Looking at Wiki, the Exordium seems like a really neat legendary with it changing shapes based on skills.
However, when I looked at some videos, I found it hard to notice or see unless they put in slow playback.
So my question to those of you who have it is do you notice it changing shape just playing regularly?
If you can't really see it or notice when playing regularly, do you regret making it? Why or why not?
External link →They are fast but also noticeable. I made this legendary on a whim and I don't regret making it. If anything this is the best legendary Anet has made. The amount of work they put into it is really remarkable. They should get a lot more credit for how great it is.
Thanks so much! :'D
How long did it take to program into the game?
I don't remember exactly but it was by far the most involved legendary. I had to do so much planning that I made a spreadsheet! I needed to figure out what the player animations all did for every race, sex, and class, then determine what shapes I could make the sword turn into that would work for all of those shared animations.
I'm making this up for the sake of an example - I don't remember who does what off the top of my head: human female guardian might spin around for skill 2 clockwise while others spin around counter clockwise. This kind of thing meant that I couldn't have the sword turn into a one sided shape, or some of the races would be hitting things with the blunt side of the shape. So I needed to do a lot of planning to make sure everything would work for all 16 of the shapes.
I also had to figure out shapes that would work well for the classes that shared the animation. I didn't have the luxury of making class-unique shapes - it had to be based on the player animations, and multiple classes use the same animation.
In addition to that, I had to actually make 16 shapes, which was unprecedented. I was effectively tasking myself with making a whole weapon set just for one weapon - I didn't have time for that level of work. What I ended up doing was making some new pieces and reusing a lot of other pieces, including pieces of the original sword, to make unique shapes. This saved me a lot of time, but it was still a ton of work.
The base sword itself also took a lot of time. Also an fx artist had to do a lot of the effects.
So to try to give you an actual answer, best I can say is in the realm of a few months.
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