Guild Wars 2

An idea I had, originally posted in the suggestions forum but it didn’t seem to be getting much traction there.

For a lot of casual players like myself, who often only have time to login to do the dailies, the requirements for ascended/legendary gear seem to be so high that we are unlikely to achieve them in any sort of reasonable time frame.

To close the gap between the casuals and the hardcores, I had the following idea:

Make daily/monthly rewards have a chance to give a random (say 1-4 for daily, 4-10 for monthly) amount of t6 mats.

Since the daily/monthly achievements are account-bound, this won’t cause a massive drop in t6 prices and can be effectively controlled by anet.

Casuals will be able to acquire some of the t6 mats necessary for crafting ascended/legendary gear without having to grind for hours and hours to get the mats/blow all their gold on the tp.
Hardcore players will get a small bonus in t6 mats, but is ultimately insignificant compared to how much time they farm.

What do you guys think?

As a casual player I like this idea, it would help me accomplish a goal that would normally take me months to do.

On the other hand I feel this might negitivatly effect the “awesomness” factor of someone obtaining a Legendary weapon. There are very few objects in this game that take a significant time sink to aquire, and speeding up the process for those people that do not have the time to invest may not be the best solution.

I enjoy seeing people run past me in Lions Arch with a Legendary weapon. I always stop and look in awe and envy, which is kinda the point. If more and more people were able to easily obtain these weapons it would water down the effect of having one.

Some people need to feel like they have earned something. It may be an epic weapon/armor/title, but those objectives need to be there in some form or another. Not all players may feel this way. There are many that play this game that feel the “grindyness” of the game is too much, and feel gear/reputation/title grinds are meant for other games. I am in no position to say they are wrong in feeling that way, but everyone enjoys these games in different ways and the developers are doing their best to please everyone.

Legendary weapons may not be for everyone, and from what I have seen and heard they are not mandatory to obtain.

So you`ll have a stack of normal ectoplasms and another stack of account bound ectoplasms ? What`s happening in the crafting window, do I have to choose if I want to use normal or account bound mats? What if I have 3 account bound and 2 normal mats for an item that needs 5 ? Is my item going to be account bound?

No thank you. Bad idea.

What do you need legendaries for anyway? Do you have every single item exotic and have nothing more to upgrade? I really doubt it.

KICKER.3874:

So you`ll have a stack of normal ectoplasms and another stack of account bound ectoplasms ? What`s happening in the crafting window, do I have to choose if I want to use normal or account bound mats? What if I have 3 account bound and 2 normal mats for an item that needs 5 ? Is my item going to be account bound?

No thank you. Bad idea.

What do you need legendaries for anyway? Do you have every single item exotic and have nothing more to upgrade? I really doubt it.

There was no mention of making account bound crafting mats. I’m not sure where you got that idea from.

Edit: When I said the daily achievement is account-bound, I meant getting the achievement can only be done once per account per day. The crafting materials themselves would never be account bound. Anet can still limit the availability of t6 mats without having to change drop rates or introducing things that could be exploited.

I’ve been playing MMOs for, what, ten years now? And I’ve been reading casual/hardcore threads for ten years.

Look, there’s no point in pleasing casual players because they’re not committed to the game, might leave at any momnet, and in any case they just want to get all the epic rewards without actually having to acquire skills or finish content.

And, honestly, hardcore players are just terrible, terrible people, and they’re lucky that they’re barely tolerated to play this game instead of being put in jail, where they can whine about how lenient parole systems are ruining the challenge of the custodial experience.

It may be that Arenanet are secretly breeding magical loot pixies that will shower tolerance dust over both casual and hardcore alike and bring about a new golden age where everyone is happy. That is possible.

But more likely you should just accept that this is a basically insoluble problem of MMO design, that casuals keep playing MMOs despite whining about not being catered to, that hardcores keep playing MMOs despite whining about not being catered to, and that the world goes on turning and we’re all having fun regardless.

