Guild Wars 2

As we all know precursors aren’t supposed to be these easy to obtain items as they are, well, precursors to a legendary item. But I feel, and I’m sure a lot of you do as well, that the current precursor crafting collections are too grindy. (I’m looking at you collection 2)

While I understand the need for gold sinks I feel like it’s a bit too much. When I first read about the “legendary journey” I imagined something else entirely to what we actually got.

I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed with the final result. I don’t feel like there’s some journey attached to it.

I’ve been hearing from a lot of sources that the second collection is nothing but a material grind/gold sink. That precursor crafting is far more expensive than buying it on the TP. (Of course it is if you’re a lazy player since the pre-crafting was designed with actually moving your butt around the world rather than buying the materials, wasting a ton more money but I can understand why players would want to avoid doing it. Ascended materials are time gated…)

Now I’m not against actually crafting the weapon with a crafting discipline but I am against wasting a crap load of materials on useless items.

I have thought up of a way to improve the pre-crafting and to make it into a proper “journey” and here it is:

For the most part the first collection should stay the same. Have it be a way to research into the properties/elements/machinery etc. etc. of the legendary weapon in question. Once that is done the reward is largely the same. A box containing the first tier precursor recipes which you craft normally.

For the step two collection rather than having to craft a ton of crap I would have it so you go around perfecting your abilities as a crafter.

I’ll take the Bolt weapon as an example. Zap is the precursor for this weapon and tier one could be about studying weather effects and ways to contain electricity among other things.

Now the second tier collection could be about perfecting your prototype. Talking to various npcs, master weaponsmiths, master scientists, alchemists, Krewes, etc. As you meet the various experts in the area you learn to better forge the proper metals, woods, and various catalysts. The prototype will break giving you an essence just like it does now if you salvage it for the next tier. Finishing this collection will once again reward you with another box containing the recipes for crafting the Zap Prototype MK II.

Now tier three could be about going out into the world with the Zap Prototype MK II that you craft from the second tier and doing various things to it. For example, one step into the collection would be to climb up Mount Maelstrom, to the highest possible peak, and hold aloft the sword to the sky prompting it to get struck by lightning. Afterwards you could venture to Morgan’s Spiral in Caledon Forest and climb up the tree to get to the highest spot to charge your sword even further. Or take it to a pool of magical water to cool it down to better temper the sword after it was struck. Etc. etc. There are many possibilities and it would be far more interesting to do.

And as you do each step the physical item could change, even if not visually. It should feel like you’re forging a weapon. Finishing the third tier shouldn’t reward you with another box containing recipes. The final tier should reward you with the completed precursor no longer in the prototype stage.

I’m no expert and I basically thought this up last night and I did take some inspiration from an old Runescape quest where you craft this round magical translucent shield. It could use polish and some sparkles but what do you guys think? How could this be improved? Does this feel like a true journey, less grindy? Can you see this working (even if the chances of devs looking into this is abysmal)?

Lemme know what you all think!

I am really frustrated that Tier 1 for the Experimental Daysword requires 30 Deldrimor Steel. I get Tier 2 being sort of that way due to the ‘okay, you dun goofed crafting", but I can’t help but feel that 15×2 for blade and hilt are excessive…

I honestly didn’t mind waiting the 15 days (Since I have two accounts with high enough crafting) for the deldrimor and wont mind waiting the month for the other 60 i need for Tier 2. Gives me time to get the gifts at least partially done.

Legendary weapons are not meant as short term goals. They only feel grindy if you try to get them quickly. You treat them like the long term goals that they’re supposed to be and voila, no more grind.

Theres two things
1) There needs to be the gold sink – otherwise literally everyone would have every weapon within a few weeks (not feeling so legendary anymore are we?).
2) Im fine with time gating on the mats – legendaries aren’t meant to be “earned” in a couple of days. – if people want to overpay for the materials then that’s their choice – The only way around time gated materials would be time gated quests ie from your list doing the M Maelstrom one day but then having to wait 24 hours before you can meet an npc to give you the next part. Thats not so easy in a live map scenario I would think? (not sure).
By the way I don’t think anet want to have chars standing on top of mountains in storms waiting for lightning to hit – you know someone will do it in person and then then sue them

No, tier 2 is stupidly grindy no matter how long you take to do it.

