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Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Discussion on the quantity of legendary items in circulation
Threather
Member, Alpha Two
Based off of Steven's design philosophy, legendaries are going to have the following requirements:
I had an idea regarding the "granted out in volume" portion of legendaries that I would like to see discussed in this thread. There are groups in the community that are for everyone being able to obtain these legendaries so all people can obtain/experience the use of a legendary. For those familiar with WoW, it would be similar to WoW legendary items like Hand of Ragnaros or Thunderfury, The Blessed Blade of the Windseeker where those legendaries are more of a rare/epic in quantity. Then there are other groups in the community that are for legendaries being a unique item that only one person can own at a time. This means that if another person wanted to obtain that legendary, it would not be possible unless that legendary is programmed to detoriate or become destroyed in some fashion.
My idea is to meet both groups somewhere in the middle, but leaning slightly more towards the "unique" side of the idea. My idea for "unique" legendaries would be to drastically limit a server's capability to allow multiple unique players to obtain ownership of the legendary items. This is designed to limit people's ability to trade the item but also limit the number of those items in circulation. To do so, I recommend a "cooldown" to the legendary item. Below is an example of a made-up item and how I would implement it:
Legendary "Unique" Item materials needed:
Let's make it that once the legendary material has been dropped, the material is then placed on a server wide lockdown and is not able to be dropped again. When all of the materials are gathered for crafting and the item is actually crafted, the item is placed on a 90-day cooldown (the length is debatable, but this is a length of time I think could be fair). Once the 90-day cooldown is up, then you have the chance for that item to drop again from that boss (keep in mind that you still have to have RNG luck to get the item to drop AGAIN). If the item is able to be dropped as a completed item, once the item drops from the raid boss in its already completed form, the 90-day timer starts at the time of acquisition.
I came up with this idea to increase the players possibility to experience powerful and story rich items and continue to hold onto the idea that it is a unique item.
Some other ideas:
Counter Points I can see people making:
I'm interested in seeing what the community thinks about this approach.
- High amount of effort to obtain
- Group based content to gather materials/components to find the materials to craft and/or auction to others.
- Not attained easily nor are they granted out in volume
I had an idea regarding the "granted out in volume" portion of legendaries that I would like to see discussed in this thread. There are groups in the community that are for everyone being able to obtain these legendaries so all people can obtain/experience the use of a legendary. For those familiar with WoW, it would be similar to WoW legendary items like Hand of Ragnaros or Thunderfury, The Blessed Blade of the Windseeker where those legendaries are more of a rare/epic in quantity. Then there are other groups in the community that are for legendaries being a unique item that only one person can own at a time. This means that if another person wanted to obtain that legendary, it would not be possible unless that legendary is programmed to detoriate or become destroyed in some fashion.
My idea is to meet both groups somewhere in the middle, but leaning slightly more towards the "unique" side of the idea. My idea for "unique" legendaries would be to drastically limit a server's capability to allow multiple unique players to obtain ownership of the legendary items. This is designed to limit people's ability to trade the item but also limit the number of those items in circulation. To do so, I recommend a "cooldown" to the legendary item. Below is an example of a made-up item and how I would implement it:
Legendary "Unique" Item materials needed:
- 1x Legendary Material (This material would have a cooldown placed on it)
- 50x Assorment of 'Epic Materials'
- 200x Assortment of 'Rare materials'
- 1000x Assortment of 'Normal Materials'
Let's make it that once the legendary material has been dropped, the material is then placed on a server wide lockdown and is not able to be dropped again. When all of the materials are gathered for crafting and the item is actually crafted, the item is placed on a 90-day cooldown (the length is debatable, but this is a length of time I think could be fair). Once the 90-day cooldown is up, then you have the chance for that item to drop again from that boss (keep in mind that you still have to have RNG luck to get the item to drop AGAIN). If the item is able to be dropped as a completed item, once the item drops from the raid boss in its already completed form, the 90-day timer starts at the time of acquisition.
I came up with this idea to increase the players possibility to experience powerful and story rich items and continue to hold onto the idea that it is a unique item.
- The first player who obtains this item has the glory of being able to show the whole world that this is theirs and no one has the ability to gain this item for 90-days.
- If RNG is the best RNG the world has seen, that means by the end of the first year, only 4 of this single legendary item would be in existence on that server. After 10 years, only 40 would exist. This is still a unique item when we take into consideration that servers have 8,000+ concurrent players (.5% of the concurrent players would have this item in their inventory after 10 years). In the end, it is still a truly unique item. If RNG is the worst ever, you might still only see 5 if it refuses to drop frequently.