Love it:

“And, honestly, hardcore players are just terrible, terrible people, and they’re lucky that they’re barely tolerated to play this game instead of being put in jail, where they can whine about how lenient parole systems are ruining the challenge of the custodial experience.”

This wouldn’t close the gap, it would make it faster for everyone and keep the gap the same.

Legendaries aren’t supposed to be easy or quick to get, otherwise they wouldn’t be legendary.

It definitely would close the gap since casual players, who cannot farm 6-8 hours a day, would still get some of the t6 mats that would normally take several hours of farming to even see one drop. And by casual I mean someone who plays less than 3 hours a day, not someone who doesn’t care about the game.
I absolutely love this game and would not leave for any reason. But at my current rate it would take me 2-3 YEARS to get a full set of ascended gear or legendary item. That is simply too long to be reasonable imo. Legendary, sure, maybe, but for ascended gear too? I don’t really think that’s fair.

KICKER.3874:

So you`ll have a stack of normal ectoplasms and another stack of account bound ectoplasms ? What`s happening in the crafting window, do I have to choose if I want to use normal or account bound mats? What if I have 3 account bound and 2 normal mats for an item that needs 5 ? Is my item going to be account bound?

No thank you. Bad idea.

What do you need legendaries for anyway? Do you have every single item exotic and have nothing more to upgrade? I really doubt it.

You, sir, lack imagination =/

Obviously if they did make them account bound and then still have normal ones (personally I think more of the mats for legendaries need to be account bound…), they would use the bound ones first and then dip into your supply of unbound ones or something similar.

And why should someone be limited, forced, to obtain “every single item exotic” before they can plan ahead and start working a bit on saving for something they may want in the future?

Besides, as they are now, legendaries aren’t very legendary; they only symbolize how much gold you bought…

Quick Mouse.7635:

KICKER.3874:

So you`ll have a stack of normal ectoplasms and another stack of account bound ectoplasms ? What`s happening in the crafting window, do I have to choose if I want to use normal or account bound mats? What if I have 3 account bound and 2 normal mats for an item that needs 5 ? Is my item going to be account bound?

No thank you. Bad idea.

What do you need legendaries for anyway? Do you have every single item exotic and have nothing more to upgrade? I really doubt it.

There was no mention of making account bound crafting mats. I’m not sure where you got that idea from.

Edit: When I said the daily achievement is account-bound, I meant getting the achievement can only be done once per account per day. The crafting materials themselves would never be account bound. Anet can still limit the availability of t6 mats without having to change drop rates or introducing things that could be exploited.

Well, if you didn`t mean account bound mats that different.

But I`ll tell you something else then, by the time I had explored all the PvE map to 95% map complete I already had most of my items crafted as exotics. I think it`s actually timed that way, if you finish your maps you should also be having max items by the time you finish all of them, varying on luck of course.

So are YOU doing your maps to completion? I don`t think any casual needs nor deserves a legendary. I myself probably won`t get one any time soon and that`s fine, I`m not putting in the dedication needed so I won`t have it, it`s THAT easy.

Edit for spelling

GregT.4702:

I’ve been playing MMOs for, what, ten years now? And I’ve been reading casual/hardcore threads for ten years.

Look, there’s no point in pleasing casual players because they’re not committed to the game, might leave at any momnet, and in any case they just want to get all the epic rewards without actually having to acquire skills or finish content.

And, honestly, hardcore players are just terrible, terrible people, and they’re lucky that they’re barely tolerated to play this game instead of being put in jail, where they can whine about how lenient parole systems are ruining the challenge of the custodial experience.

It may be that Arenanet are secretly breeding magical loot pixies that will shower tolerance dust over both casual and hardcore alike and bring about a new golden age where everyone is happy. That is possible.

But more likely you should just accept that this is a basically insoluble problem of MMO design, that casuals keep playing MMOs despite whining about not being catered to, that hardcores keep playing MMOs despite whining about not being catered to, and that the world goes on turning and we’re all having fun regardless.

