Discussion: A proposal for LIs

I apologize in advance for the length of the post. I had posted a skeleton of this as a reply to another forum, but I wanted to flesh it out a bit more.

There isn’t much of a debate that most players are pretty unhappy with the current LI system. There are more complaints than can be reasonably counted, but most of them fit into a few general categories:

Complaint #1: Legendary Items don’t grow with us/We have to replace them too often
Complaint #2: There is too much grind in the system due to the RNG
Complaint #3: Too many Legendary Items drop. They are supposed to be legendary, not decon trash

To this list I would also add a fourth item that I have not really seen mentioned on the forums:

Complaint #4: The current legacies are fine for now, but how are they going to scale as the level cap increases?

One of the major ideas to come from the player base in terms of improvement has been to advocate a system for LIs closer to that of skirmish soldiers - in other words, a fully customizable LI through some sort of trait-based system. It’s an interesting idea, but it likely would not work for several reasons:

1) This would equate to basically starting the LI system over from scratch – a massive investment of time and energy for the developers. Working on this would likely mean much less (if not no) new content for the duration of the overhaul.

2) There would be disagreements about how the system would work. Would players earn legacies and traits through deeds? Through quests? Either way you go, you are suddenly looking at a majority of the player base going back to complete these pre-requisites. For players who are already happy with their LI, this would be a lot of grind for something that to them was not broken.

3) The age old question of sameness. If you let players have complete control over the legacies they stick on their weapons, you are going to end up with a “standard” for each class and every end-game player will have much the same weapon. It’s debatable if this is actually a bad thing, but it seems like something that has been shied away from in the past.

So how do you fix the make the LI system better without having to completely toss away the structure already in place? Here are several ideas:

Change #1) Make the system so that the “Max LI level=Current character level”. In other words, if your character is level 52, the maximum level that your LI could hit would be 52. When your character reached level 53, your LI could also reach 53.

This would help to solve Complaint #1 since now the Legendary Items would grow with our characters. There would be no more arbitrary level tiers for the weapons at expansion since the level cap would always be tied to the character rather than the item itself. Of course, this still does not solve the problem of DPS or legacy scaling entirely, so therefore it would be necessary for:

Change #2) Increase the number of ranks available to a legacy – including the DPS of an item.

As more expansions come out and our level cap presumably increases, LIs are going to face a scaling problem. That +94 ICPR for Conservation might look good for my level 63 Warden now, but that might not be so hot when my character is level 75. Under the current system this would be solved by giving players a new LI tier with better versions of the legacies at expansion. If change #1 is made however, LI level tiers would be gone so there needs to be some way of scaling the legacies to be effective as the level cap goes up. Increasing the number of available ranks would do this.

“But wait a minute,” some of you are saying “This creates a balance problem since players could just pump points into DPS right off the bat!” How very astute of you. Yes, simply making this change would allow weapons be become too powerful too quickly. This is why I would make the system so that the rank a legacy could reach would be tied to the tier. For example, a legacy at Tier 1 might only be able to reach Rank 4. When it leveled to Tier 2 it might be able to reach Rank 5 and so on.

This would give players incentive to grind for the Scrolls of Empowerment to increase a legacy tier. Since they will likely have leveled up by the time they have gotten enough scroll to improve the legacy tier, the increase would now be a needed and natural part of item advancement.

Change #3) Make LI drops much more rare and remove the ability to craft 1st and 2nd age items.

This is really a natural consequence of making Changes 1 and 2. Part of the reason there are so many LI drops now is that there are so many different level tiers. Rather than simply having “1st age, 2nd age and 3rd age” LIs dropping, the current system requires there be separate drops for “level 53 3rd ages” and “level 55 3rd ages” etc. , greatly increasing the clutter of available loot. If you remove level tiers from LIs, you end up only needing to drop three kinds of LIs: 1st, 2nd and 3rd ages, which would mean the game could get away with dropping a lot fewer of them.

