Guild Wars 2

Well, if they created the TP using web browser technology (looks like that to me), there really isn’t much they can do about it. No way to stop web crawlers if they’re not made to be stopped.

Well, TP flipping isn’t that clever, it just requires patience, organization and some light math skills, the three things your average MMO player is deficient of. :p

Sure we do, we just don’t agree that they are effective.

They use manipulation. You can make a solid amount of profit via normal market trading, but big bucks come either from lucking out on trades or manipulating the market.

It also depends a lot on how much money you have to spread out. You want to spread your orders among various items, not focus only on a handful of them, that way you are always moving stuff around and you never have most of your money just sitting there doing nothing.

Big gaps get closed real fast and are usually a sign that someone is about to manipulate the market, which means they’re already moving to exploit that gap. Which means runners-up usually get shafted. You want large bulk trades with smaller profit margins, not huge ones where nothing moves and you lose a ton of money on sell tax each time you repost your offers.

Also, is GW2Spidy real-time and updated directly from the in-game data? For example in EvE Online you also have market related sites, but most are updated by players, not realtime, which makes them useless for market trading where speed and flexibility is of importance. If they allow market data to be pulled directly from game servers by third party software, that’s weird.

They may exist, but they don’t work in the sense they should, which is making consistent profit. Unless someone successfully programmed an AI. Programs need predictable environment to work with, and TP flipping is anything but.

P.S. – real life stock trading software relies on bulk data analysis, something which isn’t available from GW2. You would need to pull data from the entire market, build up a history database, then use that data to create projection estimates on prices and then create your buy and sell orders based on that. Since you can’t do that, you can’t employ a multi-million dollar supercomputer to do your GW2 TP flipping for you.

I often undercut by 2c… that way if someone undercuts by 1c while I am setting up my offer, I undercut them. Something you learn on the EvE Online market, and if you think things are tough here… heh.

Just be glad the TP doesn’t really offer much in the way of monitoring your buy/sell orders or the competition would be much more fierce.

Because if you leave a bot doing TP flipping, you’re going to go bust in no time. TP flipping is a dynamic game… a resource node is always there, profit margins aren’t.

Oh, and Air #1 also bounces not only between enemy players, but also between players and critters… so if there’s an inconspicuous bunny hopping around near you, you’re going to get zapped twice.

The big difference guys, is that a book is a static narrative. It has a clearly defined plot development and of course that means there is no inconsistency if you just go back and read a previous chapter again. You, as the reader, are not participating or influencing the plot of a book or a movie in any shape or form by watching it.

But games are a completely different storytelling medium. The player has a direct say in how the story goes (unless we’re talking about those old-school movie/game hybrids which were extremely linear and rigid). The less linear the game, more influence the player has.

So if you have a very linear, single-player game, reloading an older save doesn’t influence the consistency of the player’s experience. That is literally “going back in time”.

But say you have an MMO, and even the most “linear” MMO is much more open and free than many single player games. You have this huge open world, where players are let loose to play the game and interact with the story. You HAVE to take that into account when creating the storyline, because the player is directly interacting with it.

This is important because player experience, unlike reader or movie watcher experience, is not passive, but active. Player actions have consequences in an interactive story. Ignoring those actions shatters the consistency of the player’s experience, something you don’t want to do (for example, what Bioware did in Mass Effect 3 ending).

MMOs add to this by their very nature of being non-linear as far as character storyline and progression in the context of gameplay are concerned. In MMOs, the narrative is always unbroken (reloading a save essentially breaks the narrative and resets it to an earlier point in a story). In an MMO, you cannot save your game. Your character cannot hop between various chapters of their experience like they can in a single player game. Your gameplay narrative remains unbroken – any gameplay mechanics that break that narrative is a sign the developer hasn’t grasped the concept of open-world MMO gameplay.

Second, continuity of the open world is paramount to maintaining this unbroken gameplay narrative, which is again very important in the social aspect of the game. In an MMO, it is not all about you, but you in a “living” world, a world which goes on even after you log off. That’s a major draw of MMOs. And that alone demands consistency of game narrative.

So no, it is not like a book or a movie. Not even close. And if you want to see what happens when someone wants to make an MMO play like a movie, take a look at SWTOR. Total flop. Would be a great single player game, but whoever made design decisions for that game completely ignored the medium they were delivering the story in.

