Guild Wars 2

I just crafted by first precursor after five years of playing, and I have to say I’m displeased. I know everybody out there who has several Legendary weapons doesn’t want to hear it, but I’d really love to see Legendary crafting change from mind-numbingT6 mat/gold grind to something more like the collections aspect of the precursor steps. I understand it’s difficult to implement stuff like this, and the system has been around so long it’s unlikely to change. Nevertheless, I’d personally much prefer a set of collections that took me through every dungeon path once, one that took me to each world boss, or some of the jump puzzles, etc., rewarding us for playing varied content without endless repetition. This could even be a way of reacquainting players with lore! You could have collections for reading historic markers or something.

I love the Gift of Battle coming from a reward track – that’s great! I don’t have to put on a podcast and grind mats or gold for weeks on end; instead I can focus on just playing my class well in that game mode and when the track is complete I can move on to something else! Gift of Exploration? Fantastic! More stuff like that and less grind would make me a very happy camper. :-)

I very much second this. I’ve played multiple hours every single day for almost 2 years now, and still do, but I still consider myself way too casual to even start attempting to make a legendary. I’d love to see one or two of the HoT leggies in my inventory one day, but I just can’t see myself farming for hundreds of hours. At the moment, legendaries don’t really ask for effort, mastery or anything of the sort, but simply the ability to withstand the mind-numbing grind they require.

But hey, I’m just bragging here. I know they won’t change the legendary crafting process, and enough people seem to be fine with it, since every third person you see is running around with at least one. Maybe in 10 years I’ve gathered enough materials via regularl play to attempt making one, we’ll see.

The collection journeys are great, but slowed production down so much that ANet took a huge PR hit for not having all the new weapons available at HoT launch. So much that even with them dropping the journeys for the newest ones, they are still nowhere near completing the set even as the next expansion looms.

Plus there was a lot of grief due to the journeys requiring events to complete/not complete that other players wanted the opposite status on.

So ANet gave up and went back to the original just-get-massive-mat-piles method. Which is still better than having to do that -plus- be incredibly unlikely to get a precursor without paying tons of gold.

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

Khisanth.2948:

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

Short of the bugged event that I ran into, I’ve enjoyed the process to get Storm. I prefer long term goals that I can split into smaller chunks. Outright buying the precursor or gambling didn’t have any smaller chunks really.

I don’t care if it cost me more in time and/or gold to make it via the collections. I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than opening my wallet or spending ages grinding for gold or ages gambling.

Look at how gift of battle pve vs wvw arguement, the effort to craft a legendary pve : wvw time ratio already more than 10:1. If the two common legendary gifts turned into another pve time investment, wvwer will riot i can forsee.

What about change the gift to wvw acqure only? Make a wvw collection instead, do you like it? No i guess.

Seera.5916:

Khisanth.2948:

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

Short of the bugged event that I ran into, I’ve enjoyed the process to get Storm. I prefer long term goals that I can split into smaller chunks. Outright buying the precursor or gambling didn’t have any smaller chunks really.

I don’t care if it cost me more in time and/or gold to make it via the collections. I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than opening my wallet or spending ages grinding for gold or ages gambling.

See that is all fine up until someone is also complaining about grind. Grind grind grind and more grind but then extol the virtues of the method that requires more resources which logically speaking would require more time grinding to acquire.

To clarify – I loved the collections for crafting Frostfang’s precursor that took me all around the world to gather items from ice elementals, water from various locations, etc. They made sense to me, and I felt like I was doing them for a rational reason. I absolutely HATED the “collections” that just had me dump something like 250 axe blades and hafts, which included some ascended mats. This gave me no feeling of accomplishment; I didn’t DO anything but grind mats or gold to buy mats, and it felt like I was just sinking mats for no real purpose. I would have gladly spent time in WvW, dungeons, map meta events, etc., instead.

I admit one huge problem is that some players only ever do WvW or PvP – I understand their frustration, but as an open-world PvE player I don’t personally care. To me the open world is the real game, and these other modes are just for fun, not vice versa, and it’s incredibly frustrating to constantly have every aspect of my experience, from crafting and upgrade components to stats and skill functions, limited by the needs/wants of people who rarely, if ever, leave the Mists. The whole idea of WvW is cool, and I love that we have this great game that each player can choose to play however they like, but the constant tug-of-war in balancing stuff like this is frustrating (can’t even imagine how stressful it must be for the devs!).

