Guild Wars 2

My thoughts on precursors from another post:

Unfortunately, their RNG system for precursors has been implemented and can not be undone or changed without getting people extremely upset. Granted, there are people upset about the system in general, but a lot of people who already used a lot of their time/gold would feel even more cheated. Even the players who legitimately got a precursor from the mystic forge would be hurt that they could have used their gold/time on any new system or change they implement. The damage has been done and Anet is going to have to stick to their guns on these weapons.

However, I see Anet slowly releasing more specific mystic forge recipes into the game with skins that are very popular even if there is a lack of particle effects. A good example of this would be Arachnophobia introduced in the Halloween event. Anet needs to increase the amount of desirable weapon and gear skins that avoid extremely low chance RNG and are obtained by more definite means.

I would also like to see Anet add a second generation of legendary weapon skins that use a lot more mats but require zero RNG from the Mystic Forge (mystic clovers are somewhat of an okay exception to this).

BowmasterSol.3457:

Unfortunately, their RNG system for precursors has been implemented and can not be undone or changed without getting people extremely upset.

I don’t see a problem. People are already extremely upset.

BowmasterSol.3457:

Granted, there are people upset about the system in general, but a lot of people who already used a lot of their time/gold would feel even more cheated. Even the players who legitimately got a precursor from the mystic forge would be hurt that they could have used their gold/time on any new system or change they implement. The damage has been done and Anet is going to have to stick to their guns on these weapons.

“We found out we’re going in a wrong direction, but we have to stay the course!”

The idea that a bad design should remain unchanged, because there are already people that either exploited it, or have fallen victim to it, is ridiculous. It has also nothing to do with “fair”.

Astralporing – In regards to people already being upset, I recognize this in the second portion you quoted. I also didn’t say that future implementations should follow the same crafting mechanic of RNG mystic forge nor did I support it. Your generalized remark quote on mine doesn’t take that into account at all. Constructively, what matters here is what Anet does going forward, which I give an appropriate idea of what that may entail.

Unfortunately, keeping how the first generation precursors are obtained is how Anet will realistically approach the issue. Some could argue it has nothing to do with fair or everything to do it with it, but fairness isn’t something I mention at all in my post. I just state what Anet will most likely be doing as a company.

Honestly, it doesn’t really bother me as long as the prices are stable. If you want to gamble on the mystic forge, go for it, but as long as I have a goal that doesn’t keep getting further away, I’m not too concerned.

I am, however, highly in favor of some more legendary weapons that can be acquired in ways other than “farm enough gold to construct your own elder dragon out of stacks of coins.”

One thing is throw 10g and finally after a huge waste of money, get a precursor. Quite different is spend 700g of weapons and still not get one.
I will link a document posted on gw2guru, just to shush those elitist players with their bakc covered and their precurson inside the bag who don’t give a kitten of others

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqjFp3hDPMLUdF9KdDNKR0dXSWxSRHotVGpUSVJpM2c#gid=0

(just so you know, the documet must be updated, the failure is bigger)

My record looks a lot different from that, but it holds trade secrets and lots of boring crafting prices. I do, however, really like the fact that

a) You have a fractional number of attempts, really now?
b) None of the rares you get are worth anything because that 25s for a staff, you’re gonna throw it into the forge instead of sell it to buy cheaper rares.
c) You have nearly a 6% rate of exotics per rare which is really interesting when it means 100 rares should you 6 exotics but 25 tries should give you fewer than five. Again, because you’re not counting your rare results as having value, even when they’re worth more than 15s.
d) You’re valuing exotic level 80 weapons at less than 1.5g on average.

BowmasterSol.3457:

My thoughts on precursors from another post:

Unfortunately, their RNG system for precursors has been implemented and can not be undone or changed without getting people extremely upset. Granted, there are people upset about the system in general, but a lot of people who already used a lot of their time/gold would feel even more cheated. Even the players who legitimately got a precursor from the mystic forge would be hurt that they could have used their gold/time on any new system or change they implement. The damage has been done and Anet is going to have to stick to their guns on these weapons.

However, I see Anet slowly releasing more specific mystic forge recipes into the game with skins that are very popular even if there is a lack of particle effects. A good example of this would be Arachnophobia introduced in the Halloween event. Anet needs to increase the amount of desirable weapon and gear skins that avoid extremely low chance RNG and are obtained by more definite means.

