Guild Wars 2

The event chest that spawned during the one time event had a fair rate of dropping precursors.

Tooth of Frostfang… sold it and bought Dawn.

It’ll most likely settle down. I think a lot of people want to come back to a game where they know the economy fairly well after 1-2 weeks, but the market is constantly going up and down and has been since the bot bannings.

With all these updates, the TP is very hard to predict and nothing is ever settled. These new recipes coupled with bot bannings have elevated prices like crazy. The market really needs time to settle IMO. Hopefully this happens in the coming weeks before Wintersday. And hopefully Wintersday doesn’t utilize these T6 craftables (or T5) and instead be more of an Ori/Awood/Gossamer sink with… probably Candy Cane Shards.

However, I do think that they should improve the drops on these in general though or at least more loot bags should drop. DR now that a lot of the bot problem is gone (some are still around) should also be reduced for people who actually want to farm.

What lackofcheese said. It took me a while to figure it out but they made it so invisible bags dont show up on the TP any more.

Two things:

-I’m pretty sure the scavenger hunt changes will be in another patch. I would much rather they do that anyway from a content push perspective. It would also give them some time to test this.

-Wait a few days and see how the markets are. The first day for anything is horrible. Look at the Halloween skin prices when the event first hit. Wait 1-2 weeks for prices to settle.

If the above doesn’t happen in a few weeks (or at least has someone acknowledging that there’s an issue) THEN go ahead and yell and scream.

I’m not here to white knight or anything, but people really need to be more patient. I myself am still after Sunrise for a while now and I’m getting close except the precursor, but there really needs to be more patience on this matter. I don’t think the solution was a “FIX IT IN 1-2 WEEKS”. I would rather they actually take some time to think this process through than implement something without any test time. It seems like it’s coming, just not in this patch.

Evidence from the post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts-Follow-up-Precursors/first

John Smith.4610:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

I’m pretty sure the changes to precurors weren’t even thought of for this content pass until they realized how many people were complaining about it. To alleviate some stress on this topic most likely they increased the MF chances a bit to appease some of the crowd that want it NOW.

The blog post Linsey wrote also has this:

“We also have plans to add more fun ways to acquire Legendary precursor items with a more “scavenger hunt” feel than they are acquired currently.”

All of this points to the fact that is it not in this release. Just need some patience. If they don’t release this alternative method ever THEN i’ll be a little bit peeved off. For now, just wait a while and enjoy the content and finish the other parts to your legendary if you haven’t.

As is Grenth and Opening Arah. Lol most of the zone is broken =(. Guess i’ll play an alt.

Some lodestones are getting ridiculous. It’s exactly what ArcTheFallen is experiencing. We’re not even talking about legendaries here, a casual player or even an average player is going to have a difficult time looking cool with certain lodestones inbalanced.

It’s even more funny when you see that (last I checked anyway) glacial cores to glacial loNestone conversion costs more than what it is on the TP.

There’s a severe lack of recipes for some and too many recipes for others (e.g. charged lodestones), especially with the drop rate.

100% agree with Archer.6485 here. It seems like nobody even bothers to read the posts in this thread before flaming ideas. Does making an alternative way of getting this, actually make these items not “legendary” any more? I mean let’s be serious, there’s a tier 2 of these legendaries with Eternity. I’m pretty sure the rest of the weapons will end up having something similar.

And this is coming from a player who has turned into a hardcore TP junky. I went from 10g investments in a couple of things and making 25+g returns. By my calculations I will have enough for a precursor at the end of this month if not sooner if my predictions about the market are correct. I could even go farm some hardcore for 2 weeks and get enough. Most of it was lucky breaks and complete market speculation and some of it was from flipping.

At the end of the day though? I feel happy I have a huge sum of cash just from investments alone and will be able to obtain the precursor soon, but I don’t really feel like I accomplished anything. I felt more accomplished getting something in Everquest that wasn’t even an epic after a long quest.

You know what made me feel like I accomplished something in this game? The mad king’s clocktower puzzle. This is the last time i’ll say this, but nobody bothers to respond to the argument of making it more about a challenge than a grind:

I want challenges like the Mag King’s Clocktower Puzzle on steroids. In fact, I want 20 of these on steroids. Followed by a gauntlet of dungeon running, slaying each world dragon 100 times, helping the Pirory investigate crazy events with awesome riddles, helping the Order of Whipsers do a ton of infiltration DEs that happen every 2-3 days, to fight with the Vigil against hordes of Branded, do 400 UNIQUE DEs in 4 weeks… most of all I want a CHALLENGE. Risk vs. Reward. That’s what I want.

And sure, make it take 3-6 months. Seriously, make these challenges so hard that it takes a LOONG time to complete. They should be difficult and they should take a long time. But what they really SHOULD be is progress oriented toward people who just want to play the game rather than grind.

As for the gold sink? Sure have it. Raise the prices of the Icy Runestones to 3g each. Guess what? That’s a pure goldsink right there. They already have a great goldsink right there.

