Guild Wars 2

I consider a Legendary Item to be the biggest prize you can get in the game but…

Farming
Let me start by saying:
1) I don’t do dungeons. Haven’t done a one and don’t intend to.
2) I don’t do WvW. Well in all honesty, I did WvW to complete the 4 maps required for the PvE World Completion achievement. Yep, you guess it, I ran like the wind from POI to Vista to Skill point, avoiding every conflict I could find till I finished them off. Surely that is not legendary. Legendary Chicken maybe? Caught 10 times, killed 10 times; thou in my defense, there’s never been less than 3 of you.

Don’t get me wrong. I am dedicated to the game. I have played pretty religiously for over a year now (from the April ’12 Beta). It is just that I play the game the “way that I like”, as we were encouraged to do. I currently have 5 characters, 4 × 80’s and 1 × 73 with over 4500 Achievement Points to date. Thou I may be considered a slacker by those with over 8000 points, I consider myself a dedicated casual player.

So why is this relevant to the topic? Because to get a Legendary, you need: in my case 500 Shards of Zhaitan (dungeon only) 500 Badges of Honor (WvW only). So because I don’t do Dungeons or WvW…I can’t be legendary? The only way at present that I CAN be Legendary is to take up farming. While in real life being a Farmer is quite a respectable profession, not everyone is a Farmer. That would be just silly, wouldn’t it, as we need many other professions to make the world go round. But in this game, if you want to get the big prize, you have to be a farmer.

The other requirements: 200 Skill points, 500k in Karma, 100% World Completion, Stack of Ectoplasm, 110 Laurels; yep got all those thru my standard PvE play. So that can’t be legendary.

There is a requirement for about 120 gp. Now for the farmers, that is in no way legendary, just a repeated walk in the park. For me thou, that is a ton of money which would require me to sell everything I own. But I could do it and then be in the poorhouse. Is that legendary I wonder?

Gambling
Now comes the Precursor. We’re just playing the numbers for that RNG drop fairy to visit our door. No, I did not get that drop from the Lost Shores Finale. Nor did I get it from the 300+ World Boss Chests that I have opened. Or the Jumping Puzzle Chests, thou I still have some of those left to do. Or even a random drop from the thousands of nasties that I killed over the 230 days that I have played since Pre-Launch. So I guess Legendary Lady Luck is just not with me.

Then comes the Mystic Forge. I think that poor horse has been beaten dead many, many times already but you get the idea.

I guess you could always counter with: Hey, how did King Arthur get Excalibur? Why he pulled the sword from a stone – I guess that could count as a random drop. Or you might add, from a mystical lady in a lake – Mystic Forge? How about Bilbo, he found the One Ring on the floor by an underground lake – both random drop AND Mystic Forge. Enough, enough already, yes I know my position has a few holes but I will let others, who come after me and are wiser then myself, fill in the gaps.

LEGENDARY
The first Legendary item was crafted in LESS THEN ONE MONTH from launch date. ONE MONTH! What in all of what the 6 Gods deem holy is legendary about that, outside of the amount of unbridled dedication that was required to complete in that short period of time. In contrast, the way that Legendary items are laid out, I could continue my dedicated play for the next 6 years and still not be able to get one. Legendary amount of time invested with no Legendary outcome.

There is always the Trading Post, sure. Just let me drop down 2500gp and bam, you got yourself a Bifrost. Legendary?
Oh and by the way…toss in one of those Kudzus. And while you’re at it, give me a couple of them Twilights over there. Those things must be good; I see those bloody things at almost every Dragon event I go to.
For perspective, since I don’t farm I only have about 50gp saved up since Pre-Launch (yeah all 5 characters are outfitted with Gold Rares or better, but still), I’ll let you do the math.

The point that I am so laboriously trying to drive home is: let’s take the Farming and Gambling out of the process and make obtaining a Legendary item require a dedication to the game in a player’s own game style. Let us put the LEGENDARY back in Legendary.

Oh and all of you who already have a Legendary Item…You can all burn in Moto’s fiery Continue Room. Naaa, no sour grapes here… Continue Coins for everyone.

