Weapons Legendaries are too hard to get.

Should Legendaries be easier to get?


  • Total voters
    147
PART TWO OF TWO

*Speaking of the poll, I take some issues with it. The question is worded with a suggestive "Should" that mathematicians like to term "biased". Furthermore, the choices could have been made a bit better too, highlighting in particular the lack of anything in between "No, just keep grinding" and "Yes, much easier". If I were personally making it I'd make the question "Do you think the drop rate should be increased; if so, by how much?" and the answers be "No" "Yes, by a little" "Yes, by a fair bit" and "Yes, by a lot". As someone rather invested in this debate, I worry that this poll, sitting right at the top of the page and looking nice and convenient for a first and last impression upon visiting the thread, misrepresents the exact thoughts of those who think change ought to be made.


Miscellaneous points/refutations I want to make because I have a neurological need to grab, heft, and suplex shoddy arguments and weak conjectures:

"Why do you want to take away grinding, man?? Legendaries are SUH-POOOSED to be extreme-errifically hard to get, duhhh!" -> Nobody's taking away the grinding aspect of the game. The concept of ultra special "legendary" drops does mean they should be very rare, but no so rare that it discourages so many people to the point that flocks of players are taking to the forums to beseech the devs to fix it; again, the fact that this is an existing, ongoing complaint shared by so many is itself a big red flag that there really is a problem that needs to be solved.

"But this will give people an insane amount of legendaries! | If people use other pirates that means they're multiplying the amount of legendaries they would have!" -> Um...no. What? Look at the excellent response by squintz. What you call tons may be not enough to others. Maybe there's a madman out there trying to collect them all (I hope they don't die of old age beforehand, sheesh). The number of legendaries a person has is totally unrelated to the debate of whether or not the drop rates for them are too low. People will accumulate legendaries no matter what the rate is. And hey, here's a thought: There are people out there who already do have "an absurd" amount of legendaries. Does that mean the current rate is too high? No, it doesn't mean anything at all. This is a massive non sequitur. Especially the second part of this non-point- yes, congratulations, you have just figured out that players can make more than one character, and that each character can find legendaries. There's nothing special going on here. Those players are not getting 4x the loot, they now have 4 characters that each have the same chance of finding a legendary. There's still only 1 person behind the keyboard who can only use 1 character at a time. Insubstantial thoughts like this really irritate me, sorry.

"What about the longevity of this project? Increasing drop rates could make people stop playing the game and damage the playerbase." -> Not at all, necessarily, it depends on how MUCH you shift the rates. If it's by so much that the scenario I can almost see you imagining where suddenly they're only as rare as famed weapons and by the end of the month half the players will have one, that would definitely ruin the fun for people, sure. People's fears of a legendary weapon-apocalypse (to put it in an intentionally silly way) ruining the game are nonsense unless the drop rates were increased by too much. There is most definitely an area of percentages that won't lead to harm, and can indeed satisfy both those who want better drop rates and those who want difficulty to remain! Don't let worries exaggerate the actual possibilities; We are perfectly confident that the developers know what would be too much higher, of course, that's why we're asking them to do it.

And! Let's neither forget nor discount the unknowable number of people who ALREADY HAVE been discouraged to the point of giving up on the game, already HAVE found the grind too much, who have already left! There are probably people on these forums, even, who have complained about it in the past and are no longer here. Coupled with this knowledge, plus the fact that this has been a known, significant frustration voiced by people for so long now, it is unfortunately safe to say the current drop rates have already put some strain on this community.


Also, to comment specifically on the longevity and continued interest people have in this game...there is an essay on the wiki page for the Lost Blade of Leviathan detailing problems with legendaries, and a huge point that came right out to me and slapped me in the face: There is too much emphasis on obtaining legendary loot in this game, and the playerbase suffers from a severe obsession with it, once you hit level 30-40, grinding for legendaries becomes the only thing you really spend time doing in the game. This really needs to be fixed, and I will make a separate thread altogether about that, but as the author goes on to say, there could at least be things like new things to do in order to provide us to give incentive to actually use the weapons we already have on things other than knocking down the same boss over and over again in the hopes of getting a shiner sword. In particular, great additions would be challenges to honing personal skills and prowess, and to exercise teamwork and co-op skills. But as the game is, when you get to the barebones flow of progression, the game is ENTIRELY structured on and around "Toughen up pirate > repeatedly fight an enemy or two > find cool loot ; Toughen up pirate > repeatedly fight bigger enemy or two > find new and cooler loot : repeat", and once you've devoured all the rares and fameds, the only task left is obtain the legendaries. But currently there's a colossal obstacle in the form of oppressively-low chances of finding them that is preventing many players from reaching that final sense of complete satisfaction.

