I agree that the whole primal item RNG is out of control.
I have stated it before to many developers across many platforms and many companies. While the addictive nature of gambling is appealing from a business perspective, it is really detrimental to the economy and just morally wrong (only the business sees the benefit and is not reinvested to the people who got addicted and wasted valuable life-time).
Getting back to topic.
Companies shoot themselves to their feet when they attach RNG to anything of a competitive nature.
Basically competing in many of these games is a matter of “luck”. If you don’t get a powerful item early on the season you might as well call it quits.
I like playing competitively but I avoid at all cost playing competitive on games that rely heavily on random factors. It gives power to abuse to botters and gives too much of an edge to those who roll an early powerful item on any season.
Also, the factor of getting primals is not precisely fix(-ed). Some classes have access to fewer and better weapons/armor pieces which help them have a better chance of getting a good primal on mass rolling a specific weapon or armor piece.
I think they made some adjustment on WoW that made it possible for people to get what they are looking for base on effort and time. It seems to be working and people are so far still invested in this expansion (as of this date).
Rewards in game should be based on effort and mechanics displayed not necessarily on time spend wasted but then again…
Do you really a company will take a good deal of their time ($$$) to create measurements/indicators to keep track of how people improve their gameplay over time and how are their skills in contrast to their peers regardless of their paragon or itemization to reward them?
People times is valuable and you can see the approach that many Chinese gacha games are taking on rewarding people even when they are not playing. It simple pays off to have people enjoy themselves in their game.
Rolling is a super-fun aspect of this game and it shouldn’t be taken. It can be fixed for seasonal so that people have a fair chance of progression.
Many develpers or companies (not necessarily devs) will say that the % provide on primals shouldn’t be significant but it is.
It has already been proven on many other economic models and other games how just 0.1% adds up exponentially over time and this is a game of exponential growth (exp wise - paragon). That 0.1% may be the diffence between 10k additional damage that let you advance to another GR level and provided you with more exp and your rival… everything adds up.
When devs try to justify these very basic concepts stating that it doesn’t matter over time… I die a little inside.
Besides that…
The time-grinding glass cealings put into these games put an unrealistic burden on anyone that wants to keep at the top and then again compensate having no life-balance and promotes the use and abuse of third-party software, among other things.
It is unhealthy and should be at some time regulated do to the impact it has in the economic due to having a % of people addicted that are not giving back to the society as they should.
I don’t know… I see all of this very feasible and would love to work on a company like Blizzard to make it work.
Call me.
P.S. I have gotten several crap primals lately (blackthorn? legendaries without afixes)… about it to call it quit again.