Guild Wars 2

Aside from the bugs, it is AWESOME! No, i am not being sarcastic. All the stuff it requires is easy to farm, and the ascended mats only take a few days to make. I LOVE that this is no longer gated behind a HUGE RNG barrer!

Thank you ANet! You rock!!!

Yeah, the best part is that lovely shopping list you get in part 2. I feel so epic as I browse the trading post and grind for gold in magumma… or as I open my wallet and buy my way to glory.

The first part was good. Second part has been the Tyrian equivalent to a trip to Target.

Yes, it is very good. However, crafting 250 staffs which require around 7000 elder wood (plus, you need 11 000 elder wood logs for 53 spirit wood planks) is a bit stupid… I refuse to buy it through TP, so now I am going to park all my characters to Malchor’s Leap, guest german and spanish server, and farm the kitten out of those trees.

Dear Linsey, my bank is full of all the kinds of materials which I was saving up for years. You had a chance to give them a purpose…now they will stay there collecting dust… farming 18 000 elder wood logs + other thousands of lower tier logs is not fun at all.

I could have built a wooden castle from such amount of wood planks… not one stick with few glowy crystals.

“Only a few days”

lol.

I’m annoyed that it takes A LOT of ascended materials to craft an exotic.

Mortifer.2946:

Yes, it is very good. However, crafting 250 staffs which require around 7000 elder wood (plus, you need 11 000 elder wood logs for 53 spirit wood planks) is a bit stupid… I refuse to buy it through TP, so now I am going to park all my characters to Malchor’s Leap, guest german and spanish server, and farm the kitten out of those trees.

Dear Linsey, my bank is full of all the kinds of materials which I was saving up for years. You had a chance to give them a purpose…now they will stay there collecting dust… farming 18 000 elder wood logs + other thousands of lower tier logs is not fun at all.

I could have built a wooden castle from such amount of wood planks… not one stick with few glowy crystals.

they needed to give a reason for crafting mats that were diminishing in value… now they just need to do that for silver ore, maybe when the new legends drop.

Xbon.9086:

Mortifer.2946:

Yes, it is very good. However, crafting 250 staffs which require around 7000 elder wood (plus, you need 11 000 elder wood logs for 53 spirit wood planks) is a bit stupid… I refuse to buy it through TP, so now I am going to park all my characters to Malchor’s Leap, guest german and spanish server, and farm the kitten out of those trees.

Dear Linsey, my bank is full of all the kinds of materials which I was saving up for years. You had a chance to give them a purpose…now they will stay there collecting dust… farming 18 000 elder wood logs + other thousands of lower tier logs is not fun at all.

I could have built a wooden castle from such amount of wood planks… not one stick with few glowy crystals.

they needed to give a reason for crafting mats that were diminishing in value… now they just need to do that for silver ore, maybe when the new legends drop.

Maybe let us craft silver doubloons…

slamfunction.7462:

Aside from the bugs, it is AWESOME! No, i am not being sarcastic. All the stuff it requires is easy to farm, and the ascended mats only take a few days to make. I LOVE that this is no longer gated behind a HUGE RNG barrer!

Thank you ANet! You rock!!!

Precursor crafting still involves a certain amount of RNG. Just sayin’.

Its pathetic
We are not crafting a legendary we are crafting an exotic
Why do i need ascended mats for it?

Dawn FIRST tier needs 30 deldimor steel and 10 elonian leather woot, it took me 3 weeks to make my twilight the old fashioned way from getting the precursor to obtaining the other gifts, you expect me to craft for 30 days to make the first tier and not the complete precurser??

Oh sure you want me to farm gold and buy the mats of the tp
Listen here buddy if i wanted to farm gold then i would just buy the kitten pre from the TP and not bother with this

It started off very nicely from unlocking the tier, to going all over the map to get the items to complete the tier ,felt some assemblance of a story and then ended up with a gate or a farm gold option -_- which is the same bloody thing we had before this was implemented – “Rng or farm gold” but in this case we got to do it 3 more times wait 4 times for the new pre weapons

Brilliant

slamfunction.7462:

Aside from the bugs, it is AWESOME! No, i am not being sarcastic. All the stuff it requires is easy to farm, and the ascended mats only take a few days to make. I LOVE that this is no longer gated behind a HUGE RNG barrer!