We pretty much already know all this :P

The WvW exploration component is VERY VERY controversial. Almost nobody approves of it

Pure PvE players like me hate that we have to walk into a PvP warzone and get shot at, in order to recieve a PvE item The WvW commanders hate that PvE non-combatants are clogging up the queue so that legitimate WvW players cannot enter the zone and reinforce their side.

It gets even worse if you’re at the bottom of your WvW tier, as you’ll often find you never get an opportunity to visit certain parts of the WvW map due to enemy control

It’s a lose/lose situation and one arenanet should really rethink

I actually like that creating a legendary requires you to visit every aspect of the game pretty much. I do wish their was more skill and less RNG required though.

If they really wanted these things to take time to achieve, the Legendary would have been gated behind a legendary quest chain. One that required a gift of “xxx” to continue to the next quest. The gifts wouldn’t necessarily depend on RNG as they do now (gold & lodestone)but one for dungeon mastery(all dungeons & paths run once), one for map completion(all PvE maps completed), one for personal story completion, one for killing one of each type of enemy in Tyria, one for maxing crafting to 400 in each profession(account wide not per character), one for killing all the world bosses, one for completing ‘x’ amount of DE’s in each map, one for opening all the temples in Orr, etc.

There is always someone that will rush through content to be the first. A quest based system (similar to that mentioned above) could have slowed the process. At the culmination of the epic quest chain, the player gets to choose an account bound pre-cursor. Then the player would have most of the components needed to craft their own account bound legendary.

Even if they implemented something similar in the future that doesn’t make all pre-cursors account bound, only those that are received as a reward. Pre-cursors that are dropped by bosses/chests/JP’s etc are all still sellable.

EDIT: After thinking this one through, they could have implemented a similar type epic quest chain for WvW players as well. There are plenty of difficult achievements inside of WvW just because of the nature of the place. Kills with different types of equipment: arrowcart, seige, canons, etc. Map completion with POI’s, JP’s, Vista’s, skill points. Champion map enemies (not the tower champs). DE’s in the WvW maps not the tower/keep defense but the less popular ones that pop up in the map like killing the veteran Warg. Taking x amount of keeps, tower. Killing x amount of keep/tower champs, Acquiring x amount of Badges of Honor. You guys get the idea that there are plenty of epics that can be put into a check list type quest for seeking the pre-cursor/legendary, even in WvW.

Ryuujin.8236:

The WvW exploration component is VERY VERY controversial. Almost nobody approves of it

Pure PvE players like me hate that we have to walk into a PvP warzone and get shot at, in order to recieve a PvE item

Stopped reading there. It is not a PVE item. It is a reward for playing all aspects of GW2.

In my opinion, Anet needs to completely revamp the whole reward system in PvE such that it doesn’t reward only grinding.

Achievements should be actual achievements such as completing dungeons faster than 99% of the population, or being the first in the world to get map completion for example.

Things that people can’t just grind for and eventually achieve but require both dedication and effort in order to achieve.

They are not “legendary” at all. They don’t require all aspects just one…gold accumulation. Leader boards are 10 fold what they are in terms of prestige as are fractal weapons/ high pvp rank/ high wvw rank. Tbh the only thing that really bothers me about them is that medal on login<—-that is asinine.

Azure Prower.8701:

Ryuujin.8236:

The WvW exploration component is VERY VERY controversial. Almost nobody approves of it

Pure PvE players like me hate that we have to walk into a PvP warzone and get shot at, in order to recieve a PvE item

Stopped reading there. It is not a PVE item. It is a reward for playing all aspects of GW2.

I don’t have an issue with WvW being included in making a Legendary. Some do. I don’t think the achievements required to make a legendary are that epic at all. Many of them can be bought using the TP.
I will say that if it is to reward all aspects of play in GW2 then PvP (not just WvW) should have been a part of the achievement as well.

they are pointless clones of art and they all look the same depending on the class-type your hunting for, I felt good when i got one but then I felt unsatisfied when i seen another 8 or 9 other people with the same legendary item as me, how can a legendary item be so legendary when there is so many of the same type. give it six months and most of the guild-wars 2 community will have a legendary clone.. you can buy them on trading house for a thousand gold.

Or you could just buy one off the TP. No need to do dungeons or farm WvWvW.

