Suggestion: Legendary Weapon Chest!

[Jong.5937]

So, it seems a key objective for many endgame players, come End of Dragons, will be filling their Legendary Armoury :

• Getting one set of each weight of armor
• Getting a full set of legendary trinkets
• Getting a full set of legendary weapons including probably 2 of each dual-wielded weapon

This is obviously a long term goal for most! for time-gating and sheer cost reasons.

 

One downside of the armory, though is, once you have the 3 armor sets, "Endgame" content like raids, WvW and, to a lesser extent, PvP lose one of their key rewards. The time-gated Skirmish Tickets in WvW, for example, are almost worthless once you have 3 legendary armor weights and a full set of legendary trinkets. What's worse is some have already invested in more than 3 sets of legendary armor for alts and those extra sets are now worthless. I know most people affected know this already!

 

Maybe Anet already have this all covered and are planning on providing a set of recipes for legendary weapons via raids and competitive game modes, so they stay relevant. But, on the off chance it isn't already part of EoD, can I suggest a very quick and easy way of providing long term value from raiding  and competitive game modes and a way for people to get value from the considerable time and effort put into crafting sets of legendary armor. Literally, this could be done with a few days of someone's time!

 

A new merchant could be added who will buy legendary armor pieces in exchange for a unique "gift" for each of the 6 (head, shoulders, chest, etc.) components. The gifts should be the same whether trading in raid or WvW armor, for people that have mix and matched components. The same merchant could then sell a "Legendary Weapon Chest" in return for one of each of the 6 gifts, where people could choose a Gen 3 legendary of their choice.

 

A full legendary armor set is equivalent in cost and has a longer time gate than a legendary weapon and this trade would honour the original promise of all legendary gear - that it will never be redundant 🙂. Providing this, not only for existing armor sets but also going forward, gives a robustly time-gated and cost regulated method for raiders and competitive players to acquire legendaries and preserve the value of their time-gated currencies 🙂. Yes, maybe it's a little more costly (90 mystic clovers for example) and a much more complicated set of unique weapon recipes could be created, but it would very, very simply keep these game modes relevant for the foreseeable future.

 

What do people think?

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Infusion.7149]

We don't know how legendary armory will work to be honest. There could be added value in having multiple sets of armor if you don't use outfits for example.

If legendary weapons were able to be obtained in this manner they would need to be accountbound to avoid crashing the market. Not to mention even God of WvW (10K rank with the description "I've been in the Mists for countless lifetimes.") did not reward Eternity or some other legendary weapon. It is far more likely only mystic clovers are returned as they have no economic value outside legendaries.

Skirmish tickets and ascended shards of glory do have many other uses, it is just people normally don't go for them.
For skirmish tickets:
* +5 stat WvW infusions
* Endless Potion of ascalonian mages
* catmander / mini catmander
* a few tonics (i.e. dolyak tonic)
* siege blueprints / trap & tricks (but the memory of battle cost should probably be reduced)
* siege decoration case
* ascended trinkets (which you can salvage)
* ascended weapons with different skins (each is 350 tickets = 18,200 tickets : 6,650 for Mistforged , 5,600 for Mistforged Obsidian , 5,600 for Mist Lord's)
* ascended salvage kits (poor purchase right now)

For ascended shard of glory it's similar:
* ascended trinkets (which you can salvage)
* ascended weapons with different skins (each is 400 ascended shards of glory = 12,800 for Mist Lord's + Mistforged Obsidian ; another 3,200 if you need Obsidian unlocked)
---> realistically this affects probably <1% of the playerbase as on gw2efficiency , statistics list only 500ish people owning the Mistforged Glorious Hero Armguards (see https://gw2efficiency.com/account/unlock-statistics?filter.key=skins&filter.type=Armor&filter.rarity=6 ).
---> Only 155 people on gw2efficiency own Mistforged Obsidian Short Bow which is <0.1% (https://gw2efficiency.com/account/unlock-statistics?filter.key=skins&filter.search=mist&filter.type=Weapon&filter.rarity=6)

The conclusion is the prerequisite would probably be a fully unlocked Mist Lord's + Mistforged Obsidian collection before you could even trade anything. Otherwise it would just be an excuse that people "don't have things to unlock" when they do already.

