Legacy items are bullshit

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I also harbour a fairly negative view of people who complain about legacy items. I think it is missing the forest for the trees. If you are playing in parties in standard, you are likely used to playing with people who are totally crushing the game, as in, trivializing it's content to an insane degree. That has always been the case, but legacy items have almost nothing to do with it. Mirrored items are why people crush standard. It just happens that the same people who can afford those can afford legacies, but there is no legacy item in the game that comes close to providing the same level of advantage as mirrored gear. That 1 in 20 top end builds use a combination of mirrored gear and legacy items doesn't materially affect this situation.

That being the case, legacy items are something that make the people who own them happy. You don't need to understand it. You don't need to like it, but it is in poor taste for you to object to it. If you don't want them, they aren't any kind of impediment to your enjoying the game on your own terms. If you can't do that, legacy items aren't the problem.

Trivializing content makes players happy? Damn, GGG must have this whole difficulty thing ass-backwards. Carebear mode activate!

Not all item changes result in legacy items, so I don't see the case that GGG has some ideological bias which results in legacy items. That whole line of argument sounds bogus, Scrotie, so don't follow that path.

Last I heard it was a technical issue, where part of the item is some numbers on that item, and the other part of it is what those numbers reference. Changes to the former require modifying every existent item which requires [significant] realm downtime. Changes to the latter only requires changing the reference in the game files; one patch, all items modified. The technical challenge is real, you can't ideology it away. It's like arguing delicious fatty food shouldn't make you fat- I'm sure the companies that produce it would love to if they could, but the technical challenge is not so easily surmounted (and some solutions like O'Lean end up being worse than the original problem they were intended to solve). It's worth noting D3 has similar legacy item rules as POE, and Blizzard is not constrained by resources or tech the way GGG might be.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Legacy items change in viability almost every major patch. Naturally, the legacies themselves don't change, because that might make too much sense and we couldn't have that. But like all uniques, everything else changes around them.

Upcoming potential aura changes have Shavronne's Wrappings users scrambling for Enlightens. Cloak of Defiance becomes a new animal with the beta EB change. The death of spell shotgunning has us wondering how Taryn's Shiver and Freezing Pulse will get along. A Flameblast nerf effects Infernal Mantle builds. Bringer of Rain got its block chance reduce both on- and off-item. As base life and life nodes have changed over the years, Kaom's Heart has lost power (as I predicted years ago).

And so on, ad infinitum.

So if so much balancing is done dancing around the institutionalized immutability of legacy items, couldn't we just always change the passive tree and/or support gems and leave the uniques themselves alone?

Almost, perhaps. But certainly not, due to one stopper: legacy items themselves. You can't balance block chance in Standard around both legacy and non-legacy Bringer of Rain. Or ES around both legacy and non Shavronne's Wrappings. If one is balanced, the other is either under- or overpwered.

And what makes you think GGG's balance target is a Standard league character with legacy items?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Another quality legacy thread.

They exist, they dont affect you unless you pvp and they dont affect you when you pvp in temp leagues.

/thread

Once upon a time, there was this thing called the Standard ladder.

Oh, wait, it still exists. It's just starts on page 14 now.

That thing you call a ladder that is somehow supposed to prove something is BS. They don't update it unless you email them and ask to be put on it. If you need proof, look at my characters. I have several that would be on the standard ladder if the standard ladder was really a thing.

You said I didn't care. I do care. I care enough to say I disagree with you. Legacies don't bother me. I don't get my enjoyment from the game from looking at what i have compared to other people. I play in standard as well as in leagues. In neither standard nor in a league have I ever once felt that legacies made the game less fun.

So here are some facts. Standard has been around a long time. Legacies have been around a long time. How can both he true if legacies destroyed standard? If legacies were so bad, why would anybody play standard? The truth is most people are fine with legacy versions of items. There are those of us who play for ourselves and don't need to look at what other people have to have fun. Are the people so adamant about getting rid of legacies like that in real life too? Does it make people feel inadequate when other people have better houses and better cars that they can't get? It's not that they are not available. It's that they are gated behind money.

People wouldn't even know legacies existed if they never read it online. Yet somehow the knowledge they exist is too much for some people to handle without the need to complain about them. Just playing the game for fun isn't good enough anymore. Pretend for a second you don't know they exist. Does it change how you play? Does their existence really change how you play? Do you make your builds based on legacy items?

Isn't this like thread 100 of the exact same topic? Has anybody ever convinced anybody else that legacies ruin the game? Has anybody ever convinced anybody else that legacies are fine? What's the point of debating when neither side can be convinced the other side is right? Logic doesn't work when people don't agree with your premise. In this case, the premise is Legacy items are bad for whatever reasons. It boils down to whether or not your enjoyment of the game is contingent on some items that some people have.

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NeroNoah wrote:

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Ceri wrote:

If GGG suddenly would change the rule set and make things..non-permanent, that wouldn't go down too well I think.

coughcoughPassiveTreeandSkillscoughcough

No, seriously, you are ignoring reality. That's a weird assertion to make.

