Guild Wars 2

Honestly, obtaining legendary weapons should be a hunting process, not a gathering process. I’m 100% sure my input is too late (Anet won’t rework the system this much at this stage), but here’s what I see: crafting ascended equipment is a mark of personal prowess, and as such should be a crafting experience. Legendaries, on the other hand, simply can’t be crafted. Look up “legendary” in the dictionary. There should be other processes for obtaining legendary weapons; there should be rumors about them, maps to last known locations, battles, quests, ghosts of previous owners, battles with current owners, and more. Maybe obscenely long and challenging tasks that require groups to complete. But not crafting. Unless, of course, the hunt was to lead us to multiple pieces of the legendary item and the crafting side of things was finding materials strong enough to repair it.

I’ve never really understood the crafting process for legendary equipment, and this system (while interesting and useful for some people) seems to make it even less motivating. By all means, give us “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool” weapon types to craft, but if it’s legendary it shouldn’t be something we craft ourselves.

(Note: don’t actually give us weapon types of “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool”.)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Christonya.3856:

SO we’re left in the following position. A: Do the collection and spend just as much money doing it as buying the item off the TP. Or B: skip the hoops and just buy it off the TP.

Which goes back to my title: I don’t get it. What’s the point of the precursor crafting when the over whelming majority of it is spending time on the TP? I might as well just buy the pre and enjoy it immediately rather then suffer through the collection which is the same cost any ways.

I realize the argument of “Oh well just go run around lower level zones and mine 15k iron and 10 platinum you don’t have to deal with the TP!” Ignoring how egregious those numbers are, why not just … SELL the items on the TP at that point instead of stocking up 15k of any ore which you probably don’t even have the bank space for in the first place? At which point it goes back to the original argument…. Why not do content you want to do IE the maguuma jungle, and sell items from it for gold to buy the precursor?

You’ve basically answered your own thread question. Precursor crafting was an alternative way to obtain Precursors. It wasn’t meant to be easier or cheaper. In fact, the Devs confirmed that they purposely balanced the cost of crafting a Precursors to around what the value is on the TP. If you value your time more than anything, then purchasing a Precursor from one of us is the faster way to go. If you want to save money, and have the time to farm mats, then mining nodes yourself (or simply playing the game) is the way to go.

You can play the game any way you choose. But if you do choose to buy a Precursor from the TP, do note that the player you purchased it from thanks you very much.

Turns out it’s not balanced because Anet ALWAYS IGNORE INFLATION.
Dawn requires 100 Deldrimor Steel Ingot, which cost 1050g on TP now.
Add the other bunch of material cost, the crafting fee can easily exceeding 1200g.
In addition, you have to waste 30+ hours doing lots of activities, and many of them are even bugged and prevent your entire progression.

Now look at the TP Price of Dawn. 700g.
So which way would you choose then?

If they diversify materials much more, the inflation wouldn’t be as bad..
But nope, they want to break the market by requiring 12k iron ores, 8k platinum ores, which cannot be obtained through salvaging from lv80 gears.

Now it not only makes people who tried to craft Precursors suffer, but also make regular players who’re using those materials suffer too. Everyone is mad and sad, everyone loses. Only the richest 0.001% of people who manipulate the market for profit win this battle.

Great job Anet. You ruin the economy and kitten up everyone once again. You make people even wish they never wish for having Precursors being craft-able because it’s even worse than RNG. (RNG market = TP market)

Swift.1930:

Honestly, obtaining legendary weapons should be a hunting process, not a gathering process. ……There should be other processes for obtaining legendary weapons; there should be rumors about them, maps to last known locations, battles, quests, ghosts of previous owners, battles with current owners, and more. Maybe obscenely long and challenging tasks that require groups to complete. But not crafting.

^ this is what people expected out of the legendary journey. A journey.

Arenanet only knows how to do farming and map design, so instead of a legendary journey, they gave us a legendary farm and, even worse, they charged us for it.

I have a theory about anet being some kind of evil genie that grants wishes in a twisted way that ends up kittening the guy who found the bottle, but i already posted it and it already got stealth removed…

Swift.1930:

Honestly, obtaining legendary weapons should be a hunting process, not a gathering process. I’m 100% sure my input is too late (Anet won’t rework the system this much at this stage), but here’s what I see: crafting ascended equipment is a mark of personal prowess, and as such should be a crafting experience. Legendaries, on the other hand, simply can’t be crafted. Look up “legendary” in the dictionary. There should be other processes for obtaining legendary weapons; there should be rumors about them, maps to last known locations, battles, quests, ghosts of previous owners, battles with current owners, and more. Maybe obscenely long and challenging tasks that require groups to complete. But not crafting. Unless, of course, the hunt was to lead us to multiple pieces of the legendary item and the crafting side of things was finding materials strong enough to repair it.

I’ve never really understood the crafting process for legendary equipment, and this system (while interesting and useful for some people) seems to make it even less motivating. By all means, give us “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool” weapon types to craft, but if it’s legendary it shouldn’t be something we craft ourselves.

(Note: don’t actually give us weapon types of “highly-ascended” or “ultra-cool”.)

The trouble is, it’s obvious that in their minds, the game design benefits of turning legendaries into a grindfest far outweighs the “fun” you might get from an off-beat way of obtaining them.

After something like a year or two, they added to the legendary system and basically added a scavenger hunt on top of a grindfest. They just can’t let go of the grindfest aspect of it. In fact, they can’t let go of the grindfest aspect of the game in general. Just about every item in this game is a matter of repeat gather/currency-gain times a thousand.

That’s their style and it’s the style of most MMOs, and it’s clear that despite some of their brave design moments early in the game’s history, they are very fearful of breaking convention this late in the game. I can’t say I blame them for being afraid, as they do have a lot to lose, but it is kind of sad to me that they seem stuck spinning their wheels on a lot of fundamental design principles.

I see a lot of potential in this game, but there is risk in the way you go about tapping into that potential. It’s a tough thing to manage.

I think the new crafting process for precursors is absolutely fabulous, ANet have made it so easy for me to get a precursor now I’m working on a second legendary.

As soon as the crafting requirements started to leak out I bought a watchwork mining pick and went hunting for rich nodes. The rapidly rising prices for various refined ores means I’m netting around 70g an evening from minimal effort in just 2 hours. In a few more days I’ll be able to just buy the precursor from the TP. The drop in cost for T6 mats for the gifts is also welcome. Oh and a side bonus? I’ve almost completed a second blade shard back item by using all the watchwork sprockets I get while mining!

Gotta say a big thanks to ANet for the introduction of precursor crafting as it really does make it very easy to get one.

Spirited Was Eceni.3869:

I think the new crafting process for precursors is absolutely fabulous, ANet have made it so easy for me to get a precursor now I’m working on a second legendary.

