How to implement Legendary items?
Every MMORPG has them: legendary items. Powerful artifacts of legend, that make enemies tremble when they see them.
Or so it should be.
As MMOs evolved and loot tables became posted in online webpages, more and more players farmed those items. What once was an item of awe and status, has often lost its Legendary status, since so many players run around wielding them.
Not only that, but developers have been forced to reduce the stat-discrepancy of those items, since it gave players such a huge advantage over others.
So how can these items be implemented in modern MMO-RPGs?
Linked from:
@Mr.NobodyLegendary Buffs vs Legendary Items
Sometimes a buff might be more effective than an item:
- Buffs can have more varied effects like affecting the whole character's appearance instead of just one slot.
- It allows the player to still equip the items he has (does not force someone to use a Sword to get the Legendary Sword's buff, for example).
- Easier to handle and easier to understand: buffs always expire. Players would have an easier time understanding that a Legendary Buff/Status will expire after the season is over (or whatever timeframe).
- It can be easier to implement buffs that jump from player-to-player. For example: vampire affliction, werewolves, zombies etc.
@CaelmaiYeah, this would be the best arpouch.
For example, the legendary buff can be the result of absorbing the boss's energy, which withers over time but while the player has this energy, it may even appear to be different, as a physical manifestation of the buff.
If it smells like an item and look lika an item, it would practically be an item kkk
- In reply toMr.Nobody⬆:@Mr.Nobody
Temporary Legendary Items
Temporary legendaries are given to players for a short amount of time. Often for a month (30 days) or for a gaming season. There are many advantages to this:
- This allows legendary items to be more powerful, since even if they give advantages to players, they are only temporary. This allows for implementations of Legendary items that can really change the tide of a battle, and really give them the powerful status they deserve.
- It keeps the rarity of those items, since there will never be more than a certain number of them circulating the server.
- It encourages diversity and rotation, allowing different guilds, cities and classes to compete for those items.
- It helps counteract accounts from being sold on the black market, since even accounts with legendary items will lose them after a set amount of time.
- It gives every player a chance to "get his moment in the spotlight", which is good for server health.
In contrast, some games are going down the road of reserving those items only for the first few players who are able to get them in the game. The objective of this is to keep the rare/awe of those items. However, I think that approach is flawed.
Why limited Legendary items is bad for the game
- If only the first players are able to get the items, many players will lose motivation to play on a server as soon as someone gets the items they were aiming for.
- This leads to the problem that, when new servers are added to a game, instead of them working as empty new places for new players, they become overpopulated with experienced players that try a new start in a place where they can still get a chance to win those items. This is bad for newbies, who are overrun by experienced players, and also bad for existing servers, that will suffer population drops because of that.
- If the legendary items are always wielded by the same players, those items can't have legendary strength. There is no way to implement a really powerful item in the game, since those players wielding them would have permanent unfair advantages over other players.
- It rewards players who skip the quests, skip the gameplay and just rush to the end as quick as possible, just going for those special rewards.
- It becomes a problem when those players leave the game.
- Those accounts end up being sold for high prices on the black market.