Guild Wars 2

When HoT was announced, the ability to craft the Legendary pre-cursors was one of the more exciting updates that was mentioned. I’d loved the idea of Legendary weapons but having to hunt for a random drop or just buy the pre-cursor felt like it wasn’t in the spirit of the rest of the journey. I have yet to get started on a Legendary, partly for this reason but was excited to go hunting for one of the pre-cursors once I got around to unlocking masteries.

As it turns out, one of the ones that was most interesting to me, The Flame-Seeker Prophecies, has it’s pre-cursor gated behind guild-hall advancement. For those who don’t know, to make the first tier of the Chosen pre-cursor you need to craft an item called ‘Anthology of Villains’. It’s a weapon-crafting recipe (because it’s for a shield) and it’s also a book, which means one of the materials it needs are a new item called ‘Sheets of Quality Paper’. You need thirteen of them. As it happens, Quality Paper can only be crafted by Scribes, and Scribe can only be unlocked or trained at an appropriately levelled up Guild Hall. Also the paper is account bound.

Now, neither I nor my friends who I play with particularly care for large guild communities, preferring to play with just the small group of us, so our guild is not planning or expecting to have access to a guild hall at all, at least for the foreseeable future. Nor do we particularly care to join a larger guild that will purely to have access to this crafting discipline, so for us and players like us the Chosen is un-craftable and we have to go back to the old methods. This is deeply frustrating, especially since none of the others seem to have this kind of restriction.

I’m all for having the pre-cursors being a challenge to craft that requires time and dedication. This is how it should be! But locking one specific one away behind the guild-hall specific crafting discipline is a huge leap away from what I’d expect, not least because while anyone can peruse most of the crafting alone, becoming a 300 scribe is a huge investment even with the support of a guild all working to upgrade the hall.

This doesn’t seem like a difficult problem to solve; Provide weaponsmiths with a way to craft the paper for themselves. Less useful, but also functional would be making the paper tradeable, so at least those who can scribe are able to provide the resource to those who can’t but need it. At this stage, even in a guild with access to scribing, most guilds will not have lots of them, and anyone wanting to get the paper will need to train the discipline themselves.

Honestly, it’s deeply disappointing to find that the one precursors that needs scribing is one I’m interested in, and it seems odd that one precursor would be so much harder and more expensive to craft than the others because of that. I’d love to see it patched so that weaponsmiths are able to make the pages for themselves and that this won’t be locked off from people who prefer to play in smaller groups and not larger guilds like myself and my group.

Hopefully this reads as useful feedback and not aimless complaining. If anyone else feels frustrated the way I do by this, please chime in! And if I’m wrong and there is another way to get the pages please let me know! It’s still early days so maybe I’m missing something.

It’s LEGENDARY which means it’s across ALL parts of the game.

If you can get invited into someone’s guild hall, can you then train the skill and go from there? Yes, it’s going to be a lot of work in one shot, but if you plan ahead and make sure you have everything you’ll need, it should be doable.

Except that none of the other precursors have that requirement. And no other part of the Legendary crafting journey requires being part of a guild. And as far as I know none of them need you to play PvP? And also at no point have Arena Net talked about Legendary crafting requiring you to be involved in every part of the game? I suppose I might be mistaken, but this one item seems very out of place as compared to all the others. I’m not asking for legendary crafting to be easy, I’m asking for it to be consistent, and not to restrict a crafting challenge based on the kind of communities a player decides to play in. That does not seem onerous to me.

Palador.2170:

If you can get invited into someone’s guild hall, can you then train the skill and go from there? Yes, it’s going to be a lot of work in one shot, but if you plan ahead and make sure you have everything you’ll need, it should be doable.

Perhaps, but it’s crafting level 300 which is a lot of materials to prepare. I suppose this is more achievable once there is more info widely available about scribe but then there is a good chance that the cost of leveling scribe and crafting the paper would be more than just buying The Chosen on the Trading Post, so this isn’t exactly ideal :/

Axel Slice.4760:

but then there is a good chance that the cost of leveling scribe and crafting the paper would be more than just buying The Chosen on the Trading Post, so this isn’t exactly ideal :/

As of right now this is absolutely the case. I can’t link it atm because I’m on mobile, but someone made a post recently that breaks down the cost of obtaining and sufficiently upgrading a guild hall, and getting Scribing to the appropriate level.

These have to be done before you can even START working on the collection itself, and they already far exceed the cost of just buying the whole precursor on the TP. It’s all a bit silly. I don’t think any other item in the game that isn’t directly related to guilds actually requires guild participation, either, which makes me think (hope?) the whole thing is just an oversight/miscommunication rather than an intentional design choice.

