Alternative path for PVE Legendary Armor

[disco.9302]

29 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

I do play raids and try to get the armor but due to infrequent work schedule I can not be part of static raids making the progress inconsistent and therefore painfully slow. While being a mediocre gameplay experience. The lack of consistent teams makes a huge difference. 

So you're saying you have time to grind for thousands of hours but can't join a pug to clear a few bosses once a week? 

Many people playing as casually as possible are able to clear at least w1-4 easily every week with pugs. You don't need to complain about irregular work schedule, just jump into a pug literally any time of day and clear the content.

 

[Boh.4568]

5 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Legendary armor could be a nice reward in between. Leading you on a huge journey across all content. Including all kinds of LW maps, old expansions, core tyria, WvW, Raids, Strikes and do feel free to throw in some PvP.  So long as you can reasonably complete one segment in one extended session (aka ~2h) it could be excellent to lead you around everything multiple times for each piece of armor. 

But that's already the case for PvE? LW maps give you accessories, LW maps again give you an amulet, Fractals give you a back item, Raids give you armor and a ring (or 2 since they are not unique anymore), general OW farming and exploration give you weapons.

It's not in bad faith, I see no issue with the diversity of options for PvE.

And I don't understand the 2h per segment part, getting legendaries in WvW requires months of commitment but no one complains because WvW is boring and forgotten? Why should PvE take just hours? Why not months of timegated PvE collections to make it aligned with WvW? I can already see the hundreds of forum posts if that ever happened. At least raids are way faster.

[Sobx.1758]

2 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

So you're saying you have time to grind for thousands of hours but can't join a pug to clear a few bosses once a week? 

Many people playing as casually as possible are able to clear at least w1-4 easily every week with pugs. You don't need to complain about irregular work schedule, just jump into a pug literally any time of day and clear the content.

True, I've never joined a static and play group content pretty much exlusively through lfg. Any time someone tries to claim they can't get rewards they want "because their irregular time schedule makes it impossible to join a static!", it's just clear as day they're either misinformed or intentionally dishonest.

[Erise.5614]

Just now, disco.9302 said:

So you're saying you have time to grind for thousands of hours but can't join a pug to clear a few bosses once a week? 

Many people playing as casually as possible are able to clear at least w1-4 easily every week with pugs. You don't need to complain about irregular work schedule, just jump into a pug literally any time of day and clear the content.

 

I'm trying to do that but the PUGs I end up with often take 2 - 3 hours per wing if it gets completed at all. Which primarily exist during peak time which I can't make regularly. Plus wanting to play with friends who play during that time means I can usually clear 1-2 wings per week. Without much control over which wings I want if I wanna be able to complete any. I don't know all classes well enough to command either. Tried it and was mostly yelled at for setting up groups and markers wrong with people leaving immediately after complaining. 

Remember, I don't have 250 LI nor a large amount of KP per boss and am not accepted in a lot of LFG PUGs.

Most of my clears come from filling up spots for trainings or semi trainings in various training communities as PUGs are even less reliable. 

At this rate it'll take me about 1.5 years of playing every single week which does seem a bit excessive.

[AgentMoore.9453]

3 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

So if I only like playing festivals, I should get legendary armor for that?

I know you were asking as a joke, but if they added a legendary armor set made entirely from baubles that you had to accrue over years and years of SAB, I'd say you earned it. Bonus points if your attacks come with pixelated sound effect bubbles.

All legendary sets should require some time and effort to attain, but I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at ways of implementing an OW set when so much of the game is OW and so many of its players are OW players. I honestly don't understand the people who want to put in that time and effort through PvP, raids, or even WvW, but those are their preferred modes and more power to them for enjoying what they enjoy. The same courtesy should be extended to OW PvE.

[disco.9302]

1 minute ago, Erise.5614 said:

At this rate it'll take me about 1.5 years of playing every single week which does seem a bit excessive.

what if it took you 1.5 years of grinding pve openworld every week to complete the armour? would that be better?

