Legendary Relics Don't Work as they were Announced [Merged]

[Cheese.6352]

Hi all,

Following the announcement that everyone who crafted just single legendary rune would get a free legendary relic, I was very excited, as I could reasonably afford to get one on my alt account.  One of the main draws for me would be being able to access the new relic effects that released with SotO, even though the account does not have SotO purchased.  So I bit the bullet and paid the inflated prices for materials in order to craft a rune just in time for the patch.  I logged in to play raids on my alt account and lo and behold, the legendary relic does not have access to SotO relic affects.  This was a bit disheartening, but I thought perhaps I may have missed something in the January announcement or read it wrong.  I went back and read the announcement (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/legendary-relics-are-coming-soon) but the announcement confirms my initial understanding in two separate sentences:

"So, for relics only—and starting with the fifth expansion—new relic effects will need to be unlocked within each expansion in order to be accessible via legendary relics."

"Legendary relics will come with all Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure relic effects unlocked, will still be freely swappable between existing relic effects, and will still be able to be equipped simultaneously on multiple characters."

The second quote is consistent to how legendary gear worked up until relics.  The stats or rune effects would still be unlocked even if you didn't own the expansion.  Nowhere does it say in the announcement that there is a caveat that you must own SotO to unlock those relic effects.  Between this and crafting a 7th rune at the advice of the first announcement regarding legendary relics in July 2023, I am out around 1000g for items that are of almost no use to me.  At the very least, let this be a PSA for you to not expect to get SotO relic effects on the legendary without owning the expansion.

It would be very nice if an ArenaNet employee sees this and can confirm if this is intentional, or a bug as well, since I still really do want those relic effects on my alt account, but can't justify spending money on a second copy of SotO currently.

Cheers!

[Adinga.4738]

Yeahhh more than one specification in these announcements makes it fairly clear that some kind of disconnect happened between the people who do the announcements and the people determining what actually gets put into the game.

The reasonable resolution is to refund players who were expecting what was very clearly promised their crafting expenses, or grant them access to the soto relics through the legendary (though I doubt that's possible).

[Calaran.4358]

While I understand Anet's logic about wanting Relics to require engagement going forward, the Relic not functioning as they clearly stated in their published materials is disappointing. Hopefully they can take some action here to either apologize for advertising the functionality incorrectly and revert the purchase specifically on your account, or in the best case change the functionality of the relic to align with their marketed materials that players relied upon to make their decisions.

Best of luck Cheese! 

[Windfreeze.4701]

Big oof. I get that kitten happens, and having all facets of a game studio be on exactly the same page is a lot of cats to herd, but when the official announcement very explicitly states that required purchase of expansions to get their corresponding relics won't begin until the FIFTH one, that's..... a very pricey thing to mislead players who don't own SotO on. From a technical perspective I don't know how a fix for this would be implemented, but since this is a pretty direct conflict of communicated promises about expensive in game materials and functionality, I feel like something ought to be done even if it doesn't affect a super huge audience. This game thrives off longtime dedicated players who, yes, use alt accounts; alienating them isn't ideal.

[ICEFANG.2067]

Cheese seems to be completely correct. They really should fix this. There's a lot of useful relics from SOTO and Anet said it would work this way. Please fix this and help a Cheese in need!

[Relzyn.3415]

I really hope that legendary relics on accounts that don't have SoTO not having access to SoTO relics was a mistake. 

16 minutes ago, Windfreeze.4701 said:

This game thrives off longtime dedicated players who, yes, use alt accounts; alienating them isn't ideal.

And these alt accounts aren't just being used to farm dailies: endgame players have these to play the game more, whether it be on a different server like Cheese with his EU alt, or simply another account on the same server to receive rewards for doing raids multiple times a week. I do believe incentivizing players to play the game is desirable for a game studio.

Edited March 12 by Zuiy.8721

[Karma.6725]

Glad I read this before creating. Thanks for the heads up!

