Alternatives to the Legendary Armory: Heirloom equipment, Jeweler 500, and more

[Lonami.2987]

@maddoctor.2738 said:If you want to have a system like this, your proposal should have vastly different values for the different types of items. Different cost for weapons, armor, runes/sigils, trinkets and back item. A cost that is good for a Weapon, is gonna be absolutely terrible for a trinket.

As long as the prices don't get ridiculous, fine with me. No one should feel like they're throwing their money away by storing ascended equipment. Maybe require payment to unlock the slot before you can store any items, but refund that cost once you store legendaries?

I wouldn't mind if some types of items required specific accountbound currencies either, like, fractal relics to store ascended jewelry or whatever. Could be a great way to promote diverse content. Alternatively, since jewelry is so cheap, maybe just force players to upgrade it using jeweler 500. Or maybe only allow crafted ascended jewelry to be stored. Plenty options there.

Let's not forget that players can already unequip their ascended equipment, leave it at the bank, and pick it up with another character. The goal of this system is to make sharing gear easier, specially for newer players who might struggle with gear.

I think everyone here would like other players to be wielding good gear, instead of rare equipment with soldier stats. This system would be a step forward to fix that problem, while also opening the way for veterans to be able to test different builds far more easily.

@Zok.4956 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Zok.4956 said:In reality is is much cheaper to "unlock" all stat combinations, because you do not need to craft all those items. You can just stat swap ascended weapons/armor in the mystic forge, which is a lot cheaper.

That wouldn't work with the rules presented in the first post of the thread, once you put an item in the system you lose the ability to stat swap anymore. I tried to use the rules presented by the thread starter when calculating the cost

It was also written: "Heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment, but stat selection is limited to stats you've previously unlocked."

So, you make the stat-changes in the mystic forge to "unlock" the stats before you put the item in the proposed storage system.

You would lose the item upon storage, so you would lose the ability to use the Mystic Forge to swap stats as many times as you want too. If you like to swap stats often, you shouldn't store your equipment.

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:This essentially keeps the total price of the Heirloom Short Bow at less than 1800g (and with inflated values due to rounding) compared to a legendary weapon that costs almost 2300g. And remember this is for every single stat combination, players that need 5 or 10 of them (out of the 35 total) will pay significantly less.Meaning, your prices are way way too generous.

Price is probably the biggest problem after any technical issues.

Any alternative to legendaries that isn't cheaper than legendaries is almost useless. Their only usefulness is to avoid the need to acquire a GoB and GoE.On the other hand if the alternative is cheaper then legendaries are essentially reduced to an expensive skin.

The only way to avoid the issue is to not have any alternative ...

Pretty much what they were supposed to be in the first place. I mean, there are plenty exotic weapons worth more than 500 gold each, plus loads of heavy RNG Black Lion Chest items which are far more expensive than any legendary too.

@Mungo Zen.9364 said:Yet, you want to have Ascended gear able to Stat Swap and Gear Share, something that is unique to Legendary items.

You know you can already do that, right? You need to use the Mystic Forge and the bank though, instead of it being a single click away. That's the only difference.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Lonami.2987 said:I think everyone here would like other players to be wielding good gear, instead of rare equipment with soldier stats. This system would be a step forward to fix that problem, while also opening the way for veterans to be able to test different builds far more easily.

Hyperbole much? The recent patch made all stats available on the trading post. There are exotic items which are stat selectable for 1g a piece for some slots, other slots are easily filled with exotic items from events or rewards. Getting full exotic is a matter of minutes even for new players.

As mentioned there are very easy and fast acquirable ascended items like trinkets and even some weapons.

This type of not game state reflective statement does not make your argument any stronger, it merely suggests you are out of touch with this games gearing and reward system.

I'd say what most players want, if they know it or not, is a functioning itemization system for a MMORPG. Now you can make an argument that itemization should be removed, but then do make that argument and stop beating around the bush. Again, ascended gear was introduced BECAUSE players were leaving the game at launch due to lack of gearing incentives, make an argument how this is not applicable years later.

@Lonami.2987 said:You would lose the item upon storage, so you would lose the ability to use the Mystic Forge to swap stats as many times as you want too. If you like to swap stats often, you shouldn't store your equipment.

Nobody swaps stats "often". As mentioned by me, the cost of swaping stats in ascended gear is around 30-40% of the item cost. Great for changing an undesired DROP into a desired stat, too expensive to do regularly over crafting another item.

Enter the convenience of legendary gear or crafting multiple ascended items.

Here another example of you not being in touch of how this game and how it's systems are actually being used.

@Lonami.2987 said:You know you can already do that, right? You need to use the Mystic Forge and the bank though, instead of it being a single click away. That's the only difference.

Have you ever actually stat swapped an ascended item? Maybe do that first, then make this claim again.

Hint: it's not free.

[ugrakarma.9416]

the free 2 equipment tabs + flood of ascendeds made the legendary obsolete.

managing lots of ascedend gear with various stats was problem because i have 9 alts, but now inst more a problem.

i have 3 mains heavy alts, 5 ascendend sets, i have more ascended gear than alts.

the kind of player that manage more than this is probably 0,001% of playbase.

[Infusion.7149]

Because there's the claim I "didn't read the post"...

Let me expand on the above.

There is really no reason for Arenanet to implement this idea as a business unless they charge gems for it and disregard your proposal that people can remove item upgrades for free.