Thank you ANet! You rock!!!

Is this “not being sarcastic” sarcastic? You’re obviously exaggerating as the ascended mat requirement is at the shortest 10 days if you go for something like the pistol that has split requirements of metal and wood. Once you get into things that have single type requirements, it’s 30+ days. Then you consider the hundreds of gold that the ascended mats cost, and you are past the “RNG Barrier” that has always existed: Just buy the weapon from the TP with no additional effort required.

The first part was great. The second part is just a massive gold sink (as you could always farm and just sell those mats) – nothing more. So gamble with the toilet and hope to save/make hundreds of gold; grind hundreds of gold and just buy it; or grind hundreds of gold (or hundreds of gold worth of mats – but still the same as just buying it) with a couple of extra steps along the way. Some people may be cool with that, but I’m not.

The precursor collections are a terribly disguised mat sink. I cannot see a legendary journey there at all.

Aside from the fact that it was supplied broken, I love my new car.

Aside from the fact that my new washing machine / dish washer / whatever, doesn’t complete its cycle & leaves me unfinished / uncleaned / whatever, but wow! It looks really fabulous in my kitchen.

Only in the gaming industry could you release product as dysfunctional as Anet do on every release (NB: Anet are no worse than the vast majority of gaming companies). Only in the gaming world would you get someone telling you how wonderful broken product is…

Raedwulf.3712:

Aside from the fact that it was supplied broken, I love my new car.

Aside from the fact that my new washing machine / dish washer / whatever, doesn’t complete its cycle & leaves me unfinished / uncleaned / whatever, but wow! It looks really fabulous in my kitchen.

Only in the gaming industry could you release product as dysfunctional as Anet do on every release (NB: Anet are no worse than the vast majority of gaming companies). Only in the gaming world would you get someone telling you how wonderful broken product is…

Well, its that or quit and go play something else. Quite frankly, the market is rather bleak in terms of MMOs just like this one, that has a more rewarding system. So, makin the best of it! Ill just spend my time farmin, and forget all that HoT-business, so that when i do finally get to it, a year or two from now, i’ll be wide-eyed and bushy tailed to enjoy it more!\

Oh, and i’d like to super-seriously thank Mr. John Smith. Without his help on altering the economy in the most wonderful of ways, i might of thought of buying the precursors outright. LOL, what a mess that would have been!

The end result of all this is that Anet clearly never wanted to do any sort of scavenger hunt or such for precursors. They had a gold-grind RNG method in place and are hell bent on keeping it that way, so in response to the players requests, they gave us a gold-grind RNG method of crafting these precursors, and made sure at the same time that it would be more costly than previous methods.

whoever thinking of getting The Chosen via precursor crafting needs to think his life over…

azizul.8469:

whoever thinking of getting The Chosen via precursor crafting needs to think his life over…

After i complete Zap, I. AM. ALL. OVER. THAT!

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING <=> I LOVE GOING TO THE MALL!!!

It’s glorified shopping at stage 2. Just kills me that this is acceptable. Stage 1 and Stage 3 seem balanced. Maybe a stage 2 of a quarter of the grind would have been fine, but it’s ridiculous to think buying gold and grinding out time gated materials is fun. It’s just work.

Jesseii.2097:

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!

HIGH FIVE BRO!

slamfunction.7462:

Jesseii.2097:

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!

HIGH FIVE BRO!

mmm… hit me harder…

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!
Especially the fact that you don’t have to purchase a single thing from the TP to do it. the fact that you can casually farm everything you need and eventually get your precursor is great. It only takes 2-2.5 months and casual play and daily crafting and you got your precursor. Plus, the adventures some one them put you on and the collectibles you get really add story behind their creations. Such as spark and combining all those different things to make the Ever-Burning fuel.

The only problem is the bugs and broken collections. Bugs bugs bugs. 90% of the game.

slamfunction.7462:

Well, its that or quit and go play something else. Quite frankly, the market is rather bleak in terms of MMOs

As I said, Anet are no worse than anyone else. Buggy product / releases are endemic in the gaming industry. Car crashes kill real people; game crashes don’t! We still keep playing.

It doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be criticised for consistently releasing flawed product (I can’t remember the last release that didn’t result in 3 major patches within a week or so & at least 6 before it worked properly). Nor does it mean that overdone praise (which I feel your’s is) shouldn’t be challenged. Incidentally, according to another thread here somewhere, it’s actually still cheaper to grind gold & buy a pre-cursor than to grind your way through making a Leggie the new way.

I like it. But then I also just take my sweet time enjoying all the new content. I’m not concerned about unlocking everything in 1 week like so many GW2 players who now call everything grindy.

The precursor crafting gives me stuff to do end-game for a long time. Isn’t that what we all wanted?

Guys, can someone clear something up for me?

Is is it possible to do Precursor crafting without spending gold? Can I farm/craft all the mats needed myself? Cause that was the argument behind why it was so “good” by several players. What kittenes me off about Legendaries is that you not only have to wait a ton of time due to time-gated items, but you also have to spend ridiculous amounts of gold for things. Is the Precursor crafting alternative that much better?

Moopy.7908:

I like it. But then I also just take my sweet time enjoying all the new content. I’m not concerned about unlocking everything in 1 week like so many GW2 players who now call everything grindy.

The precursor crafting gives me stuff to do end-game for a long time. Isn’t that what we all wanted?

YESSIR! It definitely is! And i totally agree.

Avectius.3271:

Guys, can someone clear something up for me?

Is is it possible to do Precursor crafting without spending gold? Can I farm/craft all the mats needed myself? Cause that was the argument behind why it was so “good” by several players. What kittenes me off about Legendaries is that you not only have to wait a ton of time due to time-gated items, but you also have to spend ridiculous amounts of gold for things. Is the Precursor crafting alternative that much better?

You can technically farm every single part of the mats for the precursor. It’s going to take you quite a while depending on how many of the ascended mats you need, but it is doable without touching the TP.

Avectius.3271:

Guys, can someone clear something up for me?

Is is it possible to do Precursor crafting without spending gold? Can I farm/craft all the mats needed myself? Cause that was the argument behind why it was so “good” by several players. What kittenes me off about Legendaries is that you not only have to wait a ton of time due to time-gated items, but you also have to spend ridiculous amounts of gold for things. Is the Precursor crafting alternative that much better?

No, you will need to spend some money for ascended mats you need from the crafting vendors. But other than that, you should be good. It does take time, and the ingredients are worth more than the final product on the TP. But if you’re like me and care more about the road to get there, then yes. It’s possible to just collect everything yourself. Just be prepared to be busy with it for a while

troll post? r u kidding me? this reddit post shows how stupid precurser crafting is:

[PSA] Check here before starting to craft your precursor!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rohuz/psa_check_here_before_starting_to_craft_your/

in many cases its cheaper to buy it directly from the TP instead if crafting it. this shows how stupid the hole precurser crafting is….. u spend time on your collections and than its even more expensive….

it clearly shows that your post is pretty silly….

Drawing Guy.3701:

slamfunction.7462:

Aside from the bugs, it is AWESOME! No, i am not being sarcastic. All the stuff it requires is easy to farm, and the ascended mats only take a few days to make. I LOVE that this is no longer gated behind a HUGE RNG barrer!

Thank you ANet! You rock!!!

Is this “not being sarcastic” sarcastic? You’re obviously exaggerating as the ascended mat requirement is at the shortest 10 days if you go for something like the pistol that has split requirements of metal and wood. Once you get into things that have single type requirements, it’s 30+ days. Then you consider the hundreds of gold that the ascended mats cost, and you are past the “RNG Barrier” that has always existed: Just buy the weapon from the TP with no additional effort required.

The first part was great. The second part is just a massive gold sink (as you could always farm and just sell those mats) – nothing more. So gamble with the toilet and hope to save/make hundreds of gold; grind hundreds of gold and just buy it; or grind hundreds of gold (or hundreds of gold worth of mats – but still the same as just buying it) with a couple of extra steps along the way. Some people may be cool with that, but I’m not.

Ascended mats don’t cost gold….

You can gather the mats you need yourself from nodes and from salvage. For free.

