Guild Wars 2

So Colin mentioned at PAX that a couple of days ago that they’ll be introducing the ability to build Precursors, and then said it’s most likely going to be done through crafting. So in the spirit of debate, I’ll present my theory of the process, and my opinion on the matter.

So in the past, we’ve heard the term “Scavenger Hunt” thrown around. Now we’re hearing that you can build your own (again likely through crafting). What I foresee Anet doing is that the “Scavenger Hunt” part will be to find what I’ll call T8 materials, or materials specifically used to craft a Precursor weapon (or armor!). For the sake of balance, these items will most likely be Account Bound. This forces people to actually have to work to get their materials, instead of just buying them piecemeal from the TP. Due to the importance of Precursors, there might be some time gates (think Ascended crafting) to prevent mass production and market infusion of these items.

Next up, the Gold Sink part of Precursors. My guess is that the “Precursor Recipe” will cost both Gold and Laurels, again similar to Ascended weapons. If not this, then a possibility would be that you’d have to hunt and find the recipe. Perhaps it’s a drop from a Legendary World Boss that will require mass coordination to defeat (i.e. Tequatl v2.0).

Finally, you have the building part. If this really will involve crafting, then expect to be required to have lv 500 Weaponsmith, Huntsman, or Artificer. Why do I believe this? Well, Precursors aren’t your normal, run of the mill Exotics. They’re used to create Legendaries, which are top of the line Ascended quality weapons.

With my theory of what will happen later this year, I’m hoping this will keep Precursor and Legendary weapons rare. My previous worries about having a Scavenger Hunt would be that Legendary weapons would be too fast tracked, thus making them more common and easy to obtain. And note – having 1,500 Gold to buy a Legendary off the TP isn’t fast tracking, as it takes the average player a long long time to accumulate that much wealth. If the Scavenger Hunt is extensive and includes time gated materials, that’s a good balance between accessibility of Precursors and rarity. It does give players the option of something other than RNG, but doesn’t make them easy to get either way.

Here is my guess for making Chaos Gun:

An expensive recipe requiring gold, laurels, and karma
250 Ancient Pistol Frames
250 Orichalcum Pistol Barrels
5 Vision Crystals
An account-bound 4th ingredient that has yet to be introduced to GW2 but existed in GW1 and is time-gated to take 2-4 weeks to complete.

Basically somewhere between really tedious, really arduous, and really expensive.
My hope is that it’ll be easier than what I think.

I’m thinking of this:
Will it drop or raise the price of existing precursors?
Will the new ones be account bound or tradeable?
If they are tradeable, will the ultimate cost of making one be more or less than the trouble of getting one randomly through other means?

Cost vs time. This one is tricky. The vast majority of people will always take the path of least resistance. If the time and gold (laurels, skill points, ascended mats, whatever) takes forever to accumulate just to be able to create the weapon in the first place, it will mean that most players will still gravitate towards buying it outright. Keeping prices/demand high. Keeping an elite few, who do the grind, very rich in trading the things.

But what if this process is cheap? And, more importantly, easy? In reality, precursors are exactly the same as any other exotic weapon available with the stats you want. If making them becomes as simple as SentinelArk has theorised, then they will be as common as dirt. More expensive dirt for sure, but still common. I’m fine with that.

The time and effort you have to go through to craft them into the legendary should always have been the hard bit, not just getting the base weapon in the first place.

The precursor for a legendary has always been the easy-mode for a lot of players. Myself I flatly refuse to buy one from the TP because – well, how legendary is that? And keeping with the moral skew, how legendary is it to buy a full weapon from the same place?

We will need a major trading shift to keep precursors rare (those that existed before any patch to make them harder to acquire). As it is right now, precursors are in abundance thanks to gold sellers and gem flippers, even after the stocks of most of the popular precursors had been flushed from people buying them in the last patch (and the insane amount of inflation that came from it). Crafting one and obtaining one (easy mode) is where things could be split – as snoflake said, cost vs time. Whether people want to buy one outright from the TP (the unlegendary way to do it) or sink their time into crafting one of their own for potentially a lot less, as the materials could be gathered and refined, based on using the methods and platforming of the last patch for Ascended weapons.

