Well about my title it is very simple.
I am going to give all of you some basic calculations here you decide and I want to have a statement of a person who was responsible for these arrangements.
Let us take a look at Dawn:
Direct purchase price atm 740g
highest ordered price atm 660g
Now let us take a look at the collection:
For rank 1 you have to collect 14 tokens with various means and then you have to create a prototype sword.
You need 30 Deldrimor Steel Ingots and 10 Elonian Leather Squares and some other tokens like the PVP and WVW tokens to create this sword.
For rank 2 you have to craft a ton of practice stuff for at least 3000 Mithril Ingot.
Then you have to create a special sword forging tool where you need 250 Mithril Ingot 100 Orichalcum Ingot and again 10 Deldrimor Steel. Then you have to create 10 Greatsword Blades and 10 Greatsword Hilts of kinda every type of ingot there is including Deldrimor Steel Ingots again. Since 1 Blade/Hilt is 3 Ingots each we arrive at an additional 60 Deldrimor Steel Ingots. After this you have to hand in a new Daysowrd Hilt and Blade. I do not know how much ingot you need here. But we can assume at least 5 or mots likely 15 like we needed for the Blade and Hilt of Rank 1.
So we add it up:
3250 Mithril Ingot (Stack about 2 g each: 13 Stack is 26g)
10 Elonian Leather Squares (price if you order it is aboce 5,5g so 55g)
3 Settings for Steel:
-100 Deldrimor Steel Ingots (most optimal setting if the new Hilt and Blade are free for whatever reason. Deldrimor Steel Ingots is abve 5,25g if you order it so 525g)
-110 Deldrimor Steel Ingots (super cheap Hilt and Blade 577,5g)
-130 Deldrimor Steel Ingots (setting i think is most likely 682,5g)
And let us assume you spend about 50g for the other ingots you need and also the PVP and WVW tokens (I know 50g is at this moment not enough but let us assume token price will drop sharply after a few days since there will be more on the market)
This brings us to a price for the different scenarios of:
1. 656 g (scenario free new hilt and blade since i do not know how much it costs really)
2. 708,5 g (scenario 5 ingot hilt and blade)
3. 813,5 g (scenario 15 ingot hilt and blade like rank 1)
Reminder for COMPLETE PRECURSOR purchase from auction house:
Direct purchase price atm 740g
highest ordered price atm 660g
So in the most ideal scenario it is 4g cheaper than the one you order and in the worst scenario it is more than 50g MORE expensive than the one you purchase.
You still have to farm 1000 Bandit crests and a few other things (which I also do not know since you have to complete Bandit Crests before this one to see the following ones). If we assume you only have to farm things you can not buy the price does not increase.
But now think about it.
We have now only finished rank 2 of 3 ranks. We still miss a WHOLE rank. And we spent a kitten ton of time already running around the map doing part 1 and farming whatever not for rank 2.
Btw I made the prices a bit lower than they actually are for the sake of nicer numbers to calculate and the possibility that the price could decrease in the next 1-2 days.
So if you do think about it now. You have to spend MORE gold if you do try to get the precursor with the collection than if you just buy it in the Trading Post. And you have to spend hours running around.
So why should we even do it this way?
Well some collections might be cheaper than directly buying it like Dusk since it does cost more. ( 1150g direct purchase 950g order)
Or because you do not need Deldrimor Steel Ingot.
Some people might say you do not have to purchase ingredients but you can farm them yourself. But this does not mean you get the item for free. You still have the value of the item you use to craft. So you just acquire the value otherwise than direct purchase trough Trading post and you might be 15% cheaper because you do not have the fees but you would need at least 100 days just to finish rank 2 (since Deldrimor Steel Ingot is kinda once per day) and you still would have to run around farming everything which does cost time and time is money. ^^
So what is the reason we should do the collections?
Well I do not know other collections but we can assume they work the same way. So you do need at least 110 ascended crafting materials of any kind. So the price should not be all that different. If we use simple math the only precursor collections you could save money of are the ones for the most valuable ones like Dusk.
I really feel cheated. I build the rank 1 sword so I have to finish it if i want the precursor otherwise I would have wasted even more money.
I am really disappointed since i thought that the whole point of this collection was to save some money on the Precursor while I get to see some nice scavenger hunt and compensate the gold i safe with time I play to finish the collection.
If possible I would love to reverse everything I did for the collection. I now wasted gold for no reason at all and I do not even want to start on the playtime. (And I am quite sure the prices of ascended crafting material will only rise and not fall since there are now a ton of people who need the materials in the hundreds because of the Precursor collection. And there will still be people who build ascended armor themselves.
So guys think about the pros and cons of the collection. I am toying with the idea of stopping to play since well I wasted the gold I saved up on something that does cost more time and does cost more than just buying it directly. I do not have a ton of time to play so the gold I spend does really ruin me practically. Unfortunately there is no medicine for remorse.
But I would really like to hear, what the people who are in charge of designing these Precursor collections have to say about the stuff I mentioned here. If someone does find some calculation error please point it out.
Thanks for reading all this.
(edited by Alaya.8765)