Guild Wars 2

So I know lots of people understand the grind of GW2 and how there are many examples of things that feel like a grind for just the grinds sake, but I wanted to list a specific example of my issue with some of the Mystic Forge Recipes. Here we have the exotic pistol Lyss:
- 1 Eldritch Scroll (Simple Enough)
- 50 Mystic Coins (Makes sense, it’s the forge’s currency of sorts)
- 250 ectos (daunting but the gun is made out of mists, also gives it a sense of value)
- 250 Ori Barrels
Really? The recipes like these just seem like they got a little number crazy with assigning stacks of things as ingredients. This quantity defies logic. Am I making 250 pistols or just one? And with just one barrel and one frame I can make a gun with the stats as Lyss! This is just one of many examples I feel that ruin the sense of purpose in some of these grinds. Little changes here and there may not alter the prices significantly but at least I can then craft Whisperblade and feel like I’m making an actual sword, not dumping an entire armory into the MF. Please list more examples if you have any outside of the Mystic Forge, or at least try to tell me what the purpose of these recipes are outside of purposefully inflating the price of these items.

I think a mistake you make is thinking bout the forge as a crafting station where the item is created. The text is:

“Zomoros rewarded you with….”

So it is not a trade or crafting something, but it is much more like an altar where you offer to the supreme being (Zomoros in this case) and if it pleases him he gives something in return. Some offerings are not acepted, some offering result in a random gift (RNG-based) and some offering result in a garanteed reward (the so called recipes). But it is not that Zomoros is making Lyss out of the ingredients you put in. He just has it and reward it as a thank you for the gift.

So from a lore perspective, it is perfectly explainable and ok.

that leaves the actual price. On a forum of a different game I had a talk just today bout exclusivity and pricing and I repeat what I said there.

I really like the Maserati GranCabrio. But as it costs 150000 euro it is really not worth the price.

People desire exclusive items cause it make them exclusive. That means that to be exclusive, it should not be easy to get.

Even if you would be right and the pricing is too steep…how do you think that the current owners of Lyss will react if it is reduced strongly?

mercury ranique.2170:

I think a mistake you make is thinking bout the forge as a crafting station where the item is created. The text is:

“Zomoros rewarded you with….”

So it is not a trade or crafting something, but it is much more like an altar where you offer to the supreme being (Zomoros in this case) and if it pleases him he gives something in return. Some offerings are not acepted, some offering result in a random gift (RNG-based) and some offering result in a garanteed reward (the so called recipes). But it is not that Zomoros is making Lyss out of the ingredients you put in. He just has it and reward it as a thank you for the gift.

So from a lore perspective, it is perfectly explainable and ok.

that leaves the actual price. On a forum of a different game I had a talk just today bout exclusivity and pricing and I repeat what I said there.

I really like the Maserati GranCabrio. But as it costs 150000 euro it is really not worth the price.

People desire exclusive items cause it make them exclusive. That means that to be exclusive, it should not be easy to get.

Even if you would be right and the pricing is too steep…how do you think that the current owners of Lyss will react if it is reduced strongly?

I don’t want to delve too much into the economics of the recipes, as I am not an expert on it all, but I am much more focused on the lore bit. It seems like a rocky defense of calling it a legitimate gift when the item is being guaranteed much like an actual crafting recipe (with materials specific to forming the item, ex. pistol frame and ectos for Lyss) than like I hit jackpot on the MF slot machine.

You do make an interesting point on the exclusivity of these that I concede since they should be significant but not necessarily exotic. Perhaps a fair balance would be to upgrade certain rarer items in the game to be ascended quality, with a reworking of their recipe list to account for ascended materials? This would keep the prestige of owning these items while making their effort more about quality than quantity of materials, which makes it feel less grindy.

Also I think diversifying the pool of ascended weapons is good since otherwise a player that wants to be doing the most damage and use Lyss would be reskinning an ascended pistol. You’re just “offering” for a really expensive skin in that scenario.

What do you have in mind that isn’t “as grindy”? Suppose instead of 250 pistol parts, it was 10 pistol parts, 10 glowy things from karma vendor X, 10 pinkish things from karma vendor Y, and so on. Is that equally “grindy” in the sense of tossing in a bunch of vaguely-related items? And wouldn’t that be “more grindy” in the sense of time commitment?

The current crop of ‘recipes’ or ‘offerings’ balance

• economic necessities (it has to be costly, both to function as a wealth-sink and also make it ‘reasonably’ exclusive)
• game play (it shouldn’t be too tedious, it shouldn’t be too easy)
• game play again (these should involve less effort than legendaries)
• lore (the focus of the original post, if I understand it correctly)

I guess I’m used to the current system, so it doesn’t bug me that much. At the same time, it feels somehow ‘lacking’ when compared to the epic history these items are supposed to have. Still, I haven’t been ready to criticize zommy’s behavior — yet — because I haven’t seen an alternative that seems better suited to GW2.

Personally I think that in the process of crafting 250 ori barrels, you accidentally craft one of them into the Lys pistol by accident. When you hand Zomoros the 250 barrels, he just gives back the one you scored a sleep deprived crit on.