Guild Wars 2

neoxide.7320:

Vash.1852:

neoxide.7320:

I spent 350g on my precursor last week, would suck if they became freebies next update.

They’re a little rarer than most would like but their price is due to the high demand for legendaries. If they nerf precursors it would really be a slap in the face to anyone who worked to get a precursor the hard way when compared to those who sat and cried until it was made easier.

Well that’s just the way these things work, look at it this way. You bought a new game the day it came out while I waited to buy it when it was on sale. Did I just slap you in the face?

Your analogy doesn’t apply to the situation for a few reasons.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Video games or any item in real life doesn’t decrease in price because of time, they decrease in price because of lessened demand. This is not the case with precursors. Precursors are expensive because of their high demand and remain just as expensive because of their high demand.

A proper application of your analogy would be “Well if you want a precursor for less money, then just wait for the demand to go down”. In other words, wait a while for more people to get legendaries until precursors don’t cost -as much- because less people need them.

Instead what is happening is people are complaining “I want my legendary now. It is too hard to get. Make it easier to get” and ANET is responding to their complaints while totally screwing the people who played by the rules and put in the work, effort, or risk into making a precursor by the current way.

I would be fine with a revamp of making legendaries so long as they remain legendary, but even more importantly, so long as the guys who did it playing by the rules get compensated.

TL;DR – only read the first paragraph to get the point.

Honestly…
I saw someone with at least 3 legendaries lately (he switched from Sunrise to Rodgort and Frostfang)

I asked how he got them and his response was simply “I spend my time wisely.”

I can’t imagine how anyone, by simply playing the game legitimately, could have 3 legendaries at this point.

Legendaries have become a joke. Market manipulators are dangling them in our faces on the TP currently. They have an excess of gold (more than any player would ever need) and thus can get whatever they want. Not by PLAYING THE GAME but by exploiting other players.

It’s only fair for ArenaNet to give us normal players a decent shot at getting a legendary.

Especially considering there’s going to be an expansion this year… And new legendaries to strive for.

Minos.5168:

I saw someone with at least 3 legendaries lately (he switched from Sunrise to Rodgort and Frostfang)

I asked how he got them and his response was simply “I spend my time wisely.”

I can’t imagine how anyone, by simply playing the game legitimately, could have 3 legendaries at this point.

Um…I know at least two guys who had three legendaries each months ago. Both had made thousands of gold by market manipulations – that’s thousands of gold back then.

Time and again I’m convinced that the mass of players have no idea what’s going on in the top gold tier and how much it affects them. Heck, most people on this niche subforum are way more informed than the average player, yet still don’t grasp the magnitude of wealth redistribution going on in the game every single day.

Sorry I can’t take the word of a person calling themselves John Smith, do you sell insurance to old people on the weekends ?

Legendaries technically aren’t impossible to make, you just need around 500 gold to BUY all the materials. The devs saw fit in their " infinite wisdom" to create an algorithm that reduces drop chance per kill, making magic find a scam, and in part making hacking the only real way to " farm " these extremely rare materials ( silver doubloons for example ).

And John ( or whatever the hell your real name is ), if you’re reading this, you got a lot more pressing issues than " oooh legendaries are too hard for me to make " when the karka map ( i forget the darn name ) is full of bots 24/7 and people are selling extremely rare drops such as lodestones and silver doubloons in their thousands on the trading post. And don’t even get me started on PvP / WvW.

=.= i cant even farm gold fast enough to get my GS Precursor. Last week i was farming to 300g and the weapon was bouncing between 300-400g now im farming to 400g and its bouncing between 400 and 420 everyday higher buy orders are added, and i’ve watch the number of available reduce and increase only to fall again if anyone posted it under 400g

Yeah i could just use the gold to buy rare GS and throw them into the Mystic forge. =.= but knowing me i’ll end up not getting anything and be back and farming gold all over again.

