Guild Wars 2

I appreciate the reply, but I prefer a more personal touch maybe? Copy/pasting info just doesn’t warm me up for this sort of a thing.

Especially since I’ll be moving servers, I’d prefer it if anyone replying to this could give me some background on the server, tell me what the community there is generally like, etc..
No sugarcoating either, preferably. I know every server is bound to have some trolls. As long as the majority are nice enough that won’t bother me.

Currently playing on Fissure of Woe server.
The population is low to say the least. Though that wouldn’t bother me too much in general. Another issue is that the community is pretty horrid. Every single time I play WvW, the chat is full of players complaining and spreading blame around about why the server is performing poorly in WvW.

Fewer and fewer people are actually being constructive. Sure enough, our Commander means well and puts their best foot forward but it isn’t enough when the community is just not behind it.

This is why I’m looking for a new server, with a brighter community and possibly a guild to accomodate me.

I’m not the best player, don’t have a character over lvl 26. But I try to be active an hour or two a day and WvW is the most enjoyable part of the game for me. So if anyone is interested in picking up a stray, let me know.

I’m Belgian, Flemish part. Speak fluent English and Dutch. Either is fine with me.

I personally used the mats I found to craft. Since they don’t sell for a lot, they won’t really help as much either if you’re low.

Sticking to basic materials gives a good amount of experience, and doesn’t give you any extra costs. Like green planks for artificers.

But in the end it’s up to you.

The games I played in the past, have always had a lot of random luck incorporated in them when it comes to gear.

Games like Lineage 2, Cabal online, etc..

On Cabal Online, when the game originally came out, some crafts seemed impossible. You had items with LESS chance than a precursor “dropping” needed to be crafted just to be able to go to the next tier of your craft. Having to grind and grind the materials to try it all over again.

But people stuck to it and made a name of themselves as “the only person who can craft this amulet”.. or “the only person who can craft this armor piece” and it would create a lot of interaction with different people to offer them materials to attempt to create something for you, in turn allowing them to advance their crafts.

What this current system does on GW2, is create a market for otherwise “useless” rares and exotics on the TP, for players willing enough to buy them out and attempt to get precursors. That benefits the economy a great deal.

What it also does is counter inflation. Which is also a big positive.

It raises the value of legendary items. Adding a prestige level to them.
Yes players who invest real money can get them more easily than others, but if it’s mostly a cosmetic advantage, that seems to fit into the F2P cash shop concept perfectly.

If one single item is enough to make people ragequit the game, then they aren’t players who would become the core of the game 1 year from now. Let alone beyond that, so they might as well quit now. Especially if they can’t get over these issues this early after release.

edit important to add that eventually, things tend to work themselves out. No matter how low the odds seem to be now, with a player base of this size, these items will find a way to pop out more and more frequently in the future, lowering the prices.

Sauzo.6821:

Zetoshi.5803:

I don’t understand what the fuss is about.

Legendary

It’s self explanatory. You want something Legendary but you talk about wasting all your gold. If it’s all such a waste, let it go and spend it on something you feel is worth it.

Though obviously you all do think it is worth it or you wouldn’t be throwing your gold into it.

Either way – this topic isn’t any different from the usual QQ every mmorpg receives.

Why do you all think they aren’t making any official statements here? Because they don’t care. Because they shouldn’t care. If they answer your pleas here, you’ll find something else to collectively complain about. Wishing on a shooting star that they will give in.

You want something shiney, you’re not getting something shiney, you go to your parents and cry until they buy you something shiney.
That isn’t the way to go. Honestly.
Let the Legendary item have its worth.

Don’t bring it down to “yet another pretty thing” everyone has within weeks of starting the game. Why do you want everything to be common? Shouldn’t there be things so rare that owning them allows you to stand out?

Meh. My two cents.