Mats only cost gold when you absolutely must have your item right now because heaven forbid you take the time and effort to do it yourself.

Pre-HoT everyone had 2 options: 1) Play Mystic Toilet RNG game to hope for your precursor, often spending hundreds if not thousands of gold with no precursor. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Post-HoT everyone has 2 options: 1) Painstakingly gather up materials over the course of months to craft it, with very little out of pocket. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Make your own choice. Just don’t sit there complaining about the cost of the materials when you have the option of not spending that money if you really don’t want to.

Jordy.1570:

troll post? r u kidding me? this reddit post shows how stupid precurser crafting is:

[PSA] Check here before starting to craft your precursor!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rohuz/psa_check_here_before_starting_to_craft_your/

in many cases its cheaper to buy it directly from the TP instead if crafting it. this shows how stupid the hole precurser crafting is….. u spend time on your collections and than its even more expensive….

it clearly shows that your post is pretty silly….

Errr… No, it doesn’t, and it’s obvious you haven’t bothered to read the thread properly (which is pretty silly if you feel the need to comment). It’s already been pointed out (by me, for a start) that it’s still cheaper to buy from the TP than to craft.

But if you enjoy just running round the world & you accumulate materials, you now have a different route to getting a legendary than grinding gold or world bosses or praying to the RNG gods. I’ve clocked up over 6000 hours since release. I’ve never had a precursor drop. I’ve said I think the OP is over-effusive in their praise, I’m unsurprised that the process is bugged for some of the leggies because I have no faith in Anet’s QC procedures.

But the silly post is not the OP’s…

Raedwulf.3712:

Jordy.1570:

troll post? r u kidding me? this reddit post shows how stupid precurser crafting is:

[PSA] Check here before starting to craft your precursor!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rohuz/psa_check_here_before_starting_to_craft_your/

in many cases its cheaper to buy it directly from the TP instead if crafting it. this shows how stupid the hole precurser crafting is….. u spend time on your collections and than its even more expensive….

it clearly shows that your post is pretty silly….

Errr… No, it doesn’t, and it’s obvious you haven’t bothered to read the thread properly (which is pretty silly if you feel the need to comment). It’s already been pointed out (by me, for a start) that it’s still cheaper to buy from the TP than to craft.

But if you enjoy just running round the world & you accumulate materials, you now have a different route to getting a legendary than grinding gold or world bosses or praying to the RNG gods. I’ve clocked up over 6000 hours since release. I’ve never had a precursor drop. I’ve said I think the OP is over-effusive in their praise, I’m unsurprised that the process is bugged for some of the leggies because I have no faith in Anet’s QC procedures.

But the silly post is not the OP’s…

LOL
“But if you enjoy just running round the world & you accumulate materials, you now have a different route to getting a legendary than grinding gold or world bosses or praying to the RNG gods”

plz explain how anything changed with collection 2 beein the gold sink that costs as much gold as a “normal precurser”. where did u get your gold to buy everything for collection 2? somethings wrong in your logic…. you r trying to tell me that there is a way to get your precurser without grinding gold, while there isnt…. u could do the exact same before precurser crafting. it just takes ages. there is no big difference in grinding materials or grinding gold.

and btw, precurser is only 1/4 of the legendary. even though u spend 2 month on your precurser by farming everything on your own, you will need to farm 4 times the gold for the rest…. so its not that big of a deal if u can now collect 1/4 of the stuff….

precurser crafting didnt change anything. there are 2 collections where u need to collect stuff from the world. and there is 1 collection where u need to grind gold. there is no different route than grinding gold!!!! ppl dont seem to understand this. collection 1 and 3 is a time sink, while collection 2 is a gold sink that forces u to grind gold or buy gems for real money.
this is not my understanding of a legendary journey….

Chuck.8196:

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!
Especially the fact that you don’t have to purchase a single thing from the TP to do it. the fact that you can casually farm everything you need and eventually get your precursor is great. It only takes 2-2.5 months and casual play and daily crafting and you got your precursor. Plus, the adventures some one them put you on and the collectibles you get really add story behind their creations. Such as spark and combining all those different things to make the Ever-Burning fuel.

The only problem is the bugs and broken collections. Bugs bugs bugs. 90% of the game.

