Refuting The Negativity Surrounding Ancient Items

by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

If you haven’t seen it yet, my colleague, Dannie Ray, wrote an article yesterday discussing why he thinks Ancient items will be a bad addition to the game. If you’re not familiar with it yet, read his article before you read mine.

Providing Progress

Dannie Ray would have you believe that this new tier of Legendary items being added to the game is a bad thing. First and foremost, when has adding more carrots to chase ever been a bad thing? I have never seen people say, “God, I wish the developers would stop adding more Legendary items to this game.” On the contrary, people have always wanted more. So, what’s truly bad about this?

Let’s address that by talking about what’s exciting about Ancient items. More. The items will provide essentially boosted stats as you can see in the Lut Socks comparison above. This should, in turn, give your characters more Damage, Toughness, and Healing. The importance of more shines through when, as any player that has actually committed to Season One heavily can note, you run into the wall of your gear becoming about as good as it can be and the Greater Rifts not getting any easier to handle.

What Ancient items provides at that moment is more incentive. Rather than becoming discouraged and saying, “I guess I’ll just roll a different class and try to climb that Leaderboard,” you can instead continue to spend more time with your favorite class chasing this next tier of gear, which is likely to give you the means to progress further. Instead of facing down that horrible feeling of seeking a perfectly rolled Flavor of Time or a specific Stone of Jordan (SOJ), you now have the benefit of a wider range of options to seek in order to gain more power.

Too Hard To Come By?

As the developers often state, with great rarity should come great power. Wyatt Cheng, Senior Technical Game Designer, stressed repeatedly throughout the Diablo III – What’s Next panel that this tier of items isn’t designed for your casual player. Someone that only jumps into a season to unlock the transmog or to pal around with their friends a couple of nights a week will likely have zero to little concern regarding Ancient items. However, Dannie Ray seems to target a big part of his argument behind noting that this adds more time to the grind and also more RNG. Well, I’d argue that those things aren’t major concerns for casual players. You can’t have it both ways.

Time is the one factor that players have on their side to fight RNG. While, admittedly, having a new tier of rare gear adds time to a player reaching “perfection” for their set, keep in mind that Ancient items are not a requirement by any means. These items, if implemented correctly, should serve as huge “YES!” moments where players might jump out of their seats after going to Cain’s Book, identifying a bunch of Legendaries, and seeing that special orange wrap around their item. For the players with the most time on their hands, these will be items that they will eventually have a mentality of chasing. Depending on how truly rare they end up being, that may not be a reasonable expectation. Either way. it will be up to the players to decide how “fair” Ancient items are in terms of acquisition rates. If they will be as rare as I think and hope they will be, then they should fit nicely into the same motivational sphere as hunting a Furnace or a certain SOJ currently sit. It’s about providing more chase, more carrots.

And, to be quite frank, when we talk about access, don’t forget that they showcased a crafted item (Reaper’s Wraps above) that will also receive the Ancient item treatment. That means once you find an Ancient plan, the power is yours to create Ancient items at will. With the developers also adding a specific goblin that will drop crafting materials and plans, I think we simply may be jumping the gun far too soon to already feel locked out of the heaven that is Ancient item acquisition.

Coping With Bad Rolls

Lastly, Dannie Ray points out that adding Ancient items adds another layer of RNG. If you get an Ancient item with bad rolls or the wrong affixes, you’ll feel extra bad about it. This is the same mindset that people had when it was announced that there would be a new tier of gear going into Reaper of Souls. They felt all of their hard work or Auction House-d items would become worthless. I’m here to tell you that it’s going to be okay and you will get over it.

The way it currently looks, no matter how good or bad the rolls you get on your Ancient item, they should still provide a magnitude of power far greater than what you would have access to in a non-Ancient version of that item. This is, again, for the players that have grinded out hundreds of hours already and feel like they have nothing left to chase. Will they be discouraged by one bad Ancient item roll? No, they’ve seen hundreds, maybe thousands prior to get to the point where Ancient items are a major concern for them. Even for players that don’t have as much time invested into the game, a lucky find on an Ancient item should provide a massive upgrade, no matter how it rolls.

It’s similar to that question the player posed regarding not being able to find an upgrade over his pre-Reaper Witching Hour at the end of the Evolving Reaper of Souls panel. Maybe he hasn’t discovered the joy of the Harrington Waistguard yet. Maybe he doesn’t understand the power of + % elemental damage in something like a Thundergod’s Vigor. It will take player education and experience to come around to the understanding that these Ancient items are going to provide upgrades. They may not be perfect for your build or goals right away, but that’s the point. It’s adding more grind for those that want it, for those that need it.

I’m glad that Ancient items are a bit controversial right now. We’ll see who turns out to be right or wrong in the end, but it’s a testament to the player base that we don’t take anything at face value. We are always refining and trying to get to the best reward structure and player experience that Diablo III can provide. I thank Dannie Ray for providing his opinion and I hope you will take the time to contemplate mine and let us know which side you come down on.