[Solution] The Legendary Gear Problem

[Kilty.4906]

Hi! 👋

Legendary gear is amazing, isn't it? But the actual system comes with a great cost: it invalidates future content.
When Anet thought of legendaries back in 2012 I don't think they thought it would come to be such a huge quality of life and it is somewhat even unfair for those who do not own any. When you acquire a legendary gear you unlock all possible stats that gear has, meaning that players with legendary gear are no longer incentivized to craft or spend with new sigils, runes, insignias, or inscriptions. This problem exacerbates when new content is released since new stats that can come with those contents are also unlocked, and with EoD at our doorstep players with legendary gear will unlock new stats without even playing that content, invalidating a lot of the works that the devs had put in.

 

I believe a way around this problem is to change the way legendary gear works. Legendary gear should work as a "storage unit", for example, if you have an Incinerator(Gen1 Legendary Dagger) you can store in them ascended inscriptions, like Zojja's(berserker) and/or Maklain's(minstrel), this storage would work similarly to how legendary gear works already, once you store a stats in them it's available forever and can be swapped at any time, this storage unit should also be per legendary and not per legendary type, so if you have two Incinerators or two legendary weapons their storage should be separated. This would give value to unlock recipes for sigils, runes, insignias and inscriptions, crafting them, and the crafting system in general. It would also allow the devs to unlock Jeweler 500 bringing with it an ascended version of jeweler's inscriptions/insignias. Another thing I would like to see for legendaries is removing legendary skins from the wardrobe, to give them more value, so if you would want to display two Incinerators you would need to own two Incinerators. And perhaps, make legendary more accessible, reducing the material cost to compensate for the new system.

 

But what should we do with players that already own a legendary? Leave them as it is, then when new content comes out, they will get to work on unlocking the new stats.

 

I can see this being more healthy for the game than the actual system. Thank you for reading! 🙂

Edited August 9, 2021 by Kilty.4906
Redacted

[Dante.1763]

Ah, so legendaries only get more expensive. Sounds very unhealthy honestly.

[Omega.6801]

People grind for skins more than stats. Every piece of content where ascendeds are recomended gives you the means to aquire the ascendeds you need. Usually, when we go from PoF and HoTs release, new stats are included in existing containers so people can easily get them.

The current system is fine.

[Zalavaaris.5329]

Get out of here with that.... I've worked too hard for that bs to come into play. Absolutely not. Downvote

[codedbykush.2019]

34 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

But what should we do with players that already own a legendary? Leave them as it is, then when new content comes out, they will get to work on unlocking the new stats.

 

Do you even understand how much does it cost to craft a set of legendary gear?

 

I crafted 3 sets and spent so much of my time and money on them.

 

Your post shows how misunderstood you're about the legendary gear.

 

Starters, legendary gear wasn't released in 2012.

[Infusion.7149]

I think any suggestion on this forum should be given a self evaluation before posting. So here's my self-evaluation question for you  : but why?

If your answer is to make sigils / runes / inscriptions / insignias have value well they already have value. The majority of the population is not making legendary weapons and such for every weapon possible, only the ones they value skin-wise because weapons for the most part are on on one or two stat choices for the majority of PvE players. In the case of runes and sigils it's even more so because you need to spend hundreds of gold for each one so the only time it is remotely worth it is if you have many characters and don't want to grind Monk or Nightmare runes for example.

If your answer is that you think that people should unlock every stat choice they want to use, the sheer expense of legendary anything (except armor on many characters perhaps) is going to render that moot as well. Most PvE players are using some variant of Berserker's, Diviner's, Viper's (more so if you do fractal 100 less so if you do mainly openworld), Harrier's unless they raid then maybe Minstrel's/Plaguedoctor or what have you. There's really no conceivable way that legendaries do not exceed cost of making 6 sets of ascended weapons , trinkets, or backpieces. The only time there is a huge QoL is if you intend to have 2 infusion slots on backpieces because you need 500 fractal relics per backpiece to infuse it.

 

TL;DR: Terrible idea.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Do people not realize that for the cost of a single Bolt you can get over 50 Ascended Swords?

 

I get the feeling people still think Ascended gear costs much.

 

30g. Thats what a ascended Sword cost. Thats nothing.

 

If i pay ~1600g to craft a legendary than i think i should get something nice in return.

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Strixxe.2019]

Thing is to craft legendary weapon is really long term achievement.  And OP probbably cant grasp how much gold and time you need to sink in to cradt one...  And im nit even talking about eternity.. That thing is on the whole next level...

[Kilty.4906]

44 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

Ah, so legendaries only get more expensive. Sounds very unhealthy honestly.