The original post about this was made two months ago…. they haven’t updated it at all yet. SURE they just threw out a handful of precursors at the end of LS, but that just made some rich and others poor, and much more desperate. I would really like to see follow-up on what they promised in November. If they don’t make the “scavenger hunt” thing they mentioned awhile ago possible, I will have literally no reason to play this game. I guess i could go try out TERA or SWOTOR for a bit. IDK, just sort of depressing on how ridiculous anet let the economy in this game get. Not trying to troll and complain, but i’m just pointing out a few sad truths.

Once again, I reiterate: spend less time whining on here about not being able to get a precursor, and more time playing the game. I think the setup is fine, as it is. If anything, I’d like to see it be harder!

Now for the tip you’ve probably heard about in real life:

DIVERSIFY.

1. Put in buy orders at what you want to pay, not market. Spend 25% of your earnings on ectos.
2. Do some map completion.
3. Do some WvW for your badges.
4. Run the required dungeon for the 500 you need from that.
5. Grind Orr events for your karma, don’t waste your time waiting for a dragon.
6. Pick up your orders, do your crafting/forge/whatever
7. List your output on the trading post at what you want to sell them for.
8. Chat with your friends, review the forums.
9. Go to sleep
10. Back to step 1.

Oh yes, and DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GRINDING!! You don’t have to – you choose to, to get the skin you want.

If you think 500g is too much, then forget about the Legendary. Not everyone gets to be a rock star in real life, the same thing applies here. Those who succeed are the ones who make a plan and follow through.

If you want a Legendary, you might also be someone who sticks around for years, playing. If you are, then relax, you have plenty of time to get it: the price of the Legendary doesn’t change and eventually you will get your precursor.

The only thing I worry about right now is that ANet dilutes GW2 to suit the laziest common denominator.

You don’t like it? There are plenty of casual games out there…

Allisa

Allisa is 100% right when they say, “Oh yes, and DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GRINDING!! You don’t have to – you choose to, to get the skin you want.”

A legendary is “Legendary” for a reason, i mean it doesnt require a certain skill to get it just requires you to work hard in many different areas, i started just before Xmas and i only need 230 badges of honor, TA Tokens and around 120k before i have all the gifts. the money wasnt a issue for me while farming my 1million karma in Orr you earn so much gold and tier 5/6 mats that its just not really a issue. I mean When you finish a Legendary im pretty sure the feeling you will get will be Legendary

the only part of the legendary which im not enjoying is the badges of honor but that’s because i haven’t really got into the WvW scene.

If money is a issue for everyone trying to go for a legendary then either go for a cool weapon skin instead of just start farming in Orr or learn to play the TP. I currently make around 12-15g a day from farming in Orr and every so often you get those nice exotics that sells for like 2g and unlike some i always “id” my dyes and you get lucky for example 9g black dye yesterday.

Also a really easy method is the TP if you cant beat them join them isn’t that a saying :P i find that learning about a auction house in any game is easy you just work out profit margins and dip into different markets and eventually gold starts to come in i made around 50-60g from selling tier 3-5 mats when i first started over Xmas. There might be some people going well why should i learn just to make gold, gold should be easier to make…. If gold was easier to make and you had more of it the prices would go up and the TP farmers would have more gold, I learn’t this from WoW when there was suddenly more money everything shoots up in price.

Overall i think people just need to accept in games there will always be these people who like shiny gold and want a lot of it. Its not a issue its just normal for a game and just because you see people with a legendary or thousands of gold or even both doesn’t mean you to cant have that to! if you plan to play the game for years to come and your enjoying it then trust me you will get one.

I mean, after 1 year, I think they are still hard to get. Even though I got one, working on another one feels like a giant drag sometimes, specially considering that I will most likely have to go through all that pain which took me an entire year and 2 lucky precursor drops in order to complete….

get rid of the auto buyers on TP and change nothing else. aside from the wvwvw exploarion its not that tough. with some lessons learned money could be made on trader enough to buy the precursor and mats over the course of a couple months that is until the auto buyers using the games API took over. things earned are more vauable than things recieved thru the drive thru window.

