Guild Wars 2

All the numbers I use here are just made up figure and be debated. It will just show how the system will generally work.

Introduce a “Precursor’s Token” type.

Each time we throw 4 rares into the forge: if we don’t get a Precursor, we will get a Rare/Exotic + 1 Tokens.

Each time we throw 4 exotic into the forge: we don’t get a Precursor , we will get a Exotic + 3 Tokens.

Accumulate enough token (say 250 or 500), we can use them for a recipe that will give us a Precursor of choice.

This leave the RNG system intact for people to have fun with it, but it will also allow people to steadily work toward a goal. It will also help in a way to eventually put a soft cap on the price of Precursor.

While I don’t personally hate the RNG system (although I can’t say I like it), I think there should be a moderated and not “COMPLETELY” RNG dependent. Taking Star War the Old Republic for example. I think most people who played it in the early day remember the Champion Bag, it works pretty much indentical to the current Precursor system:

- You either get a Champ Piece, or some lower tier token.
- There is no other way to acquire a Champ Piece.
- Even if you get one, there is no guarantee it won’t be duplicate of what you have

So this makes it that there are “lucky” player who get a full set with opening only 20 bags, and there are players who opened upward 100+ bags and still missing piece. But even then, the time/bag attempt is not even the real problem. In my opinion, the real problem is: it lacks a metric to measure progress. The problem is not the player opened the 100th bag, the problem is after opening that 100th bag, the player can not say he’s closer or further from his goal comparing to the time when he opened his 10th bag.

In my opinion, there should always be a way a player can measure his progress. By performing an action, we should make another step closer to our goal, it can be a very small step or even trivial step, but it should still be a recorded step. And this can be relative. For example, the price of an Ecto can be 10s, or can be 30s or even 1g doesn’t matter, but when a player gain an Ecto, he can say “I’m one Ecto closer to my goal than before”. This is what my proposal is addressing, it gives the player a measurement.

Keep the RNG if you like it, and you can “balance” the Precursor Token in any way you want even severely. You can RNG the tokens we receive from each attemp as long as it’s not zero. You can balance the the number of token requires to make a Precursor and bring them in line with a number of rare/exotic you have in mind. 200/300/500 or even 1000. If the RNG god smile upon someone, that’s great. But there should be something for the people that after each attemp, they can say now they’re closer to their legendary than they were before.

Agreed, there has to be a way to take out that feeling of almost hopelessness of getting a precursor weapon from the forge. Right now that is the thing that it really bumming me out of getting the legendary. I don’t have all the pieces for it yet but everything else seems decently doable to get except the precursor.

I don’t see why it has to be RNG. I think they just need a more complex and satisfying crafting system. Whenever I think of the most satisfying crafting I’ve ever done, I actually think of Vagrant Story. A game with flaws, but I loved its crafting and upgrading system. Each item could be made using lesser items, but they had to be specific, and of certain material types. Starting with higher quality versions of those items resulted in better versions of the resulting equipment. It took a long time to make a Damascus weapon (best material weapon), and you ended up having to spend a lot of time collecting or crafting precursors to precursors to precursors in order to eventually get the two final pieces you combined to get a legendary weapon. It was very satisfying.

I personally think there doesn’t need to be a RNG, but there does need to be a tier of precursor items, even if they’re all exotics. It’d probably be best to have a few named rares you always get from combining certain weapon skins from four different areas of the world, and then having those combine into a named exotic, with the weapon type depending on which you added into the forge first or last (or whichever type was most present in the formula). Combining four of those exotics (of the same weapon type this time) results in a named precursor to the precursor, with an obvious naming convention. Say, Dusk’s four precursory items are called Fading Day, Rising Night, Day’s End, Night’s Beginning, or what have you. Combining those always results in Dusk.

All except the named rares would be just as good as the others. The amount of time and money required to collect them all would spread the money around on the Trading Post so it’s not all packaged into a single item. It would require less time, although a similar investment and would be more reliable. In addition, people with enough time and effort could eventually collect the necessary starting components from all around the world, over time, if they wanted to avoid spending money at all. And of course, this is all for a precursor item; not the legendary. These items could even share the same skin, for all I care. As long as they’re serving their function, it’s fine.

There’s always ways around RNG. They just require more effort than chucking an item value in the forge and assigning it a drop percentage.

I’d say it’s an alternative, but not one I’d associate if someone said “Legendary” to me.

To me, when I think of a weapon from Legend, I think a few things:

• Received after doing a great deed (i.e. Beowulf’s Naegling)
• Received by divine right (i.e. Arthur’s Excalibur – Sword in the Stone version)
• Received by those deemed worthy (i.e. Mjolnir)
• Forged from a rare material / powerful creature / lost techniques (Green Dragon Crescent Blade – Romance of the Three Kingdoms)

Can’t say I’ve heard of a Legendary weapon that has in any way been found by chucking a bunch of weapons into a forge.