As I said "make legendary more accessible, reducing the material cost to compensate for the new system"

 

42 minutes ago, lokh.2695 said:

People grind for skins more than stats. Every piece of content where ascendeds are recomended gives you the means to aquire the ascendeds you need. Usually, when we go from PoF and HoTs release, new stats are included in existing containers so people can easily get them.

The current system is fine.

You have a point but once you choose an option from those container you can't easily swap.

 

26 minutes ago, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

Get out of here with that.... I've worked too hard for that bs to come into play. Absolutely not. Downvote

As I said "what should we do with players that already own a legendary? Leave them as it is"

 

12 minutes ago, codedbykush.2019 said:

 

Do you even understand how much does it cost to craft a set of legendary gear?

 

I crafted 3 sets and spent so much of my time and money on them.

 

Your post shows how misunderstood you're about the legendary gear.

 

Starters, legendary gear wasn't released in 2012.

I do, I have crafted some of them, and no I'm not misunderstood how broken the current legendary system is, and yes legendary weapons were released in 2012.

 

4 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

There is no need for a new system. Your suggestion is terrible. 

So, you believe that players should have instant access to any stats in the game, including those to come with EoD, across an entire account without any penality?

 

2 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

I think any suggestion on this forum should be given a self evaluation before posting. So here's my self-evaluation question for you  : but why?

If your answer is to make sigils / runes / inscriptions / insignias have value well they already have value. The majority of the population is not making legendary weapons and such for every weapon possible, only the ones they value skin-wise because weapons for the most part are on on one or two stat choices for the majority of PvE players.

If your answer is that you think that people should unlock every stat choice they want to use, the sheer expense of legendary anything (except armor on many characters perhaps) is going to render that moot as well. Most PvE players are using some variant of Berserker's, Diviner's, Viper's (more so if you do fractal 100 less so if you do mainly openworld), Harrier's unless they raid then maybe Minstrel's/Plaguedoctor or what have you. There's really no conceivable way that legendaries do not exceed cost of making 6 sets of ascended weapons , trinkets, or backpieces. The only time there is a huge QoL is if you intend to have 2 infusion slots on backpieces because you need 500 fractal relics per backpiece to infuse it.

 

TL;DR: Terrible idea.

Why? Legendaries were already broken before Legendary Armory but now players have even less reason to get new gear because with simple two clicks and you have all stats you in the game, across an entire account without no effort. Do you really think this is balanced? 

 

[ArchonWing.9480]

In order to not need inscriptions, you would have to craft one of each legendary weapon. Excluding the 3 water weapons, that makes 16.  16 legendaries is a lot. Even 8 is a lot.

 

The average player on Gw2efficiency that's played 4000+ hours has 6 legendary weapons and 5 pieces of legendary armor, which is far from what it would take to cover everything. And Gw2efficiency is skewed towards hardcore players. In any case, the amount of people with enough legendaries to even cover several classes is more or less, irrelevant.

 

This is of course assuming that new stats would be desirable or extremely difficult to acquire. Considering new stats like grieving and harrier which are really easy to get, I am pretty skeptical that any new stats would be anything close to niche, or even meaningful in any meta. Even the Living Story specific ones simply require some map currency.

Edited August 9, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[yoni.7015]

9 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

As I said "make legendary more accessible, reducing the material cost to compensate for the new system"

 

You have a point but once you choose an option from those container you can't easily swap.

 

As I said "what should we do with players that already own a legendary? Leave them as it is"

 

I do, I have crafted some of them, and no I'm not misunderstood how broken the current legendary system is, and yes legendary weapons were released in 2012.

 

So, you believe that players should have instant access to any stats in the game, including those to come with EoD, across an entire account without any penality?

 

Why? Legendaries were already broken before Legendary Armory but now players have even less reason to get new gear because with simple two clicks and you have all stats you in the game, across an entire account without no effort. Do you really think this is balanced? 

 

The endgame in Guild Wars 2 is more about skins than about gear. 
what’s the problem with having access to the new stats because you have legendary armor? You are seeing a problem where there is none. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by yoni.7015

[Infusion.7149]

18 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

As I said "make legendary more accessible, reducing the material cost to compensate for the new system"

 

You have a point but once you choose an option from those container you can't easily swap.

 

As I said "what should we do with players that already own a legendary? Leave them as it is"

 

I do, I have crafted some of them, and no I'm not misunderstood how broken the current legendary system is, and yes legendary weapons were released in 2012.

 

So, you believe that players should have instant access to any stats in the game, including those to come with EoD, across an entire account without any penality?

 

Why? Legendaries were already broken before Legendary Armory but now players have even less reason to get new gear because with simple two clicks and you have all stats you in the game, across an entire account without no effort. Do you really think this is balanced? 