I like the idea that crafting a Legendary requires me to spend a little time in WvW and Fractals – just enough to whet my appetite if I’d never experienced them before, but not so much that it feels like grind. Also, I know ANet wants to move away from the old Dungeons, but I love that most of the core Legendaries need tokens from them, and I’d love to see the Gift of Magic or Might replaced by a reward track or some other collection type thing is all I’m saying, maybe from Dungeons, or World Bosses, or something dynamic, you know?

My wife raised another issue on behalf of ANet: Legendary weapons are huge gold sinks, and changing the Gifts away from T6 mats might hurt the in-game economy. I don’t know about that, but I suppose it makes sense. Still, I’d love to see this change!

Crossaber.8934:

What about change the gift to wvw acqure only? Make a wvw collection instead, do you like it? No i guess.

Crossaber – actually that would be great! Think of this: a PvE player completes a collection by running every dungeon path once. Each completed dungeon gives one item for the collection. A WvW player just completes a reward track for each dungeon to get these items, instead of running the dungeons themselves! That would be fantastic, and everyone gets to play their preferred game mode. :-)

Khisanth.2948:

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

Khisanth – sometimes I agree. I’ve only done the Frostfang precursor, but some of the “collections” were a joke. At one point it was just 750 mithril ingots and 500 elder planks, or something like that, followed by another collection that required five ascended axe blades and hafts among other things. I didn’t like these, but there are other collections that took me out into the world to collect frozen water samples, chunks from ice elementals, and stuff like that. I loved those, and they felt like they made sense, thematically!

I agree that the collection part of the Precursors is the best part of a Legendary. It tickles the Explorer nerve big time, and also managed to take me out of my comfortzone because I had to do WvW, Dungeons and Fractals, things I use to ignore because I am not a fan of grouping/PvP. But now I feel good about the fact that I managed to do that part anyway.

As to the materials part: I think I collected 1/4th of the mats myself over the years of casual play, and I bought the rest with Gold that I bought with gems.

I have no qualms about this, because the Precursor Collection part is so much fun and already challenged me to a degree.

I think many more folks like me fuel the Economy in this way, and I do not see Anet ever taking a “less mats” approach to this.

However, I do think that every new Legendary should at least have this Exploratory Collection part to it. I definately will not be doing any Legendary that is just about mats.

Khisanth.2948:

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

The OP is saying they like the smoke, they like the mirrors. What they don’t like is just coming up with mats for no reason.

I agree: it would be a lot more fun to have this as an option for the final step (not just the precursors), plus more fun if the current collections were updated for step II to be less about farming and more about collecting.

However, it doesn’t seem practical, at least not any time soon. There are just too many moving parts, which is why the remaining HoT precursors have identical requirements (which require a lot of grinding of one sort or another).

It’s pretty unrealistic to expect that Forcing players into game modes they have surely already tried and not enjoyed, would be popular with PvE players in general.
Reward tracks may work in WvW because it’s been basically unrewarding but the players in PvE are used to being rewarded when they accomplish something. Those rewards, combined, should give the Legendary, as they do now. You simply need a broader increase in loot in WvW to be able to create a legendary weapon in that game mode. Then the whole idea would not seem so grindy. This way, many in WvW would already have those Legendary weapons.

Tumult.2578:

It’s pretty unrealistic to expect that Forcing players into game modes they have surely already tried and not enjoyed, would be popular with PvE players in general.
Reward tracks may work in WvW because it’s been basically unrewarding but the players in PvE are used to being rewarded when they accomplish something. Those rewards, combined, should give the Legendary, as they do now. You simply need a broader increase in loot in WvW to be able to create a legendary weapon in that game mode. Then the whole idea would not seem so grindy. This way, many in WvW would already have those Legendary weapons.

Like… warbringer, envoy armor, fractal backpiece and the pvp backpiece do already?

Hevoskuuri.3891:

I very much second this. I’ve played multiple hours every single day for almost 2 years now, and still do, but I still consider myself way too casual to even start attempting to make a legendary. I’d love to see one or two of the HoT leggies in my inventory one day, but I just can’t see myself farming for hundreds of hours. At the moment, legendaries don’t really ask for effort, mastery or anything of the sort, but simply the ability to withstand the mind-numbing grind they require.

But hey, I’m just bragging here. I know they won’t change the legendary crafting process, and enough people seem to be fine with it, since every third person you see is running around with at least one. Maybe in 10 years I’ve gathered enough materials via regularl play to attempt making one, we’ll see.