Axel Slice.4760:

Except that none of the other precursors have that requirement. And no other part of the Legendary crafting journey requires being part of a guild. And as far as I know none of them need you to play PvP? And also at no point have Arena Net talked about Legendary crafting requiring you to be involved in every part of the game? I suppose I might be mistaken, but this one item seems very out of place as compared to all the others. I’m not asking for legendary crafting to be easy, I’m asking for it to be consistent, and not to restrict a crafting challenge based on the kind of communities a player decides to play in. That does not seem onerous to me.

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Legendaries have always had strange and uneven requirements. Some require very specific dungeon tokens for instance. Some require doubloons that are actually easier to collect on a low level character than the max level one you’re presumably building the legendary for.

In all, anet has always been of the opinion that legendary requirements are goals set my anet, and they’re diverse, weird, and different from each other. Anet intends them to be pretty time consuming to acquire, and to have you run all over the game.

radioAspen.6829:

I don’t think any other item in the game that isn’t directly related to guilds actually requires guild participation, either, which makes me think (hope?) the whole thing is just an oversight/miscommunication rather than an intentional design choice.

It makes me hope that they have some non-guild stuff planned for the Scribe. What it can do now just… really doesn’t justify it being a crafting profession. But that’s beside the point.

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

You can’t buy/trade the paper, which is the problem.

radioAspen.6829:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

You can’t buy/trade the paper, which is the problem.

Its account bound? That is indeed a problem, and kind of inconsistant from a content flow perspective.

While the wvw, dungeon tokens, etc. all assume you have to go do a thing, that thing is a case of immediate progress. You see “I need badges” or “I need tokens” and you can go get them. If you literally have to level scribe yourself to get paper that’s pushing it, as now you have to opt in to a guild system, claim a hall, and do a lot of expensive upgrades.

I don’t have a problem with that for scribe as a profession, as it’s supposed to be a guild-centric discipline, but requiring it for a non guild related and highly work intensive personal prestige item seems a little out of whack.

I mean, it isn’t a crafting backpack, which is a bonus to leveling the craft rather than the entire point from a design perspective, and scribes aren’t really about crafting personal equipment.

In addition this really hurts the flow of scribe itself, which is designed as a “guild position” more than a “personal crafting profession” and its requirements are all balanced around the idea that your guild contributes to a single scribe rather than the guild all leveling scribes. Requiring someone to level scribe takes away from that sense of guilds empowering scribes and benefitting from them by sucking up scribe resources.

I’m okay with it as a requirement, but it should be tradable. This would allow people to treat it as a gold cost, and help guilds offset the cost of leveling their scribes by selling a bit of paper.

PopeUrban.2578:

radioAspen.6829:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

You can’t buy/trade the paper, which is the problem.

Its account bound? That is indeed a problem, and kind of inconsistant from a content flow perspective.

While the wvw, dungeon tokens, etc. all assume you have to go do a thing, that thing is a case of immediate progress. You see “I need badges” or “I need tokens” and you can go get them. If you literally have to level scribe yourself to get paper that’s pushing it, as now you have to opt in to a guild system, claim a hall, and do a lot of expensive upgrades.

I don’t have a problem with that for scribe as a profession, as it’s supposed to be a guild-centric discipline, but requiring it for a non guild related and highly work intensive personal prestige item seems a little out of whack.

I mean, it isn’t a crafting backpack, which is a bonus to leveling the craft rather than the entire point from a design perspective, and scribes aren’t really about crafting personal equipment.

Yes, it’s accountbound. If it wasn’t then this would be totally fair and balanced, but as things stand it’s really awkward.

There are now a few threads in this forum about this problem, but so far we haven’t heard anything from the devs, which is really sad.
While others can enjoy the journey to get their precursor, the ones who want the Chosen sit on a huge pile of costs and barriers.
And it seems to be even worse. To level the scribe you need further upgrades of the guildhall to be able to craft decorations, which are a huge part of the scribe’s recipes.
So far I could only get to level 30 (level 300 is needed in order to craft sheets of quality paper), because I’m now missing several items, mostly found in the HoT-maps or from salvaging dyes.

And to make it clear for everyone who says “it’s supposed to be difficult and using every aspect of the game” or “just buy them at the TP”: sheets of quality paper are account bound on acquire, so no we can’t buy them at the TP.
And I really don’t mind that the journey is long, involves every aspect of the game or even that the journey is as expensive as purchasing the precursor at the TP.
What really bothers me is that it is the only journey with such a huge starting barrier. We are not talking about Tier 2 or 3 of the precursor journey, it is the FIRST item we need to acquire to even start the journey. Without the anthology of villians we can’t begin to fill the achievement and that is unfair.