Well I must still be unlucky then…1 year on (no RNG drop in MF-plenty of exotics and rares put in). No drop in PvE (>1000 hrs doing events/items on main lvl 80 <world bosses, dungeons, FoTM etc- this is not afk time, it’s time spent at lvl 80 doing high end stuff).

It does seem that some people are exceptionally lucky and have had 2+ pre drops from champ farming (from the mindless frosty gorge farming) since the change was release (that is all they now do – mindless champ farming).

I would love to know what was meant by “more obtainable”- the main thing that changed was the ability to earn more gold in game causing rampant inflation across many aspects of the game.

I’m now getting at least 10-30 rares per day (if these were sold in TP) for about 2-3 hrs farming effort (~150% MF) – would only net me 4g/day. With the precursors hovering around the 400-600g mark that’s 100 days of farming. It doesn’t help that most FoTM exotic drops or rings are also “account bound” which cannot be sold. These can only be put in the forge or. Salvaged at best.

I must be doing something really wrong to have this great luck !
RNG only alone (which I’m sorry really doesn’t seem random) – becomes mindless and extremely boring in the hope that one of these things drop.

Let’s take an example of a true “legendary” weapon according to myths/history:
King Arthur’s base was at a place called Camelot. Here he built a strong castle. His knights met at a Round Table. They carried out acts of chivalry such as rescuing damsels in distress and fought against strange beasts. They also searched for a lost treasure, which they believed would cure all ills – this was the ‘Quest for the Holy Grail’. (Que – Monty Python references and the champion rabbit in FoTM).

Under the guidance of Merlin, Arthur had obtained a magical sword from The Lady Of The Lake. This sword was called ’Excalibur" and with this weapon he vanquished many foes.

Please- where is the scavenger hunt to find these things, I have explored the lands of Tyria many times, done everything in the world several times and yet- nada.

It’s only the precursor which I need ! The mats, materials to make it – got enough for several legendary’s (and keeping them so I can actually make the legendary).

It really becomes ridiculous that now after over a year they told us it will be ‘observed’ and ‘addressed’ and now still nothing happened. Rather the prices skyrocketed even more (x-fold).

“Hey let’s rez this old thread to point out the promises not kept and hope that this time they will take a hint and change things for the better.”

To which I can only say : Roflcopter.

i admit that paying 800 gold + for twilight pre is kind of absurd

what about making some use of those laurels and offer precursor for 100 laurels each? so that people actualy start getting serious about their daily and monthly if they werent before that is. lot of people thinks laurels are for buying dyes in loads

John Smith.4610:

After that post the Mystic forge rates on precursors were increased. We’ve moved into more longterm plans for precursors (we’re still watching), as you know, but that promise was upheld.

It makes me pine for a streak-breaker mechanic like the Pristine Fractal Relics:

If each combine of 4 exotics (or 3 and a mystic stone) also returned a “Zomorros’ treasured shiny” and you could spend 250 of them at the Mystic forge vendor to buy the precursor of you choice, this whole process would be a LOT more satisfying.

Nike.2631:

John Smith.4610:

After that post the Mystic forge rates on precursors were increased. We’ve moved into more longterm plans for precursors (we’re still watching), as you know, but that promise was upheld.

It makes me pine for a streak-breaker mechanic like the Pristine Fractal Relics:

If each combine of 4 exotics (or 3 and a mystic stone) also returned a “Zomorros’ treasured shiny” and you could spend 250 of them at the Mystic forge vendor to buy the precursor of you choice, this whole process would be a LOT more satisfying.

If you’re planning to drop 1,000 Exotics (or 750 with Mystic Stones), you might as well just sell them to buy the Precursor of your choice. But implementing a system like this might actually increase costs across the board, as Exotic values would go up in anticipation of people buying them to forge.

Maybe it’s just me, but having to buy precursors on the TP completely ruins the whole process of making a legendary. It ruins what is supposed to be a pinnacle focus of the game and imo letting that be standard practice is poor form.

PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012 is like telling a friend you are going to help them move and then wiping your finger across the mantle. Then when they ask you about helping, you reply “I cleaned, sheesh!”…ie…next to nothing is more like nothing than something even though technically it is something Tbh it’s kinda insulting.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

I’ll help you out: Buying things is never epic.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

It’s still a ridiculously low chance. It seems quite obvious what he was getting at… and what trying to get a precursor out of the forge can feel like for people.

Lothirieth.3408:

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

It’s still a ridiculously low chance. It seems quite obvious what he was getting at… and what trying to get a precursor out of the forge can feel like for people.

The devs don’t look at the game from one player’s perspective, they have to consider the game as a whole. A 20% increase means 20% more precursors entering the market. Since they made the change there have been hundreds of precursors created that wouldn’t have existed without it.

What would the prices be like now if those players were still competing for a precursor in a market with 20% less items available?

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

John strikes again.

Hi John ^^,

A lot of the frustration here comes from the realization of the overall situation, not just the direct cause. Guild Wars 2 is a video game, and video games are meant to be played and enjoyed. As legendary items are the highest level/function for a weapon in the game, it is seen as a goal – as part of a game it is expected to be a somewhat enjoyable goal – or why would someone play the game at all?

Then we look at the process. Gift of mastery – makes sense. Gift of fortune – pretty much ‘gift of gold’ as most of it is dependent on farming gold just to buy the ingredients from the TP. Nothing epic, skill related or particularly enjoyable from a gaming sense here. Gift of the $legendary – still grind based but a lot better than fortune. Last is the precusor…

Since you can’t really farm for a specific precusor – you can farm for loot but not for the specific item, the only options left are buying it from the TP or from MF. Both depend on supply and demand – the demand a result of people wanting to obtain said item, the supply more linked to the drop rates Anet put in place – as the ingredients cannot be farmed (crafting rare weapons to forge is possible, crafting exotic is more expensive than buying so it’s pointless).

So we have a situation where the player cannot directly control the amount of work required to complete the final part of the weapon. Forging, is totally dependent on luck, and even if Anet increased the drop rates, they are still at such a low point where the cost of making one, averaging over a large dataset, still remains high. Hence why the high price of precusors on the TP – if it was viable to produce at a lower cost people would do so and bring additional competition to the market. If people save up the excessive amount of gold required, the suffer from the prices rising or erratic jumps like what happened with the legend a while back – which again the average player cannot control, nor can they control the demand from external parties going through the same strife. While some people do enjoy farming, I question if this is a fair representation of enough of the playerbase to justify the situation or if this pushes the idea of ‘enjoyable farming’ to the extreme. Again this is a video game, knowledge of markets and resource flow should not be required to obtain a pretty sword.

tldr; This isn’t fun. It doesn’t make the game better. It has been a year and the core problem remains – lack of availability and grind required. While drop rates may have increased, the overall cost due to other items such as the mats required or changes to farming spots have unbalanced the equation to be back where it was.

I am ranting, trying to keep this simple and obviously don’t have data to back up anything I say, though I think we can agree on one thing….

This is not fun.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

John strikes again.

How so? Given that Essence Snow’s comment goes to the heart of why many many people are frustrated with the loot and RNG systems in the game it is not deserving of a flip response.

A temporary fix that would help until a wider quest was added would be to add an ascended recipe for making a precusor. For example:

Staff Precusor Recipe - costs 50 laurels

3 Ascended Staff Head
3 Ascended Staff Shaft
3 Vision Crystal
1 Gift of Heroism

Gift of Heroism is obtained via either
- Completing the story
- WVW season chest
- 1 per 5000 point reward chest
- Gaining x rank points in pvp
- Liadri

etc

Recipes use existing material, have to add one item that is available from other means. Time gated materials that are available via farming, major ingrediant earned through achievement, not rng.

I thought it was epic adventure to flush your money down the mystic toilet. Think of the legendary tale you’ll share with all of us when you see your new shiny floater.

