Guild Wars 2

After reading the reddit AMA and posting about legendaries, (viewable here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/legendary-weapons/ ), I’d like to offer a bit more feedback on the topic.

On the pro-side, it’s definitely good that new legendaries make it into the game, and Eureka was a nice surprise treat in yesterday’s patch. While I have no interest in making it (since it has a wielding arm effect which is almost certain to look horrendous on charr – my Astralaria still isn’t fixed, thank you very much), I was curious about it at first.

If there was something HoT did tremendously well, it was the precursor/legendary journies. Even though I don’t really like most of the designs, as they mostly range from annoying and blingy to just way too glittery and overly fancy for my gear tastes, I actually jumped into several of the collections just because they were tremendously fun. They dragged players through the most obscure and uknown little places and tiniest nooks. Even I, despite enjoying exploration element, found a few places I’ve previously never seen.

And indeed, when Chuka & Champawat was introduced earlier this year, it offered the best, most FUN journey so far. Even though I have no class to use it on (does anyone really use shortbow these days? It’s only wieldable by two classes, anyway), I wanted to make the bow because it was simply enjoyable to do.

Eureka went in the completely opposite direction. It’s just there, requires you to grind one map currency over and over again and… that’s basically it. That doesn’t really reward you for playing the game, it rewards you for getting bored out of your skull really fast. Possibly the spookiest moment of the whole AMA was the question if ANet is planning to “streamline” past precursors the same way (thankfully, the answer was NO, and I do pray it stays that way, because if the game doesn’t need something, it’s ditching gameplay for MORE obnoxious grinding).

I’m not saying getting legendaries should be easy or cheap (Eureka, by a paradox, seems to be so far, just boring as hell), or that some mat-sink shouldn’t be present: that’s the whole point of legendaries, after all. I also understand that when all assets and models and art are done, holding back legendary weapons for months at a time just to figure out what “journey” to attach to it is not a good solution. But cutting out pretty much ALL of the process besides the grinding part seems equally wrong and pushes the game further into a place I’m personally sad to see it go.

Getting free bling items for ton of currency should be left to the gemstore. I’d like to get something to actually play in the game.

Agreed. Story, discovering, action is what should always matter. It maybe good to have legendaries “back”, but a pure grind legendary is not legendary at all.

It really looks like a case of “We have this asset and we can either spend hundreds of man hours of development to do a thorough job, or we can ship it now.”

Given the choice of not having it at all and having it this way, I am glad we have it. But it is a far inferior method of acquisition if I understand correctly that there is no associated achievement.

I’ll re-iterate a point I made in a different thread which is that if they could go back and add in a legendary journey for all the original weapons that didn’t have one (which afaik is what they did when HoT came out), they can hopefully do that for the new ones as well, at some point in the future when they are all out and people aren’t complaining about not having them.

Fully agree with op. The Chuka & Champawat lore collections (all but vol II obviously) were just great.

I am also very sad that it has no collections or AP tied to it in any way. Greatly reduces the incentive for me to go for building it.
It makes new legendaries quite a bit less legendary. They are just even more glorified exotic skins now.

“Less Legendary” gets me the bingo!

cephiroth.6182:

Fully agree with op. The Chuka & Champawat lore collections (all but vol II obviously) were just great.

This. Loved the whole thing (except vol 2)

Legendary collection is for a very few players, so its make sense to streamline it as it take a lot of man power to make something for few players. Most players that have legendary got it with gold.
So yeah it is way less cool, but way better because this way we will get a lot of more legendaries.

Cormac.3871:

It really looks like a case of “We have this asset and we can either spend hundreds of man hours of development to do a thorough job, or we can ship it now.”

Given the choice of not having it at all and having it this way, I am glad we have it. But it is a far inferior method of acquisition if I understand correctly that there is no associated achievement.

Well said.

Personally, I would have been okay with postponing legendaries so that we have the journey. But clearly they think this is better for the game and its community and the evidence to date (both the harsh words prior to this week and the praise since the patch), it looks to me that they made the right call.

I believe the pendulum swung far too much away from what building precursors were to what Eureka is. There is no scavenger hunt specific to what Eureka is, a fire mace.
I like the recipes better (35 spiritwood planks was too much for Nevermore; i did it but it was too much. )But I think recipes could have been less ascended mats instead new mats for Eureka. Vol. 2 could have been reduced as well in the number of mats. Without the scavenger piece, legendaries feel like a gold grind.

I made The Minstrel and Astralaria and I much prefer The Minstrel. Why? I can buy the precursor and cut out the grinding.

Eureka has been good for my gold wallet since material prices shot up as people are rushing to make it.

Anet’s logic sometimes entertains me.

“Here are legendaries, now we’re taking them away, but look we’re giving you another legendary.”

To be honest though, I don’t care for the mace. Not interested and not going to go get it.

They never took away Legendaries.

To the new streamlined Version. Well I prefer the having Lore tied to the Legendaries which makes them stand out even more. But I can understand Anets descision. Tying Lore into a Legendary seemed to be the Part that took most of the Time and we saw how long it took them to get out the new Shortbow. Since Anet promised a new Legendary Set and the delaying of it left a black Mark on HoT, it seems logical to get some Distance from the Part that takes the most Time and in Return giving out new Legendaries faster, thus not breaking their promise. And well many People seem to be happy that we have now Eureka. Looks like Anet made the right Descicion for the Game and its Community.

Well, I do see how something like Chuka & Champawat took hours and hours and hours to implement. Pure new content, lots of new assets (which were SO kitten worth it, I just wish they were more… permanent. Like the tiger pair’s ghosts haunting the home instance, for example, to preserve the gorgeous models).

“Old” legendaries, however, mostly used the content that’s already been in the game since launch. I recently did Howler, for example, and the tier 3 spirit journey dragging you across pretty much ALL ghost-related events in Tyria showed me some places I never knew existed in the game. When I wield my Howl (yet), I remember actually playing the game and having fun with it: climbing the desolate owl shrine to the very peak, paying respects to fallen Norn spirits, returning a cherished locket to a slain Vigil soldier, driving Malchor up the cliff for 173rd time…

The mace lacks all that. You have literally the same experience building a bloody legendary item of bloody legend that you have buying a giant pack of skritt merchants. Actually, even grinding gold in-game and buying thing like… let’s say… the Kurzick axe from gemstore with ingame gold only feels more challenging and rewarding and fun, because you can at least freely change scenery at that point.

New legendaries really don’t all have to be as complicated as the short bow, amazing as that one has been. Compared to Astralaria, making Howl was a cakewalk, as the collections are much shorter and mostly use existing content. And still, it was fun nonetheless. Please, bring at least that level of fun back to the legendaries. Make them a journey again, instead of being a rat race.