Exactly.
And both sides are equally lame.

This game actually has it all, stupid fractal grind for the so called “hardcore” and a huge world to explore for the “casuals” with easy ways to get 99% of the items in the game.

But what are they doing ?
The casuals cry they`re left behind and can`t grind, something they don`t want to do anyway, and the hardcore cry there`s not enough things to grind and forget to have fun in the world. So stupid.

I laughed at the jail part too

As a casual i disagree with this because it cheapens the efforts of those working to get the T6 mats through other means. Even if you made the random mats from daylies based on level everyone would just do it on their 80s . Being a casual player i dont expect to get gear,mats etc as fast as a hardcore player and im fine with that . Asking for stuff to pretty much be handed to you just doesn’t fly with me .

kitten legendaries/ascended this will help me alone with Exotics.

I got most of my exotic armor from dungeons (minus accessories). I’ve played 700+ hours since release. In my stash I have less than 20 t6 mats of each type (besides ancient bone ofc). You need 250 of any type for EACH ascended item (barring those that drop). That’s pretty insane imo. I’m not asking to be ‘given’ anything. Adding a CHANCE to get t6 mats from dailies would net me maybe 10-40 t6 mats per month if I did every daily and got pretty lucky. Hardly game-breaking, but it does make acquiring ascended items a little more realistic for people who don’t have time to farm 6+ hours a day.

KICKER.3874:

So are YOU doing your maps to completion? I don`t think any casual needs nor deserves a legendary. I myself probably won`t get one any time soon and that`s fine, I`m not putting in the dedication needed so I won`t have it, it`s THAT easy.

Edit for spelling

Yes I have done 100% world completion.

You can’t really close the gap. Accomplishments are based on the time/effort put into them. There is no viable way to lower the time/effort for a certain group of people and not have the other NOT be affected as well.

The RNG applies to everyone the same way – the only way to tinker with it is to get/use Magic items. Other than that there needs to be an even playing field for everyone to begin with (i.e. at the core level).

Death Reincarnated.3570:

You can’t really close the gap. Accomplishments are based on the time/effort put into them. There is no viable way to lower the time/effort for a certain group of people and not have the other NOT be affected as well.

Well, playing devil’s advocate, you can use diminishing returns. So that each successive hour of play per day (or per week) after the first yields progression at a slower rate. Someone who plays four hours a day will still be ahead of someone who plays one hour a day, but not four times as far ahead – maybe twice as far.

And GW2 already does that to some degree through daily achievements and diminishing rewards on dungeons. It could do it more but you eventually get to a point where you’re discouraging people from playing your game, which is counterproductive.

You can do other stuff like giving people cash for each day they don’t log in – way less than if they played, but still more than nothing. It’d need to be per account, not per character, obviously. You can develop mobile apps so that players who don’t spend a lot of time in front of their computer per se can still meaningfully interact with the game on buses etc (effectively converting some of their existnig super-casual gaming time into GW2 time). You can recognise that casuals are more likely to want to play socially and make it easier to find friends for content, get into the content, and get out without downtime. You can apply a Magic Find boost that accumulates duration very slowly when you are logged off and drains very quickly while you are logged in.

There’s a lot you can do. I just think that the perception of the problem is maybe a bit over-sensitive, and it’s one that MMOs have been surviving just fine without having solved.

The motivation for a majority of hardcore players is to set themselves apart and be recognized as “better” than the rest. You cannot close the gap, and in games that encourage this kind of behaviour, which GW2 is going to become, the best way to deal with the two sides of the coin is to encourage casuals to become hardcore. True casuals won’t care how much more awesome a hardcore player is, how much more gold he has, but there is a large group of casuals who might want to become hardcore and work hard to rise above the sea of mediocrity.
WoW does this better than any other game at the moment. the road to epics is clearly laid out in front of everybody, and you are encouraged to start walking it almost everywhere you go. You don’t have to, and that’s what some people choose. Nobody has a problem with that.
Adding just one dungeon was a poor move from ANet. They can taper off the amount of content later on, after the gear grind weeds out the portion of players who aren’t dedicated enough to get to the top. The longer the progression curve is, the less people keep up with it. The less people keep up with it, the less effort you have to put into creating content (talking about quantity, not quality).