As for the precursors? Keep them. After implementing a challenge-worthy approach to getting a precursor, lower the drop rates. This way power traders can go ahead and do it their way, whereas people who want to go on a great journey (the one they talked about in the Legendary blog post for example) can actually go on that journey rather than staying at Plinx or the TP all day.

tl;dr for the people who don’t like to read a long post: make it HARDER, add a pure goldsink elsewhere for the legendaries(like raising icy runestone prices), lower the drop rate via RNG after implementing a challenging way to PROGRESS toward the precursor, let current precursors stay for power traders.

Recently.1043:

Dusk up to ~450ish now. It will probably be 500 minimum by December, if not more.

It’s 500g now =). Your prediction came true.

Also I’ve been watching the price of Precursors for a while. I could have sworn that 2 days ago there were 8-9 dusks up on the TP ranging from 360-410g. Now there are two. I guess it can’t be one person or one group of people buying 8 of them are relisting them for a 20g profit right? (lol…)

Sorry to hear that Snow. Seen you around for a while and you’ve spent a lot of time trying to get this part. Really sucks to have a blocker like this.

@Larlik.1532 difference between this and the Mad King puzzle is that you progress and LEARN the mad king puzzle and get BETTER at it.

I spent 2.5 hours on it each run progressively getting better. I took some breaks, I laughed at Charr/Norn jokes, I conversed with people, I raged a little when people summoned their ranger spirit pets or guardian spirit weapons… but in the end it was fun; it created a memory. I want more of these tough challenges, more things like this in the game that make me feel like im on top (lolol) when I finish it. It felt like I achieved something. Guess what? It wasn’t even about the dumb slippers. It was about getting to the top. It was REALLY fun despite the camera glitches and race discrimination.

This pure RNG system? It creates what Snow just encountered. A bad memory. You don’t want a bad memory.

Legendaries should be RARE. It should be achievable by players who play a lot and are highly skilled, I would completely agree with a design that challenges players to make it rare.

They should also be DIFFICULT. However, there are many types of “difficult”. Currently the difficulty for a precursor is purely “How long can you stand grinding cash for it or throwing weapons into the forge without feeling totally bad and giving up”. The difficulty should be something like 20 mad King clock tower puzzlez, travelling all through Tyria talking to random NPCs figuring out things detective style, doing dungeon runs, and contributing to dragon kills. THAT is difficult with SOME grind. THAT is fun and creates memories that people want.

Compared to how awesome Everquest epic quests were, this is nothing but a boring grind.

Forget legendaries… it’s hard to make some of the exotics to even mildly look good. This drop rate and really drop rates (and rewards) in general need to be improved.

This might be a tangent but it would be nice for once to be rewarded for playing the game. WvW doesn’t reward you much, dungeons reward more than they used to but are still kind of “meh”, most DE’s barely award you anything. The list goes on. Charged lodestones is just one area that is just as tight as the rest of these systems.

Sidenote: Before anyone says “play to have fun”… i’ll be honest here: PvE is about gaining pixels and that’s what is “fun”. Sure the story might be fun… once… the puzzles might be fun a few times… but the rest of the time? I’ts pixels. Constantly making your own character look cool. THAT is fun. GW1 had this down.

I dunno who’s coming up with these loot tables but it’s barely making anyone want to do any DEs other than Plinx+Broodmother and Tunnels. I really want to do some other DEs but nobody wants to actually do any of them. And I’m on a fairly populated server.

Loot drops need to be reassessed throughout the game, not just lodestones. The optimistic side of me wants to think that the Ascent to Madness is a testing ground for some of these changes. Even that is still stingy.

I love the idea of using tokens as trading for Lodestones. Alternatively up the rate in chests in a dungeon. I also wish that a designer could respond to some of these crafting threads. In BLTC and Dungeons subforums, I see a lot more designer activity whereas crafting seems kind of dead.

I realize that they might be busy fixing the stuff, but a little bit of feedback helps calm the number of these threads regarding drop rates, precursor issues, and mystic forge issues. Especially since the tone of this thread is starting to go to “angry” instead of “oh they’re working on it”. I’d wait and see what they do within the next month, though.

Twilight Zone Guy.1487:

I see players threatening to try and destroy this game or at least say its going to die because they can’t get a weapon skin. That’s probably one of the most petty things I’ve seen from gamers in a long time. Maybe they should just make all weapons have the exact same skin. People are getting far too invested in this.

I don’t think the majority of the people angry are threatening to destroy the game. I think most of them, myself included, feel that this is a bad path to move down, especially since throughout the game every aspect is just horrible drop rates.

I think more people are worried that the game they waited for so long is going down a path of pure RNG in order to get anything that looks decent. I think more people are worried for the game rather than threatening to destroy it.

It took a while for people to get holiday items in GW1. But none of it required RNG or games. I don’t mind hard to obtain items. In fact some of them should take multiple holidays to finish or you need to trade items to finish them.