So wait… you guys seriously are ok with “time travelling” theory as an explanation? I mean… I’m sorry but that is so ridiculous I can’t even respond to it with anything that makes sense.

I’ll just say, Neilos, MMO story is not a book. Mixing apples and nuclear rockets here.

Personally, I would have preferred if the war against Elder Dragons, at least the Zhaitan part/personal storyline, was better crafted. However, I won’t lose any sleep over it – I enjoy the game, and I think overall it is very well made, world, backstory and all.

I entered this topic to throw in my opinion about why killing Zhaitan doesn’t make sense, but when people are willing to totally rip apart the continuity of the game world by offering time travel as an explanation, there is little point in continuing this discussion.

Narcemus.1348:

See I have to absolutely disagree with you. I mean I cannot tell you all that my characters have done for Tyria in the past and present, and it kills me every time that Devona, Mhenlo and the likes get all the credit for what I did. I knwo it’s a necessary because of the millions of millions of people who have killed liches, envoys, gods, and dragons champions in Tyria, but it breaks my heart every time that my character gets no credit for all that he has done, and now you expect me to play a game where my character is just a grunt in the pact forces fighting a dragon that will never die in a world that is never changing. I say why don’t I just stop playing MMORPG’s and go to work, to my job where I’m just a grunt doing pointless work day in and day out. I honestly don’t see the difference between what you are saying MMORPG’s should be and boring regular everyday life.

Sounds to me like you could do with a single player RPG. After all, it’s not like you can actually share what your characters did IC because other people did the same thing and the way the story is constructed, you would be contradicting each other. So we end up with everyone just keeping their “achievements” to themselves.

This more than anything illustrates why personal storyline shouldn’t be exclusive, because you end up with this disjointed, awkward situation where each and every character has achieved incredible deeds, but they can’t talk about it to others because contradictory shenanigans would occur immediately.

There are plenty of ways to make the player feel heroic without going overboard with it. The lure of multiplayer games is other players. After all, that’s what cool gear and titles are all about – so that you can show to others what you have achieved. But the important thing is that these achievement shouldn’t be guaranteed for every player, or they lose their charm.

To name just one example of how a player can be made to feel heroic and important:

-make ingame factions have ranks, with rank exclusive gear, weapons and titles, NPC reactions (they salute the highest ranking players, for example) and so on. All players start as mere unimportant grunts, and slowly rise through ranks, through gameplay. Make special quests available only to players which have achieved a certain rank, which they have to earn through gameplay instead of being awarded titles just because story demands it.

I guarantee you that heroics which the player has actually done through effort and gameplay feel way more heroic than NPCs setting things up for you through a linear storyline.

Narcemus.1348:

Gaudrath.6725:

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

So then, you believe that for MMORPG’s to ever make any sense, your character is a worthless unknown that can never make any title or rank, because if he did that would be contradicting any other person gaining the same title. The world will never, ever change and your actions are pointless, because things have to repeat. And finally the big bad guys never die, or if they do it’s one final event like Lost Shores, and players later on in the game never get to relive this beauty because that would be lore breaking. There could also never be any named epic or legendary weapons either, because then who would really own The Bifrost if 400 players really did. So in other words nothing truly epic can ever, ever happen in an MMORPG, and you can never be important, so why don’t you just go out there and continue being the worthless slug you’ve always been! I’m sorry but your statements just say to me that you just hate MMORPG’s in general.

Not at all. I have no problem with a little suspension of disbelief, after all, I am playing a game.

But there is a big difference between cleverly constructed lore that allows for players to feel unique and special and a poorly constructed one which requires players to ignore parts of their own experience.

To feel heroic, a player needs to achieve. These achievements can be of a single-player type, where the player if often the main protagonist of the story and is pivotal to the developments of the same.

But in a MMO, the player cannot and should not be the main character of the story. The player is, instead, at first relegated to the position of a faceless grunt, for a very simple reason – because at first they’re just that, another face in the crowd.