As soon as the crafting requirements started to leak out I bought a watchwork mining pick and went hunting for rich nodes. The rapidly rising prices for various refined ores means I’m netting around 70g an evening from minimal effort in just 2 hours. In a few more days I’ll be able to just buy the precursor from the TP. The drop in cost for T6 mats for the gifts is also welcome. Oh and a side bonus? I’ve almost completed a second blade shard back item by using all the watchwork sprockets I get while mining!

Gotta say a big thanks to ANet for the introduction of precursor crafting as it really does make it very easy to get one.

Your post sounds more like an irony yknow…
So it turns out it’s better to sell the inflated products, then buy precursor on TP, which totally defeat the purpose of precursor crafting, making it only a mean to mess up the market.

Duncanmix.5238:

Devata.6589:

snip

First you should learn to use forum properly, not only your quoting is bad but its clogging up half of page.

Second, about tequatl, I did explain why its stupid. Its you who has no ability to understand it. U compare tequatl with charged lodestones which is ridiculous. One obviously has way less drop % and is not something u need to farm. Buying mini teq for gold is ok, so is buying charged lodestones/cores but its also reasonable to farm charged cores but is not reasonable to farm mini tequatl. What u saying is nonsense because u claim that farming cores is not reasonable, that’s simply not true. U are one lazy individual who don’t want to invest time into farming, and come here to whine cause of crazy amount of mats needed to get legendary.
Since u don’t have decent arguments, u took extremely silly argument that only way to farm things is silverwastes and that its so much better compared to alternatives, that other ways are not realistic ( this is not truth). As someone who has farmed in many ways including charged cores in coe , and as someone who made 6 legendary weapons, I came here to explain to everyone who have doubts.
Farming gold and trading it for mats is viable.
Farming mats needed is viable and realistic in big majority of things.
I’ve done all that. Bring more of whine, I’ll be ready whenever.

Well I tried farming charged lodestones (and also some other mats) and it was not at all a viable option. (some are btw)

The Tequatl was just a good example to show how a system works, it was not about Tequatl or the mini, it was about the system.. How one thing effects the other.

You see, because Anet knew Teq was getting farmed, the drop-rate for the mini had to be adjusted to that “what needs to be the drop-rate to prevent a overload of mini’s on the TP within a week”, and not to the question “what would be a reasonable drop-rate for a player going for that mini”.

The answer to the first question results in lower drop-rates making it harder to go for it directly and making grinding gold for it the better option.

If the mini would have been account-bound or lets say Teq would only drop that mini and so would not be farmed so much for it’s loot, then the drop-rate could be much higher.

It looks like something like this also happened to Fractals, that also shows this effect. WoodenPatatoes talked about how the drop-rate in fractals had gone down a lot. But that the chest could now be sold on the TP.

This can eventually also result in the situation where doing the most optimal gold-grind in GW2 gives you a better way to obtaining those chest then to do fractals itself.

The same holds true for mats or any other item really. When items drop from one specific place and that placed is not being farmed for other things as well, or if items are account-bound, you can make higher drop-rates while keeping the same rarity / value on for that item. (simple math really)

If items drops from many places or a place that also gets farmed for other things (so general good loot) and those items are not account-bound then you need way lower drop-rates to keep the same value / rarity to that item (until demands drop).

However, those different approaches result in the fact that farming items directly becomes harder / less viable versus going for the most optimal currency grind.

It’s that simple. If you can not understand this that I can’t help you with that.

I am not lazy if it comes to ‘farming’ mats. But I am lazy if it comes to grinding currency. That just bores my to death. While I do think mats (items you need many of in a recipe) is something I think you should not need to have a heavy farm for. Mats should be easy to get.

You should put in items you only need 1 of that are really hard to get. A recipe or a precursor item (like the brew for Nightfury, while that has the problem that it’s time-limited. But lets say the brew was an extremely hard drop from the MKD and that dungeon was here all year round. Then that was a great system. Those mats (seeds) you need for Nightfury are in fact easy to farm)

You can keep saying it’s viable to farm all those T6 mats / charged lodestones. However, this thread and many like it show that many people disagree with that idea. Going more into this would only make it a yes / no game.

Ragmon.6350:

Oh jeezes already! When did players become so kitteny?

If you want the legendary then work for it. If you don’t move on with your life.

I started working on my precurser and it really feels like a long journey with a heavy investment, and in the end it will feel even more gratifying to have that item.

PS: You have 3 ways to get a precurser/legendary, buy it with gold, farm or hope for a random drop (mobs or either from MF).

PSPS: Oh and noone is forcing you to make a legendary. So stop complaining.

This is the typical response from people who either got rich early in game when values were different, or do not work so play the game all day with no thought to the fact that for people with only a couple of hours a day to play and who would actually like to play the game for fun with friends will never have the time to farm the materials or the gold for precursors. The best gear I myself will ever have will be exotic. I do not have the time, patience or whatever else is required for anything more than that.

I accept this fact. But for the sake of argument if something in a game cannot be acquired with a couple of hours play a day over 2 to 3 months it is just not worth it. I am happy for those who have it or are going for it, and I feel for those who desire it but do not have the time and/or know how to earn the gold or farm the materials since a game that was meant to be fun loses a lot of that fun when all you have time to do is run around farming materials. If I wanted to be a farmer I would own 50 acres and a tractor. Anyway I have learned to desire nothing so I am not disappointed.

It is a pity though that in response to someone posting about this or any other difficulties they feel they have in the game they have to put up with some smart%#$ss who rather than offering encouragement just enjoys running the person down for posting.

Duncanmix.5238
chill :P
In order to keep the thread alive , there must be 2-3 ppl arguing like a headless chicken with circular comments :P
Trust me :P

quotes :

a)
Yeah that is farming yes, you are right (as I see it, you grind currency and farm an item). There is however a difference. For weapon 1 you farm dungeon x, for weapon 2 dungeon y for skin 1 boss z. This sends you all over the world doing many different things. Then the grind-gold*..

b)
grinding Silverwaste (when going by the 10 gold an hour people seem to get) is a little faster, less effort and not / less time-gated. So I am sorry, but you did not convince me that this is a viable way to farm them. And that is when I use your drop-rates that are way better then what I have experienced*

c).
;I am not lazy if it comes to ‘farming’ mats. But I am lazy if it comes to grinding currency*

ps 1)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/1-glider-skin-with-HoT/first#post5722894
this thread althought MUST to be in the first link , because they havent release many skins ingame
(i agree with them this time for not releasing enought skins ….and not removing the the costumes and the gemstore for more x-packs (which we had a riot ))

ps2) Precurso Hunting is a ALTERNATE WAY TO GET PRECURSOR , WITHOUT THE RUNG
alternate
alternate
alternate
not less costly

even if was soulbound …. then each zone/dungeons/silverwastewhatever … rather than needed 100 Charge Lordestones/T6 mats …. when each place would have its own RNG item , like the first HoT map/geodue from the Siverwaste to get item = which you have to collect (it would be the same time needed)
…and each Map drops would be nerfed …like the dungeons… because we they trying to reduce the gold>gem costs …yo !