The legendary armory is supposed to rely on templates, so likely equipment templates. The reasoning is equipment templates are at a disadvantage if you use legendary items (i.e. more than just the weapon) because you can only have six (datamined to 10 if I'm not mistaken) equipment templates.

The monetization would be at a bare minimum something akin to 600+ gems for an armory storage kit (see build storage , bank tabs, etc), not 20g which is less than one day of fractals.

Purchase an Armory Storage Kit from Miyani. Storage kits have 20 uses, and a fixed cost of 20 gold plus 200 transmutation charges.

Transmutation Charges would still be monetized. There is no reason that they would not monetize it. If you don't like paying gems for them go play WvW or PVP or do map completion.

Runes and sigils would still be charged a fee to remove via upgrade extractor , because there's no incentive for them to change this and destroy the value of the endless upgrade extractor as well as the upgrade extractors in the gem store. Scholar rune + sigil of force has been meta everywhere that power is relevant more or less. The only time you use something else is because you need boon duration or crit chance (thief runes) unless you are running a condi build (why, unless it's instanced content such as 100CM or something akin to Cairn / Matthias / Largos).

The crux of this is the very fact that in the original post it is said heirloom equipment works exactly as legendary equipment ... there's only a handful of stats you would even want to use unless you play WvW (so add minstrel , trailblazer, and marauder typically). An implementation such as this basically invalidates legendary items even further because you might as well just make a bunch of characters instead of making legendary items and buying equipment templates. That's counter to the point of templates.

The game was in a better state in terms of accessibility when ascended stat creep was added, honestly. Now that the damage has been done the best way to rectify it is to increase accessibility of ascended (which has been done mostly via ascended back , rings, + trinkets via living world). There's been a few ascended upgrades for weapons such as Boneskinner drops but for the most part most weapon drops in open-world are exotic or lower. This is a consideration before it hits Steam and the proposed solution here does nothing to help with that because it only allows people with excess ascended (i.e. mostly people that do high tier fractals and/or get ascended drops from raids) to make a legendary-like ascended. In addition, if the system only fully works with infused backpieces as well as infused + attuned rings it helps no new players whatsoever and only rewards people that do fractals often enough to actually infuse all their Viper / Diviner / Minstrel / Trailblazer rings and backpieces.

In terms of investment I would say the largest investment a new player would have to make is 500 in a craft for a weapon unless they do strikes for it. Having more story collections reward an ascended weapon (Knight of the Thorn , Specialization Collections , Gift of Aurene from 1000 coffers in Dragonfall, etc) would be a step in the right direction overall. As stated in my prior post , if level 78 crafter backpieces with an infusion slot aren't good enough per say then Bough of Melandru is effectively an infused backpiece with zero need for fractals.

Yesterday I saw someone write exotic is all you need in EoTN , which I promptly refuted. It's absolutely gimping yourself if you don't use ascended weapon (~ +5% weapon strength) + amulet/trinkets/back/ring. Let's not kid ourselves and think that ascended is difficult to obtain in this current state of the game compared to before. Back when I first crafted ascended light armor it cost 300g a piece , which is more than what legendary armor costs per piece now.

[Firebeard.1746]

Yeah giving the armory ascended gear devalues the value proposition of LA. If they did anything, I'd like them to release a tier of exotic soulbound gear on use that can be stat swapped at will and has infusion slots, and costs about as much as ascended to make, that way we can play with our characters' full capabilities before diving super deep into a particular ascended gear setup (and being forced to play for years before being able to experiment using leggies).

[Lonami.2987]

@ugrakarma.9416 said:the free 2 equipment tabs + flood of ascendeds made the legendary obsolete.

managing lots of ascedend gear with various stats was problem because i have 9 alts, but now inst more a problem.

i have 3 mains heavy alts, 5 ascendend sets, i have more ascended gear than alts.

the kind of player that manage more than this is probably 0,001% of playbase.

Exactly, I'd go even further and say nowadays managing acended equipment is far more comfortable than managing legendary equipment, due to all its issues.

@Firebeard.1746 said:Yeah giving the armory ascended gear devalues the value proposition of LA. If they did anything, I'd like them to release a tier of exotic soulbound gear on use that can be stat swapped at will and has infusion slots, and costs about as much as ascended to make, that way we can play with our characters' full capabilities before diving super deep into a particular ascended gear setup (and being forced to play for years before being able to experiment using leggies).

That would solve many of the problems we have right now.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

Sounds like a great idea

[Veprovina.4876]

The only thing they really need to do is make legendary armour function like a permanent equipment instead of an item that you can equip.Once you unlock a certain armour of a specific weight, you should get an item, double click it and it converts that slot into a permanent armour slot, plus unlocks whatever skin you started out with (Raid, PvP, WvW variety). The unlocked armour slot should be unlocked for all present and future characters who can wear that weight because let's face it, once you unlock a legendary armour, you're never going to use anything else.

Furthermore, legendary armour slots that get converted function separately per equipment template (different stats, runes, infusions AND skins).

That's it, that's all they really need to do to make a "legendary armoury" without devaluing anything previous like ascended gear.

Legendary armour should have never been an item to drag in and out of equipment slots.That way, Ascended stays as an item to share through bank when needed, and Legendary armor actually has value, because now, legendary armor is largely a waste of money compared to ascended.

Legendary weapons should stay items since one class can use multiple, but you're never going to change your armor if you have a legendary. Just its stats, infusions, runes and skins (which should be separate in each equipment template - would sell more templates for fashion wars changing on the fly).