What's the point of Transcendence?

[DoomNexus.5324]

Can anybody give me an insight on what the purpose of Transcendence will be once the Living World Return amulet is available?
Like.. why would anybody waste a Mystic Tribute (which according to gw2efficiency is worth about ~1674g at the moment) on something you can not only get for free but also earn quite a bit of money, skins and extremely useful items in general while working towards it? Especially since - and I can only talk for myself and pvp players I know - "we" tend to also play a lot of PvE and are very dedicated when it comes to achieving something we set as goal for our self, so completing the achievements isn't really an issue. At least I am not complaining about having to play the living world (again).. I don't like the story and will just watch something on youtube/twitch while doing the achievements but yea, I don't really get it..
I thought to myself - well.. waiting for the amulet to release is probably the tradeoff but it's kitten ~1600g sooo.. it's not something I'd easily re-gain in a week or two usually and secondly once it's out the tradeoff would be gone.
It's also not just "an alternative" but it's an objectively  WAAAY more efficient way to get it because even if it takes a ton of time, the amount of grind that goes into a Mystic Tribute will outweigh doing the achievements every time. I don't want to argue about making acquiring one harder or easier, I'm just genuinely confused about what the point of Transcendence will be in the future.. Especially since Anet wants to sell the story journals and people probably/maybe buy them to play the story anyway, so it's not like you can only get it during that pre-time until EoD or something.

I actually have everything I need for Transcendence ready and waiting to be used in my bank but I don't really want to waste 77 mystic clovers, a stack of mystic coins and a ton of mats for something I get for free in a couple weeks or months.

[Dante.1763]

Doesnt Transcendence have an effect?

 

We dont know if the EOD amulet will have one, so that might be the tradeoff, coupled with the time requirement(if you get each week as it releases anywho).

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Because anet caters to the mob and the mob loves world bosses and hates pvp.

Edit: it should have been a legendary aquabreather  or enhancement infusion.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Shadowmoon.7986

[Linken.6345]

Find it funny how the OP and so many other just assume we will get the amulet for free, you mean how all the gen 1 precursors would be cheaper to craft then to buy of the trading post?

 

One of the steps can be to give mystic tribute to this npc for example.

[crewthief.8649]

Honestly, what’s the big deal? Considering the amount of time and resources I’ve grinded for my various legendaries over the years, I personally hope it’s free (minus doing the LS).

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Can anybody give me an insight on what the purpose of Transcendence will be once the Living World Return amulet is available?

Yes. It will be a way of obtaining a legendary amulet if you dislike LS (or want to avoid Chalice of Tears). It will also have different effects (and that's even if the LS amulet will have one).

 

Additionally, as some  people already pointed out, it's not so sure yet that the amulet will not cost you anything.

[Dante.1763]

20 minutes ago, crewthief.8649 said:

Honestly, what’s the big deal? Considering the amount of time and resources I’ve grinded for my various legendaries over the years, I personally hope it’s free (minus doing the LS).

Cause, some players want content locked to their game mode, i dont understand it honestly -shrug-

[JUN YANG.4328]

its more like why will have legendary armor, backpack, for wvw and pvp. its same theory. i bet will have another legendary ring to replace conflux as well.

[Dunroy.1058]

I think people assume the amulet is free (read, a reward from completing the return to LW achievements) because the achievement shows that the full amulet is the reward for the final tier, not a component that will still require some spenny additions in a Mystic Forge. 

So unless they make one of the return to LW achievements, create a mystic tribute, it's quite likely that this amulet is "free" comparatively.

[Head Kracker.4790]

The point of transcendence is the achievement of nirvana....wait wrong thing 🙂

 

 

Honestly though, I dont get why people are getting this bent out of shape over a alternate for the neckless. In pvp your pretty much grinding tickets and shards of glory while upgrading shards as well. That is truly a long fairly annoying process. All while playing a mode where winning isn't easy or inevitable. But you literally can short stop the process by buying materials off the market and the only thing truly gates are the tickets and wins, which I will admit are no small feat.

 

But for the counterpoint to the argument. Anyone who complains that were getting a "free" amulet really has not ever done all of season 2, 3, 4, and 5 story. First off you cannot skip any part of the story since its asking for story steps from beginning of a chapter to the end. Your looking at 12 to 20 minimum hours of story you cannot skip and you are probably doing them twice or more if your a player that has been around. Assuming you try and do some of the other achieves linked to the story could take longer.

 

Next off is the 5+ jumping puzzles you have to do none of which are easy. Admittedly one or two are more tedious than others. But the ones in drytop, ember bay, draconis mons, and sirens landing are all quite hard especially Chalice, which you need to do at minimum twice for Aurora making sure to get the murasat coins or your going to need to go a third or forth time. Thats anywhere from easy to omg kill me hard depending on if you do it the easy way with mesmers or the hard by actually doing the JP like it was designed. All these JP are pretty easy to make a mistake that unless you have the PPR are fairly unforgiving, especially the ones with a checkpoint in them which three of the needed so far actually do. This can waste anywhere from 3 to 10 hours depending.

