Guild Wars 2

The title pretty much says it all. I think there needs to be a way to “earn” a pre-cursor…. not RNG from Mystic forge. If say, the laurel vendor would let you pick any one pre-cursor for 250 laurels… It’d be ok with that.

That way, I would feel like my daily/monthly achievements would lead up to somethin of epic importance.

Yes but, you do realize that is about 8 months worth of dailies right? As much as it is nice to have some kind of safe bet backup alternative, we are still able to get 500g in that time and just buy them from TP anyway.

I agree with the sentiment, but Laurels probably aren’t the way to do it.

There are unfortunately a lot of things in game that have simply been implemented in the wrong way. For a lot of us 10g is a massive amount, we shouldn’t have to be daunted by the fact that if we ever want a precursor or a legendary or agony resistance we’re going to have to wait until we have upwards of 100g.. It’s simply not cool.

if 10g is a massive amount. do some dungeons and go to fractals.
but agree with post

So maybe 250 laurels is too high, but having some way to earn pre-cursors by participating in the game is better that throwing 500g into the mystic forge and still not getting a pre-cursor.

There was talk about doing a scavenger hunt for obtaining a pre-cursor which I am also ok with. But with the whole Laurel system being introduced (and built upon in future updates), I thought this would be a good opportunity to reduce the difficulty of just one part of the legendary grind.

Even if you earned 500g in 8 months of work, for most legendaries that still isn’t enough money to buy all of the parts required for crafting.

You should get a precursor of your choice if you complete Slayer achievements.

I like it, but I believe that ArenaNet intends to retroactively reward players for non-daily/monthly achievements too.

So implementing in for only 250 Laurels would be unwise.

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There would need to be a second requirement to make the purchase

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Like suggested in the post above this, completing the Slayer achievements.

But instead, make it so you can’t see your progress (like 386/1000), so players can’t get all ADHD on their progress. Then we could focus on slaughtering stuff instead of counting the kills – Which is an existing problem for a lot of events that tell us how many to kill.

Doomguard.5094:

Yes but, you do realize that is about 8 months worth of dailies right?

And…? 8 months is much easier then what a lot of us have to do currently.

For a lot of us, it would take a year just to save up enough to buy it off the TP.
Some of us don’t have the self-control needed to save up that much money.
There are other items like dyes and gems to buy.
Other Legendary components cost time and money too.

A lot of us don’t play efficiently and the precursor is easily the most inconsistently expensive component to obtain.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

The title pretty much says it all. I think there needs to be a way to “earn” a pre-cursor…. not RNG from Mystic forge. If say, the laurel vendor would let you pick any one pre-cursor for 250 laurels… It’d be ok with that.

That way, I would feel like my daily/monthly achievements would lead up to somethin of epic importance.

I agree in principle with the concept of precursors being earned rather than obtained via lottery. I’m not certain that the laurel system is the best way to handle this, though. I don’t really have a fully worked-out alternative, but I feel that daily/monthly completion is too low of a bar for precursor acquisition, regardless of the number of laurels needed.

Perhaps guaranteed precursor mystic forge recipes, dependent partly upon an item purchased for laurels? This could bring precursors more in line with the rest of the legendary system, potentially requiring elements from multiple sections of gameplay.

curtegg.5216:

You should get a precursor of your choice if you complete Slayer achievements.

Not really a viable option, given the astounding lack of giant NPCs in the game. Good luck farming that one in Diessa 1000 times.

Blueshield.6291:

I agree in principle with the concept of precursors being earned rather than obtained via lottery. I’m not certain that the laurel system is the best way to handle this, though. I don’t really have a fully worked-out alternative, but I feel that daily/monthly completion is too low of a bar for precursor acquisition, regardless of the number of laurels needed.

Yes, I am in total agreement that we need to earn precursors by actually playing the game vs gambling large quantities of coin on the lottery. Because let’s face it, the lottery system only encourages people to grind through boring parts of the game that will give you money, which you can in-turn gamble away.