Essence Snow.3194:

.next to nothing is more like nothing than something even though technically it is something Tbh it’s kinda insulting.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

*Correction it is insulting

Twenty percent of nothing is—let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin’. Carry the nothin’…

I’m not sure the complaints can be warranted without actually testing out the MF in it’s current state. I’ve been grinding out world bosses for dragonite ore which also nets me rare weapons, I’ve been throwing them in the forge for exotics (dark matter) and have had two precursors thus far in the last month and a bit of farming. I may be extremely lucky but on the other hand it may also be the result of the change.

Minos.5168:

Honestly…
I saw someone with at least 3 legendaries lately (he switched from Sunrise to Rodgort and Frostfang)

I asked how he got them and his response was simply “I spend my time wisely.”

I can’t imagine how anyone, by simply playing the game legitimately, could have 3 legendaries at this point.

Until recently with the advent of the daily chest which cut down profits running the easy dungeons over and over (like people do champ trains) would need a lot of $$$ for time invested, you’ll notice a lot of people with quite high attachment points and a couple legendaries were likely doing it that way (dungeon master, after that every 5 dungeons = 5 achievement points). Either way, with grinding and speed runs it’s still relatively easy to turn 20g in around 2 hours a day, over 30 days thats 600g.

John Smith.4610

Essence Snow.3194

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

First I’ll quote myself from another thread, as I think it fitting here.

Kosmo.5187:

I find that the individual experience is often sacrificed when all your decisions are based on percentiles of millions. It’s great, for example, that an intended number of people have a precursor. The statistics speak for themselves. On an individual level, though, I would presume that the person who dropped 12 items in the forge to get it is somewhat happier than the guy who dropped 1200 items and still hasn’t gotten one. On an individual level the effort doesn’t match the reward, but statistically things are the way they’re supposed to be. Games are for many people, but those people are all individuals.

I don’t think Essence Snow.3194 deserved a snide response – the intent conveyed was obvious. ArenaNet can pat themselves on the back all they want for inventing awesome ways to get rid of items from the game, but during this magnificent feat they forgot to make the hunt for a legendary actually feel as such.

This is Guild Wars. Not economy/market wars, not gambling wars. It’s great that there are people who enjoy the market aspects offered by the Trading Post, and it is, to some degree at least, fair enough that some people enjoy gambling. However, I will never understand why one of the pinnacle rewards in the game is so far removed from the actual core game play as is the case with legendaries. It seems unimaginative to simply throw some stuff in a bucket and “here’s the best weapon ever”.

I’ve read that they’re going to be adding another way to obtain specific precursors (it’s been over a year). But is it going to be more thoroughly integrated with the game play?

There is room for vast, vast improvements of the trading post, the way gem store items are handled, as well as how the mystic forge works. If player frustrations are met with comments like the one offered to Essence Snow.3194, then I can only express my utmost disappointment. Then of course, I am only one of several million…

Putting the increased chances behind the mystic forge mechanic in which you still have to use the auction house to participate in doesn’t make it any better.

Put the drops on the mobs, not the auction house.

You still have your beloved terrible rng, except you’re encouraging people to play the game instead of playing other players.

Concurring the essence of “It’s just not fun.”

All my gifts are done, All im left with to get is another 65 obsidian shards through karma farming or fractals.

I spent about 300g on the mystic forge and got my dusk.

My char age is 250 hours with 38 days played.

I think if you know how to use the trading post it makes it alot easier.

Btw im a new gw2 player as well. so its not like ive had existing knowledge. But i will agree RNG is not fun especially when flushing down rare GSs.

I think they should make soulbound precursors that cannot be traded for people to make their ledgendaries. And these should look slightly less cool then the ones gotten through RNG flushing or be upgraded to look equal.

I hate to say it but if everyone had one they wouldn’t be legendary. Yes we are all, as individuals, are on our own hero’s journey but we also are playing in a shared world but an item that by label is “legendary” should be difficult to acquire. And to craft one, what you need above everything else is the precursor weapon so they made that difficult to find. Sure there’s an extremely rare chance they will drop from a major chest or from playing the mystic slots and some people are luckier than others which is why you can get one off the TP. Of course you and everyone else wants one and they are rare so expect to pay though the nose for it.