I would also like to see Anet add a second generation of legendary weapon skins that use a lot more mats but require zero RNG from the Mystic Forge (mystic clovers are somewhat of an okay exception to this).

Actually the damage had already been done when the godskull weapons were exploited and people had gotten their precursors very cheap. And yet Anet changed it anyway without any regard as to how many people became extremely upset with it.

So where’s the logic in “Well they changed it once and made people extremely upset but now it cannot be undone or changed or it would make people extremely upset” ?

There’s a difference between “not working as designed, there was a bug” and “working as designed, but people are complaining”.

Dungeon rewards were working as designed as well. That doesn’t mean the design was a good idea. Anet changed it and are still in the process of changing it because they recognized the original design could have been better.

This doesn’t change the fact that the damage was done due to the bug and it’s not an argument as to why there shouldn’t be any more changes.

You asked “Well they changed it once and made people extremely upset but now it cannot be undone or changed or it would make people extremely upset”

I answered: “The reason they changed it was because they were fixing a bug, not responding to complaints, so they’re two entirely different things”.

Dungeon rewards ARE working as intended, but I feel like difficulty level was not, where it was too high and people were finding it more worthwhile to exploit dungeons than to play them as intended.

How many precursors do you think were made from that bug? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?

Ghastly Great Sword From AC dungeon take 3 days to get.

179 power
128 toughness
128 vitality

Twilight

179 power
128 toughness
128 vitality

Colbear.6425:

You asked “Well they changed it once and made people extremely upset but now it cannot be undone or changed or it would make people extremely upset”

I answered: “The reason they changed it was because they were fixing a bug, not responding to complaints, so they’re two entirely different things”.

Dungeon rewards ARE working as intended, but I feel like difficulty level was not, where it was too high and people were finding it more worthwhile to exploit dungeons than to play them as intended.

How many precursors do you think were made from that bug? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?

And I was responding to a person who said the current system shouldn’t be changed because “it would upset a lot of people”. If something can be made better then it should be. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t change things for the better just because they are “working as intended”

@Ozii:
I’m sorry but your comment is completely useless.

Well. Why would it be better? Because it’s easier? What if they just made a vendor that would sell it at 1000g? Would that be okay?

Archer- I honestly would have given a similar reply to what Colbear gave. Anet made their change to prevent an exploit and make obtaining precursors back to what was originally intended. Personally, I really wish Anet was more assertive in deleting the precursors made in this way even if it took some Anet staff to manually control the offender’s account and right-click delete.

Dungeons were mechanically working as intended for the most part (there were several exploited paths and bugged paths). However, players speed farmed certain paths, completing them using said exploits or by skipping large portions of the path. This effected the economy and also caused other dungeons to have a non-existent player population, so changes were made to get everything back to what Anet had intended, while also including changes like karma rewards to make it appealing.

As much as I hate gambling and RNG systems, Anet’s precursor generation via Mystic Forge is working as intended now. I can see how my wording can be misconstrued as support, but that’s far from it. I only talk about what Anet is realistically going to do about it (simply nothing) and how they are going to treat new skins in the future. I don’t particularly like the idea of them not changing the precursor RNG, but I’m realistic and understand that Anet will most likely not change it.

Archer.6485:

Colbear.6425:

You asked “Well they changed it once and made people extremely upset but now it cannot be undone or changed or it would make people extremely upset”

I answered: “The reason they changed it was because they were fixing a bug, not responding to complaints, so they’re two entirely different things”.

Dungeon rewards ARE working as intended, but I feel like difficulty level was not, where it was too high and people were finding it more worthwhile to exploit dungeons than to play them as intended.

How many precursors do you think were made from that bug? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand?

And I was responding to a person who said the current system shouldn’t be changed because “it would upset a lot of people”. If something can be made better then it should be. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t change things for the better just because they are “working as intended”

@Ozii:
I’m sorry but your comment is completely useless.

Just adding perspective thats all. Legendary is luxury Item not required to play. Perspective

Precursor prices are all based on popularity. I suspect the price of the torch is about to go up in the next day. Currently 60g nobody has crafted the legendary until now. I gotta say it looks great up there at the minimum with the bows and on par with Bolt.

@Ozii, agree the torch appears to be one of the better off hands (only one with footsteps I believe). Probably on par with the Longbow but not the sword. Its subjective but Bolt has more animations and has a purple electric aura. If there was a good comparison, the torch is a mirror image of frostfang (which also has icy arm, frozen breath and footsteps).