Now, I am aware that you aren’t talking about the actual Legendary weapons, but I think that:

*The pre-cursor should show your skill and dedication with the weapon, which gives you the right to pursue the Legendary.
*The Legendary should show your commitment to mastering and aiding the world around you, showing you are truly a hero.

I like this idea. The “Legendary” comes from the other requirements of the weapon, the exotic precursors don’t need to be THAT hard to get.

Let me expand a little. First, I hate those posts about people wanting to make X easier to get. Vanity items can be arbitrarily hard to obtain, no problem. I just thing RNG is bad design, and creates unnecessary frustration on some of the game’s most dedicated players. You can keep the current difficulty the same (in terms of time to achieve it), but make it so you feel like you’re steadily progressing instead of just throwing money away.

TheDaiBish.9735:

I’d say it’s an alternative, but not one I’d associate if someone said “Legendary” to me.

To me, when I think of a weapon from Legend, I think a few things:

• Received after doing a great deed (i.e. Beowulf’s Naegling)
• Received by divine right (i.e. Arthur’s Excalibur – Sword in the Stone version)
• Received by those deemed worthy (i.e. Mjolnir)
• Forged from a rare material / powerful creature / lost techniques (Green Dragon Crescent Blade – Romance of the Three Kingdoms)

Can’t say I’ve heard of a Legendary weapon that has in any way been found by chucking a bunch of weapons into a forge.

Now, I am aware that you aren’t talking about the actual Legendary weapons, but I think that:

*The pre-cursor should show your skill and dedication with the weapon, which gives you the right to pursue the Legendary.
*The Legendary should show your commitment to mastering and aiding the world around you, showing you are truly a hero.

Following your logic – the 1st player to get Twilight will lock other players from getting this item, because it’s LEGENDARY – so there should be only one. Did you ever heard of two Excaliburs? Or 4 Mjolnirs?

tl:dr This is MMO game, you make highest tier weapons by doing what you can do in a game, not “aiding the world” or “being a truly hero”.

Cisza.9540:

TheDaiBish.9735:

I’d say it’s an alternative, but not one I’d associate if someone said “Legendary” to me.

To me, when I think of a weapon from Legend, I think a few things:

• Received after doing a great deed (i.e. Beowulf’s Naegling)
• Received by divine right (i.e. Arthur’s Excalibur – Sword in the Stone version)
• Received by those deemed worthy (i.e. Mjolnir)
• Forged from a rare material / powerful creature / lost techniques (Green Dragon Crescent Blade – Romance of the Three Kingdoms)

Can’t say I’ve heard of a Legendary weapon that has in any way been found by chucking a bunch of weapons into a forge.

Now, I am aware that you aren’t talking about the actual Legendary weapons, but I think that:

*The pre-cursor should show your skill and dedication with the weapon, which gives you the right to pursue the Legendary.
*The Legendary should show your commitment to mastering and aiding the world around you, showing you are truly a hero.

Following your logic – the 1st player to get Twilight will lock other players from getting this item, because it’s LEGENDARY – so there should be only one. Did you ever heard of two Excaliburs? Or 4 Mjolnirs?

tl:dr This is MMO game, you make highest tier weapons by doing what you can do in a game, not “aiding the world” or “being a truly hero”.

I’m not talking about there only being one of each. I’m talking about the concept of what makes a weapon “Legendary”.

In the terms of requiring rare materials ect, we already got that. Divine right would be a case of RNG, so that leaves:

- Those who are deemed worthy

Depending, this could mean a number of things. It could range from the person has mastered the use of the weapon and are deemed worthy of wielding it, to they have had a significant impact on the world, to they’ve had a personal epiphany / understood a lesson.

- * Received after doing a great deed*

Killing Zhaitan, helping an area, ect ect. A deed that benefits the lore of the game world. Zhaitan being dead means you’ve taken down an Elder Dragon. In the game world, this would be a ‘great deed’.

After all, we do have achievements – Weapon Master, Emergency Response Hero, Combat Healer, Slayer, ect ect. Instead of relying on RNG / grinding lots of gold, why not make use of the Achievements for the pre-cursor?

Why not make it so you have to have Max Weapon Master, a certain tier of Slayer ect ect to show your dedication to using that weapon?

Why not have a Gift that is created when you reach a certain Tier of Emergency Response Hero, Combat Healer, Explorable Dungeon Achievements and something, that shows your willingness to help the world and its people (in the context that you are helping while doing events, clearing these areas of potential threats – driving off bandits, protecting points in Orr ect)?

These are all in the game, and so are do-able within the game.