Guild Wars 2

First the disclaimer. I have played Dungeons and Dragons tabletop since 1978. I was in college at the time, and needed something to reduce the stress of finals. The game, in 1978 was only 4 years old, and in my neck of the woods, was relatively new and unknown. After many many years of playing, and DMing many campaigns, I was thrilled when a little game called Neverwinter Nights came out and I could try my hand at building a module, and carrying on a campaign of my own making in “3D”. I ended up creating one of the most popular modules in the game: Adventures in Cormyr: Immersea.

So, this brings us to my topic. I have told many people in game how disappointed I was that Legendaries were not, in fact Legendary at all, unless you count the legendary grind it takes to make one. I then tell them about being “Legendary” in my module in NWN.

I had legends, and legendary weapons in my module, they were one of a kind. So were the players. Legendaries had LEGENDS associated with them—-Stories, Lore….and one had to find the pieces while unlocking the legend of the item, then find out how to forge them together. Once they did this, they were also legendary. (not by the item alone but because it took some campaigning to not only find the pieces, but to figure out what they were, what they went to, and how exactly, what specifics it took to put them together.) So in the end, I would then ask for a snapshot (a computer file snapshot) of their character and I would place a “stoneskin” texture on them, and an animation to make them stand perfectly still, and then place them as a statue in my module, along with a book of their deeds that had made them legendary.

This is exactly how I would have done legendaries in Guild Wars 2. I would have made them truly legendary, and the player as well.

Look at the history of the real world, and think of the many legendary people there are. Go to any town square and there is a local legend. I believe that if legendaries had been one of a kind with a story attached, and the player the new legend, then you would have a truly “living world.”

Giving a player the opportunity to not only change history in my module in NWN, but to mark it forever by his gameplay was one of the reasons my module was so popular.

Tabletops/NWN modules and MMOs don’t compare very well. In a MMO you have literal millions of players, and a substantial portion of them eventually wants to have a legendary weapon, for it’s the ultimate goal in GW2 (at least as of now). If you make legendaries truly unique, you either have to include hundreds of thousands of different weapons for players to make (which is likely infeasible for the devs to do) or create a situation that only a fraction of all players can ever have a legendary weapon. In a MMO, that means the handful of fastest players will have one, the rest never will. Which is…umm…not really desirable.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Tabletops/NWN modules and MMOs don’t compare very well. In a MMO you have literal millions of players, and a substantial portion of them eventually wants to have a legendary weapon, for it’s the ultimate goal in GW2 (at least as of now). If you make legendaries truly unique, you either have to include hundreds of thousands of different weapons for players to make (which is likely infeasible for the devs to do) or create a situation that only a fraction of all players can ever have a legendary weapon. In a MMO, that means the handful of fastest players will have one, the rest never will. Which is…umm…not really desirable.

Just to expand on this a bit:

Imagine for a moment that the final battle with Zhaitan was a one time event, like the ancient karka event. Zhaitan was killed within the first 24 hours of the 3 day head start.

Now just imagine that the current legendary weapons followed your model. Most legendaries were obtained within the first few weeks of the game. If there were a finite amount of legendary weapons, only a finite number of people could acquire them. Just as with Zhaitan being a one time event. Only a finite amount of people would have been able to experience it.

Having finite resources -or one time events- in an MMO doesn’t always work. The “hardcore” crowd will devour the content/resources in record time, leaving everyone else in the dust.

“Forge your legend”
Instead of just gathering tons of mats and doing whole creation process in LA, there could be spots all over tyria with rare and hard events that are required to forge your mats and eventually whole item.

I would personally not have named the tier “Legendary” so that people would stop taking it so literally.

Do you feel exotic when wearing your exotic gear?

Ursan.7846:

I would personally not have named the tier “Legendary” so that people would stop taking it so literally.

Do you feel exotic when wearing your exotic gear?

Have you seen some of the exotic armors? I don’t think there’s a better word in the English language to describe some of them….

And it’s not a matter of how they named it, it’s a matter of how they pumped “legendaries” up as something big and meaningful and exciting, then delivered something that’s bland and boring and grind-happy.

Lest we forget, it was the DEVS, not us, who first spent all their time hyping up “legendaries” as the most super awesome things ever.

The lesson here is not “don’t name things literally”, it’s “don’t overhype your product”. Don’t hype your product as gold when you’re only planning on giving us bronze with gold paint on it.

