Legendary Armour – Increasing the appeal

[khemkitty.7942]

Please note this is not a criticism of legendary armour, rather this intended to start a debate about encouraging more players to collect /craft legendary armour. 

When legendary armour was available for PvE I was a first excited by the prospect however when I realized the cost of completing a full set of armour my interest diminished significantly.  

I don’t tend to change my sats that frequently, and when I do I have a stack of ascended armour chests thanks to the Wizzard Vault. Additionally given the cost of making ascended armour vs legendary armour and the relative ease of changing ascended stats, for me it's just not worth it.  As such the reasons for me crafting legendary armour boil down to 1. the look of the armour and 2.  the kudos for crafting the set.  Personally, I’m don’t like the look of the of the Obsidian Armour (and it defeats fashion wars) and I already have several legendary weapons, I’m sure I’m not the only person with similar feelings regarding legendary armour.   

This got me thinking about what would encourage me (and hopefully other players) to craft legendary armour, so I came up with a few suggestions, I’m also curious about other players thoughts are on this. 

1. The ability to transmute the armour to any skin that a player has unlocked, regardless of race or armour class, if you want to dress your Messer in heavy armour or mix and match from different classes go ahead.  

• I’ve suggested unlocked skins rather than all in game skins because I think it important to encourage players to participate in the collections etc, and because allowing any skin (unlocked or not) would negate the work done by players to build their collections. 

2. Each piece of legendry armour should have an effect that can be layered by increasing the number of armour pieces equipped (similar to infusions), this would hopefully motivate players to craft full sets .  Rather than a set effect players could choose from a small library of 5-10 effects, with each piece supporting an individual effect is selected.    For example, fireworks, ice & snow, bubbles, falling leaves etc. 

•  What effects would players like to see? 

These would still need to work when applying an outfit rather and skins, I also thought about changing the effect colour scheme but this may be asking a bit much. 

I would also to add to this library via collections and achievements, including festival looks.  Is this something other players would be interested in?  

3. In order to further encourage players to craft a complete set, equipping 6 pieces of legendary armour equipped (combination of any set) should provide have ability to change the profession colour scheme.  Maybe you're not a fan of the Reaper’s sludge green effects, alternatively you may be a member of the Sludge Green Appreciation Society and think all professions should use this, sludge green butterflies anyone? 

This idea may require a bit more work, for example what happens underwater when you drop to 5 pieces? Also some professions / elite specialisations don’t have an obvious colour scheme - a rainbow of Jade Mechs anyone? 

The reasoning behind these suggestions, is to provide player additional benefits from having legendary armour whilst still demonstrating that you have legendary armour so no loss of kudos.  When your Messer is wondering through Lions Arch in Heavy Armour with sludge green butterflies and soap bubbles everyone will know you have six pieces of legendary armour (and possibly no taste 😊)  

So, for those of you on the fence regarding legendary armour or with partial sets, what would encourage you to craft legendary armour or complete your sets? 

[Hotride.2187]

Ah yes, full customization with a few clicks is not enough.

Aside from the "legendary" relic which is a rip-off legendary item, the legendary armory is more than fine. Its a solid grind, after which you do to not have to grind items, in case you want to have / try many builds.

From my POV I don't need extras here. Just don't ruin even more item slots after the relic crap.

Edited July 22 by Hotride.2187

[yoni.7015]

No thanks. I don’t think legendary armor needs to be changed, it’s good the way it is now. 

[DarkK.7368]

I totally like all the ideas you gave. At least, being able to mix armor from different weights (from other races seems not feasible), and changing your profession particles colours. But I'm not sure that should be tied to legendary armor and not baseline... Thought I wouldn't be against it, it's just cosmetic, so... 