John already showed us a while back how many of a particular precursor sold in a single day. Problem is we don’t see them because they simply don’t last long enough to register on the TP. It’s posted and sold between the times that item was sampled by gw2spidy, gw2tp or gw2db.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

20% increase on a miniscule chance may be significant to Anet (who looks at the market as a whole), but is completely inconsequential to the individual trying to forge a precursor.

It may be a novel thing to an economist, but sometimes money is not everything that matters. And people are not statistics.

But having a limited amount of Precursors drop is a statistic. Asking that something extremely rare to drop commonly because you want it badly is borderline Entitlement. Then the item in question is no longer rare. So if that’s the case, why have anything rare or unique going forward?

One of the reason why certain items are highly desirable is because it’s rare. Take away the rarity, you take away the desire to have the item.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

But having a limited amount of Precursors drop is a statistic. Asking that something extremely rare to drop commonly because you want it badly is borderline Entitlement. Then the item in question is no longer rare. So if that’s the case, why have anything rare or unique going forward?

One of the reason why certain items are highly desirable is because it’s rare. Take away the rarity, you take away the desire to have the item.

It can be “rare” and still be possible to get with more consistency than it is now.

Ways of doing that has been describe some posts up.
Besides it’s not the actual precursor that is desired.
It’s the legendary weapon that comes from it.
And that still requires an immense effort to get.
You need to do 100% world exploration, you need to do quite a bit of WvW, you need to do dungeons, you need to get quite alot of karma.
All of that in itself makes it quite “rare” apart from the precursor itself.

Behellagh.1468:

*I hate to say it but if everyone had one they wouldn’t be legendary. * Yes we are all, as individuals, are on our own hero’s journey but we also are playing in a shared world but an item that by label is “legendary” should be difficult to acquire. And to craft one, what you need above everything else is the precursor weapon so they made that difficult to find. Sure there’s an extremely rare chance they will drop from a major chest or from playing the mystic slots and some people are luckier than others which is why you can get one off the TP. Of course you and everyone else wants one and they are rare so expect to pay though the nose for it.

John already showed us a while back how many of a particular precursor sold in a single day. Problem is we don’t see them because they simply don’t last long enough to register on the TP. It’s posted and sold between the times that item was sampled by gw2spidy, gw2tp or gw2db.

And yet, you can buy one from TP. Very legendary indeed.

If everyone worked hard enough to get one, how would that make it any less legendary (at least on individual level)?

“Either way, with grinding and speed runs it’s still relatively easy to turn 20g in around 2 hours a day, over 30 days thats 600g.”
I have heard of many people via exploits like 16min Arab path runs (3g), exploiting CM explorables (<10mins). This doesn’t seem to be skill or playing correctly IMO. The Arah path with a team should take 1-3 hours (not 16mins solo).

I have never managed to get more than about 4g/hour – as I like to do various different things in the game than repeat the same thing over and over again. Many if the exotics if they drop are worth 1-2g from the world bosses as they are such a common drop.
There are many Arah paths being sold where a player is soloing the dungeon to sell the end path – these kind of things tend to get shutdown eventually. Here yes you could be earning large amounts of money in that 2-3 hours windows but this seems to go against the GW2 principles of co-operative play.

We have not had a round of account bans recently – I can see one incoming.

The cause is simple : “players feel the precursor is unobtainable and need to resort to these tactics or exploits.” Which is a shame. I am not saying everyone is doing this just a small % which helps support the crazy high prices.

I don’t want to do a mindless champ farm where people are getting 7g/hour either (no skill involved there either). FoTM will only net you a few gold at best for 1-2 hours effort.
A world boss farm which covers all Orrt temples, shatterer, jormag will net you about 10-40 rares that is with a high MF (150%) and doing the pre-events.. That certainly is not in the region of gold income you suggest according to my calculations. Yes – I could sell them all but I put them in the MF each day for the hope of a precursor (>1 year).
This at least has some degree of skill and teamwork involved (>champ box farming).

