Astral weapons LUDICROUSLY out of cost balance

[ZeroTheCat.2684]

The elitism and arrogance from people in this thread is appalling... This community is really taking a turn downhill.

[kratan.4619]

@Etria.3642 said:In less than one hour I got 390 kralk and 465 powdered quartz. All from meteors, thanks to a multimap farm. At this rate it'll take me a week. The Dragonsblood ones took me much longer--there is no easy peasy way to get them other than hearts and events. And getting them included map comp on several characters.

Don't forget there are 20+ dwarven chests that will give you a branded mass each once a day. Granted it can take a bit of time to reach all of them, but when the other options ran out i would look for these.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Astral - 6 Weapons - 3000 Kralkarite ore + 3000 Powdered Rose QuartzDragonblood - 6 weapons - 360 Branded Masses

Hearts that sell Kralk ore are in 25 while Branded masses are 3. On paper its about the same value. Of course the people designing this forgot all the other factors that really throw the process well out of proportion.

The biggest issue is that the amount of materials is comparable to making the ascended ones aside from the ascended weapon pieces. The ore and powdered materials is just an insane grind compared to all the other collections.

Lets also not forget that this really turned the trinket into an immense ecto dump. At least you only need 100 Funerary Insense.

[PervMonk.4891]

@ZeroTheCat.2684 said:The elitism and arrogance from people in this thread is appalling... This community is really taking a turn downhill.

elitism in open world pve, wow what a time to be alive

[Etria.3642]

@Faaris.8013 said:

@Etria.3642 said:In less than one hour I got 390 kralk and 465 powdered quartz. All from meteors, thanks to a multimap farm. At this rate it'll take me a week. The Dragonsblood ones took me much longer--there is no easy peasy way to get them other than hearts and events. And getting them included map comp on several characters.

I was able to craft the 6 Dragonsblood weapons within 4 days, but I'm not even able to buy the recipes for the Astral weapons yet. It takes a 7 day quest just to get started. Just yesterday we talked about this in guild chat and we all agreed that in comparison, the aquisition of Astral weapons is out of line. You need 500 kralk ore, 10 times more than Branded Masses. But you only get 5 times more from Heart vendors. Ok, I got a lot from mining meteors on multiple maps. But in comparison to Dragonsbloos weapons, it's a lot of standing around waiting for stuff. In Thunderhead Peaks, I used 13 characters to do the Gorrik Heart, which takes less than one minute to complete, and buy the item to get into the dungeon on the TP, for the gems. I think there was a quest for the recipes as well, but not time gated.

For Astral weapons, I have to do a 7 day time gated quest and wait many hours for meteors. I will do this, but in comparison to the othher stuff you have to do for the collection, it's not equal. Maybe that was never the goal, but it's like that.

Ah sorry, we all did the quest part when the episode came out, but didn't care for the looks of the Astral weapons. Yeah, if you had not yet done that part, you're kind of in trouble, as in at least the maps I've seen, Akili is broken, so you can't progress anyway. The daughter who couldn't be bothered to do the quests with us has all the kralk and quartz she now needs but is stuck on Akili.

So I'll agree that the time-gated part is irritating if you had not done it yet, but the materials are relatively easy(she didn't multimap either, just kept popping into the map. Akili is on day 5, so it took her less than 5 days to accumulate the 3k.

And she is 25 with a full time job. So no, it isn't a case of school's out, much free time.

[Etria.3642]

@Krizek.5672 said:

@Faaris.8013 said:

@Krizek.5672 said:

Problem in general is, that you want it ASAP.

How do you know I want it ASAP? I think you should re-read my post carefully because you are jumping to conclusions that cannot be found in my words. Dragonsblood weapons are cheaper and can be crafted faster than Astral weapons. That's all I'm saying.

I'm not in a hurry, I crafted Bolt a day before the last episode arrived, and I don't have enough resources to craft a Mystic Tribute right now.

If you dont want it ASAP, where is the problem?