No, you are missing the point. The skill tree has been changing every patch as far back as I can remember, it's an evolving thing. When the game went into Open Beta, it was also clearly advertised as the final wipe. Not that they would wipe closed beta to go into open beta, but that it would be The Final Wipe, ever. Thus the permanent leagues were born, and here we are. Changing that now does not seem possible.

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Ceri wrote:

No, you are missing the point. The skill tree has been changing every patch as far back as I can remember, it's an evolving thing. When the game went into Open Beta, it was also clearly advertised as the final wipe. Not that they would wipe closed beta to go into open beta, but that it would be The Final Wipe, ever. Thus the permanent leagues were born, and here we are. Changing that now does not seem possible.

Thing is (I already wrote it somewhere), you don't need to touch the items to make them less useful (a.k.a. making them loss value). Efforts to not touch items in standard are moot in the long run (although it's more about GGG not having the technical capability rather than ideology).

If you think that not touching items is part of the permanency of the leagues, it's just an illusion.

The rule sets are constantly changing.

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mark1030 wrote:

You said I didn't care.

Did I? (Hint: no.)

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mark1030 wrote:

So here are some facts. Standard has been around a long time. Legacies have been around a long time. How can both he true if legacies destroyed standard? If legacies were so bad, why would anybody play standard? The truth is most people are fine with legacy versions of items.

Desync has been around a long time. How can this be true if desync destroyed the game? The truth is, most people are fine with desync (not sarcasm; they've made their peace with it or quit already). I mean, it is still bullshit which undermines overall enjoyment of the game, but it isn't going to end human civilization and/or destroy the game.

But do we really only have a right, much less a duty, to complain about bullshit well before it reaches game-destroying levels?

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mark1030 wrote:

Logic doesn't work when people don't agree with your premise. In this case, the premise is Legacy items are bad for whatever reasons.

Maybe you do not consider hypocrisy to be bad. That's fairly objectively what legacy items are; it is GGG saying "this item is too powerful to be allowed to exist, except for these guys who already have it." The only argument GGG has for being hypocritical in this manner is a feeble claim that they lack the ability to fix it.

If you don't consider hypocrisy bad, then I have precious little else to offer. There are other issues, like Standard PvP, but we both know that's pretty niche. So if you don't mind a little hypocrisy, then you're right - you disagree with a key premise.

I never said legacies completely ruin the game. I think they detract from it, but things like spell shotgunning are/were even bigger bullshit. Legacies are not super high on the bullshit totem pole.

But they're still bullshit. The arguments against legacies are grounded in fairness, while those for are rooted in double standards.

Pneuma and Nero: You're both talking as if the standard player's mentality is based purely on a desire for absolute permanence. "Passive tree changes occur, therefore legacies are pointless anyway!!"

It's an uninflected, perjorative perspective. Rather, think of standard players as being people who want *some measure* of permanence. Also consider that a lot of players actually play both temp and standard leagues.

Some people may be happy, at that point when they step away from the game, to have created and retired dozens of builds in temporary leagues, leaving all of them to rot once the league ends. However, to some people that would feel like a waste of time, because they would feel as if they'd achieved nothing enduring. Real life is like this too; some people would prefer to live in a world of pure experiences bereft of worldly goods; others the reverse and a whole continuum between.

It's a dichotomy for GGG because, as others have inferred sarcastically, some whales *do* actually play standard as well as other leagues, and yes, they actually *do* have to think about how they get paid at the end of the day. So their approach makes sense - address issues through other means, if you have to, but keep your eye on the 'main' game rather than edge cases.

Some of the underlying design issues could also be addressed in a new game - i.e. a game which starts and finishes with a design philosophy of 'nothing can be unchangeable'. Like... a Path of Exile 2(.0).

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davidnn5 wrote:

Pneuma and Nero: You're both talking as if the standard player's mentality is based purely on a desire for absolute permanence. "Passive tree changes occur, therefore legacies are pointless anyway!!"

It's an uninflected, perjorative perspective. Rather, think of standard players as being people who want *some measure* of permanence. Also consider that a lot of players actually play both temp and standard leagues.

I don't deny some people just want a measure of permanence, but the truth is that a lot people just try to defend the status quo (be reasonable or not). I've seen people asking for a buff for acuities in reddit because of the changes to leech. Protecting their inversion, I guess. My posts were about the second group.

It has nothing to do with defending status quo. It's if you worked your ass off to save 300ex and buy a legacy shavs you want what u paid for not a bait and switch operation. Earning - something many of you would never understand as you seek to destroy in envy.

These legacies don't hurt anything but egos.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

It has nothing to do with defending status quo. It's if you worked your ass off to save 300ex and buy a legacy shavs you want what u paid for not a bait and switch operation. Earning - something many of you would never understand as you seek to destroy in envy.

But hey! This time is not being nerfed. Calm down, :)
The rest is buffed making it less overpowered, I guess.

I guess this is more a proof that people care about their 300 ex rather than the item per se.

Here is something to cheer you up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation