Legiondaries design is bad

[Magemaer]

The design foundations of WoW can be summed up in: work to improve your character. You level him, you gear him up. Harder content, better gear. And so it goes. This character improvement hamster wheel is, together with the social aspect, the very pillar of this game. It's what makes it have such a replay value, such addictive fun.

You want your character to be stronger, there's a path to make him stronger and you go after it. It's a social game where competition is an important element, even more at the endgame for raiders and so on.

Legion got so many things right. They added a great system of max-level character progression with artifacts. They're emphasizing the social aspects of the game, making players go out, run dungeons together, use group finder. It's working wonders.

But they just HAD to add Legiondaries. They were warned: it looked bad. Legendaries dropping from anywhere? RNGfest? Why Blizaard? They still continued with it. Annnnd... it's the worst part of the game right now.

The thing is luck is a part of gearing, always has been. It shakes things up, that's fine. Loot tables are fine. Then they added warforged/titantforged. Ok, more rng. Then sockets. Alllriiiight, more variation. Maybe too much rng going on, but bearable.

But explain: how can a game based on progression and competition award insane power increases to characters that did almost nothing to earn it, and deny this same power to other characters that worked hard for weeks and months to earn this same power increase? This goes against everything this game is about.

Yes, we all heard tales of lfr heroes that can barely turn their characters or pass tank dps with a bis legendary. Of players with an astonishing number of days played at 110 religiously doing caches, raids, dungeons and still haven't acquired a single one. Yes, right now competitive pve is a mess, as players of the same class are divided in tiers. Those that were lucky to get the right legendaries are able to rank high, they're on another power level.

Reports are coming of massive amounts of salt, tears and rage being generated at homes where WoW is cultivated. It's a public health issue.

The thing about Legiondaries, this awful system, is that it doesn't know what it wants.

It wants to be a sweet surprise, something you can't work towards, you can't farm, but when you get it's a great feeling. That's what the devs say. But if it's to be so, a rare surprise that can happen anytime for any player, they shouldn't be competitive. They shouldn't be so powerful performance wise. Because if they are, they're going against all that character development is about.
They're not a sweet surprise, they're cause of constant anxiety, envy, frustration. And when they drop they might actually feel really bad, if you were unlucky to get a bad one. That's the opposite of what it aimed for! Gosh, getting a good one brings more relief than satisfaction.
If you want to go with "sweet surprise" make them have cool effects but not affect how well you perform with your class.

Now if you want to make them powerhouses, fit them in character progression. They have to be earned, worked for. Add luck as a proponent element if you will. But you need to select how you get it, either by effort or skill. No one wants the boredom of MoP and WoD legendaries-for-all. But this lottery is a mess.
One way or another, players should be able to work towards a legendary if they affect their performances.
Right now hardcore players that try to farm them get a cruel, bullshit treatment. Of course you can't actually farm them, just roll more low-chance dices. They have to do all chores (dailies, lockouts), and carry many less geared/skilled players in mythics+ for weeks and weeks to improve their chances. Not only there's rng to get a legendary, there's rng to not get an awful legendary. You can farm a lot and not get anything, or get something mediocre at best. And after weeks of work you might be arriving at raids without a good legendary, while your class peers have and outperform you by a large margin, and lfr heroes walk around with those sick legendaries you lack. Just because they were lucky and you weren't, it has nothing to do with your dedication or quality as a player.

As they don't know what they want this system to be, they aimed at two widely different things and failed at both. They're neither sweet surprises nor do they work as more endgame content for character progression as they're far too random.

Honestly i don't know if legendaries should aim for sweet surprises or powerhouses. I don't even know if the game needs them at all. But as it is, it's such a bad inconsistent design!

[thilicen]

Legiondaries. Nice one.

[Lochton]

Right @Darsithis @Splenda @MoanaLisa, can't we just make a Legendary megathread too? This is getting old, and repetitive.

And no, OP, this isn't a dig at you. Just the threads being a little too many and some hitting the same tones.