I am an EXTREMELY casual player that has played since Beta. I have taken a month or 3 off here and there in that time and did not play every day. About 6 months ago I decided I had enough mats saved up that I wanted to start Chuka & Champawat. So far I have had enough wood collected to get through The Hunt and Ambush. I used up all my high-tier leather and had to buy more, but it didn’t make me broke. It seems that Ambush was the most material-intensive step, so I think I’m in the home stretch except for the Mystic Tribute which I am not too far off from.

Keeping in mind that through my time playing the game I wasn’t even thinking in terms of crafting a Legendary, I would think that someone who plays multiple hours every single day with a goal would be able to make one much quicker.

Relic.2136:

I didn’t like these, but there are other collections that took me out into the world to collect frozen water samples, chunks from ice elementals, and stuff like that. I loved those, and they felt like they made sense, thematically!

In many cases they just reused existing content. It’s not very interesting if you’ve already done those things a dozen times already. In some cases multiple collections also overlap. Nice if you are doing them in parallel. Potentially a bit annoying when done in serial.

I’ve been thinking about getting a second Legendary, but since I love swords, it’d either be another Bolt or (hopefully) a new sword currently unreleased. When I got Bolt, that was still during the days of old school mat farming, and I really loved the map completion aspect. Farming gold was frustrating sometimes, but I did get very good at dungeon running! I think I might start collecting mats for the obvious gifts, and then look at where I am after that.

C’mon ANet, put out another sword!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Khisanth.2948:

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

The OP is saying they like the smoke, they like the mirrors. What they don’t like is just coming up with mats for no reason.

I would go further and say that the “smoke & mirrors” are the collections I did NOT like – the silly master crafting ones that just had you dump a stupid amount of materials. Collections that take you out into the world I would not classify as smoke/mirrors at all, but that’s just my opinion. :-)

Khisanth.2948:

Relic.2136:

I didn’t like these, but there are other collections that took me out into the world to collect frozen water samples, chunks from ice elementals, and stuff like that. I loved those, and they felt like they made sense, thematically!

In many cases they just reused existing content. It’s not very interesting if you’ve already done those things a dozen times already. In some cases multiple collections also overlap. Nice if you are doing them in parallel. Potentially a bit annoying when done in serial.

Khisanth – I can sympathize with that point of view. Personally, I don’t mind re-visiting existing content when it makes sense to me – collecting water samples and ice elemental parts for Frostfang was good fun! It got me to go back to locations I don’t frequent anymore, and I felt like it really put me in tune with the nature of water and ice throughout Tyria. :-) That sort of thing is the reason I play MMOs!

Khisanth.2948:

Seera.5916:

Khisanth.2948:

The collections for the precursors are often more costly than just straight up buying. Then on top of that you often have to do other stuff too like Dry Top for the geodes or various fractals or wait around for events.

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

Short of the bugged event that I ran into, I’ve enjoyed the process to get Storm. I prefer long term goals that I can split into smaller chunks. Outright buying the precursor or gambling didn’t have any smaller chunks really.

I don’t care if it cost me more in time and/or gold to make it via the collections. I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than opening my wallet or spending ages grinding for gold or ages gambling.

See that is all fine up until someone is also complaining about grind. Grind grind grind and more grind but then extol the virtues of the method that requires more resources which logically speaking would require more time grinding to acquire.

Those types will complain about it as long as it’s not simply log in and get awarded the precursor/legendary. Because anything else to them is just grind because that’s not what they want to do.

And how other people view it doesn’t bother me at all. So it’s not all fine up until someone else complains about it. Because someone will complain about any method they put in for getting a legendary. Even if it’s handed out for free.

Djinn.9245:

Hevoskuuri.3891:

I very much second this. I’ve played multiple hours every single day for almost 2 years now, and still do, but I still consider myself way too casual to even start attempting to make a legendary. I’d love to see one or two of the HoT leggies in my inventory one day, but I just can’t see myself farming for hundreds of hours. At the moment, legendaries don’t really ask for effort, mastery or anything of the sort, but simply the ability to withstand the mind-numbing grind they require.

But hey, I’m just bragging here. I know they won’t change the legendary crafting process, and enough people seem to be fine with it, since every third person you see is running around with at least one. Maybe in 10 years I’ve gathered enough materials via regularl play to attempt making one, we’ll see.

