Guild Wars 2

Well, to keep it simple:
My idea would be that, instead of doing the legendary armor piece “all at once” involving a “precursor item” and various gifts, to make the legendary armor piece, one would start with an Ascended weapon piece.
With each “upgrade”, one would put in the mystic forge:

• the ascended piece (the usually costs from 50 to 100 gold to craft)
• an ascended insignia (that usually costs from 50 to 60 gold to craft)
• a legendary gift (hopefully lesser gifts, as is the case with vision crystals for weapons and armor)
• another lesser legendary gift.

Each upgrade would give a new stat combination to the armor, that the stats already in the armor could be changed like they can be changed in legendary weapons, but in this case the only options would be the insignias you already included in the armor.

Each upgrade would take a different gift, going from cheaper/easier gifts to more expensive/harder ones.
After the Nth upgrade, with the last gift, the armor piece would be legendary and allow to choose from all stat combinations in the game.
N = enough for it to start a very rare thing. I think that, if a legendary weapon costs 2000g to 3000g to do, a full legendary armor should cost double that, let’s say, 5000g for the full set. On the other hand, the more simple items, like shoulders, would cost less than 800g to complete.

Advantages:

• A clear path of advancement, that is horizontal (allows for more variety in play styles) and is dictated by the player, that chooses which stat combinations he would rather have first.
• No single ultra-rare item that dictates if you can advance to your legendary or not (I’m talking about precursors).
• Would allow for new gold/karma sinks in the economy, I hope for new ones involving daily crafts! It’s really sad that the once-a-day ability to do ascended mats results in gold loss in the case of ascended leather, for example.

Risks and problems:

• I really hope those armor pieces continue account-bound after becoming legendary. Otherwise it would be as meaningless as legendary weapons are today, after becoming tradeable.
• You guys tell me!

Thanks for reading.

That sounds like another horrible grind, that involves zero skill.
Don’t we have enough of this in this game already?

Actually, you put a grind on a grind. What is legendary about this? The grind?
This will make GW2 just more of a TP simulator.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

That sounds like another horrible grind, that involves zero skill.
Don’t we have enough of this in this game already?

Actually, you put a grind on a grind. What is legendary about this? The grind?
This will make GW2 just more of a TP simulator.

I think that, if a “not elite” player wants to work towards his legendary, he should have the option.
There are already armor and weapon sets that reward skillful play, like the glorious armor and the luminescent armor.
Legendary weapon are currently a reward for time in the game and luck, but the luck part is overwhelming (precursor) and the time payoff is only at the end of the road.

With the system I described, there would be little payoffs at the middle of the road (new stat sets available), and the influence of luck would be diminished.

This could even lead to more skillful play, because people would be able to change their stat sets to something adequate to the content they are playing.

Of course, if ArenaNet wants to condition progression on the legendary armor to skill in the game, they can make some of the lesser gifts obtainable only through skillful play, for example, as a reward for a difficult achievement.

There! Problem solved for the elitists.

I was thinking why don’t we tie the Legendary Armor into the OoW, DP, and Vigil. We could do a scavenger hunt to collect the gifts needed, then bring them to an NPC in our repective order to buy a set of Legendary Order armor.

What does everyone think? To make it more difficult we could even introduce a rank system that requires us to reach a certain rank to be able to buy from the NPC.

steveway.3167:

I was thinking why don’t we tie the Legendary Armor into the OoW, DP, and Vigil. We could do a scavenger hunt to collect the gifts needed, then bring them to an NPC in our repective order to buy a set of Legendary Order armor.

What does everyone think? To make it more difficult we could even introduce a rank system that requires us to reach a certain rank to be able to buy from the NPC.

Wait, so you want to introduce a reputation grind. Which I never had a problem with in other games, but this would make this game just like every other game. Grind rep for better stuff.

Why do people think progression is farming for tons of gold and materials? That is the worst of all gates possible. It punishes new players, as they will take forever to get the gold and the materials. It punishes the casuals, this game was made for. If the illusion of progression is getting so far out of reach – the stick the carrot is on sooo long that you can no longer see the carrot – people will stop playing this game.

We do not need less players, or scare off the new ones (they even created the NPE for them), so take all those ideas and put them where no light will ever shine.