Then you allow the player to slowly rise in stature and power as their character progresses, but you never quite make them pivotal to the story structure. You do not try to force or fake their character’s importance, instead leaving them to gain that in a purely social environment.
In a single player game, where there are no other players to contradict that, you can crown the player king. In an MMO, if you do that, there can be only one (something the upcoming Elder Scrolls Online proposes to do).

In short, little things can and should be left to be handled by suspension of disbelief. Big things, like the ending of a major world threat, shouldn’t. There is no ifs or buts there, it is just not done. You don’t tell your audience the butler did it in the first paragraph when making a crime novel, you don’t kill off a major world threat in the first 60 hours of an MMO.

Hey, let’s just then set aside the problems with personal storyline (and yes, it could be said that players are ALL commanders in the Pact), but there are problems in the open world too.

Namely, the Zhaitan’s Champion, Tequatl the Sunless. Like the Claw and the Shatterer, the story revolving around them is cleverly designed to hint that there is more than one, and as long as the Elder Dragon behind them is alive, we may kill a few but more will always come.
It is pretty firmly established that the Elder Dragons are the primary and only source of these beasts. Kill Jormag and it makes no sense to see any more Claws coming about. So how come you can kill Zhaitan and still regularly face off against his liutenants?

Killing an Elder Dragon was a mistake. Not only because of the continuity problems it creates in the world, but also because it shatters the ominous dread, the often hinted at apocalyptic feel you can witness throughout the world. The hopeless but valiant struggle. It actually creates a nice buildup.

But when you kill an enemy like that, you effectively remove all sense of impending doom from other enemies of that type. You achieve the climax of the story, the glorious final battle, and yet you are left with FIVE other enemies of the same type to defeat!

Only now you know that they can be defeated (rather easily in fact) and the valiant struggle becomes a mopping-up action. The story deflates from now on, in a too-long, overstretched wind-down.

I sincerely hope they have a real Elder Dragon still tucked in somewhere beneath Orr.

The rest of you, Narcemus? Since when do you speak for the entire player base of Guild Wars 2? You may find the lackluster story “great” which I will not comment much, de gustibus non est disputandum, but please stop trying to portray any criticism of the same as “temper tantrums”.

A good storyteller will always take into account the media used for the presentation of that story. Some things work for books, other things for movies. Things that work for single player games do not necessarily work in multiplayer games. And so on. A good storyteller will be able to tell a compelling and interesting story AND fit it to the medium.

In case of MMO’s, this means constructing the story so that at the end players are not left going “wait, but… we just killed that guy!” MMO’s are by nature designed to be repeatable. Their settings revolve around ongoing conflicts which are not resolved in a definitive way. GW2 is full of exactly such settings, and they are called dynamic events – which are just very short story arcs going back and forth, something I find quite innovative.

And then they go and throw in that elephant of a personal storyline which proceeds to pretty much wreck half the game narrative just by being there.

Sure, we can imagine whatever we want, so I’ll imagine the story isn’t so bad and that Zhaitan was just a bit bruised, but not killed and Trahearne got high on them undead fumes. Carry on, loot awaits!

Neilos Tyrhanos.5427:

Gaudrath.6725:

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?

Oh, come on, now. This isn’t a contradiction or a problem with the format of storytelling— it’s just refusing to overlook something that’s no real issue. I don’t think the MMO genre should forsake grand plotlines because some people can’t disassociate reality from fiction.

So you are saying that glaring contradictions arising from having a storyline where a major world nemesis is killed and yet also requiring that same nemesis to be there for a multitude of players is no real issue?

I call it bad storytelling. There is a number of ways to reconcile such issues. For example, make it so that players do not actually kill Zhaitan, only beat him back and prevent his forces from overrunning the bulwarks set up against the risen advance. This is heroic enough and more importantly, repeatable.

But if you require so much suspension of disbelief from the player that they have to just selectively ignore parts of the world, then your storytelling just isn’t very good.

So who took down Zhaitan, and who is the second in command of the Pact forces… me or you? Or Bob?
And how come risen still attack full force, their fury still completely unabated by Zhaitan’s defeat?

I could go on like that for quite some time. Developers should just drop the “heroic personal story” in the context of an MMO… didn’t work in SWTOR, doesn’t work here. To be clear, I am all for personal story, just make it more of a character development thing than some “you are the guy who made it all happen” epic.