It’s a real shame Anet decided to get greedy and lazy and made the whole thing into a huge mat/gold grind, since the actual “go around the world and do themed things” collections are actually pretty neat. They could easily have leveraged those instead of leaning so hard on “now craft dozens of ascended mats to make this exotic weapon” (for example, only letting you do one objective per day, fluffed as “you have to do this slowly or you wreck the weapon”, or something).

Basically, I feel precursor crafting should have been a relatively cheap (requiring little gold or anything that can be converted into gold, ie mats), but time-consuming alternative to the instant gratification of purchasing one.

I do agree they could have made the story around precursors more involving and add more lore justification as to why you spend all those materials in the first place. It is a bandaid patch and most events you need to visit actually do feed into the items lore.

Seera.5916:

Legendary weapons are not meant as short term goals. They only feel grindy if you try to get them quickly. You treat them like the long term goals that they’re supposed to be and voila, no more grind.

Agreed. Nothing more to add here.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Basically, I feel precursor crafting should have been a relatively cheap (requiring little gold or anything that can be converted into gold, ie mats), but time-consuming alternative to the instant gratification of purchasing one.

Sorry to say, what you feel and what the goal of precursor crafting is are far appart. At no point was precursor crafting supposed to drastically reduce cost of precursors (unless you are unlucky with rng mystic forging). It was always ment as another option.

Also with the amount of outrage timegating gets in general, I doubt many people would have been happy with even more timegating, especially timegating which can’t be bypassed. I’d assume that’s what you ment since time-consuming gameplay is very relative in its effect on players. If we convert the gold cost of precursors into hours (aka the amount of time it takes to farm the gold) you end up with easy 40+ hours for the high demand precursors (assuming precursor price of 800+g and 20g/h farm) during which you’d have to not allow the player to earn gold. 40 hours is like a drop in the bucket for some players and probably 2 months of casual play for others. Tying this to gold just makes it easier for everyone to go at it at their own pace.

Seera.5916:

Legendary weapons are not meant as short term goals.

I agree with that and all, but… we’re not talking about legendary weapons. We’re talking about the precursors. These things are supposed to be the starting point of the Legendary Journey, handed to the chosen by fate or luck, or gained by outstanding skill.

Turning the precursor into the full legendary is supposed to be the great trial, the all consuming goal. The precursor is just the key to unlock that content. ANet seems to have forgotten that.

It’s pretty clear from the design of the legendary weapon collections that Arenanet has decided that the precursors are actually a significant part of creating a legend.

I’ve made three precursor weapons (none of the new ones though), and frankly I agree with that decision. The legendary weapons I’ve earned with this system have much more value than the one I merely crafted with a purchased precursor.

I won’t argue that there’s not distortion from unanticipated market changes, nor will I argue those couldn’t have been anticipated, but in my opinion each step has sound reasoning behind it.

thisisit.6954:

Theres two things
1) There needs to be the gold sink – otherwise literally everyone would have every weapon within a few weeks (not feeling so legendary anymore are we?).

Hello gift of fortune ? gift of mastery ? gift of whatever ? I don’t know why people always think that just having the precursor is like having already the legendary.
That’t not the case at all. There’s already a lot of grind behind the 3 other gifts so it would be nice if collection 2 is tuned down a little.

I have to agree that to me the precursor is far from being the legendary. It shouldn’t be so hard to craft in comparison to the legendary itself. The gold sink is already in place during the actual steps to craft the legendary. I felt like adding more to it really limits the creativity of such a process.

But I agree that the journey shouldn’t be easy or fast. I didn’t mean to convey that.
And man you guys are much more civil in comparison to the sub-reddit when it comes down to discussions…

I still feel like crafting 250 weapon butts and 250 weapon furs over and over and over again is some what of a flawed mechanic. I just can’t fathom how that’s a good idea.