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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

So I think someone from Anet should address the big problem that we all know exists in the current legendary system… precursors. Namely the fact that they are RNG based and and the supply among the servers is ridiculous.

First off I want to say that I do appreciate the hard work you guys put in and I really do enjoy the game, but the precursor system is an area that seriously needs a revamp.

To be honest I think the current system has a lot of problems. For one the randomness of the drops. There is a guy in my guild who has gotten 3 precursor drops (including the elusive dusk) since he started playing the game (two of which happened within 4 weeks of one another). Meanwhile there are players in the guild that have been playing since beta that haven’t gotten even one precursor drop. While I congratulate the one player on getting three and becoming exceptionally wealthy and being able to craft two legendaries, this seems highly unfair.

Second let’s take a look at some stats on the supply and demand of these precursors (taken from the tp):

Dusk:
Current Price: 833g 98s
Supply = 8
Demand = 4913 (And these are just active buy orders, not those people that haven’t posted money yet, or don’t have enough)

Zap:
Current Price: 699g 99s
Supply = 4
Demand = 1148

The Legend:
Current Price: 790g
Supply = 11
Demand 2532

Spark:
Current Price: 688g 68s 68c
Supply = 18
Demand = 1580

Etc. etc.

My point is not mainly to point out the exorbitant prices but the supply and demand of the item. The supply for these weapons is in the teens at best. And the entire population of Guild Wars players has to compete monetarily to get those few in existence. That’s what 3.5 million people (games sold)? Competing for 10 weapons in existence?

I guess my point, and I’m sure others will agree, is that the current system makes you want to pull you hair out. The other things that you have to assemble for your legendary are hard enough, but they you give us the task of basically buying a legendary item (because it is so rare) as well. And those gifted few who have been given 3 in their playing time ride out above the rest thanks to the random number gods.

I know that you guys pointed out that you want to make these weapons craft-able, but who knows what sadistic torture we will have to go through to craft them. And when is this going to happen?

And the thing is… there is a very simple solution to this problem. Increase the probability in the drop rate tables. This will increase the supply, drop the price to a normal level (200g?), and make people not so angry over the way this is currently set up. We all know that you play with drop levels (such as the not so subtle changing of ecto salvage rates when the price dipped on them to 17s per), so it is time to do it to precursors in the opposite direction.

Can I get a +1 on this from any other player that is ticked off by this mechanic?

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Posted by: AKLbow.2463

AKLbow.2463

Let’s talk precursors.

Tuesday night I was bored and decided to play the Mystic Forge game.

I started with ~800 gold.

I got:

5 – The Collossus
2 – Dusk
3 – Tooth of Frostfang
1 – Spark
2 – The Lover

And ended the night with 2300 gold. I didn’t list the precursors I just straight up sold them to highest bidder because I don’t like to wait just to make a profit of ~80-100 gold.

[Envy]
Viohlent – Thief

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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

And that is precisely my point. I have thrown ~100g into the mystic forge without getting a single precursor. I personally know others who have spent far far more than I in the mystic forge to no avail. The fact that you got 13 off of 800g seems unfair to those that have spent ~500g and gotten 0.

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Posted by: izer.8243

izer.8243

For me it was pretty much other way around. Wanted to craft legendary so i flushed around 1500g in mystic dump with no luck. Now im forced to grind events to simply buy lege from TP.
Definetly +1

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Posted by: Ffamran.2598

Ffamran.2598

A very nice post.
I’m waiting for the possibility of crafting the precs, hoping it will be more cheaper, but knowing Anet it will be really hard.
+1

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Posted by: Ffamran.2598

Ffamran.2598

http://www.dpsgold.com/gw2/news/197--new-legendary-weapons-update-will-be-delayed-in-guild-wars-2 and here all my hopes are vanished, I’ll don’t play until 2014

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Posted by: Milumeo Rinku.7583