 

The math doesn't check out. You're posting based on emotions and not facts.

Before the legendary armory there was more or less no reason to run a legendary weapon other than skin because having to swap it in and out of templates if you wanted to use it on more than one character and having all the sigils and stuff reset was a major pain. The only exception is if you are a hardcore raider that actually tests every stat and sigil combination (i.e. more than 6 sigils and stats). People in WVW can make use of the infusion swap but most don't use more than 6 combinations. All the armory did was restore actual functionality to weapons really without requiring shared inventory slots and boatload of template shenanigans.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[codedbykush.2019]

17 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

yes legendary weapons were released in 2012.

Did you forget the title of your post? And you want the people who crafted legendary weapons also "work" on the new stats that they would release in EOD? Is this a joke?

Edited August 9, 2021 by codedbykush.2019

[Kilty.4906]

10 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

In order to not need inscriptions, you would have to craft one of each legendary weapon. Excluding the 3 water weapons, that makes 16.  16 legendaries is a lot. Even 8 is a lot.

 

The average player on Gw2efficiency that's played 4000+ hours has 6 legendary weapons and 5 pieces of legendary armor, which is far from what it would take to cover everything. And Gw2efficiency is skewed towards hardcore players. In any case, the amount of people with enough legendaries to even cover several classes is more or less, irrelevant.

 

This is of course assuming that new stats would be desirable or extremely difficult to acquire. Considering new stats like grieving and harrier which are really easy to get, I am pretty skeptical that any new stats would be anything close to niche, or even meaningful in any meta. Even the Living Story specific ones simply require some map currency.

Yeah, perhaps this part is too much:

1 hour ago, Kilty.4906 said:

this storage unit should also be per legendary and not per legendary type, so if you have two Incinerators or two legendary weapons their storage should be separated.

 

Though I still think you should unlock them, at least once. Having this freedom as soon as a new content drop is nonsense.

 

[Dante.1763]

23 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

As I said "make legendary more accessible, reducing the material cost to compensate for the new system"

They would have to be idiotically cheaper to the point that anet wouldnt even consider it. Ascended sigils vary in price from 40g on down to 18, and frankly having to buy ALL the sigils + Craft the account bound ones would be a massive turn off. No thank you to that idea.

 

Especially because youd have to do it for every single weapon made after this idea came into place. + Do it for all content after it too. Nope. Presently harms nobody by letting it function as it is now.

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by Dante.1763

[Kilty.4906]

2 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

They would have to be idiotically cheaper to the point that anet wouldnt even consider it. Ascended sigils vary in price from 40g on down to 18, and frankly having to buy ALL the sigils + Craft the account bound ones would be a massive turn off. No thank you to that idea.

 

Problem is: you are seen it as you have to unlock all sigils, most of the sigils people don't even use. Also, yes having to unlock for every piece of gear is not ideal but I still think players should have to craft at least once.

[Infusion.7149]

12 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

Yeah, perhaps this part is too much:

 

Though I still think you should unlock them, at least once. Having this freedom as soon as a new content drop is nonsense.

 

Okay let me put it another way...
Let's say you're 100% correct the system is broken. (I don't think you are , but let's assume you are.)

If they implement your suggestion all it will do is annoy everyone with legendary items, inflate prices for people still on ascended or exotic, and make the general 90%+ playerbase shout and scream about how terrible the devs are at implementing one feature (the armory) and then penalizing everyone that actually intends to use it.

Sigils are more than covered with the mystic motes and condensed might/magic.

In addition, do you honestly believe people that speedclear instanced content in <2 hours after it drops without guides will not have the new stats more or less day 1 unless they are pointlessly timegated? The most timegated inscriptions/insignias can be obtained in less than a day (see diviner's / plaguedoctor's/celestial) even if accountbound. How naive to believe this suggestion is worth even thinking about.
 

Easy logic.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[ArchonWing.9480]

15 minutes ago, Kilty.4906 said:

Yeah, perhaps this part is too much:

 

Though I still think you should unlock them, at least once. Having this freedom as soon as a new content drop is nonsense.

 

What kind of freedom are we really talking about though? PoF introduced exactly 4 stats.  3 of them, you can buy the exotic insignia to stat change an ascended item. Grieving ones cost less than 20s, while the other 2 cost less than 3g. These are just as convenient as core stats.

 

Oh I guess there's Diviners, but barely.

 

The only one that's sorta gated is PlagueDoctor. Not only is that an extremely niche stat, it requires just playing some of the map. Which people will probably do anyways....

 

 

Edited August 9, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Kilty.4906]

Ok, I've been defeated. 😞

I'm sorry for wasting your time.