You are still arguing that Astral weapons are more expensive than Dragonsblood weapons. Still dont see the problem. There are 2 sets of different weapons with different amount of required resources. It would be the same when I say that Kudzu is more expensive than Dreamer. Apples and oranges ...

If I do simple math.For one Astral weapon you need 500 ore. One heart gives you 25 ore, that means do 20x heart. Also huge aspect is meteor farm. Daily cap is between 750 - 1000 ore (I believe its 750, but some says its more, because event meteors doesnt count) + you got some events like Paladawan, Great Hall and that champion pirate (maybe even more). For opening recipes you need to do achievement which is timegated but low requirements on recources. When you finnish that one, recipe cost 10 ore, which I believe is really low price.

On the other hand for Dragonsblood weapon you need only 60 ore. One heart gives you 5, that means do12x heart. On the map you got limited ore nodes, 25 per day, which gives 0 - 3 ore (maybe I got bad luck, but lately from most of them I got 0 ore). You have two metas, which give 5 ore per event.

And there comes different aproach. If you got multiple characters, so its much easier to do Dragonsblood weapon via just doing multiple hearts, but keep in mind that there are players who dont have a lot of them. I believe you can get 5 characters without gems.

And if I go even futher. Those sets of weapons are pre-requisition for ascended ones. And there is situation much different. For one stellar weapon you need Irradiated vision crystal (500 ore, 1 rose quartz, 1 vision crystal and 10 ecto).

For Heroic Dragonsblood weapon you need to buy one item which costs 50g

+ 100 ore and then craft it very similar as stellar weapon + achievement Chasing tales 5g + 100 ore per achievement. In total for one weapon 55g + 200 ore.

As I said before dont mix two different things into one. It is as it is, accept it or leave it.

So if you read this carefully what do you think?

The Heroic Dragonsblood weapons--you will receive the 50g item from doing the achievement quest for that weapon and only need to buy the 50g item if you want to make a SECOND. It's still more expensive than a regular ascended, however. And the quests can be somewhat frustrating. I'm still working my way through them.

[Krizek.5672]

@Etria.3642 said:

@Krizek.5672 said:

@Faaris.8013 said:

@Krizek.5672 said:

Problem in general is, that you want it ASAP.

How do you know I want it ASAP? I think you should re-read my post carefully because you are jumping to conclusions that cannot be found in my words. Dragonsblood weapons are cheaper and can be crafted faster than Astral weapons. That's all I'm saying.

I'm not in a hurry, I crafted Bolt a day before the last episode arrived, and I don't have enough resources to craft a Mystic Tribute right now.

If you dont want it ASAP, where is the problem?

You are still arguing that Astral weapons are more expensive than Dragonsblood weapons. Still dont see the problem. There are 2 sets of different weapons with different amount of required resources. It would be the same when I say that Kudzu is more expensive than Dreamer. Apples and oranges ...

If I do simple math.For one Astral weapon you need 500 ore. One heart gives you 25 ore, that means do 20x heart. Also huge aspect is meteor farm. Daily cap is between 750 - 1000 ore (I believe its 750, but some says its more, because event meteors doesnt count) + you got some events like Paladawan, Great Hall and that champion pirate (maybe even more). For opening recipes you need to do achievement which is timegated but low requirements on recources. When you finnish that one, recipe cost 10 ore, which I believe is really low price.

On the other hand for Dragonsblood weapon you need only 60 ore. One heart gives you 5, that means do12x heart. On the map you got limited ore nodes, 25 per day, which gives 0 - 3 ore (maybe I got bad luck, but lately from most of them I got 0 ore). You have two metas, which give 5 ore per event.

And there comes different aproach. If you got multiple characters, so its much easier to do Dragonsblood weapon via just doing multiple hearts, but keep in mind that there are players who dont have a lot of them. I believe you can get 5 characters without gems.

