Guild Wars 2

I know that Anet has typically been against providing a distinctive advantage to certain types of content simply to avoid the charge of pay-to-play. I get that although I probably stand in opposition to it in some respects provided it’s not egregious. (The watchwork mining pick and molten or consortium harvesting sickles come to mind as examples of something i’d like to see more of.)

However, I’m vastly in favor of rewarding the massive effort and expense of creating a legendary with some sort of bonus power for each that matches the lore or aesthetic of the item. Creating a legendary is a monumental expense of time and resources that might otherwise go to growing a person’s in-game wealth or benevolence. To reward the effort with something notably cooler and impactful for PvE gameplay seems appropriate to me. After all, these are LEGENDARY weapons and armor! Lore-wise, they should be magically superior to every other item in the game. Special effects for the items make them look awesome, but they’re not effectively better than ascended, and to me, that seems wrong somehow.

Imagine a Quip that inflicts confusion, a Twilight that inflicts blindness, or a HOPE that poisons — all as inherent qualities. They aren’t game-breaking additions, but can present a more powerful and legendary feel to the weapons. Something similar could be considered for the armor sets as well.

These bonus effects could be eliminated from PvP and WvW to keep the competitive aspect fair, but I see little reason not to include them to PvE.

Forgive me if this has been brought up before — I did a quick search to see if other threads existed on the forum and didn’t find anything.

Nope I would rather see free sigil changes on legendary weapons.

No, nope, nay, nah.

Well your idea is a lot less game-breaking than many suggestions to “improve” legendaries, but I still think it’s unnecessary.

I’ve made 2 legendaries so far and will probably make more in future and I’m completely happy with the way they work. IMO if someone made a legendary and then was disappointed that it’s functionally identical to other ascended weapons the problem is they didn’t make an informed decision when they started – they should have checked what they were going to get instead of assuming it’d have some type of special bonus.

For me the reward for the effort involved in making one is the appearance. I’ve made The Dreamer and The Bifrost and I love watching my characters using them. I’ve had the Dreamer for almost 3 years and the idea of firing unicorns at my enemies still amuses me.

On the other side it’s also important to Anet and a lot of players that no one feels pressured to make a legendary and that only works if they’re no better than other weapons so you’re not missing out on anything by not having one.

(Also minor clarification – pay-to-play is another name for a subscription, because you have to pay in order to play the game. What you’re worried about is pay-to-win, where you may be able to play the game for free but you can only get the best equipment, and therefore the best chance to win, by paying extra.)

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

However, I’m vastly in favor of rewarding the massive effort and expense of creating a legendary with some sort of bonus power for each that matches the lore or aesthetic of the item. Creating a legendary is a monumental expense of time and resources that might otherwise go to growing a person’s in-game wealth or benevolence. To reward the effort with something notably cooler and impactful for PvE gameplay seems appropriate to me. After all, these are LEGENDARY weapons and armor! Lore-wise, they should be magically superior to every other item in the game. Special effects for the items make them look awesome, but they’re not effectively better than ascended, and to me, that seems wrong somehow.

They are better than ascended because you can change stats at any time. Not everything has to be about power gain, but perhaps a side effect that can be triggered on a 5 min cooldown, a glowing aura perhaps, portal to a location you can pick, a speed boost out of combat, the ability to consume and transform items etc

Ragnarox.9601:

Nope I would rather see free sigil changes on legendary weapons.

I agree. Some system for free sigil changes (there have been various interesting suggestions in the past) and, later on legendary armor, rune changes would be great. A power boost, however, is a pretty horrible idea in a game with mostly horizontal gear progression.

no.

No.

The basis underlying this game is no gear progression. There’s a max, and that’s it. It would go against every promise made on that. People left the game when ascended gear was introduced. People would leave the game if Legendaries were made a higher tier, no matter how small an increase.

Lets take a look at the last legendary

1. The Rifle is well a Rifle and only the Engineer and the Warrior can use the rifle which would mean locking all other classes out of that buff because they couldn’t use a rifle.

2. Its a buff so wouldn’t that push the Warrior and Engineer to use the rifle as a weapon since their other weapons wouldn’t have that buff unless they slot additional legionaries into those slots.

Outside of all that I’m not going to do fractals for a legendary backpack and I’m not going to do pvp for a legendary backpack. I’m also not going to do raids for legendary armor either. Sadly I’m a filthy WvW fan and WvW gets nothing so because I prefer WvW I’m out of luck getting legendary buffs if legends granted buffs. In addition WvW is in dire need of some reworking in certain areas and lets say it does have a proper reward system like the other modes with a legendary reward of some kind. Then people would be forced to do that mode they had no interest in to get the legendary and the numbers would be artificially inflated by people that despise it.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

Lore-wise, they should be magically superior to every other item in the game.

What lore is that says that?

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

Special effects for the items make them look awesome, but they’re not effectively better than ascended, and to me, that seems wrong somehow.

I don’t think it seems wrong at all. It seems best for the community that legendaries are nothing more than skins and convenience.

i guess what I’m really talking about would be some sort of inherent sigil or trait level effect. If free sigil swapping is what could accomplish that, that’s fine by me.