100 deldrimor is 100 days is more than 2.5 months.

Draknar.5748:

Ascended mats don’t cost gold….

You can gather the mats you need yourself from nodes and from salvage. For free.

Mats only cost gold when you absolutely must have your item right now because heaven forbid you take the time and effort to do it yourself.

Pre-HoT everyone had 2 options: 1) Play Mystic Toilet RNG game to hope for your precursor, often spending hundreds if not thousands of gold with no precursor. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Post-HoT everyone has 2 options: 1) Painstakingly gather up materials over the course of months to craft it, with very little out of pocket. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Make your own choice. Just don’t sit there complaining about the cost of the materials when you have the option of not spending that money if you really don’t want to.

Why, yes, yes they do – if you sell those mats, it is the exact same thing as saving up hundreds and buying the precursor as those mats are worth hundreds…. except you’re painstaking limiting yourself to gathering thousands of nodes for that barter item (be it trading in those items directly for the precursor, or trading in for gold to buy the precursor).

Cost comes in more than just gold. The irony is that the cost of precursors in Ascended mats is so huge that it is greater than the cost of most precursors in gold. Whether you pay in “gold” or pay in “Deldrimor Steel Ingots”, the cost still exists, and Anet still put just a huge paywall on precursors that will bar most players. It’s the same as precursors have always been: grind or $$$ past the paywall. I, for one, was hoping that this “Legendary Journey” would have been a way for us players to escape that.

Just as a tip: Grinding gold will be cheaper than the mats in most cases; and for the few precursors where that material cost is cheaper than just selling those materials and buying it, grinding the gold and mats simultaneously is much quicker and better for your sanity than clicking “Interact” on thousands of nodes for a single weapon. Hundreds of gold in materials is indeed less of a paywall than 1000 if you’re going for Dusk.

Avectius.3271:

Guys, can someone clear something up for me?

Is is it possible to do Precursor crafting without spending gold? Can I farm/craft all the mats needed myself? Cause that was the argument behind why it was so “good” by several players. What kittenes me off about Legendaries is that you not only have to wait a ton of time due to time-gated items, but you also have to spend ridiculous amounts of gold for things. Is the Precursor crafting alternative that much better?

It is considerably more expensive to craft the precursor than to buy it off the trading post for every precursor except 3 iirc. You could literally craft all the mats needed for Dusk, sell it 2 months into the process (assuming you don’t actually use them for the collections) and buy the precursor off the trading post at the buy order. No RNG involved. It’s just veiled grinding and, what’s worse, it’s a means to get you to grind more than they used to. Just to disguise the process.

Part I is great, Part 3 is great, Part 2 would have been fine with a 75% nerf in expenses.

Jordy.1570:

plz explain

Sorry. Shan’t. If you can’t work it out for yourself, you won’t acknowledge anything I tell you as having any validity. Besides which, I couldn’t manage to wade through your badly spelt & incomprehensible reply.

The funny thing about everybody complaining and comparing prices is that they forget one thing:
- Prices change, gathering does not!

So go ahead farm 1000 gold to buy it from trading post… but what if it costs 1500 gold then? Farm another 500 only to see it’s at 2000 gold then. Precursor prices might double while you farm 1000 gold. But 10 Deldrimor steel are 10 Deldrimor steel, even in 100 days!

Another thing is that a lot of materials doubled in price since the release of HoT. Because you need material for guild halls, precursors and other things, like new armors.
So AT THE MOMENT some precursors might be cheaper to buy than to hunt for.
If you want to have it NOW, you might want to check out these threads. But it could change every day. And I doubt these people will update their threads with daily prices!

Check back in like 6 months and compare prices again. Then take a look at the QQ threads and you might start to laugh!

Another thing with crafting these is the fun involved in it. I laughed so hard when I read that I have to paint certain spots in the world for the legend (bifrost pre).
And when I checked what I have to do for quip, I really thought ANet devs smoked some really good stuff while doing these hunts.
Oh, and you also get APs (yeah, only 9 per precursor, but at least something).

I love the hunt too. But I agree that more different materials would have been nicer than to farm 6k wood.

Schumi.4285:

Check back in like 6 months and compare prices again.