I would advocate getting rid of crafted 1st and 2nd ages. It seems ridiculous to me that given the game takes place in the 3rd age of Middle Earth that a ton of people have knowledge of being able to craft 1st and 2nd ages – or that people have the ability to find entire housefuls of them at auction. These items are supposed to be rare and powerful – not something that you would see every day and I think they should be kept that way. From a game play perspective, these kinds of items should be reserved as rewards for players who are something more than casual. Make 2nd ages drop in some of the more minor instances and the 1st ages be reserved for the raiding crowd.

Overall, I think these three changes would be positive, but would also require less work than a total re-design of the system. It would help to make the system closer to what was advertised originally – an “item that grows with us”. It would help to reduce inventory clutter by allowing for fewer drops and although it would not remove grinding entirely (I am not advocating getting rid of the RNG to determine legacies – variety is the spice of life after all), it would remove the aggravation of grinding only to find you have to start over solely for DPS purposes. Under the proposed changes, you would basically end up with three “tiers”of LIs: 1st, 2nd and 3rd age. You would need to grind to get the legacies you wanted on a particular age of weapon, but once you found those there would be nothing to stop you from using it for the rest of the game until you wanted to get a better age weapon (thus eliminating what happens right now – having to ditch a second or first age weapon for a third age just for the DPS).

I like suggestions 1 & 2; honestly, that's sort of how I expected LIs to work in the first place. When I put all that time & energy into leveling up my LI (prior to the ixp re-alignment) it was under the assumption that when there was a level cap increase, my LI would grow with me. That was what Turbine promised, after all. (at the very least I thought my ixp would transfer via a rune.... )

I don't like suggestion 3. Craftable legendaries was something I argued FOR from the beginning. You have to allow the crafters to stay relevant somehow. It's bad enough that crafted gear is, for the most part, obsolete. Allowing LIs to be crafted (with whatever special ingredients etc) at least keeps crafting relevant. I really dislike seeing formerly important aspects of the game tossed by the wayside, I'd hate to see this effort to revitalize crafting in some small way dropped.

Envoyé par cwinches

If you let players have complete control over the legacies they stick on their weapons, you are going to end up with a “standard” for each class and every end-game player will have much the same weapon.

Not true. Browse threads about builds and strategies and you will see people are unable to agree about anything. There would be variety.

... and, even if it wasn't the case, who cares if the person next to him is using a similar item. Well, obsessed, over-controling people (but since I don't care about them... meh)

Envoyé par cwinches

I am not advocating getting rid of the RNG to determine legacies – variety is the spice of life after all

Fail. Frustration comes from the RNG factor. Two players want a good weapon (according to their own standards), have to overcome the same obstacles (aka grinding) then one of them gets the item he wants out of PURE LUCK and the other doesn't? Fail, fail, fail.

A better solution, proposed by someone in another thread, would be to get scrolls with legacies from maxed LI's to apply on newer LI's. Simpler, more elegant.

With this kind of scroll, no need to decon hundreds of LI's, Turbine could stop mobs from dropping them, making them "rare".

Envoyé par Turimbar

Not true. Browse threads about builds and strategies and you will see people are unable to agree about anything. There would be variety.

... and, even if it wasn't the case, who cares if the person next to him is using a similar item. Well, obsessed, over-controling people (but since I don't care about them... meh)

Not really. We had that sort of situation during the latter days of SoA before LI's were introduced. Everybody used the same weapons, the same armour, and the same jewellery. One hunter was almost inevitably identical to the next. This was even more apparent before the cosmetics system which allowed us all to at least look different even if we were built the same.

IMO this is the ONE area where the LI system has succeeded. Despite all its flaws, you really can believe that your Legendary Item is unique and requires some strategy to figure out how to use/improve.

**NOTE: this is NOT a defense of the LI system, just a comment on one aspect of it that I think is well-intended. lol

Envoyé par Graythandor

I don't like suggestion 3. Craftable legendaries was something I argued FOR from the beginning. You have to allow the crafters to stay relevant somehow. It's bad enough that crafted gear is, for the most part, obsolete. Allowing LIs to be crafted (with whatever special ingredients etc) at least keeps crafting relevant. I really dislike seeing formerly important aspects of the game tossed by the wayside, I'd hate to see this effort to revitalize crafting in some small way dropped.