I guess I am leaning toward the laurel system because it is a way to earn some kind of token that is account-bound and can be redeemed for items. With this system in place, your hard work of actually paying the game (and not farming for money) could be rewarded for something you actually want.

What I’m really looking for is a path getting a pre-cursor that is fixed and not random. Basically, something that says: “If you do A,B,C for the next X months, you can earn a precursor”. I am totally ok with ~8 months of effort being involved… but tell me what I need to do now so I can start the 8 month journey to a pre-cursor.

Just got done trashing over 200 swords into the mystic forge in an attempt to get a precursor. I know that doesn’t even begin to touch what some people have poured in though. I really feel there needs to be some way to get a precursor also. Don’t hand them out for free, but holy crap at least give us some hope.

I like the idea of having options, laurels for a precursor isn’t a bad idea, but I think you should also get a precursor of choice(bound to account) for getting dungeon master title or completing every jumping puzzle or obtaining some meaningful achievement in wvw/sPVP.

Precurors are supposed to be epic rare drops

Beyondthelol.9504:

Precurors are supposed to be epic rare drops

Except they aren’t epic rare drops.
They’re epic rare -go spend hundreds of gold throwing rares you had to buy of the TP into the Mystic Forge- RNG drops.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Beyondthelol.9504:

Precurors are supposed to be epic rare drops

Except they aren’t epic rare drops.
They’re epic rare -go spend hundreds of gold throwing rares you had to buy of the TP into the Mystic Forge- RNG drops.

Not true, that’s just another alternative method they offered you, but they do drop as epic rare drops in dungeons and chests. Ignoring that fact and only focusing on the forge is your own fault. You can get them without spending a single gold coin, you just have to get a bit lucky, because they really are epic rare.

At any case, someone mentioned they’d like the dungeon master achievement would give you a precursor, but I think that would be kinda too easy.

TerrellEdenost.7086:

What I’m really looking for is a path getting a pre-cursor that is fixed and not random. Basically, something that says: “If you do A,B,C for the next X months, you can earn a precursor”. I am totally ok with ~8 months of effort being involved… but tell me what I need to do now so I can start the 8 month journey to a pre-cursor.

Yeah, I see what you’re saying. My point was that we definitely need a fixed path to precursor acquisition, but I’m not certain that “do the same thing every day for 250 days” is necessarily the answer. I think the timeframe there is completely reasonable; my quibble is with the mundane nature of the tasks in question.

As I said, I don’t have a serious alternative. In lieu of one, this is a suggestion I can definitely back. Whatever the specifics, I hope that we can expect a definite route to a precursor at some point in the future.

Doomguard.5094:

Not true, that’s just another alternative method they offered you, but they do drop as epic rare drops in dungeons and chests. Ignoring that fact and only focusing on the forge is your own fault. You can get them without spending a single gold coin, you just have to get a bit lucky, because they really are epic rare.

At any case, someone mentioned they’d like the dungeon master achievement would give you a precursor, but I think that would be kinda too easy.

Haha, I would never waste money on RNGing with the Mystic Forge. My gold sits firmly in the bank >.>

I think the point is really that there needs to be a set way to get Precursors and legendaries. Relying on the tiny tiny tiny possibility of a chest drop or having to throw ridiculously expensive things into the mystic forge really isn’t the solution in my eyes.

I would rather know that there was some giant chain of things to do out in the actual game that led me to earning a precursor and eventually a legendary. I think it’s sad that the only way to get a Legendary is to work the Trading Post (there is no feasible way you can get that much gold my dungeon running without being someone who can dedicate ridiculous amounts of time).

Another alternative, that might not be perfect, but doable would be to randomize specific achievements required to unlock a precursor.

For example for person A, it might be: complete dungeon master, obtain spvp gladiator and complete every tradeskill

while for person B, it might be: every jumping puzzle, spvp gladiator, and some other random(but difficult/time consuming) achievement.

Also you would need to make it a mystery as to what unlocks it for each person, e.g: SWG Jedi.