And you think greens are literally Masterworks?

The words are simply words the devs chose to designate their gear tiers, nothing more. People get really hung up on the word Legendary though. I wonder if we’ll have the same hubub if they named the Legendary tier the “Ultimate” tier or something. Or maybe “Golden” for the gold it requires.

Whether you think the current method is good or not is your personal opinion which I don’t care enough to discuss about.

EDIT: By the way, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I just think it’s very amusing how some people get really hung up on the term “Legendary.”

What if there were say…20 Legendaries in game at the beginning of the game. Weapons that were TRULY Legendary.

All you grinders and farmers could still have your “Legendary” with pixelated oooh ahhh particle effects, just call them “Epic”.

Now every month IF the Legendaries had all been found 5 more were put in. Also keep in mind, they would not be easy to find, or figure out how to put together. Also, the pieces only would be tradeable, not the weapon.

You are telling me you would rather have 1 million “legendaries” so everyone could have one, then to have there be in a game something unique to strive for—-and a chance to mark the world with your name—-forever? I find that terminally sad.

Personally I admire people who have achieved greatness. I do not have to achieve that same greatness myself, I only need a chance to forge my own. This is the idea behind it.

And you believe that I was able to do something in 2002, and yet with the advanced tools, and the advanced game engine created by Arenanet they are somehow not able to duplicate this in 2013? Seems kind of limiting.

I have written 3 posts to put here and deleted them all because I know they would have received infactions…so I will put it into 1 sentence.

The majority community here has a knee jerk reaction to anything someone can accomplish by means of skill that they could not otherwise get in a “farming” manner that takes almost no skill and can be completed solely by playing “x” hours.

Nalora.7964:

Personally I admire people who have achieved greatness. I do not have to achieve that same greatness myself, I only need a chance to forge my own. This is the idea behind it.

And so do I.

Problem is, “legendaries” are by no means a symbol of a player’s greatness as of right now.

Totally agree OP, i also played the table top games a lot..

My gripe with legendaries are exactly the same as yours why do i want a legendary grind for something meaningless, and it is meaningless…(more so now the bot farmers are selling them…) where is the story behind these things, why did i never see them in Guildwars 1 why are 99% of them stupid looking…

Legendaries should have been gotten during the campaign, a piece at a time in certain secret spots (maybe some jump puzzles too, a lot are old ruins etc..) not what we got now..

Dear OP,

it’s not that Anet doesn’t recognise this. You just didn’t realize it or think ‘it can’t be!‘. This wasn’t said with cynicism and agree your alternative is also a feasible alternative. But instead of replacing the current system, a new set of Legendary could be implemented with yours in mind. ‘Legendary(s) of Lore’..lol that wasn’t intended but yeah along those lines.

ANYHOO! Considering there are players who burn through content, Legendary(s) are essentially a fallback for Anet. If said player has done everything then, at least said players has Legendary(s) to grind for. Or an excuse for Anet to retort with.

It’s just a last line of defense for them i think. Nothing more.

I’d settle for this concept:

At some point you wind up getting a weaponsmith / bowyer / artificer into your home instance and they ask you for something every day. Each day you complete the request, their wares get a little higher in level and more than basic models show up. Then after so many, you get an instanced mission somewhat like the personal story to go secure something for them which is unusual and you get a special weapon. It’s not unique in the sense of stats or model, but you get to apply a name to it. (Within standard MMO naming rules!) But it’s only a level 20 weapon . . .

. . . but you keep doing things for the crafter and eventually he asks you to do another mission. Perhaps he wants a specific type of wood, or heard about high-quality metal veins, or a crystal which could be used. So again, an instanced event and afterwards he offers to replace your personalized weapon since he’s gotten better resources. You get it back but it’s now level 40.

You do this route a couple more times, but once you hit the point where it should be a level 80 item, he wants a word. He needs you to track down something from each region of Tyria in order to craft a weapon the likes of which none have seen yet. Depending on what you bring him and how you direct him, you get a result which will be your legendary weapon. Sure, the model might be common to people (Oh you went for this glowing diamond instead of Risen magical essence? You got Sunrise instead of Twilight as a model!) but the stat distribution and name would be yours.

I would have made legendary parts hidden throughout the world in difficult dungeons and solo content with stories associated with them.