 

Long term though you also have to understand that these maps will die in popularity so the ease of completing these JP is in proportion of the amount of people active in the respective maps. It actually gets harder to get these JP done in a reasonable manner.

 

Lastly the story itself is both really interesting and horrible. I mean I'm going to have to listen to Braham all over again from his omg shoot him moments to the end of his norn of destiny end. Thats not including the mechanics that they put in that slow the story down alongside just redoing some of the worst designed boss fights in the game. As a bonus if I want to get Vision alongside this amulet im also going to have to get all the story achieve armor parts, and accessories. Thats another time sink. As well as a money sink since https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Memory_Essence_Encapsulator is expensive to acquire as all the materials needed are at least 5+ gold per encapsulator.

 

So yes were actually doing quite alot to gain access to a precursor and a amulet. Just as much or maybe a little less than the pvp crowd. If nothing else I challenge the pvp folks to actually play the game and see which is easier 6 months down the line when its not all fresh and hot to do.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Head Kracker.4790

[Tails.9372]

28 minutes ago, Head Kracker.4790 said:

Chalice, which you need to do at minimum twice for Aurora making sure to get the murasat coins or your going to need to go a third or forth time ... As a bonus if I want to get Vision alongside this amulet im also going to have to get all the story achieve armor parts

 

You only need to do chalice once as all the required rewards can also be obtained from reward tracks which allows you to skip the related meta achievements.

[decease.3215]

Why build lendary at all if you dont care for effect?  It is a prrstge thing afaik

 

P.s. free amulet will tell other they complete story.. The pvp amulet will tell people its owner destroy 99% of.player in pvp

[Kalocin.5982]

53 minutes ago, Head Kracker.4790 said:

The point of transcendence is the achievement of nirvana....wait wrong thing 🙂

 

 

Honestly though, I dont get why people are getting this bent out of shape over a alternate for the neckless. In pvp your pretty much grinding tickets and shards of glory while upgrading shards as well. That is truly a long fairly annoying process. All while playing a mode where winning isn't easy or inevitable. But you literally can short stop the process by buying materials off the market and the only thing truly gates are the tickets and wins, which I will admit are no small feat.

 

But for the counterpoint to the argument. Anyone who complains that were getting a "free" amulet really has not ever done all of season 2, 3, 4, and 5 story. First off you cannot skip any part of the story since its asking for story steps from beginning of a chapter to the end. Your looking at 12 to 20 minimum hours of story you cannot skip and you are probably doing them twice or more if your a player that has been around. Assuming you try and do some of the other achieves linked to the story could take longer.

 

Next off is the 5+ jumping puzzles you have to do none of which are easy. Admittedly one or two are more tedious than others. But the ones in drytop, ember bay, draconis mons, and sirens landing are all quite hard especially Chalice, which you need to do at minimum twice for Aurora making sure to get the murasat coins or your going to need to go a third or forth time. Thats anywhere from easy to omg kill me hard depending on if you do it the easy way with mesmers or the hard by actually doing the JP like it was designed. All these JP are pretty easy to make a mistake that unless you have the PPR are fairly unforgiving, especially the ones with a checkpoint in them which three of the needed so far actually do. This can waste anywhere from 3 to 10 hours depending.

 

Long term though you also have to understand that these maps will die in popularity so the ease of completing these JP is in proportion of the amount of people active in the respective maps. It actually gets harder to get these JP done in a reasonable manner.

 

Lastly the story itself is both really interesting and horrible. I mean I'm going to have to listen to Braham all over again from his omg shoot him moments to the end of his norn of destiny end. Thats not including the mechanics that they put in that slow the story down alongside just redoing some of the worst designed boss fights in the game. As a bonus if I want to get Vision alongside this amulet im also going to have to get all the story achieve armor parts, and accessories. Thats another time sink. As well as a money sink since https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Memory_Essence_Encapsulator is expensive to acquire as all the materials needed are at least 5+ gold per encapsulator.

 

So yes were actually doing quite alot to gain access to a precursor and a amulet. Just as much or maybe a little less than the pvp crowd. If nothing else I challenge the pvp folks to actually play the game and see which is easier 6 months down the line when its not all fresh and hot to do.

Not only is everything you said true and accurate but also why I haven't even bothered to keep up with the weekly season focuses. Some of us already spent enough time, too much time, with that content lol

 

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

5 hours ago, DoomNexus.5324 said:

Can anybody give me an insight on what the purpose of Transcendence will be once the Living World Return amulet is available?

Fashion.

Same reason you do anything in this game with rewards that are exclusive to a game mode.  You play it for the fashion or the prestige.  the LW amulet will s how that you did all the 'return to' achievements while the PvP amulet shows that you do stuff in PvP.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

I guess I don't understand how mystic clovers or coins really means anything...yes they have arbitrary value if you outright buy them (i.e. buy coins and then also clover gamble)--but why would you? 