Khisanth.2948:

Devata.6589:

Khisanth.2948:

Devata.6589:

You do understand that was an example. I also know it involves more than those charged lodestones. The thing is that there is no resendable / doable way to get those lodestones other than grinding gold.

You can get them through the new map bonus system by doing events in the appropriate map which conveniently also levels your legendary crafting mastery at the same time.

You also need to buy crystals that cost about 1 gold and you can only buy (I think you could also get them by doing SAB, but not at this moment).

What crystals?

The only crystal I am aware of that is related to legendary crafting is the Mystic Crystal and you buy those with Spirit Shards.

Not sure if there is a decent way to farm Globs of Ectoplasm?

World boss train (fractals isn’t bad either). Salvage all the rares.

Some of the T6 materials you cannot farm (maybe that got better with HoT, have not tested that yet).

Same situation as Charged Lodestones. Map bonus system includes these.

You might also need Unidentified Dyes, but where to farm those? As far as I know they can drop from many places (so will end up on the TP) but there are no real ways to in any reasonable rate farm them.

These are a bit tougher. Basically you need to do the same as black lion key farmers and farm the personal story but I don’t think the source of the dyes has a weekly limit(yet?).

I said I was very happy with HoT moving towards the Life of the Land mentality (somehow some people seem to forget that and purely focus on the fact that I say that it’s also holds true that for many things grinding gold is still the only viable option).

Testing the map bonus is high on my to-do list and something I did really look forward to with HoT (and something I praised). So hope you are right and this has now become (the most) viable option.

But your post perfectly displays the point what I am trying to make. HoT was good a step in the right direction, but it’s not there yet.

Well on the other end of this is … Armored Scales. Those are in Southsun Cove currently and trying to get them from doing events in Southsun Cove is definitely not worth it.

This I still have to test, but it is disappointing to me if this is true.. you are referring to the new ‘mats from map’ system right?

What would then be a good way to get Armored Scales.. other then grinding gold?

Also see from how many places it drops: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armored_Scale

They even drop from ToT bags and Wintersday gift. If you make it drop from so many places drop-rates need to be extremely low.

If the map system does not work then basically only killing the Karka Queen is a somewhat doable way but heavily time-gates.

Avectius.3271:

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

I know what you mean. I was very excited back when I found out we could craft Mawdrey. But after a few months, I wasn’t excited anymore. Now I have a bunch of the items in my bank and they are just sitting there. At some point I will probably get the rest of the mats by just playing, but the drive and excitement to complete it is gone.

Djinn.9245:

Avectius.3271:

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

I know what you mean. I was very excited back when I found out we could craft Mawdrey. But after a few months, I wasn’t excited anymore. Now I have a bunch of the items in my bank and they are just sitting there. At some point I will probably get the rest of the mats by just playing, but the drive and excitement to complete it is gone.

Mawdrey only took me a week or two O.o. If you do a bunch of fractals and get the LWS2 story out of the way that’s a majority of what you need to do. Collecting the clay in Dry Top isn’t too bad, you just gotta go there for a bit.

slamfunction.7462:

Yay…another one of these threads. Yes, farming is hard. Keep spending time complaining about it, instead of just playing the game and gathering the items you need. Talk about “productive”! /sarcasm

I’m not sure why you don’t understand that some (probably the majority) of people can get on the forums while they are at work but can’t play GW2 while they are at work…

MiniEquine.6014:

Djinn.9245:

Avectius.3271:

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

I know what you mean. I was very excited back when I found out we could craft Mawdrey. But after a few months, I wasn’t excited anymore. Now I have a bunch of the items in my bank and they are just sitting there. At some point I will probably get the rest of the mats by just playing, but the drive and excitement to complete it is gone.

Mawdrey only took me a week or two O.o. If you do a bunch of fractals and get the LWS2 story out of the way that’s a majority of what you need to do. Collecting the clay in Dry Top isn’t too bad, you just gotta go there for a bit.

I’m glad that Mawdrey only took you that long. I’m not sure what your point is – is this a race? Ok, you win.

I wasn’t playing GW2 to make Mawdrey, I was playing the game. In the process of playing the game (doing the Living Story, etc.) I was receiving things to make Mawdrey. But apparently unless I went out of my way to grind (I was playing in Dry Top) and do things I don’t ordinarily do (like Fractals), I wasn’t getting very far making Mawdrey. Eventually Mawdrey just fell off my radar.

Its like the Dailies – they get in the way of playing the game. You used to be able to do the Dailies while you were playing the game in the way you wanted to play. Now you have to go to a specific zone or do some other very specific thing that takes you away from what you want to do.

Djinn.9245:

MiniEquine.6014:

Djinn.9245:

Avectius.3271:

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

I know what you mean. I was very excited back when I found out we could craft Mawdrey. But after a few months, I wasn’t excited anymore. Now I have a bunch of the items in my bank and they are just sitting there. At some point I will probably get the rest of the mats by just playing, but the drive and excitement to complete it is gone.

Mawdrey only took me a week or two O.o. If you do a bunch of fractals and get the LWS2 story out of the way that’s a majority of what you need to do. Collecting the clay in Dry Top isn’t too bad, you just gotta go there for a bit.

I’m glad that Mawdrey only took you that long. I’m not sure what your point is – is this a race? Ok, you win.

I wasn’t playing GW2 to make Mawdrey, I was playing the game. In the process of playing the game (doing the Living Story, etc.) I was receiving things to make Mawdrey. But apparently unless I went out of my way to grind (I was playing in Dry Top) and do things I don’t ordinarily do (like Fractals), I wasn’t getting very far making Mawdrey. Eventually Mawdrey just fell off my radar.

I wasn’t making it a competition; no need to be snippy. Mawdrey takes very little time and effort (vitrually no grinding) versus what it takes to make these precursors.

MiniEquine.6014:

Djinn.9245:

MiniEquine.6014:

Djinn.9245:

Avectius.3271:

I’m not asking for a Legendary/[insert rare item here] today. But I don’t want it five months from now, either.

When does waiting becomes waiting for too long? That’s the question. There’s a boundary where the whole experience becomes off-putting. If players do not enjoy something, or rather, if an activity does not provide pleasure, then people will simply shy away from it. I’m not asking for 100% enjoyment, but rather 70% or 60%. What’s sad is that the percentage is far, far lower than that.

I know what you mean. I was very excited back when I found out we could craft Mawdrey. But after a few months, I wasn’t excited anymore. Now I have a bunch of the items in my bank and they are just sitting there. At some point I will probably get the rest of the mats by just playing, but the drive and excitement to complete it is gone.

Mawdrey only took me a week or two O.o. If you do a bunch of fractals and get the LWS2 story out of the way that’s a majority of what you need to do. Collecting the clay in Dry Top isn’t too bad, you just gotta go there for a bit.

I’m glad that Mawdrey only took you that long. I’m not sure what your point is – is this a race? Ok, you win.

I wasn’t playing GW2 to make Mawdrey, I was playing the game. In the process of playing the game (doing the Living Story, etc.) I was receiving things to make Mawdrey. But apparently unless I went out of my way to grind (I was playing in Dry Top) and do things I don’t ordinarily do (like Fractals), I wasn’t getting very far making Mawdrey. Eventually Mawdrey just fell off my radar.

