PvE Open World Legendary Armor Proposal (draft)

[Erise.5614]

41 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

What "data" exactly? Which gw2effi numbers specifically are you taking into account here to draw the conclusions you just did while excluding what you've excluded?

Mind, that I'm not asking you how to access the number, I know how to access them. I'm asking how exactly (and with which numbers exactly) you're reaching the conclusions quoted above (also notably wondering about the exclusing of cost/time necessary to acquire, despite these recent threads clearly pointing out at the amount of time it takes to acquire that gear being problematic for some of the players complaining about it).

The problem I've seen talked about most was the kind of content necessary. Not duration.

Ad Infinitum requires 375 T4 fractals to grind the necessary fractal relics. The value is also understated as balls of dark energy are necessary. Which is likely a significantly increased cost. The only reason you might have plenty of ascendeds to spare is if you raid. Neither fractals nor the other content give you these in sufficient number for free. 

Considering we can compare it to a single piece of armor (300g-400g + finishing envoy collection which can be done by running W1 5 times and 2-3 FCs total), the barrier to get one piece is comparable in terms of hard time gate (fractal pages vs envoy clear) while drastically fewer LI are needed than fractal relics. 

Ad Inf is far more effort and far more expensive. Depending how you gained ball of dark energy it is even comparable in price to a full set of armor. Yet is still completed significantly more often. At least it's more effort in terms of raw hours spent assuming you clear both content sufficiently smoothly. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Erise.5614

[vares.8457]

1 minute ago, Erise.5614 said:

The only reason you might have plenty of ascendeds to spare is if you raid. Neither fractals nor the other content give you these in sufficient number for free. 

 

That’s not true. You actually get a quite a lot of ascended boxes in fractals. 

[Ashen.2907]

5 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

The only reason you might have plenty of ascendeds to spare is if you raid. Neither fractals nor the other content give you these in sufficient number for free. 

I've outfitted 9 characters with at least one full set of ascended (and 3 sets on a couple characters), plus a few extra, primarily via strikes, wvw, and some weapon collections. The only thing Ive gotten from fractals has been some trinkets. Nothing from raids.

[Erise.5614]

5 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

That’s not true. You actually get a quite a lot of ascended boxes in fractals. 

You only drop them from daily chests. Droprate research suggests drop rates of any relevant ascended box to be around 1%. Meaning, assuming full clears every day, you are expected to drop one about every month. 

[mindcircus.1506]

8 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

The only reason you might have plenty of ascendeds to spare is if you raid. Neither fractals nor the other content give you these in sufficient number for free. 

Incorrect.
Fractal's start dropping ascended weapon and armor boxes liberally starting in t3. A few weeks running just daily t3's let me gear up two alts. Most people I know running T4 dailies have bank tabs full of unused boxes.

[vares.8457]

7 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

Incorrect.
Fractal's start dropping ascended weapon and armor boxes liberally starting in t3. A few weeks running just daily t3's let me gear up two alts. Most people I know running T4 dailies have bank tabs full of unused boxes.

half my bank was full with ascended armor and weapons from fractals. Now I salvaged them for research notes. Claiming they are rare in fractals is a lie. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by vares.8457

[Erise.5614]

6 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Yeah half my bank was full with ascended armor and weapons from fractals. Now I salvaged them for research notes. Claiming they are rare in fractals is a lie. 

A new player will not have them piling up anytime soon. Even having run several times over as many fractals as necessary for AdInf I've only been able to semi equip 4 characters and had noting left for dark energy. 

The difference in perspective here is whether you've been playing for a long time or start out. To make the comparison fair, you have to consider someone playing their first fractal vs playing their first raid when comparing the two. Which means they probably won't have enough balls of dark energy by the time they have the relics. Even if they salvage all drops.

By now I have them piling up and ready to equip another two characters as well. But that's not a sudden thing. The drop rate is quite low. We just kept doing it for really long times. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by Erise.5614

[vares.8457]

6 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

A new player will not have them piling up anytime soon. Even having run several times over as many fractals as necessary for AdInf I've only been able to semi equip 4 characters and had noting left for crafting. 

The difference in perspective here is whether you've been playing for a long time or start out. To make the comparison fair, you have to consider someone playing their first fractal vs playing their first raid when comparing the two. Which means they probably won't have enough balls of dark energy by the time they have the relics. Even if they salvage all drops.

What does this have to do with a new player? You claimed that fractals rarely drop ascended boxes. This is not true. 

Edited May 3, 2022 by vares.8457

[Erise.5614]

7 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

What does this have to do with a new player? You claimed that fractals rarely drop ascended boxes. This is not true. 

Please read more carefully.

I claimed that the amount of ascended boxes is (likely) not sufficient to gain the number of balls of dark energy necessary to craft ad infinitum in the timeframe it takes to grind the necessary fractal relics. Potentially increasing the necessary time spent to acquire it. Since it's random you may drop more than enough or none at all. 