True casuals stay at the bottom and are happy, and everybody who isn’t one will either attempt to be hardcore and succeed, or give up along the way. Players with hybrid gaming profiles like the “low power plateau/no grind” kind are an oddity, and maybe high enough in number to keep a game like GW1 afloat, but GW2 is a few tiers above its predecessor. It needs a certain amount of players that finance their expansions and in between content updates. Server costs might be a negligible expense, but paying 150 employees every month to create new expansions, while the other half is fleshing out the current content isn’t.

I’m a casual player, and quite frankly we don’t deserve legendaries. For all the good reasons already listed above.

More importantly, we don’t NEED legendaries to do any high-level content. That’s the difference between GW2 and most other MMOs. As a former hardcore vanilla WoW raider, I NEEDED to grind out 400 fire resist gear to do Molten Core, or I would get 1-shot and possibly wipe my entire 40 man raid team. No gear = No play. A legendary is just visual eye candy for the most dedicatedplayers of the game (and lucky, but that’s another kettle of fish). A casual player neither deserves nor needs one. Which is a GOOD thing.

Quick Mouse.7635:

An idea I had, originally posted in the suggestions forum but it didn’t seem to be getting much traction there.

For a lot of casual players like myself, who often only have time to login to do the dailies, the requirements for ascended/legendary gear seem to be so high that we are unlikely to achieve them in any sort of reasonable time frame.

To close the gap between the casuals and the hardcores, I had the following idea:

Make daily/monthly rewards have a chance to give a random (say 1-4 for daily, 4-10 for monthly) amount of t6 mats.

Since the daily/monthly achievements are account-bound, this won’t cause a massive drop in t6 prices and can be effectively controlled by anet.

Casuals will be able to acquire some of the t6 mats necessary for crafting ascended/legendary gear without having to grind for hours and hours to get the mats/blow all their gold on the tp.
Hardcore players will get a small bonus in t6 mats, but is ultimately insignificant compared to how much time they farm.

What do you guys think?

I don’t think it makes any sense how does this close the gap, won’t hardcore players still just that much more get more t6 mats?

honestly this wasn’t so much about legendaries as it was the ascended gear. But crafting ascended gear uses the mats that you’ve been saving for the legendary. You can’t make casuals become hardcore players when they have lives outside of gws. Giving a CHANCE to get t6 mats from the dailies does close the gap, because people who can only log in for an hour a day will still get a chance to get some mats. Whereas at the moment a lot of casuals have to choose between doing the daily, with its guaranteed reward, and farming for an hour which often yields nothing worth anything.

As a casual player I don’t mind if i need much more days to get high-end gears. But I really wish Anet could expand the methods to get gears. I’m talking about some stats combination can only be achieved from one sepecific way(i.e. dungeons) now. If Anet can make these prefix craftable or from world loot that will be great.

I think the point of the ascended tier was to give something that’s not trivially easy to get like all the other gear in the game, but not quite as hard as legendary.

More ways to get ascended are supposedly coming down the ’pike.

Philosophically, I think the argument you’d give from a design perspective is that people have a choice. They can either get the mats themselves, buy them, or go without. There’s a very small penalty for going without (someone else might have ever so slightly higher performance on their character than you). And of course everyone has the option to buy gold with real money, thus transferring the grind to their paypal.

Sender.7958:

I’m a casual player, and quite frankly we don’t deserve legendaries. For all the good reasons already listed above.