[jekyllandaldehyde.7018]

this is very disheartening to hear, especially as i'm already not very happy with how the legendary relic functionality will work going from expansion 5 onward (having to unlock the normal relics manually first instead of automatically being able to access any relic effect...like how every other legendary in the game works :/). thanks for the heads up!

[EphemeralWallaby.7643]

45 minutes ago, Calaran.4358 said:

While I understand Anet's logic about wanting Relics to require engagement going forward, the Relic not functioning as they clearly stated in their published materials is disappointing. Hopefully they can take some action here to either apologize for advertising the functionality incorrectly and revert the purchase specifically on your account, or in the best case change the functionality of the relic to align with their marketed materials that players relied upon to make their decisions.

Best of luck Cheese! 

Huh.

Similar speech pattern to the OP, and your forum accounts were made w/in a half-hour of each other according to when I checked.  Also, currently both have only posted here.

Interesting coincidences.

~EpWa

Edited March 12 by EphemeralWallaby.7643

[Calaran.4358]

Understandable to think, but not true. Cheese is a friend of mine though and I'm here on his behalf - I don't have any reason to deny that. I have ~11 years and 6 months in in-game time, but I never come to the forums because I generally don't enjoy the experience.

edit: Tried to quote your post, but it didn't work. I don't have experience with these forums. Sorry. 😕

Edited March 12 by Calaran.4358
Tried to Quote above post but didn't work

[Nephalem.8921]

I have absolutely no idea why people expected expansion specific relic access without owning the expansion. No legendary works like that.

[Teknomancer.4895]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_Relic#Notes

[QueenKeriti.5176]

25 minutes ago, EphemeralWallaby.7643 said:

Huh.

Similar speech pattern to the OP, and your forum accounts were made w/in a half-hour of each other according to when I checked.

Interesting.

~EpWa

It's like reading all those bot responses to posts on various social media. :| Kind of uncanny.

We already had a thread on this, too.

[Healix.5819]

They are "unlocked", but they require the expansion to use. They didn't make it clear, but they did hint that they wanted the expansion to be required when they said they gave previous legendaries access to everything regardless of expansion ownership.

[Adinga.4738]

Because the announcements said they would include all current expansion stats and you'd only have to do extra for future expansions (post-soto ones). he lays it out pretty clearly in the OP.

[Linken.6345]

26 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I have absolutely no idea why people expected expansion specific relic access without owning the expansion. No legendary works like that.

Check the wiki link under your post all other legendaries work like this and so should the legendary relic before expansion 5 that have not release yet.

Glad to see more people asking this question OP

 

[firedragon.8953]

The announcement is unclear, but I don't think it is "wrong." I think the problem is the player's definition of "unlocked" and the dev's definition of "unlocked." There needed to be an asterisk that included "Must own SotO to use SotO relics" or something.

Dev's define "unlocked" as unlocking via achievements, etc.
Players like the OP read "unlocked" to be "available for use."

There isn't any lying going on here, just miscommunication and mismatched expectations. I'm sorry for your situation OP. Not sure if Anet has to justify their choice, but they should definitely make sure such future announcements are crystal clear (include examples, footnotes, etc.) to avoid it in the future.

[Surelia.2651]

51 minutes ago, firedragon.8953 said:

The announcement is unclear, but I don't think it is "wrong." I think the problem is the player's definition of "unlocked" and the dev's definition of "unlocked." There needed to be an asterisk that included "Must own SotO to use SotO relics" or something.

Dev's define "unlocked" as unlocking via achievements, etc.
Players like the OP read "unlocked" to be "available for use."

There isn't any lying going on here, just miscommunication and mismatched expectations. I'm sorry for your situation OP. Not sure if Anet has to justify their choice, but they should definitely make sure such future announcements are crystal clear (include examples, footnotes, etc.) to avoid it in the future.

Well in this case, I would say that "purchased Soto" means unlocked to them apparently.

If you did read the original announcement about relics in July, you would have seen they did specifically explain: "If you have Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure, you’ll be able to acquire expansion relics."    That part seems pretty clear to me.  