I can see your point on this. I though about what would be best for a while becaue I like the concept of being able to craft 1st and 2nd age LIs, since it makes them available to people who are not hard-core groupers. I think maybe my dislike has to do with the fact that the current Lv. 65 LIs are almost impossible to craft. The stupid symbol you need to craft it drops so rarely that it takes forever to win one when you raid and its so expensive at AH that I'll never be able to afford it.

Envoyé par Turimbar

Fail. Frustration comes from the RNG factor. Two players want a good weapon (according to their own standards), have to overcome the same obstacles (aka grinding) then one of them gets the item he wants out of PURE LUCK and the other doesn't? Fail, fail, fail.

A better solution, proposed by someone in another thread, would be to get scrolls with legacies from maxed LI's to apply on newer LI's. Simpler, more elegant.

With this kind of scroll, no need to decon hundreds of LI's, Turbine could stop mobs from dropping them, making them "rare".

As to this, for all of people's hate on the RNG, I don't think this is actual problem. The issue is that with the current system, Turbine has created a lottery that no one can win.

In any standard real-life lottery, there are a large number of losers, some winners and a small number of people who hit the jackpot. The jackpot winners create buzz and the smaller winners create hope that you too can win, which is what keeps the losers playing.

With the current LI system does not do this. It is essentially the equivalent of letting people hit a jackpot but not allowing them to keep their winnings. It would be like a state lottery saying, "Well, congratulations on winning $10,000 on that scratch game, but we are not accepting that game card anymore, because we are only allowing people to play this new, better game!" In game, you can get every legacy you want, but at the same time you are hobbled by the knowledge that it would become obsolete in a couple of levels. Essentially, Turbine has eliminated the hope factor that exists in any good lottery. Yes you can win, but you are really just playing for s***s and giggles, since any gains you have made will be taken away when the next expansion comes out.

But what if you were allowed to keep your winnings? What if you had to play the lottery in order to get the legacies you want, but once you have them, you could keep using that weapon? I could live with that because although there would still be the aggrivation of not getting the legacies I want, I would be living with the hope that one day, I could win. That would make the RNG factor quite a bit more manageble.

Also remember that as aggrivating as it can be, the RNG does serve a practical purpose. Given that we are getting expansions at the rate of roughly once a year, there needs to be something to do end game. You can't count on content for an entire year - there just isn't enough. What are players going to do when they hit the new level cap and have done every quest and instance? They can level an alt, but they have already seen most of the content at the lower levels. They can raid, but not everyone is into that and even if they are eventually they will have earned every set-piece or rep reward.

LI's provide players with something to do that everyone can take part in end-game, regardless of their play style. In order to do this effectively, there needs to be some random factor in the equation in order to entice people to keep playing.

Envoyé par cwinches

in order to entice people to keep playing.

entice...definitely would not have used that word...

Envoyé par cwinches

But what if you were allowed to keep your winnings? What if you had to play the lottery in order to get the legacies you want, but once you have them, you could keep using that weapon? I could live with that because although there would still be the aggrivation of not getting the legacies I want, I would be living with the hope that one day, I could win. That would make the RNG factor quite a bit more manageble.

Well I couldn't live with that. Keeping the "perfect" weapon if you had luck enough to win the lottery is not enough. Why do I have to grind for hundreds and hundreds of LI's to get the item I want and the person next to me can be lucky and get it on the first attempt? Same effort, same reward.

Envoyé par cwinches

LI's provide players with something to do that everyone can take part in end-game, regardless of their play style. In order to do this effectively, there needs to be some random factor in the equation in order to entice people to keep playing.

This is, at least to me, so absurd an idea that I can't believe it comes from someone who actually plays the game. I can see if some executive who hates gaming and loves profit comes up with such idea, but not a player. Do you seriously think someone will keep playing something he/she doesn't like, for months, just to try to get the LI he/she wants? And then, when he/she gets it, will stop playing. Well, such a person must be very masochist to keep playing repetitive content he/she wouldn't play otherwise just to try to get something that will never be used.