I wasn’t making it a competition; no need to be snippy. Mawdrey takes very little time and effort (vitrually no grinding) versus what it takes to make these precursors.

And it is fine that your “very little effort” is quite different from my “very little effort”. I did, in fact, spend very little effort on Mawdrey. And I did spend effort doing things that I normally wouldn’t do in GW2. But ultimately I wanted to play the game my way, not grind in Dry Top or Fractals. So no Mawdrey for me.

And my point is not to complain about it – that was my choice. My point was to say that I understand people who don’t want a huge grind and want to obtain things by just playing the game. The problem is that Anet wants to force people to play in ways they might not want to play instead of offering reward paths that could be taken no matter how you like to play.

OK, now I see what people are complaining about. I started on the 2nd tier yesterday. It’s one more thing. Oh, and one more thing. One more. Just one more. So far, I must have dropped about 700 G worth of stuff. That’s whether I bought it, or what I had and is worth on the TP. And I still am not done. This is crazy. I wish I knew exactly what was going to be needed ahead of time so I could have just compared prices and said, screw this.

Like many posters have said, this was supposed to be a journey. It’s obviously a gold sink and a material sink for things like mithril and elder wood in order to take that stuff out of the economy.

Here’s an idea: have more than one type of metal or wood node in all the end zone maps. That will take out the rarity of these things, rather than punishing those of us who would like to craft something by using us as your tool. Because at the end of the day, when enough time passes, your’re going to still have the same problem.

Avectius.3271:

“But then it won’t feel like an adventure, and the hard work, and yadda, yadda, yadda…”

Isnt that the problem tho? It not feeling like an adventure but like a job?

Spurnshadow.3678:

OK, now I see what people are complaining about. I started on the 2nd tier yesterday. It’s one more thing. Oh, and one more thing. One more. Just one more. So far, I must have dropped about 700 G worth of stuff. That’s whether I bought it, or what I had and is worth on the TP. And I still am not done. This is crazy. I wish I knew exactly what was going to be needed ahead of time so I could have just compared prices and said, screw this.

Like many posters have said, this was supposed to be a journey. It’s obviously a gold sink and a material sink for things like mithril and elder wood in order to take that stuff out of the economy.

Here’s an idea: have more than one type of metal or wood node in all the end zone maps. That will take out the rarity of these things, rather than punishing those of us who would like to craft something by using us as your tool. Because at the end of the day, when enough time passes, your’re going to still have the same problem.

We warned you guys countless times.

For those who defend this, they’re either at part 1 or haven’t even start the precursor crafting yet.

Also, I can tell you one more depressing news. Currently almost ALL of them are bugged in part 3, that the progress is completely blocked because there’re 1 or 2 part bugged and cannot progress. Many people have been waiting for 2 weeks and still no fix for it.

So not only you spend way more money on this precursor crafting, you also have to suffer from excessive bugs that God knows when Anet would fix it.

You officially wasted 700~1000g, and waste another one week doing random scavenger hunt, and waste another month waiting for Anet to fix the bugs to get that precursor.

This “journey” is the worst experience of all time in GW2 history, and the worst system Anet ever created, untested, inconsiderate (of materials inflation), and unfun.

Grim Jr.8946:

precursor crafting was never meant to be a way to get the precursor cheaper than the tp it is just a way to get a precursor out of RNG something you can work towards rather than hoping it would randomly drop.

get it through your thick skulls devs never ever mentioned it to be cheap or free it was stated multiple times it will retain the cost of the precursor in the market.

How about you get it through your thick skull that people were expecting this to involve hunting specific materials in challenging in world content, not a brick wall of materials in volumes that are impractical to farm personally and need to be bought from the TP at prices that are as much or more than buy the precursor directly – and then to get stone-walled by insurmountable RNG barriers. Add to that developing the mastery involves grinding kitten-loads of xp that could be used for other more practically useful, and it becomes a fool’s choice to craft it over just buying them.

People wanted them to replace numbing grind with gameplay, they chose to replace it with even more numbing grind, stop defending this.

EPIC JOURNEY !
…
…
…
Ends up in Lion’s Arch next to Trading Post.

Grim Jr.8946:

precursor crafting was never meant to be a way to get the precursor cheaper than the tp it is just a way to get a precursor out of RNG something you can work towards rather than hoping it would randomly drop.

get it through your thick skulls devs never ever mentioned it to be cheap or free it was stated multiple times it will retain the cost of the precursor in the market.

There was always a non-RNG way to get the items, and that was grinding gold and buying it. (like with too many items in this game).

It was now indeed supposed to become a item you could work towards, it had to be a journey.

However as many here suggest (and I still have to test it myself) you now need to gather materials that are not really viable to get directly (just like the precursor itself was not really something you could go for other then buying it after grinding gold).

Resulting in people still needing to grind gold to buy the materials. So the thing people wanted to avoid they now still need to do.

Other people say you can get the materials you need for the precursor easy, I will find our soon enough I guess.

I still find this thread (and many like it) mainly interested because it shows how many people dislike grinding for gold to buy items, but prefer the life of the land mentality.

Imho that grind for currency mentality is what did scare of most people from GW2. Those did come back with HoT resulting in so many topic where this subject gets touched. HoT made big steps if it comes to life of the land, but also added even more currencies, more gem-store items and more grindy content. So they better do that before those people walk away again.

If that means the precursor hunt also needs some adjustments then so be it.

I love that they implemented it, and it’s one of the things what I looked forward to with HoT. More then the new specializations. However if so many people feel it’s still grinding gold to buy what they need it clearly needs some tweaking.

And honestly it boggles my mind why they not just implemented traditional quest for this. Those quest could send you on epic challenges to get the items you need. That would in total be a epic journey to get your precursor. Colin even said in the stream that quest would be better suited for this then events.. so they came up with collections. No wonder that for many it does not feel much as an epic journey. If you acknowledge that traditional quest are very well suited for these things then implement them instead of being stubborn about it and doing anything in your power to work around quests.

Devata.6589:

There was always a non-RNG way to get the items, and that was grinding gold and buying it. (like with too many items in this game).

No, you were still dependend on the RNG and work of those selling these precursers.

Devata.6589:

And honestly it boggles why they not just implemented traditional quest for this. Those quest could send you on epic challenges to get the items you need. That would in total be a epic journey to get your precursor. Colin even said in the stream that quest would be better suited for this then events.. so they came up with collections. No wonder that for many it does not feel much as an epic journey. If you acknowledge that traditional quest very well suited for these things then implement them instead of being stubborn about it and doing anything in your power to work around quests.