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

for idea 1: i think this idea would be a coding nightmare, since the game was designed around classes being limited to specific weight-class of armor, and races are so deeply imbedded in character save files. and would result in breaking character save files, which would result in loss of customers. (think about modding skyrim and corrupting savefiles by changing mods. when you can't load a savefile anymore it's bad, especially if you have only 100+ hours on it. GW2 save files sometimes have tens of thousands of hours.) 

for idea 2: i've seen the suggestion on forums to separate infusion effect slots into a new slot on equipment templates, and different suggestion to make legendary infusions. i think that both of these ideas could lead toward allowing what you'd like. Also, an alternative would be to simply unlock new infusions when unlocking legendary armor skins.

for idea 3: i think that would would be way too much coding. it would essentially be the same making everything dyeable. make the skill effects dyable. make the skill icons dyeable, make the glow effects dyeable, make the infusion effects dyeable. will all the coding involved, it would easier to make a new game than rewrite all the code of a 12 year old game to allow it.

overall, i think the current benefits for legendary armor (stat-switching, free transmutation) is plenty incentive for it. The players who want to brag about their legendary armor will brag about it regardless. 

HOWEVER: i'm not opposed to more cosmetic options, so if Anet would be able to and choose to implement ideas like these, without breaking anything, i would not argue against it.

[DarkK.7368]

I'm a bit tired of excuses "they cannot do it", "spaguetti code", "etc etc". They can do whatever they like, and it's just excuses. Maybe some things require more investment than others and may not be economically worth. But they can do it. For the love of god, they are not working on some super limited environment. I never worked in these types of projects, and I talk from a bit of not knowing (though I know programming and making games), but as long as the environment supports BASIC CODE (variables, conditionals, loops) then you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT. It's harder if the environment used does not make that for you automatically? Sure. But you can do whatever you want.

Specially for mixing armor types, where you can just COPYPASTE the skins, and create, for example, NEW LIGHT SKINS that visually use the same model as the heavy ones. And make these new skins only available for legendary. Or make it baseline, who knows. I'll refuse to believe they can't do it. Just they don't want, or they think it won't generate enough money for the effort.

[Gehenna.3625]

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

Please note this is not a criticism of legendary armour, rather this intended to start a debate about encouraging more players to collect /craft legendary armour. 

And yet, it IS a criticism because you want things to change with regards to the perceived value and functionality of legendary skins and the acquisition of it. You say it's prohibiting for you considering the road to acquire it, but all your suggestions below actually would create a much larger effort and cost when you put it all together.

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

I’ve suggested unlocked skins rather than all in game skins because I think it important to encourage players to participate in the collections etc, and because allowing any skin (unlocked or not) would negate the work done by players to build their collections. 

Legendary armour can be reskinned for free. That's one of the perks of it after all. So you can do all sorts of things via collections to gain new skins, so I don't really think you have a point

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

Each piece of legendary armour should have an effect that can be layered by increasing the number of armour pieces equipped (similar to infusions), this would hopefully motivate players to craft full sets 

Legendary armor sets do come with effects (except the basic Obsidian and WvW legendary sets) and you need to equip all pieces to get the effect for your entire armor and it does restrict players to use the skin of the set. So in that sense the infusions are better if you want to reskin your legendary armour and still have an effect on it.

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

In order to further encourage players to craft a complete set, equipping 6 pieces of legendary armour equipped (combination of any set) should provide have ability to change the profession colour scheme.  Maybe you're not a fan of the Reaper’s sludge green effects, alternatively you may be a member of the Sludge Green Appreciation Society and think all professions should use this, sludge green butterflies anyone? 

This idea may require a bit more work, for example what happens underwater when you drop to 5 pieces? Also some professions / elite specialisations don’t have an obvious colour scheme - a rainbow of Jade Mechs anyone? 

Yeah this is something that is not something I see Anet doing simply because of the resource cost vs benefit to the game and how would this work with gloves, shoulders and helmets that you can turn off individually?

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

The reasoning behind these suggestions, is to provide player additional benefits from having legendary armour whilst still demonstrating that you have legendary armour so no loss of kudos. 

