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

[Zyreva.1078]

20 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

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

Playing content isn't a requirement for unlocking SotO relics tho ...

[Padrion.7382]

I was a bit disappointed to. Clearly false advertising. Still I think the relic was a good investment and I'll get Soto eventually at some point...

[Mistwraithe.3106]

The bits quoted are part of the larger article from Anet talking about the system of needing to do achievements within expansions to unlock relics even if you own the legendary relic. That is also what they were talking about when they said Legendary relics will come with all SOTO relic effects unlocked, as in you wouldn't need to do achievements within SOTO to unlock them.

I agree the article wasn't as clearly written as it should have been though as it left the question of whether you would need to actually own SOTO up in the air.

Previous comments from Anet had indicated you would need to own SOTO to get access to the SOTO relics, including the wiki page linked to from that article (which says "12 expansion relics at launch, available exclusively for the owners of SOTO") but those places didn't specifically address the question of whether Legendary Relics would bypass this.

So, yeah, it was left fuzzier than it should have been and some people have assumed a different interpretation from what Anet meant. I personally always assumed that you would need to own SOTO to use the SOTO relics even with a Legendary Relic because that seemed to be the overall direction of what they were saying.

 

[Linken.6345]

38 minutes ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

The bits quoted are part of the larger article from Anet talking about the system of needing to do achievements within expansions to unlock relics even if you own the legendary relic. That is also what they were talking about when they said Legendary relics will come with all SOTO relic effects unlocked, as in you wouldn't need to do achievements within SOTO to unlock them.

I agree the article wasn't as clearly written as it should have been though as it left the question of whether you would need to actually own SOTO up in the air.

Previous comments from Anet had indicated you would need to own SOTO to get access to the SOTO relics, including the wiki page linked to from that article (which says "12 expansion relics at launch, available exclusively for the owners of SOTO") but those places didn't specifically address the question of whether Legendary Relics would bypass this.

So, yeah, it was left fuzzier than it should have been and some people have assumed a different interpretation from what Anet meant. I personally always assumed that you would need to own SOTO to use the SOTO relics even with a Legendary Relic because that seemed to be the overall direction of what they were saying.

 

Yes except it goes against how any other legendary worked previously and should therefor have been clearly adressed.

And dont help that they further compund it and saying it will start working differently then any other legendary after expansion 5 releases.

[Assolador.3598]

On 3/11/2024 at 8:37 PM, Cheese.6352 said:

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!

legendary armor can have expansion stats, legendary relic should have the expansion effects too...

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

11 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

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".

It is a bit of a tin-foil hat theory I have, but I think that there are Anet employees hopping on alt accounts and spamming all these posts with confused emojis.  Normally, generally unpopular opinions have a lot of responses disagreeing with them, and it takes a certain set of personalities that will spam confused emojis on other players.  However, these threads on the legendary relic don't follow that trend.  There's a lot of psuedo downvotes, but no noticeable population that would be giving them out.  

Seriously, look at the topic post.  Even if you disagree with the intention of getting SOTO relics without soto, the most you could say in response to his evidence and his claims is "oh well, guess we'll have to move on."  There's nothing there that would incite half of the forum viewers to admonish him.  He isn't insulting the playerbase, he isn't saying something that is clearly irrational or crazy, he isn't out to ruin the game for other players, and there's no strongly motivated argument as to why what he says is wrong.  Yet for some reason, he and most of the other players who either agree or are sympathetic have incensed an abnormally large amount of silent players to spam negative emojis.  

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It is a bit of a tin-foil hat theory I have, but I think that there are Anet employees hopping on alt accounts and spamming all these posts with confused emojis.  Normally, generally unpopular opinions have a lot of responses disagreeing with them, and it takes a certain set of personalities that will spam confused emojis on other players.  However, these threads on the legendary relic don't follow that trend.  There's a lot of psuedo downvotes, but no noticeable population that would be giving them out.  

Seriously, look at the topic post.  Even if you disagree with the intention of getting SOTO relics without soto, the most you could say in response to his evidence and his claims is "oh well, guess we'll have to move on."  There's nothing there that would incite half of the forum viewers to admonish him.  He isn't insulting the playerbase, he isn't saying something that is clearly irrational or crazy, he isn't out to ruin the game for other players, and there's no strongly motivated argument as to why what he says is wrong.  Yet for some reason, he and most of the other players who either agree or are sympathetic have incensed an abnormally large amount of silent players to spam negative emojis.  

Yeah, that is pretty tin-foil. The developers barely find time to interact with the players on the forums, I doubt they care about repeat topics which will run their course within a few weeks.

Here what is going to happen: Nothing.

The way relics work now is clear. The approach to require future expansions might be extended to existing legendary gear. All of this is being done to increase revenue for an aging game.

My guess is: there are players which own the legendary relic, are happy the way it works, are happy about not seeing monetization happing via the gem store but rather via features.

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

Wish anet makes mini quest for each relic unlocks in future... If we want a soowon relic, eye of ocean, that has some bonuses against the undead or scare away the undead, we do some mini quest or collection or scavenger hunt to snatch the relic from the krait... Like we did in core story... Same goes for hylek relic or quaggan relic or kodan relic.. upon completion of relic quest, we get a recipe... Upon crafting the item once, legy relic owners get to use it infinitely... Non legy relic owners use the crafted relics

This is just an example.. the relics, quest, collection can be anything

Edited March 13 by Crystal Paladin.3871

[Cheese.8421]

6 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Previous comments from Anet had indicated you would need to own SOTO to get access to the SOTO relics, including the wiki page linked to from that article (which says "12 expansion relics at launch, available exclusively for the owners of SOTO") but those places didn't specifically address the question of whether Legendary Relics would bypass this.

People are quoting the article about standard relics, not legendaries. They are not the same. Just like stat selectable ascended boxes didn't work the same as legendary weapons/gear, or new expansion runes didn't work the same as legendary runes.

 

People here seem to want to argue against objective facts. The point isn't how you think the leggy relics should have shipped. The point is Anet's marketing vs what was actually shipped. 

These are objective facts:

1) Prior to the legendary relic, all previous legendaries (including weapons, armor, runes and sigils) allowed the user to select stats and effects from expansions they did not own.

2) Anet said in their announcement legendary relics would work differently and "starting with the 5th expansion", relic effects would need to be unlocked before being used with in the legendary

3) Anet also said in their announcement that legendary relics would have SotO relic effects unlocked already.

4) In the post about legendary relics, Anet did not mention any caveats of having to own SotO.

5) The legendary relic dropped and people who do not own SotO cannot use SotO effects with their legendary relic.

Whether you think that's right going forward is irrelevant to this discussion, since it's already been announced that the 5th expansion will require unlocks for everyone. We also have no way of knowing what ANET meant. We can't read minds. So let's stick to objective facts and work on getting the issue sorted, by giving these players access to SotO relic effects OR getting clarification on the marketing that was done, so mix ups like this don't happen in the future.

Edited March 13 by Cheese.8421
Typos

[Cyninja.2954]

37 minutes ago, Cheese.8421 said:

Whether you think that's right going forward is irrelevant to this discussion, since it's already been announced that the 5th expansion will require unlocks for everyone. We also have no way of knowing what ANET meant. We can't read minds. So let's stick to objective facts and work on getting the issue sorted, by giving these players access to SotO relic effects OR getting clarification on the marketing that was done, so mix ups like this don't happen in the future.

There is no issue to sort. This wasn't the first case of miscommunication or unclear communication. It won't be the last.

The point this change was made for is clear: force/encourage purchases of future releases if players are interested in the content or upgrades they provide. This was ham-fisted in with EoD and the Jadebot and the reaction to that made the developers move to changing their approach on how certain mechanics are to work.

You complaining about a miscommunication or oversight or even last minute change will not shift their perspective on this. Even should they decide to shift back on their  decision for SotO, by mid this year this entire thematic will return for the next mini expansion. In fact, ignoring this now and letting players know THIS is how this will work from now makes even more sense, given then next time around players will at least know: yup, that's how they did it with SotO already.

[Cheese.8421]

1 minute ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

There is no issue to sort. This wasn't the first case of miscommunication or unclear communication. It won't be the last.

An apology and acknowledgement of how the marketing was unclear or misleading goes a long way in maintaining player trust, in my experience.

[Cyninja.2954]

3 minutes ago, Cheese.8421 said:

An apology and acknowledgement of how the marketing was unclear or misleading goes a long way in maintaining player trust, in my experience.

Sure, and if they feel the need to do that, they will. Or they won't. They certainly won't do it in a forum thread. They "might" do it in their upcoming communication, hopefully with some content and other news to make the medicine go down easier.

That still makes this pretty much a non issue to the studio.

Here is what they will likely say:"There seems to have been some unclear understanding or wording on how legendary relics will behave, this is how they will behave from now on."

Edited March 13 by Cyninja.2954

[Labjax.2465]

5 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It is a bit of a tin-foil hat theory I have, but I think that there are Anet employees hopping on alt accounts and spamming all these posts with confused emojis.  Normally, generally unpopular opinions have a lot of responses disagreeing with them, and it takes a certain set of personalities that will spam confused emojis on other players.  However, these threads on the legendary relic don't follow that trend.  There's a lot of psuedo downvotes, but no noticeable population that would be giving them out.  