I understand that people fear the idea of challenge, especially in a ultra-casual game like GW2. But at least let the players feel like they progress with their goals while playing the game, and not by taking over the job of a bot.

The last thing this game needs is another hardcore grind in a game made for casuals.

The thing I hated the most from GW1: Grinding out Faction/rep points. So, if GW2 were to add something like that, with grinding akin to what was in GW1, I’m not sure how I’d feel about it.

DDCarvalho.2071:

snip*

I like this idea, and I’m sure many more would too (probably not so much in the GW2 forums). Upgrading ascended armor to Legendary status for the stat swap would be a nice long term goal to work towards, especially players who don’t invest much playtime into alts.

No stat increase horizontal>vertical is a nice touch too.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Wait, so you want to introduce a reputation grind. Which I never had a problem with in other games, but this would make this game just like every other game. Grind rep for better stuff.

Why do people think progression is farming for tons of gold and materials? That is the worst of all gates possible. It punishes new players, as they will take forever to get the gold and the materials. It punishes the casuals, this game was made for. If the illusion of progression is getting so far out of reach – the stick the carrot is on sooo long that you can no longer see the carrot – people will stop playing this game.

We do not need less players, or scare off the new ones (they even created the NPE for them), so take all those ideas and put them where no light will ever shine.

I understand that people fear the idea of challenge, especially in a ultra-casual game like GW2. But at least let the players feel like they progress with their goals while playing the game, and not by taking over the job of a bot.

The last thing this game needs is another hardcore grind in a game made for casuals.

First, Lets keep everything civil and not resort to rude remarks like “take all those ideas and put them where no light will ever shine.” It was an idea to make it more difficult to achieve if neccessary. My idea was for the Legendary armor to be tied to the orders and a scavenger hunt to get the items to purchase from a vendor.

Second, legendary anything is something to work for. I am a casual player. I don’t get involved in the hardcore grind and find a lot of grind tedious. There do need to be some long term goals however that people can work towards.

Third, GW1 had a faction system so its not like it would be anything new to the universe. (Kurzik/Luxon/sunspear to name a few. Which coincidentally had unique high level armor availiable at higher ranks.) Im not suggesting a ridiculously high rank,
It could be something like the PVP reward track for use in PVE the end prize would be an item that would unlock the NPC.

Let’s keep it constructive but I would be open to other peoples ideas.

The only thing that would make this worthwhile is if this upgrading process also introduced new legendary armor skins (akin to Mawdrey’s progressive cosmetic enhancements).

Without the ability to also swap sigils/runes on legendary gear, the usefulness of swapping stats is severely limited. I’d argue this would be an even greater problem for armor because runes are often more closely tied to stats and build than sigils. As with legendary weapons now, it is more convenient, functional, and cheaper to craft additional ascended versions of the gear you want. This way you can apply upgrade components best suited to the purpose of the item and its stats. With good inventory management, this also makes swapping out stats easier than dealing with the current, cumbersome stat swapping interface on legendaries.

On skins:
I didn’t talk about the skin related to the legendary because, well, the functionality matters to me much more than the visual.
But I imagine that the skin could be dictated by the gifts you put in with the ascended pieces and insignias.
If you put a “mesmer” gift, you would get a legendary mesmer skin, necromancer could get a tatoo skin like in GW1 (that is a well beaten horse, but I still like it!)

On runes:
The point Elestian makes is a very good one. If you can’t cheaply swap runes, the utility of swapping stats legendary armor is reduced.

My “endgame” with this proposal: cold-swap (ooc) builds
On the end, what I would like is a system that makes easier for people to “play like a pro”. One thing I see in the videos of the real pros in PvE, people who speed clear Arah with 1 person, is that, between fights on the dungeons, they swap utility skills, weapons and armor from the inventory like it’s no big thing.

Of course, it’s no big thing, but the average casual player is too casual to do that. Even I, on my path away from being a noob, just recently started changing my utility skills more frequently at dungeons.

So, I think the greatest horizontal progression the game can award the player, is the ability to play more and more like a pro, adapting his character to the moment, without introducing cumbersome methods like maintaining your inventory/hero panel open at all times and/or losing valuable inventory space.