Well, you talk about how prohibitive the costs are in your opinion for legendary armour and your solution is to give more benefits via collections and crafting, but as far as I see it that makes it more prohibitive for many players. And if you just break down the costs of legendary armour in smaller chunks, it may take some time but it really isn't that bad. People tend to stare themselves blind on the total cost of legendary stuff but you should set small goals instead that will eventually lead to the desired end result. And in my experience, once you've completed your first legendary, it's a lot easier for the next one.

59 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

So, for those of you on the fence regarding legendary armour or with partial sets, what would encourage you to craft legendary armour or complete your sets? 

Fair question but I suspect it'll mostly boil down to lowering the cost of legendary items and as far as those are concerned legendary armour pieces are some of the least costing legendary items

[Gop.8713]

I feel like there are plenty enough reasons to craft leggy armor, and I think it's okay if not every player sees it as absolutely mandatory. As to OP's specific suggestions, I'm not generally a fan of things that muddle classes or increase the existing visual clutter of the game. But that's just me, I wouldn't be overly fussed about any of these things either . . .

[DarkK.7368]

11 minutes ago, Gop.8713 said:

I feel like there are plenty enough reasons to craft leggy armor, and I think it's okay if not every player sees it as absolutely mandatory. As to OP's specific suggestions, I'm not generally a fan of things that muddle classes or increase the existing visual clutter of the game. But that's just me, I wouldn't be overly fussed about any of these things either . . .

Classes are already 9999999% muddled with outfits and with shop skins that ignore weight, a heavy armor dude with bikini. That's also an old complain that doesn't let the game advance. I find negative that combining armor weights is taking so long to be a reality.

I agree that visual clutter could be reduced, infusions and so, but maybe better some configuration that lets you hide in a percentage the infusions, but let the others see their own infusions. I would make also infusion visible in PVP again, and if anyone is mad at that, that person can disable it with the new option 

[Zera.9435]

The base legendary attributes are incentive enough. Even if the armor isn't visually appealing, you can reskin it for free. Legendary armor is meant to be a long-term goal. Sure, the grind for obsidian armor is a little ridiculous, what with 54,000 T1, 21,600 T2, 10,800 T3 essences (plus 10,800 ectos) just for the 18 gifts of expertise, but what else are you going to do in SotO?

Just chip away at it a little at a time, and make sure to do a convergence run for the 6-hour buff you get before you start your weekly rift hunting. With all the masteries, you can get about 50 T2/T3 essences and something like 75 T1 essences per each respective rift if you use motivations. Always get yourself the T1 essence reward from your daily convergences since T1 is what you need the most of.

That was one of the plus sides of the staggered releases: you were able to break down the acquisition into reasonable chunks between releases. When the base T1 obby armor came out I got the full 18 pieces on day one since I had gotten everything else done in the months leading up to that second major update. I got 19 different legendary pieces of equipment that day 😄

Honestly I feel bad for anyone who wants the obby armor but hasn't already gotten it by now. As time goes on and less people do SotO content, it's going to get harder to some of the group content required for it.

[Nash.2681]

Leggy armor offers enough convenience already (unlimited + free: stat selection, skin changes, rune and infusion swapping), so I rather have the Devs spend their ressources on something else.

[khemkitty.7942]

Thanks for everyone comments so far.   

Several of the comments have suggested that the main benefit of the legendary armour is the free transmutations. Whiles I agree that this is beneficial to some players, if you been playing the game for a while, to the point where you’re capable of crafting the legendary armour, then there’s a good chance that you have a large pile of transmutation charges in which free transmutation isn’t providing anything useful. If you going to re-skin the armour then what's the point in collecting the skin in the first place – which leaves us with sat changes. As already discussed, if you’re not frequently changing the build then ascended armour works for a fraction of the cost.  Fundamentally, legendary armour is not providing me with any benefits that I can’t get elsewhere for a fraction of the cost /time involved, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way. 