[Sobx.1758]

4 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Tried it and was mostly yelled at for setting up groups and markers wrong with people leaving immediately after complaining. 

Just out of curiosity: what markers at which encounters caused the players to yell at you and leave? Curently, a lot of raids just don't use markers at all and nobody seems to care?

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Rinagal.9235]

31 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

A lot of people in these 5 pages have pointed out already that giving a full set of legendaries (armor+weapons+trinkets) for every game mode would be bad because people fossilized on a single game mode would never even try other game modes without a worthy reward.

It's problem of said modes, not of players. Stop solving imaginary problems at the expense of players, raids not being popular is problem for those who likes raids, not for me. There is nothing wrong with liking one specific game mode, wrong is being punished for it.

 

31 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

Also if we want to be precise, PvE is covered by raids, why should PvE give two different armor sets because people don't want to raid?

I have already discussed it on previous "5 pages of discussion", not going to return to it again and repeat said arguments. Raids and open world are 2 different game modes.

 

31 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

Why isn't there a PvE armor set just for fishing? There will always be someone claiming "I only like to do tequatl and leyline daily, where's my legendary set?", there has to be a limit, and the limit is "endgame".

Fishing heavily incorporated into open world, as it is now it can't fully exist outside of open world, all collections are done in open world, players starts and progresses in fishing in open world, baits/lures, different related items acquired in open world. Fishing doesn't exist as a standalone game mode, but a part of open world, so no need going extreme with this reasoning.

 

31 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

Sorry but PvE endgame is raiding.

 

Stop this endgame bullkitten arbitrary claim, raids didn't even always exist in this game. I have played more than 2500 hours before even trying raid and never had a problem, it might be true for games like WoW, where open world is indeed is just side activity mostly needed to prepare for raids, but for Guild Wars 2 open world is actuall major content, not raids. Raids are just the most challenging part of endgame PvE, not the entire.

 

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Rinagal.9235

[Sobx.1758]

6 minutes ago, Rinagal.9235 said:

Stop this endgame bullkitten arbitrary claim 

(...)

raids are just the most challenging part of endgame PvE, not the entire.

Congratulations, you've explained it to yourself.

Raids "didn't even always exist in this game" and when they weren't, there was different "most challenging part of pve", which fit the title of being "endgame". "Endgame" doesn't need to be and isn't a constant, games release new content and evolve with it. Again, this is not a new concept.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Erise.5614]

2 minutes ago, Boh.4568 said:

But that's already the case for PvE? LW maps give you accessories, LW maps again give you an amulet, Fractals give you a back item, Raids give you armor and a ring (or 2 since they are not unique anymore), general OW farming and exploration give you weapons.

It's not in bad faith, I see no issue with the diversity of options for PvE.

And I don't understand the 2h per segment part, getting legendaries in WvW requires months of commitment but no one complains because WvW is boring and forgotten? Why should PvE take just hours? Why not months of timegated PvE collections to make it aligned with WvW? I can already see the hundreds of forum posts if that ever happened. At least raids are way faster.

Accessories, Amulets and Back Items are the easiest to get ascended and you don't benefit from the free reslotting either. 

Weapons are nice but scale the worst as you'll need a good handful of weapons before you can start to properly feel the freedom and overlap between classes and specializations is generally mediocre. 

Rings are useful to jump start a new fractal character with 54 AR.

Armor is the most useful legendary item as armor is the most expensive to acquire, rune reslotting is the most expensive action about build changing and it makes up the majority of your stats. 

2h per segment is about short and mid term goals. There can be multiple WvW requirements. That's what I mean with building up duration through volume of tasks. The overall time gate can be similar or longer. But each step towards that goal should be about 2h long so you can feel how you are making consistent progress and feel immediately rewarded for doing something you didn't consider doing for pure enjoyment before. Possibly even growing to like it! Like, let's say it's designed to take 3 months. It could have 12 sub collections, each having 6 tasks, each taking about an hour. Capture X things in WvW, kill X raid boss, do IBS and EoD Strike Y & Z, do exploration on that map, play this meta twice. Repeat 12 times. Each step takes 1 - 2 hours. Overall it takes about 110 hours of gameplay across all modes. 