As it stands, there are a couple of tiers to legendaries imo:
tier 1 = greatswords
tier 2 = sword, hammer, staff
tier 3= bows, axe, torch, shield, rifle
tier 4 = everything else

Yeah the GS are leagues ahead of the rest as far as looks and effects go. I got the hammer last night and while the ideas behind it are neat, in actuality you can’t even tell I have a legendary. Perhaps it’s because I’m asura, but the tiny little footprints are hard to see and the armor effects go unnoticed even by myself. The weapon itself is very bland looking. And I know that this weapon is much better than some of the others.

Terra.8571:

@Ozii, agree the torch appears to be one of the better off hands (only one with footsteps I believe). Probably on par with the Longbow but not the sword. Its subjective but Bolt has more animations and has a purple electric aura. If there was a good comparison, the torch is a mirror image of frostfang (which also has icy arm, frozen breath and footsteps).

As it stands, there are a couple of tiers to legendaries imo:
tier 1 = greatswords
tier 2 = sword, hammer, staff
tier 3= bows, axe, torch, shield, rifle
tier 4 = everything else

Hmm I agree on Tier 1 i think Shield should be in your tier 2 the shield is really good. the Pages turn as your fighting.

the guy that just made the torches link.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/74021-world-first-legendary-torch-rodgort/#entry2059627

Animations: fiery footsteps, arm on fire, dragon moves and is on fire. It also breathes fire more when the mouth is open.

Vid

http://youtu.be/xavdId9COsI

oZii.2864:

Terra.8571:

@Ozii, agree the torch appears to be one of the better off hands (only one with footsteps I believe). Probably on par with the Longbow but not the sword. Its subjective but Bolt has more animations and has a purple electric aura. If there was a good comparison, the torch is a mirror image of frostfang (which also has icy arm, frozen breath and footsteps).

As it stands, there are a couple of tiers to legendaries imo:
tier 1 = greatswords
tier 2 = sword, hammer, staff
tier 3= bows, axe, torch, shield, rifle
tier 4 = everything else

Hmm I agree on Tier 1 i think Shield should be in your tier 2 the shield is really good. the Pages turn as your fighting.

the guy that just made the torches link.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/74021-world-first-legendary-torch-rodgort/#entry2059627

Animations: fiery footsteps, arm on fire, dragon moves and is on fire. It also breathes fire more when the mouth is open.

Shield looks cool but other than the glow (which is limited to the shield) and pages turning on weapon swing, it has very few animations. No footsteps, the blue glow is limited to the shield. If the book had things like pages flying out then I’d agree it would be up a tier. The way I categorise items is not only how they look but animations. At the end of the day, animation is what really differentiate legendaries from high tier exotics.

Take Bolt and infinite light, infinite light has better looking skin imo but the fact Bolt gives so many animations (electric aura, footsteps, sound effects on swing, lightning trails etc) it’s the superior sword.

Flameseeker prophecies is a pretty skin with a nice animation but to move it up a tier needs footsteps and the glow needs to extend to the character and not be limited to the shield. Adding additional animation like flying pages would then put it in the greatsword category in my book.

I saw the pictures of rodgort and looks like the fiery dragon sword with animations. It’s a nice torch but to make it as good as if not better than bolt it needs to either give the player a fiery aura (ideally to the extent that the Halloween book gives) so they can do the glow in the dark jumping puzzles or add some more particle effects (waiting for the video so cannot comment further but other than what the OP stated, it seems very similar to the fiery dragon sword from HoM).

Colbear.6425:

Well. Why would it be better? Because it’s easier? What if they just made a vendor that would sell it at 1000g? Would that be okay?

Not easier, just a more clear and stable goal that doesn’t shift depending on market fluctuations and luck factor. I said I didn’t want it easier, that doesn’t mean I want it harder either.

oZii.2864:

Just adding perspective thats all. Legendary is luxury Item not required to play. Perspective

Everyone here already knows what legendaries are. We don’t need you to explain it.

Luxury or not obtaining items in an mmo is a large part of the game, therefore how it’s done can be a major factor in how much people enjoy it. And if some of us feel it’s done badly and could be made better than we’re going to talk about it.

If we say the method of obtaining legendaries is bad and you say “they’re luxury” then what’s the perspective here? They’re luxury so it’s ok if the method of obtaining them sucks? Or maybe, they’re luxury so the method of obtaining them is supposed to be unfun? That’s some nice perspective there.