- This prevents the item from being wholly lost in the ether of the game if it was a truly unique (one of a kind, no other person could obtain it) and that person were to quit or just hold onto it so no one could get it.
- It continues to make the specific Raid boss and dungeon a desirable place to clear.
Some other ideas:
- Currently, it is stated that materials made to craft the item are needed to continue to repair the item. If the legendary material is needed for that purpose, then we might be in a 90-day cycle where only one of these items can exist. Either the person who owns it gets the legendary material again and repairs their item, or another person gets it (essentially transferring the ownership of the item to someone else) for the next 90-days.
- This keeps the item truly a "Legendary Unique" because only one of these items will ever be "ACTIVE" because once it is used to completion, it is broken until the material can be dropped again.
Counter Points I can see people making:
- This removes the item's ability to be truly legendary/unique. If it were a story item, it wouldn't make sense to have 40 copies of a legendary amulet that was used 20,000 years ago to seal away some ancient entity.
- It could be seen as removing the glory of people spending a lot of time working together to actually acquire/build the item because the more copies there are, the less value it contains.
- This could cause a single metropolis to become a permanent fixture in the world by the population. This could be seen as a negative thing as it would reduce the ability for the world to fully grow in newer areas because one of the 5 metropolises would never move.
- 90-days is way too long. It could diminish a dungeon's worth by completely removing a raid boss's big ticket item from dropping for 90-days.
I'm interested in seeing what the community thinks about this approach.
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Comments
I highly doubt all the people who end up obtaining that item will continue to play for 10 years. Better to make the item account bound. This would be a better way to keep the count even less.
2. I personally would prefer lower drop chance than a 3 month cooldown timer. As this would enable big guilds in all the wrong ways.
Edit: One of the most important aspect of MMO is the sense of achievement. If after putting so much hardwork we lose the legendary item after a certain time period why should people bother with obtaining them then?
But in a bit of a different way. Maybe all nodes on metropolis stage spawn an epic boss every 30 or whatever days(different boss for each node) and it drops that legendary material. So people can fight over for it. Also with each node spawning other epic boss ( for different legendary item) is an extra reason to want the other's guild metropolis to go down.
Hence if i recall correctly they said there would be 5 metropolis give or take in a server. Means 5 legendary items in a server per 30 days. Just an opinion though. would be really interested to see other peoples opinions too.
Edit: i mean after the 30 days the people that had them lose the item. I would like it to be a top reward for these guilds that fought hard to get them. Then again try in a month or so.
I would really like to NOT see much binding of gear in any sense. It just feels so artificial. What greater thrill than swanking a legendary off of someone?
Moreover legendary items from different Nodes will be different. So there would be some absolute uniqueness in there too.
On the flip side if legendary items are degradable or lost after some time period then I would not bother with this aspect of the game and would settle for the next best. Because the grind needed to obtain them...well I have better things to do with the amount of time and effort which would be required, in game or otherwise.
I'd think that legendary items should be something you go for when you are already at the top. A lot of it would be naturally farmed along side other items. If you played classic wow, think Hand of Rag. Yes, someone needs to farm the rep for the recipe and get other materials but you get most of the key components while farming gear in MC.
The way i see it, the item should either have to degrade or become obsolete. Either way, it becomes unusable at some point.
Would being able to turn the broken legendary into a cosmetic make people feel better about losing it?
I have played TBC somewhat and Wotlk for couple of years. But you are making some assumptions here.
Firstly, Legendries should be notoriously hard to obtain w.r.t both grind and difficulty of the grind. So while some of the materials could be collected while farming gear, rest of the grind would have those material itself as its focus.
Secondly, AoCs instanced Raids would be more lore related than progression. Some of the mats other than the legendary one would likely be dropped by world bosses only which would involve a lot of shenanigans due to its open world nature. As a result the grind already has a higher level of difficulty associated with it compared to WoW.
I dont mind if the item becomes obsolete wrt stats on it. Although I have an impression that unlike WoW, AoC expansions wont render its items from the older ones obsolete. Correct me if I am wrong.
But if it degrades and I lose the item as a whole, this in essence completely invalidates all my efforts which went into obtaining it. Moreover, the player would lose so much due to no fault of his/her own.
Edit: Wouldn't it be better to handle this by initiating a quest chain for all players with Legendries so that they can upgrade their current ones to match the stats of the newer models of the expansion?