This suggestion needing a check of sorts would also apply to PVE by the way if it is even taken as magnetite shards and gaetling crystals already have far higher value than shards of glory. You'd need to have some sort of unlock check in place , i.e. every raid skin + mini unlocked. Legendary insights can be utilized in other ways (Envoy Insignia makes ascended armor craft near half the cost), plus legendary armor in PVE has a different skin. I feel that PvE should not be prioritized as firstly , the gold gain is far higher unless you repeatedly wipe (which you really shouldn't if you have 3 sets of legendary armor...) and secondly raiding intrinsically has more rewards than WVW/PVP.

P.S. For WvW specifically, they would be better off bringing back a prestige armor tier at 2K rank, with more dye channels (i.e. dyeable glow similar to PVP mistforged). If for example it required you to have legendary WvW armor as a basis + mistforged WvW armor to unlock it that would already be quite a time sink.

Warlord's armor acquisition method shows that more prestige level rewards are unlikely however.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Jong.5937]

Thanks for taking the time to reply with such a detailed response..

 

Yes, I agree we don't know for sure how legendary armory will work but I think it will be an epic fail if sharing is made impractical!

 

Totally agree any weapon so obtained would have to be account bound.

 

You are right God of WvW does not reward a legendary, but while that has a pretty epic soft timegate it has zero cost.

 

A few mystic clovers don't come close to compensating for 5+ months time plus thousands in gold for a now redundant "guaranteed always best available" armor set and there would be no impact on the wider community in allowing such a legendary "swap".

 

Really, the time-gated currencies will be close to worthless once people have the armor sets and trinkets. The items you mention will mean close to nothing to such people, who will have ascended weapons and weapon chests coming out their ears!! There are so many other ways of getting the smaller things you mention, quite apart from the shear quantity of those you would need to buy to match the time-gated cost of an armor set.

 

I don't see any reason why people should have to have bought every currently available skin before they can continue to acquire legendary gear in their chosen game mode any more than they needed to do that before buying the legendary armor!

 

I personally don't find some new skins anything like a replacement goal for legendary armor and rings (not that it wouldn't be another nice thing to collect!) and now more people will be actively building legendary weapon collections making those available via endgame content on a circa 5 month timegate, even though that is likely longer than acquiring via open world, seems a good way of extending and expanding the life of endgame activities. In the 2020s, it's a logical replacement for the ascended weapons that have been available that way for some years.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Infusion.7149]

The functionality of legendary armor will certainly be retained, but nothing has been said about cosmetics. What if you want a racial armor look on it? You won't be able to use its appearance on a different race for example. What if I have legendary mistforged WvW armor on my guardian and legendary PVE envoy armor on my warrior and legendary mistforged PVP armor on my revenant? If only functionality is retained, having different sets still offers added value of different looks.

The reason why legendary armor that is unused will not be "refunded' for materials is there is no way to know how much use someone has gotten out of it.There is no way to prorate accordingly and by this time anyone making it will have had at least one year's use of it unless they did not pay attention. The news of a legendary armory has been out an entire year (see https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/69920-legendary-equipment-and-templates-merged/)

Even if it were a 1 for 1 value exchange you would be looking at roughly one set of armor per legendary weapon. (see https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/legendaries?filter.type=armor)

Your post mentioned :
 

Quote

The time-gated Skirmish Tickets in WvW, for example, are almost worthless once you have 3 legendary armor weights and a full set of legendary trinkets. What's worse is some have already invested in more than 3 sets of legendary armor for alts and those extra sets are now worthless. I know most people affected know this already!

That is why I brought up other rewards for those currencies. That includes trinkets and backpieces as well. Backpieces and trinkets have salvage value, not weapons or armor that you mention.

"5 months' time + thousands of gold" is only really relevant for WVW players , which has been clocked at something akin to 7 gold per hour with boosters and active primetime play before the consumables and siege used are counted. As a heavy WVW player I can tell you that many people were disappointed when the WVW mistforged set was reduced from 2000 to 500 rank, which is why a new prestige tier armor with the same skin and dyable aura (i.e. rather low effort on Arenanet's part) with added dye channel would be better than "free legendary weapons". (Only 20% of 4000+hour players have 2K rank per gw2efficiency https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.wvwRank and in order to have max WvW masteries you need 1226 ranks not 500)

PVE raiders that are half decent (which I would hope they are if they did 750 LI) will still be making gold on par with other content such as openworld bosses or anything that isn't an outright farm (see https://fast.farming-community.eu/instances/raids). PVP players don't actually lose gold playing PVP , plus the ascended shards of glory are uncapped per season so I could only see the PVP league tickets being salvaged because there is no skin involved with legendary PVP armor.