As in, what happens if I don't have SotO then?  No expansion relics.

What is unfortunate is that they did not, in that announcement or in the later one, restate this specifically for legendary rune owners since they spent time instead talking about a reward of progress for them on the new relic system  It's easy to see how people might have gotten confused.

[kiroho.4738]

3 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I have absolutely no idea why people expected expansion specific relic access without owning the expansion. No legendary works like that.

You are wrong. All legendaries work like that. Except for the relic.

Wiki:
"All attribute combinations are available to Legendary equipment regardless of whether or not an expansion is owned, except in the case of the legendary relic."
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_equipment

Original source:
"Legendary equipment will still have all attribute combinations available regardless of expansion ownership."
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upcoming-changes-to-attribute-selectable-gear/

 

49 minutes ago, Surelia.2651 said:

If you did read the original announcement about relics in July, you would have seen they did specifically explain: "If you have Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure, you’ll be able to acquire expansion relics."    That part seems pretty clear to me.  

As in, what happens if I don't have SotO then?  No expansion relics.

What you missed is the context.

The part you quoted has nothing to do with legendary relics. That part is about the aquisition of normal relics.
The part about legendary relics comes later in that blogpost and there is nothing about any such limitations.

There is no blogpost that could let you think the legendary relic requires Soto for the soto relic effects.
As you see in the upper part of my comment, no other legendary work like this.
And more importantly, Anet even confirmed that the legendary relic will give access to all soto relic effects. OP quoted that part:

"Legendary relics will come with all Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure relic effects unlocked, will still be freely swappable between existing relic effects, and will still be able to be equipped simultaneously on multiple characters."

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

I have absolutely no idea why people expected expansion specific relic access without owning the expansion. No legendary works like that.

Every legendary, other than relics, give access to expac specific stats whether or not that expac is owned on the account. And then there is the fact that ANet said it would work as you did not expect.

[Cheese.8421]

8 hours ago, QueenKeriti.5176 said:

It's like reading all those bot responses to posts on various social media. 😐 Kind of uncanny.

We already had a thread on this, too.

I apologize if this duplicates another post, I very clearly don't use the forums, so would not have seen it.  I tried contacting support about it, and they said there was nothing they could do and suggested to make a forum post, so that's what I did.

As far as I'm concerned, the more people aware of this the better, and a couple people have thanked me for the heads up, so it was already worth it, since it saved someone else having the same issue.

At this point, I don't expect a proper remedy to the situation, but even just an acknowledgement of "yeah we made a mistake and communicated poorly, this is as intended" would go a long way, in my opinion.

[Zyreva.1078]

13 hours ago, firedragon.8953 said:

There isn't any lying going on here, just miscommunication and mismatched expectations.

If it was just accidential miscommunication, they could have answered when asked for clarification. And there have been multiple questions regarding this very topic after the announcement (and both before and after the actual update) - yet complete silence from the devs in this regard, while at the same time happily responding to other relic related comments.

To me it strongly looks like they were deliberately keeping quiet about relevant information, even tho i don't understand what they expect to gain from that other than distrust. Maybe they wanted to keep the option to call it an unintended "bug" open, in case there is a big outcry, but that didn't happen, so now they are for sure not going to change it.

So yea, better not put too much faith in anets announcements, who knows, how often there will be "miscommunication".

Edited March 12 by Zyreva.1078

[Astralporing.1957]

The whole relic release was one big case of Anet intentionally shifting expectations and going back on their older statements - and not for the benefit of the players. And while it's very disheartening to see them abandon another assurance so fast after making it, unfortunately it's not all that much surprising anymore. We should probably expect more of this in the future.

Edited March 12 by Astralporing.1957

[Hotride.2187]

Whole relic change made me play the game a lot less and I'm overall a lot happier. Full legendary just doesnt mean what it did an year ago. I buy expansions for the maps and the specs, not so I can farm my gear again. If I wanted that I'd still play WoW.

[Luthan.5236]

It is to get people to actually play the content ... I guess.