[Cyninja.2954]

The issue here, and yes indeed it "might" be an issue way down the road (as in maybe 1 or 2 more expansions. So give or take 4-6 more years), is that you are vastly underestimating how much legendary gear costs.

 

Sure, technically if we assume 5-8 more years and a lot of current players become more veteran and acquire more and more legendary gear, this could become an issue.

The reason it is not for the foreseeable future:

1. veteran players drop out of the game, occasionally to return at a later date. Their wealth acquisition pauses

2. a lot of players are still not interested in legendary gear. It is a ton of work and very expensive

3. new players join the game constantly. For a new player to "catch up" to a veteran status of today, it would take close to 7-9 years (not quite in regards to wealth acquisition, given a new player might start trading and make huge sums of gold, but on average this holds true)

 

Just a small calculation:

My current legendary armory shows a total value of 88,053 gold on efficiency. I am pretty much full legendary.

 

At 9 years, given I am a veteran of head start launch, that still amounts to on average 9,783 gold per year. Which in turn means 825 gold per month. Which in turn results in 27 gold per day. Yet I am not even "done" given I am missing a few weapons for dual weapons setups, or more than 2 1-handed weapon setups. That's a VERY long time for any player to work towards something.

 

For anyone else, if you are not full legendary, you always have something to work towards.

 

Now, where this does become an issue faster is armor and runes/sigils. With a total cost of around 7,542 gold for a full 3 armor weight setup (aka all 3 armors from pve, spvp and wvw are slightly cheaper) and another 8,450 gold for 7 runes and 8 sigils (5,464 for 6 runes and 4 sigils, if we omit underwater gear), the total of around 16,000 gold is far more achievable. Yet even that is still a tremendous sum of gold.

 

If this does become a huge and widespread issue, I'm sure the developers will come up with something. For now, it's not.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Xanadrine.4352]

2 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

People grind for skins more than stats. Every piece of content where ascendeds are recomended gives you the means to aquire the ascendeds you need. Usually, when we go from PoF and HoTs release, new stats are included in existing containers so people can easily get them.

The current system is fine.

The current system is broken. The QoL that the armory gives is heads and tails above anything else. So the elite can run around swapping stats and changing sets in an instant. While the poor slobs that created multiple sets of freaking ascended for multiple builds across multiple toons are stuck shlubbing around all those sets in their inventory! And having to jump hoops to swap stats. Guess this game is a gear race after all, get ascended you will never have to worry about it becoming obsolete they said! BS

[codedbykush.2019]

39 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

For a new player to "catch up" to a veteran status of today, it would take close to 7-9 years

I'm not sure how you define veteran status, I created this account in Feb 2020 and now has cleared all raids wings including CMs (except Dhuum), FotM 100, crafted all 3 weights of PVE raid gear, a couple of legendary weapons, Ad Infi, and currently working on vision and others.

 

It does take a lot of effort and time invested in the game, but any new player can reach legendary gear within 1 year or so.

[ArchonWing.9480]

49 minutes ago, Zuldari.3940 said:

 While the poor slobs that created multiple sets of freaking ascended for multiple builds across multiple toons are stuck shlubbing around all those sets in their inventory!

 

I mean, it's actually easier to swap an ascended weapon in, than a legendary one atm.

 

As for those poor slobs that created multiple sets of ascended for multiple builds, oh no, the humanity!

 

https://i.imgur.com/sAvMWMe.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/cR5zAXo.jpg

 

Saving the gold and buying more character slots, gearing them with ascended, is a much more convenient way to gain access to more builds. There should be a sale coming up soon. If you really want to waste you money, you could even buy more equipment templates if you don't want to switch toons. (Probably wait for a good sale)

 

Or you could buy the perma bank express. Keep ascended gear in your bank and it effectively turns into a gear locker with huge storage. I bought that long before I constructed any legendary. It is objectively a superior choice and is not limited to gear. And it's not more expensive than multiple sets of legendary armor. And it requires no gameplay beyond getting gold.

 

And guess what? I'm still using Ascended for some of my characters, despite having legendary armor for all 3 weights, because it's not worth the hassle. I would lose gold paying for infusion extractors and new runes.  And of course I still need ascended weapons.

Edited August 9, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

2 hours ago, codedbykush.2019 said:

Did you forget the title of your post? And you want the people who crafted legendary weapons also "work" on the new stats that they would release in EOD? Is this a joke?

Gear is a synonym for equipment.

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gear_(disambiguation)

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment

 

Just an FYI. 

[Zalavaaris.5329]

3 hours ago, Kilty.4906 said:

Ok, I've been defeated. 😞

I'm sorry for wasting your time.

Don't worry about it, you'll get em next time!