When you put any combination of random parts together, you would literally get YOUR legendary. Let’s just say you combined that ludicrously long greatsword handle with a lengthy blade of dark steel and combined it with runes of something that give it this particle effect. And then you dye it. Because why not?

Now you have, for example, a long, skinny runed greatsword with an almost spear-like handle that produces lightning that you’ve chosen to dye red. It’s your legendary. You worked for it and it became a part of your story. Hell, you even named it.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

I would have made legendary parts hidden throughout the world in difficult dungeons and solo content with stories associated with them.

When you put any combination of random parts together, you would literally get YOUR legendary. Let’s just say you combined that ludicrously long greatsword handle with a lengthy blade of dark steel and combined it with runes of something that give it this particle effect. And then you dye it. Because why not?

Now you have, for example, a long, skinny runed greatsword with an almost spear-like handle that produces lightning that you’ve chosen to dye red. It’s your legendary. You worked for it and it became a part of your story. Hell, you even named it.

I wonder how hard it would be to actually place a weapon customisation tool into the game. I mean you can already edit all manor of features for your character so why not allow the player base to edit their own weapons in such a way. You would only be allowed to do this once/twice(1H/2H) per character and would have to satisfy many tasks in order to do so. Completing the story mode gives X ingredient, an NPC awards you with Y ingredient after collecting the dungeon explorer title, map completion, jumping puzzle completion, boss killing etc etc all grant ingredients/spells/recipes. You then need master crafter status to forge your legendary in the fires of Mt Doo…. some special GW2 place! You get to design everything from length, width, colour, spikes, jewels etc etc and then get to write your own passage for that message bit featured on the weapon stat box.

This is what id call Legendary. Skill is needed to craft the weapon, not gold (although I personally would want some gold input as part of the building) and its an actual account of your journey across Tyria. Hell you could go further and require different recipes for different particle effects/designs. For example if you wanted the flame footprints currently given to the wielder of the Incinerator then you need that specific recipe which drops from the boss at Mt. Maelstrom (or can be purchasable with some form of token maybe?).

Legendaries were a missed opportunity for ANET and its something that has made me think twice about getting a legendary myself. But I also understand that the devs cannot design a unique weapon for every legendary owner in the game so why not allow the playerbase to do the designing for you? Develop the tools needed and bam, uniqueness!

Seen a lot of attention to this topic, and there have been interesting takes on it, like OP and others.

How would I have done Legendaries, hmm.

Material cost + better ways to get precursor.

Require several categories of achievements.

Legendary Deeds – Special Legendary achievements. Complete and get a token, convert to a relic.

Decipher secret language on it and start a scavenge hunt. Gain access to solo instances with puzzles/lore/challenges/riddles.

Ends with a doppelganger who holds the Legendary you’re after. Beat the incarnation and it drops your Legendary. Grats.

I honestly came up with this in like ten minutes. What happened, ArenaNet?

How I would have done legendaries?

Well, I don’t really have any ideas for a quest (which is really quite needed) to get one. What would be nice though is if you can name them. It’s more personalized that way.

Most of the legendary process is fine. It does take some skill to attain most of the portions of it.

However, there is also an insane amount of RNG required. I find that Mystic Clovers are actually the only part that have an acceptable amount of randomness. Lodestone and precursor acquisition is terrible.

If I were going to change how these two particular parts were implemented, it would be as follows:

• Precursors Quests would be started by killing 1000 foes in PvE and 250 foes in WvW with the weapon in the desired precursor category.

• Once the quest is started, the player would be given 5 riddles, giving clues as to which jumping puzzle chests have the 5 portions of the precursor that they need.

• With the 5 portions in tow, bring them to the three greatest blacksmiths in Tyria: Occam, Izu Steelshrike, and Beigarth. Here, you could require the player to bring lodestones, cores, or other crafting materials to each one. They could also reward you with a lodestone per day for completing a task for them (These lodestones would be ACCOUNTBOUND of course). This would allow players to attain the weapon much more quickly if they farm materials or purchase them from the TP, but also able to attain the weapon with 0 RNG, albeit slower Once complete, this awards the player with a “Dull” or “rusty” precursor

• Next, player would be tasked with slaying champions around Tyria with a “Dull/Rusty” Precursor. I think killing the zone boss in every zone would be interesting. (Shadow Behemoth, Megadestroyer, etc.) That would be 25 total meta-events, and you would actually be slaying legends. [An alternative would be to kill 5 champions in each zone]

• You now have a “Tempered” Precursor. With this weapon, you now surpass the greatest heroes of Tyria… each member of Destiny’s Edge. You can only attempt one battle each day. (Logan would run away, so no biggie)

• Lastly, you fight your doppelganger in the Mists who wields the finished version of your legendary weapon. Your doppelganger will be champion with a permanent swiftness and protection buff and be given weapon specific (not class specific) skills.