In regards to the grinding, I actually enjoy grinding, I find the repetitiveness relaxing.  I already have enough for 3 pieces and enough of some items (blood, bones, venom sacs etc) for a full set, so again if there was a tangible benefit I'd have made it already.  Indeed, it's the 3300 ectoplasms, along with multiple piles of other crafting materials sat on a spare Revenant that's making me question if it's worth it, given what I could exchange the gold for it I sold it all. 

[Sobx.1758]

I don't see the need or a reason for any of these to be added. Legendary items already offer enough incentive to craft them, while not making them a "must have" tier. If you don't think it's worth it for you then don't do it, not sure why you feel you need to be somehow convinced to craft it.

[Randulf.7614]

Why do we need to encourage more people to get a set? There's already considerably enough incentives and those who don't get it are simply not wanting (or are unable) to put the time into it because that's not their style of play or reason for playing.

I'm not understanding what problem we're fixing here

[Zera.9435]

13 minutes ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

Thanks for everyone comments so far.   

Several of the comments have suggested that the main benefit of the legendary armour is the free transmutations. Whiles I agree that this is beneficial to some players, if you been playing the game for a while, to the point where you’re capable of crafting the legendary armour, then there’s a good chance that you have a large pile of transmutation charges in which free transmutation isn’t providing anything useful. If you going to re-skin the armour then what's the point in collecting the skin in the first place – which leaves us with sat changes. As already discussed, if you’re not frequently changing the build then ascended armour works for a fraction of the cost.  Fundamentally, legendary armour is not providing me with any benefits that I can’t get elsewhere for a fraction of the cost /time involved, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way. 

In regards to the grinding, I actually enjoy grinding, I find the repetitiveness relaxing.  I already have enough for 3 pieces and enough of some items (blood, bones, venom sacs etc) for a full set, so again if there was a tangible benefit I'd have made it already.  Indeed, it's the 3300 ectoplasms, along with multiple piles of other crafting materials sat on a spare Revenant that's making me question if it's worth it, given what I could exchange the gold for it I sold it all. 

Legendary equipment is not a must have for anyone at all. The entire system of legendary equipment is more of a convenience thing (for players like me who has 26 different characters and wants to outfit them all with good equipment) or maybe even prestige. The free transmutations is just a bonus, not the main reason. Sure, some legendary equipment doesn't look great (like that filthy quaggan bowl, for example), but that is why you have options in case you don't like the look of one. Aesthetic preferences vary by player. You might think the obby armor looks bad, but I think it looks good. Aesthetics are incentive enough. After that, it's the method of acquisition that is the consideration. After that, it's equipment needs and desires.

The only incentive I needed to make obsidian armor is that it requires no pvp, no wvw, and no raids. That was all the reason I needed to buy (and is the sole reason I bought) SotO. What other reason do you need?

While I do like your idea of a character wearing the armor skins of any other weight class (excluding race-specific armor, of course), that should be a general wardrobe feature, not a legendary equipment feature.

As far as layering goes, they would have to be VERY careful that the full 6-pieces don't become just 'excessive visual noise'. There is already enough 'noise' with infusions and legendary trinkets as it is, and while we do have the glorious option of unchecking the visual effect of legendary trinkets, it shouldn't be necessary.

Changing the profession coloring scheme is a bad idea, because people will tend to pick colors that are the most visually distracting (more noise).

Nah man, I say legendary equipment as it is now is visual noise enough, and that's not even including skill effects.

[Astralporing.1957]

General cost and functionality are fine. It's narrow-locking legendary armor that always was an issue. And while Obsidian set was finally released for OW, it is still suffering from the same issue. They really should have spread it more over GW2 OW content, instead of locking it behind a single expansion so strongly.

It might have been different had SotO was a good expansion (or at least a decent one), but unfortunately it wasn't.