NOBODY keeps playing this game BECAUSE the LI's are random. People play this game IF THEY LIKE IT. And they play it IN SPITE OF the LI system. The question is HOW LONG they can bear such a failed system before moving on.

Envoyé par Graythandor

Not really. We had that sort of situation during the latter days of SoA before LI's were introduced. Everybody used the same weapons, the same armour, and the same jewellery. One hunter was almost inevitably identical to the next.

Well, back then you didn't have so much diversity on what to get from your gear. Basic primary stats, some secondary, that was it. Much easier to reach a consensus on what was the "best".

Now you have legacies specific to each class, affecting specific skills. Depending on your playstyle and what you like to do, some skills will be more used than others, than some legacies will be prefered over others. You have more variety on play styles now, hence more variety on what people want.

Envoyé par Turimbar

Well, back then you didn't have so much diversity on what to get from your gear. Basic primary stats, some secondary, that was it. Much easier to reach a consensus on what was the "best".

Now you have legacies specific to each class, affecting specific skills. Depending on your playstyle and what you like to do, some skills will be more used than others, than some legacies will be prefered over others. You have more variety on play styles now, hence more variety on what people want.

I guess so. Most of my experience with the LI system is on my LM, and for LMs there are only 2 or 3 legacies that matter, everything else is gravy. And if your LI is lacking those 2 or 3 legacies it is FAIL. And in my experience, it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to get a lvl 65 LI staff with the requisite 2 legacies, nevermind the 3rd. Anyway, my point being that if we could control our legacies so easily, then once again every LM in the game would be weilding the exact same staff because we'd all choose the same legacy(s) to add.

Still, I wholeheartedly agree something has to be done to change the system. As it stands right now in SoM, from my point of view the LI system is FUBAR. I personally think they should add a one-time-only scroll you could earn/barter that would allow you to add the one legacy OF YOUR CHOOSING to your LI. You could choose any legacy from your class's legacy pool, but you could only apply ONE scroll to a given LI ever, so you would have to choose wisely. To me, this would solve a world of problems and give us enough control back to make the system tolerable but not so much as to render the entire purpose of the system obsolete.

Envoyé par Turimbar

This is, at least to me, so absurd an idea that I can't believe it comes from someone who actually plays the game. I can see if some executive who hates gaming and loves profit comes up with such idea, but not a player. Do you seriously think someone will keep playing something he/she doesn't like, for months, just to try to get the LI he/she wants?

Yes, that's precisely what they will do. Welcome to the psychology behind internet gaming (and any other "addictive" activity).

I had thought along a similar line once I saw the skirmish soldier building screens.

I tried to think through how you could achieve a workable LI builder, using only existing mechanics, and the skirmish / trait building system is exactly that.

Add in a few other things:
Damage type /rank dependent on kindred with relevant factions - kindred with bree, annuminas, esteldin and the eglain allow and increase the rank of westernesse damage - same for beleriand and rivendell / lothlorien / mirkwood, and dwarves for moria and TH. This immediately puts factions back into play as relevant.

Monster damage type linked to slayer deeds - completed 4 troll slayer deeds so I can slot troll slayer rank 4 etc

Dps rank you can control any way you want - use xp to increase the dps, and cap it with the level cap of your character.

Class Legacy ranks similar to how we have now, but you earn your legacies through a drop system, and slot them in available slots, and rank them up with xp. Again you can cap based on level cap of your character, and still allow `resets` using scrolls as currently if desired - make that the use of a SM crafter if you want crafting to be relevant.

Stat legacy done very similar to how it now is, using a relic-master and relics through drops or barters.

Finally, put radiance on the weapon, and have it equivalent to a trait - I get additional radiance by completing a tier of deed for a particular instance - you can control it easily using tiered deed.

And (although this isn`t in the attachment) you could also have cosmetic slots.