• Take dawn for instance: regardless of your greatsword class (mesmer, ranger, warrior, or guardian), you would fight a doppleganger wielding Sunrise. Skills could include Radiance (blind), Ray of Judgement (AoE burning ray), and others.

• After defeating your doppelganger, you would attain your precursor.

Plenty of work required. A bit of RNG. However, nothing so crippling as to make someone go crazy. You would have a clearly defined goal. And you can also keep the RNG method in the Mystic Forge for people who are into that.

And the best part? You have can have a bit of backstory added to each legendary through the riddles for jumping puzzles. However, in the end, the process is the same for each weapon and therefore much easier to implement than a brand new quest for each one.

I Like Vorch’s idea.

Thing is that with these weapons is that many forget they are not for everyone, only for the hardcore gamers, as its the only thing for them left to work towards. Its not ment for casual gamers (1-3 hours a day) to obtain these weapons.

The method that Vorch above described would be perfect! Gift of Mastery and Gift of Fortune are still old style, thus meaning farming / tp purchases etc, completion etc etc etc (Enough RNG in here), Gift of (weapon) would still remain, but with an alternative Lodestone source (that is account bound, ANet making 2 different types Account Bound and Tradable is no hard work, many MMO’s have this feature.) and the Precursor will actually mean something sorta “Legendary” as it takes a story into account you have to work on.

Right now all i need is the precursor actually, but elas…..100+ meta-events later….not a single exotic even….bad luck i guess.

Not giving up though.

Vorch.2985:

• Precursors Quests would be started by killing 1000 foes in PvE and 250 foes in WvW with the weapon in the desired precursor category.

In short, gaining the “Mastery” achievement with the weapon? Also, I would prefer NOT to have to go do WvW to that extent. Possibly because it is an extreme amount if your server, I dunno, checks out of WvW for three weeks running and thus you can’t accumulate kills reliably.

Though it is better than 250 Badges of Honor, since every kill doesn’t net you a Badge.

• Once the quest is started, the player would be given 5 riddles, giving clues as to which jumping puzzle chests have the 5 portions of the precursor that they need.

I’d also think jumping puzzles wouldn’t be fair to require. Especially if they happen to be the WvW ones. I’d say five portions, five different things:

- Start off having to go to a specific spot for the Precursor. It’s okay to have these overlap or otherwise repeat rather than be randomized. An account-bound item is received from the spot once you interact with it. A mail is sent at that time using riddles or otherwise lore-based details to point you to:
- A champion native spawn, not an event-bound one. If the item is in your inventory, a special loot bag drops with a “Precursor Shard”.
- A random DE; if part of a chain it appears at the LAST event in the chain. When it’s finished, a chest appears in the corner a la daily/monthly/fractals achievements to claim the next “Precursor Shard”.
- A Point of Interest, which will cause the chest to appear again. A specific emote or /say string may activate it.
- A specific spot in your racial home city where you can interact with an NPC for it.

• With the 5 portions in tow, bring them to the three greatest blacksmiths in Tyria: Occam, Izu Steelshrike, and Beigarth. Here, you could require the player to bring lodestones, cores, or other crafting materials to each one. They could also reward you with a lodestone per day for completing a task for them (These lodestones would be ACCOUNTBOUND of course). This would allow players to attain the weapon much more quickly if they farm materials or purchase them from the TP, but also able to attain the weapon with 0 RNG, albeit slower Once complete, this awards the player with a “Dull” or “rusty” precursor

I mentioned this idea above – why not get some use out of the Home Instance again? Have them arrive one day after the last piece is found, and say “I heard you found something wondrous…” and offer to set up shop to study the weapon for repair. They ask for specific materials for each Precursor, but in lesser amounts and random order over the course of a few days. These could be the same items as the Forge takes, mind you.