And if I go even futher. Those sets of weapons are pre-requisition for ascended ones. And there is situation much different. For one stellar weapon you need Irradiated vision crystal (500 ore, 1 rose quartz, 1 vision crystal and 10 ecto).

For Heroic Dragonsblood weapon you need to buy one item which costs 50g

+ 100 ore and then craft it very similar as stellar weapon + achievement Chasing tales 5g + 100 ore per achievement. In total for one weapon 55g + 200 ore.

As I said before dont mix two different things into one. It is as it is, accept it or leave it.

So if you read this carefully what do you think?

The Heroic Dragonsblood weapons--you will receive the 50g item from doing the achievement quest for that weapon and only need to buy the 50g item if you want to make a SECOND. It's still more expensive than a regular ascended, however. And the quests can be somewhat frustrating. I'm still working my way through them.

OK, my bad. I was misguided, personaly I m not crafting those asc ones yet.

[Katastroff.1045]

Im gonna go ludicrously spend my time farming. As i write this, im only 1 astral weapon short of finishing the whole Vision 1 collection, cya in game.:p

[Astralporing.1957]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I'll also add that I was averaging 30-50 powdered rose quartz per brandstone. Within a month, it'll be back down to around a silver each or 5G per weapon. Pretty reasonable.Within a month noone will be doing meteors anymore, again. And that reduces supply by a lot. Average brandstone gain per meteor is around 10 when not in farming zerg - every 15 minutes (or more than 15 minutes, if you happen to miss the meteor, which happens very frequently if you're the only person on the map looking for them).

Meteors are balanced around assumption that there's a ton of people farming them. When that's not the case, they turn out to be a very, very poor replacement for nodes. This has been known since very first day people seen that mechanic, and the only reason people weren't as loud about it then was because astral weapons' appeal wasn't all that big. That's also the only reason why complains about astral weapons' cost went mostly unnoticed. Now, that Anet have added an additional thing dependant on those, peopl estarted to notice both of those things again.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I'll also add that I was averaging 30-50 powdered rose quartz per brandstone. Within a month, it'll be back down to around a silver each or 5G per weapon. Pretty reasonable.Within a month noone will be doing meteors anymore, again. And that reduces supply by a

lot

. Average brandstone gain per meteor is around 10 when not in farming zerg - every 15 minutes (or more than 15 minutes, if you happen to miss the meteor, which happens very frequently if you're the only person on the map looking for them).

Meteors are balanced around assumption that there's a ton of people farming them. When that's not the case, they turn out to be a very, very poor replacement for nodes. This has been known since very first day people seen that mechanic, and the only reason people weren't as loud about it then was because astral weapons' appeal wasn't all that big. That's also the only reason why complains about astral weapons' cost went mostly unnoticed. Now, that Anet have added an additional thing dependant on those, peopl estarted to notice both of those things again.

Nobody had been doing brandstones for the past ~1.5 years since they nerfed them (assumption based on your assumption) and yet the supply of powdered rose quartz dropped to under a silver since then until a week ago. Players still farm home instances which will continue to add onto supply and demand will continue to fall over time as it has significantly happened over the past week.

The map currency isn’t really an issue as doing the three hearts yields a lot and you can also get a bunch from doing either or both metas.

[ugrakarma.9416]

when the episode come out i did astral/stellar greatsword for fun lolz, I would not have imagined it would serve in the future.lucky i had lot of these collections completed due to my "fashion wars" addiction.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

Not everything needs to be the same effort. Simply because they are LW sets, doesnt mean they take the same time.

[pinguadoido.6581]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I'll also add that I was averaging 30-50 powdered rose quartz per brandstone. Within a month, it'll be back down to around a silver each or 5G per weapon. Pretty reasonable.Within a month noone will be doing meteors anymore, again. And that reduces supply by a

lot

. Average brandstone gain per meteor is around 10 when not in farming zerg - every 15 minutes (or more than 15 minutes, if you happen to miss the meteor, which happens very frequently if you're the only person on the map looking for them).