But even when comparing one piece of legendary armor with ad inf, it's much faster to get armor (in terms of hours spent within the content). It's comparable to a full set of armor.

Should you have droprate research suggesting they increased it over the years that would be interesting! Though that would not invalidate the time argument either. Just make the cost of a full set of armor less comparable with a single backpiece. 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Astralporing.1957]

12 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

That's a convenient way to look at the statistic, while entirely avoiding how people going for legendary armor usually already have multiple ascended sets for their builds anyways. At leasat partially due to that, a lot of players craft the whole set at once. Not all, obviously, but still a lot.

You are talking as if ascended backpacks were not absurdly easy to obtain. Practically every map of LS3 was offering you one for cheap (and only one required any effort to get). And those are not the only options - the game started throwing ascended backpacks at you long before that. I've got to the point where i was obtaining them for skins only, and salvaging them immediately after long before i even thought about getting a legendary.

[Friday.7864]

12 hours ago, vares.8457 said:

Yeah, they should give us legendary armor for killing Champs in Queensdale and Metrica Province - truly legendary. 
 

edit: I forgot, most Champs there are now Veterans - even more legendary! 

🙄

You know what's super mega ultra legendary? WvW leges.
Capture camp > afk > repeat
Can literally do it at work or watch movies at home while farming those...

[The Boz.2038]

On 5/3/2022 at 11:41 PM, Erise.5614 said:

Ad Infinitum requires 375 T4 fractals to grind the necessary fractal relics. The value is also understated as balls of dark energy are necessary. Which is likely a significantly increased cost. The only reason you might have plenty of ascendeds to spare is if you raid. Neither fractals nor the other content give you these in sufficient number for free. 

Considering we can compare it to a single piece of armor (300g-400g + finishing envoy collection which can be done by running W1 5 times and 2-3 FCs total), the barrier to get one piece is comparable in terms of hard time gate (fractal pages vs envoy clear) while drastically fewer LI are needed than fractal relics. 

Ad Inf is far more effort and far more expensive. Depending how you gained ball of dark energy it is even comparable in price to a full set of armor. Yet is still completed significantly more often. At least it's more effort in terms of raw hours spent assuming you clear both content sufficiently smoothly. 

No. Objectively wrong on... several counts. You don't need 375 T4 runs, you only need to externally source one BODE, you get a lot of ascendeds in fractals (especially if you do 375 of them, lol), the cost of Ad Infinitum in gold equivalents is ~1.1k gold, vs 1.8k for armor, and while "fewer LI is needed", fewer drop, and the rates are incomparable. You can't finish the entire Envoy without doing all of the wings at least once, and after that, you need to do full clear nine more times, across nine more weeks. Armors 2 and 3 require double the clears, too.

On a stat-per-gold level, Ad Infinitum is more expensive. It is, however, applicable to all characters, as opposed to only three that share an armor weight, and comes through playing far more rewarding content, significantly offsetting the cost.

The 1.1k gold of Ad Infinitum is more comparable to the 1.3k gold for Aurora, Vision, Coalescence, Conflux, which take up trinket slots that are applicable to all characters. 

Source: Have Ad Infinitum, 2 legendary armors, Aurora, Vision.

[SlayerXX.7138]

Does anyone have something productive to add? It is a post about a draft. If people wanna exchange the same boring points over and over there is a threat open RIGHT NOW were people can do that. People in favor of OW Armor are derailing the post because why? They don't wanna see high number? They gamble on season of dragons amount of effort(free)? They hope high page numbers=Legendary armor? They are just so angry they cant help themselves?  I honestly don't know but it it is ridiculous. 

 

  

On 5/2/2022 at 6:32 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

The poster was equating legendary currency to junk (jade slivers). That's what this sort of suggestion feels like.

• "acquired from successful completion of meta bosses" = literal afk unless it's metas with a fail condition
• "acquired from completion of Events" = also literal afk , see bauble farm
• "acquired from completion of Hearts" = how is this legendary , make a weapon if you want to do hearts all day
• Reading Map Chat = lol , can't be serious
• "acquired from Jump Puzzle final chests" = more like JP /TP armor since "can be traded"

Not everyone has to be an economy designer but if you're going to put up a suggestion that is absurd I have a right to point out the fundamental flaws with it.

 

As you should! As should I.

 

Not meta bosses, meta events. Also 500 of them. Also also with the trade of of exchanging a existing reward. One meta event is at average around a 15 min time investment. If we assume mostly leeching. Way more if done the correct way. So 125 Hours at minimum. With the trade of of 500 gemstones. Seems fair to me. Honestly homeboy probably overshot that requirement if anything.

 

I do agree with the events they need to be time gated and caped per map to discourage afk farming or some other solution. 

 

Well memory of battle are tradable so I know why he got that idea in the first place. Still not a fan myself of that one.

 

Reading Map Chat = Hero Points. Expansion HP are mostly challenging. Following a hero train makes it easy but no vastly easier then following a commander in WvW.

