Before I start of to much into this post, I want to start off by saying that this isn’t so much a complaint as an observation, maybe, or just me voicing my concern.
I have recently started playing the game, and as a Ranger, falling in love with the class, and maybe even daring to dream about one day getting a Kudzu, Legendary longbow. I got even more exited when I learned that in the new expansion, I would be able to build my precursor, as the prospect of ever getting one as a drop or getting the 1,5k gold to buy one seemed impossible.
I recently finished building the Mawdrey backpack, I was exited of the prospect of building a precursor, as going through the stages of the backpack included both some grinding of materials, crafting and doing tasks in the world, so I thought, maybe they’d be doing something similar with the precursors. But boy, was I wrong!
I’m going to make a comparison of making the precursor into a legendary weapon compared to the first (of three) stages of actually building the precursor. I know you can’t do a real comparison, as you need two different currencies from a dungeon and WvW to get different items and needing to to 100% world completion to get another. This is just to prove my point, why I’m doing my comparison, cause trust me, right now, actually making the weapon legendary is the “easy” part of the journey.
For the sake of this post, I will also be looking at the longbow, Kudzu, cause that’s the one I know. Different items will be needed for different weapons, and doesn’t really matter if you need to gather x amount of metal vs. x amount to lumber, my goal is to try and open a debate, nothing more.
Kudzu Legenday = 10.635 components.
So, to make you Kudzu legendary, you will need exactly 10.635 components, that includes things like 1.200 of thee different currencies, 3.000+ various wood logs. The one item needed you get as a reward from world completion I counted as one item.
Kudzu Experiment I = 14.823 components.
This is the first step (of three) towards making the precursor weapon needed for the legendary bow. The 14.823 components includes 6.400 various wood logs, 7.500 various leather sections, 200 PvP tokens and 200 WvW tokens. The PvP tokens will take you between 80-100 daily quests to get and the WvW tokens will require you to gain 50 levels in WvW.
Keep in mind, that these 50 levels of WvW and 80-100 dailies and over 10k pieces of leather and wood is only to build the first part of the weapon. I would have loved to have shown you what’s in store for the second and third part of this, but there is nothing available on the wiki page, and I haven’t been able to find anything and what’s in store for us. But the’re nothing to indicate that there anything less grindy after this.
I want to stress out again, well, yes, I do think this is way way way to much with the collecting stuff. To be honest, this isn’t fun. And before you say it, I know, if it’s not fun, don’t do it. The reward doesn’t warrant all the work, and I’m not really doing anything when I’m out farming this stuff. For the people that are out to farm specific plants or other things to make gold, that’s a choice. When I decided to make that backpack I mentioned in the beginning, that was a choice as well. The stat upgrade was okay, but I was doing things along the way that made it fun.
Unlocking the achievement giving me access to the recipe for the bow was super fun. Had there been some type of grind involved, that would have also been okay. I could even have been okay with the current items being maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of what they are now, and maybe being on a daily or weekly cooldown. I don’t mind me having to wait a few months getting my weapon, and having to do things along the way, that would have been fun. But having them the way they are now, that’s no fun, I know many in my guild that were exited to go on the journey, and are already fed up and don’t want to do it, and that can’t be what they were after when putting the precursors in like this.
They could have easily made it so that things would have been locked behind timers. Collect this thing, that means go collect 50 of this wood, 20 of that wood, 40 of that leather, combine it, bring it to this place of power, kill a mini boss, get a bit of loot, your item is now ready for the next stage, but you can’t do anything with it for the next 4 days, or something to that effect.
You could also assemble it one piece at a time, instead of giving multiple crafting recipes, you get one for the crafting profession that can craft the weapon, you can make one of these a day, you need 7, when you have 7, you can combine them, you then get the next part, there always account bound, or even soulbound, that sort of thing.
If that meant they weren’t done with all of them by launch, then we could have waited. People don’t have a problem waiting with the new once. And if the new legendarys are the same type of grind to build, then why bother with the older once, and then, why make them craftable in the first place.
I’m sorry, but I feel like they were lazy with putting the old legendary weapons into crafting by just building a crafting wall, such a wall that to many are just not going to bother with them anyway?
Well, that my “little” rant, call it what you want. If people are interested, I will gladly share the spreadsheet I did for all the items needed to the precursor part 1 vs. legendary to compare the two sets of numbers to see that I did not cheat in any way. And if there would happen to be any developer stumbling upon this forum post, I would love to hear some feedback as to the design choice on the precursors.
Ziyall