Seriously, look at the topic post.  Even if you disagree with the intention of getting SOTO relics without soto, the most you could say in response to his evidence and his claims is "oh well, guess we'll have to move on."  There's nothing there that would incite half of the forum viewers to admonish him.  He isn't insulting the playerbase, he isn't saying something that is clearly irrational or crazy, he isn't out to ruin the game for other players, and there's no strongly motivated argument as to why what he says is wrong.  Yet for some reason, he and most of the other players who either agree or are sympathetic have incensed an abnormally large amount of silent players to spam negative emojis.  

I think both can be true to an extent. There is probably some manipulation going on in every major product forum, but also, fanatical fans who believe their object of obsession can do no wrong and view it as their duty to protect them from criticism are a thing that can happen in fandom. What's interesting to me is open world legendary armor was a very controversial topic to try to talk about on here with a lot of pushback, yet it got implemented. That hints to me that there is at least some divide between other players reacting negatively to feedback and what Anet listens to.

Unfortunately, I think in some cases it's just too convenient and enriching for the company for them to want to do much about the kinds of fans who take it too far, so they can sometimes get away with being disruptive and, well, confusing to others, and in doing so, make it harder for customer and business to have a blunt communication over preferences (which is sometimes needed for both parties to make any headway on reducing tensions that result from player interests and business interests not lining up, or just from business not understanding the nuances of what players are wanting, or business making a flub and not knowing how to handle it, etc.). I think even in cases where people mean well and are trying to calm things down, it can make it more difficult to communicate when other players try to explain the business's reasons for them without a foundation for it and then the argument becomes about speculation rather than concrete understanding of what's going on. (That last part is something I've oops'ed on at times before with products when I was sympathetic toward a developer. Sometimes it really takes a conscience effort to take a step back and say, like, "Hmm, I don't have to be part of this conversation. Or if I am, I can be part of it through voicing my own preferences without trying to negate that of others. The developers can handle the feedback.")

Anyway, I guess the point is, Anet has got some explaining to do in this situation. Nothing players say can bridge the gap between what was announced and what has occurred. Nothing players react with on posts can bridge the gap either. The people who are actually confused by the inconsistency are not going to stop being confused if some confused emojis appear on their posts. So whoever is doing it, it doesn't make a difference one way or another, from that standpoint. And the hard pill people sometimes don't want to swallow is sometimes the people who leave the feedback end up leaving if it's ignored. Further, they won't tend to feel welcome if other players treat their feedback as disloyalty that needs to be removed. There is a product forum I hang out on now that I like and I'm a fan of the product and its developers, but I try to make sure I'm not making other people feel unwelcome if I personally don't share their views on it. I never want to be that person and ultimately, the place to hang out being pleasant to hang out in is more important to me than who feels what way about that product.

Edited March 13 by Labjax.2465

[Astralporing.1957]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

My guess is: there are players which own the legendary relic, are happy the way it works, are happy about not seeing monetization happing via the gem store but rather via features.

You mean, people that try to persuade themselves that it's fine because it could have been even worse? Sorry, but that does not sound all that positive to me at all.

[Cyninja.2954]

56 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You mean, people that try to persuade themselves that it's fine because it could have been even worse? Sorry, but that does not sound all that positive to me at all.

Nope, I actually enjoy the way it is implemented. I enjoy the fact that now I can individually select my "6th" slot bonus. I don't mind that I have to buy future content,  I would have done so anyway as long as I am playing.

I also agree with putting expansion bonuses behind the expansion they come with, mostly because I would prefer this type of monetization over having more "optional gem store stuff" forced on me.

Now does every one have to agree with me? Absolutely not, and I can see how players, especially in financially weaker situations, might be turned off by these changes. That doesn't mean I am persuading myself though.

Edited March 13 by Cyninja.2954

[Padrion.7382]

11 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

I agree the article wasn't as clearly written as it should have been though as it left the question of whether you would need to actually own SOTO up in the air.

No, the article was pretty clear. It explained what the relic can and can't do in detail and didn't leave any questions open in that regard. The problem is, the provided information was just plain wrong.

[Cheese.8421]

Just now, Cyninja.2954 said:

I also agree with putting expansion bonuses behind the expansion they come with, mostly because I would prefer this type of monetization over having more "optional gem store stuff" forced on me.

That's not the point of this post though. They've made it clear that going forward this will be the case. I'm not here to debate this, since it's clearly down to personal preference and opinions.

The point of this post is that how legendary relics released is different to how they said they would. They are two different discusssions.

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

So let me try and get my head around this.