Archer.6485:

Colbear.6425:

Well. Why would it be better? Because it’s easier? What if they just made a vendor that would sell it at 1000g? Would that be okay?

Not easier, just a more clear and stable goal that doesn’t shift depending on market fluctuations and luck factor. I said I didn’t want it easier, that doesn’t mean I want it harder either.

oZii.2864:

Just adding perspective thats all. Legendary is luxury Item not required to play. Perspective

Everyone here already knows what legendaries are. We don’t need you to explain it.

Luxury or not obtaining items in an mmo is a large part of the game, therefore how it’s done can be a major factor in how much people enjoy it. And if some of us feel it’s done badly and could be made better than we’re going to talk about it.

If we say the method of obtaining legendaries is bad and you say “they’re luxury” then what’s the perspective here? They’re luxury so it’s ok if the method of obtaining them sucks? Or maybe, they’re luxury so the method of obtaining them is supposed to be unfun? That’s some nice perspective there.

Its not required so people seem to be overly bent out of a luxury item and pricing due to impatience. There is post in another thread where a guy explains the lore and states that the items will more than likely become more availbe to craft the precursors as more content is added possibly this next update. Can’t find it atm but will post when I do. People are impatient game hasn’t been out that long. Thats perspective.

Average price for Precursors is 234g thats all the precursors not just the 3 everyone is focused on which is what all these threads turn into. Dawn, Dusk, Legend talks because those are the only 3 precursors available? Perspective.

They are luxury so the method of obtaining them good bad or not is optional and not required to play the game.

What about crafteable precursors? And I even have the idea for recipe:

Let’s say;
250x weapon part A
250x weapon part B
xxx mystic clovers
gift of something, preferably from the dungeon

Personally I dislike the RNG. Luck based endgame is not working. personally i would like to see legendaries crafted and be soulbound… the crafting would only be allowed through mastering all crafts. each craft has an ingredient for the weapon you want to craft. that way it would still take a while to work towards because you would need the mats for each part… but it would not be luck based. there is a huge chance that i can put swords into the forge and never get my precursor. sorry but that is not working towards something solid and its very disheartening. i wouldn’t care if it took lots of mats… i want to do it from start to finish… to me, buying it off the TP is not an option.

? that sounds easy way to easy. Also if everyone could master every crafting profession there would be no reason to buy anything from the tp from other crafting professions. You get 4 now. Having them all i just hope to whatever I need contrary to popular opinion there is money to be made in crafting. Go grab some steel ore, some iron ore, which takes not long at all make GS blades and Hilts dont make the sword and put it on the tp at lowest seller price and watch it disappear quickly.

I can level a crafting to 400 in like 30 minutes.

You dont grind much for level they say but you have to grind the life for material for legendary…

@Nebilim.5127

Quick question: did you wear a magic find set in CoE for the 30 charged lodestones? I have done enough CoE for a full set and a half and have never seen a lodestone, I have seena total of 3 charged cores though. I did not however, use a magic find set so was wondering if this is what helped you.

I can answer for him: using it or not, doesn’t matter, considering you find them inside chests.

Oh ok thanks Lucas. I was aware of this but I wondered if somehow he was getting the lodestones as drops, 30 of them is alot for one set of CoE gear’s worth of runs. Considering I’ve never seen one I am sad

The most important thing is a sense of progress. Your rng towards 77 clovers has tangible progress after every clover. The precursor is a lump sum, so there is no sense of progress regardless of how many you dump into the forge. At least if your precursor costs xxx in materials you know that you are making progress.

First of all, sorry about my terrible english.
Second, If they change the precursor chance (even for a while) and then a lot of ppl finally get theirs, another problem will show up.
There isnt charged lodestone enough for 6 legendaries on TP, and they are costing 250g for the 100 first cheaper lodestones.
So, because the demand, you may pay the price of a precursor or even more on mats in the end.

@zOltam

I was thinking the same thing there is going to be a price hike some where if a simple recipe was made to obtain the precursor.

If Anet says ok here is the recipe for dusk. The ingredient that is used for that will skyrocket. If they make a new ingredient I highly doubt it will have a drop rate better than what you see for lodestones right now. So I don’t think its as simple as people think it is to just say give us a recipe.

People are asking for a recipe for a precursor but I don’t think having 1 will put you any closer than you are now if you don’t have it. There will be something that you have to pay for and something you have to grind for.