• Next, player would be tasked with slaying champions around Tyria with a “Dull/Rusty” Precursor. I think killing the zone boss in every zone would be interesting. (Shadow Behemoth, Megadestroyer, etc.) That would be 25 total meta-events, and you would actually be slaying legends. [An alternative would be to kill 5 champions in each zone]

I’d avoid that, but adding in a specific “legendary” (the purple frame higher than champion) spawn which is triggered by the presentation of a “Unfinished Precursor” for each one, that people would have to go trigger and fight. Say, for Dusk, the previous wielder in ghost form.

• You now have a “Tempered” Precursor. With this weapon, you now surpass the greatest heroes of Tyria… each member of Destiny’s Edge. You can only attempt one battle each day. (Logan would run away, so no biggie)

I’d skip this step in favor of the revisions above and below.

• Lastly, you fight your doppelganger in the Mists who wields the finished version of your legendary weapon. Your doppelganger will be champion with a permanent swiftness and protection buff and be given weapon specific (not class specific) skills.

A single battle you can trigger once per day, in a circular arena with a few elements you can “hide behind”. The weapon champion uses unique skills based on but not exactly like the ones for that weapon type.

• After defeating your doppelganger, you would attain your precursor.

You mean Legendary? Also, as I suggested above, the Legendary becomes Account Bound and has your character name in the description. “Skillfully and masterfully earned by Carson McChickenPants”

I totally agree with Vorch in precursor case. The quest should be long and legendary. Players should earn their precursors not playing with the market/farming hours to able to buy one.

Currently Legendary items are 70% grind/luck nothing more. 700 Cof runs sounds fun, wait NOT. At the moment you cant set a goal to yourself due the precursor market situation. People has to grind more and more for a precursor and people asking more and more a precursor as the demand is getting higher and higher. Normal market reaction but precursors should have never been like this.

And the best part: few player (already having 3-4 legendaries) keep coming to the forum telling others they are stupid and its totally normal to grind 700G for a weapon while they have bought theirs when they were 70G-100G after Karka event. They just want to stay a “unique” snowflakes for a longer period.

Ursan.7846:

And you think greens are literally Masterworks?

The words are simply words the devs chose to designate their gear tiers, nothing more. People get really hung up on the word Legendary though. I wonder if we’ll have the same hubub if they named the Legendary tier the “Ultimate” tier or something. Or maybe “Golden” for the gold it requires.

Whether you think the current method is good or not is your personal opinion which I don’t care enough to discuss about.

EDIT: By the way, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I just think it’s very amusing how some people get really hung up on the term “Legendary.”

This.

But I also think this is partly to blame on Anet who shouted the whole “you will feel legendary!” marketing jargon.
Some people take those things literally.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

I would have made legendary parts hidden throughout the world in difficult dungeons and solo content with stories associated with them.

When you put any combination of random parts together, you would literally get YOUR legendary. Let’s just say you combined that ludicrously long greatsword handle with a lengthy blade of dark steel and combined it with runes of something that give it this particle effect. And then you dye it. Because why not?

Now you have, for example, a long, skinny runed greatsword with an almost spear-like handle that produces lightning that you’ve chosen to dye red. It’s your legendary. You worked for it and it became a part of your story. Hell, you even named it.

This would be perfect, and more in keeping with what I imagined when I heard the first hints at Legendary weapons in the game. As it stands, I have no desire for a legendary weapon. They are fluff that says not that I played the game, and played it well, but merely that I could, given enough time and a good axe, cut down a forest.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ursan.7846:

And you think greens are literally Masterworks?

The words are simply words the devs chose to designate their gear tiers, nothing more. People get really hung up on the word Legendary though. I wonder if we’ll have the same hubub if they named the Legendary tier the “Ultimate” tier or something. Or maybe “Golden” for the gold it requires.

Whether you think the current method is good or not is your personal opinion which I don’t care enough to discuss about.

EDIT: By the way, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I just think it’s very amusing how some people get really hung up on the term “Legendary.”

This.

But I also think this is partly to blame on Anet who shouted the whole “you will feel legendary!” marketing jargon.
Some people take those things literally.

I will remind you of your nonchalant attitude about words and the English language any time you demand someone use the right gamer “acronym” or you mock someone with the words: Noob, lame, or Gay who does not use the right “gamer terminology”.