First and foremost my initial impressions from the beta and what we have seen so far are that this game is going to be something very special. Atmosphere, gameplay impact, sound design, and all of those little things that Blizzard games achieves in the meticulous attention to detail are knocking it out of the park.
However, I think that Legendary items pose a problem: they encroach a little too heavily on the space that Diablo players associate with Uniques. Every Diablo fan (and those who play the ARPGS that follow in Diablo’s footsteps) know the heart pounding excitement of seeing that orange loot beam, and I think that space should be (pun very much intended) unique to Unique items.
As they are implemented right now, Legendaries are not uniques, and they clearly aren’t intended to be. And so the fact that they are brushing up against one another poses some unintended confusion as well as dilutes that dopamine rush that players crave when something truly Unique drops.
Two potential solutions:
The first (and most modest):
To simply rename legendaries and change the color. Epic items would fit in the Diablo universe. A lootbeam of a different color would still be exciting while avoiding the subconscious dilution of the thrill of nabbing a Unique.
The second:
Cut Legendaries, but keep legendary aspects.
The truly thrilling point about Legendaries is the skill-modifying aspects they drop. As a design choice, this is really fun. When you grab a new legendary, at least for me, I immediately want to see what skill its going to make more powerful. You then get the joy of your mind spinning out with the possibilities of how to exploit this, how to synergize, and maybe even the temptation to build a new character around that skill.
But the item surrounding that aspect is like the wrapper around a juicy piece of candy. Something you have to get out of the way before you can get to the good part.
So, instead, why not have the aspects drop directly. This is similar to how skill runes were proposed long ago during part of the development of D3: they would drop directly and you could apply them to the skill.
Having an aspect drop (that you could then apply to your equipped gear in the same way as you can now once it was extracted) would take out the middleman, keep the item hunt for that perfect rare you can slap your aspect on exciting, and maintain the truly unique feeling of when that Unique item you’ve been drooling over finally drops.
I’m eager to see how everyone else feels about the dynamic and relationship between uniques and legendaries.
Does anyone else agree that there’s something subconscious going on there where your brain just wont accept an orange item as something that is not truly Unique?
Would changing the color fix this?
Am I dead wrong that the item around the aspects isn’t as thrilling the aspects themselves?
Eager to hear other’s thoughts on this.