Even if Anet says ok run AC 10 times and you can exchange the tokens for Dusk that will cause onyx lodestones to go up in price. Like zOlt said you would have 20 people in 10 minutes with a precursor as Im sure people have that many tokens stocked. Now they are all trying to get their hands on the same lodestones. Anyone that is smart with those lodestones is going to relist to a higher price. So you have your precursor that you can run around with but your still far from creating the legendary anyway.

Not to be rude…but you all need to stop conducting the complain train.

To rant, legendary precursors are SUPPOSED to be incredibly difficult to obtain…that is why they eventually make LEGENDARY WEAPONS. In the “old” days of MMO gaming nothing came easy…AND such things as grinding for a whole year to get something you wanted was not unheard of but COMMON. For example, in DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) people would have to grind for THREE YEARS to even come close to realm rank 10…and not a single person threw a fit about it! Besides, if ArenaNet made it “easier” to get these weapons, then you would probably end up complaining about how “everyone has them”…accusing ArenaNet of lacking endgame/high end loot. Honestly listening to people cry about how “this item is too expensive…I’m not gonna pay that much for it! Arena Net fix it!” is like listening to a child who lost their ice cream. Grow up and realize that its okay for something to be difficult in a game because it means the eventual reward will be so much greater! In fact, I would be willing to bet ALL of the gold on my character that those who have earned their legendary the hard way (aka no gold sellers) probably feel incredibly accomplished and are proud of their achievement. No fatigue is felt on the day of victory…and instead of griping about how “unfair” the legendary system is on the forums, you could be out there working towards your weapon!

It’s not the difficulty that people are discussing. It’s the RNG aspect to the whole precursor generation…. that’s pretty much the crux of the whole discussion.

There’s nothing legendary about gambling. There’s also nothing legendary with buying gold either (and I’m not saying that’s what most people have done… but there would be some out there that have)

Legendaries should be made through in-game achievements… not tossing random items into the forge crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

I don’t find that hard to understand. Why not make the process fun?

Heck make it 10 times harder and I would still be ok with that so long as they removed the randomness of it… back in GW1 days there was weapons/armor that took a hell of a lot of work to obtain and still people were ok with that because there was a sense of clear progression. GW2 should maintain that.

I’d rather see someone own a legendary and think “geez that person achieved everything worthwhile doing in this game and they rock!” instead of “geez that person farmed his butt off to get that weapon…”

At the moment – there’s nothing really epic or legendary about a legendary. It just takes gold – there’s really not much skill involved whatsoever (even the 500 wvw badges are super easy to get… dungeon tokens are easy to get) there’s nothing that’s hard about a legendary other than having enough gold to get it (and you can buy gold) so where does that leave the legendary status?

I pretty much run under the assumption that most people get their precursor from a gold seller or they get the gold they used to buy their precursor from a gold selller or the gem store. I know many people I’ve talked to tend to feel this way. Either that or they exploited one of the many early on money making bugs.

I mean, statistically you probably didn’t get lucky. If you did, then that’s not real achievement. You just got lucky. If you didn’t, if you bought your gold from Anet or a gold seller – how is that any less of an achievement.

It’s not. Because getting a precursor takes as much ability as a monkey tossing poop into a bowl. That’s what I’ve been doing. Tossing kitten into a bowl hoping for a reward.

Legendary status = amount of time spent farming cursed shore.
As for lodestones, imo ( as mentioned in other threads) they should be available through the exchange of dungeon tokens, like the runes and gear are. One lodestone for say 180 tokens or more, people were discussing, im no economic genius but that seems to take a little of the rng out of it and motivate people to do the dungeons more.

Azelroth.6801:

It’s not the difficulty that people are discussing. It’s the RNG aspect to the whole precursor generation…. that’s pretty much the crux of the whole discussion.

There’s nothing legendary about gambling. There’s also nothing legendary with buying gold either (and I’m not saying that’s what most people have done… but there would be some out there that have)

Legendaries should be made through in-game achievements… not tossing random items into the forge crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

I don’t find that hard to understand. Why not make the process fun?

Heck make it 10 times harder and I would still be ok with that so long as they removed the randomness of it… back in GW1 days there was weapons/armor that took a hell of a lot of work to obtain and still people were ok with that because there was a sense of clear progression. GW2 should maintain that.