 

Like Aurora for example, I'm not looking at the mystic tribute--in fact, that's the easiest part.  By just playing the game I have nearly 250 clovers and 4 stacks of mystic coins, and that's after crafting all my legendary armor.  The hard part is the collections and crap, the jumping puzzles, timegates, events that require an open world group to do...

 

Anyway, the long and short is its a literal single item out of many, many items you need to really get use of legendary.  It doesn't actually matter for existing players, and gets new players in the game and interested in the armory.  So it has all upside for anet no matter how much people complain that it's 'easy'.  

[BlueJin.4127]

The point is that rather than locking legendaries behind contents that vast majority of players won’t touch, regardless of the carrot, it may be better to give players more options, such as also adding rewards to something the vast majority of players would want to play.

Edited August 11, 2021 by BlueJin.4127

[Gotejjeken.1267]

57 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

 

You only need to do chalice once as all the required rewards can also be obtained from reward tracks which allows you to skip the related meta achievements.

 

How is someone going to get Mursaat coins through a reward track? We can't just assume someone has a friendly neighborhood mesmer willing to port them to both coin spots (that are outside the JP and thus outside checkpoint help), or they have a position rewinder handy.

 

I had to do that frigging thing four times, one for initial completion, two for coin runs, and lastly one for the seasons of dragons achievement.  

 

The only thing reward tracks helped on were map currency and the overall map reward (things like the houndskin mantle or other armor pieces).  But nothing with the jumping puzzles, especially not Chalice of Tears.  

[JUN YANG.4328]

Here is a solution, if you think you had put too much effort on transcendence or you doing PVP because of this and spent lots of time you can always jump onto  " the ascension" (if you havent got). and come back 2~3 months and you can decide which one is worth it.

[Tails.9372]

24 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

How is someone going to get Mursaat coins through a reward track? ... The only thing reward tracks helped on were ... the overall map reward (things like the houndskin mantle or other armor pieces).

 

You don't cause you don't need them. The only thing you actually need from the Chalice of Tears is the Flask of Tears which you can get by doing the JP once. The tokens are only relevant if you want to get the Dragonscale Epaulets though the meta achevent but how you yourself  just noted these are exactly the kind of items you can also get from the reward tracks.

 

Scratch that you're right, I just remembered you do need the tokens. Not for the archevents themselves but to get the whole thing started.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Tails.9372

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

4 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

 

You don't cause you don't need them. The only thing you actually need from the Chalice of Tears is the Flask of Tears which you can get by doing the JP once. The tokens are only relevant if you want to get the Dragonscale Epaulets though the meta achevent but how you yourself  just noted these are exactly the kind of items you can also get from the reward tracks.

You do need them, though.
You do
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Token_Collector
To get
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentient_Aberration
To make
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gleam_of_Sentience
To then acquire
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sentient_Seed
For
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aurora:_Awakening

[asterix.9614]

Doubt the pve amulet will have the same effect as the pvp one. Maybe different ball colour and image, as the pvp one is golden with an image of eternal colosseum.

[Raizel.1839]

Because maybe that someone (new player) doesn't have any LS unlocked and it would cost a lot too.

[Khisanth.2948]

There is the obvious cosmetic answer otherwise the same could be asked of the gen3 weapons.

In the case of the amulet there are people who want to interact with Living World stuff as little as possible which means they would never finish that amulet.

[genjonah.1253]

42 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

There is the obvious cosmetic answer otherwise the same could be asked of the gen3 weapons.

In the case of the amulet there are people who want to interact with Living World stuff as little as possible which means they would never finish that amulet.

This, right here, as well as what others have noted

 

yes, the new one (seemingly, we still have two weeks to go for them to give us a curveball) does cost less in gold (potentially zero, if memory serves correctly and again no curveballs in the remaining two weeks). But it is not a ‘free’ legendary. There is significant amount of work required to do it- jumping puzzles, the entirety of four seasons worth of story, significant map completion of over a dozen maps, successful completion of a bunch of metas (and several side quests, looking at the Djinn in season 4) and more. Yes, for many of us, a lot of the content will be ‘easy’, but it’s still a significant time dump. 
 

do I wish it had been a ring? Yeah, because when it was announced, I had finished Transcendence, like, the week before and for a moment wanted my mystic tribute back, and at the time only had one Conflux and no Coalescence. But it probably is the best choice- Transcendence is PvP based, and frankly that is the place of toxicity in this game that can turn a lot of people off, whereas getting two confluxes just takes time, etc

 

more options to get legendaries (while still requiring ‘legendary’ levels of effort, just in different ways) is a good thing. Now, I DO NOT think they should make any more that don’t require gold sinks. But one, in this legendary journey, is not only acceptable, but good.

 

also, as mentioned, relatively certain this will have a different aesthetic than Transcendence 

[Vayne.8563]

On 8/11/2021 at 9:13 AM, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Because anet caters to the mob and the mob loves world bosses and hates pvp.

Edit: it should have been a legendary aquabreather  or enhancement infusion.

Who should they cater to? The 10% of the population that predominantly PvPs?  That would be a pretty bad business decision one would think.