Percursor Scavenger Hunt. Your suggestions?

[Nemeon Lion]

So here's an interesting post from Colin:

Hey guys,
Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature and you should not expect in the Jan/Feb/March releases at this point.
We are however working on expanding reward systems to make them more re-rewarding across all parts of the game, making the open world more rewarding, and adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world.
Some of these additions will come as early as the January release, and will get covered in more detail in the next week or two as well release all the details about this release once testing has signed off it’s all ready to go in January. (we’ll also provide a high level summary of our goals with reward systems, etc. in our 2013 blog post, which should be out next week)

Source

So, what are you thoughts on the whole percursor issue? Is a Scavenger Hunt even enough of an achievement for such a thing? The closest GW1 had was the Black Moa Chick which ended up revolving in nothing more than a Wiki-search.

The best I can think of is tying the percursor reward to something that's actually hard to do (Mad King Clocktower anyone?).

[shawn]

Clock tower was way too easy for precursors I'd say - but then again, they gave some away just for auto attacking a **** ton of karka, so who knows.

[BladeDVD]

I thought the Karka precursor was randomly assigned, not a guarantee.

The Moa Chick was cool, and if they do something like that, it will have to be a lot longer for a precursor, but any scavenger hunt will turn into a wiki search. They would probably have to build it into dynamic events, which could be a lot more interesting. That would be my suggestion, a scavenger dynamic event chain across all zones.

It can't be jump puzzles, there are people who can't do them (as opposed to just not liking them).

Just how much time or effort does everyone think is reasonable for a precursor? 100 hours? More? Less? Something requiring multiple people, or something you can solo?

[shawn]

I thought the Karka precursor was randomly assigned, not a guarantee.

That was part of my point, sit around for two hours and have a 50% shot at a precursor. That's even less challenge than the clock tower, even if it wasn't a guarantee.

[RD]

Well, I definitely think they need to do SOMETHING about precursors. Right now, they're way too hard to get. Not to mention how ridiculous the whole legendary system is to begin with.

I'd like to get a legendary one day, but, with the way it currently stands, it doesn't feel like I'll be able to, even as a long-term goal.

[satomz]

Hmm, if they made precursors a rare drop from BLC, would that kill two birds with one stone? Not drop like cakes, but something better than mini polar bear from GW1.

[Alaris]

I know... make a rare tradable token drop from BLC, and you can trade 1000 of them for a precursor. That way it doesn't have to be as bad as mini polar.

Of course, people will complain that it's buy2win, and given legendaries are ever so slightly better than exotics, they would be partly right.

[Sharkinu]

I think people are expecting too much from this scavenger hunt and I knew we are not going to see it anytime soon because is really hard to find a middle ground so it wont generate too much qq. People will cry about it after it goes live because is either too easy(like Mad King Thorn backpack piece or black moa chick minipet) or because is too hard, too expensive, too much time consuming or that it still involves RNG(with higher chance than current solution, of course).

Making it too easy like the Mad King book is a bad idea unless they make the scavenger hunt limited to one per account and make the precursor account bound. And still, I think it's unlikely we'll have a guarantee chance to get a weapon worth 300-400gold after checking wiki or some random guide and just wandering around the map for 40 minutes.

And making it too hard or too expensive will only make it worth for more desired precursors like dusk, dawn, colossus, zap etc. Why would you do some really time consuming task or throw a stack of ectos and skillpoints with some other ingredients in the Mystic forge(specific recipes for precursors could be a solution to this) to get a trident or focus precursor when you can just buy them for like 20 gold?

[Sigmatics]

because is too hard, too expensive, too much time consuming or that it still involves RNG(with higher chance than current solution, of course).

People can't complain it's too hard because they shouldn't be obtainable by everyone. That's the hard thing about all of this.
If everyone has legendaries, they aren't legendary anymore. This should be a way for the exceptional players to prove their skill, like some sort of trial (where you have to demonstrate your knowledge of lore, gameplay (challenging solo fight) and other aspects of the game).

Most importantly, you shouldn't be able to look up any information because the process dynamically changes and never exactly repeats itself (I know, very hard to do).

It should also be limited to 1 per account and legendaries should have been account bound from the beginning.

[Ashen]

I think the issue more than anything is that they need to get rid of the RNG factor of the pre-cursors.

Now, if they could combine the Black Moa chick hunt (as someone said, it was no more than a wiki-search) with the Titan Source quests AND the scavenger quest for Gwen's secret focus that began in pre-Searing and finished in EotN. The only things that require actual input to them that don't involve money are the Bloodstone Shard, Obsidian Shards (which frankly are easy as hell to get) and the Gift of Exploration.

I want the scavenger hunt to be HARD. As in, I need to go everywhere in the map, maybe even complete a new, rock hard jumping puzzle and defeat a dungeon a la Slaver's Exile.

I think the knee jerk reaction of "legendaries aren't legendary anymore" is a total fallacy. The percentage of people with a legendary is waaaay below 1% and then across 50 servers there's maybe a dozen on the TP. Considering there are over 1 million accounts, that's pretty good odds.