taken to an extreme (like most things in life). Obviously every single drop from every single mob is a rng, but no one is complaining about that because the rng in those cases is regular enough to reach an average for most players.

The precursor rng however is so abysmal that it creates astounding differences. The money spent in the MF for a precursor can range anywhere from 0.5 gold to potentially even 1000 gold. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of luck based systems. Luck can help players to speed up their progressions by getting mystic clovers faster or salvaging more globs of ectoplasm. But a possible 1000 gold difference is just far too much. The TP is an option yes, but it’s not the source and therefore is not reliable. Someone still has to get lucky and get those precursors in order to sell them.

The MF might be a good item sink system but it’s probably not a good idea to have it rely solely on precursors. There needs to be more desirable items (not just skins since there seems to be plenty of those already) that will make people want to throw items in it. That way the pressure isn’t just on the precursors.

Copenhagen.7015:

Magic find does jack kitten.

I was pretty sure we knew this to be the case quite some time ago, that magic find only affects drops from mobs. It doesn’t affect resource nodes or salvaging or bags or the mystic forge.

Archer.6485:

The precursor rng however is so abysmal that it creates astounding differences. The money spent in the MF for a precursor can range anywhere from 0.5 gold to potentially even 1000 gold. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of luck based systems. Luck can help players to speed up their progressions by getting mystic clovers faster or salvaging more globs of ectoplasm. But a possible 1000 gold difference is just far too much. The TP is an option yes, but it’s not the source and therefore is not reliable. Someone still has to get lucky and get those precursors in order to sell them.

The thing is, given the huge number of players playing the game, as well as the presence of some very rich players, that kind of luck gets evened out a lot when taken over the entire playerbase. That’s the main reason why the prices have been a lot more stable on the TP lately.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of rare level 80 weapons are bought and sold on the TP every day, and I would think that almost all those are being thrown into the forge.

setvenx.6285:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

CoF speed runs are not even in the same order of magnitude as the Godskull exploit, which allowed these cheaters (and yes, they are cheaters) to make thousands of gold in mere hours, which is not possible anywhere else in the game legitimately.

Further, it is specifically against the TOS to exploit bugs like that so you are simply wrong, objectively. To play the game every player must agree to abide by the TOS which includes not exploiting bugs which can net you gains that are not possible and were never intended to exist in the game (and guess what? Making thousands of gold and dozens of precursors in a matter hours counts). Your opinion about it is irrelevant.

How is one supposed to tell that it was an exploit when the difference is a RNG % rate which one cannot measure when no one was told the real success rate. So what you are saying is that if i threw in items and got a dusk, it could possibly be a glitch because technically i have to spend forever like everyone else to get it. Your counter argument is invalid.

Because, you can’t make 900g and dozens of precursors in 2-3 minutes from 60s in rares, anywhere else in the entire game. If you can’t tell that exploiting that falls under the Terms of Service, you would have to be completely brain dead. This argument fails completely.

No one in their right mind would not notice that making 900g in 2-3 minutes is not supposed to happen (y’know, maybe the whole “Not in the game anywhere else” thing might tip you off).

Your argument is irrelevant regardless, it spells out in no uncertain terms, right in the TOS that you accept to play the game, that this type of exploitation is bannable and cheating.

So yeah, it doesn’t really matter what you think about it or whether or not you can make up thousands of tortured pathetic arguments about someone theoretically not realizing that instantly converting 60s in rares into 900g is not supposed to happen.

Abusing the bug is exploiting. Exploiting is cheating. It’s against the TOS whether you personally like it or not.

Depends on how many people want to craft legendaries. I know some people say they should be kept super rare but I don’t think that’s going to stick. The legendaries have been presented by Anet as a feature of endgame (not the only feature of course.) As far as I know Blizzard never released a video and a blog post about the Ashes of Al’ar. It was just this item in the game that dropped once in a blue moon, so no one really made it their goal to farm one out. The legendaries in this game are different. People have set their sights on them and I don’t think that was against Anet’s intentions.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

No one in their right mind would not notice that making 900g in 2-3 minutes is not supposed to happen (y’know, maybe the whole “Not in the game anywhere else” thing might tip you off).

ChairGraveyard.2967:

So yeah, it doesn’t really matter what you think about it or whether or not you can make up thousands of tortured pathetic arguments about someone theoretically not realizing that instantly converting 60s in rares into 900g is not supposed to happen.

I seriously doubt that that is at all an accurate description of what the problem was with that exploit. I expect people making big profit from that exploit would have done thousands of forgings, if not tens of thousands.

My understanding is that the odds were, at the time, not much different for the Godskull weapons than what they are now for level 80 weapons; some people just managed to do very many conversions because they were spending a lot less on each batch to put into the Forge, and because the prices on exotics (which come out 20% of the time) were priced higher then than they are now.

Nonetheless, if it really was a magical “turn 60 silver into 900g in 2 minutes” button the way you’re saying it was, I completely agree that it was obviously an exploit.

~700 rare GSs, don’t know how many exotics it spat out, but zero precursors. I also put in the exotics, was left with a single Shaman’s Etched Avenger or something.

Seems like to have a real chance at it, you need about 8000-16000 rares (unless you’re a Godskull exploit cheater or otherwise cheated yourself tons of gold or precursors). That’s only 1200-2400g (only $3000-6000 if you bought it with gems) at 15s per rare, not bad at all.

I think that’s as it should be. If anyone but Godskull cheaters had precursors, they’d be far too common.