More importantly, we don’t NEED legendaries to do any high-level content. That’s the difference between GW2 and most other MMOs. As a former hardcore vanilla WoW raider, I NEEDED to grind out 400 fire resist gear to do Molten Core, or I would get 1-shot and possibly wipe my entire 40 man raid team. No gear = No play. A legendary is just visual eye candy for the most dedicatedplayers of the game (and lucky, but that’s another kettle of fish). A casual player neither deserves nor needs one. Which is a GOOD thing.

There in lies the rub.
According to definition in this thread hardcore means x hours of play a day and casual means less than 3 hours.
By definition only younger players with a lot of time on their hands can ever be hardcore. I have no problem with that since I am a casual player that also has litle mine to play.
The bolded part is what i have a problem with.
Just because I am a casual player does not mean I am not a dedicated player. GW2 is the only game I play atm, I spend most of my free time playing it. I have an 80, in full exotics/ 61% map exploration and 3 alts between lvl20-30. I have 3 crafting profession at 400 and the rest between 100-250.
I have bought bankslots, black lion salvage kits, and fine trans stones and a halloween costume from the store with real money.
So I consider myself a dedicated GW2 player, same goes for my husband. We have been playing since the betas.

Now as it stands, ever earning a legendary might as well require me to hike to the moon because that is exactly as achievable.
I would dearly love the Bifrost- it will take me several years to get it- if ever.
So yes I support the OP’s idea, that will at least give me and people like me a chance.

Morrigan.2809:

Sender.7958:

I’m a casual player, and quite frankly we don’t deserve legendaries. For all the good reasons already listed above.

More importantly, we don’t NEED legendaries to do any high-level content. That’s the difference between GW2 and most other MMOs. As a former hardcore vanilla WoW raider, I NEEDED to grind out 400 fire resist gear to do Molten Core, or I would get 1-shot and possibly wipe my entire 40 man raid team. No gear = No play. A legendary is just visual eye candy for the most dedicatedplayers of the game (and lucky, but that’s another kettle of fish). A casual player neither deserves nor needs one. Which is a GOOD thing.

There in lies the rub.
According to definition in this thread hardcore means x hours of play a day and casual means less than 3 hours.
By definition only younger players with a lot of time on their hands can ever be hardcore. I have no problem with that since I am a casual player that also has litle mine to play.
The bolded part is what i have a problem with.
Just because I am a casual player does not mean I am not a dedicated player. GW2 is the only game I play atm, I spend most of my free time playing it. I have an 80, in full exotics/ 61% map exploration and 3 alts between lvl20-30. I have 3 crafting profession at 400 and the rest between 100-250.
I have bought bankslots, black lion salvage kits, and fine trans stones and a halloween costume from the store with real money.
So I consider myself a dedicated GW2 player, same goes for my husband. We have been playing since the betas.

Now as it stands, ever earning a legendary might as well require me to hike to the moon because that is exactly as achievable.
I would dearly love the Bifrost- it will take me several years to get it- if ever.
So yes I support the OP’s idea, that will at least give me and people like me a chance.

I understand your arguments and your lack of time to play due to real life obligations that prevents you to achieving your content of desire which is Bifrost. But making legendary easily attainable would essentially (as mentioned by above poster) make the appeal of a legendary diminish. The reason people desire legendary is because it is one of the highest badge of honor this game has to offer. If everyone can achieve it so easily, then it just becomes nothing more than a white item. I find your statement of how a legendary would take you 7 years very intriguing. Seeing as the dungeon rewards are revamped quite a bit to amplify the gold received. A typical full run of AC normally takes me around 1-1.5 hours depending on my group and nets a nice 3g. That is pretty casual friendly time frame.

I have read many posts on this forums and it seems that a lot of the more “casual players” prefer to have a shot at the legendary by doing what they enjoy which is exploring and having fun in their own way. I am not saying there is anything wrong with different people having different play style, but one should embrace the consequence of ones’ choice. Just because you chose to causally play at your own pace and style does not necessary mean you should receive the same amount of reward for “hardcore players” who chose to utilize their game time to grind for their respected goal. I don’t see how legendary will affect your skills in a game such as guild wars 2 where the stats are capped.