I think you’re missing the point. It’s not that the legendary is hard to get or takes time, it’s the fact that the precursor has absolutely nothing to do with “hard work”. It’s based purely on the luck of a RNG. I have no problem with it taking 2 or 3 or 4 months to get a legendary but i do have a problem with 1 guy putting in 1000 rares in the MF and getting nothing and the next guy putting in 4 rares and getting one. Take out the RNG factor in the precursors and make it about “work” and not a freakin roulette wheel called the mystic forge. And yes, a legendary is not something you NEED but after you have done 100% map, done all the dungeons and paths, maxed out crafting and don’t really play alts, it would be nice to have another goal to work to that you know you can actually get. Map completion isnt random, dungeons aren’t random, crafting isn’t random, why are the legendaries random?

And about a legendary being unique and people needing one to validate them being unique, get a life. Nothing about a legendary screams “im a unique snowflake”. All of it can be done solo as long as you live in moms basement and grind 18 hours a day to buy mats or farm karma/honor badges. Unique was getting a weapon or armor in other MMOs that took 24-40 people or in the case of a certain MMO from about 10 years ago, 80 man raids, all working together over months to finish raiding dungeons.

And when you get your legendary. What then? You’ll have accomplished it, fair enough. But what is your next goal? What will keep you playing?

If you only play for the goals or accomplishments the mechanics offer you, you’re not enjoying the game. You’re completing it, yes. But that in the end isn’t the purpose of the game.

Especially in a game like Guild wars. Which to me, has always been more about having fun with a group of people, playing PvP.

If you have the feeling you have nothing left to do in the game besides the legendary, why not put your focus on the WvW aspect? Set your own goals with a group of people in that part of the experience.
Then when you’ve met your goals there, get a fresh perspective on things. Read up on lore, create a character with a different race, class and story based choices.

I think it’s sad when players are so caught up in numbers and items that they lose track of other, again – in my opinion – important aspects.

Do you get anything you want in life with hard work? No. Some things in life ARE purely based on luck. It’s nice to see a game that reflects it in part.

Morrar.1764:

Let’s not discuss whether chasing a Legendary is silly or not. People set goals for themselves in a game and they get satisfaction from pursuing these goals. Whether you think a goal is silly is a matter of personal preference.

What we can discuss, however, is whether the road to these goals makes sense. In particular, we can discuss the amount of luck involved. How people evaluate rewards largely depends on how these rewards relate to the efforts they put in. On one end of the scale there is no correlation between effort and rewards and rewards completely depend on luck. On the other end of the scale, rewards totally depend on effort and no luck is involved. How do people evaluate these different reward systems?

When everything depends completely on luck, people may feel that much of their effort goes unrewarded. When they do get a reward, it doesn’t satisfy them because it is completely unrelated to the effort they put in (although some are quick to come up with rationalizations why they ‘deserved’ the reward). Moreover, this system leads to feelings of unfairness as some people get rewards without putting any effort in, while others get nothing and put in a lot of effort. In conclusion, random rewards are not satisfying at all.

At the opposite end of the scale -where rewards totally depend on effort- people also tend to be unsatisfied. In this scenario, rewards often feel like a grind, like working if you will. People then tend to go about and make a plan, grind and cross things of their list. This system often feels like it lacks excitement.

In the end, rewards therefore need to be a combination of effort and luck ( alot of research supports this finding by the way). It’s this combination that is crucial. When we look at Legendaries, part of it is a pure grind (i.e., karma, tokens), part of it is a grind with some luck involved (i.e., lodestones) and part of it is pure luck (precursors). Unfortunately, the precursor part has turned out to be the most important obstacle in obtaining a Legendary, dwarfing all other components. In my opinion (and I think many agree here) this is simply bad game design.

This could easily be cured by reducing the luck factor involved in obtaining precursors and increasing the effort factor. For example, instead of getting the precursor (or not) with a 0.01% chance one could implement a system with shards. In such a scenario one would have a 0.1% chance on a shard and 10 shards combine into a precursor.

