Hi, I hope you are all doing well and enjoying HoT!
I finished the prec collection for Dawn yesterday and wanted to give my impressions on the collection achievements. I know it takes a while for you guys (Anet) to make these, but I think with a little more work for each weapon, there would be more of a personal attachment to each legendary (like a wield-able Tybalt), aside from its looks.
Oh, and THANK YOU for adding the collections to the game, they are so much more interesting than forging rares. :P
Decentralize the crafting and acquisition aspect of precursors from generic NPCs in Lions Arch.
- One thing that I was quite disappointed with is how much time I spend in Lions Arch while working on the precursor. I bought the collection start from the legendary NPC, did some material acquisition through the other legendary NPC, and then sat in front of the crafting station with a generic master weaponsmith.
I think it would be cool to have specific weaponsmith/npcs (not just in other cities) that you have to go out of your way find in order to learn about things, which would give some personality to the crafting aside from “find generic NPC.” Even a few extra lines of dialog to give more lore to the weapon would be really cool. Tybalt is a memorable character in the game to many people in the game because of his attitude, it would be cool for more of that with the legendary crafting.
- I would really like to see the LA NPC give a treasure map to find a lore item directly relating to the legendary. Having an NPC say “oh, I know how to make that!” makes the precursory not feel very legendary.
Make the item requirements for collection steps feel like they have an impact on the world.
- In the case of Dawn, I had to make 250 mithril greatswords, 250 greatsword blades, and 250 hilts. However, it was just “hand in the items and you were done.” I think it would be much more interesting if you have to deliver items to npcs throughout the world. For example, why not make players deliver bundles to npcs in the HoT areas to directly contribute to the war effort?
Spread the crafting requirements throughout the collection, not just at the end.
- I understand that crafting a prec is supposed to be time consuming. However, doing a scavenger hunt and then finding out you need 30 daily time-gated items (in dawn’s case it was Deldrimor ingots) is kinda frustrating. It would be nice to start the collection tracts with some idea of what materials I need to work on first, so then while I’m doing the scavenger hunt I can work on obtaining those items.
I think the transition between the first collection and the second collection needs a bit more work
- The way the collection was set up, I was originally going to create dawn, but instead created a failed experiment and had to go find a master weaponsmith to learn their ways. But from the original crafting recipe I KNEW I was making a failed experiment to start with, which kinda soured my mood. Maybe something along the lines of trying to test the item first before discovering it was a failed experiment would make a better transition?
Thank you for reading!