Milumeo Rinku.7583

I dunno. I kinda like the idea of it being completely random. But I also know where you are coming from. I don’t think it’s unfair that people could get 2 in 2 weeks while others 0 in 2 months, it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. It would kinda be crappy if there were more about; they’re supposed to be ‘Nice, they’ve got a legendary/precursor!’ not ‘Oh…another Twilight/Dusk…’, the TP quantities may not be accurate; people may keep their precursors as they’re so rare. But I think something needs to be done; what, i’m not sure. I used to farm meta events along with most people, only in the interest of a possible precursor, but have stopped due to it getting boring and lack of drop. And I don’t like spending money in the forge either as I find gold is fairly hard to come by in large quantities fast, unless you merchant, but that’s also partly due to the game having a cash shop / currency exchange. I don’t think precursors should be craft-able either, even though they said they’re going to add it in. Unless it’s extremely difficult and time consuming.

tl;dr – I’m sort of ‘sitting on the fence’; something needs to be done, but I don’t know what. For me, they just need to provide more incentive to try and get one.

EDIT – Added a bit more.

(edited by Milumeo Rinku.7583)

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Posted by: incognito.4019

incognito.4019

www.thatchinesefarmerislookinggoodnow.com

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Posted by: Sawnic.6795

Sawnic.6795

I like the idea of being a minority for having one of the weapons these craft.

Whatever guild I’m repping today [tag]
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Commander by title: Sawnec the Mesmer

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Posted by: CattivoUomo.7198

CattivoUomo.7198

I like the idea of the randomness to be honest, however, I also think it would be cool if players had a way of contributing to their chances other than farming a ton of gold and pulling the one arm bandit known as the mystic forge. Magic find is part of that for some drops (at least in part) but what I was thinking is a system that specifically targets the uber rare items and not just precursors.

Something that increases your odds of getting that random uber drop from a chest by participating and completing content. At first, I was thinking that content should be really challenging like Tequatl, dungeons, or fractals, but I think it could work with any content, so long as it scales with difficulty.

Just as a crude example(numbers are just to demonstrate how it can work): Everyone starts at 0. As you complete events, let’s say something really easy like a queensdale event. Assuming you didn’t get an uber rare item, then you get a +0.005% added to your uber drop probability counters. If you kill Tequatl, then your probability could then increase by +0.5%, and so on. So you could repeat a bunch of smaller events to add to your chances, but it would take quite a few to equal that of a more challenging event. This probability could then be capped to something like +25%. It would take a lot of playing to even get that high, but a 1 in 4 chance of an uber rare item is very good. When you do get that uber rare item drop, then your increased probability resets back to 0. This should only apply to things like precursors, ascended items, infinite use items, and super rare minis and dyes, to just think of a few. Regular items and other drops remain the same.

Obviously, this would require some planning and testing, but to just think that completing anything in the game will give you better chances for uber rare drops gives players a way to improve their chances. In my example, 50 Tequatl kills without an uber drop at least then give you a 1 in 4 chance you will get something as you continue to play the game. Since this probability increase would only affect your chances when opening chests, you couldn’t just farm umpteen million bandits over and over until it hits. Maybe also to discourage farming the same event over and over, the probability counter would only allow an event to repeat no more than twice for every 10 events. So you could kill Teq twice within a 10 event span, but the 3rd kill would not add to your counter.

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Posted by: Milumeo Rinku.7583

Milumeo Rinku.7583

I like the idea of the randomness to be honest, however, I also think it would be cool if players had a way of contributing to their chances other than farming a ton of gold and pulling the one arm bandit known as the mystic forge. Magic find is part of that for some drops (at least in part) but what I was thinking is a system that specifically targets the uber rare items and not just precursors.

Something that increases your odds of getting that random uber drop from a chest by participating and completing content. At first, I was thinking that content should be really challenging like Tequatl, dungeons, or fractals, but I think it could work with any content, so long as it scales with difficulty.

Just as a crude example(numbers are just to demonstrate how it can work): Everyone starts at 0. As you complete events, let’s say something really easy like a queensdale event. Assuming you didn’t get an uber rare item, then you get a +0.005% added to your uber drop probability counters. If you kill Tequatl, then your probability could then increase by +0.5%, and so on. So you could repeat a bunch of smaller events to add to your chances, but it would take quite a few to equal that of a more challenging event. This probability could then be capped to something like +25%. It would take a lot of playing to even get that high, but a 1 in 4 chance of an uber rare item is very good. When you do get that uber rare item drop, then your increased probability resets back to 0. This should only apply to things like precursors, ascended items, infinite use items, and super rare minis and dyes, to just think of a few. Regular items and other drops remain the same.

