So, I’ve often thought there was something off with shards in most (maybe all?) maps…but I just did a Paradise Meltdown which really demonstrated the problem.
Less than 9 minutes in, and 20+ Legendary Items had already been activated.
I don’t know what the answer is but if the game design is that all gear should be somewhat balanced and legendary gear isn’t an obvious choice…then something is way off. Also if it’s meant to be ‘late game’ gear than something is way way off…
if you prioritize gear over buildables perhaps this is possible, but yeah those numbers seem a little off. I’ve never had a game where 2/3 of gear was legendary or where both teams even had the potential the activate all that gear.
I feel like it’s now considered the ‘best strategy’ in most cases to run 2-3 legendary items if you’ve managed to acquire good ones for that character on certain maps.
Also, of course, on other maps that nobody ever plays, free and cheap items are the norm.
I guess you could claim this is all A-OK, but I think it kills most strategy and tradeoffs between time collecting shards, sacrificing XP and utitlity from buildables, or “faster vs better” gear if people are easily getting multiple legendary items activated within the first 10 minutes.
(Also, it’s probably discouraging to new players as a side note…)
That sounds…unlikely.
Unless there was a Quartermastery Bin and team coordination in letting one guy pick up all the shards involved.
I mean…20+ would be literally more than 6 people running straight legendaries. Thats 5400 shards per person.
Thats’s…well over 35000 shards in 9 minutes.
Why is this a bad thing exactly? They just decreased the amount of shards last patch so…
So, Tuesday night I was watching theSarevok play Meldown/Paradise on Twitch. Player on the other team had an OM with all three legos, and activated them in a losing effort. One of them was a shard generator, and sure enough, it was the Quartermastery Bin. Fancy not taking a free shard generator, right?
Remember, it’s not JUST the shards themselves that respawn, but minions also drop shards when destroyed or when consumed by MINREC. There are a LOT of shards to go around, and I think it’d be interesting to see how it would affect gameplay to further reduce the shards on the MAP, so that players had to fight more over the dropped shards in the lanes and in front of the sacrifice portal grinders. Not sure if I’d like to play like that or not, but it would be INTERESTING to see in action, and to see just how low the map shards number would have to go to get people to fight over those…
That’s only possible with 0 cost shard gen. It requires all ten people to have 2 and that’s not going to happen without it.
Yeah it is possible to get somewhere between 15-25 legendaries activated in 10 minutes in paradise, exact mount depending on things like QB and quick shard generators …not sure why you think it is not.
And that’s with a still-disabled shard stealing legendary out there which may be reactivated some day…!
As to why it’s a problem…I see a system that GB spent a lot of time trying to balance…making even common items useful and making people pay for shards with time and with XP/buildables and possible strategies like a shard running and shard control or choosing early game items vs late game items.
It’s hard to believe, looking at the way the gear and game is designed, that they wanted everybody who can to run 2-3 legendaries. Or that they thought many Legendary items would be activated before people even have Ultimates… I can’t be sure what’s going on in the Gearbox brain but it seems off to me. If it becomes the ‘accepted best strategy’ 90% of the time…that is just closing off possibilities.
Its because the end game is supposed to be legendary items.
Its not supposed to be 2 blues and a purple.
Those items are in the games as place holders until you have the legendaries. Also almost all of the ones that were problems have now been nerfed. There are still some good combos, but they are not the same as it was.
Well, far as I know, there’s one Orange SG that can basically break the whole thing if all five players use it. I think it’s the Quartermastery Bin, that shares 6% of all shards generated with your team. If all five players have that, in addition to their normal SG from the base QB, they’re splitting an extra 30% of every shard picked up.
[quote=“hexhammer, post:10, topic:1541425, full:true”]Those items are in the games as place holders until you have the legendaries. Also almost all of the ones that were problems have now been nerfed. There are still some good combos, but they are not the same as it was.
[/quote]
In PvE, maybe, but not in PvP. The devs have specifically balanced the game around (and said they intend people to use) all types of loadouts. Low rarity loadouts provide an early advantage; high rarity loadouts provide a late advantage. Both of them are valuable (most of the ubar-PvPers I know/talk to actually use white/green/blue loadouts because they provide a nice early game advantage which can be exploited for rapid level advancement).
If the devs truly intended the game to just be legendary items at the end game, legendary gear wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to get (almost twice as much as a purple); they would just have all gear cost roughly the same so that there’s no real advantage to white/green/blue. As it stands, each rarity has specific advantages that make them all viable options in PvP.
That’s actually a huge waste if all 5 have it. You’re wasting 4 spots.
Have 1 person with it and let that person gather all the shards for the same effect.
Its because you’re not just buying stats, your buying perks.
What purple allows you to remove cc while being healed.
What green allows you to not take damage for 2 seconds after dropping to 10%.
What blue refunds all your cd’s if you drop below 10%.
What white gives you a bigger advantage then the 0 shard gen. (you could debate 0 cost buildable).
You see the best thing you can do with Blues, greens is GG roll a stat on them like AS with another thing of AS, or damage with damage. But in the end all you are is up probably 4-5% of a certain stat. When I have access to some potentially game changing stuff. You can get them easy by 10m in. Also the Legendaries synergize better with each other.
Frankly people really just don’t know what to expect when they run full legendary games because its actually not quite common yet.
That’s quarter master’s bin and its 30%. Its not actually that effective in PvP.
However, a coordinated team could potentially make use of it. It would take 3 full big shard runs it actually net a legendary off it or a lot of time not spent fighting the enemy team by your player with it. When by that point most shard gens will have a legendary anyways.
At the cost of early game advantage and opportunity cost provided by buildables. Early game can pretty easily be dominated by a white/green focused team that dumps a bunch of shards into buildables and, if they dominate it hard enough, it’ll be won before the full legendary people can amass their fortunes to spend on their own amazingness.
The entire point is that just going pure legendary isn’t the only way to be effective at PvP (and many people actually argue that full legendary is actually less effective). Legendaries afford you a significant late game benefit, but they’re gonna give you worse stats early and prevent you from using buildables (which means less xp in addition to not having the additional firepower).
The meta is very much so not “all legendaries or you suck”, which is what you’re suggesting.
The number of shards on maps is just fine and in order to activate legendaries early you have to completely ignore buildables. Whether or not that’s a good idea depends on a lot of factors. If your team is doing great, you probably won’t need them. In a more even match though they can help turn the tide. Also don’t see an issue with people running 2-3 legendaries, if they are then they are giving up on buildables for a significant portion of the match. That’s the balance right there, no need to make it better to run cheap gear than legendaries. That wouldn’t be very much fun and would make legendaries worthless, they’re already crazy expensive.
I don’t have the statistics gearbox has, but I don’t think you’re considering the trendline here.
There is X% of players that run 2-3 legendary items, there is Y% that strategically runs more balanced gear setups, and there is Z% that just doesn’t have the appropriate legendary items to run for a certain character yet. Right now, Z is by far the largest category. As people in the Z category get their gear, most of them, IMO, will move in to category X because the pros just currently seem to outweigh the cons.
Having seen the new maps today, it looks like Gearbox may be on this already though. It’s hard to say after one night, but the shards seem to be harder to get and require you to get out of the fight a lot longer to collect in the new maps. My worry is that even though this is much more balanced, complaints will come and they will just add more. (see Echelon).