Legendary Weapon Suggestion

[Abelisk.5148]

Hi everyone, this is something I found in FFXIV and wanted to share.

Currently the legendary weapon model is like this: every season a new weapon is made, and players then have to craft their way into making it.

Proposed model: every season/patch (including expansion release) will entail a new step for all sixteen (or if too much of a hassle, eight or six) Gen 3 legendaries. In other words: one legendary won't be released per patch, but rather, the very first precursor weapon + step for every weapon (or less if it's a hassle) is released per patch. So, batches are released at a time rather than one at a time. I think this will guide players and keep them excited in anticipation. Not only that but once the legendary skins are finalized and revealed, players who might not enjoy one particular skin may enjoy others.

It's similar to Coalescence, but on a more frequent schedule. Now I understand that the finalized designs are the most difficult to create, so I think these designs could be worked on over a longer period rather single designs fished out every patch.

[Cyninja.2954]

Given no new legendary weapons are announced yet (and how the last batch took nearly 3-4 years with a cancel announcement inbetween), maybe wait for them to announce/implement any new legendary weapon before even suggesting for a method of implementing 16 steps at a time.

[starlinvf.1358]

This would fail on all fronts for very simple reasons.......

• Most legendary weapon collectors are not completionists.
• This is on top of the ongoing argument about "joke legendaries" just because people don't like a skin
• The role of legendary weapons is that of a gold sink, first and foremost
• When they tried to make it collection based, Step-by-step process oriented, the bulk of the community backlashed it hard
• Players have a very self-centered mindset on these types of topics, and instant gratification is far too important to that argument

And as a side bar argument, I have noticed a very clear trend in discussion that suggests people want to know the whole process BEFORE starting a project. Something I can attribute to Anet's past attempts to sink the market, and players now paranoid about being screwed by it. When the original Gen2 set was released, a lot of people ran the collection steps in parallel to get it out of the way for later (which is common practice ever since HOT's collection system involved doing the same things and visiting the same places for nearly everything). But the lesson learned from that is that any token or gold cost immediately multiplies beyond practical, and thus many collections were stopped dead until there was a reason to complete them.

This, along with a ton of other reasons ranging from Economic to Player attention spans, is the reason Gen 2.5 is now basically just a material sink. Despite what some people incessantly try to claim is standard, "sense of achievement" is NOT something this community puts significant value in. If anything, its been a major driver for division in the community that some people seem to feed off of, and is used far more for exclusion rather then aspiration. More over, the immediacy of the Gen2.5 release fuels nearly all areas of fashion wars, skyrocketing demand before frustration can set in, increases TP trade volume like crazy, sinks the market in 7 days in way thats not possible with any other collection we've seen to date, and captures the FOMO trends that modern games exploit on a routine basis.

Through out the history of the game, on multiple occasions, its been proven that time gates illicit a resounding negative response from the community. So much so, that its presumed the only reason Anet ever uses it now, is deliberately calculated to control what methods the players will favor, and leverage alternative methods as part of their market sink attempts, or to steer people toward the Gem Store and/or Black Lion chest.

Another thing to consider is that releasing Legendary weapons as sets puts them in direct competition with each other, and distracts from the Black Lion Weapon skin sets. The former is caused by the sheer cost of Legendary weapon production, and the effect of "cumulative" cost comparison verses incremental cost comparison. 2500g every time you want a weapon, or 10,000g every 6 months... which is a better deal? You'd be surprised at how many people can't fully deconstruct that cost. The latter is the result of the cost/value of Legendary skins immediately overshadowing other skins, to the point that it'll be used as their new default. This non-disposable status of Legendary skins means they're not likely to stop using it for a long time, or will only use something else for a very specific cosplay scheme. In comparison, BL and Gem store skins are meant to be replaced on regular basis, as this fuels the gem store transactions for the majority of Fashion/Casual demographic (which is the largest demographic overall).

You see, players who regularly work on legendary weapons get incredibly efficient at wealth generation out of necessity. That same mind set could also be used to regularly convert gold to gems... more so now since the exchange rate has been steadily rising over the years. This works against the BlackLion, as it makes them less likely to outright buy gems for Gem store cosmetics, and interferes with whatever market currently exist for Gems to Gold (which makes Anet money, and is a worse value for the player as is).