Guild Wars 2

Just a note up front: This is NOT intended to be a discussion of the merits—or lack thereof—of ascended equipment. As the title states, I would like to restrict this to cosmetic goals only, rather than getting caught up in the endless back and forth surrounding the issue of vertical progression.

Lodestones.
Ectoplasm.
T6 materials.

What do all of these have in common, besides their recent, meteoric rises in price? They’re all used in significant quantities to create many of the Mystic Forge exotic weapons, most notably the guardian/mesmer/elementalist summoned weapons, but also one-off skins like the Stygian Blade, Infinite Light, Immobulus, and so on. Even the special holiday weapon skins require some or all of those materials.

I dislike playing the trading post, and I have neither have the inclination nor the time to farm for 10 hours a day, so I probably won’t ever get one of those weapons. It would be nice if there were other ways of attaining them (perhaps a lengthy quest series for each weapon, along the lines of Everquest II’s class-specific epic weapon quests), but even if that never happens, the cost required to acquire them doesn’t really bother me; they’re just meant for people who are willing to spend more time in the game than I am, or who get incredibly lucky with a one-in-a-million drop.

However, I think there is something missing in the game as it is right now—namely, attainable mid-tier items that are also desirable enough to entice players to work towards them. On the one hand, you have pearl weapons and similarly inexpensive (and correspondingly plain) named exotics, and on the other, you have incredibly expensive, multi-hundred gold exotics with all sorts of flashy particle effects and animations; where are the weapons targeted at, say, the 30-70 gold range, with more intricate designs than the former and more subtle effects than the latter?

As it stands right now, I don’t see myself ever switching out any of the weapon skins on my main character, simply because none of the skins I could afford in the foreseeable future are in any way interesting. I certainly don’t mind the existence of all of the high-end skins—if nothing else, they make people-watching in Lion’s Arch interesting—but I would like to have a realistic, interesting goal to look forward to on my own character.

Well, gigantic quest for legendary weapons is coming, so you could just stockpile materials until then and get a legendary.

We know that ANet is working on all kinds of things right now. I’d wait a bit to see what kind of skins come out.

Gilosean.3805:

Well, gigantic quest for legendary weapons is coming, so you could just stockpile materials until then and get a legendary.

We know that ANet is working on all kinds of things right now. I’d wait a bit to see what kind of skins come out.

Even if precursors were to become totally free, legendaries would still cost several hundred gold (close to 1000 gold, in some cases) due to the other required materials, which all fall into the categories listed at the start: lodestones, ectoplasm, T6 materials.

I actually think that’s a fundamental flaw of the current recipes, whether legendary or not—they all require the same few materials, which drives demand for those materials through the roof and straight into the stratosphere, given the incredibly limited supply—but it’s a somewhat separate issue from the one I mentioned in the original post. Reducing the prices of those materials (say, by increasing drop rates, or decreasing the amounts required) might make previously-unattainable items reasonably affordable, but it still doesn’t address the issue of there being a gap between the very entry-level items and the very high-end items, with really nothing in the middle.

Hopefully, ANet will address this issue by adding more items in the future that fall into a mid-level price/effort range, but it goes against the pattern we’ve seen from the items added post-launch thus far. Both the Halloween craftable skins and the Mystic Forge back items require just as many materials—if not more—of the same few types as all of the existing high-end exotics, with the inevitable result being that their prices are every bit as high if not higher.

I would say nice “medium term” skins would be the Tier 3 Cultural skins. 63k karma. Not too cheap, not too expensive and some nice skins in there. The Skull items, and “Eye” items are also a hair cheaper than some of the other ones as well. Also, the faction weapons could be considered that too or the “Trinity” stuff. I think you maybe glossed over a few weapons in your thread or thinking process OP.

I wish Lodestones were easier to obtain. ;/ Easier to get 250 ectos than get one of those to drop.

The immediate problem is that a lot of items that were formerly appropriate “mid tier” goals, like Immobulus, The Anomaly, etc. have all been forced out of that category in the last few weeks. Immobulus was at one point about 60g in materials. Now it’s over 250g. Anomaly used to cost about 30g and will likely be over 100g shortly unless the Ecto market stalls.

I’ve already purchased the cultural T3 that I want. What else can I do now? My buying power is dropping daily. The only item I currently have to work toward is the fractal capacitor backpiece because it’s achieved from a fixed currency.

Totally Agree everything is grind and grind for end game. Nothing good at mid game as it was in GW1 everything was after 20 levels which wasn’t a big deal now we have 80 levels of the same thing then gear out, it makes no sense..

Crafting weapons gives very little mid game anything
The bought gear is 80% generic until end game etc
Merchant gear is 100% generic through the whole game..

The order gears are level 80 for rares why not 50-60 for rare order gears, as you progress through your story i wanted to wear my order gears and be part of them not odd one out in generic stuff, by the time i got the chance to wear them i went off to dungeons and got exotics etc, very pointless..people would probably buy them more at 50-60 too…

Tier 3 Cultural is so far above the average player its insane 119 gold and its end game too.

Really feel left out during the mid grind to 80…

While obviously, the term “intricate” is a matter of opinion, there’s still some nice skins out there that fall in your category (30-70g range).

There’s some dungeon skins that are pretty nice. Arah weapons have a slight glow to them. AC weapons glow at night. CoE weapons have that electric things going on.