I’ve been working towards my legendary for a couple weeks. Not very long, and I don’t have much to show for it, though I’m half way to the total BoH I need, and I’ve collected a LOT of wood.
That being said, I’ve been seriously reconsidering due to a couple factors that are along the lines of what the OP is talking about.
Gathering 250 each of the T6 mats is pretty much an exercise in insanity. It’s not impossible, but I wonder what percentage of legendary owners actually just bought most of theirs. I farm for a couple hours in different zones on nights when I want to really push things, and generally wind up with maybe 10 of the T6 items, and perhaps 25 of the T5’s. With limited time amounts, that’s just a long way to go time-wise.
The other thing is stats. Right now you pay for a skin. BFD. It’s a skin, several of which are ridiculous, and some of which aren’t all that special when it comes to effects. That aspect is fine, but the stats that come with them bring legendaries down to the level of standard skins.
Legendary weapons should be legendary in all aspects, including stats, and instead of having Anet give them some set of stats that no-one uses. It would be better if legendaries had 3 “legendary attribute slots”, where, much like infusions, you would place in special gems that imbue the weapon with the stats you pick, AND the number those attributes add would be at least 2 points higher than any other weapon in the game.
That would make them a little more worth the effort.

You make some very valid points OP, but for me the only issue I have with Legendaries is the gambling aspect of getting a precursor. It should not be a gambled or traded item, but one aqcuired from completing an epic quest. A quest to put your name in the history books. A quest to make you a living legend.

I’d also like to comment on the idea that a legendary is a PvE only weapon. I do not believe this is the case. A legendary weapon is supposed to represent your mastery of almost all aspects of the game: WvW, dungeons, gathering materials, gathering wealth, exploration and more. Within those aspects there is already a large element of luck involved, so again I feel the precurser aqcuisition needs to be changed.

Anet has already stated that they would like to add some kind of scavenger hunt to aqcuire the pre-curser, so we just need to be patient and wait for them to implement this idea. Hopefully, by the time this has been added we will have some more legendary skins to choose from, as many of them do not suit my tastes (many of them are far too toy like and not serious enough for the effort IMO).

Rin.1046:

I’d also like to comment on the idea that a legendary is a PvE only weapon. I do not believe this is the case. A legendary weapon is supposed to represent your mastery of almost all aspects of the game: WvW, dungeons, gathering materials, gathering wealth, exploration and more. Within those aspects there is already a large element of luck involved, so again I feel the precurser aqcuisition needs to be changed.

Well, I didn’t actually say that a Legendary was a PvE only weapon. My point was that PvE is all I chose to do and therefore, in the current Legendary process, the only way that I can get one is by farming for gold and buying one. Which I don’t feel is very LEGENDARY.

As for:“A legendary weapon is supposed to represent your mastery of almost all aspects of the game”
I do not recall seeing a quote from ANet stating that was the case, but I surely may have missed it.
In my case, I only like PvE open world, so it would be nice for me if there was an Epic way for me to get one just doing PvE. On the other hand if someone else only likes to do sPvP or WvW then I think it is likewise only fair to have some Epic way for them to get one too.
If a Legendary item is truly a representation of your mastery of almost all aspects of the game, I question; what about a person who just farms one path of a Dungeon continuously for gp until they have enough gold, then buys one? Thou that truly would show a mastery of that path of a dungeon but not of almost all aspects of the game. Or to just go to the extreme, how about the real time independently wealthy person, who just buys enough gems, converts to gold, and buys a Legendary Item that way? They could have a Legendary without ever stetting foot outside their starter city. Sure that would be expensive but I would be willing to guess it has already been done by somebody back when the prices were lower.

In closing: I wrote this in hopes that there were some other like-minded, poor people out there who desire to put in the effort to become LEGENDARY in their own way.

for hardcore gamers there is farming,
for lazy-brainiacs there is trading,
for everyone else there is mastercard

“The only way at present that I CAN be Legendary is to take up farming. While in real life being a Farmer is quite a respectable profession, not everyone is a Farmer.”

Your comment in make me think we would be poachers, if we did this in real life.

If you don’t wanna do what it takes to get a legendary, play without one. It really isn’t a big deal. I got one and then mostly ran around using other weapons anyway.