I acknowledge the counterpoints made above contending that raising the power level of legendaries is anathema to Anets desires for the game. Or, at least, for the players’ desires for the game which is also a valid point. But saying it’s a bad idea because people would leave the game is not a connected point. I left the game for a year and a half because life got busy and I didn’t have time for it. A friend left the game because he got a new game that captured his attention instead. (That game subsequently got replaced by yet another when he bought that one.) I also contend that there were likely other pressing concerns that compelled other players to leave, even game related ones, but I think it’s likely not as prevalent that adding ascended gear is solely what caused many players to quit. Even if it were, the complaint at the time was that ascended gear devalued legendaries which this kind of minor power creep would kind of fix.

Me being more of a story addict, I love the idea of building a weapon that’s truly epic in the context of my personal story. I now have ascended gear which makes me competitive in PvE and I’m happy with it. I’m not so stat-fiddly I need to swap sigils or runes regularly to get max results for a new zone or encounter. I’ll likely forget my first legendary can even do that once I have one. I just want to run around and have fun, see new things, hear the next chapter in my story. I know that makes me a non-optimal player but I don’t care. Life is still busy and I just want to have fun for a couple hours by diving into Tyria.

As an owner of a few, I am absolutely against such an idea. Legendaries are bling, with a bit of convenience on the stat swap. I’m OK on the idea of swappable sigils, but they should have no addition gameplay mechanics, no matter how minor.

Doam.8305:

Lets take a look at the last legendary

1. The Rifle is well a Rifle and only the Engineer and the Warrior can use the rifle which would mean locking all other classes out of that buff because they couldn’t use a rifle.

2. Its a buff so wouldn’t that push the Warrior and Engineer to use the rifle as a weapon since their other weapons wouldn’t have that buff unless they slot additional legionaries into those slots.

There is a legendary of every weapon. People can choose the legendary based on the character, not the profession based on a legendary.

Sinmir.6504:

Doam.8305:

Lets take a look at the last legendary

1. The Rifle is well a Rifle and only the Engineer and the Warrior can use the rifle which would mean locking all other classes out of that buff because they couldn’t use a rifle.

2. Its a buff so wouldn’t that push the Warrior and Engineer to use the rifle as a weapon since their other weapons wouldn’t have that buff unless they slot additional legionaries into those slots.

There is a legendary of every weapon. People can choose the legendary based on the character, not the profession based on a legendary.

But that only works as long as they’re all the same.

The OP is suggesting adding a different buff to each legendary – that would make certain legendaries better for certain builds. Sure some people wouldn’t worry about that (I never used a greatsword on my ranger even when I was told it was “required” because some youtubers had said so) but other people would feel like they have to obtain that legendary (which is not a quick, cheap or especially easy thing to do) and they’re stuck using it because of that buff.

Or their alternative is to make a sub-optimal character – knowingly making themselves weaker than that could be, which would contradictory.

hell no
this is why i left all these grindy mmos to an mmo that has a certain balance – gear wise –
and focus more on the skill of a player not the stat it self .

you can do 100 power more dmg just by being GOOD.

Ragnarox.9601:

Nope I would rather see free sigil changes on legendary weapons.

Same.

Aurelian Omenkind.2470:

However, I’m vastly in favor of rewarding the massive effort and expense of creating a legendary

It is rewarding already. I should know, in the last year I made myself 4 and sold 5 more.

What you propose is to introduce a vast amount of power grind. Just… no. It’s the worst thing in virtually all ARPGs out there and I cannot even begin to express how happy I am GW2 has almost none of this kitten.

Somebody said an out of combat speed boost. Seriously though, an out of combat, PvE only speed boost while wielding a legendary would be great. It wouldn’t be game breaking because some classes have perma swiftness anyway. It’s just to help some classes that don’t have a 25% speed trait/sigil, like a guard to get around a bit faster.

I dont have any leggendaries weapon, but I really think that they Need to make you free to change sigils (or runes for the armor) in the same way you can change stats.

BlooDyliCious.5824:

Somebody said an out of combat speed boost. Seriously though, an out of combat, PvE only speed boost while wielding a legendary would be great. It wouldn’t be game breaking because some classes have perma swiftness anyway. It’s just to help some classes that don’t have a 25% speed trait/sigil, like a guard to get around a bit faster.

It is still advantage in the game mechanics, if only for some classes. Nah. GW2 has this beautiful concept of giving mechanics relatively easy and making you work for cosmetics. It’s really great. It doesn’t make you feel like you should spend hundreds of hours just to finally be able to play the game like it’s meant to. Yet it does give you long-term goals to work for, which are rewarding on their own.

I’m against changes to present legendaries, even sigil swap/rune swap… I do not think this will be a just move for the economy….
Ppl will:
make all weapons and all 3 armors,
make the skins suit all races,
make gold with no usefull sinks anymore ,
they will NEVER EVER have to do anything in game again for gear, as it will stay the top tier, and will always stay up to date,
eventually stacking infinite amounts of gold
will be in need of alternatives to stack more gold when they are close to 200k gold
destroy the economy for high priced items…

You’ll find buy offers this skin now available for 20 permahair style kits, instead of a finite amount of cash….

I would rather not see any mechanical additions, new power or sigil swap, added to legendaries.

In every human language imaginable, “No.”

Against extra powers; making only legendaries best-in-slot would pressure players to own them. Normal, (not so hardcore) player would feel disadvantaged and frustrated.

Also another plea for an augmentation library on legendaries, allowing to unlock sigils for a (hefty?) cost and later select them for free. Like with stats now.