I am an EXTREMELY casual player that has played since Beta. I have taken a month or 3 off here and there in that time and did not play every day. About 6 months ago I decided I had enough mats saved up that I wanted to start Chuka & Champawat. So far I have had enough wood collected to get through The Hunt and Ambush. I used up all my high-tier leather and had to buy more, but it didn’t make me broke. It seems that Ambush was the most material-intensive step, so I think I’m in the home stretch except for the Mystic Tribute which I am not too far off from.

Keeping in mind that through my time playing the game I wasn’t even thinking in terms of crafting a Legendary, I would think that someone who plays multiple hours every single day with a goal would be able to make one much quicker.

Djinn – I’m a super casual player, too. Maybe an hour or two of play each day, if that, on average for me. In five years I’ve only ever built one set of ascended armor, but never have I ever had 250 of any T6 mat. I have nine characters (one of each profession) and all the crafting disciplines maxed out, all the elite specs unlocked and actually tested to see if I liked them, main story and HoT done multiple times, all dungeons completed at least once, and personal fractal level 50 or something close to that.

I’m not bragging – it took me five years to do all that in the little time that I have to play, but I’ve enjoyed it immensely and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Even during summers or vacations when I had several consecutive hours to play I would never spend it repeatedly farming mats (or gold in order to buy mats). While it’s true someone with time on their hands could grind up mats to craft a Legendary faster, one of the strongest reasons I continue to play Guild Wars (been around since Prophecies) is because that sort of grind is not necessary, on principle. Of course we could say Legendaries aren’t “necessary”, and I fully agree, but that doesn’t mean we should encourage grinding in order to acquire them, in my opinion. :-)

For me the worst part is the daily gate of 1 crafting material per day. It took me like 90 days for Bolt. I know you can buy them off the TP – but it was way cheaper to make it yourself.

Relic – place buy orders for the T6 mats with a portion of the gold you’ve made after each time you’ve played. You will have them in no time at all! Grats on your ascended, I still don’t have a single piece of that, but it may change with the new wvw rewards. I agree with your sentiment of having fun; GW2 is the only game I come back to again and again, because it’s never pushy about hpw I spend my time, and there’s always something fun to do.

Relic.2136:

Djinn.9245:

Hevoskuuri.3891:

I very much second this. I’ve played multiple hours every single day for almost 2 years now, and still do, but I still consider myself way too casual to even start attempting to make a legendary. I’d love to see one or two of the HoT leggies in my inventory one day, but I just can’t see myself farming for hundreds of hours. At the moment, legendaries don’t really ask for effort, mastery or anything of the sort, but simply the ability to withstand the mind-numbing grind they require.

But hey, I’m just bragging here. I know they won’t change the legendary crafting process, and enough people seem to be fine with it, since every third person you see is running around with at least one. Maybe in 10 years I’ve gathered enough materials via regularl play to attempt making one, we’ll see.

I am an EXTREMELY casual player that has played since Beta. I have taken a month or 3 off here and there in that time and did not play every day. About 6 months ago I decided I had enough mats saved up that I wanted to start Chuka & Champawat. So far I have had enough wood collected to get through The Hunt and Ambush. I used up all my high-tier leather and had to buy more, but it didn’t make me broke. It seems that Ambush was the most material-intensive step, so I think I’m in the home stretch except for the Mystic Tribute which I am not too far off from.

Keeping in mind that through my time playing the game I wasn’t even thinking in terms of crafting a Legendary, I would think that someone who plays multiple hours every single day with a goal would be able to make one much quicker.

Djinn – I’m a super casual player, too. Maybe an hour or two of play each day, if that, on average for me. In five years I’ve only ever built one set of ascended armor, but never have I ever had 250 of any T6 mat. I have nine characters (one of each profession) and all the crafting disciplines maxed out, all the elite specs unlocked and actually tested to see if I liked them, main story and HoT done multiple times, all dungeons completed at least once, and personal fractal level 50 or something close to that.

I’m not bragging – it took me five years to do all that in the little time that I have to play, but I’ve enjoyed it immensely and I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. Even during summers or vacations when I had several consecutive hours to play I would never spend it repeatedly farming mats (or gold in order to buy mats). While it’s true someone with time on their hands could grind up mats to craft a Legendary faster, one of the strongest reasons I continue to play Guild Wars (been around since Prophecies) is because that sort of grind is not necessary, on principle. Of course we could say Legendaries aren’t “necessary”, and I fully agree, but that doesn’t mean we should encourage grinding in order to acquire them, in my opinion. :-)

Yea, I mainly PvE and I am around 150 average on T6 mats. But I do have laurels, and gold to buy mats which I didn’t grind for, just played like I normally would.