Obviously, this would require some planning and testing, but to just think that completing anything in the game will give you better chances for uber rare drops gives players a way to improve their chances. In my example, 50 Tequatl kills without an uber drop at least then give you a 1 in 4 chance you will get something as you continue to play the game. Since this probability increase would only affect your chances when opening chests, you couldn’t just farm umpteen million bandits over and over until it hits. Maybe also to discourage farming the same event over and over, the probability counter would only allow an event to repeat no more than twice for every 10 events. So you could kill Teq twice within a 10 event span, but the 3rd kill would not add to your counter.

You pretty much explained what I wanted to say but I couldn’t find the words haha

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Posted by: Kerushi.7609

Kerushi.7609

The problem is legendaries (and ascended gear) are what control the economy. If they make them more common then the prices will crash and the economy will get seriously messed up. They already do have an increased probability of dropping with higher magic find, and they may introduce a way to craft precursors.

Legendaries are supposed to be the most difficult items to obtain in the game. I believe Anet didn’t intend to have a large proportion of the population earning them. By making precursors so rare they are giving the grinders something to grind to. There isn’t much end game in this game (excluding the living world stuff).

Finally when I was making my incinerator there was one day where I logged on and all of the sparks were sold out. Within 6 hours there were 8 new sparks on the market. If you watch carefully they actually are posted quite frequently, around 4 or 5 precursors are added to the list a day. No that isn’t a lot compared to the population of the game, but this is supposed to be one of the rarest items in the game.

Keep in mind, I have thrown about 100g (low estimate, I didn’t keep track) down the mystic forge, I have never gotten a precursor drop, and I am currently grinding to save for my second legendary. I understand how difficult these items are to get, and how frustrating it can be saving money to obtain them. That being said if you make it easier and easier to get them it will cheapen all the hard work that people who already have legendaries have done. If everyone can easily afford a legendary then there will be nothing for the hard core players to ‘show off’ and distinguish themselves.

I do like Cattivo’s idea of the rare item increase drop, especially since he suggested that it reset after you get a rare item, but I’d change the cap (especially if this increase in probability includes precursors) to more like a 5 or 10% increased chance at those items.

~Shirin Shi (Silvari Necro)
TFG Os Northern Shiverpeaks

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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

The problem is legendaries (and ascended gear) are what control the economy. If they make them more common then the prices will crash and the economy will get seriously messed up. They already do have an increased probability of dropping with higher magic find, and they may introduce a way to craft precursors.

Legendaries are supposed to be the most difficult items to obtain in the game. I believe Anet didn’t intend to have a large proportion of the population earning them. By making precursors so rare they are giving the grinders something to grind to. There isn’t much end game in this game (excluding the living world stuff).

Finally when I was making my incinerator there was one day where I logged on and all of the sparks were sold out. Within 6 hours there were 8 new sparks on the market. If you watch carefully they actually are posted quite frequently, around 4 or 5 precursors are added to the list a day. No that isn’t a lot compared to the population of the game, but this is supposed to be one of the rarest items in the game.

Keep in mind, I have thrown about 100g (low estimate, I didn’t keep track) down the mystic forge, I have never gotten a precursor drop, and I am currently grinding to save for my second legendary. I understand how difficult these items are to get, and how frustrating it can be saving money to obtain them. That being said if you make it easier and easier to get them it will cheapen all the hard work that people who already have legendaries have done. If everyone can easily afford a legendary then there will be nothing for the hard core players to ‘show off’ and distinguish themselves.

I do like Cattivo’s idea of the rare item increase drop, especially since he suggested that it reset after you get a rare item, but I’d change the cap (especially if this increase in probability includes precursors) to more like a 5 or 10% increased chance at those items.

I partially agree with your post. Although your first statement is incorrect; namely, legendaries are very irrelevant to the economy, and ascended gear is account bound and soulbound and you can only sell a fraction of the crafting stuff for it, so it also is irrelevant to the economy. If you want to know what Anet cares about with regards to the economy look at ectos. Those are the back of the economy in Guild Wars 2 just like they were in Guild Wars 1. Legendaries and precursors make up a very very small portion of the economy, and there prices over the past year are evidence of that. They used to be in the 60G range, and they are now in the 900G range without having any impact on the rest of the economy.