There was already a thread akin to this one  in similar vein , general consensus is no materials will be or should be returned:

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Voltekka.2375]

Will they also charge you a fee with all the months/years you used the "extra" legendary armors? 

It's already as easy as it can get, to make/buy gen1 legendary weapons...

[Jong.5937]

I for one will be hugely disappointed if they don't allow different cosmetic looks per character for items in the armory. Look is so a central to GW2; an armory that forced all characters to look the same would be tragic. I just can't believe Anet would not have realised this and have us covered. We will see!

 

Yes, I was disappointed when the rank requirement was reduced for the WvW chest piece and like the idea of a genuinely prestige armor set. I just don't see it as an alternative to some opportunity to acquire legendary weapons, now armor and trinkets are likely to be covered. As I said, in 2021, it's the logical next step to providing ascended weapons back in the day 

 

I can see we are not going to agree on trading in extra armor sets, which is fine. But I can't see why any should have an issue with it. It will affect only a small number of people, it will have no detrimental economic impact (assuming they are account bound), it's a reward for long-term commitment and legendaries are supposed to keep their value, remain forever best in class and relevant. I understand we may doubt it will happen but why anyone would not like it to happen I don't personally get. But, that's what makes life interesting I guess :).

 

Thanks again for engaging in the debate.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Yakuzai.6593]

I dont think that this game was originally designed to have multiple alt accounts.

I guess the original vision was:

New player starts his/her journey, gets into endgame, spends time to gather gear, enjoys endgame, starts to try out other classes and specializations, realizes that having legendary stuff would make things much easier, spends time in crafting legendary stuff, enjoys the variety of this game and its classes to enable the maximum of current and future content.

 

Maybe i didnt fully understood your thread, but somehow i just saw someone beeing disappointed in investing a lot of stuff in alt accounts. Thats just unlucky then.

[Jong.5937]

I was talking about extra sets of legendary armor for alternate characters to a main on the same account. Sorry, I can see how that could be unclear.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Rasimir.6239]

18 hours ago, Jong.5937 said:

the original promise of all legendary gear - that it will never be redundant

Where exactly did you get this line from? I do seem to recall that they at one point promised that legendary gear will never be eclipsed by a higher gear tier with higher stats, but I don't remember them ever saying anything about having other options of the same strength.

 

Technically the legendary armory will not be different than sharing a single legendary piece of equipment now, it just adds some qol to the sharing part. It won't change the stats on any of the items you already have (and have potentially used for months or even years already), nor will it introduce items with higher stats.

[Jong.5937]

My words for sure, but I think it reflects the spirit of their legendary promise in the new context of the legendary armory. And the armory (done right) does make a 2nd set of the same weight completely pointless and so invalidated,. Sure you could ignore the armory and keep using the armor set but it doesn't alter the fact that it would be worthless.

 

Look, I'm not saying they owe me and I'm not going to kick and scream if they don't do it.  Just it would be a really nice touch if they did, it would have no impact on the wider economy and, as the items being traded cost 5 months grind and ~2.5k gold,  no other players should feel hard done by 🙂. Why wouldn't that be a good thing?

 

It also provides a very easy way of allowing these endgame modes staying relevant for legendary acquisition at a cost and rate fair to all players, when we know/suspect development resources for these modes are probably very limited.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Infusion.7149]

On the flip side you say it won't affect the in-game economy, but each one you trade in is "~2.5k gold" that is not being dealt into the economy. In addition, materials would not be drained from the economy either. That fundamentally is the issue, especially given the events that provide a heavy influx of materials.

The gold you don't spend in the trading post or gain from selling materials you would have otherwise used is a net gain. Since it benefits people with legendary gear over 3 sets, that is already inherently a wealthier segment of the population. That would be the inverse of a progressive tax (i.e. a luxury tax on all purchased non-electric Ferraris or over $10 million assessed value homes), it would be regressive similar to a gas tax or a tax on all food.

Believe it or not there's plenty of players that aren't even in full ascended, which is why more ascended weapons and trinkets with usable stats (viper/berserker/marauder) should be given out for achievements. That would be of much more benefit to the overall population.

