Re-inventing Blizzard's bad design, legendaries. For playability extension of the server

[TheCEOofArms]

Hello!

The expansion is at it's end, the content is no more. Nothing to look forward too, except perhaps the next expansion... meaning what I'm going to propose now, to the current expansion that is Legion, is non-impactful decision to everything else, but highly impactful to here and the now. The Legendaries. Server is one hundred percent going to have a downward trend of players no matter what, and what I'm proposing here isn't probably even going to reverse that downward decline of the playerbase but it's going to make it a lot slower, because it's very steep now.

So, the Legendaries. - From the get-go this is a monumentally bad Blizzard design, we all know this let's be real here. RNG.... you never know when it's coming, often those 2 things drive people away from even having alts on top of your 1 or 2 main characters. And trust me playing 1 or 2 gets boring especially when you did it all. You should create an event, or install a vendor in dalaran to claim 1 legendary of your choosing per week, so it's same rough obtaining once per week like now, only it's selective. Which is good. People can immedietely play the game with a little more joy gearing through heroic into mythic. Or increase essences by like.... 300 per boss, increase the drop rate of the legendaries by a big big %, do something radical whatever way you do it to have people put their alts on their feet a lot sooner than they do now so they can keep playing the same game from a new perspective. This is the reality, people are more likely to quit than play for 5 months just because the 3 legendaries they need decided to be that slow-coming. This is not a blizzlike server anyway, not with people walking around wearing 985 7.1.5 gear, so that argument is in the water.

This is is not even player servicing, this something you do to keep the players playing. To give them an opportunity to enjoy the game from a new perspective, here and now. Or you don't do this and you fall off a lot sooner, maybe you want to fall off maybe you don't. I'm gonna speak from a logical point of view of keeping this server fun, to me this is like offering a million dollars to a man and him saying no. But he's broke and his rent is due... this is just a decision that feels necessary and can only give you a WIN. As a server.

Please if anyone who can actually quickly apply something along the lines of this reads this, or someone who knows that person does, just copy paste this to the person that can actually execute a change.

I just want to play here more and maybe enjoy my warlock and boomie, but if I'm being honest... I'm not gonna stick around until my legendaries drop several months down the year, but I am going to STICK SEVERAL MONTHS DOWN THE YEAR if they drop now. This is not a spoiled point of view, this is a point of view from a realist stand point. Do not dismiss this on glance, this is big. This is the make it or break it. Thanks for the read - -

[Sarah]

Hello,

So, first of all, the design philosophy behind legendaries (by Blizzard, not by us - however, we mostly try to replicate Blizzard's intentions in most things) is to have them in this RNG way in order to keep players playing... more playtime = more legendaries. If you receive all your BiS legendaries immediately, chances are you'll do less content and resort to only do so-called raidlogging (only log on for your guild's main raid and maybe a weekly +15 dungeon) as you no longer have to actively do all the content for the legendary chances.

Blizzard does not intend you to have full BiS legendaries for all specs on every class. Only very few players had this, and if they did, it was by luck.

Over the course of the expansion, legendary drop rates have been increased slightly again and again, and patch 7.3.5 has already added the Wakening Essence mechanic, which pretty much gives you 1 legendary per week if you do all of the content which awards them.


That said... we are at the end of the expansion and chances are that if you start a new character now, you will not be able to get the crucial legendaries anymore, no matter how much effort you put into obtaining them.

I personally am for an increase of legendary availability, however I am absolutely AGAINST the concept of receiving a legendary of choice (or even a random one) for free. What I would be in favor of would be solutions like these:

- Moderately increase the drop rates for legendaries from the existing sources, but not by too much.

- Increase the amount of Wakening Essence gained from existing sources, or make them drop from Mythic+ dungeons and/or all Antorus difficulties per week. (Possibly drop a lower amount from older Tiers as a motivation for players to do those raids again?)

- Introduce a custom quest (maybe weeklies with different objectives?) which asks you to kill a certain Antorus boss on a selected difficulty (Normal or maybe Heroic), or to complete a specific Mythic+ dungeon on a certain level, for example +10 - completing this quest awards x amount of Wakening Essence


In short, I would like to see an increase to the rate legendaries can be obtained in, but maintain the core idea of the legendary system, which is to be rewarded for doing content. I will not support the idea of receiving legendaries for free, and I am also against being able to freely select the legendary you want.


Best regards

[TheCEOofArms]

You can't reference a Blizzlike design as a key arguing point on a server that isn't a blizzlike experience. Beginning from... the most glaring fact you can have 7.1.5 or older items in 985 edition. Also, we also came to a conclusion not everything Blizzard ever did was smart. And making legendaries RNG is one of those things. So in fact Freakz removing the RNG factor would them be doing what the retail players would've wanted all along. And I think the premise that you would stop playing with right legendaries is apsurd. The main reason I play the game is to enjoy it, and I can only enjoy it with right legendaries. With wrong legendaries it's not fun. So me sitting in RNG is driving me away from the game, where as them installing a selective process would drive me back in.

[se7enspree]

And how will that slow down the population declining... It will in fact do the quite opposite, once you obtain bis legendaries combined with bis gear from raids (which will take you 2 weeks at max), thats it you done with the content, now you are free to leave the server, because you literally got nothing else to grind for or look for.

[Sarah]

I agree with se7enspree, from my personal experience on retail, where I've played a variety of level 110 chars, I can say for a fact that I resorted to raidlogging and 1 weekly M15 as soon as any of them got their BiS legendaries, the same goes for most my friends I've played with.

This is why I would like to see a solution which promotes actively doing content on several characters, as that would help to combat the declining playerbase a bit. Sure it will not necessarrily fix the declining numbers, but it might motivate the remaining players to be more active.

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[LethalFactorLK]

We wont implement such a thing, await for interesting news in the near future.