[Gehenna.3625]

7 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

Thanks for everyone comments so far.   

Several of the comments have suggested that the main benefit of the legendary armour is the free transmutations. Whiles I agree that this is beneficial to some players, if you been playing the game for a while, to the point where you’re capable of crafting the legendary armour, then there’s a good chance that you have a large pile of transmutation charges in which free transmutation isn’t providing anything useful. If you going to re-skin the armour then what's the point in collecting the skin in the first place – which leaves us with sat changes. As already discussed, if you’re not frequently changing the build then ascended armour works for a fraction of the cost.  Fundamentally, legendary armour is not providing me with any benefits that I can’t get elsewhere for a fraction of the cost /time involved, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way. 

Legendary armor is not for everyone but I just want to comment on the free transmutations. It's not the main benefit of legendary armour but I mentioned that benefit because you were talking about the visual aspects a lot. And it really depends on the person what they consider the main benefit.

In my case the main benefits are the free reskins but also that I can use legendary items on ALL of my characters (as long as their class allows it of course). I have 20 characters and others have way more but every time I level a new character I don't have to worry about gearing them at level 80.

Also when you play Fashion Wars a lot, you really use up an inordinate amount of transmutation charges. At least I do. The reason is that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and Anet has made it very hard to mix and match for various reasons. And the preview window sucks. So I can now freely swap skins around without having to worry about the charges. One change on one character can easily cost me 20 charges or so and, as I said, I have 20 of them.

But that's me. It's also nice that I can change stat sets and swap out runes, infusions and sigils without having to worry about extracting them. What legendary gear means to me primarily is the freedom it gives me from hassle.

7 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

In regards to the grinding, I actually enjoy grinding, I find the repetitiveness relaxing.  I already have enough for 3 pieces and enough of some items (blood, bones, venom sacs etc) for a full set, so again if there was a tangible benefit I'd have made it already.  Indeed, it's the 3300 ectoplasms, along with multiple piles of other crafting materials sat on a spare Revenant that's making me question if it's worth it, given what I could exchange the gold for it I sold it all. 

Well, that's for you to decide. I can't tell you whether it's worth it to you or not but looking back at it, it's always been worth it to me. You forget what it cost after a short while anyway. It's only game currencies after all.

Edited July 22 by Gehenna.3625

[Zera.9435]

31 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

General cost and functionality are fine. It's narrow-locking legendary armor that always was an issue. And while Obsidian set was finally released for OW, it is still suffering from the same issue. They really should have spread it more over GW2 OW content, instead of locking it behind a single expansion so strongly.

It might have been different had SotO was a good expansion (or at least a decent one), but unfortunately it wasn't.

Yeah that was one of my major gripes about the obby armor. I really wanted to go all over Tyria doing a variety of things, instead of doing the same 3 map metas 100 times and opening the same arcane chests hundreds of times and  farming the same rifts hundreds of times. They definitely could have done it better. But alas, I finished it and and not going back to SotO content.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

I don’t tend to change my sats that frequently (...) for me it's just not worth it.

That's you and most players. Some get in their heads they have to, get on it then burn out chasing it and then just quit the game, seen it several times now.

 

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

given the cost of making ascended armour vs legendary armour and the relative ease of changing ascended stats

This is 100% the reason, to the people I like I wouldn't recommend any to bother with Legendary unless they found themselves constantly stat swapping before events.

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

The ability to transmute the armour to any skin that a player has unlocked, regardless of race or armour class, if you want to dress your Messer in heavy armour or mix and match from different classes go ahead.

You can't have that, race specific armor doesn't have rigged mesh for other races. In the early days Anet actually came out with what they call (if memory serves) flame kisses set for the gem store, which was just human racial armor but made for all races and with fire effects. This prompted a huge backlash because people felt betrayed their special racial armor could now be used by anyone so Anet had to redesign it with some generic base instead.