Meteors are balanced around assumption that there's a ton of people farming them. When that's not the case, they turn out to be a very, very poor replacement for nodes. This has been known since very first day people seen that mechanic, and the only reason people weren't as loud about it then was because astral weapons' appeal wasn't all that big. That's also the only reason why complains about astral weapons' cost went mostly unnoticed. Now, that Anet have added an additional thing dependant on those, peopl estarted to notice both of those things again.

Nobody had been doing brandstones for the past ~1.5 years since they nerfed them (assumption based on your assumption) and yet the supply of powdered rose quartz dropped to under a silver since then until a week ago. Players still farm home instances which will continue to add onto supply and demand will continue to fall over time as it has significantly happened over the past week.

The map currency isn’t really an issue as doing the three hearts yields a lot and you can also get a bunch from doing either or both metas.

Demand has been increasing, not falling at all since the announcement (check Volume chart). But prices are stabilizing, yes.

https://gw2efficiency.com/tradingpost?filter.search.term=Powdered%20Rose%20Quartz

[Ayrilana.1396]

@pinguadoido.6581 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I'll also add that I was averaging 30-50 powdered rose quartz per brandstone. Within a month, it'll be back down to around a silver each or 5G per weapon. Pretty reasonable.Within a month noone will be doing meteors anymore, again. And that reduces supply by a

lot

. Average brandstone gain per meteor is around 10 when not in farming zerg - every 15 minutes (or more than 15 minutes, if you happen to miss the meteor, which happens very frequently if you're the only person on the map looking for them).

Meteors are balanced around assumption that there's a ton of people farming them. When that's not the case, they turn out to be a very, very poor replacement for nodes. This has been known since very first day people seen that mechanic, and the only reason people weren't as loud about it then was because astral weapons' appeal wasn't all that big. That's also the only reason why complains about astral weapons' cost went mostly unnoticed. Now, that Anet have added an additional thing dependant on those, peopl estarted to notice both of those things again.

Nobody had been doing brandstones for the past ~1.5 years since they nerfed them (assumption based on your assumption) and yet the supply of powdered rose quartz dropped to under a silver since then until a week ago. Players still farm home instances which will continue to add onto supply and demand will continue to fall over time as it has significantly happened over the past week.

The map currency isn’t really an issue as doing the three hearts yields a lot and you can also get a bunch from doing either or both metas.

Demand has been increasing, not falling at all since the announcement (check Volume chart). But prices are stabilizing, yes.

https://gw2efficiency.com/tradingpost?filter.search.term=Powdered%20Rose%20Quartz

It’s been decreasing and will continue to do so well into the future unless Anet adds something else that requires them.

I’m also hesitant to rely on the quantity on buy orders as ‘demand’ because of how easy it is to inflate those numbers. For example, I could play buy orders for 1,000,000 units at the minimum allowable price.

When I said demand will decrease, I’m referring to people who complete the six weapons they need or abandon it altogether. Demand had been fairly low prior to last week so 99% of the increase was due to the legendary trinket. It’s pretty reasonable to expect demand to drop as they complete their six weapons.

[pinguadoido.6581]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@pinguadoido.6581 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:I'll also add that I was averaging 30-50 powdered rose quartz per brandstone. Within a month, it'll be back down to around a silver each or 5G per weapon. Pretty reasonable.Within a month noone will be doing meteors anymore, again. And that reduces supply by a

lot

. Average brandstone gain per meteor is around 10 when not in farming zerg - every 15 minutes (or more than 15 minutes, if you happen to miss the meteor, which happens very frequently if you're the only person on the map looking for them).

Meteors are balanced around assumption that there's a ton of people farming them. When that's not the case, they turn out to be a very, very poor replacement for nodes. This has been known since very first day people seen that mechanic, and the only reason people weren't as loud about it then was because astral weapons' appeal wasn't all that big. That's also the only reason why complains about astral weapons' cost went mostly unnoticed. Now, that Anet have added an additional thing dependant on those, peopl estarted to notice both of those things again.