I’m not saying that I like grinding or that I think it’s good, but games have to look for something that will take characters time in order to make Legendaries special. I’m glad that they gated them behind something I can do over time instead of behind raids or something actually difficult that I probably couldn’t do.

In general, i agree. The material tier of precursor collections turns the whole experience from something interesting into a boring grind.

Unfortunately, we now know that the non-material collection parts required supposedly too much work, and had to be abandoned. That’s why the latest precursor crafting consists of only the material part.

Thus, it’s a mistake that will likely never get fixed.

I just made my first legendary, Kudzu. I went through the entire precursor crafting process. I’m agreeing with the others. The scavenger hunting was great. The chopping down entire forests to make one magical toohpick part sucked.

Thank you all for your responses, and especially for being so reasonable and calm when disagreeing! One of the many reasons I <3 the GW2 community. :-)

Relic.2136:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Khisanth.2948:

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

The OP is saying they like the smoke, they like the mirrors. What they don’t like is just coming up with mats for no reason.

I would go further and say that the “smoke & mirrors” are the collections I did NOT like – the silly master crafting ones that just had you dump a stupid amount of materials. Collections that take you out into the world I would not classify as smoke/mirrors at all, but that’s just my opinion. :-)

It looks like the smoke and mirrors did an extremely good job since you seem to have forgotten the other tiers that requires ascended materials. Such as the deldrimor steel ingots that go into making the flasks for HOPE’s t3 collection.

Oh also exclusive to the HoT legendary is the recipe sheets. “Oh looks like I got all the materials, lets just toss them into the forg… NOPE looks like I need to spend another 80g on recipe sheets first -_-”.

Khisanth.2948:

Relic.2136:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Khisanth.2948:

What the collections offer is smoke and mirrors to hide the total cost.

As for grind … well that is all on you. If you want to rush it then yeah that is going to require some grind.

The OP is saying they like the smoke, they like the mirrors. What they don’t like is just coming up with mats for no reason.

I would go further and say that the “smoke & mirrors” are the collections I did NOT like – the silly master crafting ones that just had you dump a stupid amount of materials. Collections that take you out into the world I would not classify as smoke/mirrors at all, but that’s just my opinion. :-)

It looks like the smoke and mirrors did an extremely good job since you seem to have forgotten the other tiers that requires ascended materials. Such as the deldrimor steel ingots that go into making the flasks for HOPE’s t3 collection.

Oh also exclusive to the HoT legendary is the recipe sheets. “Oh looks like I got all the materials, lets just toss them into the forg… NOPE looks like I need to spend another 80g on recipe sheets first -_-”.

Uh, no…that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I like the collections that are active and take you places, and I dislike the parts of crafting that involve huge mat dumps, including the ascended components. I’ve never made a HoT one, so I didn’t know about recipe sheets, but if they’re just gold sinks then yes, I’d oppose those, too…

Relic.2136:

I just crafted by first precursor after five years of playing, and I have to say I’m displeased. I know everybody out there who has several Legendary weapons doesn’t want to hear it, but I’d really love to see Legendary crafting change from mind-numbingT6 mat/gold grind to something more like the collections aspect of the precursor steps. I understand it’s difficult to implement stuff like this, and the system has been around so long it’s unlikely to change. Nevertheless, I’d personally much prefer a set of collections that took me through every dungeon path once, one that took me to each world boss, or some of the jump puzzles, etc., rewarding us for playing varied content without endless repetition. This could even be a way of reacquainting players with lore! You could have collections for reading historic markers or something.

I love the Gift of Battle coming from a reward track – that’s great! I don’t have to put on a podcast and grind mats or gold for weeks on end; instead I can focus on just playing my class well in that game mode and when the track is complete I can move on to something else! Gift of Exploration? Fantastic! More stuff like that and less grind would make me a very happy camper. :-)

I agree I just got my gen 2 legendary shortbow Chaka and Champawat. I have to say anet picked the most least droped and most expensive mats for a account bound legendary weapon. Can’t even sell it. You’re better off making gen 1 legendary weapons the old way and cheaper. I spend more on this account bound weapon than one you can sell or buy. The mystic coins is an issue as well. I will not go for another gen 2 legendary weapon.