A CoF path x 2 – yes 20 mins for 2g – but who wants to run this every day?

I am extremely concerned that people are reaching for exploits to get 800g or so after changes to runs are now account wide.
Every rare that I have ever had and most exotics (which I have not equipped on my char) has been thrown in the MF in the hope for the precursor.
No luck – it’s certainly more than >8000 rares and>100+ exotics over the course of the year. (Feel free to check my account John! – many players I also know are in this situation where they have put over 600-700g worth of weapons in over time and have not yet received any precursor and others got this one there first try).

I have never liked the idea “to buy something” and would rather farm it with skill and achieve it as a drop (wIth reasonable chances).

The RNG aspects of GW1 and GW2 are completely different.

More money can be made by spending 1-2 hours buying something off the TP for resale at a more reasonable price than doing stuff in the world. This seems easily the fastest way to obtain that precursor.

It doesn’t feel legendary at the moment at all – very little skill involved and just pure player frustration. This is why I take you back to King Arthur and his legendary tasks involved to achieve the weapon.

Here is how the RNG worked in GW1:
With GW1 RNG was different for most weapons/drops- you knew where they would drop and with a reasonable chance.
This allowed people to concentrate on this area which rewarded skill, teamwork and RNG luck.

Underworld for example – Crystaline swords, mini dhuum
This was viable with skilled people to perform this between 10-20 mins (even after dhuum appeared) which made the RNG aspect of this tolerable.

It still is possible to do it this quickly.

Yes – solo runs did exist or 3 man pathing and selling the paths which created a good income. This was nerfed – I also expect that Arah paths will suffer the same fate ensuring that a team is required to get this done (the number of solo players is increasing steadily and puts the economy out of whak).
Other exploits will also be closed down over time – this game is only just over a year old.

In GW1 – I must have done at least 100-200 runs of UW before I got the mini, but did also get several crystaline swords in the progress. This was in teams, solo’d and 3 manned over a period of 6-12 months. This dungeon was at least challenging and rewarded skill properly. You were also rewarded with ectos which were required for FoW armor (the other reason I did these runs) as it was the only place it dropped (more tolerable RNG). It was at least around a 1 in 10 runs (10%) one of your party members would get either the mini or the sword. You felt happy for them when it happened also.

FoW runs could also be done in a similar time (10-20) mins with a good team for the obs shards and that sword ! The RNG here wasn’t too bad. It rewarded team work and skill correctly IMO.

The mini polar bear was a very bad example of RNG. There were players who would do this daily for every hour when the dungeon was released in the hope that they would get it. Some did this for years and never got one. A good run took about 5-6 mins solo (wasn’t hard) just plain boring with only the polar bear as a potential drop.

It is completely different than the RNG in GW2.

Astralporing.1957:

John Smith.4610:

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

20% increase on a miniscule chance may be significant to Anet (who looks at the market as a whole), but is completely inconsequential to the individual trying to forge a precursor.

It may be a novel thing to an economist, but sometimes money is not everything that matters. And people are not statistics.

Except that it is very consequential to the player trying to forge a precursor. 20% more precursors from the forge leads to more supply, more supply leads to lower prices, lower precursor prices leads to lower rare and exotic weapon prices, which means that the person throwing countless weapons into the forge will pay less for each weapon that they put in, and they have a 20% higher chance to get a precursor, so it probably won’t take as many tries.

You can’t take only one piece of the economy, pretend that it works entirely separate from the rest of it, and tell the economist that he’s wrong for considering every piece of the equation.

Astralporing.1957:

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

20% increase on a miniscule chance may be significant to Anet (who looks at the market as a whole), but is completely inconsequential to the individual trying to forge a precursor.

It may be a novel thing to an economist, but sometimes money is not everything that matters. And people are not statistics.

A 20% increase overall will still impact the individual player in the long term via droprates and, more importantly, in the short term by lowering the prices on the TP.

In general, that would mean that 20% more pre cursors enter the economy every day. It will be a short term fix for pre cursor prices but it will also have a giant impact on other parts of the economy.