Having a single requirement: "Play months of WvW" is not a very engaging goal. You probably either just grind that passively while doing what you enjoy anyway or don't do it at all. In that way, WvW players actually get legendary armor for much less effort than I'm asking for. As it's really just passively doing what they enjoy anyway. Alone, with friends, as a group. It just happens over time.

The same for OW would be neat but frankly too low effort to justify a legendary item as reward. 

[Rinagal.9235]

26 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

So if I only like playing festivals, I should get legendary armor for that? What about someone who only likes to kill ambient creatures? Give him legendary armor? 

If there would be demand for it, i suppose we would've topics and discussions about it, but we don't. Maybe because not many players consider festivals their major activity in the game or really care for having legendary gear.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Rinagal.9235

[disco.9302]

6 minutes ago, Rinagal.9235 said:

Stop this endgame bullkitten arbitrary claim, raids didn't even always exist in this game. 

yes and legendary armour didn't exist before raids.

8 minutes ago, Rinagal.9235 said:

Raids are just the most challenging part of endgame PvE, not the entire.

what else is endgame? to a lot of people farming nodes or doing collections is not endgame because it's insufficiently challenging. If you think strikes are endgame, then fine, you get 1 LI pre week from strikes as the comparable difficulty of them is lower than raids (with out CM). 150 weeks of strikes and you can have enough for a set of legendary armour :):)

[Erise.5614]

19 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

what if it took you 1.5 years of grinding pve openworld every week to complete the armour? would that be better?

Depends on the implementation. If it was expecting varied content, sending me across the world in a way that I can grind up step by step then yes.

If it was just currency accumulating passively then no. That's the same problem with current legendary armors. Just slapping on month long time gates without anything particular to do. Which is not an engaging process at all and very demotivating if you are trying to work primarily towards the reward. It doesn't feel real as a goal. You aren't really working towards it. It's something that may one day happen alongside playing the game mostly regularly. Or might not.

I would expect more effort of a second PvE method for legendary armor. I would expect better. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Erise.5614]

19 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Just out of curiosity: what markers at which encounters caused the players to yell at you and leave? Curently, a lot of raids just don't use markers at all and nobody seems to care?

Had that happen twice as gorseval when we didn't succeed first try and accepted that I'm not good enough to be a raid commander. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Astralporing.1957]

21 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

The game gives you three ways to get legendary armor. If you like nine of them, that’s your fault. 

When those three ways added together cover maybe 10% of total players at best (most likely even less), then it's not players' but the design's fault.

19 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

So you're saying you have time to grind for thousands of hours but can't join a pug to clear a few bosses once a week? 

Yes. It's not an issue of time. It's an issue of fun. It is supposed to be a source of relaxation, not stress and unhappiness. Besides, if i wanted a second job, i'd find a different one, because the pay in this one is significantly lacking.

19 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

Many people playing as casually as possible are able to clear at least w1-4 easily every week with pugs.

Yes. And yet they do not want to. Because they do not like that content to the point where they do not want to play it even to get that armor. Which is a consequence of this content being designed at a mismatch with both the rest of the game, and the expectations of the huge majority of player community.

 

[Astralporing.1957]

12 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Raids "didn't even always exist in this game" and when they weren't, there was different "most challenging part of pve", which fit the title of being "endgame".

Yes. There was even a dev statement to that end. It was "the whole game is the endgame".

Raiding is just an endgame for a small minority of players. For others it may be SPvP matches, or WvW play, or GvG (which is something separate), or something else completely.