Reading all this I recalled vanilla WoW and the hunter class quest for the epic bow. You got the quest from the second to last boss in Molten Core, WoWs first raid instance (which meant it was RARE… but that is not the part they got right). Once you had it you had to defeat 4 demons which were desinged to test your skills at playing the class. And these were actually difficult bosses with some nifty mechanics. Each spawned in a different location and you had to solo them within a limited time or they despawned for several hours (also despawned when someone helped you). I remember how much I enjoyed it. Took me a week or two to get them all down but it was a challenge and an adventure. It was exciting. You usually even had a crowd of spectators from both factions cheering you on (and surprisingly rarely being kittens and screwing up your attempts).

Jana.6831:

Devata.6589:

There was always a non-RNG way to get the items, and that was grinding gold and buying it. (like with too many items in this game).

No, you were still dependend on the RNG and work of those selling these precursers.

Not really. Because of the system as it was, they did drop to people who did not want them and so would end up on the TP anyway. So yes, while there is RNG somewhere in the process, it’s not something you had to deal with per se.

Then grinding gold does also involve some RNG, but as with RNG, higher numbers make it more predictable. So you could pretty accurate grind x gold per y time. Effectively taking away that RNG as well.

So yeah somewhere in the process there was RNG, but not in a way that you actively had to deal with it.

If grinding gold was something you liked to do.

Lorath.2504:

Devata.6589:

And honestly it boggles why they not just implemented traditional quest for this. Those quest could send you on epic challenges to get the items you need. That would in total be a epic journey to get your precursor. Colin even said in the stream that quest would be better suited for this then events.. so they came up with collections. No wonder that for many it does not feel much as an epic journey. If you acknowledge that traditional quest very well suited for these things then implement them instead of being stubborn about it and doing anything in your power to work around quests.

Reading all this I recalled vanilla WoW and the hunter class quest for the epic bow. You got the quest from the second to last boss in Molten Core, WoWs first raid instance (which meant it was RARE… but that is not the part they got right). Once you had it you had to defeat 4 demons which were desinged to test your skills at playing the class. And these were actually difficult bosses with some nifty mechanics. Each spawned in a different location and you had to solo them within a limited time or they despawned for several hours (also despawned when someone helped you). I remember how much I enjoyed it. Took me a week or two to get them all down but it was a challenge and an adventure. It was exciting. You usually even had a crowd of spectators from both factions cheering you on (and surprisingly rarely being kittens and screwing up your attempts).

I think these are also the type of things people want from it. While likely with a longer quest-line but ending with a challenge as you explain here. The NPC giving the quest could also tell more lore about them and the weapon.

ArenaNet clearly did try to do this btw. The weapons have lore and the collections are based on that lore. But the question is, if the collection really gives the same experience and remove the grind making it a journey.

Looking at the complains I guess not.

And of course this holds true for more items. I cannot say that enough. Just look at the gliders. This was such a great opportunity to add a lot of gameplay value. Earning epic gliders with interesting quest-lines or challenges. That sort of things keep people playing until the next expansion.

But how is it implemented. One you got for free, One came with the Deluxe edition and 4 other you could buy from the gem-store. So the in-game way of getting them is by grinding gold. That is such a waste of good game-play value.

This game is great on many parts, but especially for a game that is supposed to be about horizontal progression (so getting cool skins and toys) it’s lagging a lot because those parts are for 90% just too much grinding some currency.

HoT made big steps with this, but it still needs to make many more steps and need to do so within the next half year.

Jana.6831:

Devata.6589:

There was always a non-RNG way to get the items, and that was grinding gold and buying it. (like with too many items in this game).

No, you were still dependend on the RNG and work of those selling these precursers.

Not really, individual RNG variances for all those people were pretty much irrelevant considering how many players contributed to the TP prices.
RNG is a problem when it is applied to a single person. When its effects can be averaged throughout tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of players, the end results become highly predictable and reliable.

Lucky, unlucky streaks of players did not impact the tp prices in any visible way.

So, in the end, we had the RNG way and the dependable, but grindy way. What we expected was difficult but dependable way based on gameplay challenges. What HoT introduced instead, was even more grindy way with RNG elements.

No wonder players are disappointed.

Aomine.5012:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Christonya.3856:

SO we’re left in the following position. A: Do the collection and spend just as much money doing it as buying the item off the TP. Or B: skip the hoops and just buy it off the TP.

Which goes back to my title: I don’t get it. What’s the point of the precursor crafting when the over whelming majority of it is spending time on the TP? I might as well just buy the pre and enjoy it immediately rather then suffer through the collection which is the same cost any ways.

I realize the argument of “Oh well just go run around lower level zones and mine 15k iron and 10 platinum you don’t have to deal with the TP!” Ignoring how egregious those numbers are, why not just … SELL the items on the TP at that point instead of stocking up 15k of any ore which you probably don’t even have the bank space for in the first place? At which point it goes back to the original argument…. Why not do content you want to do IE the maguuma jungle, and sell items from it for gold to buy the precursor?

You’ve basically answered your own thread question. Precursor crafting was an alternative way to obtain Precursors. It wasn’t meant to be easier or cheaper. In fact, the Devs confirmed that they purposely balanced the cost of crafting a Precursors to around what the value is on the TP. If you value your time more than anything, then purchasing a Precursor from one of us is the faster way to go. If you want to save money, and have the time to farm mats, then mining nodes yourself (or simply playing the game) is the way to go.

You can play the game any way you choose. But if you do choose to buy a Precursor from the TP, do note that the player you purchased it from thanks you very much.

Turns out it’s not balanced because Anet ALWAYS IGNORE INFLATION.
Dawn requires 100 Deldrimor Steel Ingot, which cost 1050g on TP now.
Add the other bunch of material cost, the crafting fee can easily exceeding 1200g.
In addition, you have to waste 30+ hours doing lots of activities, and many of them are even bugged and prevent your entire progression.

Now look at the TP Price of Dawn. 700g.
So which way would you choose then?

If they diversify materials much more, the inflation wouldn’t be as bad..
But nope, they want to break the market by requiring 12k iron ores, 8k platinum ores, which cannot be obtained through salvaging from lv80 gears.

Now it not only makes people who tried to craft Precursors suffer, but also make regular players who’re using those materials suffer too. Everyone is mad and sad, everyone loses. Only the richest 0.001% of people who manipulate the market for profit win this battle.

Great job Anet. You ruin the economy and kitten up everyone once again. You make people even wish they never wish for having Precursors being craft-able because it’s even worse than RNG. (RNG market = TP market)

First – Increased demand does not equal inflation. Sure, crafting mats have shot up, but this also increased the earning power of miners. Everyone can mine and make more money now. If you insist on buying in a market with extreme demand, of course you will pay high prices. However, everyone can mine. My usual gathering routes and stats are showing 19.5 raw gold/hr or 16.5 after TP tax, the highest I’ve ever seen. But as long as people keep thinking “must grind silverwastes and buy mats” it will be a strong seller’s market. Based on the 10g/hr general rule of thumb, you’re paying about a 50% “I don’t want to gather it myself” premium on everything.