[Deleted]

The only issue is the fact there are some that literally nobody wants. Nothing worse than getting the fucking CC ring

[Magemaer]

The only issue is the fact there are some that literally nobody wants. Nothing worse than getting the fucking CC ring

Honestly if they take the powerhouse route there are a couple of paths that could work. You could have a wide set of legendaries with varying power, but make them more reliable to farm. Or a set with only a few powerful ones, harder to farm but more reliably rewarding.

As it is you have the worst of both worlds, and on top of that legendaries being thrown to chars not farming at all.

[Raelbo]

But explain: how can a game based on progression and competition award insane power increases to characters that did almost nothing to earn it, and deny this same power to other characters that worked hard for weeks and months to earn this same power increase? This goes against everything this game is about.

Because by and large this isn't the norm. People are upset because they have this idea that in most cases, which is basically every case anyway, everyone with a legendary got it for practically zero effort and is a no skill noob who will undeservedly climb to the top of the rankings and get invited to world first mythic raiding guilds, while the people who deserve them most will simply never see them, or if they do, it will always be some useless legendary.

Reality is that for the most part, legendaries are going to land up with the most dedicated players, and weak players are not going to become Wow gods just because of a legendary, and good players are actually going to cope just fine without one.

But when you take a massive dose of exaggeration, with a bit of paranoia and nice cherry picking of anecdotes, you have a ton of hysteria evident on the forums. I guess you could argue that legendaries are a bad thing because if it hadn't been for them, then there wouldn't have been this response. But I would argue that this problem is also entirely down to people being silly.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the legendaries aside from the fact that evidently some people just don't know how to process their presence in the game.

[Deleted]

Honestly if they take the powerhouse route there are a couple of paths that could work. You could have a wide set of legendaries with varying power, but make them more reliable to farm. Or a set with only a few powerful ones, harder to farm but more reliably rewarding.

As it is you have the worst of both worlds, and on top of that legendaries being thrown to chars not farming at all.

Honestly I think your first suggestion is fine but it's creating a solution for a problem that shouldn't exist. As it stands I know 3 people who have had the 895 neck but aren't using it because it's a considerable DPS loss due to having their worst stats. It's bad enough that the proc is a survival based one and in no way fun but to be WORSE because it has no main stat is just a massive design flaw.

The ring is similar, at least you can proc it on adds/a lot on mythic+ but even then with it being procced basically on cool down it sometimes sims lower than having a ring that has bis stats.

Edit: The ways you achieve legendaries in my opinion are fine, the vast majority of people get them from instance based content so in reality spamming mythic+ dungeons is the most reliable way, so it really is time=profit. Of course getting them from a cache on an alt (which will happen I swear) is shit, but that's RNG

[Deleted]

The only issue is the fact there are some that literally nobody wants. Nothing worse than getting the fucking CC ring

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ryhardcow/feed

Ya, check my feed out on my alt Priest... Saying that the neck I'm using is actually probably one of the better choices for Mythic+ spam which is all I really do on him Neck/Ring, fun stuff!

[Deleted]

Honestly if they take the powerhouse route there are a couple of paths that could work. You could have a wide set of legendaries with varying power, but make them more reliable to farm. Or a set with only a few powerful ones, harder to farm but more reliably rewarding.

As it is you have the worst of both worlds, and on top of that legendaries being thrown to chars not farming at all.

I think this is what bothers me the most.

[Deleted]

I agree the system is not perfect...

but do we need a new thread about it every day?

[thilicen]

I agree the system is not perfect...

but do we need a new thread about it every day?

You say it like it's just the one..

[Mazeari]

The only issue is the fact there are some that literally nobody wants. Nothing worse than getting the fucking CC ring

I've both the ring and the foresight boots ( which were a 15 ilv upgrade only, for worse stats aswell). You know the system is broken when you are dissapointed you got (that) legendary

[Pull My Finger]

How can people possibly get so worked up over this stuff? For fuck's sake.

There's absolutely no problem with legendaries. The only problem comes from people being completely unable to stop themselves from being a ridiculous person. It's pathetic. You even said it yourself OP: anxiety, envy, frustration. But it doesn't come from the system, it's the players. It's YOU! Stop diverting and shifting the blame for your inadequacies to some system design aspect that can't possibly be perfected enough to alleviate all your personal shortcomings.

[Nest]

But it doesn't come from the system, it's the players. It's YOU!.