I’d rather see someone own a legendary and think “geez that person achieved everything worthwhile doing in this game and they rock!” instead of “geez that person farmed his butt off to get that weapon…”

At the moment – there’s nothing really epic or legendary about a legendary. It just takes gold – there’s really not much skill involved whatsoever (even the 500 wvw badges are super easy to get… dungeon tokens are easy to get) there’s nothing that’s hard about a legendary other than having enough gold to get it (and you can buy gold) so where does that leave the legendary status?

See the problem is people aren’t looking at the whole picture you don’t want rng for the precursor

If Anet gave you a Precursor and you where going to start your process to make your legendary lets say sunrise.

Are you going to go out and farm every material to make it? Are you really about to farm all 250 ancient bones when they are dirt cheap on the TP? You don’t like RNG so that would remove RNG because you know where to get your ancient bones just like you know where to get the precursor on the TP.

250 Globs of ecto – RNG
250 of each of the T6 Mats – RNG

Now you say there is nothing legendary about buying your precursor so I would assume you are going to go and farm all the above. Which makes you deal with RNG.

I know you wont go buy it because you said thats not legendary. So your argument is you want the precursor just to have it I guess.

Buy it-= Not legendary
RNG = Despise it its dumb remove RNG

Dont complete legendary because both are needed to complete legendary.

oZii.2864:

Azelroth.6801:

It’s not the difficulty that people are discussing. It’s the RNG aspect to the whole precursor generation…. that’s pretty much the crux of the whole discussion.

There’s nothing legendary about gambling. There’s also nothing legendary with buying gold either (and I’m not saying that’s what most people have done… but there would be some out there that have)

Legendaries should be made through in-game achievements… not tossing random items into the forge crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.

I don’t find that hard to understand. Why not make the process fun?

Heck make it 10 times harder and I would still be ok with that so long as they removed the randomness of it… back in GW1 days there was weapons/armor that took a hell of a lot of work to obtain and still people were ok with that because there was a sense of clear progression. GW2 should maintain that.

I’d rather see someone own a legendary and think “geez that person achieved everything worthwhile doing in this game and they rock!” instead of “geez that person farmed his butt off to get that weapon…”

At the moment – there’s nothing really epic or legendary about a legendary. It just takes gold – there’s really not much skill involved whatsoever (even the 500 wvw badges are super easy to get… dungeon tokens are easy to get) there’s nothing that’s hard about a legendary other than having enough gold to get it (and you can buy gold) so where does that leave the legendary status?

See the problem is people aren’t looking at the whole picture you don’t want rng for the precursor

If Anet gave you a Precursor and you where going to start your process to make your legendary lets say sunrise.

Are you going to go out and farm every material to make it? Are you really about to farm all 250 ancient bones when they are dirt cheap on the TP? You don’t like RNG so that would remove RNG because you know where to get your ancient bones just like you know where to get the precursor on the TP.

250 Globs of ecto – RNG
250 of each of the T6 Mats – RNG

Now you say there is nothing legendary about buying your precursor so I would assume you are going to go and farm all the above. Which makes you deal with RNG.

I know you wont go buy it because you said thats not legendary. So your argument is you want the precursor just to have it I guess.

Buy it-= Not legendary
RNG = Despise it its dumb remove RNG

Dont complete legendary because both are needed to complete legendary.

Ozii while I respect you playing devils advocate can you be honest & tell us whether or not you have a completed legendary or a precursor? I ask because any & every thread related to this subject you seem determined to prevent any discussion related to changes that may impact precursor acquisition.

None of us are asking for legendaries to be handed to us. However, there needs to be a alternative to gambling or purchasing off the TP. Precursors should be account bound like every other portion of the legendary process. Throwing garbage into the mystic forge for hours on end hoping to get the precursor you desire is a flawed design.

Ozii it’s funny that you mention that because I actually am aiming for sunrise lol

Now with that being said. I am trying to farm for most of my ingredients (although not all). I acknowledge that some RNG is inevitably going to be apart of the legendary process (in particular the mystic clovers – which is totally OK since they are based upon luck which is highly relevant to their generation and I have no qualms about that part being completely RNG whatsoever)

It’s the precursor being RNG that I do not understand as it doesn’t really make any sense. The core concept behind the Mystic Forge is to control the economy by offering a way to sink items out. I ask you this, if there was a set precursor recipe – would that not achieve the same result? Items would still be leaving the economy via the Mystic Forge. People are still going to be using the MF to make weapons (more item sinking). Rares would still be leaving via salvaging due to ectos. So it doesn’t change the infrastructure of the Mystic Forge to implement it in this manner.

