Buying 1st gen precursor vs. doing collection

[Flowersunshine.7385]

So this was a thing before SotO, but the difference between getting a precursor and doing the collection will probably only get larger with the legendary weapon starter kit.

I love doing the leggy weapon collections - I've picked half of my legendaries based on whether they had a collection or not. I dropped Storm, still did the collection for Meteorlogicus. But currently, I just can't justify doing the collections for the precursors anymore. Crafting a precursor costs easily four times as much as buying one. That's a lot of gold that I could spend on other things.

Loving collections as much as I do, I could do the first collection for every weapon ofc, but the collections usually become very pricey at the (significantly less interesting) second collection, so it would still keep me from doing the (usually most interesting) third collection.

I'd love a solution for this. The collection are so well thought out, they really take me on a journey. The effort put by the devs into this part of the game is huge, and I think it would be a waste if it was no longer something that was worth doing.

I see two options for solutions, but perhaps there are more: decrease the drop rate for precursors, so the TP price will increase in time, or tweak the collections to become less expensive: reduce the amount of Memories of Battle or the amount of ascended mats needed, for example.

[Danikat.8537]

I think adjusting the cost of the collections would be the best solution. As far as I know precursor drop rates aren't higher now than they used to be when they were much more expensive, although it turned out a lot of that cost was 'artificial scarcity (people who had them holding onto them to sell slowly to keep the price high) because as soon as the collections were announced the market was flooded and the prices dropped.

The difference is no one has to buy a precursor and the collections set a maximum price, so sellers can't dominate the market, and there's a lot more choice now. Someone who just wants a legendary and doesn't care about the specific skin (or doesn't like any of the gen 1 ones) can make one of the others instead so the demand is lower for each item.

The precursor collections were created based on the cost at the time they were introduced (when HoT was released) and I don't think they've been updated since.

I'm not sure the collections themselves could be changed, but they could probably reduce the cost a lot by changing the amount of materials needed in stage 2. For example changing the weapon part requisitions to require fewer of each material. For example Elder Short Bow Requisition requires 250 staves for The Lover but only 175 for Chuka and Champawat, matching them would reduce the cost by 300 elder wood planks. Do that with all the components and it could bring the cost down quite a bit.

[FalanuLachance.4576]

4 hours ago, Flowersunshine.7385 said:

I love doing the leggy weapon collections - I've picked half of my legendaries based on whether they had a collection or not. I dropped Storm, still did the collection for Meteorlogicus. But currently, I just can't justify doing the collections for the precursors anymore. Crafting a precursor costs easily four times as much as buying one. That's a lot of gold that I could spend on other things.

 

No, you don't love doing collections, otherwise you'd do them. You're treating the game like a business with profits and losses. That's not how to treat a game. Why do you care about the cost for newer players who can not hope to achieve the things possible in a game that's more than a decade worth of content? The cost-reduction aspect is a given in any mmo that's long enough into their life-cycle.

Live and let live, otherwise you won't be able to motivate people to start fresh adventures in to longer run.

[Pinkeh.4207]

The Predator collection was pretty expensive. But went that route because it was fun to do.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Pinkeh.4207

[Gop.8713]

I too really enjoy the collections and if/when I make any more new-to-me gen1 leggies I'll definitely be doing the collection for them rather than buying off tp or wt, regardless of price. I don't see raising the price of pres as a solution, and also see it as contrary to anet's apparent intent with the leggy kits in wt. Lowering the price of the collections is more of a meh:  I wouldn't object but otoh if you're enjoying the journey why not take it slow . . ?

The only way I can see this being an issue is if new players who might enjoy the collections never try them bc the alternatives are so much cheaper and they are more like to actually 'need' the utility of the leggy and not just be unlocking it for the journey or skin or w/e . . .

I have the same concern about dungeons. It's really hard for new players to get exposure to that content, but at least the old daily system had dungeon dailies pop up now and then and that was kind of the only time anyone did them. Not sure if those are going to carry over into the new daily/weekly system or not . . .