Wrong, the current legendary system is just rng garbage. Quite sure thats the opinion that majority have.

[Aggrophobic]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ryhardcow/feed

Ya, check my feed out on my alt Priest... Saying that the neck I'm using is actually probably one of the better choices for Mythic+ spam which is all I really do on him Neck/Ring, fun stuff!

Ehm... No it's not.
The shield is crap and the stats are horrible. Quite a few options that would be much, much better for you.

[Rehok]

Ehm... No it's not.
The shield is crap and the stats are horrible. Quite a few options that would be much, much better for you.

The shield is actually good, It can save your life especially when you are doing progress fights in raids or in mythic plus. Its saved my life on Mythic Ursoc a few times

[Glorious Leader]

How can people possibly get so worked up over this stuff? For fuck's sake.

There's absolutely no problem with legendaries. The only problem comes from people being completely unable to stop themselves from being a ridiculous person. It's pathetic. You even said it yourself OP: anxiety, envy, frustration. But it doesn't come from the system, it's the players. It's YOU! Stop diverting and shifting the blame for your inadequacies to some system design aspect that can't possibly be perfected enough to alleviate all your personal shortcomings.

Typically i would agree although i think your characterization is a but harsh. In this case however the system is bad. Its good that legendaries are available from different content and not behind the raid wall. Its bad that its purely rng. The designers dont have a clue in this case.

[rda]

There's absolutely no problem with legendaries. The only problem comes from people being completely unable to stop themselves from being a ridiculous person. It's pathetic. You even said it yourself OP: anxiety, envy, frustration. But it doesn't come from the system, it's the players. It's YOU! Stop diverting and shifting the blame for your inadequacies to some system design aspect that can't possibly be perfected enough to alleviate all your personal shortcomings.

It's actually the system design, not "YOU".

Ways to "perfect" it enough to "alleviate" people's "personal shortcomings" certainly exist - one way is to make legendaries work how they worked in MoP / WoD (predictable farming).

[Magemaer]

Honestly I think your first suggestion is fine but it's creating a solution for a problem that shouldn't exist.

I agree. When it comes to powerhouse legendaries there may be weaker ones, but completely trash legendaries like the ring shouldn't even be.

Because by and large this isn't the norm. People are upset because they have this idea that in most cases, which is basically every case anyway, everyone with a legendary got it for practically zero effort and is a no skill noob who will undeservedly climb to the top of the rankings and get invited to world first mythic raiding guilds, while the people who deserve them most will simply never see them, or if they do, it will always be some useless legendary.

Reality is that for the most part, legendaries are going to land up with the most dedicated players, and weak players are not going to become Wow gods just because of a legendary, and good players are actually going to cope just fine without one.

You're the one exaggerating here Raelbo. I think people are upset because they're invested in a game based on character progression and they can't meaningful progress when it comes to Legiondaries. This lottery has been thrown at them.

When you say cope fine, you say it like one who says "it's just a game". Good legendaries sometimes bring huge power jumps. You'll still do decent dps/heal etc if you play well and have good gear, but will be far behind those like you that happened to grab a good legendary. And that's why no one with sense is saying Legiondaries broke the game, they're just the worst aspect of it right now.

- - - Updated - - -

But it doesn't come from the system, it's the players. It's YOU! Stop diverting and shifting the blame for your inadequacies to some system design aspect that can't possibly be perfected enough to alleviate all your personal shortcomings.

When a ball is badly thrown to you, you may or may not be able to react well, according to your skill. Neither change the fact that it was a badly thrown ball.

[Rehok]

Because by and large this isn't the norm. People are upset because they have this idea that in most cases, which is basically every case anyway, everyone with a legendary got it for practically zero effort and is a no skill noob who will undeservedly climb to the top of the rankings and get invited to world first mythic raiding guilds, while the people who deserve them most will simply never see them, or if they do, it will always be some useless legendary.

How do you decide who deserves them? someone who plays 12 hours a day deserves it more than someone who plays 3 hours a day?

This is what does my head in, Is when people think they are entitled to a legendary just because they play more.

Also, Since when would a world first guild take someone just because they are rank 1? if you suck at doing mechanics they won't take you, Ranks mean nothing when you ignore all mechanics