The issue isn't figuring out how to keep them around, it's that they need to eventually go away if they are supposed to be rare. Everyone, or at least most people, will eventually have them if they aren't being removed in some way, wither it's through irrelevance or destruction. They would become another part of the gear grind if they don't, which I don't think they are supposed to be.
Which is fine with me.
I also wouldn't mind if the items entered the world through some mechanism besides boss drops. Boss drops means they go to the dominant guilds or players, which is traditional. What if one went to the most productive crafter per year, another to the cleric who healed the most HP that year, one to the Bounty Hunter who killed the most corrupt players, one to the best fisherman, one to the player with the most 1v1 PvP wins, and so forth?
Yes, that would make them rare but that is also changing what they are. Instead of a large project a guild or person could work towards, it come down to luck. Even if there is a grind component, you are still gated by the rng drop from those bosses. With the limited number of attempts, law of averages doesn't have much of a chance to play a role either.
In Sylvanar's post, they mentioned it would not be worth farming if they lost it. In that scenario, you don't have the option to farm for it unless your guild is able to kill the boss, they are lucky enough to get the item, and you are lucky enough to receive it.
I'd prefer the rarity being created by the resources required and limited use then rng.
For those numbers to stick, there could never be another source of legendaries. it would always have to be those bosses or whichever ones that replace them. You could never have legendaries that might come from more accessible areas but are balanced by the number of resources required to get and the amount of time they last.
Where i'm coming from, i think there should be a class of item that is a large investment, special, and limited. I think the idea of legendaries fits this. I don't think they should be the next quality of item everyone shoots for.
If I see two people wielding the same "legendary" sword, it's not the legendary sword, it's just a good sword.
Ashes terms may be different than what you expect. The Ashes official definition of class being one example.
Seems fairly unlikely that a Master Crafter would Craft the exact same Legendary item, since it's probably going to include enchantments and other specs requested by the wielder.
My expectation is that a server may have at least a couple of Legendary swords Crafted from the eyes of the Winter Dragon Legendary World Boss.
In a raid of size 40 aiming to down a world boss who is going to drop a legendary material, with open world PvP being a involved, I am absolutely sure there wont be only one person per raid group aiming for it if it drops. LUCK would always be a BIG factor for obtaining a legendary item in the first place. By big I mean 95+% or more. Let me explain why.
- In a server of 50k accounts there would always be at least if not more than 100 top tier players (humble assumption on my part) gunning for that material every time the relevant event would happen. Many of those top tier players would be in the same raid. So unless the guild downing the boss is a cult, I dont see how this gets resolved without RNG being involved. Now that RNG has entered the scene, why not make the material drop RNG as well. At least this way big guilds cant monopolize the legendries.
- Grind can be done by anyone willing to put in the effort. So does this mean everyone who grinds deserves legendary items? So when someone does get THE material needed to craft it, yes you are lucky enough to receive it because there are other deserving players too.
Absolutely.
But I abhor the idea of "absolute unique item" or "The Legendary item". There are 5 Mayors and 5 Castle Lords (I dunno if this is the exact term for that position) This is a game where there is no "Absolutely Unique" player or "The Legendary" player. The why does the item need to be so?
I dunno if I have conveyed what I am trying to say properly, but this idea of being "The only one" in a game of 50k accounts just sounds like a way of boosting their own ego with no real significance to the game and everything involved with it.
I think the idea is making a class of item that is this rare, which is part of the reason i'm arguing this. I don't think it should be looked at the same as legendaries in other games. It's the pinnacle of items that can be created and is more of a tool for the guild than the user's item. You shouldn't look at this item as your BiS.
i have maybe failed to say that i dislike it being heavily dependent on RNG. I prefer it being more about effort and/or skill.
We both know that if this was rng, there will be guilds that get them often and those that never get one at all, despite killing the boss every time it's up. You will have that guild that clears the boss for a year and never gets anything, then a guild kills it once and gets a legendary. I think this is silly and is why I prefer the rarity to not be created through rng.
Instead of the 5 monthly bosses having a 5% chance of dropping the legendary item/component, i'd prefer for them to 100% drop the component. A person can then do whatever else needed to finish the item. It would eventually break, either through use, timer, etc (think i prefer use), and they would need the same component to get it repaired. The rate of their degradation would control the number of them on a server. If they last a month on average, then there will always be around ~5 working legendaries on the server at one time. They could increase degradation to an average of 6 months and there would be around ~30 on a server.
Instead of a monthly chance of a server getting more legendaries, the number of legendaries would be constant.
In this scenario, If you want a legendary, there is a clear path to it. You need to kill a boss and you will have the component that gates its creation. Killing the boss is hard but there are ways for someone to figure out that part. If it's rng, you have to figure out how to kill the boss and pray.