Endgame is just something people continue to do after they've reached the max level and geared up. Nothing more, nothing less. Challenge is fully optional here.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Erise.5614]

15 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

yes and legendary armour didn't exist before raids.

what else is endgame? to a lot of people farming nodes or doing collections is not endgame because it's insufficiently challenging. If you think strikes are endgame, then fine, you get 1 LI pre week from strikes as the comparable difficulty of them is lower than raids (with out CM). 150 weeks of strikes and you can have enough for a set of legendary armour :):)

Using challenge as deciding factor here is incorrect. First of all, WvW armor nor PvP is challenging. It just requires you to participate in that content. It's quite literally a participation trophy. 

But secondly. It's not important for the game to have difficult end game. I mean, it is important for the part of the player base who enjoy it. However, the long term benefit to the game itself is not that everyone must play that kind of end game. Any player who participates, enjoys the game and pays for expansions and gems is a net benefit allowing ANet to work on all aspects of the game. 

Therefore, all content should have solid, long term reward structures. 

And, side note. After 150 weeks of strikes you can not make a legendary armor as it's locked behind the envoy armor collections. Several weeks of raid clears are mandatory. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Sobx.1758]

11 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Had that happen twice as gorseval when we didn't succeed first try and accepted that I'm not good enough to be a raid commander. 

Interesting, so what markers exactly did you mess up there? What did those people specifically complain about?

[TheNecrosanct.4028]

I've been reading arguments like these for a long time now, and I have to say I struggle to understand where it actually comes from, from a gamer's perspective.

I'm 44, going on 45, and have been playing games since the 80's. I have never known games to be any other way than: you want item x, you will have to perform action y. Do you want that ultimate weapon? Then beat this very challenging boss. Do you want these items? Then kill these specific enemies for a chance to get them. In GW2 that is: do you want legendary armor? Then do raids (or WvW/PvP, options that were added in later, I might add). Do you want a legendary weapon? Then you'll have to do some WvW too. I do not like WvW. I spend as little time in there as possible. But I still spend time there to get GoB's, because I want legendary weapons. I also want The Ascension. Wonderful back piece skin. But I absolutely loathe PvP. So I won't be getting The Ascension. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Asking to get it through other means has never even occured to me. PvP is the way to go for The Ascension, because that's how the game is designed. It's the same with Warbringer (I did start that one, but haven't put any work into it for at least more than a year now).

Games were never designed to have all items be available through every means there are in a game. Certain bosses/dungeons/raids reward unique items and skins and it's part of the reason why people do them.  It's been that way since long before online gaming. I'm a big Final Fantasy fan and have played nearly every game in the series. I'm a big JRPG fan in general. I grew up with games that required me to go on long quests killing ever more powerful bosses to obtain a character's ultimate weapon. If I can't manage to kill a boss, I keep trying. Eventually I'll kill it. That has, at least, always been my experience (not saying my experience is universal here; that would be missing the point). And it's okay if I don't manage to fulfill a task to get x item. I can still play the game, I can still enjoy it and it doesn't diminish a game in any way. Because these items are never essential in finishing a game (or, in the case of MMO's, keep playing a game). They simply give you more options, that's it. For legendaries in GW2 that means the option of 1 more skin and the free stat swap, extraction and transmutation.

The point is, if you don't like any of the methods to acquire legendary armor (or can't play them for whatever reason), you don't have to do it. You're not missing out on anything by not having legendary gear, just a little bit of convenience. This call to get everything one wants by playing any way/any content one wants is something that just keeps popping up more and more the past few years. While before beating challenges used to create a sense of achievement for yourself and maybe respect in the larger gaming community, now it seems like nothing but a hurdle to a lot of people. Maybe it used to be this way before, but the lack of a worldwide web prevented us access to these perspectives and opinions. Maybe people have become more spoiled lately. Maybe the people complaining about this aren't really longtime gamers and don't know this is a common practice in gaming since forever. Maybe it's all of the above or none of the above. But I can't help but get the feeling that the people who do go for these challenges are the same people who used to spend hours trying to defeat a certain boss in a game (I know I've done so countless of times in the Final Fantasy series alone), and the people who complain they can't get certain shinies are the ones who have only ever been "superficial gamers", as in spend an hour a day, maybe not even every day, to just relax and have some low intensity fun. There's nothing wrong with either. But when I want some low intensity fun from my gaming, I actually choose to play a game that is designed to be nothing else but that. Or at the very least, when it's a game that's built around levels of difficulty (like GW2), I choose to do the low intensity content when I feel like it, and the challenging content at other times when I feel like it.