What people also continue to ignore is how large the “I want it now” factor is. If you look at the cost of deldrimor ingots, there is a 4.5 gold premium (or 3.3 gold after TP tax) over the cost to buy the ore and make a deldrimor ingot. But you can only make 1 a day. In effect, people are willing to buy your daily time gate for 3+ gold. Multiply by 100 ingots, and right away you add 350-400+ gold higher price for the collection. The 100 ingots that you cite as costing 1050g only cost 510 gold in raw mats, even at the current prices. The same mats would be about 380 gold at the more recent average prices of about 2s/ea for iron and plat. So of that 1050g cost, about 1050 – 380 = 670g is due to market conditions and demand.

tl;dr Markets function like markets. If you don’t want to gather or wait 100 days to make your own ingots, you’re gonna pay.

Astralporing.1957:

Not really, individual RNG variances for all those people were pretty much irrelevant considering how many players contributed to the TP prices.
RNG is a problem when it is applied to a single person. When its effects can be averaged throughout tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of players, the end results become highly predictable and reliable.

Lucky, unlucky streaks of players did not impact the tp prices in any visible way.

So, in the end, we had the RNG way and the dependable, but grindy way. What we expected was difficult but dependable way based on gameplay challenges. What HoT introduced instead, was even more grindy way with RNG elements.

No wonder players are disappointed.

Of course it depended on RNG – not such much on the RNG for people running around and killing stuff but on the RNG of the people who put yellow and exotic weapons into the MF – as if the RNG was too bad they wouldn’t do it again. And I’m pretty sure that for the more popular weapons a lot of people used the MF.

Iron and mithril are plentiful and easy to gather. Take a few hours on the level-appropriate maps and you’ll get a ton, and more if you salvage metal gear and weapons.

Is there any update on the issue with the shatterer? He is a world boss that can be blindet, at huge zerks he is practically perma blind and thus the cast for the crystal always misses making it impossible to get the archivement. We tried to explain the situation to people on the map but there usually is not much courtesy toward that issue… and even on off-hours the map is very crowdet. It would be nice if we could have a short awnser if that problem has been noticed.

I haven’t gone through this to read everything, but I just did the Legend collection. T2 of the collection is just a massive resource sink, but T1 and T3 were fun (minus the stupid coral farm in T3). Overall, I got Legend for less than it would have taken me to buy it from the TP, even with a buy order, and I got an additional 35-40 achievement points for it. But I managed to power through T2 fairly quickly (day 2 or 3 after release), and had most of the resources lying around.

I can easily see how the Spiritwood Planks would be jumping in price right now, as well as the 2100 iron ore (actual ore, not ingots) required would absolutely throw that balance out the window very quickly. I do not think the collection will actually be cheaper in the end, and they are probably already more expensive than straight up purchasing the precursor. But the advantage of the collection is that you don’t need XXX gold RIGHT NOW, as you can do it bit by bit. No one ever said it would be cheaper. No one ever said it would be easier. The “journey,” I do not believe, was ever supposed to become THE way to get the precursors. It’s just an option.

For the new HoT legendaries though . . . Those are going to be gross to get. Market’s already going to be hit hard by everyone doing core collections, so you can expect prices of those to be absolutely absurd.

Jana.6831:

Astralporing.1957:

Not really, individual RNG variances for all those people were pretty much irrelevant considering how many players contributed to the TP prices.
RNG is a problem when it is applied to a single person. When its effects can be averaged throughout tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of players, the end results become highly predictable and reliable.

Lucky, unlucky streaks of players did not impact the tp prices in any visible way.

So, in the end, we had the RNG way and the dependable, but grindy way. What we expected was difficult but dependable way based on gameplay challenges. What HoT introduced instead, was even more grindy way with RNG elements.

No wonder players are disappointed.

Of course it depended on RNG – not such much on the RNG for people running around and killing stuff but on the RNG of the people who put yellow and exotic weapons into the MF – as if the RNG was too bad they wouldn’t do it again. And I’m pretty sure that for the more popular weapons a lot of people used the MF.

sigh
It depends on average drop changes. Not on the individual RNG variance. If Joe drops 3k gold into MF, won’t get anything back, and never comes back? For the person that buys said precursor that doesn’t matter, for every such Joe there’s a Bob that got dusk at the third try.

The resulting TP price is stable, and doesn’t depend on the vagaries of chance or RNGesus favour.

Mesona.5293:

I do not think the collection will actually be cheaper in the end, and they are probably already more expensive than straight up purchasing the precursor.

Do you not see how this is a problem? Go through a tremendous amount of work and end up spending the exact same amount of money, maybe more?

Mesona.5293:

But the advantage of the collection is that you don’t need XXX gold RIGHT NOW, as you can do it bit by bit.

You could always do that! It was called “letting your money accumulate in the bank.” Bit by bit, you work your way up to the 1000 gold you need and then poof, Precursor.

Mesona.5293:

No one ever said it would be cheaper.

But it should’ve been.

Mesona.5293:

No one ever said it would be easier.

I don’t have any issue with having to put in a significant amount of work, even a comparable amount of work. I just don’t want to have to grind for gold. I want to play the content, not the TP and not the Silverwastes chest train.

Astralporing.1957:

sigh
It depends on average drop changes. Not on the individual RNG variance. If Joe drops 3k gold into MF, won’t get anything back, and never comes back? For the person that buys said precursor that doesn’t matter, for every such Joe there’s a Bob that got dusk at the third try.

The resulting TP price is stable, and doesn’t depend on the vagaries of chance or RNGesus favour.

So? There was still RNG involved, wasn it? As people claim there wasn’t.
Btw a TP flipping friend told me that the only thing one could hold a monopol on the TP was precursers/legendaries (and maybe some other stuff that wasn’t sold anymore).
So even for the buyer it was some kind of gamble and not “the sure way to get a precurser for that amount of gold”. Unless they were fine with the set price by the one holding the monopol of the precurser they wanted.

Edit: spelling

Edit²: Even if you want/ed to buy your precurser from the TP, you don’t buy them directly for gems, but the price depends on various factors: T5 mats prices, RNG of the people using the MF, how many people decide to use the MF, how many people decide to flip precursers on the TP, how many people decide to flip mats prices and so on – the prices have never been stable, unless 100-400 gold difference means stable to you.

Jana.6831:

Astralporing.1957:

sigh
It depends on average drop changes. Not on the individual RNG variance. If Joe drops 3k gold into MF, won’t get anything back, and never comes back? For the person that buys said precursor that doesn’t matter, for every such Joe there’s a Bob that got dusk at the third try.

The resulting TP price is stable, and doesn’t depend on the vagaries of chance or RNGesus favour.

So? There was still RNG involved, wasn it? As people claim there wasn’t.

No, for the buyer it wasn’t. At the level buyer is operating, rng is no longer relevant.

Jana.6831:

Btw a TP flipping friend told me that the only thing one could hold a monopol on the TP was precursers/legendaries (and maybe some other stuff that wasn’t sold anymore).
So even for the buyer it was some kind of gamble and not “the sure way to get a precurser for that amount of gold”. Unless they were fine with the set price by the one holding the monopol of the precurser they wanted.