[Gotejjeken.1267]

I think if they just contain the Wizard's Vault pre to Gen 1 only we're good.  Could maybe put Aurene weapon pres in there but those are a little new IMO to be doing that with.

Gen 2 is what they never should put anywhere except through how you do it now.  For me, they are meaningful as you have to do collection to craft them and you can't just buy them on the TP.  

I have a hope the fourth gen will be like gen 2 again where you have to craft them, but it's not a high one.  

[Solvar.7953]

I enjoy doing collections, but as OP, hard to justifying spending a lot more doing it than buying it from the TP.

This is somewhat compounded that for most weapons, the second step is just get a huge amount of resources to craft into the specific item needed to unlock the third stage - there is no scavenger hunt collection at that point, that is just pure cost.

I've actually done the first stage scavenger hunt for all the gen 1 weapons, because I did enjoy it.

Since they added legendary weapon starting kits, I wonder if instead they could add legendary weapon crafting kits, which just include all crafting bits for the given precursor - people could still do the scavenger hunt but not need to deal with the massive material sink for the second stage.

 

[Flowersunshine.7385]

19 hours ago, FalanuLachance.4576 said:

 

No, you don't love doing collections, otherwise you'd do them. You're treating the game like a business with profits and losses. That's not how to treat a game. Why do you care about the cost for newer players who can not hope to achieve the things possible in a game that's more than a decade worth of content? The cost-reduction aspect is a given in any mmo that's long enough into their life-cycle.

Live and let live, otherwise you won't be able to motivate people to start fresh adventures in to longer run.

I've crafted several precursors that cost me more than buying them on the TP would have cost me - I even crafted Storm after it dropped for me from 99cm - it would not have cost me anything to use it for crafting, in fact, it still hasn't sold. (I don't mind that, you win some, you lose some.) But at some point, I will want to put my gold to other uses that I also enjoy. I could buy new dyes, skins, gems - I could use my gold to buy a new character slot. All of these things are ways to enjoy the game. You're suggesting players should never weigh their choices in the game as to what goal they are working towards or investing their resources in. Of course we do. That has nothing to do with profit or loss.

What I'm saying is that at this point crafting precursors no longer outweighs all the other things I could spend my resources towards that also allow me to enjoy the game. Perhaps, many years from now, I will be satisfied with all those other goals and have accumulated enough wealth continue my legendary journey through collections. But at this point, it does not, and I would like that to be different.

5 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Since they added legendary weapon starting kits, I wonder if instead they could add legendary weapon crafting kits, which just include all crafting bits for the given precursor - people could still do the scavenger hunt but not need to deal with the massive material sink for the second stage.

That's a good idea! I knew people would come up with more solutions. 😄

[willow.8209]

8 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

add legendary weapon crafting kits, which just include all crafting bits for the given precursor - people could still do the scavenger hunt but not need to deal with the massive material sink for the second stage.

i love this idea

[ChildofEmbers.7329]

Just got back to the game  and started a new account and was exited to do the collection building a legendary start to finish. Only to find out doing the collection was 8x more expensive than just buying. Disappointing to have one of my first project vanish. I don't mind crafting being more expensive but 8x is absurd.

[Super Hayes.6890]

I chose to do the collection for my favorite precursor. Other legendaries I simply buy outright. Best of both worlds 🤷‍♂️

[LSD.4673]

The fact that someone put all that effort into creating all these collections for the first batch of legendaries, only for them to be left by the wayside because of inflation and increased supply, is a real shame. I wonder how many people even bother with them any more?

I'd be more inclined to make a legendary weapon if the collections weren't prohibitively expensive, and just mystic forging a bunch of materials together for Gen2 onwards isn't worth it.

[Lucy.3728]

1 hour ago, ChildofEmbers.7329 said:

I don't mind crafting being more expensive

I do mind that. Make the entire crafting system useless to me.

Almost everything is cheaper to buy from the tp than to craft it. I'd like to craft my own food and stuff but not when it is cheaper to just buy it.

