Things to prevent when adding new Adventures for Legendaries

Hi everyone!

This post is probably not going to be received well. I know this, because I'm a bit late with my little complaint and so far many of you and many others already went through what I now am going to lament about.

Before the addition of the second tier of legendary weapons I usually didn't bother with crafting legendaries myself and instead just bought them from the AH.

But since the second tier offered some really nice skins I decided to at least craft one of them. So I made The Binding of Ipos.After that I went on making Aurora, since I REALLY love the effect and I finished it last weekend.Currently I am working on Nevermore (almost done).I tell you this to assure you: I feel the joy but also the pain about some of the aspects that come with crafting legendaries.

Now I want to ask you: Isn't farming crystalline ores day in and day out from the same event nonstop just kinda NOT legendary? I'm not talking about the time it takes, but how frustratingly boring it is to do something over and over again. I had to do this already for The Binding of Ipos and now I have to do it for Nevermore again.The same goes for "A henge away from home" which is a timegated achievement for Aurora in which you have to farm runestone fragments from hearts (you can get one additional for unbound magic). That achievement takes at least 16 days if you farm 5 fragments every day. So its 16 days of doing the same 4 hearts every day.

Yes, it's a legendary. Yes, it should take time. And yes, it is supposed to be hard.But the only "hard" thing about it is having that perseverance to do the same stuff over and over and over and over and over again.

I know in the meantime Anet has added new Legendaries that are even more frustrating to create due to crazy long tracks of timegated items you have to acquire.

But come on; this certainly cannot be the way.

What do you think? Shouldn't Anet come up with something better?

Given that they abandoned collections and quests for the precursors due to taking far too much time to implement, what could you suggest that would replace grinding and not be questing either? Raids and difficult content arent the answer eithersince legendary armour requires grinding raids over and over.

Im not a fan either, but i see no other feasible path that allows them to churn out legendaries in a regular basis

No offense, but how is anything in this game not "doing the same thing over and over"? Fractals is practically the same over and over, as are raids, WvW and sPvP. Even open world consist largely of grinding the same events. I don't know what you expect.

You claim to have bought legendaries from the trading post, so you must have a lot of money; having a lot of money sounds to me like you're used to grinding out content. Doing Dragon's stand 4 times to get a stack of crystalline ore shouldn't be that much of a problem then. The worst part about the legendaries is that for gen 2.5 80% of the work consists of gathering tens of thousands of wood and ore (or buying it from the TP). The other things I really don't have much problems with (considering you can buy Mystic coins and gemstones from the TP).

Legendaries shouldn't just be about dropping a ton of money on the TP, and time gating is there so you don't just use all your saved up mats on day one and instantly craft it in an hour. Legendaries are in an odd place right now because precursor crafting collections were a great addition that gave more meaning and identity to the legendaries, but they have since thrown that out of the window. I would love to see it return, and if there is any problem with legendary crafting, I would say that is it.

MMO’s have always been about grind as that’s what keeps players active and playing the content.

As for crystalline ore, you can technically get a stack within two metas.

@"Late For Tea.1846" said:No offense, but how is anything in this game not "doing the same thing over and over"? Fractals is practically the same over and over, as are raids, WvW and sPvP. Even open world consist largely of grinding the same events. I don't know what you expect.

No offense either, but I wouldn't be here complaining if 4 Dragon Stand Metas was all it takes: It takes way more, from one noxious pod you get 1 ore, if you are lucky sometimes you get more. So its somewhere around 200-250 pods to open (therefor approximatively 10 metas).

And I agree that droping gold shouldnt result in an easy Legendary, I didn't say that btw. But crafting / acquiring one certainly can be more exciting. There are a ton of things you have to do for a legendary, and most of it you only do ONCE.

Beside that: I play fractals for fun and they ARE fun because they are fast and have enough variety (19 different fractals). Even dungeons are fast and have variety (3 ways + storymode). And raids (3 maps, one with 3 wings) are difficult and large, so it's never boring. But yes, WvW and PvP are always the same because that's the nature of that mode.

But map meta events are kind of timegated, you just run mindlessly in a zerg, farm your stuff, kill the boss and then wait for the next map to get filled with people and you repeat the whole thing. That's not the case with any other gamemode you mentioned.

@Clyan.1593 said:

@"Late For Tea.1846" said:No offense, but how is anything in this game not "doing the same thing over and over"? Fractals is practically the same over and over, as are raids, WvW and sPvP. Even open world consist largely of grinding the same events. I don't know what you expect.

I farmed enough crystalline ore for all of the legendary weapons they’ll release as well as for all of the guild vendor recipes/minis. You can average over a hundred easily. Farm other map currencies and buy the keys for the pods.

@"Clyan.1593" said:

But map meta events are kind of timegated, you just run mindlessly in a zerg, farm your stuff, kill the boss and then wait for the next map to get filled with people and you repeat the whole thing. That's not the case with any other gamemode you mentioned.

I understand it can be quite frustrating if you don't like the events, but different players like different things. I for one really enjoy the Dragon's Stand meta, and still do it for fun even though I'm drowning in crystalline ore.

In case you will need crystalline ore in the future, let me help you out. After clearing a camp during the DS meta, around 6 Noxious Pods spawn at that camp. With a total of 6 camps that is already 36 pods to open. After completing the meta additional "hidden" zones open that also contain a number of pods, marked by red arrows on the map. These zones include, among others, the mushroom cave below the Central Advance Camp and the spider lair west of the Southern Forward camp. With these pods you should easily be able to get 50+ ore from a single run.That said, it can still be quite tedious to get all the machetes together to open these pods.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

There are at least 60 Noxious Pods in DS after a full meta, if you hit all you'll usually get at least ~80-90 ore. There are of course the occasional bad runs when you won't get all pods and not get more than 50-60 ore, but as you learn the map you'll find the path that works for you to get all/most.

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:There are at least 60 Noxious Pods in DS after a full meta, if you hit all you'll usually get at least ~80-90 ore. There are of course the occasional bad runs when you won't get all pods and not get more than 50-60 ore, but as you learn the map you'll find the path that works for you to get all/most.

This.

If you average 20-25 ore after a completed DS meta, you either were extremely unlucky, ran out of keys or just don't know the spawn points of all the pods. 60 pods Sounds about right, I think I usually ended up using around 55 keys.

I've finished a full Set of Leadership rundes and have over 800 ore left with a completed collection of DS weapons. At worst it should take about 5 DS meta. That's on the lighter side of the available grinds, though more restricted time wise.

About the same as the 5 chack eggs per legendary armor piece (unless you get lucky).

As to the rest, yes some collections are heavily gates by daily lockouts. Not fun, not great design but insignificant in the long run unless you are very impatient.

I would rather have items locked behind gathering 10K of each type of leather, ore, or dust rather than random meta events that require a chain to succeed.

The fact that people are still completing Legendaries tells me there is a balance between hard and too damn hard.