Your TP flipping friend told you wrong, the Anet economist commented on it several times already in many thread. It’s not really possible to maintain any lasting monopoly on high demand precursors (and useless to do that on low demand ones).

Jana.6831:

Edit²: Even if you want/ed to buy your precurser from the TP, you don’t buy them directly for gems, but the price depends on various factors: T5 mats prices, RNG of the people using the MF, how many people decide to use the MF, how many people decide to flip precursers on the TP, how many people decide to flip mats prices and so on – the prices have never been stable, unless 100-400 gold difference means stable to you.

Pretty much the only relevant thing here is t5 mats prices – and those are not RNG based. All other things are swallowed up and made unimportant by the sheer size of game population.

So, in short, you’re wrong. No rng is involved here.

Well RNG is still partly responsible for the amount of certain precursers which are sold.
My TP flipping friend had a friend who held the monopol on 2 precursers for a while.
No, I said that the prices weren’t stable as you claimed but depend on many factors, right now spark costs 500 gold less than about a year ago.
Please try to understand my point, ok?

Edit: To make it easier for you: You answered on me saying there was still RNG in the amount of precursers on the TP – you said it wasn’t and that prices were stable.
I said 1) still RNG and that 2) prices aren’t stable but depend on a lot of factors. That are 2 different points or 1) is a point of 2).

The problem isn’t RNG when looked at the player base at large. The variance due to the RNG is small relative to what players can cause by choosing to or not to try MFing a particular weapon precursor. Then you have the secondary impact from the players who got one whether or not to place them immediately on the TP or hold on to them until the price rises.

thehipone.6812:

Aomine.5012:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Christonya.3856:

SO we’re left in the following position. A: Do the collection and spend just as much money doing it as buying the item off the TP. Or B: skip the hoops and just buy it off the TP.

Which goes back to my title: I don’t get it. What’s the point of the precursor crafting when the over whelming majority of it is spending time on the TP? I might as well just buy the pre and enjoy it immediately rather then suffer through the collection which is the same cost any ways.

I realize the argument of “Oh well just go run around lower level zones and mine 15k iron and 10 platinum you don’t have to deal with the TP!” Ignoring how egregious those numbers are, why not just … SELL the items on the TP at that point instead of stocking up 15k of any ore which you probably don’t even have the bank space for in the first place? At which point it goes back to the original argument…. Why not do content you want to do IE the maguuma jungle, and sell items from it for gold to buy the precursor?

You’ve basically answered your own thread question. Precursor crafting was an alternative way to obtain Precursors. It wasn’t meant to be easier or cheaper. In fact, the Devs confirmed that they purposely balanced the cost of crafting a Precursors to around what the value is on the TP. If you value your time more than anything, then purchasing a Precursor from one of us is the faster way to go. If you want to save money, and have the time to farm mats, then mining nodes yourself (or simply playing the game) is the way to go.

You can play the game any way you choose. But if you do choose to buy a Precursor from the TP, do note that the player you purchased it from thanks you very much.

Turns out it’s not balanced because Anet ALWAYS IGNORE INFLATION.
Dawn requires 100 Deldrimor Steel Ingot, which cost 1050g on TP now.
Add the other bunch of material cost, the crafting fee can easily exceeding 1200g.
In addition, you have to waste 30+ hours doing lots of activities, and many of them are even bugged and prevent your entire progression.

Now look at the TP Price of Dawn. 700g.
So which way would you choose then?

If they diversify materials much more, the inflation wouldn’t be as bad..
But nope, they want to break the market by requiring 12k iron ores, 8k platinum ores, which cannot be obtained through salvaging from lv80 gears.

Now it not only makes people who tried to craft Precursors suffer, but also make regular players who’re using those materials suffer too. Everyone is mad and sad, everyone loses. Only the richest 0.001% of people who manipulate the market for profit win this battle.

Great job Anet. You ruin the economy and kitten up everyone once again. You make people even wish they never wish for having Precursors being craft-able because it’s even worse than RNG. (RNG market = TP market)

First – Increased demand does not equal inflation. Sure, crafting mats have shot up, but this also increased the earning power of miners. Everyone can mine and make more money now. If you insist on buying in a market with extreme demand, of course you will pay high prices. However, everyone can mine. My usual gathering routes and stats are showing 19.5 raw gold/hr or 16.5 after TP tax, the highest I’ve ever seen. But as long as people keep thinking “must grind silverwastes and buy mats” it will be a strong seller’s market. Based on the 10g/hr general rule of thumb, you’re paying about a 50% “I don’t want to gather it myself” premium on everything.

What people also continue to ignore is how large the “I want it now” factor is. If you look at the cost of deldrimor ingots, there is a 4.5 gold premium (or 3.3 gold after TP tax) over the cost to buy the ore and make a deldrimor ingot. But you can only make 1 a day. In effect, people are willing to buy your daily time gate for 3+ gold. Multiply by 100 ingots, and right away you add 350-400+ gold higher price for the collection. The 100 ingots that you cite as costing 1050g only cost 510 gold in raw mats, even at the current prices. The same mats would be about 380 gold at the more recent average prices of about 2s/ea for iron and plat. So of that 1050g cost, about 1050 – 380 = 670g is due to market conditions and demand.

tl;dr Markets function like markets. If you don’t want to gather or wait 100 days to make your own ingots, you’re gonna pay.

That’s another funny thing about GW2’s economy; not only do prices go up, but there’s that weird and utter gold-sink – the trading post tax. Does it seem a little high to anyone else? There’s no good reason for it to be there, as there’s no direct player-to-player fee-free trade option in the game. (Unless you want to risk sending 500g-valued precursors through mail.)

Elder Scrolls Online has a really fantastic trading option – sending a message that requires the recipient to pay a fee (determined by the sender) before he/she can open it. It can be recalled, I believe, otherwise it expires and returns to the sender if not paid for. There’s a normal trading post as well, but for player-player trades they really provided a brilliant system.

Swift.1930:

That’s another funny thing about GW2’s economy; not only do prices go up, but there’s that weird and utter gold-sink – the trading post tax. Does it seem a little high to anyone else? There’s no good reason for it to be there, as there’s no direct player-to-player fee-free trade option in the game. (Unless you want to risk sending 500g-valued precursors through mail.)

Elder Scrolls Online has a really fantastic trading option – sending a message that requires the recipient to pay a fee (determined by the sender) before he/she can open it. It can be recalled, I believe, otherwise it expires and returns to the sender if not paid for. There’s a normal trading post as well, but for player-player trades they really provided a brilliant system.

I agree, Elder Scrolls Online has a superior and more stable economy which cannot be abused, but look at the class imbalances of ESO compared to GW2… GW2 reigns supreme atm when it comes to class balance in both PvE and PvP.