All of this turbine could make as `grindy` as they like, and drip-feed enhancements to keep people interested.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4028/...91fd904e_o.jpg

Envoyé par dimmerswitch

I had thought along a similar line once I saw the skirmish soldier building screens.

I tried to think through how you could achieve a workable LI builder, using only existing mechanics, and the skirmish / trait building system is exactly that.

Add in a few other things:
Damage type /rank dependent on kindred with relevant factions - kindred with bree, annuminas, esteldin and the eglain allow and increase the rank of westernesse damage - same for beleriand and rivendell / lothlorien / mirkwood, and dwarves for moria and TH. This immediately puts factions back into play as relevant.

Monster damage type linked to slayer deeds - completed 4 troll slayer deeds so I can slot troll slayer rank 4 etc

Dps rank you can control any way you want - use xp to increase the dps, and cap it with the level cap of your character.

Class Legacy ranks similar to how we have now, but you earn your legacies through a drop system, and slot them in available slots, and rank them up with xp. Again you can cap based on level cap of your character, and still allow `resets` using scrolls as currently if desired - make that the use of a SM crafter if you want crafting to be relevant.

Stat legacy done very similar to how it now is, using a relic-master and relics through drops or barters.

Finally, put radiance on the weapon, and have it equivalent to a trait - I get additional radiance by completing a tier of deed for a particular instance - you can control it easily using tiered deed.

And (although this isn`t in the attachment) you could also have cosmetic slots.

All of this turbine could make as `grindy` as they like, and drip-feed enhancements to keep people interested.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4028/...91fd904e_o.jpg

I like that very much. Except I would still retain the "lottery" system for legacies with the addition of a single-use "add legacy" scroll that could only be used once per LI -- you could add any legacy you want, but only ONE ever. Other than that, what you've described seems light-years better than the wack system we have now. As you describe it, no matter how grindy it might be, at the end of the day we'd actually be working towards something truly "legendary" and worth fighting for. As it stands now, we're just running on a treadmill to nowhereville.

This thread is full of great ideas, somebody should pm a mod to move this thread to the Suggestions forum; it's probably more likely to be seen by somebody with actual pull there.

Envoyé par cwinches

Complaint #1: Legendary Items don’t grow with us/We have to replace them too often
Complaint #2: There is too much grind in the system due to the RNG
Complaint #3: Too many Legendary Items drop. They are supposed to be legendary, not decon trash

I have a solution that solves ALL of these complaints you listed, DOESN'T require Turbine to overhaul the system, and adds EXCITEMENT to the Legendary item system no matter what style of play you choose:


Allow Legendary Items to experience a CRITICAL EVENT that changes the item in one of four ways.

1. Critical Degradation - a legacy on your item fails and degrades in tier.

2. Critical Destruction - a legacy on your item is destroyed.

3. Critical Enhancement - a legacy experiences an improvement in tier!

4. Critical Enlightenment - a NEW legacy appears on your item!

A Critical Event has a chance to occur at random (at a rate similar to finding a Second Age LI in the world) on killing any foe in the world.

Degradations and Enhancements to legacy tiers have an equal chance of changing 1 to 5 tiers.

Your item NOW changes and grows with you...

Envoyé par spiritintelligencia

I have a solution that solves ALL of these complaints you listed, DOESN'T require Turbine to overhaul the system, and adds EXCITEMENT to the Legendary item system no matter what style of play you choose:


Allow Legendary Items to experience a CRITICAL EVENT that changes the item in one of four ways.

1. Critical Degradation - a legacy on your item fails and degrades in tier.

2. Critical Destruction - a legacy on your item is destroyed.

3. Critical Enhancement - a legacy experiences an improvement in tier!

4. Critical Enlightenment - a NEW legacy appears on your item!

A Critical Event has a chance to occur at random (at a rate similar to finding a Second Age LI in the world) on killing any foe in the world.

Degradations and Enhancements to legacy tiers have an equal chance of changing 1 to 5 tiers.

Your item NOW changes and grows with you...

Actually a very interesting idea. Not sure how to give rep but when I find out I shall give it to you!!!!