That’s why, for me, the endgame in horizontal progression would be for people to be able to maintain various builds and use them according to the moment, in a streamlined process. After doing some things (equipping ascended, completing personal story, another more difficult gate), people would get access to a second build, and would be able to define a second skill bar that would be more easily swappable (but only out of combat and respecting current cooldown of the utility/elite skills).

Completed another milestone? Get access to a third build to be ready for easy swapping. (I would imagine 3 would be the limit for easy swapping).

With this system of horizontal progression, more casual players would get better at the game, and the pros would also enjoy the increased quality of life of not having to maintain inventory/hero panel open and choosing skills from the little arrow stuff.

Most casual players won’t play like a pro, because they can’t.
For most players, ascended stuff is already the long term goal, and even that seems impossible for many.

Why do people think there needs to be a long term goal for the pros? This game does not cater to anyone with skills by any content that is ever added.

So we have a long term goal: Ascended items. Now you want to introduce legendary stuff where one piece will be as hard to get like a whole set of ascended armor? This is not progression, this would be bad game design. Even the fairly hard core people would get demotivated by this piece of kitten. Grind or die?

Colin Johanson: “In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

But what you are talking about is probably the biggest grind in an AAA MMO up to date.

I know that ANet does not give much about the stuff they said in the past. Hell, the manifesto is as dead as a manifesto can be.

But not even ANet would be dumb enough to put such an epic grind in GW2. If you remember the uproar when they introduced ascended items back in November 2012, you can only imagine how these forums would burn the day they introduced something like this…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Most casual players won’t play like a pro, because they can’t.
For most players, ascended stuff is already the long term goal, and even that seems impossible for many.

Why do people think there needs to be a long term goal for the pros? This game does not cater to anyone with skills by any content that is ever added.

So we have a long term goal: Ascended items. Now you want to introduce legendary stuff where one piece will be as hard to get like a whole set of ascended armor? This is not progression, this would be bad game design. Even the fairly hard core people would get demotivated by this piece of kitten. Grind or die?

Colin Johanson: “In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

But what you are talking about is probably the biggest grind in an AAA MMO up to date.

I know that ANet does not give much about the stuff they said in the past. Hell, the manifesto is as dead as a manifesto can be.

But not even ANet would be dumb enough to put such an epic grind in GW2. If you remember the uproar when they introduced ascended items back in November 2012, you can only imagine how these forums would burn the day they introduced something like this…

The uproar you speak of was due to the vertical progression of stats, this would be horizontal, that would give no advantage over another with top tier ascended armor.

Some of us “vets” that have the same game today as we have been playing since release, that take no interest in alts, would enjoy this sort of progression. Does this idea have to follow op’s way of attaining?..no, but is still a good idea to be discussed and built upon.

Sadly I don’t think armor will come any time soon. They are working on amulets atm, not armor. Cool ideas though!

Here are the amulet data mines showing they are working on legendary amulets:
Test Amulet Elementalist lvl 1337: [&AgEQWQAA]

Test Amulet Engineer lvl 1337: [&AgERWQAA]

Test Amulet Mesmer lvl 1337: [&AgESWQAA]

Test Amulet Necromancer lvl 1337: [&AgETWQAA]

Test Amulet Ranger lvl 1337: [&AgEUWQAA]

Test Amulet Guardian lvl 1337: [&AgEVWQAA]

Test Amulet Thief lvl 1337: [&AgEWWQAA]

Test Amulet Warrior lvl 1337: [&AgEXWQAA]

Wetpaw.3487:

Some of us “vets” that have the same game today as we have been playing since release, that take no interest in alts, would enjoy this sort of progression. Does this idea have to follow op’s way of attaining?..no, but is still a good idea to be discussed and built upon.

Thanks for the support.
I imagine that any option that would support 2 or more cold-swap builds would need a pretty big overhaul of the interface, and solve problems like the fact people can’t put more than 1 rune set in 1 armor (different stats in armor would call for different runes to make sense).

But I would welcome very much a change in that direction, because at least for me, the slight vertical progression of ascended equipment is not interesting enough to pursue. That’s why I would like to put an extra “utility” in ascended equipment that would even prepare the way for legendary equipment and be a clearer path of progression that can be pursued little by little.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Most casual players won’t play like a pro, because they can’t.
For most players, ascended stuff is already the long term goal, and even that seems impossible for many.

Why do people think there needs to be a long term goal for the pros? This game does not cater to anyone with skills by any content that is ever added.

