This is well put, i see everyone saying athenor should be default system, and while i agree and i like the athenor, farming a million essence for all the weapons would be less enjoyable to me then chest loot. But some players would preffer that i think.
It’s not the droprate of reds I’m annoyed about. It’s the fact that after hundreds of hours in the game all the gold/blue/green dust has become garbage to me. Opening commendation chests has become a waste of time. There should be a way to convert a big bulk of gold dust to red in some way.
Completely agree. I want a red halberd and it’s the only red item I’ve actively wanted for Kruber. Here I am today receiving my second red executioner sword.
It is such. A. Waste. Of. Time.
I agree, I’m so bothered by the lack of cosmetics. I feel I say this every thread, but it was one of the things everyone wanted from VT1. We know there are so many hats in the files that could be thrown in but they aren’t and I don’t understand why.
But let’s face it, it’s probably so that people don’t buy the cool hats and let all the others just sit there. But it’s been years since release and content feels stagnant. With WoM being a massive failure I really wonder what’s coming next.
I doubt it’s the essence farming people are referring to, but rather how easily you can change traits and properties.
Yes i know. That’s what i meant with that i agree it’s a nice system, but the enjoyment of loot is gone, so if they can introduce the good parts of the athenor and combine it with the loot system i would be all for it. I’m saying for me personally i enjoy the loot system and i love the athenor’s way to choose stats and reroll, but the way to get essence feels boring to me and feels more of a grind then it actually is.
Splitting illusions and stats is also something i’m alot for.
I’m still not sure what the best way to rework the loot system and gear system without removing the loot enjoyment.
So… IIRC, I’ve found the following veteran items over my play time:
3 Fireball Staves
5 Conflagration Staves
2 Flamestorms
1 Bolt
2 Daggers
2 Swords (Sienna)
1 Fire Sword
3 Swords (Kruber)
2 Exec Swords
2 Sword+Shield
1 Mace+Shield
1 Mace (Kruber)
1 Hand Gun (Kruber)
1 Repeater
3 Blunderbuss
2 GAxes
2 Axes (Bardin)
1 Axe+Shield
1 Hammer+Shield
1 Hammer
2 Empire Longbow
2 Handgun (Bardin)
4 Xbow (Bardin)
1 Grudgeraker
2 Drakeguns
4 Elf Swords
4 Dual Daggers
1 Sword+Dagger
1 Dual Sword
1 Glaive
1 Spear
3 Swiftbows
5 or 6 Hagbanes (seriously I just roll my eyes and trash these, I get so many)
2 Elf Crossbow
1 Rapier
1 Xbow (Salty)
1 Flail
Plus enough trinkets, necklaces, etc, that I have 1 of every (useful… ahem) stat combination sitting around in case I ever want it, plus enough red dust to have crafted at least one of all of the following items and STILL have over 50 red dust currently sitting around collecting dust.
And in spite of all of that, I still have:
0 Falchion
0 Axe (Salty)
0 Greatsword (Salty)
0 Brace of Pistols
0 Repeater Pistol
0 Elf Longbow
0 Drake Pistols
0 2h Hammer (Kruber)
0 2h Hammer (Bardin)
0 Halberds
0 Greatswords (Kruber)
0 Mace (Sienna)
0 Beam
Screw RNG with a rusty pitchfork.
So the thing players have the most issue with is illusions from what i can tell.
Edit: doesn’t mean we should ignore the other side
Yeah, it’s not a big problem getting stats you need for builds, but skin collectors are shafted.
Exactly. While i’m not a big illusion collector i can understand the grind and annoyences of those types of players.
The biggest issues i feel are stat rerolling and illusion rng. Red drop rates maybe aswell for good low playtime players who wanna go cata (a specific legend build) super early but get held back because of certain bp’s
Red acquisition rate seems fine to me. Would like a way to target a specific red illusion but hey, it will come.
5 red dust for an illusionless red is still stingy as hell. Would be made less bad with red illusions available in LE, but still bad.
20% droprate, so like 9 ish hours for 5 red items, to get the best weapon that’s available. Seems fine to me. Even less if you get lucky, this assumes you get 5 duplicate items that you scrap for dust, So thats like 95 ish hours to get a full red loadout with dust and ur necklace and trinkets etc you will probably use on other characters depending, so you will need 3 items per new character, 27 hours for a new build on a new career with dust
Could you elaborate your math? How did you get to 3.5 hours per 5 red items?
EDIT: OK, I see you’ve changed it to 9 hours.