But I can already hear the outrage when the key legicy for your class item disapprears!!! I can see size 80 text in bright red telling the devs how bad this is, how I will never play this game again, how could the game be so RNG based.......

But I actually like this more than the:

1) "I get to pick exactly which legicies i want."
2) "I get to transfer my great legicies from my old LI to my new LI."
3) "Attach the legicies to the player, which is the same as number 1 above."

edit: some one explained it to me. +1 rep for you!!!

Envoyé par Maxal

But I can already hear the outrage when the key legicy for your class item disapprears!!! I can see size 80 text in bright red telling the devs how bad this is, how I will never play this game again, how could the game be so RNG based.......

So true. Although I can see a mechanic being added that could tip the scales in favor of the positive Critical Event based on something like how many deeds you have accomplished...

Base chance: 25%, 25%, 25%, 25%
Best chance: 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% (in order of Destruction, Degrade, Enlighten, Enhance)

Envoyé par spiritintelligencia

I have a solution that solves ALL of these complaints you listed, DOESN'T require Turbine to overhaul the system, and adds EXCITEMENT to the Legendary item system no matter what style of play you choose:


Allow Legendary Items to experience a CRITICAL EVENT that changes the item in one of four ways.

1. Critical Degradation - a legacy on your item fails and degrades in tier.

2. Critical Destruction - a legacy on your item is destroyed.

3. Critical Enhancement - a legacy experiences an improvement in tier!

4. Critical Enlightenment - a NEW legacy appears on your item!

A Critical Event has a chance to occur at random (at a rate similar to finding a Second Age LI in the world) on killing any foe in the world.

Degradations and Enhancements to legacy tiers have an equal chance of changing 1 to 5 tiers.

Your item NOW changes and grows with you...

I hope this was intended as a joke? lol There is a similar mechanic with slotted stat-stones in Aion and it is OBNOXIOUS. Every time you slot a stone (some weapons have 5-6 slots) there is about a 50/50 chance you will fail or succeed. If you succeed, the stone becomes part of your weapon; but if you fail, not only is the stone you are slotting lost, but so is every other stone already slotted in the weapon. Trust me, you don't want that system -- our LI system is random & grindy enough as it is.

Envoyé par spiritintelligencia

I have a solution that solves ALL of these complaints you listed, DOESN'T require Turbine to overhaul the system, and adds EXCITEMENT to the Legendary item system no matter what style of play you choose:


Allow Legendary Items to experience a CRITICAL EVENT that changes the item in one of four ways.

1. Critical Degradation - a legacy on your item fails and degrades in tier.

2. Critical Destruction - a legacy on your item is destroyed.

3. Critical Enhancement - a legacy experiences an improvement in tier!

4. Critical Enlightenment - a NEW legacy appears on your item!

A Critical Event has a chance to occur at random (at a rate similar to finding a Second Age LI in the world) on killing any foe in the world.

Degradations and Enhancements to legacy tiers have an equal chance of changing 1 to 5 tiers.

Your item NOW changes and grows with you...

This will never work. MMO players are spoiled, greedy people. They like to gain, gain, gain, not lose. From resource nodes to LIs, no one must ever experience any sort of loss or the world will come to a screaming end.

Envoyé par cwinches

I can see your point on this. I though about what would be best for a while becaue I like the concept of being able to craft 1st and 2nd age LIs, since it makes them available to people who are not hard-core groupers. I think maybe my dislike has to do with the fact that the current Lv. 65 LIs are almost impossible to craft. The stupid symbol you need to craft it drops so rarely that it takes forever to win one when you raid and its so expensive at AH that I'll never be able to afford it.



As to this, for all of people's hate on the RNG, I don't think this is actual problem. The issue is that with the current system, Turbine has created a lottery that no one can win.

In any standard real-life lottery, there are a large number of losers, some winners and a small number of people who hit the jackpot. The jackpot winners create buzz and the smaller winners create hope that you too can win, which is what keeps the losers playing.