[Jong.5937]

I get what you are saying, I do. Yes people in this situation are hardly worthy of charity, but still months of time and gold were already added to that very economy for the promise of lifelong relevance that is now revoked.

 

And I still say this will be a drop in the ocean of the economy and would not make a dent, if only because any impact (speaking personally at least!) will not be for 2+ years when, if we are very lucky, there are no more weapons to add 🤣. In the meantime money will still need to be spent!

 

Plus, I still think there needs to be an on-going way to acquire legendary weapons in raids, WvW and PvP.

Edited June 8, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Rasimir.6239]

  

9 hours ago, Jong.5937 said:

the promise of lifelong relevance that is now revoked.

  On the danger of repeating myself: that is your interpretation of what was said. The other interpretation, namely that there will never be stronger equipment than legendary equipment, still stands, and whether or not you want to keep using different pieces of legendary equipment on different characters or re-use just one from next month on is your choice, but doesn't make the equipment any weaker than it is now.

 

Change happens, especially in a massive online game like this one. Change has always happened. Every time, there are winners and (hopefully far less) "loosers", however you define loosing in this context. Anything you do in an evolving game holds the risk that at one point in the future hindsight will tell you that it might've been more efficient to do things differently. Contrary to other games that drop a gear tier increase every year or so, the legendary armory is a boon to a large part of the playerbase, and even those that now have duplicate items haven't lost anything apart from the feeling that they may not have played as efficiently as they would have if they had known what was to come.

 

Technically none of your extra legendaries is useless with the upcoming change, they are just not as useful any more as they used to be. Even then, that usefulness was mostly in the quality of life department, since you could already share your equipment among all characters, although at the premium of taking extra time to configure builds every time you swap. You could also have just used ascended equipment instead of the extra legendary, but you chose to go the legendary route instead. It was your own choice.

 

9 hours ago, Jong.5937 said:

Plus, I still think there needs to be an on-going way to acquire legendary weapons in raids, WvW and PvP.

That totally depends on whether ANet wants people to play more instanced content (raids), like pretty much any other MMO out there, or open world, the signature strength of this game (up to now). You can already gather the resources for legendary weapons through a variety of gameplay, and they do play a large factor in the stability of the game's trading system. Somehow I doubt ANet will introduce ways to reliably gather legendary weapons that allow people to largely opt-out of both open world gameplay (gifts of exploration and material gathering, plus wvw/pvp reward tracks that also add to the material supply) and the material trading market.

[Jong.5937]

Of course I get what you are saying, Yes, I am reinterpreting the legendary "promise" in the light of a change that was not on the radar all those years ago. Anet are free to disagree.  I still believe my reinterpretation holds though, I won't repeat my reasons or we really are going in circles!

 

Of course I understand change happens with winners and losers and, as I said before, I am not crying and stomping my feet here 🙂! But invalidating x times 5 months and 2.5k gold's worth of work is at the top end of the list of costly changes, most would agree. I remain slightly baffled why some would actively argue for such behaviour instead of just saying to the trade "yes, sounds fair, but I think it's unlikely to happen", which I totally get. but I guess difference is what makes the world go round!

 

Regarding making legendary weapons available in raids and competitive modes. I think the same was said about ascended back in the day and, in 2021 with EoD and the legendary armory, legendaries will be the new ascended. I also doubt the GW2 community will abandon Open World for raids and competitive modes! A little bit more of a swing in that direction would only be for the good IMO. but we will see!

 

Edited June 9, 2021 by Jong.5937

[Rasimir.6239]

2 hours ago, Jong.5937 said:

I remain slightly baffled why some would actively argue for such behaviour

That's an easy question to answer: personally I think the legendary armory will benefit a lot of people, while the ones that may feel their duplicate legendaries are now "worthless" (a definition I still don't agree with btw 😉 ) are few in comparrison and not exactly on the "needy" end of the wealth spectrum as far as the GW2 player base as a whole goes.

 

In a way ANet is somewhat leveling the field with the armory, by making usage of legendary equipment across different characters more accessible to everyone. Those that invested in duplicate legendaries really are not loosing anything (they still have access to best-in-slot equipment for all of the slots they own at least one legendary piece for, and most of them had the advantage of the duplicate pieces for a good while already). It's more that the rest of the playerbase is catching up, which I still see as a net positive.