Simple and honest answer is: it doesn’t make sense, and this is the main reason epic personal storylines will never work in an MMO… you just have to keep on making stuff up to cover all the inconsistencies that keep cropping up.

My elementalist, a young and daring adventurer, died about half an hour after leaving the city gates when a plague worm ate him.

Giles Marchand.6970:

Gaudrath.6725:

Giles Marchand.6970:

Gaudrath.6725:

Gambling is for those who want a chance to get something for nothing. That’s what you get. A chance. Don’t like it? Don’t gamble.

If that were the case we’d all be happy, but it costs 2 gold to participate which is something and we don’t get any return except the cosmetic mini-pets, so in essence the problem is that we get nothing from something on a regular basis.

No actually it doesn’t work like that. 2 gold is the cost of the chance. If you “win” you get something whose arbitrary value is perceived as much higher than those initial two gold. Thus, you get “something for nothing” because in case you win, that initial investment is instantly forgotten. Of course, if you lose, then you are acutely aware of those two gold pieces. With each failed repetition you get more and more aware of the fact that you are gambling until you finally arrive at the conclusion that chance-based activities are really not a reliable way of getting anything.

Except I don’t think anyone perceives the mini-pets as being a much higher value. Which is why I stated nothing from something.

Tell that to OP, who has spent 50$ trying to get one.

Giles Marchand.6970:

Gaudrath.6725:

Gambling is for those who want a chance to get something for nothing. That’s what you get. A chance. Don’t like it? Don’t gamble.

If that were the case we’d all be happy, but it costs 2 gold to participate which is something and we don’t get any return except the cosmetic mini-pets, so in essence the problem is that we get nothing from something on a regular basis.

No actually it doesn’t work like that. 2 gold is the cost of the chance. If you “win” you get something whose arbitrary value is perceived as much higher than those initial two gold. Thus, you get “something for nothing” because in case you win, that initial investment is instantly forgotten. Of course, if you lose, then you are acutely aware of those two gold pieces. With each failed repetition you get more and more aware of the fact that you are gambling until you finally arrive at the conclusion that chance-based activities are really not a reliable way of getting anything.

To all who are upset by “gambling” – nobody is forcing you to participate in it. You could be like me, I don’t spend real cash at the gem store, and I didn’t get a single mini; I just play the game and enjoy what is available to me (99% of the game is).

Gambling is for those who want a chance to get something for nothing. That’s what you get. A chance. Don’t like it? Don’t gamble.

Agree. Eve online has a very succesfull market economy going, and it includes expiration timers on market orders.

All long cast skills do that… the animation will finish, but no damage will be applied.

Chill them first, or immobilize them, then drop the spike. I absolutely love that skill, if you chain it after eruption, they both go at approx. the same time, really nice damage.

Oh man, that sucks! XD One more reason to have a dark themed legendary staff.

Red Falcon.8257:

Ele is one of the easiest classes to play.
Skill ceiling is high for classes that need to rely reflexes, positioning and timing or particular setup mechanics; Ele has almost nothing of this.

So basically, you just stand in one spot with your eyes closed and spam fireball? I can see that working, sure. :p

Ele is by far the most difficult class to master and it has nothing to do with the number of abilities but with the fact that if you want to be good with them, you have to know when and where to use each one, you have to learn your self and group combos, plus you have to be constantly moving and be aware of your surroundings because you won’t last long otherwise. And actually yeah, you do have more skills to juggle too.

So it’s not easy to master, but not that terribly hard to pick up either. It is, however, fun as no other class. And it can be rewarding once you learn all of the above and, you will learn it by the time you hit max level. As others have said, I don’t even have to think about which skill should be used when. Muscle memory.

Well, my main is actually an elementalist, I was just talking about the lack of a good legendary staff for necros, not lack of good necro staff skins.

Or even better… add coloring ability to particles and model skins, like what we have for armor. Although I would fear the prevalence of ghastly pink swords in that case.

Well, a white themed necro is unusual, so you don’t exactly fit the overall tone. Necromancers are usually associated with black for obvious reasons, throw in all shades of grey, dark green, red… for example a staff with a similar effect to the necromancer’s Death Shroud ability, or perhaps a shifting green glow, would fit much better than the rainbows of Bifrost. And for those who want a lighter theme, like yourself, you are also covered with Bifrost.