With the current LI system does not do this. It is essentially the equivalent of letting people hit a jackpot but not allowing them to keep their winnings. It would be like a state lottery saying, "Well, congratulations on winning $10,000 on that scratch game, but we are not accepting that game card anymore, because we are only allowing people to play this new, better game!" In game, you can get every legacy you want, but at the same time you are hobbled by the knowledge that it would become obsolete in a couple of levels. Essentially, Turbine has eliminated the hope factor that exists in any good lottery. Yes you can win, but you are really just playing for s***s and giggles, since any gains you have made will be taken away when the next expansion comes out.

But what if you were allowed to keep your winnings? What if you had to play the lottery in order to get the legacies you want, but once you have them, you could keep using that weapon? I could live with that because although there would still be the aggrivation of not getting the legacies I want, I would be living with the hope that one day, I could win. That would make the RNG factor quite a bit more manageble.

Also remember that as aggrivating as it can be, the RNG does serve a practical purpose. Given that we are getting expansions at the rate of roughly once a year, there needs to be something to do end game. You can't count on content for an entire year - there just isn't enough. What are players going to do when they hit the new level cap and have done every quest and instance? They can level an alt, but they have already seen most of the content at the lower levels. They can raid, but not everyone is into that and even if they are eventually they will have earned every set-piece or rep reward.

LI's provide players with something to do that everyone can take part in end-game, regardless of their play style. In order to do this effectively, there needs to be some random factor in the equation in order to entice people to keep playing.

This quote has so much fail in it I cannot believe you are actually a player. You sound like you are the director of finance for Turbine. How do we appease the players without actually appeasing the players and continue to get them to grind instead of actually having to work on end-game content.

Please stop posting

Due to the random/grindy nature of LIs they aren't something that can grow with you.
They have to be very common or you'll never get the legacies you want.
On a third age item with 3 starter legacies (including the chance that they only get 2 makes this even worse), there is something around a 1/56 chance to get the three you want, and that isn't even starting on the secondary pool legacies you get as you level. (If you want another primary pool your chances are horrible) So if you've just unlucky it can take you many many more legendary items to get the legacies you'd like.

So instead the system is a random grind to get the choices you want. Letting people grind for some scrolls or some other item to choose their legacies and improve the items would be better. If they want it to be dependent on random drops, have those improvements require random drops, but some control over the direction of your weapon would do lots to make it feel like a legendary that could stay and grow with you overtime as you tweaked and improved it.

Envoyé par Turimbar

This is, at least to me, so absurd an idea that I can't believe it comes from someone who actually plays the game. I can see if some executive who hates gaming and loves profit comes up with such idea, but not a player. Do you seriously think someone will keep playing something he/she doesn't like, for months, just to try to get the LI he/she wants?

Envoyé par Graythandor

Yes, that's precisely what they will do. Welcome to the psychology behind internet gaming (and any other "addictive" activity).

One has to enjoy something to get addicted to it.

We play the game, we enjoy it, we get addicted. Ok. Grinding is added, we hate it, even so we insist on it because we think it might provide us an improvement on the other (content) enjoyable activity. Time goes on, we realize the desired improvement will never come because the odds are minimal, we give up. Sounds like a cure to the addiction to me.

Envoyé par spiritintelligencia

I have a solution that solves ALL of these complaints you listed, DOESN'T require Turbine to overhaul the system, and adds EXCITEMENT to the Legendary item system no matter what style of play you choose:


Allow Legendary Items to experience a CRITICAL EVENT that changes the item in one of four ways.

1. Critical Degradation - a legacy on your item fails and degrades in tier.

2. Critical Destruction - a legacy on your item is destroyed.

3. Critical Enhancement - a legacy experiences an improvement in tier!

4. Critical Enlightenment - a NEW legacy appears on your item!

A Critical Event has a chance to occur at random (at a rate similar to finding a Second Age LI in the world) on killing any foe in the world.

Degradations and Enhancements to legacy tiers have an equal chance of changing 1 to 5 tiers.

Your item NOW changes and grows with you...

You can close your eyes and randomly press buttons on your mouse and keyboard to the same effect.