Does that still seem fine to you? That’s longer than some single-player games. That’s less than some people can afford to play a week. Does that not seem like an obcene amount of time spent to get a single item?
Yes, that’s still fine for me. I even liked it before they added red dust, the only issue i have is rerolling takes so much time and illusions. Playing 9 hours on average to get a red item doesn’t bother me.
We do have to keep in mind that this is with emperor vaults on legend, and when you start playing you probably won’t start at legend. So while learning the game, progressing difficulties you will probably find a red or two on the road to legend.
Now that they added dust it’s less rng to get a red weapon you need. Rerolling stats is slow and annoying when you wanna reroll while playing in a lobby and everyone has to wait, making it so you didn’t duplicate rolled helped alot but it’s still slowing lobbies down, and that makes it so you need to have 4 red staves so you can use different loadouts, and then it becomes a REAL grind to get every weapon + dupe weapon with certain stats to be able to switch loadouts quickly. If, for example, you could choose your stats on the fly like with the athenor then players would only need 1 red weapon, which would make it way less grindy then it is now.
I do agree that illusions should have a different way of obtaining them, because now illusion hunters get forced into doing legend runs and forced into this rng grind fest, even if they aren’t such hardcore players and don’t wanna play on the highest difficulties. If you are hunting a red weapon to be able to play difficult content or certain builds then i feel the grind isn’t long, but for illusions it is so fkuing long. And ‘hardcore’ players who aim to play on high difficulties mostly have the time to grind 9 hours or do deeds which even goes faster, while illusion hunters might be just intrested in illusions and not in achieving the ‘hardest challenges’
If we are comparing games, i could compare with an mmorpg and say getting boss uniques is way more of a grind, but that argument doesn’t help really so i’ll leave it out.
And this is not about getting a red loadout in a week. Some players can only play 1 hour a week, do you think red weapons should be obtainable by them in 1 hour playtime? If they can only play 1 hour a week they are most likely not playing legend.
Reds are by no means mandatory to enjoy the game, even in harshest difficulties. Reds will come “easily” when you’ll reach legend. The drop rate is really not an issue (9 hours to drop 5 reds seems fine, as reds are “the ultimate” thing, and you get 5 of them ! I mean, guild wars 2 alone ask you for way more hours even for a single piece of a non ultimate piece of armor). The targeting is. (maybe 5 reds is a bit too harsh to craft a specific, I don’t know, would have chosen 3)
My big (read: titanic) issue is dupes. Dupes, always dupes. And you need five reds scrapped down to make one. It should be, at most, three dust to make a red, not five.
I agree 5 reds for 9 hours wouldn’t be bad if you could target specific reds, but you can’t.
@anon75893681 We’ll have to agree to disagree because 9 hours (and that’s on the low side) per targeted item is obscene in my eyes.
Three is too little.
Like @Froh said, it’s the ultimate weapon rarity, which isn’t even mandatory to play the game or get good at it. When i started playing i didn’t even notice the red grind, and that was before red dust, and my rng is super bad in comparison with most. I played legend twitch with orange weapons even, idk where this sudden ‘red items take too long to get’ came from tbh. Illusions i understand, rerolling QoL, sure.
Unless you have 20 of the same weapons and items with different stats, like i have on my sienna just to be able to switch easily between loadouts, then red drops are fine and most casual players won’t have multiple loadouts anyway i think.
Yep we can agree to disagree, we are just way different players.
20 minutes per game, 3.3 hours to get 2 red items aprox, 6.6 to get 4, 8.35 to get 5 red items. Add some running to the portal or toilet inbetween, a skittergate map, and that’s around 9 hours.
The above is even faster if you choose a fast map, add deed or twitch and go broken dps builds and speedrun it, you can do like 14 minutes and lower map or something on screaming bell for example and get emp chests + deed chests reward
If you are doing 30 minutes per map and are failing alot then, yes its way longer. But i remember you said you steamroll (if i remember correctly) legend so it should be pretty easy for you to get consistent runs and farm your red items. Add easy deed modifier, like hordes (which is broken anyway so it’s just a free chest) ontop for an added chest and it increases massivelly.
Our math is quite different.
Personally I take around 25 minutes per map, and I disagree about the time in between each run:
The scoreboard, loot animation, loading screens at the end and start of each mission, plus the bit of off-time in the keep between each mission easily amount to 5 minutes, meaning it’s something more like 30 minutes per run for me.
Also, I don’t know what your deed drop rate is, but I have gotten about 5 legend deeds in my entire 250 hours playtime so far.