Maybe the later tiers of this journey are easy and simple, maybe the materials needed to craft the different items are significantly lower than with the other precursors. maybe everything evens out in the overall journey, but at the moment nobody but Anet knows since nobody could start to progress.

So please Anet respond to one of these threads, explain if this starting barrier is intended or happened by accident. And if it happened by accident change something: remove the account binding from the sheets of quality paper, make the recipe available for the weaponsmith or for christ’s sake raise the starting barrier for every precursor journey but please even the odds.

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the PvP materials thing. When you say the new ones, you mean the brand new legendaries? That also strikes me as odd (the PvP seems really divorced from the rest of the game, at least to me. I’ve played some of it and enjoy it but it does feel very separate). In either case, if I could just wait it out until the market picks up and buy the paper from a scribe that would be fine. Actually, increasing demand for things made with crafting so that they are a little more profitable in general would be nice. As it stands though the paper is account bound, which means you have to craft it yourself. In fact from what I can see, most scribe items are.

Axel Slice.4760:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the PvP materials thing. When you say the new ones, you mean the brand new legendaries? That also strikes me as odd (the PvP seems really divorced from the rest of the game, at least to me. I’ve played some of it and enjoy it but it does feel very separate). In either case, if I could just wait it out until the market picks up and buy the paper from a scribe that would be fine. Actually, increasing demand for things made with crafting so that they are a little more profitable in general would be nice. As it stands though the paper is account bound, which means you have to craft it yourself. In fact from what I can see, most scribe items are.

Yeah, the account bound nature was pointed out to me by another poster.

They added the pvp materials, presumably, to help PvP players make a bit more money, but also to provide some clear options. Despite any reasons why it might be appropriate, Anet is pretty hardcore about not forcing people to play a sphere of the game they don’t like in most cases, but they also are trying really hard to give compelling and unique reasons for people to try and play all of those parts.

The fact these are tradable, and that you can’t actually learn or progress scribing without some hefty investment in a guild hall seems to put the paper thing in a weird place. It would be more consistant if the paper were tradable. Seems odd to let people opt out of PvP, but require them to opt in to guild halls.

PopeUrban.2578:

Axel Slice.4760:

PopeUrban.2578:

Actually, all of the new ones require you to either play PvP, or buy new pvp only materials from people that play pvp. The paper is pretty much the same thing. Either be in a guild with a scribing station, or buy from someone that has one. Right now there just aren’t a lot of scribes, so the market hasn’t picked up for the item. Give it time.

Huh, I wasn’t aware of the PvP materials thing. When you say the new ones, you mean the brand new legendaries? That also strikes me as odd (the PvP seems really divorced from the rest of the game, at least to me. I’ve played some of it and enjoy it but it does feel very separate). In either case, if I could just wait it out until the market picks up and buy the paper from a scribe that would be fine. Actually, increasing demand for things made with crafting so that they are a little more profitable in general would be nice. As it stands though the paper is account bound, which means you have to craft it yourself. In fact from what I can see, most scribe items are.

Yeah, the account bound nature was pointed out to me by another poster.

They added the pvp materials, presumably, to help PvP players make a bit more money, but also to provide some clear options. Despite any reasons why it might be appropriate, Anet is pretty hardcore about not forcing people to play a sphere of the game they don’t like in most cases, but they also are trying really hard to give compelling and unique reasons for people to try and play all of those parts.

The fact these are tradable, and that you can’t actually learn or progress scribing without some hefty investment in a guild hall seems to put the paper thing in a weird place. It would be more consistant if the paper were tradable. Seems odd to let people opt out of PvP, but require them to opt in to guild halls.

Yeah, I somehow didn’t see those responses before I responded to you, my bad. I’m pretty much in agreement with you on this one. I’d prefer to be able to craft it myself, but just making the item tradeable solves the problem to a large degree. In any case I’m hoping that by talking about it here we might get some communication on the subject, at the very least what the intent was. I assume it was just ‘the legendary has a book on it, lets make them craft a book’ followed by ‘books are made of paper, lets put paper as one of the materials’ (all of which makes perfect sense) and that this barrier is an odd oversight. ANet have historically been good with listening to player feedback, so while I won’t hold my breath I’m glad people are talking about it.

Oh, and thanks for the comments about PvP materials! That’s useful to know