Also to note, you used to be able to preview any armor weight on the dungeon vendors and mix and match it on the preview. And yes, it was clipping galore but you could make some really cool combinations. With time Anet locked the preview to only weights you could wear, people complain, and we got what we have now. So as far as mix and matching, never gonna happen, but, we COULD go all in on a different weight. When the game first came out Anet stated they wanted weights to be apparent and distinct, that went out the window with Outfits and eventually skins that fit all weights, so the idea of using Legendary armor to get light on heavy classes could be on the table.

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

Each piece of legendry armour should have an effect that can be layered by increasing the number of armour pieces equipped (similar to infusions)

And this is why we need a client side option to turn off ALL player armor, weapon and trinket effects, you guys need to put the glitter down.

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

What effects would players like to see?

None.

11 hours ago, khemkitty.7942 said:

provide have ability to change the profession colour scheme

You mean redesigning the UI... ? We don't even get a tint option for older backpieces, good luck with that...

[Skub.8240]

I'll be honest: the only way you're really going to increase the "appeal" of legendary armour for more players is to make it easier to obtain, which defeats the entire purpose. As it stands, for a lot of more casual players; it'd be nice to have but the grind is unappealing so they just don't do it. Adding more cosmetic effects to it isn't really going to change that, imo, since what it already offers is already pretty amazing for the people who care about it at all.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I think a big factor is the number of characters you have on your account. If you have just one or two then the reasons to get Legendary anything are much diminished. Whereas if you have 5, 10, 20+ then the benefits from Legendary items begin stacking up significantly.

I only have 9 that I play (plus a couple of old characters which just get parked places) but I find that's enough to already make legendary armor and trinkets very useful. Legendary weapons a bit less so but they make up for that by having cool effects and footfalls.

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

You can't have that, race specific armor doesn't have rigged mesh for other races. In the early days Anet actually came out with what they call (if memory serves) flame kisses set for the gem store, which was just human racial armor but made for all races and with fire effects. This prompted a huge backlash because people felt betrayed their special racial armor could now be used by anyone so Anet had to redesign it with some generic base instead.

Actualy that wasn't the only reason it was removed. Another reason was that (other) people asked for all other cultural armor sets to be similarily released. And this was not something Anet wanted to do.

Although, notice that there isn't anything really preventing cultural armor from working on other races. Originally it was possible to preview it on other races, and it worked mostly fine... apart from few overlaps/weird joins on usual suspects (Charr, Norn and Asura).

[Liewec.2896]

i only wish there was a more streamlined way of getting it with fewer requirements,

like i don't mind something requiring 20 [x] to craft, but its annoying if you check and [x] is only available from a vendor after completing the game 100% and then time-gated to 1 per week, or something silly like that.

[Gehenna.3625]

3 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

i only wish there was a more streamlined way of getting it with fewer requirements,

like i don't mind something requiring 20 [x] to craft, but its annoying if you check and [x] is only available from a vendor after completing the game 100% and then time-gated to 1 per week, or something silly like that.

I don't agree personally. I think it's good that there are items in the game that aren't instant gratification and aren't convenient to get. Sure, it can be frustrating at times but that's ok; it's part of the experience that will ultimately add to the feeling of accomplishment at the end. Others may not care about that feeling but I do and this is my personal opinion after all. 

You do make me curious though: what's this item that you can get from a vendor that requires you to complete the entire game? I've made many legendaries and I can't remember anything like that.

Edited July 23 by Gehenna.3625

[Sobx.1758]

3 hours ago, Liewec.2896 said:

like i don't mind something requiring 20 [x] to craft, but its annoying if you check and [x] is only available from a vendor after completing the game 100% and then time-gated to 1 per week, or something silly like that.

Does anything like that even exist? Because I'm not sure it does, so by your own words you shouldn't mind the current ways of legendary acquisition.

Edited July 23 by Sobx.1758