Anyway, I feel as if I’m repeating myself and talking in circles so I’m done with this topic…. I wish everyone the best of luck and perhaps Anet will listen and help implement a better system in the future onwards and upwards friends.

The only way to “fix” legendaries is to get rid of the RNG and monetary value associated with it.

Acquiring one should not be about who gets lucky or who has the most money. This leads to RMT, which i believe is how a large portion of current legendaries were acquired.

Anet was on the right track with parts of the chain such as world completion and dungeon tokens, but they dropped the ball big time everywhere else.

I’m saying this as someone who has everything for mine, minus the precursor of course. There’s nothing special about something that anyone with a big wallet can acquire.

@Azelroth- I agree that some RNG is alright and I feel that the Gift of Fortune does this adequately while also being somewhat satisfying and acceptable. If we go along with the assumption that precursors were a method of controlling the economy, then let’s see how prices may be effected without it. I would foresee an awful domino effect of price deflation starting from the top going down with item qualities.

Without the Mystic Forge digesting exotics, the supply of them would increase and the prices would drop. The incentive of Mystic Forging rares has now diminished with a lower or non-existent profit margin. Prices for rares may also decrease as a result. Since rares have decreased in price and less are being MF’d, more rares are being salvaged and more ectos are supplied, which drop the price of ectos. Ectos are prevalent in a lot of high-end recipes, so all those items also see a huge price drop.

While the price drops seem great initially, this means that all your gear loot isn’t worth as much, which is generally a major source of income for players other then harvesting nodes and crafting drops. Very expensive and hard to come by rare crafting materials are now even harder for players to purchase. There are also items like Elonian Wine and Gift Recipes that cost a set amount of gold, which also would be harder to obtain with a weaker income of gold.

I will say that I’m no economist but that’s how I would perceive the economy and player base be effected with other repercussions I’m sure I don’t have the foresight to address. The way I see it, any alternative that replaces the current method of precursor generation must also get rid of a good quantity of exotic weapons to prevent this.

A possible solution that does this would be a chance to receive a new rare weapon crafting material from salvaging only exotics. So if you salvage an exotic greatsword you get a chance (similar to ecto chance rate) to obtain new greatsword rare crafting material component (similar to PvP salvaging but you’d need more then just one). Players would then use these in a new Mystic Forge recipe to generate a Precursor greatsword.

Again that’s just a thought up on the spot idea, but essentially exotic weapon removal is necessary.

@SteepledHat

I had the same feeling when I see ppl with a legendary + cultural armor/gem skin. And some of them have both above plus commander lol.

Lol so much gold being blown on this legendary weapon. I just want my commander and I’ll be happy. That’s my end game.

@snow it doesn’t really matter if I do or don’t have one. I my opinion wouldn’t change. I am not against a different method I am just saying that many of the suggestions to change the system don’t seem really thought through. We know the current system so we can scrutinize it to death. We can start from exploration to gift of X. A change in anyway to obtaining the precursor will effect the entire economy of the game. So an alternative suggestion should take that into consideration. It isn’t as simple as give me a recipe. Which what almost every alternative suggestion is.

Also on my server there is a guild (yes I am in that guild) they are all working together for their legendaries. Everyone puts in money toward a precursor and then depending on who did the most to help with influence then the funds go toward that precursors. Everyone also goes farming together to get the materials for the gifts. Its a group effort where we keep track with a spread sheet. We just finished kudzu for 1 member of our guild. Then we will move on to put together the warhorn for our next member.

Maybe the current system sucks for a person wanting to solo put it together. I know the guy who created the world first torch said he had help from guildies.

We are doing it as a group effort.

I still don’t understand how some people are saying they spent +700g on items in the MF.
Are you guys buying gold or are just extremely lucky?

Most people I know didn’t even break the 100g barrier.

I honestly am confused…

It’s a sum from prerelease days till today, for who didn’t abuse of exploits just attempting the weapon normal way Today we speak, i don’t see how impossible can be 700g wasted

I find this kind of sad that we haven’t had an official response about the state of acquiring precursors (unless I missed it). If there isn’t a change coming in the future, then I might as well stop playing this game all together. I don’t want to be a part of future RNG systems to obtain items. I’ve only wasted 150g on the Mystic Forge and there aren’t many good ways to make money anymore. I’ve reduced myself to only doing 3-5 mystic forges per day because I don’t play as much. The system sucks the life away out of the game for me because I want to complete an ingame goal but it feels impossible.

wicket.2485:

I find this kind of sad that we haven’t had an official response about the state of acquiring precursors (unless I missed it). If there isn’t a change coming in the future, then I might as well stop playing this game all together. I don’t want to be a part of future RNG systems to obtain items. I’ve only wasted 150g on the Mystic Forge and there aren’t many good ways to make money anymore. I’ve reduced myself to only doing 3-5 mystic forges per day because I don’t play as much. The system sucks the life away out of the game for me because I want to complete an ingame goal but it feels impossible.

