10 reasons Ancient Items are a terrible idea
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
BlizzCon is on, and the first Diablo panel gave us plenty of material to work with.
Right now though, I’m going to focus on the announcement of Ancient Items. Ancient Items are a new item rarity that will be even superior to legendary. Basically, Ancient Items will be clones of legendary items that are enhanced up to 30%.
These items were designed for the player that “has it all”, that guy that has been grinding hard since launch and already has all the items he wants with all the perfectly rolled stats. They want to give that kind of player more things to work for.
Immediately after the announcement, I saw very mixed reactions on Twitter. While many players are happy to get upgrades that will allow them to progress further through Greater Rifts, plenty of others are unhappy about these news. You can count me in with the latter group and I’ll explain why on a second.
RNG on top of RNG
You all know how excruciatingly hard it is to get the item you want to roll perfectly. Now it just got a whole order of magnitude harder.
The droprate on [d3item name= “The Furnace”] is low enough? Wait till you need to find an Ancient Furnace with the right affixes and elite damage closer to 50%.
Even at 10% droprate at Torment VI, this means that it’s going to take you 10 times as long to get the Ancient Version of your perfectly rolled item.
Yes, 10 times…
Leaderboards just got a lot more Time Consuming
Like I said on my Diablo 3 = Pokemon Article, If you want to place high on the leaderboards you gotta commit time to it. Not only do you have to grind RNG for the right amount of conduit pylons, monster density, and even specific layouts and monster types. You also need to have top tier gear. I mean what do you get from getting the perfect rift layout if you don’t have the numbers to push through in the required time?
People with a lot of skill but not so much time will be punished even more as the process to getting competitive gear will be even longer. 10 times longer….
It’s not new content
Ancient Items is not new content, Ancient Item is just a way to artificially extend the replay value of old content. This means this isn’t a move to bring back players that have gotten bored of doing the same tasks over and over. This is move to stop losing player, this targets people who’ve been resilient enough to stick with the endless repetition and simply gives them a chance at additional rewards for their commitment.
This shows a philosophy of Reaper of Souls Patch Support being oriented to the small percentage of players that has unlimited time.
I’m afraid that if this trend continues the post-game of Reaper of Souls will be less of a game and more of a time-sink.
Don’t the people deserve better? Didn’t they wait for this game over 10 years?
It’s effect on Seasons
30% is a significant buff, on Seasons the top ranks might end up being decided on who got the rights Ancients and who didn’t. If we go back to that Ancient Furnace, how much of a difference will it make? And when a Season’s Length is Finite, getting the best weapon early and getting more time to grind the best rift layouts could be a HUGE difference maker for the leaderboards.
Bad luck with drops might just kill your season, better pray to the RNG gods if you really want to make your way onto the top 10.
Ok, that weren’t really 10 reasons, but i used lots of 10’s on the article so that has to count for something. If you agree with me be sure to leave a comment and rate my article 10/10.
But you might also disagree, maybe you think that Ancient Items are the bee’s knees, let me know in the comments below.
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Is not only for the player that has it all. Is for everybody with an incomplete set. I see my monk, missing two pieces, a Unity and a witching hour. But I’ve roll so many times for that witching hour with Kadala that I don’t see the point anymore, but what if while gathering shards for those rolls I get an Ancient SWK item with good enough rolls to substitute mine, that rewards me in an indirect way for may effort search for one item. I get more power and better chances to get loot because of that so that extends my desire to chase those missing pieces. I can do enough math to realize that aspiring to full Ancient set is beyond my reach, but having some of those pieces to improve my character will keep me playing more that the actual state that just feels pointless to search for the only 2 pieces that I’m missing.
Is not only for the player that has it all. Is for everybody with an incomplete set. I see my monk, missing two pieces, a Unity and a witching hour. But I’ve roll so many times for that witching hour with Kadala that I don’t see the point anymore, but what if while gathering shards for those rolls I get an Ancient SWK item with good enough rolls to substitute mine, that rewards me in an indirect way for may effort search for one item. I get more power and better chances to get loot because of that so that extends my desire to chase those missing pieces. I can do enough math to realize that aspiring to full Ancient set is beyond my reach, but having some of those pieces to improve my character will keep me playing more that the actual state that just feels pointless to search for the only 2 pieces that I’m missing.
I definitely agree, its very similar to destiny and path of exile and many other RPGs be they dungeon crawlers or not. The endgame is always going to come down to RNG loot drops and the easiest way for a developer to artificially extend the life is either by imposing restrictions eg. in destiny you can only do the raid once a week on each difficulty and in path of exile and diablo you just make even more ridiculously difficult to get loot.
In the end it comes down to if you have fun with the game I don’t mind having artificial content added because I was only looking for artificial reasons to continue playing a game I was already having fun with, however if you are bored with the game adding artificial content will NOT keep you playing. My personal opinion is that this artificial content will not keep me playing.
I definitely agree, its very similar to destiny and path of exile and many other RPGs be they dungeon crawlers or not. The endgame is always going to come down to RNG loot drops and the easiest way for a developer to artificially extend the life is either by imposing restrictions eg. in destiny you can only do the raid once a week on each difficulty and in path of exile and diablo you just make even more ridiculously difficult to get loot.
In the end it comes down to if you have fun with the game I don’t mind having artificial content added because I was only looking for artificial reasons to continue playing a game I was already having fun with, however if you are bored with the game adding artificial content will NOT keep you playing. My personal opinion is that this artificial content will not keep me playing.
One word: LAZY.
make ancient items an item upgrade with a legendary material like R. Gifts.
I couldn’t find a SMK for my WD after about 500 hours of grinding. I don’t expect to find an Ancient version of it with proper rolls in another 500 hours either.
One word: LAZY.
make ancient items an item upgrade with a legendary material like R. Gifts.
I couldn’t find a SMK for my WD after about 500 hours of grinding. I don’t expect to find an Ancient version of it with proper rolls in another 500 hours either.