All in all it comes down to this: if you don't want to play all aspects of the game, you're not meant to have every possible shiny you can get in the game. Some things will remain blocked off to you. Whether that is because of game design or personal choice is a matter of perspective. You can argue for either but I tend to end up on the personal choice side of the conversation.

 

Disclaimer: I am saying nothing about disabilities preventing people from playing certain content. That's because it's a different topic in my opinion. One that touches on this discussion, but that is not at the core of it. I do understand and empathize with people who aren't able to do certain content and get certain rewards because their disability prevents them.  But a disability is by its very nature an obstacle to certain aspects of life, experiences and actions. It wouldn't be a disability if it wasn't. How this relates to content and rewards is a much more complicated discussion, in my opinion, and one I have to admit I don't have a straight answer to.

[Erise.5614]

7 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Interesting, so what markers exactly did you mess up there? What did those people specifically complain about?

Failing to kill the wall. I didn't mark the wall everyone should move to early enough, we didn't open it in time and wiped. 

Though I still struggle keeping up with all my rotations and mechanics. Like, I can fulfill my job just fine but it takes my full attention. I do not have the available attention or experience to predict phases, to call out early and correctly.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Sobx.1758]

11 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes. There was even a dev statement to that end. It was "the whole game is the endgame".

Endgame is just something people continue to do after they've reached the max level and geared up. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the same way "endgame" for other games consists of max level content, I suppose? Here is always lvl 80, which doesn't change the fact about the difficulty levels changing between the content. But you sure are free to replay whatever you want if that's what you enjoy, never tried saying otherwise (but you also don't need legendary for anything there btw -and in case of a lot of OW content, in reality everyone's comfortable with exotics).

11 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Challenge is fully optional here.

Yes, it is. And so is legendary gear, that's the point. 🤨

[Rinagal.9235]

2 minutes ago, disco.9302 said:

what else is endgame?

There is no commonly acknowledged definition of "endgame" for MMOs or gaming in general, each time someone starts to use this word it is just a sign it will be used as a tool to push certain narrative. So i'm not going to continue on this pointless branch of discussion which will inevitably devolve into "what is endgame". I feel no need in arbitrary terms just to make discussion uneccesary more complicated and cofusing to get stuck in it like in a quicksand.

 

If many players can enjoy certain mode for many thousands of hours, there's no point to push them into other modes, and beautiful claims like "raids are endgame content, it's healthy for the game to support endgame" won't change it.

[disco.9302]

2 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Using challenge as deciding factor here is incorrect.

why do you think this is incorrect in pve? I think this in entirely the point that you're missing. Stomping ambient mobs for 5 years is not deserving of the same reward as trying and succeeding in beating the most challenging content - it's not like its even locked behind CMs!

[Sobx.1758]

8 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Using challenge as deciding factor here is incorrect. First of all, WvW armor nor PvP is challenging. It just requires you to participate in that content. It's quite literally a participation trophy. 

That's just the reward system differences comming from "competitive vs cooperative" differentiation.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Failing to kill the wall I didn't mark the wall everyone should move to early enough, we didn't open it in time and wiped. 

Though I still struggle keeping up with all my rotations and mechanics and do not have the available attention or experience to predict phases and call out early and correctly.

Ok, so it wasn't about wrong marks, but about no marks at all. At that point it was nothing more than your learning experience. You didn't know something, now you do. Next time you can mark the wall before the fight starts and... That's it? Instead you've went through that learning experience and decided "nah, now that I know this thing I didn't know before, I guess I won't be doing it anymore"? Come on.