Well, the only major items that require RNG is the legendary, you have what…like everything else to choose from? And if you just want to complete an ingame goal, then what?—quit the game? Which is what you were going to do now anyways. The change shouldn’t be necessary. IMO, the best thing to do is make a new set of “legendaries” that have more definite recipes—that way, people can stop complaining about not getting a legendary and we can keep the current set of legendaries…well, legendary. And let’s face it, plenty of “heros” are legends because they were fortunate and born great, not because they worked hard for it.

Again, watch Naruto and learn about Neji and Rock Lee; two sides of different legendary origins. I totally support people who want the legendaries for the ingame completion. It’s pretty satisfactory. I do not support people who just want these specific legendary skins—it’s just a skin; it wouldn’t be legendary if everyone could get it easier (aka more definite, b/c if you take out RNG, people will have it all over the place); it’s just a skin and Anet made it the way it’s supposed to be—be a game designer yourself if you want to change things, but seriously don’t expect to play a game and want to change something that by no means affects anyone other than their “wants”.

TL;DR Yes, we need a better way to get the legendary achievement—but through more legendary options so we can have variety not make the current set easier to obtain.

I don’t understand why people complain so hard for a skin. Getting a Legendary is part of something different to do at end-game, but the end result doesn’t need to be an absolute achievement for this MMO. Also, I want to add that the process of getting a Legendary should take much longer than 2 weeks to a month and I’d hazard a guess that it’s what ANet devs intended in the first place… Either way, it’s certainly not that ANet doesn’t care; it’s because the Legendary system and crafting don’t need to be changed whatsoever.

The system isn’t broken. The demand far outweighs the offer, since everybody wants to have a Legendary and don’t realize that it’s never going to happen. Heck, trying to find another skin than a Legendary may yield you interesting results…

Let’s face it. ANet doesn’t even need to give us an official response for complaints about something that isn’t broken, is entirely optional. People expecting for one are the ones with their heads in the sand.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

wicket.2485:

I find this kind of sad that we haven’t had an official response about the state of acquiring precursors (unless I missed it). If there isn’t a change coming in the future, then I might as well stop playing this game all together. I don’t want to be a part of future RNG systems to obtain items. I’ve only wasted 150g on the Mystic Forge and there aren’t many good ways to make money anymore. I’ve reduced myself to only doing 3-5 mystic forges per day because I don’t play as much. The system sucks the life away out of the game for me because I want to complete an ingame goal but it feels impossible.

Well, the only major items that require RNG is the legendary, you have what…like everything else to choose from? And if you just want to complete an ingame goal, then what?—quit the game? Which is what you were going to do now anyways. The change shouldn’t be necessary. IMO, the best thing to do is make a new set of “legendaries” that have more definite recipes—that way, people can stop complaining about not getting a legendary and we can keep the current set of legendaries…well, legendary. And let’s face it, plenty of “heros” are legends because they were fortunate and born great, not because they worked hard for it.

Again, watch Naruto and learn about Neji and Rock Lee; two sides of different legendary origins. I totally support people who want the legendaries for the ingame completion. It’s pretty satisfactory. I do not support people who just want these specific legendary skins—it’s just a skin; it wouldn’t be legendary if everyone could get it easier (aka more definite, b/c if you take out RNG, people will have it all over the place); it’s just a skin and Anet made it the way it’s supposed to be—be a game designer yourself if you want to change things, but seriously don’t expect to play a game and want to change something that by no means affects anyone other than their “wants”.

TL;DR Yes, we need a better way to get the legendary achievement—but through more legendary options so we can have variety not make the current set easier to obtain.

We already have fake legendaries in the game with definitive recipes. I’m not watching Naruto; it’s just bad. I’m not asking the devs to change the skins or change the whole game. I and many other people are just asking them to take most of the RNG out of the precursor creation part. Why would I want to be a game designer and how does this have relevance? I think you are trolling me, but I’m not even sure.