If longevity, let alone things like growth of the game and playerbase, are to continue, there will have to be changes to the game so that obtaining a few legendaries doesn't leave the player feeling like they have finally done all there is to do in the game (other than level up ships), and that there's no more activities. The grind for rare > famed > legendary loot is a finite process, so when we do reach the top of that mountain, there's nowhere on that peak to play around in the snow, nothing else to engage yourself with the game. Instead of the game being structured around the long, slow climb to the top of the loot pile, there have to be other objectives as well, such as repeatedly-playable missions, scenarios, challenges etc for a pirate or they and their friends to do, maybe involving a high score to beat, a global leaderboard or something. I have to say that I'm extremely glad to see a whole island dedicated to PvP activities soon to come in the next major update, I can see the devs are aware of the plight of boredom players inevitably face, and I hope they put even greater focus on this as time goes on!

Thanks for reading~
Very hard to read the green font on my phone...
 
I'm tempted to shrug and say "Ain't my problem, you're the one on a phone" but that would be rude. But regardless, I actually thank you for saying that however ,because since I wrote an essay and not just a regular response I believe I ought to at least make it as easy to read as I can. I'll see if I can edit it back to the default. Also, not to be snarky, but you don't have to quote half an essay just to tell me the font's hard to read XP
 
Hi. I'm Captain Evaríste Sorrow, and I use green font because it stands out better against the background in dark mode. ahem
I've had thoughts on this subject for a while now, and after reading many threads and wiki comments, the first two pages and this current page of the thread, I feel prepared to make my informal mini-essay ("Tl;dr" whiners will not be spared. I come from a harsh school of debate philosophy where knowing & reading as much info as possible is highly important) at last in this intriguing thread. And no, despite its lengthiness, despite having to post it in multiple parts, I don't want to make it as its own separate post. That would both create a superfluous thread, and separate my response from the very thread it's a part of and replying to. So, without further introduction...



PART ONE OF TWO
I have dark background and I like green.
 
@Mantha

That was nice of you to edit it for people. I like green however.
I did read it all and agree with almost all of it.
I do have a little to comment about with this statement... which isn't yours, I know.

"But this will give people an insane amount of legendaries! | If people use other pirates that means they're multiplying the amount of legendaries they would have!"

Well, there is an element of time fracture when actually playing with say, yourself and 4 other alts alone on a boss. Even though you hop back and forth between yourselves, or by some other means, each pirate has their own rate of chance for the drop (I think- I could be wrong), but since a container doesn't drop the same items per pirate, your five dudes and dudettes in essence bend the space-time continuum and in time mostly, improve their collective chances of a legendary concurrently. The player is killing the boss five times at once. Otherwise, if it takes 1 minute for one player to kill the boss, then using his separate alts consecutively it would take 5 minutes of play time. The player and his personal team may take a legendary faster than by his lonesome. There is also some theory that a high main and lower alts can effect the drops. So my theory can support many hypothesis, parabolic time shifting and game rng/math alterations.

That is the time element where I submit one person is improving their chances. How the game actually designates loot at any given scenario, I have no idea. But game elements may also be improved if one can multi box.


And of course, I didn't read the post and respond just because, at your pirates peril, you made a positive comment about moi.
 
Last edited:
If the game's mechanics are genuinely coded in a way that your other pirates can have an effect on your main pirate's chances, I would be both fascinated with the peculiar minds that originally made this game, and more importantly, utterly baffled as to why anybody would code it this why. Essentially, I would eat my hat. The notion is very silly to me that, if I understand what this theory is saying, the original PotCO developers went out of their way to secretly make the levels of individual characters into another factor influencing teach other individual character's chances of finding better loot (and then not tell anyone about it).

If the theory isn't true, then I still hold against some people's "five characters, 5 x the legendaries" argument that since one can only use one character at a time, it is false.

Honestly, I think literally everyone would find it a great favor if the TLOPO devs could explain in detail just exactly how these near-mythical mechanics actually freakin' work XD

(I'll see any responses in the morning, I bid ye all goodnight)
 
They're called legendaries for a reason, not everyone will get as many as other players and to be honest legendaries are pretty common. I feel like the majority of players have at least 2 and the staff already made the odds of getting stuff in this game better than in potco but I guess some players will never be happy will the odds. I imagine if the staff increases the chances to get legendaries some players will still complain in a couple of months. Do players actually want legendaries to become too common where instead of the majority having 2 different ones they have 5? I think the looting system could actually be different in a way that's not pure rng but actually rewards you on the time spent looting instead of relying on pure luck.
 
time spent looting...hmm, if I go into sleep mode of AFK does the clock keep running? Seriously, why reduce this achievement to some very simple factor like a clock instead of an algorithm that judges *quality* of battle instead of mere quantity? Should we revise TLOPO so that all battles are won by button mashing, which is also a "quantity wins" type of argument?
 
time spent looting...hmm, if I go into sleep mode of AFK does the clock keep running? Seriously, why reduce this achievement to some very simple factor like a clock instead of an algorithm that judges *quality* of battle instead of mere quantity? Should we revise TLOPO so that all battles are won by button mashing, which is also a "quantity wins" type of argument?
The time spent is only for looting so it won't really work if you're afk or sleeping unless you use an auto clicking program but instead of time spent it could be how many enemies you defeat like a couple hundred or so for a guaranteed legendary.
 