It was an obvious exploit. It’s against the TOS to exploit. It’s cheating. There’s no ambiguity there. I’m sure we can make up all sorts of nonsensical hypothetical situations where it’s not obvious, but that isn’t reality and doesn’t matter.

How do you know it was “obvious”? Or maybe you used that exploit yourself, and that’s why you know?

I’m not the one coming up with nonsensical hypothetical situations – the “60 silver into 900g in 2 minutes” is the only nonsensical hypothetical I’ve seen, and you’re the one who said it. If you’ve got good evidence that that was actually the reality of the situation, then go ahead and present it, because otherwise you’re the one making up nonsensical hypotheticals.

That being said, I think that according to the rules of conduct, whether or not you know something is an exploit doesn’t even matter anyway. You’re breaking the rules of conduct even if you don’t know.

Well the person who reported the godskull exploit to Anet made a post on guru and said himself that he made 900 gold off of it and he apparently had zero trouble realising that it was an exploit (that’s why he reported it)

I think the precursors were only around 100 gold or less at the time which meant he must have made at least 9 of them to make that kind of profit. If he managed to get that many of them my guess would be that the chance of a precursor drop from godskull weapons was much higher than it currently is by using exotic weapons.

Well, that’s the extent on what I know about this issue anyway.

programmers are responding quickly to questions about the event while here after 12 pages and 600 posts there is still no answer ….

ArenaNet are u here? ;_;

ChairGraveyard.2967:

It was an obvious exploit. It’s against the TOS to exploit. It’s cheating. There’s no ambiguity there. I’m sure we can make up all sorts of nonsensical hypothetical situations where it’s not obvious, but that isn’t reality and doesn’t matter.

So someone found an incredible way to make money in this game and it’s labelled as an exploit? Please tell me, where did Anet ever say that you couldn’t get a precursor with lvl 65 rares? They only told us that AFTER it happened that it wasn’t intended. So when someone put in 4 godskulls and got a precursor, how was he supposed to know that it wasn’t intended? After all, every aspect of legendary creation had to be DISCOVERED by the players. If people discovered that godskulls could make precursors, how would they have known that it wasn’t an intended feature and it was bugged?

The profits that were made with the godskull weapons are COMPLETELY separate from the fact that precursors could be made with them. The price of everything that can be put on the TP is determined by the players. If the cost to produce a godskull was 10 times higher or if precursors were selling for much lower, do you think anyone would be calling this an exploit?

Infact, if the above scenario was the case, this thread would never have existed.

My question to you: How was this exploit “obvious”?

Archer.6485:

Well the person who reported the godskull exploit to Anet made a post on guru and said himself that he made 900 gold off of it and he apparently had zero trouble realising that it was an exploit (that’s why he reported it)

I don’t know about “zero trouble”, but yes it’s clear that that person realised it and reported it, which means that they at least thought might be an exploit.

Archer.6485:

I think the precursors were only around 100 gold or less at the time which meant he must have made at least 9 of them to make that kind of profit. If he managed to get that many of them my guess would be that the chance of a precursor drop from godskull weapons was much higher than it currently is by using exotic weapons.

I saw that thread on GW2Guru, but I don’t think you’re right about it.

Here’s quotes from the GW2Guru thread:

It costs 60 silvers when I initially crafted it. I can sell the exotics that I get for average 3.5 G even at 20% chance. You can’t really lose money.

I have never stated it to be a higher chance. It has the same percentage as the guide. The only difference is that it is approximately 1/2 the cost of what everyone is doing.

Sure, VisualNover might be lying (he does have an incentive to), but the explanation
(which is the explanation I gave earlier) makes good sense, and the price history is right there on the TP if you want to check it.

Basically, if you could spend ~60s per batch you’re putting into the forge, and get an exotic to sell for an average of 3.5G 20% of the time, then you’d already be making money whether you got precursors or not. Doing thousands of conversions probably would’ve earnt a solid profit even if you got 0 Dusks out of it.

So, while VisualNover seems to have realised that this was something that ArenaNet should look into, I think there could easily have been a number of other players who never realised that there was a problem.

Initially, I was dumping a mix of stuff to throw in(ie 4 random weapon) to get something. After a few attempts and reading the forums, I decided to keep a log of all my activities with the mystic forge.

Using a grid paper, I marked R, E or P to represent rares, exotic and of course, the precursor. And I swear, no exotics, which annoys me the more I see the number of attempts I made vs the price of the leaf on the TP.

On the other hand, my mystic clovers is 77 out of 205 attempts. All single clover recipes, no 10 clover recipes.

Edit: wanted to add, all bows put into the mystic forge are either crafted, or the rares returned by Zamorrah.

Hi everyone… from what i remembered:
first try: 80+ rare GS : total 5 Exotic no precusor.
Second try 23/10/2012 50GS: Total: 3 exotic no precusor

Lindsey has posted one time saying “they are watching it” and has not said a word since. The devs have no clue about risk vs reward. They think RNG = skill and massive hours of grinding = skill. I don’t think this will change any time soon as the devs refuse to touch on this since Lindsey’s post. They are perfectly fine with the people who received 1500g+ off the broken bug with the Godskull exploit / Beta Foreknowledge to buy the precursors when they were 10g. —- If they wanted them to be legendary in this manner they should never has been tradeable on the TP. Way to lie to us and say it’s not Pay-to-win (since appearance is the only reward there is after crafting your full exotic set) but then put the best item in the game available on the TP and do nothing about the price.