The only reason to level crafting are the items that are locked behind it, that aren't buyable.

Some items are still profitable to craft, but only with effort or waiting times. Often things are dependent on other items that are cheaper in TP than if you also craft them. But you have to be patient to acquire the necessary quantities at a price that is still worthwhile.

[Solvar.7953]

It almost seems like they added research notes as a way to still keep people crafting stuff, as well as something of a material sink.  In terms of a sink, I just find it annoying - looking at something like gw2efficiency to see what is the cheapest way to get notes, than just spend a bunch of time watching the crafting system spin around as you need those 500 notes or whatever.

Oh, and crafting is relevant when it shows up on a daily.  But otherwise, at this point, I craft almost nothing, other the obsidian and ectoplasm refinement.

 

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Oh, and crafting is relevant when it shows up on a daily.  But otherwise, at this point, I craft almost nothing, other the obsidian and ectoplasm refinement.

Then you can just merge some blue, green or yellow luck on your artificer and your done with daily craft.

[starlinvf.1358]

So basically  "market shifted, and I'm upset because what I want to do is suboptimal".    This reminds me of the back and forth the community had with the game's economist.  And I still remember when he went "f it, I'm hands off now".   The community didn't get what it wanted... but it got what it deserved.  And 8 years on still haven't learned that lesson.  

On 12/26/2023 at 8:46 PM, ChildofEmbers.7329 said:

Just got back to the game  and started a new account and was exited to do the collection building a legendary start to finish. Only to find out doing the collection was 8x more expensive than just buying. Disappointing to have one of my first project vanish. I don't mind crafting being more expensive but 8x is absurd.

But thats the thing.... it wasn't always 8 times higher.  Its only like that now, because we complained about a bunch of other stuff being worthless, and now those things are considered valuable.  Surprise Surprise, when something becomes valuable, everything adjacent to it gets more expensive.  

And this was on top of the fact that Legendary Crafting has ALWAYS been more expensive than buying pre-cursors, because unpopular Legendaries go for cheap on the TP.  Theres only really been a few edge cases with high demand Gen 1s, because those managed to keep a higher price point.  And at best, the disparity was never greater than a few hundred gold.  Just enough to justify the effort, but not enough to sway the market.  And thats before you consider generating 100g a week isn't that hard anymore.  

[starlinvf.1358]

On 12/26/2023 at 10:01 PM, Lucy.3728 said:

I do mind that. Make the entire crafting system useless to me.

Almost everything is cheaper to buy from the tp than to craft it. I'd like to craft my own food and stuff but not when it is cheaper to just buy it.

The only reason to level crafting are the items that are locked behind it, that aren't buyable.

Some items are still profitable to craft, but only with effort or waiting times. Often things are dependent on other items that are cheaper in TP than if you also craft them. But you have to be patient to acquire the necessary quantities at a price that is still worthwhile.

How dare a complex economy allow a system old enough for most people to no longer remember how it even came about have the sheer nerve to be...... SUBOPTIMAL!!!!

Its almost like the in-house economist said something like this would happen.  😛

[starlinvf.1358]

On 12/26/2023 at 11:12 PM, Solvar.7953 said:

It almost seems like they added research notes as a way to still keep people crafting stuff, as well as something of a material sink.  In terms of a sink, I just find it annoying - looking at something like gw2efficiency to see what is the cheapest way to get notes, than just spend a bunch of time watching the crafting system spin around as you need those 500 notes or whatever.

Oh, and crafting is relevant when it shows up on a daily.  But otherwise, at this point, I craft almost nothing, other the obsidian and ectoplasm refinement.

 

There was a time when 95% of the TP was basically mere copper prices.  Now thin leather strips is one of the biggest pains to get, if you actually need them in that form.  The community is so stuck in the present, it keeps forgetting how we ended up with "current problem" in the first place.  Its rubbed off on the devs so hard, we keep getting caught in cycles of boom and bust, because setting up a stable I/O takes too long.    Remember the Leather Farm?  

[Ashen.2907]

Gotta love a suggestion that others should pay more.