You have the mystic weapons too, which are just like CoE weapons but blue. Very affordable. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_weapon

There were some halloween skins too that falls under this category. I remember during Halloween, the Greatsaw was around 50-60G. I’m sure it’s much more expensive now, but I have a feeling Wintersday will have something similar.

There’s the Corrupted weapons, which take around 30 Corrupted Lodestones, which go around I think ~1g50s ish on the market. Which is about what, 45g? Also falls into this range.

There are plenty of these medium-tiered skins out there, you just have to look for them!

Ursan.7846:

While obviously, the term “intricate” is a matter of opinion, there’s still some nice skins out there that fall in your category (30-70g range).

There’s some dungeon skins that are pretty nice. Arah weapons have a slight glow to them. AC weapons glow at night. CoE weapons have that electric things going on.

You have the mystic weapons too, which are just like CoE weapons but blue. Very affordable. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_weapon

There were some halloween skins too that falls under this category. I remember during Halloween, the Greatsaw was around 50-60G. I’m sure it’s much more expensive now, but I have a feeling Wintersday will have something similar.

There’s the Corrupted weapons, which take around 30 Corrupted Lodestones, which go around I think ~1g50s ish on the market. Which is about what, 45g? Also falls into this range.

There are plenty of these medium-tiered skins out there, you just have to look for them!

At least for my playstyle, I would consider dungeon weapons to be easily attainable in the short-term. They only require 5-6 runs’ worth of tokens to get, which takes a few days at most, assuming you can get consistent groups for the desired dungeons (which can sometimes be a pain, admittedly). That’s not to say that some of them aren’t pretty, or otherwise interesting—I really like my TA staff, and I plan to get some of the Arah weapons as well—but I do think they’re fairly low-effort to acquire.

Mystic weapons are similarly quick to acquire, given their low cost. I think the key point is not that there are no skins which are both easy to acquire and interesting-looking—there are, which is great!—but that there seems to be a large gap in terms of effort require to attain various things. You either have the quick, easy skins or you have the absurdly difficult skins, with not much in between. If you think of the effort in attaining the various types of weapons as a slope, it ends up looking more like a stairstep than a smooth incline.

T3 cultural weapons are closer to what I was thinking of, given the 63,000 karma cost. Assuming you do most/all of the dailies and some events on the side, that’s about one or two weeks per weapon; I suppose I didn’t consider them here because I have such a large stock of karma already built up, even after actually buying a couple of them already. I completely missed the corrupted weapons, too, which also seem to fit the bill.

Thanks for the suggestions…I might just have to start saving for a corrupted focus.

I guess the biggest issue, for me, is that the items that were my medium-term goals because they fit thematically with my character have been forced into being long term goals (or potentially outright unreasonable goals) instead due to market instability and supply shortages.

There are nights when my income rate is at such a level that I make zero quantifiable progress because the supply chain is limited enough to make it extremely vulnerable to speculators.

So if everyone is able to obtain so called Medium-ranged item then it will be no longer “Medium” would it? I’d say dungeon weapons are low to medium ranged and corrupted and destroyer series are typical mid-ranged. This is what separates casual players and longer term players/ or players who simply puts more effort in the game. “I don’t have time to farm” is just an excuse saying “I want a cool looking weapon to show I am good at guild wars 2 but I don’t want to put too much effort to obtain such thing.”
Don’t get me wrong, I am not totally against OP’s idea as the current price for T6 mat is bit high… But consider this, people has been gathering mat for legendary weapon through farming and TP so compare with the effort to obtain legendary the gold/time required for a corrupted, destroyer or any 50-150 gold weapon are at their right place.

On a side note, the reason why lodestone, ecto and T6 mat are at the current price range is because there are enough people out there who can afford theses stuff on a daily basis, therefore what price the majority willing to pay determines how much they go. Although it might be hard for some people but after all it is an executable price for sellers and buyers around all servers in guild wars 2.

Heck I thought that’s what the exotics were. I mean Cultural Tier 1 <= Low Level, Tier 2 Medium Level, Tier 3 High Level.

Noob armor <= Literally low level, Exotics Med Level, Really the thing lacking is High Level stuff as far as armor is concerned.

As far as weapons go Noob weps <= Low level, Exotics/Mystic Others http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Other_Items Med Level, Legendary High level.

I don’t see anything missing.

The problem is, that many players just “bought” their legendaries or farmed the mats back when the drops rates were much higher for certain mats (heck even most of the players that farmed them probably still bought a large portion of their mats). I think this has kind of warped the perception of how long it is supposed to take to obtain certain items in game.

What Anet really needs to do is create different “routes” to getting a legendary. A dungeon grinder shouldn’t need to go do anything else, explorers should be able to obtain them from just exploring, event enthusiasts should just be able to do events, and maybe eventually even have a sort of traditional quest route for a player to obtain one.

If you like to explore you should be able to have a small chance of getting mats from jump quests and chests, or maybe tokens obtained from chests to eventually trade in for mats; something along those lines.

Dungeon Grinders should be able to grind their dungeons for the tokens they already get, but make it an epic dungeon grind to get enough for one (like an insane amount of dungeon grinding). Maybe even just something like having a special token that they can obtain after certain intervals of dungeon runs: after 1 dungeon run you get a special token, 10 dungeon runs in a day you get another token, 20 runs you get another, etc. (this kind of setup would be to try and curb over farming lol)

Right now, legendaries just equate to a big fat amount of gold to most players; I don’t think they should be that way. They should instead be rewards for dedicated players that play over a certain period of time because they enjoy the game.