Nobody had been doing brandstones for the past ~1.5 years since they nerfed them (assumption based on your assumption) and yet the supply of powdered rose quartz dropped to under a silver since then until a week ago. Players still farm home instances which will continue to add onto supply and demand will continue to fall over time as it has significantly happened over the past week.

The map currency isn’t really an issue as doing the three hearts yields a lot and you can also get a bunch from doing either or both metas.

Demand has been increasing, not falling at all since the announcement (check Volume chart). But prices are stabilizing, yes.

https://gw2efficiency.com/tradingpost?filter.search.term=Powdered%20Rose%20Quartz

It’s been

decreasing

and will continue to do so well into the future unless Anet adds something else that requires them.

Your chart does not show Demand, only prices and supply. Demand is increasing over time, as gw2 efficiency shows.

Check blue line. It's clear that there is a trend line going upwards for the demand.

[pinguadoido.6581]

I posted before your edit.

[phs.6089]

I dunno, Im person that gets along with farm/timegate etc as far as there is shiny I want at the end but I think 6 astral weapons are a bit overturned.I get it all that kralk is 25 per heart, that dragonblood ask laurels etc. Still isn't it bit much for Istan? Especially after heavy nerfs

[JDub.1530]

There is nothing that states the efforts of individual parts need be equal. Aurora had druid stones, which seemed to consume much greater time and effort than most other portions of that collection. But every Legendary seems to have 2 things in common: massive resource sink, and timegating. The timegating for PvP, WvW, and raids are pretty straightforward. Not so much for open world PvE, where they don't really have a strong setup for forcing you to play content for so long to get required items. Druid stones seems to be an ad hoc timegate for Aurora. Astral (and Dragonsblood) weapons seem to be the timegate for Vision. And it's a fairly soft timegate too, because (1) people could have already had them farmed from when those episodes released, and (2) there is no hard per day cap on materials. Druid stones were a per day account cap. But you can send any number of alts to Thunderhead and Istan to farm hearts. Map activities always drop the materials, reward tracks can be repeated, and while Branded Mass nodes have a daily account cap, meteor strikes don't.

That's not to say it's not going to take time--I think it's supposed to. That not all maps require the same amount of large time dedication is what makes it appear the collections are imbalanced, when this is likely working as intended.

[MetalGirl.2370]

Of course that majority of the people will defend Anet no matter what.You people should be outraged at the fact that Anet has no care for your lives and the fact that they expect you to do only GW2 in all your free time.Say bye to your hundreds or thousands of games on Steam if you have only 2h after your work cuz you're bound to GW2.They don't care that you'd like to play GW2 AND other games.

Let's say you got kids and only 2h after work. You'd have 0 time for GW2...or maybe you'd choose it over your kids... idk. But Anet certainly forces you to choose.

[Iris Ng.9845]

It's like how people complain about the 10k drink requirement for Winter's Presence when it first came out, again. I remember people were doing maths, statistics, etc. and generally burst into outrage when the price of the drinks was like 10s /piece. After a year, it quickly dropped down to 3s, and now, 1s.

The same thing happens for Rose Quartz. You have a steady supply, but a rush in demands will push people out to pay a premium for it - and they ain't happy. However, if it takes them time to farm it, they ain't happy either.

[yann.1946]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:Of course that majority of the people will defend Anet no matter what.You people should be outraged at the fact that Anet has no care for your lives and the fact that they expect you to do only GW2 in all your free time.Say bye to your hundreds or thousands of games on Steam if you have only 2h after your work cuz you're bound to GW2.They don't care that you'd like to play GW2 AND other games.

Let's say you got kids and only 2h after work. You'd have 0 time for GW2...or maybe you'd choose it over your kids... idk. But Anet certainly forces you to choose.

I see the exact opposite, their are lots of ways to progress to vision in a really short amount of time. So even if you have almost no time to progress you still can.