Envoyé par Turimbar

Time goes on, we realize the desired improvement will never come because the odds are minimal, we give up. Sounds like a cure to the addiction to me.

And yet here we are.

I rest my case.

Envoyé par Graythandor

And yet here we are.

I rest my case.

Those who left speak no more.

That doesn't mean no one has left.

Sorry, but I don't think your suggestions sound all that good.

It keeps the LI lottery and simply makes it harder to find a winning ticket.

IMO - the biggest complaint is the lottery nature of the LI's and these ideas just make that worse.

Sorry, just my .02

It seems some of you have forgotten which game you've chosen to play.

My feelings here are there should be either something in place when it comes to reforging you Legendary item. I mean they only give you two choices on a New Legacie and maybe both suck or you do not use. What a waist of a legendary item in my book. They should either give you 3 or 4 choices instead. The Legendary item should be based on what we want not us having to trait around a item. Or another idea should be if we get a sucky reforges give us the ability to get a scroll for a buy back reforge so you can exchange a legacie for a diffrent one. Again just ideas. We need to find something that will kill 2 birds with one stone. After I though we were the good guys we are suppose to be getting a boost not the baddies. They dont win the war!

I'm going to go back to the OP's suggestions.

Scaling the level of the LI to the level of the character it's bound to. No argument from me about that.

Scaling the legacies. Here's where things start to come unstuck, not all legacies scale up well. Legacies that reduce the power cost for using certain skills are one example. They use a percentage scale. Should they scale up until they reduce the power cost by 100%, which means those skills cost ZERO power to use? If they scaled higher than that, the same skills would actually give power back to the player using them.

Try this. Minstrels have a legacy that reduces the power cost for healing, if that scaled up to 100%, in group situations they could put up their bubble (damage from mobs is taken from their power instead of their morale) and spam heals that don't use any power. If they get aggro, they lose power instead of morale until someone else pulls the mobs off them. I'd say that's a fairly serious break to content balance, not just because the risk to the mini from healing aggro is seriously trivialised, but if they don't pull aggro they have an effectively unlimited power pool to heal with. Add in the legacies that increase outgoing heals (also a percentage scale at the moment) and group content would be well and truely broken by massively overpowered minstrels.

How about legacies that reduce the cooldown on a skill, should they scale up until the skill effectively has no cooldown? What about legacies that increase the number of targets for AOE skills? I can tell you that right now, with the right combination of skills and legacies, guardians have an AOE melee skill (Whirling Retaliation, a level 18 skill) that can hit up to 10 mobs at the same time (5 from the skill itself + 5 more from a legacy if it's at max rank), and two more skills that can both potentially hit 8 mobs using the same legacy (Vexing Blow and Sweeping Cut).

What about legacies that increase damage done by skills? Those use a percentage scale, plus if you look at those skills in the lorebook, they get a natural increase in damage every time a character levels up. Using a percentage scale and making it open ended will be very content breaking.

To make legacies scale up over a much larger range of ranks, the scaling itself is going to have to be redone. Cooldown and power reduction legacies will have to have hard caps, or some other mechanism would have to be added to the skills to balance out the effect of those legacies at very high ranks. For cooldown legacies the legacy could increase the power cost of the skill at the same time, the more ranks you put into the legacy, the shorter the cooldown for the skill but you need more power to use the skill, so power consumption becomes a secondary cooldown on the skill. You could apply the reverse to power reduction legacies, each rank increases the cooldown for the skill, so you use less power each time but you cannot use the skill as often. This is fine for a legacy that only affects one skill, but several classes have power reduction legacies that affect multiple skills and any increase to the rank of that legacy will make the cooldown longer on all the skills it affects, not just one skill.

AOE target legacies may have to stay fixed, I don't see any clean way to scale them much higher without risking breaking the content through trivialising it. Is being able to smack 15 mobs in the head with one swing of a sword/axe/whatever reasonable? I don't think so. Damage increase legacies (and healing increase legacies for the relevent classes) would need to change from a percentage scale to some other scale, probably a fixed number of points per rank, percentage scales baloon out of control once you get past a certain point.