Note that the overall chance to get a precursor stays the same (so they do not necessarily become more common), but the system allows one to ‘work towards’ getting a precursor. It will feel more rewarding and also reduces the unfairness between players.

In your example, 10 × 0.1% chance doesn’t equal 0.01% chance. That’s mathematically incorrect. But I see where you’re trying to go with this. It’s a more reasonable solution.

From my perspective, you already have the grind element that’s prominent in the other parts of legendary items. I would hate it if that was all there was to it. There has to be more to it for you to gain something that’s referred to as “end game” for most.

I’ve read people say that their “last” objective in the game was to get a legendary item. Threatening with quitting the game because it’s seemingly impossible. But why? They’re essentially saying that once they get the legendary, their goal will be completed. They won’t have anything left to do and they’ll quit for that very reason.

What is the difference to them if they quit now, or after they obtain it?

But back on topic ( apologies for rambling ) I like the way you phrased things.
Personally I feel like I can accept the way things are now. But obviously, in every game, balancing needs to happen regularly.
Perhaps implementing a surefire recipe, that’s made up of multiple parts with low odds of obtaining, that ultimately add up to the same, will give players the sense of progress they need to keep going.

I can imagine that putting that much time and effort into something without a glimpse of achievement would be anguish to some. Might be different if you feel you’re a bit closer to your goal when you get that 1 out of however many shards or what not you need to build your precursor.

@Snow

That is the company’s perogative. They are a company. They do need to take their profits somewhere. If someone is stupid enough to spend that much on a virtual item that offers cosmetics mostly, that’s their choice.

@Fellyn

Everything relies on RNG. Your damage rolls, are randomly generated. All drops are randomly generated.
That said, it would make more sense for it to be less reliant on luck. Still, I like the RNG for the fact that not everyone will get it.

@Snow

I’m not trolling. It’s a Legendary weapon but you’re willing to take away anything that is Legendary about it. YES, it is expensive as hell. But that should be the point. It should be near impossible or very unlikely to obtain.

Luck is always a factor, in life, and what is an RPG if not an interpretation of life.
The boring grind, we see in life daily. The same should go with other aspects. Else you would not feel any real statisfaction other than instant gratification which quickly disolves into nothing more than a “meh”.

I would much rather earn a Legendary item now, with the way things are, then in the end have one and admit “oh I only managed to get this because they made it easy, all I had to do was put in some time and BAM. Pretty shiney thingies.”

Keep things the way they are. Loving it.

Ignore all the rage. Finally an end game that requires effort instead of an end game that’s dead and gone 1 month into a game. ( Diablo 3 anyone? )

Idc if it’s RNG. It’ll feel like more of an accomplishment when you get it.

Hate this “new generation” who expect everything to be handed to them on a silver platter.

Do you really want to get this as a freebie and then be like.. "okay..so I have this. Now what? oh right. I have nothing left to accomplish.. Better quit the game anyway. “ARENANET.. Y U NO MOAR ENDGAME?”

I don’t understand what the fuss is about.

Legendary

It’s self explanatory. You want something Legendary but you talk about wasting all your gold. If it’s all such a waste, let it go and spend it on something you feel is worth it.

Though obviously you all do think it is worth it or you wouldn’t be throwing your gold into it.

Either way – this topic isn’t any different from the usual QQ every mmorpg receives.

Why do you all think they aren’t making any official statements here? Because they don’t care. Because they shouldn’t care. If they answer your pleas here, you’ll find something else to collectively complain about. Wishing on a shooting star that they will give in.

You want something shiney, you’re not getting something shiney, you go to your parents and cry until they buy you something shiney.
That isn’t the way to go. Honestly.
Let the Legendary item have its worth.

Don’t bring it down to “yet another pretty thing” everyone has within weeks of starting the game. Why do you want everything to be common? Shouldn’t there be things so rare that owning them allows you to stand out?

Meh. My two cents.