[Goettel.4389]

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:Items with nearly identical value

How do you define the value of vanity items? If the look is worth it to you, go for it. If not, don't.

[Rasimir.6239]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:You people should be outraged at the fact that Anet has no care for your lives and the fact that they expect you to do only GW2 in all your free time.Say bye to your hundreds or thousands of games on Steam if you have only 2h after your work cuz you're bound to GW2.They don't care that you'd like to play GW2 AND other games.

Let's say you got kids and only 2h after work. You'd have 0 time for GW2...or maybe you'd choose it over your kids... idk. But Anet certainly forces you to choose.I have kids and often not even two hours after work for gaming. GW2 is only one of the games I like to play. Nevertheless I really like how ANet is putting goals and things to do into this game. Nobody is forcing me to get everything, and get it now. I can pick and choose what I want to pursue, and do so whenever I find the time and mood for GW2. If I don't get it done today or tomorrow or next week or next month it'll still be there to do next year.

Not having much time to play doesn't mean being entitled to get all the content cut to cater the limited gametime I have. It means I get to pick and choose what is fun to me. It's an opportunity, but also a responsibility I have to myself to play only what I enjoy. This game is great in that it offers so many things to do, yet doesn't disadvantage me for choosing not to do a specific piece of content.

I don't see any reason to be outraged for ANet to put out more content than I have time to consume. On the contrary, I love that they do this because the way they do it I do get to choose the best out of a large selection of stuff to do.

[Astralporing.1957]

@MetalGirl.2370 said:Of course that majority of the people will defend Anet no matter what.It's not the majority. For the most part it's the same few people that defended sigil of nullification debacle and all othr similar cases in the past. And at least some of them i could name, if Anet went and did make adjustments, would immediately change their tune and start defending that change and explaining why what Anet did was necessary (like it has happened a few times in the past).Basically, status quo is sacred and the best thing possible. Until it changes, in which case the new status quo is the best thing possible.

[Faaris.8013]

@Krizek.5672 said:As you can see I do. We are talking about optional things. If you do them, you should accept terms. If you dont like it (too much grind in your opinion), still an option. Problem in general is, that you want it ASAP. One week or two weeks to complete those 6 weapons isnt too much time, considering that we will wait a long time until new content.

And I definitely dont tell you how to play the game since we are talking about optional things. I still stand up that, if you put your energy into complaining about bugs rather than things that are already set and where isnt any problem.

Perhaps you are still confusing me with the OP? I don't have the opinion that it's too much grind, and I never complained, I only confirmed the OP's impression that there is a huge difference between the collection part of Thunderhead Peaks and the one for Istan. If you run the numbers, you have to agree that there is a difference in time consumption and effort. I even stated in my post that there is no reason to believe Anet wanted to make the effort and time required for the different maps equal. It's still a fact, no matter if you like it or not or if it's optional or not.

I appears you have problems to distinguish between statements about differences of quests/collections and emotional connections to these statements. I can discover that X takes more effort and time than Y without being bothered by it or complain.

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@Faaris.8013 said:So how does it come I'm already done with the 6 Dragonsblood weapons but don't even have the recipes to craft Astral weapons?You must've gotten extremely lucky with serpentite jewel drops if you've managed to craft 6 of those weapons in less than 5 days. That is, unless you circumvented the timegate on the dragonsblood weapons by collecting the daily resources beforehand.

Maybe I was lucky, I even deleted some of those gem stones 2 weeks earlier to make room in my bank. I checked what they are for, decided I don't want any of these weapons and deleted them. Why doesn't a crafting mat go into the mat storage anyway. So I started with zero, did the metas onlyy once for thhe dungeon key, bought the rest from the TP. I got exactly 18 gems after 4 days, must have been from the hidden chests in the chambers.

Also, I got lucky with the Astral weapons quest. Just when I was at day 5, they fixed the mirror event and I was able to proceed :)