And they’ll probably be even higher. Because here’s the thing: the major reason precursor crafting is so expensive right now is because it requires an astronomical amount of ascended crafting materials, materials that are also required to craft Ascended Armor and Weapons. Once raiding arrives and supposedly requires Ascended Armor and Weapons, demand for those ascended mats is only going to go up.

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the disparity continues to grow.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Cost comes in more than just gold.

There is a difference between cost & value. Running around the world to harvest materials is something I would regard as a grind. In just the same way that I regard endlessly re-running dungeons (and only the fastest, easiest paths, naturally) for phat lootz & gold as a grind.

On the other hand, I’m running around the world anyway, doing whatever it is that I (whichever “I” we’re talking about) want to do. I accumulate materials. However much it takes, however much (or little) I concentrate on the gathering, I gather.

As Draknar rightly said, before HoT you had two options – grind for gold or… well, one option really, because gambling on the Mystic Toilet for many players meant buying cheap exotics on the TP. But let’s call it two options, for the sake of argument – grind for gold or gamble on chucking stuff down the Toilet.

Now you have a third option. It may well ultimately be less efficient / more expensive to accumulate materials & craft than it is to accumulate, sell, and buy. But that’s not the point, is it? For very many players having a leggie is not terribly important (over 6,000 hours, no precursor, leggie is a very small improvement over an 80 exotic, couldn’t care less; I’d play with a player who knows what they’re doing than some clueless idiot with maxed gear & a dozen leggies).

If you enjoy chasing down a leggie as fast as possible, however you get it, good for you. If you enjoy just generally running around the world, and one leggie will eventually come your way, good for you.

Whatever I think of the OP’s post (which is more negative than positive, lest it be forgotten), players now have another option to achieve the “best” gear. It may be, in-game, more expensive, but so long as they are enjoying themselves, what does that matter?

Raedwulf.3712:

If you enjoy chasing down a leggie as fast as possible, however you get it, good for you. If you enjoy just generally running around the world, and one leggie will eventually come your way, good for you.

And I’m totally ok with that. I just don’t think there should be an enjoyment tax, particularly when that enjoyment tax is several hundred gold.

Methinks OP hasn’t gotten past tier 1 of the precursor crafting. It starts getting ridiculous.

SteepledHat.1345:

Chuck.8196:

I LOVE PRECURSOR CRAFTING TOO!!!
Especially the fact that you don’t have to purchase a single thing from the TP to do it. the fact that you can casually farm everything you need and eventually get your precursor is great. It only takes 2-2.5 months and casual play and daily crafting and you got your precursor. Plus, the adventures some one them put you on and the collectibles you get really add story behind their creations. Such as spark and combining all those different things to make the Ever-Burning fuel.

The only problem is the bugs and broken collections. Bugs bugs bugs. 90% of the game.

100 deldrimor is 100 days is more than 2.5 months.

One of them cost 100 Deldrimor? I haven’t seen that one yet. From my experience Zap is a 3 ingot crafting both handle and blade totaling 75 (2.5 month) and since GS are also 3/3 so i postulated the same would be apply elsewhere but hey pedantics and is merely 2 weeks more. Still love the crafting.

Raedwulf.3712:

As Draknar rightly said, before HoT you had two options – grind for gold or… well, one option really, because gambling on the Mystic Toilet for many players meant buying cheap exotics on the TP. But let’s call it two options, for the sake of argument – grind for gold or gamble on chucking stuff down the Toilet.

Now you have a third option. It may well ultimately be less efficient / more expensive to accumulate materials & craft than it is to accumulate, sell, and buy. But that’s not the point, is it? For very many players having a leggie is not terribly important (over 6,000 hours, no precursor, leggie is a very small improvement over an 80 exotic, couldn’t care less; I’d play with a player who knows what they’re doing than some clueless idiot with maxed gear & a dozen leggies).

How is that “not the point”? How is just dumping all your accumulated materials on the craft system different from dumping all your accumulate materials on the TP? Except the TP doesn’t require you to revisit to click the same buttons every single day with artificial time gates as you can sell as much as you want at a time. Why would you want to take 10 times as long and spend more?