Behellagh.1468:

The problem isn’t RNG when looked at the player base at large. The variance due to the RNG is small relative to what players can cause by choosing to or not to try MFing a particular weapon precursor. Then you have the secondary impact from the players who got one whether or not to place them immediately on the TP or hold on to them until the price rises.

kitten, is my english that bad?
Someone: “There’s no RNG involved when buying from the TP”
Me: “There’s still RNG involved for those selling the item”

And that also effects the buyer (although there are a lot of factors which determine the price of a precurser) – no precurser without RNG, except it is crafted.

Vaelen.5294:

I agree, Elder Scrolls Online has a superior and more stable economy which cannot be abused, but look at the class imbalances of ESO compared to GW2… GW2 reigns supreme atm when it comes to class balance in both PvE and PvP.

I disagree strongly with that – what has happened wasn’t balance but promoting skill less play as all classes have so many passives that they can make as many mistakes as they like and still live through it.

Anet, please change Dawn crafting recipe!

This is getting ridiculous!

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19699
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/46738

Jana.6831:

I disagree strongly with that – what has happened wasn’t balance but promoting skill less play as all classes have so many passives that they can make as many mistakes as they like and still live through it.

I’d disagree slightly on this. a lot of classes have these passives, and I’ve always felt like warrior was one of the more prominent examples, but a few classes are very punishing if you make mistakes (thief, for example)

i crafted the juggernaut incl. prec and it was awesome . its a 100% pure craft… and that feels way better then the 2nd hand legy from the tp!

if you want a second-hand(scrub)legy go for it, but it just meh.

i love the new system A-net GG to all of you^^

Refereing to TP-bought “legys” as scrub ones makes you rather look like a prick.

So, if precursor crafting was not meant to eliminate RNG and it wasn’t meant to be cheaper or easier, then what exactly is the point of them having gone to all this work of making them craftable?

I am really confused.

Because it gives the player a sense they are working toward their choice of precursor.

So here is a way to “earn” your precursor by playing the game, the whole game, “on an epic quest” and while on it, gather all the mats you need. For long running players they may already have a fair chunk of the mats needed. The devs were never looking at the “cost” of this method over the others, just the reliability of getting what you want.

Of course some players don’t really care about all that. They look at the price on the TP, and realize that if they sell off those materials they need to gather and/or craft along the way their precursor, they could simply buy the one they want now as the price has crashed. Of course some of that crash is recovering as more players realize that crafting a precursor isn’t going to be cheap and easy.

This is like the question about why some players craft their own gear rather than buy superior ones off the TP for less than the material costs (excluding ascended gear of course). Some players want to use what they make or find while others go to Evon-Mart.

I too have to add my frustration with the HUGE mat cost of precursors. What were they thinking with, “lets make it cost a dozen worth of ascended weapons mats”. This destroys the ascended weapon and armor economy placing an even larger sink on the materials making them cost more and place them farther out of reach of the general populace. The sink also makes the pursuit of a legendary weapon and ascended armor/weapons counter productive. And most frustrating of all, the huge gold sink ruins what I thought the entire purpose of this “adventure”. Why would you kitten yourself to do these steps and then spend more than you would get in materials than you would get just selling them and flat buying the precursor? Sure, the economy might balance around the cost of crafting a precursor against, but if I found grinding hundreds and hundreds of gold (be it through mindless gaming the TP, grinding dungeons, or grinding mats to sell) even remotely fun, I would have had a Legendary years ago. They has always been the “huge gold sink” option to get one, and the idea that the new adventure to get a precursor should be a “huge gold sink” frustrates me immensely. I thought the entire point of them adding this was a way to get these weapons without grinding huge amounts of gold. sigh

What I want to see:
- Make crafted precursors BtA (if they’re not already – the stupid gold sink has prevented me from further pursuing the weapons). While a lowered demand will affect the RnG sold market, not as much as them being sell-able would be. Not that I would consider even that “bad” for the market. The market would balance around people going on the adventure or grinding the gold… which I find to be much better than the current ‘go on the adventure and grind the gold’ or ‘just grind the gold’.

- Remove the ascended material cost. The PVP and WVW material cost is an example of a good material cost. If the goal was to place a time-gate to precursors, placing it on high-demand hugely expensive ascended mats is not it. Having 30 mats that you can get daily per-path of a specific dungeon for a weapon would be an example of an adventure-driven time gate. Those with only a little available game time can do just a path or two when they can and eventually get their weapon. Those with more time can do 3 paths a day for a 10 day gate. And if the goal is to allow people to choose between PvE/PvP/WvW and able to buy out the other methods with gold if they so desire, just make these mats sell-able.

Now if they add the dungeon grind cost (or something similar such as map completion items, making adventure “collection” items used for crafting, or what not), then those that have already decided that the huge gold mat cost was worth it can be told that they did “x” method instead of “y” method. If they just remove the ascended material cost as the precursor adventure already has a heavy PvE component, then players that have already completed the crafting should be reimbursed the ascended mats used.

No matter the case, this takes away a huge amount of game value for me. I planned on doing many Precursor adventures which also comes with all the other additional Legendary efforts (map completion, dungeon grinds, material costs). As it stands, the current “just another massive gold sink” means I’m doing zero.

Daily update on Dawn crafting :

Tier 1
10 Globs of Ectoplasm 3 g
5 Crystalline Dust 1 g
1 Orichalcum Plated Dowel 0.7 g
10 Elonian Leather Squares 90 g
30 Deldrimor Steel 290 g
200 Memories of Battle 16 g
200 Shards of Glory 16 g

Tier 2
1000 Bandit Crests 0.4 g
400 Geodes 3.2 g
100 Obby Shards 0 g
100 Karka Shells 9 g
25 Passion Flowers 16 g
25 Stabilizing Matrices 9.5 g
2250 Mithril Ingots 42.5 g
60 Bronze Ingots 1.8 g
60 Iron Ingots 6 g
60 Steel Ingots 6 g
60 Darksteel ingots 5 g
60 Mithril Ingots 1 g
160 Orichalcum ingots 16 g -> Here I am 533g in
60 Deldrimor Steel 600 g
10 Lumps of Primordium 0 g
30 Thermocatalytic Reagents 0.5 g
100 Elder Wood Planks 6 g
250 Bloodstone Dust g
1 Amalgamated Gemstone 1.5 g
10 Master Maintenance oil 2 g
1 Charged Lodestone 2.8 g
1 Glacial Lodestone 1 g
1 Molten Lodestone 0.9 g
1 Onyx Lodestone 9 g

Tier 3
10 Sunstone Lumps 0.5 g
10 Sun Beads 0 g
25 Orichalcum Ingots 2.5 g
5 Quartz Crystals 0 g
10 Piles of Coarse Sand 0.4 g
100 Mithril Ingots 1.8 g
100 Silver Ingots 0.5 g
10 Thermocatalytic Reagents 0.2 g

Total : 1162.7 g

So far I invested 75% of the cost of Dawn on TP and refuse to craft any further.

There are actually 51 Dawn on TP ranging from 700g to 1000g.

Now wich would you consider :

- Turning those 60 Deldrimor into Lumps of Mithrilum?
- Give every player completing Dawn 4800 to 1000 gems until there are none on TP?