That being said: I agree that these items should be hard to get. I’m not saying that they should drop as often as Princess Miya’s Tiara. :P I do think, however, that everyone should have the reasonable chance to get a legendary with enough hard work. I think that the current legendary system already deters the idea of everyone having a legendary since it costs a ridiculous amount of money for all the gifts, mats, and clovers. It also takes a lot of time and effort to explore the entire world. I don’t think that making precursors drop to 300G on the TP would mean you would have to be afraid of walking into LA to be greeted by a sea of twilights, bitfrosts, etc.

My point is simply that it is rather unfair that RNG can really impact a player as much as getting a precursor drop. Magically one player has been handed 900G by Anet. I don’t think that you would consider that hard work would you?

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Posted by: Epic.3950

Epic.3950

Let’s talk precursors.

Tuesday night I was bored and decided to play the Mystic Forge game.

I started with ~800 gold.

I got:

5 – The Collossus
2 – Dusk
3 – Tooth of Frostfang
1 – Spark
2 – The Lover

And ended the night with 2300 gold. I didn’t list the precursors I just straight up sold them to highest bidder because I don’t like to wait just to make a profit of ~80-100 gold.

insert rage comment
screens or it didnt happen

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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

Just as an update I even tried last night throwing in 100g worth of rares, and the resulting exotics, at in game dusk (which I have heard is the only time that you get dusk).

And guess what?!

No dusk. Just a waste of 100g. Very frustrating to spend 100g and have nothing to show for it.

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Posted by: Malediktus.9250

Malediktus.9250

100g is nothing. If you had a good chance to get them for 100g they wouldnt be worth what they are now.

1st person worldwide to reach 35,000 achievement points.

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Posted by: fugazi.5139

fugazi.5139

Like anything else in PvE. It’s just another grindy thing. This is what keeps me away from PvE. Can’t balance PvP with PvE. On a competitive level of PvP that is. PvE takes just way to much time to be able to achieve what you want. I manly PvP. I like the PvE in GW2, but the turn off is…In order for me to be able to really enjoy all the perks of PvE is to not PvP. Which brings me to another point: balancing reward system in PvP to where I can make some gold or gems to convert to gold. So the amount of time that I spend in PvP is not gone without being worth it. Gw1 had a perfect balance of being able to PvE and PvP through Zashien Quest/Bountys.

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Posted by: Kerishan.8460

Kerishan.8460

Precursor RNG is kittened, i play just one time the Mystic Toilet with 500gold and got NOTHING.

A friend in guild got 3 precursor from Mystic Toilet with 200gold and dropped also 3 precursors (2 in great karka event when ppl got precursor and i nothing, and another one in WvW just yesterday).

Anet should say something on this, this is just ridiculous.

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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

Agreed Kerishan. They are going to push the change to make them craftable until next year when everyone has wanted to see this change for a long time now. And I have no doubt the change will make getting a precursor just as hard as gathering up 900g to buy your own.

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Posted by: Brother Grimm.5176

Brother Grimm.5176

I’ll add my honest opinion to this:

Precursors should NEVER have been available for sale on the TP (nor should finished Legendary Weapons). Precursors (and Legendary Weapons) SHOULD be rare…..but they should NOT be sellable in any way. Account bound period.

At this point, we need to wait and see some additional details of the “crafted precursor” plans before speculating on any further fixes.

We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

I agree, the system for precursors is ridiculous. I haven’t put a lot in to the forge, perhaps 50g over the last year, but I have map completion, have done all the jumping puzzles at least once, countless boss events and enough time in WvW to have ~1000 badges of honor (A lot for a necro). There was a long running thread last winter surmising some people have cursed accounts, with some sort of perma DR, and are just doomed to bad drops. I know with my account, I could go weeks without ever seeing rares…and exotics were so scarce that they weren’t even worth mentioning. I only just recently started playing again (Since last March or so) for the Halloween event and so far drops seem better than they were last winter.

Other than the one I got from the karka event, I’ve never had a precursor drop and in 500 hours of play have probably had less than 20 exotics drop.