You can accumulate gold just like you accumulate materials – just don’t spend the gold just like you’re not spending the materials on actual ascended items. You can “accumulate” hundreds in gold/materials for precursors like you could before. Ask yourself, though, 6,000 hours and you don’t have a Legendary – why? Mine is I have a thousand other things I’d rather spend my gold/mats on rather than a single item. Legendaries were not worth the paywall before HoT, and they’re not worth the even larger “third” paywall now.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Raedwulf.3712:

As Draknar rightly said, before HoT you had two options – grind for gold or… well, one option really, because gambling on the Mystic Toilet for many players meant buying cheap exotics on the TP. But let’s call it two options, for the sake of argument – grind for gold or gamble on chucking stuff down the Toilet.

Now you have a third option. It may well ultimately be less efficient / more expensive to accumulate materials & craft than it is to accumulate, sell, and buy. But that’s not the point, is it? For very many players having a leggie is not terribly important (over 6,000 hours, no precursor, leggie is a very small improvement over an 80 exotic, couldn’t care less; I’d play with a player who knows what they’re doing than some clueless idiot with maxed gear & a dozen leggies).

How is that “not the point”? How is just dumping all your accumulated materials on the craft system different from dumping all your accumulate materials on the TP? Except the TP doesn’t require you to revisit to click the same buttons every single day with artificial time gates as you can sell as much as you want at a time. Why would you want to take 10 times as long and spend more?

You can accumulate gold just like you accumulate materials – just don’t spend the gold just like you’re not spending the materials on actual ascended items. You can “accumulate” hundreds in gold/materials for precursors like you could before. Ask yourself, though, 6,000 hours and you don’t have a Legendary – why? Mine is I have a thousand other things I’d rather spend my gold/mats on rather than a single item. Legendaries were not worth the paywall before HoT, and they’re not worth the even larger “third” paywall now.

It’s not the point because believe it or not, some of us just like to craft it from scratch. To use in-game methods other than simply buying the things we need to obtain the things we want. It’s not for economical reasons. Just simply, we like it. And there is absolutely no point whatsoever to try and persuade everyone that it’s not fun and that we’re all crazy for taking the expensive route. It would be like someone explaining to you why your hobby is dumb and you should just do something else that would be time better spent. (Most of us have probably heard the one where people ask why do we spend our time playing video games while we could be getting a job, right?) We just like it; it’s a game and this is what we do for fun. We have real life for caring about our wallets!

It’s not the point if it’s not the point, of course! How can I best explain this? With a question, perhaps? What do you play GW2 for? Ultimately, we all give just one answer – to have fun, yes? But how do you have fun?

It’s different things for different people. Let me offer you a couple of things I definitely don’t like – Jumping Puzzles & Vistas. Oh, and “festivals” like Halloween or Super Adventure Box. I played Manic Miner when it was released (google it, if you have to), but I’m long past thinking that platform gaming is fun. Other players love that content; I do it because there are rewards attached. In the case of vistas, map completion; now that JPs are never part of dailies, I never do them (except some are now required to complete leggie collections. Meh).

Or Halloween / SAB. I’ll do as much as I need to to get what I want out of it. Other players play those things simply because they love the content. There was a thread a few days ago demanding that the dev’s “don’t waste time” on SAB. Now, I sympathise with the sentiment, obviously. If I want to retro-game, I can download an emulator & play the original (an original I might well have played when it was the newest coolest thing…).

On the other hand, again, I know that a lot of players enjoy that content and want to see more of it. Who am I to insist that they are wrong? So it is with the leggie collections. As it stands, it’s an inefficient way of getting a legendary. From the numbers p-o-v it makes more sense to gather, sell, and buy. But leggies aren’t the point & purpose of the game for most players.

The crafting route is another route. It’s an option for those players who dislike relying on luck (Toilet / drops) or grinding for gold (buying). It’s expensive, too much so in my opinion. It’s long-winded, and the fact that Anet have released it bugged is both disgusting & pathetic (there are required items that you simply cannot get, such as Scarlet’s Prototype Mechanism (needed for two leggies, I believe) – the graphic exists but you can’t interact with it. I mean that’s really kitten, right?).