Getting a legendary should be a challenging thing to do, as ANet would have wanted – it should be an epic journey that makes you feel special about owning one and being proud to have it, and by all means it should NOT BE ABOUT RNG, be it drops in the open world or flushing thousands of gold through the mystic toilet – but unfortunately they made the precursors (and full weapons) available for trade which means that on this very point, they’ve shot themselves in the foot.

After careful consideration, the only thing legendary about legendary weapons, is… well, nothing… except for world completion, which isn’t all that epic anymore. But there’s the epic amount of gold sunk into buying heavy bags for T6 material acquisition if you don’t copiously farm Orrian areas, the epic amount of gold thrown into the forge in vain hopes of that precursor, and now the generosity of ANet for giving up those badges of jumping, requiring no killing of any players in WvW at all. Tell me where exactly did this get ‘legendary’?

Play the way you want, but are you truly worthy of the weapon that you wield? I hope precursor crafting can make us feel that way, even if it’s just me that wants to feel good about owning something that took a monumental amount of time and resources to craft.

Precursor building is just another option for players to get their desired weapon, rather than RNG. If you want to MF one or buy one, I’m sure that option will still exist. But it’s hard to call it “easy mode” considering the amount of money you need to put into building or buying a Legendary. The average player cannot afford to do that normally.

If the Scavenger Hunt is tied into the Precursor building, along with lv 500 Weaponsmith, Huntsman, or Artificer, then the process should be quite long and expensive in and of itself.

No matter how it is made, an introduction of more ways to get precursors are going to lower the value. I see the price of them on the tp being cut in half actually, and more along the lines of the mini-legendaries, ie Foefire, etc.

Personally i think when the do add the crafting it will be time gated for sure and also the precursor will be account bound. That would make sense right? This way the players that actually want to create the weapons using that precursor can and it doesn’t have bots and other farmers and such grinding out the precursors and selling them on the TP lowering the prices overall.

Time-gating ala ascended crafting will only prolong the time needed to get a Legendary; you’ll get there eventually.

To reward players with a Legendary based on skill, they could tie it in with some achievements of sort.

Back in FFXI, there were certain items that you can get only if you defeated a mob 1v1. Even with all the guides and currency, players still had to finish the encounter on their own.

If Anet tied precursor crafting with some achievements similar to the Liadri fight or Clocktower, it could effectively retain the exclusiveness of Legendaries, while giving players something tangible to work towards.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

No matter how it is made, an introduction of more ways to get precursors are going to lower the value. I see the price of them on the tp being cut in half actually, and more along the lines of the mini-legendaries, ie Foefire, etc.

I think prices in the beginning will drop due to speculation, but if there are time gates and Gold sinks, the Precursor prices might still creep up to current levels. If it takes a month or longer to craft a Precursor, and you have the option of buying one on the TP, guess which option an impatient player will choose?

There are all types of players. The ones who are willing to wait to build a Precursor are just sacrificing time over money. There are those who are opposite, and would rather sacrifice money over time. It’s the latter’s demand that might still affect the market.

Sacrifice 4 ascended tier weapons to the mystic toliet….

He never said it was going through the crafting system just that they would be craftable.

TexZero.7910:

He never said it was going through the crafting system just that they would be craftable.

What does this even mean?

Does big Z even ‘craft’ weapons? I reckon it’s semantics, you throw stuff into the forge combining elements of a recipe and it’s really no different to discoveries in crafting.

Personally I really hope that the toilet has nothing to do with the final crafting of a pre… too many people with broken hearts and empty wallets already. Leave the forge to the final legendary recipe and be done with it.

The only word that I want to say, please, DO NOT use RNG anymore (including mob loots). Make sure everyone got the same thing when they did the same actions.

When I read Val’s signature,
“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2” – Colin Johanson
Please show us the action in precursor crafting updates.