Legendaries have lost allure for me. I don’t even bother equipping my 3rd one, FSP and I regret making it since I don’t use it as often as I planned. Would be nice if legendaries were a bit more exclusive and actually rare, but then again many casual players would complain.

I’m confused. You don’t want farming, or earning money, yet you want a legendary to reward players who are dedicated to their own playstyle. This poses quite a big problem since how do you ascertain that dedication in game content X is equivalent to dedication in game content Y? Is 500,000 DEs worth 250,000 kills in wvw? Is doing all paths of all dungeons 5000 times the same as earning 2000g through farming/working the TP? You really don’t know.

What I realize is legendaries reward people for:
1.) Doing everything the game has to offer. Wvw, dungeons, RNG and farming, leveling (for skill points), doing DEs (for karma), etc.
2.) Dedication to all of those (tho ofc with different difficulties)

Vol.5241:

Legendaries have lost allure for me. I don’t even bother equipping my 3rd one, FSP and I regret making it since I don’t use it as often as I planned. Would be nice if legendaries were a bit more exclusive and actually rare, but then again many casual players would complain.

Casual players wouldnt complain i play 2-3hrs a day sometimes less weekends more, I am almost their with my legendary. To me it was a goal to work towards along the way I made other items to reward myself for getting to a certain point in this journey. But you are correct having one is becoming more common and I dont think Anet had that in mind when creating legendary weapons

Pretty soon it may be cheaper to buy the legendary than to buy the precursor and then make the legendary. The cost of some of the T6 mats are definitely going up as supply is slowly diminishing.
Just a thought. But if people are farming CoF P1 hard enough to make the gold for the precursor <— usually a third of the price for the actual legendary.
Wouldn’t it just be smarter to go ahead and farm 2/3 more of the time and put in a buy order for their preferred legendary?
They’d probably make back a good chunk of change selling all the materials they’d collected in preparation for making the legendary and not have to rely on RNG at all.
I’m not a number cruncher but from a little bit of preliminary pricing and rounding of max buy orders for components; you’re not saving a whole lot of gold by making your own. And there are hidden costs for some of the components (clovers = RNG, WvW badges will require some repair costs, T6 mats are costly and subject to market fluctuations, certain dungeons are harder to run than others (Arah for Bifrost), etc. )

EDIT: I’m not endorsing just outright buying the legendary. I think it makes it cheap when you are allowed to do so. I am just pointing out that max buy order for a precursor Ie. The legend = 600g and max buy order for Legendary Bifrost = 1800g At some point it just might be cheaper gold & time wise.

What I find most annoying is having to do a dungeon over and over again. As was suggested above I would also prefer to have to run each Dungeon Story and each path once.

The world completion is fine as it is on my behalf. It’s not really that hard to get it done if you keep your eyes open. The Badges can be obtained fairly easy, too, though I do understand some might find W3 as frustrating as dungeons are for me.

I haven’t yet started to concentrate on gathering/farming/buying materials as I don’t even see myself owning a precursor any time soon (the prices for Precursors seem to rise faster than my income). Though I don’t like this fact, I find it acceptable, as a Legendary should be extremely rare. If Anet doesn’t want people to obtain a Legendary as fast as they have, they shouldn’t really introduce a quest to obtain one.

And I don’t think Legendaries should be sellable. Account bound would be nice once crafted as I’m still not even sure I want to make a Legendary, because

1. Who knows if my necro will stay my main.
2. I might find other weapons/builds to be more fun as the game continues.
3. Many of the effects are just too colourful and/or annoying. A few more legendary skins (and sound effects) would be nice.
4. I hate wasting hard earned money on RNG. I rather hold something in my hand for the money I spent

one of the faster guys in getting a legendary made video about the badges required. called them badges of jumping because apparently he couldn’t get them in combat (don’t really know why, by the time he did that video I had over 300 without even trying). so he just did the jumping puzzles.. or rather, created new chars, went to the JP, plundered it, delete the char, created a new one etc..

the jumping puzzle on your homeland should be more or less safe anyway. once each day and within 2-3 months you should be pretty near your goal without ever having to fight an enemy.