Not really sure why they didn’t do a greater range of legendaries. I do 3D artwork and designing a few more models and adding unique particle effects is NOT that time and resource consuming as one might think.

So why are we using those explosive golems to bring down the Claw… we should just drop a crateful of Princess Dolls on that guy, sit back, relax and loot its smoking, broken corpse once the screaming ends.

They should make more legendaries for every class theme. For example the shield. That’s a Guardian shield. Only Guardians can look good wielding one (of course, they have that oversized Aegis effect ruining the whole thing, but that’s another issue). I can’t see a warrior dressed all in spikes with a rusty axe in one hand and a gleaming book-shield in another.

Bifrost is great for elementalists – really not so much for necromancers. They need their own themed legendary.

And so on and so forth. Personally, I will be going for some non-legendaries which look way better on my character for half the time/money/effort invested. Incinerator is a good example… it’s too technical. It’s a gadget, something a thief maybe would use (only problem, a thief with a frikkin’ torch, not very subtle), or engineer, if they could use daggers.

My advice would be to leave the bell alone. I imagine down the line we will actually get playable instruments like in LotRO, the concept obviously works. Then the bell will be neither unique and probably not even that good sounding.

And totally agree that bells should have been awarded only to players who score max points on the choir and make them soulbound on acquire.

Nobody would use anything but swords then? But I like Gondram’s idea. I would also like something similar, a system where we can prepare customized spells, where we take a long time to mix and match “meditation” type spells and then unleash them all at once, with varying effects depending on what we used in the combination.

Now make another one so you can dual wield!

Plus, there is no real item loss/degradation in the game. That alone guarantees eventual saturation of the market and prices driven into the ground.

What better way to go down than fighting as a giant man-bear!

Ellisande.5218:

Daulnay.4971:

Hellkaiser.6025:

Inb4 you’re attacked ad hominem for daring to point out the fact there is no craftables that sustain in terms of demand

That isn’t a problem with the game design, it’s a characteristic of a market economy. In an efficient, competitive market economy, supply rises to meet demand so much that there is no extra profit in the activity (only enough to sustain the current level of production).

A market economy is dynamic, and you will not be able to find one thing that you can consistently make and profit on. If you can, the market isn’t functioning properly.

And that is why player driven economies are not desireable.

NPC driven economies would be far superior.

Not really. Player driven economy means every useful item in the game must come from players. GW2 doesn’t have that, quite the opposite. EvE Market is fully player-driven and it works just fine, but there you have an entire economy simulated, not just the market part, and the player base is more mature and understands that time invested also has value, so the “I farmed those mats myself so they are free!” philosophy doesn’t really impact the prices that much.

I just fought another group of those creepy, whining little princess dolls and now I have a strong sense of deja vu when reading this thread.

I enjoyed snowball fight and got all my points just by playing normally. You want to stop people from running away with presents? Choose support and knock them down with #3, finish them with #1, then steamroll (snowroll?) them over. No need to stomp them, just roll over them repeatedly and they are done. There. Want to be able to run away? Choose scout, since it is made for running.

Humm… well, I’d understand people being upset if all ANet did was add costumes and ridiculous skins so that people can throw money at them… but let us be honest, they do add new content. And the thematic holiday events actually do have stuff to play with for fun, not so that you can get those mini toys (which are annoying anyway, especially for a roleplayer, but that’s my issue). That’s just extra.

So I figure there is very little to be upset about. Including cash-grab schemes, because if you are naive enough to think ANet is in the business of making everyone feel toasty warm inside instead of making money, then stop playing this game and get out in the real world a bit more and possibly get a job so you can understand what “business” means.

Anet might have changed the drop rates because they have measured people acquire high-end gear faster than planned. This is common in new games, there is really no way to predict how the game mechanics will hold when subjected to a large playerbase and things inevitably get changed.

As for grind and RNG. I mentioned it before in another thread, RNG is the most reliable way to limit availability of certain items because it is based on pure probability mathematics and thus easy to adjust and control, plus it is impervious to player cooperation (online guides) as opposed to quantity systems (where mats are easy to obtain but you need a TON of them, for example EvE Online) or purely puzzle or difficulty based systems (which can be easily farmed either via player cooperation or online guides, basically WoW).