ANET decided to change the way runes worked, didn't think it through and significantly irritated anyone with legendary runes. They then decided to fix it with a legendary relic, but they didn't think it through properly and irritated anyone with legendary runes AGAIN because they'd need to craft the legendary relic to get the benefit back that they formally had. So then ANET decided to offer SOME progress towards the relic based on how many runes you had, but didn't make it at all clear. Leaving people to flounder in the dark.

Deep breath.

Then, at the last minute, they decided that anyone that had one legendary rune would get the relic automatically. Screwing over anyone that had got 6/7 after the relic change, on the basis that it was going to provide progress towards the relic. But they also announced that this new relic wouldn't work the same way as old legendaries, for no reason that they could clearly articulate. Irritating people yet again.

Now it turns out that the way that this new process works for unlocking the relics for the legendary works in an entirely different way to how they described it. Meaning that even MORE people are irritated by what they've done.

Not sure if I missed anything in there, but the whole process has been a shambles from where I'm sitting. An utter clusterkitten of incompetence. Generally speaking in life, if you make a mistake you make every effort to fix it once, and fix it right. This process has been ANET making ignorant, poorly communicated design decisions one after another. Making them look barely competent to the player base that they rely on for their livelihood.

Their best bet would be to revert the legendary relic to work the same way as ALL the other legendaries. Removing any possibility of unintended consequences like this thread. But my expectation at this point is that ANET will make another poorly thought out decision and double down. Probably breaking something else that they haven't thought through properly. It's no way to run a company, sadly.

[Minna.7895]

to sum it up:

- Anet took away stats from an already existing item to put them on a new one instead

- some made said item that they took them from on a legendary level and therefore futureproof to any additions that may come (Anet seemingly forgot about that)

- to keep the outrage at bay they told us we will get a legendary relic but it has to be determined what legendary rune owners will get for progress towards this (if they kept their word, that would have been okayish, still leaving a little bit of bitter taste cause double sell etc.)

-later it turns out they will even give it to everyone with just 1 legy rune for free BUT also they won't give us a legendary relic, instead they give us an item that goes into the armory but is NOT a real legendary (because you have to unlock futurestuff first)

- (on this one I'm not sure but someone mentioned some relics on this item are not the current version but an earlier one before nerfs? If that's the case they even put themselves in a weird corner with it not working like a legendary item)

 

Personally I see 2 solutions at this point:

1. give us a true legendary relic

or

2. give us back our old runes (keep and balance relics accordingly so they are an addition rather than a replacement if you don't want too much powercreep)

edit: this was merged so sorry for being offtopic - mine was: Please give us our old 6th Runebonuses back since apparently you don't want to give us a Legendary Relic

Edited March 13 by Minna.7895
was merged

[Calaran.4358]

While I appreciate the moderator's efforts to keep the forums clean, merging a thread asking for different functionality into this one about an Arenanet communication being wrong about SotO being required for legendary relics is not a great decision. As has been stated earlier in this thread, this is about a miscommunication on Anet's part about functionality that players made decisions based on - not asking for the whole system to be reworked to give rune bonuses back. 

Apologies to Minna for their thread being merged into ours when they're not really the same thing at all.

[Cheese.8421]

2 hours ago, Minna.7895 said:

edit: this was merged so sorry for being offtopic - mine was: Please give us our old 6th Runebonuses back since apparently you don't want to give us a Legendary Relic

A response from ANet!! Praise be! (/s)

[vares.8457]

2 hours ago, Minna.7895 said:

Please give us our old 6th Runebonuses back

no thanks, I prefer the new relic system. 

[Minna.7895]

1 hour ago, vares.8457 said:

no thanks, I prefer the new relic system. 

I'd actually be okay with that aswell, as long as they give us a true legendary relic (maybe that's the reason they merged it? would solve the problem of this thread just aswell so who knows)

[Zebulous.2934]

Ah! So what you want is for Anet to be more vague when describing new content.  That way the announcements are subject to wild speculation.  More hype is generated for new content because of speculation and theory crafting. No one will be able to quibble about specifics upon release because of the vague language used for the announcement. 

Anet should probably use these types of words and phrases in all content announcements: similarly, adjacent to, very much like, nearly all, somewhat like, for the most part, largely, usually, often, likely to, ect.  Pleanty of corporations sprinkle such language throughout official announcements to temper customer expectations and hedge against any accidential omission.

Is that what you as a customer want? 

[Los.9635]

best argument against op is miscommunication about unlock vs available for use and that is being generous because it's still a bad argument. As some one who has always thought the legendary relic was just a free item for the richest players on the game opposed to being compensation for the use of their runes i think anet should make this right and let the legendary relic function the same way for everyone up til this point in the game because that is how its function was explained.