As for legendaries controlling the economy? I disagree. The economy is broken and has been since the gem store was implemented. Giving players the ability to inject new money in to the game, without doing anything to earn it, does nothing more than cause runaway inflation, especially on the most desirable of items where the demand far exceeds the incoming supply. It would be a better game without the gem to gold conversion in the gem store since this truly does create a pay to win scenario.

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

I’ll add my honest opinion to this:

Precursors should NEVER have been available for sale on the TP (nor should finished Legendary Weapons). Precursors (and Legendary Weapons) SHOULD be rare…..but they should NOT be sellable in any way. Account bound period.

THIS!! Account bound though…NOT soul bound, ever!! Personally, I don’t think any high end items should ever be soul bound. I can agree that binding them to the account helps keep the economy going, but I should be able to share items between my alts rather than my only option being to salvage. At the very least, there should be a way to unsoul-bind (Then account bind) them, kind of like how you can reset traits. I salvaged a 60g+ set of Jatoro’s armor and trinkets after magic find was changed because it was now useless as a secondary armor and I couldn’t hand it down to an alt. After I sold what was salvaged, luckily some good sigils, I estimate I still lost over 20g in the end. Being able to hand items down would also be much more an incentive to create alts.

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Posted by: eleshazar.6902

eleshazar.6902

I’ll add my honest opinion to this:

Precursors should NEVER have been available for sale on the TP (nor should finished Legendary Weapons). Precursors (and Legendary Weapons) SHOULD be rare…..but they should NOT be sellable in any way. Account bound period.

At this point, we need to wait and see some additional details of the “crafted precursor” plans before speculating on any further fixes.

This would be even worse than the current system. So those of us that have never gotten a precursor as a drop are just doomed to never have a legendary? The only way right now that I can get a precursor is to buy it on the TP since I have wasted far too much gold in the MF and have never gotten one as a drop. The only way that they could take them off the TP is if there is another surefire way that you could get one (such as buying from myiani[sp?]).

Honestly I wish they would just let you buy them from an NPC with a set price. It would balance it so that you don’t have ridiculous precursor prices on some (such as dusk) and low prices on others (such as the bard). They could even make those account bound and leave the ones on the tp alone since this would create a cap on TP values of precursors (no one would buy one on the TP for 800g when you can get it from an NPC for 500g). It would still let people that get them as a drop feel ecstatic since they gained 490g or so (non AB can be sold on TP), but allow others not to have to succumb to ridiculously inflated prices dictated by those lucky few.

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Posted by: Leamas.5803

Leamas.5803

Honestly I wish they would just let you buy them from an NPC with a set price. It would balance it so that you don’t have ridiculous precursor prices on some (such as dusk) and low prices on others (such as the bard). They could even make those account bound and leave the ones on the tp alone since this would create a cap on TP values of precursors (no one would buy one on the TP for 800g when you can get it from an NPC for 500g). It would still let people that get them as a drop feel ecstatic since they gained 490g or so (non AB can be sold on TP), but allow others not to have to succumb to ridiculously inflated prices dictated by those lucky few.

Agreed, even 500g is ridiculous considering most precursors were less than 100g on the TP a year ago. At 800g for the precursor alone, I’ve given up on the idea of crafting a legendary, there’s just too much gold, grinding and general effort (Mystic forge) required. I figure with what I’m doing now I can save up enough gold by mid-winter to just buy a legendary, which is a lot less time than it would take to craft it. …and no I’m not buying gems (What is it, about $800 worth of gems/gold for The Bifrost…ya, I don’t think so.) or illegal gold sellers (Don’t want to get banned), just plain ’ol in-game money making tactics.

This runaway inflation is due to the gem to gold conversion. If players were not allowed to buy in-game gold with real money, essentially injecting more and more money in to the economy, then this would never have been an issue. What would happen to the American economy if they printed enough money to pay off all their debt? The economy would crash because there would be so much money in circulation it would be worth NOTHING and the cost of commodities, especially those of luxury in nature would get more and more expensive. This is what’s becoming of gold in GW2. Perhaps the economy won’t crash because it is just a game, but the rest of what’s happening with the value of gold related to luxury items is text book.