I see more problems with t6 mats. starting area mobs scale to keep you challanged even at lvl 80 (well, not really, but that’s the idea), yet they only drop t1 mats. you only get t6 mats in 4 areas afaik (frostgorge, southsun, cursed and malchors), all of which seriously lack in fun content. they’re barren, at best boring at worst constantly annoying.

The fact that legendaries are tradable make legendaries impossible to be perceived as legendary.

The fact that every day has an avg of 1~2 topics opened about them….

Still makes them legendary.

Milennin.4825:

Or you could just buy one off the TP. No need to do dungeons or farm WvWvW.

And how else can you get the money for that in say a reasonable amount of time, than grinding the dungeons (ohai thar CoF p1)? Sure, doing maps, events and gathering does give out a decent amount of money, but I guesstimate it would take well over a year to get the money to buy a legendary from TP without dungeons.
But that’s not the issue. It’s not something that should just be easily available to buy. As the original poster said – legendary should be legen-waitforit- dary. That means that players should do some cool / epic / legendary stuff to reach such a goal. So map exploration, rare materials etc – it’s all good. Even WvW to a certain point (even though I agree that people shouldn’t be forced to do PvP if they don’t like it). The problem arises from precursor random drops. RNG is truly a cruel mistress. It’s not about the skill or the time input, it’s all about luck. That’s what should be changed.

Honestly, the best weapon models in game for each weapon, none of them are the legendary, so I don’t think it’s a big deal. Not much legendary about 90% of them and the rest have stats I don’t want anyway. There are better looking weapons out there that don’t force you into 1 stat combo.

Mike.5091:

What I find most annoying is having to do a dungeon over and over again. As was suggested above I would also prefer to have to run each Dungeon Story and each path once.

Getting dungeon badges is probably the easiest part.

Oranisagu.3706:

one of the faster guys in getting a legendary made video about the badges required. called them badges of jumping because apparently he couldn’t get them in combat (don’t really know why, by the time he did that video I had over 300 without even trying). so he just did the jumping puzzles.. or rather, created new chars, went to the JP, plundered it, delete the char, created a new one etc..

the jumping puzzle on your homeland should be more or less safe anyway. once each day and within 2-3 months you should be pretty near your goal without ever having to fight an enemy.

I see more problems with t6 mats. starting area mobs scale to keep you challanged even at lvl 80 (well, not really, but that’s the idea), yet they only drop t1 mats. you only get t6 mats in 4 areas afaik (frostgorge, southsun, cursed and malchors), all of which seriously lack in fun content. they’re barren, at best boring at worst constantly annoying.

Yeah I find it hilarious when people think JP badges are the most efficient way. They’re not.

Playing WvW (especially on reset night) and roaming with zergs is the best way to get badges. And now, you can get even more with supAC.

Vol.5241:

Mike.5091:

What I find most annoying is having to do a dungeon over and over again. As was suggested above I would also prefer to have to run each Dungeon Story and each path once.

Getting dungeon badges is probably the easiest part.

It may be easy, maybe only for some but not for all. And apart from maybe being easy, I just don’t really want to do a dungeon over and over again. And rushing Dungeons is something I just don’t do, due to my personality.

But the thread once again shows that in a group of many, people have different goals and preferences. It’s not possible to satisfy everybody to the same level.

Though the majority does seem to agree that the RNG part isn’t good, it’s not such a big part of the path towards the legendary. Using the Mystic Forge is a choice made by players to RNG. Often it would cost less to simply save up and buy the Precursor.

About W3 .. in all previous MMOs I’ve played PvP got me so worked up that I didn’t enjoy that part of the game and ended up not playing it. So at the beginning I avoided but later grew fond of W3. So I can understand people who prefere to do a JP than kill other players and there are quite a few reasons to avoid W3, may it be lag, annoying, missing skills, lack of interest. It may not be most efficient time wise but if no stalker is around and you don’t fall all the time (some days just suck :P ) then BL JPs are much calmer. The nice thing about badges is that you can choose which way you prefer to gather them.

Summed up, it isn’t easy for the majority to obtain a legendary, it’s just boring/annoying, which it shouldn’t be. There are plenty of ways to adjust things on Anets side, but somebody will always be unhappy with the results. Then there’s the player who can decide to take things slow and as they come. That’s what I’ve been doing since I’ve seen the objectives for a legendary.