Casual/pro???? lmao…….

Pro, as in professional, means that you’re making money from playing this game, which I doubt is what you really mean. Maybe pro to you just means countless hours in front of a computer monitor, with no other real world responsibilities.

Lots of current casual players used to be real hardcore players, and now chose to be casual either because of real life commitments, or because they just don’t want to sink that sort of time into a GAME anymore. It has very little to do with game “skills” as you imply by your post.

And yea, thank goodness, this game caters more to the casual crowd…..those that just want to have fun rather than sinking the majority of their current life into killing/manipulating pixels.

I always get a good chuckle about these sorts of casual/pro/hardcore sort of posts……like being a hardcore and/or ‘pro’ means a higher status in the game chain of life or like one does or does not have have the mad skillz to be a ‘pro’…….lol…….lol.

Yea, there are some players out there that have better reaction time, higher end programmable keyboards and game mice, and a better understanding of different character builds. And yea, there are a very few players out there that actually do make money off just playing games.

But, for the most part, hardcore or ‘pro’ just means that person has a lot more time that he/she is willing to commit to the game.

And one question…..how do you know that ascended stuff is the long term goal of “most players”? Got any hard data on that? Or is that “most” just mean the group that you run with in game?

Yeah… Those terms, “pro”, “hardcore”, usually only mean “elitist”.
And those on this group don’t even recognize ArenaNet tries to make content for them, like the Living Story achievements. After all, if someone else was able to do it, it can only mean it was “too easy”, “no challenge” and stuff.

But back to legendary armor.
I almost got hyped enough to try my hand at Paint, to sketch how I imagine would be the interface to dual or three-speccing. Maybe later.
In the meantime, anyone has any other ideas and suggestions about legendary armor?

Before you suggest crazy thing like this, you may wanna read the amt of complain regarding the current BiS item in the game.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Inflation-pushes-progression-beyond-reach

Here’s a good place to start. kthxbye

I read that post, BlueBoy. I don’t agree.

A friend of mine with less than 200 hours in the game already forged 2 or 3 ascended light armor pieces. He grinds a lot on FGS, but that’s his option.
Now, I prefer other methods that don’t feel like a grind. I like dungeons, and I love Silverwastes for the fun of it, and both are pretty lucrative.

I have done my legendary staff, but I have never done any ascended armor pieces.
Lack of money or resources?
No. I haven’t done it because I think it is pointless currently.

The ascended armor brings me nothing I would want, but if it would focus on dual/multi-speccing instead of a “little more” stats, I would feel like building a much more useful (and powerful) thing. Also, if you could “upgrade” it little by little, it would be even better. Hence my proposal.

I’m thinking of ideas to solve the fact that ascended multi-spec armor wouldn’t have more than 1 runeset and because of that, it could reduce the utility of multi-speccing.
One idea I had was that, after the person got the ability to dual-spec, it could “merge” 6 runes into 1 “supreme rune”, which would be account bound since part of the mechanic of runes is that, if you use a rune, you only get it back by destroying the armor (or using an expensive gem item). I think account bound would accomplish part of this tradeoff that runes have, if it is an important thing to keep.
Each stat-set would have a slot for 1 supreme rune.
Also, each stat set would be also linked to 1 trait-set, so when you changed between them, automatically you would change your traits too.
Still lazy for trying to draw how would be an interface for that.

This game needs less brainless grind ty. Before someone say things would be bad if it is only awarded by skillful play, how is things being only rewarded by grinding like a zombie any better?

- People want long term goals to aspire to. There was a friend of mine that, despite my advice to not bother with ascended armor, started crafting it. Why? Because it was something to invest on his character and improve it.

- ArenaNet wants loyal customers that continue playing the game. Long term goals help in that.

It is difficult to quantify skill, because this is a MMO game and even when you aren’t good enough, your friends can help you with getting those Shards of Zaithan (my case).

If they implemented as acquiral method for legendary armor, instead of a costly, time consuming method (grind), some pass/fail gate like the Luminescent Armor achievements, skilled players would get it very fast and leave the game, and unskilled players would get frustrated with not having a way of improving their character and would also leave the game.

I’m not saying skill shouldn’t play a role on getting the “ultimate shinies”, but it really shouldn’t be the only mechanic/factor for it.