Guild Wars 2

TL:DR – Legendaries are not legendary as has been said repeatedly. DE’s are dead because people are farming gold for skins and legendaries in high gold areas mainly instances (changing with the new update). Gold is too powerful and is = legendary. Incorporate legendary attainment into DE chains. Instead of gift recipes require grinding (for gold), requiring the activation and completion of X DEs #X times or collecting X trash items from X mobs etc (more thought out than that to limit min/max) will be a more fulfilling experience and PROMOTE MAP DENSITY.

Preface: This post is really intended at putting my thoughts to paper but I would love to hear your opinions and have a proper discussion. This has likely been discussed but I would like to create some fresh direction based on Anet’s goal of fixing the core game. If you have any l2p, disrespectful, or attacking comments I kindly ask you leave them out of this discussion, thank you.

Anet’s plan for the year is focused on primarily building on the core component of the game. Love this and am seeing progress in them making world bosses more appealing already.

What sold me on this game was the countless amount of pre-launch talk on the groundbreaking Dynamic Event (DE) System. And it truly lived up to expectations as it was a heck of a lot of fun at launch. Maps full of people everywhere doing chain after chain of DE content. Anet even said they would be building on it by adding more DE’s throughout the maps.

But then everyone leveled up, spread out through the maps, hit 80 and didn’t need to do DEs anymore. I think the major cause for this is that most of the big carrots (targets for people to aim at) with the main one being legendaries, was built around gold. Gold practically gets you a legendary (you can even buy on on the tp) and gets you most of the stat distribution armour and trinket types.

For a game that incorporates multiple currencies, gold in my opinion is way too powerful. Not only that but to then create a trading post without any regulations simply creates a wide gap between the rich and poor.

Not everyone goes for a legendary but a I would say most do or at least most aim for it. This leads people into the highest gold deriving activities which were mainly farming very specific areas and event chains (orr), and running instances (fotm and dungeon speedruns) thus leaving the rest of the amazing world and content Anet created empty.

So what I think really caused dead maps and poor NPCs not being helped through their DEs is mainly the fact that everyone is farming gold (usually for their legendary or other nice skin).

What I think could be implemented instead was something that actually incorporates all of the world. I personally found the Gift of Mastery the most fun to do when doing my legendary as it involved going out into the world. This should extend into the other gifts. For example instead of needing all of the t6 mats you could have needed to do specific DEs or make it such that DE’s drop items that you trade in for components of the gift.

Or perhaps using all the ‘npc trash’ or junk you get from monsters and needing certain amounts of those. Basically legendaries should not have been = gold in my opinion. Linking them to the actual world and through the DEs would have left more people in the maps instead of instances and been a more fulfilling experience. Getting my legendary was hardly legendary. After getting the gift of mastery the rest was just legendary gold making.

Perhaps they just ran out of time when creating the game but I do hope they head somewhere in this direction with the updates this year. Personal story looks promising and the hints of a scavenger hunt could incorporate this! I miss seeing people in maps doing DEs!

So after reading all of my waffle (thank you) what do you think? Would you like to see carrots like legendaries and gift related skins be attained more throughout the world and using the DE system? Or are you happy farming for gold to get them?

Y’know, if certain legendaries were linked to certain/a certain handful of DE chains, it’d definitely populate the maps more evenly.

Like, say, Harathi Hinterland’s centaur chain containing three steps along the event (so people couldn’t just show up for the last bit) and gives you a necessary piece you need a certain number of for a part your legendary.

Special events that weave through a map and necessitate keeping up with the whole thing would not only populate a map but make it entertaining, I think. Money from the kills and the rewards of about a dozen events, with the major reward (including piece) at the end.

I’ve actually been wishing they had a reward ‘screen’ like at the end of a dungeon for long DE chains. It’d give everyone more incentive to do them and see them through, even if the increase in reward was minor.

As someone who really likes how the DE system turned out, I’d love if doing entire chains or more obscure events was rewarded more. Not necessarily because I’d want the rewards, but there’s definitely a lack of balance with some events being extremely popular while a lot of zones barely have players in them.

Ideally we wouldn’t just get a new currency that drops from all mobs in a specific region, because that would still make people minmax and only do a small number of events. But requiring bits from all steps of a chain sounds like an interesting idea. It would also add to the legendary feeling of a legendary weapon, since it would literally require you to become a legend – as in, known among people everywhere.

I agree. There’s too many T6 materials needed to create those gifts that it just shouts “more gold” than “earning it with hardwork”. Like TS said, Gift of Mastery is one gift that displays how much time and effort the player has dedicated to obtain it. Gifts should be more like that, instead of a whole bunch of T6 mats.

Scumbag Mawile.6384:

Y’know, if certain legendaries were linked to certain/a certain handful of DE chains, it’d definitely populate the maps more evenly.

Like, say, Harathi Hinterland’s centaur chain containing three steps along the event (so people couldn’t just show up for the last bit) and gives you a necessary piece you need a certain number of for a part your legendary.

Special events that weave through a map and necessitate keeping up with the whole thing would not only populate a map but make it entertaining, I think. Money from the kills and the rewards of about a dozen events, with the major reward (including piece) at the end.

I’ve actually been wishing they had a reward ‘screen’ like at the end of a dungeon for long DE chains. It’d give everyone more incentive to do them and see them through, even if the increase in reward was minor.

I like this idea. Having a reward screen at end of a long DE chain will be great for some incentive to follow events through.

But if they ever change the process for legendaries to incorporate this sort of stuff it will definitely have to be for new ones or include a parallel system (which you negate it’s power straight away).

They said they will likely release new legendaries. Let’s hope they see the great responses in this post and implement a different system to attain them than currently.