But whilst I’m less than in tune with the OP’s post, there is now another route to getting a leggie. You don’t have to play the RNG game. You don’t have to play the TP game. And many players are NOT interested in either. That’s the point – that selling “stuff” to buy a precursor (whether the stuff is materials or anything else) to buy a precursor is, now, NOT the only route to getting a legendary.

Miserymachine.7512:

Methinks OP hasn’t gotten past tier 1 of the precursor crafting. It starts getting ridiculous.

This has been the disheartening thing for me so far. There are a few people who do like the precursor crafting, but even they say that tier 2 is off. Tier 1 is considered good (and that’s how far I am, I think they did a pretty good job there) and tier 3 gets considered to be at least somewhat balanced, but tier 2 usually earns more than enough criticism for all three of them.

The only thing I’ve wondered so far is – at tier 1 – how bland, gameplay-wise (lore-wise, it’s good) the Bifrost/Legend track is compared to the Flameseeker/Chosen or Dreamer/Lover one.
I mean…
Flameseeker/Chosen: Craft the anthology and then experience a selection of some of the most remarkable foes all over Tyria, including Fractals, while having it with you.
Dreamer/Lover: Get a bunch of ideas about love across all of Tyria, talking to some people, buying stuff somewhere, and even placing items you get from one place at another, very specific place (a nice image, especially for old GW1 fans like me).
Bifrost/Legend: Run around in the Shiverpeaks, killing Jotun for a drop while leaving Bloodstone Dust at their holy sites, then do two other tasks with what they dropped.
It fits, lore-wise, but compared to the other two, gameplay-wise, especially considering diversity and what Tyria has to offer… it’s rather limited. I mean, even by mileage travelled alone, it’s not even comparable.

At first, I began the Kudzu collection out of curiosity: is precursor crafting really as horrible as these forum warriors are making it out to be? I have found I am really enjoying the precursor collection! I already had a lot of materials stored up (been hoarding since the announcement of the expansion and precursor crafting). Now I’m out harvesting the things I need and that is something I like to do. Some of the items I needed:
-1000 Bandit Crests
-400 Geodes
-100 Obsidian Shards
-100 Karka Shells
-25 Stabilizing Matrices
-25 Passion Flowers
These are all things that can be obtained via the very adventures we were promised! Playing Silverwastes and Dry Top, opening Balthazar temple, doing fractals, joining the karka train and harvesting those blooming passifloras. Not to mention the various jumping puzzles/fractal encounters/events needed for the first step of the collection. My friends helped with ascended cooldowns and harvesting the passion flowers, and ran fractals that I needed.

I think it was well put together and I never expected it to be cheaper or easier than buying one off of the trading post. If it was cheaper or easier, what’s the point? I expected something I can work on over a month or two, and that’s exactly what it is. I will never be one of those people who only thinks of my play time in terms of funds per hour; I prefer to think of it in funs per hour.

Guys, there are lots of other threads for complaints about precursor crafting. Why don’t you post the negativity there? If you think the collection is stupid, too time consuming, and too expensive then don’t do it.

rhapsody.3615:

Guys, there are lots of other threads for complaints about precursor crafting. Why don’t you post the negativity there?

Possibly because the best place to post the opposite point of view might be where the opposite view reigns supreme? Or do you preach only to the converted (which is a dead waste of time, in my book)? Just a thought…

Sometimes, i wonder if the people who do the gold to time translations (then complain about it) work jobs where they have to bill their time to a client of some sort. Furthermore, i wonder how much money IRL, they charge for going to the bathroom….

Raedwulf.3712:

rhapsody.3615:

Guys, there are lots of other threads for complaints about precursor crafting. Why don’t you post the negativity there?

Possibly because the best place to post the opposite point of view might be where the opposite view reigns supreme? Or do you preach only to the converted (which is a dead waste of time, in my book)? Just a thought…

Because if that’s the case, they may as well merge this thread with “precursors are a ripoff.” It’s just going to go down that line of people arguing the same points back and forth. It looked to me like this thread was unique, in that it was about telling Anet we like the collection.

You will find comraderie and morale boosts by preaching to the converted. Just look at any club, church, or organization. The majority are “already converted” but find joy in the spirit of those who surround them.

I’m sure the people waiting on dwayna’s to fail so it can reset would agree with you.