Now, I would love to see a new, creative way to tackle rare or difficult to get item acquisition, perhaps by introducing some sort of personalized procedurally generated questing content requiring players to display a certain high degree of playing skill, but I can understand why ANet went with RNG. For a new game it is a good choice, from a developer’s point of view of course.

Personally I plan on making at least one legendary, but I fully expect it will take me a long long time. Fortunately, this game doesn’t have a subscription fee. In the meantime, I’ll just enjoy the game and get what gear I can (besides some exotics look way cooler than certain legendaries, so there is definitely a way to pimp out your character without going all the way with gear treadmill).

Well, technically, you could get a guild to focus on manufacturing legendaries meant for sale on TP… the time/effort investment per member would not be nearly so demanding and the generated income would then be easily spent on all kinds of other stuff, like being filthy rich and smoking really fat cigars handrolled by personal Asura slaves…

You can start trading on the TP with 55 gold, honestly if you’re looking for profit that is the best way, if not as interesting as fighting stuff. And flipping TP doesn’t mean selling your loot there. It means buying stuff for cheap on TP and then selling it again for profit. Some people spend whole days there and with enough seed money and smart investments you can generate a healthy revenue.

You know those mega billionaires in EvE Online? Market traders, every one of them. Hell, market trading was always the smartest way to get ingame cash in any game with a player-run market. Grinding is designed to be slow and there is no way around it. It is a necessary mechanic to ensure that rare and legendary items remain rare and legendary. Otherwise you get the Jedi Syndrome… you know, where everyone and their dog is a Jedi, being a Jedi doesn’t mean anything anymore.

I love the event. It is creative, it is fun to play, the activities are interesting (we need more games like the Keg Brawl) and I sure don’t obsess over “rewards.” If I want rewards I can do my job and get paid, then I can get personalized rewards, yay.

If I want to have some relaxing fun, I can play games like these.

And that bell makes you look good only if you know how to play it really well. Otherwise it makes people want to drop a huge boulder on your bell-swinging $@#!

Why don’t you guys just play the game for whatever drops, sell the good stuff on TP (or are you saying nothing worth selling ever drops for you?), complement that with some smart TP flipping and simply buy whatever mats you need? I sure don’t intend to grind my rear off for months when I can spend that time just enjoying the game. I mean… what’s the point in getting the item you want if you make yourself hate the game in the process?

Of course a new tier of weapons will be released. Your usual player needs goals to chase, and gear is #1 goal in theme park games. Nothing weird there. And it’s not P2W. P2W is when you can buy exclusive character buffs/gear ONLY for real world money. In this game there is nothing stopping you from investing your time and effort instead.

Dagger/Dagger is most popular in PvP because it is highly mobile, full of PbAoE spells you don’t need a target to hit with, especially with #1 skills… basically the whole skillset requires no targeting whatsoever, so it is very responsive when everyone is moving around. Plus, you get awesome escape and gap closing skills.

Scepter/Dagger is somewhat less used for PvP since the biggest damage skills tend to be easily avoided, and it is more a single target set, so you can’t do tons of damage to a group of enemies. I use Scepter/Focus for certain PvE content, since it’s very defensive and survivability is great.

I don’t think anyone uses dagger/focus much, it just doesn’t work that well.

It seems to me that people complaining about this or that system designed to keep rare items rare, forget that as soon as you water it down, as soon as make those rare items available for less time/effort, they cease to be valuable. Would you desire to get a legendary sword that is really cool looking if every single character can get one (and does get one).

Realize that if designers had to create a system which guarantees rarity and does not use RNG, it would have to be viciously hard. And I mean viciously, harder than even those impossible arcade game levels they used to do from time to time back in the day. Forget the clock tower, way, way harder than that. And it would have to be again based on procedural randomization, in order to ensure no “easy guide to getting X” will ever have an effect on the system, which really boils down to RNG only more interactive (for example “your legendary item is buried somewhere in the world. Here is a shovel, go get it!”).
No other way to ensure only a tiny fraction of your pretty large playerbase gets access to the “good stuff”.