The other repercussion of daily mats reward, would be impact on the already limited economy. OP argued that giving a few mats will not affect the economy as a whole since the amount will be so small. But consider the amount of players guild wars has, multiplied those mats by the player base and we will have a very very big issues. Op might argue that he/she will not be selling those mats he will get from daily, but can he say the same for the entire player base?

The best solution is for Anet to implemented new methods of getting ascended gears like dungeon reward or even temple events; instead of the one and only method that purely requires mystic forge recipe.

Just my 2cent.

TL;DR

Daily mats will just kill the already feeble economy. Daily mats reward * Player base = terrible idea.

Raiz.7402:

I understand your arguments and your lack of time to play due to real life obligations that prevents you to achieving your content of desire which is Bifrost. But making legendary easily attainable would essentially (as mentioned by above poster) make the appeal of a legendary diminish. The reason people desire legendary is because it is one of the highest badge of honor this game has to offer. If everyone can achieve it so easily, then it just becomes nothing more than a white item. I find your statement of how a legendary would take you 7 years very intriguing. Seeing as the dungeon rewards are revamped quite a bit to amplify the gold received. A typical full run of AC normally takes me around 1-1.5 hours depending on my group and nets a nice 3g. That is pretty casual friendly time frame.

I have read many posts on this forums and it seems that a lot of the more “casual players” prefer to have a shot at the legendary by doing what they enjoy which is exploring and having fun in their own way. I am not saying there is anything wrong with different people having different play style, but one should embrace the consequence of ones’ choice. Just because you chose to causally play at your own pace and style does not necessary mean you should receive the same amount of reward for “hardcore players” who chose to utilize their game time to grind for their respected goal. I don’t see how legendary will affect your skills in a game such as guild wars 2 where the stats are capped.

The other repercussion of daily mats reward, would be impact on the already limited economy. OP argued that giving a few mats will not affect the economy as a whole since the amount will be so small. But consider the amount of players guild wars has, multiplied those mats by the player base and we will have a very very big issues. Op might argue that he/she will not be selling those mats he will get from daily, but can he say the same for the entire player base?

The best solution is for Anet to implemented new methods of getting ascended gears like dungeon reward or even temple events; instead of the one and only method that purely requires mystic forge recipe.

Just my 2cent.

TL;DR

Daily mats will just kill the already feeble economy. Daily mats reward * Player base = terrible idea.

I get what you are saying ( btw I said several years, not 7 :P )
I also think Legendary Weapons should remain legendary and not common.

My point was the term Dedicated player.
You can be casual due to time limitations and still be a dedicated player, at least I think so.
It is definitely true that as a casual player I would prefer to spend my time in the game doing things I enjoy.
I think that more avenues to achievement other than grinding would be wonderful and would certainly give people more options to reach different goals.
Not just for Legendaries but for all goals- the more options you have to get the materials, the less you need to grind, which should keep it fresh for everyone.
As for players who spend hours a day grinding Legendary requirements, naturally they should achieve their goals much faster than the person who just plays consistently but plays for fun.
It should however be possible for a dedicated player with less time to play- to eventually earn a Legendary. I don’t think it should be easy or fast just possible.

Take Bifrost for example- for that I need: 500 dungeon tokens + gift of Zaitan.
I hate dungeons and having a small kid makes them very hard to do for me.
I can guarantee you that by the end of all that I will never set foot in a dungeon ever again and it will have been a very unfun journey.

Now take the temple events as a contrast, which I love .
I would gladly run them many many times for the small chance at getting a token at the end of a successful chain because I enjoy it and it is something I can do within my schedule.
this btw is just an example of how to get to the same goals through different paths and doesn’t apply to a specific recipe

As for the T6 mats- maybe you are right.
The thing is that they are used by so many things in game that you have to pick and choose what to make very carefully.

I don’t care about ascended gear at all to be honest- but I would really really like Bifrost one day.