 

I do agree with the fact that people in the forums vastly under estimated what commitment WvW is. Being at minimum 15 Hours per week in the mist and on your feet is no small task. Grieving the game mode makes it of course easier but also boring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Boz.2038]

5 minutes ago, Albi.7250 said:

People in favor of OW Armor are derailing the post because why? They don't wanna see high number? They gamble on season of dragons amount of effort(free)?

Pretty much bingo, yeah.

Remember that exotic rune-ejecting stat-swapping armor got ~0 traction with the "we need legendary armor" crowd, over the dozens of times it was suggested? Yeah. Because it's not legendary.

[Erise.5614]

On 5/5/2022 at 10:57 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

No. Objectively wrong on... several counts. You don't need 375 T4 runs, you only need to externally source one BODE

Hmm. Whatever source I found was actually incorrect. It's a bit over 200 T4s to gain the necessary 4150 fractal relics. Still quite substantial and requires more T4 fractal clears than raid encounters that are necessary to gain a full set of armor. 

On 5/5/2022 at 10:57 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

the cost of Ad Infinitum in gold equivalents is ~1.1k gold, vs 1.8k for armor, and while "fewer LI is needed", fewer drop, and the rates are incomparable. You can't finish the entire Envoy without doing all of the wings at least once, and after that, you need to do full clear nine more times, across nine more weeks. Armors 2 and 3 require double the clears, too.

Again. I was talking about the first piece. It requires one FCs and 5 times part of W1 if you run it optimized. The absolute minimum is 14 specific raid encounters.

More probably you'll have to run 5 times W1 and each of the other wings one time. For a total of 32 raid encounters.

The amount of hours necessary to gain one piece of armor vs ad infinitum is at the least comparable if not significantly more for ad inf. 

On 5/5/2022 at 10:57 AM, The Boz.2038 said:

On a stat-per-gold level, Ad Infinitum is more expensive. It is, however, applicable to all characters, as opposed to only three that share an armor weight, and comes through playing far more rewarding content, significantly offsetting the cost.

The 1.1k gold of Ad Infinitum is more comparable to the 1.3k gold for Aurora, Vision, Coalescence, Conflux, which take up trinket slots that are applicable to all characters. 

Two fun facts. Weapons are about 250% more popular than one piece of armor. A bit below 400% more popular than one set of armor. Despite being even less widely applicable than armor. They are more popular than any other kind of legendary item.

And we also have about 200% as many users who own two legendary items than people who own one piece of armor. In fact, more people have 6 different legendary items than a single piece of legendary armor. 

(Side note. Neither of those stats is considering regalia as legendary item. Only items that have an associated gold value are listed on GW2 efficiency. Source, my account count did not increase when I gained regalia)

So we can rule out both "on how many characters / how many builds you can use it" and "how expensive it is" as primary reason for why armor has lower completion rates. 

I seriously don't get how you can argue that any reason other than locking it behind raids may be responsible for these discrepancies. It's not even a hot take. Raids have a poor image in the general player population. Originally formed due to the difficulty but by nowadays also very much as a meme. With PvP and WvW acquisition methods not being a big factor... it really  should not be a surprise that the legendary item associated to raids has unusually low participation and completion rates. 

[Erise.5614]

On 5/5/2022 at 1:22 PM, The Boz.2038 said:

Pretty much bingo, yeah.

Remember that exotic rune-ejecting stat-swapping armor got ~0 traction with the "we need legendary armor" crowd, over the dozens of times it was suggested? Yeah. Because it's not legendary.

I did respond to it and pointed out the risk of harming player retention. 

Exotic, stat swapping gear must be cheaper and easier to get than legendary items. Making it as expensive and as long to get, yet objectively worse, is too much of an explicit "f u" and would cause issues across the community beyond reason. 

But offering the same convenience at a cheaper price and faster it would fulfill the purpose of owning a legendary item. And could therefore push people towards skipping most of the current end game goals. Both ascended and legendary. 

What might be possible is if all current acquisition methods for legendaries were removed. Stat swappable exotics are introduced in all 4 modes at >3/4ths the cost and ~3/4ths the time gates. So too much to skip ascended, yet not quite as expensive as current legendary items. And then the upgrade to legendary would be a last, quite cheap step. BUT, requiring account bound currency that can only be acquired from the other 3 modes and make up the last 1/4th of time / "hours spent playing" gates. The ones you did not play to gain your exotic.

Forcing you to play all of them. But being able to decide for one area of play where you'll do the majority of grinding. Requiring less time in the others. Around or slightly below GoB levels of requirement per mode. 

The important thing about "OW legendary armor" is improving player choice and preventing burnout due to content players don't enjoy. Not making everything else irrelevant nor making it cheap and quick to get.

Not that I'd expect such major revamps. But simply retrofitting exotic stat swaps into the game comes with some huge risks.

Edited May 6, 2022 by Erise.5614

[NuggetScout.3782]

F to the no.