The problem is people shelling out 50 dollars and getting crafting boosters thinking the rate of these items were 1/10 or something. You have to admit 50 dollars is more than someone would pay for a monthly subscription game in less than 2 months.

It’s true its a gamble, but the rates are so ridiculously low that people just feel ripped off. You have to agree that spending 50 dollars should almost guarantee you something or at the very least get you a “second prize” worthy to compensate you for your cash. I’ve said this before, but slot machines have a better return which is something people get addicted to. This is just purely enraging and really makes me feel like the game could get hurt from it.

Isn’t designing a system with gambling supposed to be fun? Seriously, if you’re going to RNG at least make it fun or trick people into believing it is. If you’re going to milk players, at least milk them slowly.

Fighting monsters and having RNG on them is not as bad. It’s why a lot of people don’t mind fighting bosses at the end of a dungeon and having a CHANCE at an item which might drop. The fight there is fun for the most part AND you gain gold out of it.

The classic slot machine with a return rate of 70-80% (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slot_machine#Payout_percentage) is another example of a well designed RNG system. You can argue that the boosters/black lions chests/etc. you get are the payout, but translated into direct gold, the payout actually isn’t actually anywhere near 70-80%.

I really wanted to keep liking this game, but the amount of thoughtless RNG being introduced into it is making me think twice about logging on.

Sure you don’t need any of this. But let’s be honest, if we can get max gear in a week (two weeks farming a dungeon) after hitting 80, then what else is there to do? Get skins. That’s what. If all these skins, including precursors are RNG, it really kills my drive to reach those goals.

Everyone who keeps saying you don’t NEED any of this, seriously needs to think about the lifespan of this game. I agree with the mentality that max gear should stay easy to obtain. But if that’s the case, then what do players work for? Skins. That’s the only other thing you can work for if max stat gear can be gotten so easily.

So now think about this: should obtaining cool skins cost more than a monthly subscription based MMO? The answer should be no. As it stands we have users in this thread spending $50-100 and getting nothing. That’s roughly 3-5 months of a monthly subscription. With December around the corner, do you really expect people to spend another $50-100 a month for a CHANCE to get a limited skin? Otherwise you get… crafting boosters… black lion salvage kits….? Things that you don’t even need because there essentially is no character progression grind in this game?

I loved GW1 and it sort of breaks my heart to see GW2 going down this path of thoughtlessly design systems. I’m going to probably take a few days break and hopefully things get cleared up.

Agreed Collects and Snow. This burns people out.

I want to go on an epic quest to obtain my legendary… not sit at a forge all day running items through hoping I’d get something back.

I’d rather kill Claw of Jormag, The Sunless, Shatterer 300 times, collect 1k dungeon token from each dungeon, get 1k WvW badges of honor, and kill 1 of each champion in the game than to deal with the mystic forge any more. At least the things I just said can create some wonderful stories of adventure.

Sure you could say I could save up. But as it stands, what I listed above at least makes you feel like you’re doing a variety of things. Right now? You have players in cursed shores, farming Plinx/Tunnels event over and over and over and over. It’s not even about the Karma. It’s literally about the cash farm. It’s boring. It’s bland. It burns people out.

So I have three options here:
1. I RNG my cash hoping to get a precursor
2. I farm Plinx all day hoping I either get a drop of a precursor or spend 300+ hours doing this chain hoping I don’t hit DR to save up for a precursor
3. Don’t bother with progressing the only end-game this game currently has to offer

I’m thinking I’m going to do 3 for now because this just burns me out. I literally had someone today say that they got a Zap on their 5th try on rares to me today. I mean that’s awesome and all, but they’re not even going to bother with a legendary.

I actually know of a friend who blew 200 dollars on some gold to RNG in addition to their saved up gold. They lost it all. It was kind of sad. Needless to say they quit. FYI they tried it on exotics. Roughly 100-120 attempts total (probably more because I had to log off).

They sold everything they had and RNG’d it all. The sad thing is? This person’s been a supporter of Guild Wars since Beta Test weekends of GW1 up until you guys had the final event leading up to GW2 release (Wayfarer’s Reverie).

While he made a hasty and thoughtless decision, it still shows how ridiculousness this system is. He even sold his 250 ecto he needed for another gift as well as his charged lodestones due to the recent price spike lol… I saw this all unfold as he sold everything in his bank. Dumb decision? Yeah. But this mechanic never should have been here. It’s literally worse than Vegas slot machines and just causes rage. And the saddest part? A very dedicated player to the GW franchise ragequitted the game.

Instead of creating epic adventures and memories through some crazy awesome long quest and journey, it’s just bland and boring and plain infuriating, especially since this literally IS the end-game… the only end-game that there is to offer currently.

I’ve read the other forums and I’ve heard that dungeon loot and champion(maybe more) world loot is going to improve, but I have yet to hear anything about precursors being improved, if at all.

So please, any feedback about whether this is being looked at will be appreciated.