Because that would mean that most likely, 20% more legendaries will be forged as well, resulting in raising prices of ectos and t6 common, fine and rare crafting mats as those are used in crafted every legendary weapon.

It will also have a huge impact on items that are used in crafting weapon specific gifts. A good example for that are Silver Doubloons, which are needed for crafting the vial of quicksilver for the Juggernaut, as they have been widely discussed and complained about on the forums. I also think that Silver Doubloons are solely used for the Vial of Quicksilver as its other uses are obtainable cheaper.
You can promote them to Gold Doubloons but those are cheaper to buy on the TP.
You can craft 4 minor sigils with them but those are also cheaper on the tp and you can craft those with 2 copper doubloons as well instead of using a silver doubloon.

And i dont think anybody needs +1% Boon Duration between lvl 20-35 at a price tag of 1 gold.

So that means that the price of Silver Doubloons is only influenced by its demand to craft the vial of quicksilver.

Basically the amount of Juggernauts that can be forged each day/week/month/year is gated by the supply of Silver Doubloons that is coming into the game.

If 20% more people start crafting Juggy, it will ultimately result in lower prices for the Colossus and higher prices for Silver Doubloons as more people will attempt to craft it simultaneously and need a longer period of time to do it because the supply of SD´s is not there.

John didnt say by how much it increased.

It could be an increase of 0.000001 %.
We will never know.

TPMN.1483:

John didnt say by how much it increased.

It could be an increase of 0.000001 %.
We will never know.

It’s an example. Whether it’s a 5% increase or 100%, it has an effect on the entire process.

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

The chance of me getting a precursor increased by 20%, seems legit. But wait, the chance of me not getting a precursor deceased by what? .00000002/.9999999 about 0.000002%.

What a significantly outstanding change!

Behellagh.1468:

I hate to say it but if everyone had one they wouldn’t be legendary.

1. They are so common its at that point already.
2. The way they are acquired has completely destroyed any sense of them actually being legendary.

If they are so common then why are there still complainers?

Ping.5739:

The chance of me getting a precursor increased by 20%, seems legit. But wait, the chance of me not getting a precursor deceased by what? .00000002/.9999999 about 0.000002%.

What a significantly outstanding change!

If your chances of getting a Precursor were to be increased by 20%, the chances that you wouldn’t get one would decrease by an equal amount.

Behellagh.1468:

If they are so common then why are there still complainers?

You must have been a Fire Elemental in your past life.

20% was just a number pulled out of thin air; I estimate the increase in the drop rate of precursors was roughly twice that.

For me I have just been farming my orichalcum and ancient wood log nodes for a couple months now (about 2-3) and slowly saving my tier materials that dropped or I bought with laurels. With a combo of ectos I got from CoF and Fractals I’ve finally got all the pieces for my legendary except 50 Icy Runestones. I work and go to college with only 1-2 hours a night to play usually, sometimes more on the weekends but even I have almost earned my legendary.

So I am almost there and it was definitely a long and painful path, but I feel like it’s going to be even more rewarding when I finally forge it in the mystic forge. However I know deep down soon enough legendaries will be easy enough to craft and every person will be running around with footstep particle effects under their feet.

I realize they are a wanted commodity but they should stay hard to obtain. there are plenty of skins in-game that are just as cool if not better looking than some legendaries that take a fraction of the commitment.

Mikuchan.7261:

Besides it’s not the actual precursor that is desired.
It’s the legendary weapon that comes from it.
And that still requires an immense effort to get.
You need to do 100% world exploration, you need to do quite a bit of WvW, you need to do dungeons, you need to get quite alot of karma.

no wvw is required anymore apart from the map completion….achievement chests will drop more than enough badge of honor quite quickly
You need to run a dungeon 9 times…which isn’t a significant effort since most dungeons have a least one path that is easily speed run in less than 15 minutes

the only difficult thing about legendary is the grind for the gifts due to how many mats that requires, and for the most part the mats aren’t difficult to acquire, it’s just time consuming or expensive.