Lets agree, set a legendary boss to have a 100% drop chance, remove rng instead you require common boss spawns which removes the shock and awe of a legendary boss, you make it so to have even 5 or 10 players with a legendary you must spawn 3 or 4 legendary bosses per month, no longer a unique event for the server its now just gameplay. Plus you just encourage people to horde legendary content instead of using it, people will use legendaries at legendary spawns to help win the fight further capitulating their strength and just leading to a totalitarian guild since even with multiple bosses a month a player would be able to easily move to the next spawn in time, too much of a snowball. However instead lets make world bosses extremely rare, say 4-10 bosses a year dependent on new lvl 6 nodes. You get a 100% chance of a legendary. This means every player in a server would know that a legendary boss will spawn at x location and time because its that much of an event. It means every guild of 150 players or greater who wants to be competitive in the server will show up, legendary content would draw in hundreds if not a thousand players who will PVP for this content. This encourages rivalries, node wars, castle sieges, its the pinnacle of the gameplay that they are aiming for. Legendary content cannot just degrade requiring another legendary material to repair. UNLESS you make the repair material for a legendary item smithable by the players. Perhaps a legendary item does degrade but either you allow it to be repaired by epic level material by smithers or you allow smithers to use epic level content to craft legendary materials to repair legendary items. This would push players to make sure they have strong smithers in their clan fostering a artisan playstyle thats healthy and inclusive while also competitive.
TLDR; The more rare a legendary spawn the more participation, if you must have items degrade allow them to be repairable by a player smith and allow the material required for repair by craftable by said smith. I agree 100% chance would feel better overall.
If I correctly understand what the devs have said, there will be some Legendaries that are unique - one of a kind per server. But, Legendary is also a class of item that can be Crafted by Master Crafters using resources gathered from Legendary bosses... those are not necessarily one of a kind.
Why would a Master Swordsmith only be able to create one Legendary Winter Dragon Sword per server?
As if they would say, "Well, I already Crafted the one Legendary Winter Dragon Sword I can ever make. Sorry. You'll have to settle for a Legendary Winter Dragon Lance."
I assume by "effort and/or skill" you include creating and managing a guild capable of obtaining it through all the chaos as part of it. So the legendary item becomes more a symbol of THAT guilds dominance and it needs to be re-established every couple of months or so. Hence the degradation.
Btw, I never said you were wrong for what you have proposed, just that it wouldn't appeal to me personally. Maybe if I find a guild I like enough to do all this I would feel differently. Not to mention what you are proposing suits AoCs ideals more closely. Risk/Reward.
Edit: This way of implementing ensures that only hardcore guilds will participate in that content though cuz casual players and semi-hardcore players have no place in that aspect of the game anymore.
I could see each Monarch of a Castle receiving a unique Legendary ring.
And I could see there being a "unique" Legendary item for the Mayor of each Node Type Metropolis.
Of course, in the latter case, there are 4 Node Types and 5 Metros, so we should expect to see cases of overlap if there are two Scientific Metros or two Military Metros.
I could also see something similar for Religions. The "Pope" of each Religion might receive a unique Legendary item that reflects the focus of the Religion. Same for the leader of each Social Org.
The grind wouldn't need to be any more time consuming than a grind for a permanent legendary, could even be less because of the degradation.
Rng doesn't create awe for me. It just means they got lucky, anyone can get lucky. The meaningful part of the item is the fact they killed the boss. As i pointed out, you would have some guilds that never get a legendary and others who get it on the first kill, not because one is more skilled than the other but because one got lucky. I don't think that is good.
If the item breaking changed the importance in the event in any way, it would increase it since the item is guaranteed.
There are ways you can get people to use their legendaries but them only using their legendary for critical events is part of the idea. If needed or people think it shouldn't work that way, it could be changed to or augmented with a timer.
The legendary item should consume the same item required to create it so more legendaries aren't being generated. In order to keep your legendaries running, you should have to keep killing the bosses. Can't just get the legendary and quit the guild that helped you get it since you need them to keep the item functioning.
Uniqueness in this case is fine because these items are associated with the position and not the player themselves. So whomever manages to rise these stations gets to keep that item signifying their accomplishment for however long they manage to stay in power.
Headpiece for Mayor.
Amulet for Castle lords. (Maybe belt?)
Ring for religion leaders.
Wouldn't including the social org leaders make it a bit too common though? Unless there is a limit to how many social orgs can exist at a time.