They're called legendaries for a reason, not everyone will get as many as other players and to be honest legendaries are pretty common. I feel like the majority of players have at least 2 and the staff already made the odds of getting stuff in this game better than in potco but I guess some players will never be happy will the odds. I imagine if the staff increases the chances to get legendaries some players will still complain in a couple of months. Do players actually want legendaries to become too common where instead of the majority having 2 different ones they have 5?

I advise you to read the Miscellaneous Points/Refutations segment of my essay post. I responded to these exact sentiments and debunked them. Actually, reading the essay as a whole would give you an even fuller response.
 
Just thought I'd comment on some of these points
Couple that with the prior information that there are 200 famed weapons alone (I didn't even bother counting rares and commons because there are undoubtedly hundreds more), means that even if an already-lucky skull rewards you with a high-level selection of loot, there's still a virtual sea of famed weapons that drown out the chance of a legendary weapon has to fight through to be chosen for one of the loot slots.
Pretty sure legendaries have a set drop rate regardless of how many famed there are. So if TLOPO doubled the amount of famed in the game you'd still have the same odds at getting a legendary weapon in a skull chest.
Once they smile and laugh through revisiting the jolly days of levels 1 to ~35, the only major rewards left that the game can still give them are within playing the notorious lottery of the legendary weapons grind. That becomes exactly what people spend their time doing.
Which is why I don't think that making legendaries more common is going to help the playerbase, but instead make more people get bored of the game quicker once they finally find that legendary they wanted, or get bored with the feeling of finding them.
the vast majority don't have enough time to grind and grind and grind for the satisfaction of finding a legendary.
Ironically the reason legendaries are so satisfying to find is because they are extremely rare.
Those players are not getting 4x the loot, they now have 4 characters that each have the same chance of finding a legendary. There's still only 1 person behind the keyboard who can only use 1 character at a time. Insubstantial thoughts like this really irritate me, sorry.
If a pirate has 2 different characters on 2 different accounts, they can play on both of those 2 characters at the same time. Thus doubling their odds at finding a legendary. MANY players already do this in the community and it is a very common sight to see a player controlling 2 pirates at once in game.
there will have to be changes to the game so that obtaining a few legendaries doesn't leave the player feeling like they have finally done all there is to do in the game
I completely agree.

Bottom line is that I think the drop rate currently in the game is perfect. There are people in the community who have both school and regular jobs to go to every single day and have still managed to find over 30 legendary finds. You just have to get lucky, and that sheer unpredictability and challenge of getting a legendary is funnily enough what keeps a ton of players coming back to play the game each and every day.
I really hope you get a legendary. I'd suggest shifting all of that effort you say you've been putting in into The Watcher in hollowed woods. Her drop rate for legendaries is extremely good compared to other bosses. Or you could wait for yuletide event and to purchase the legendary they sell in the shop.
 
While I disagree with increasing the legendary drop rate I do agree with adding more different challenges for higher level players. The game has become too focused on grinding for legendaries for sure. I particularly love the sailing in this game but it offers little in the way of rewards beyond the satisfaction of playing and I feel I have been conned into land looting far more than I would like by the legendary carrots that have become pervasive and to which there is no other way of getting anything comparable or as desirable for both their rarity and utility.
 
If the theory isn't true, then I still hold against some people's "five characters, 5 x the legendaries" argument that since one can only use one character at a time, it is false.
I don't believe anyone put it that way. I think what we've been saying is playing 5 alts gives one actual person 5 more chances to get one legendary as opposed to single player beating his brains out against a boss.
Simple compounding interest rates. Only much better than your bank gives you.
 
They're called legendaries for a reason, not everyone will get as many as other players and to be honest legendaries are pretty common. I feel like the majority of players have at least 2 and the staff already made the odds of getting stuff in this game better than in potco but I guess some players will never be happy will the odds. I imagine if the staff increases the chances to get legendaries some players will still complain in a couple of months. Do players actually want legendaries to become too common where instead of the majority having 2 different ones they have 5? I think the looting system could actually be different in a way that's not pure rng but actually rewards you on the time spent looting instead of relying on pure luck.
It would seem many people would like to keep the rng system, but drop a decimal point or two in the odds table. The way it plays now, I'd have more chances to find a dinosaur tooth in my campbells chicken soup. I got a royal flush at a casino in the time frame I've been playing tlopo before I got a legendary. Unfortunately, I was playing minimum coins <--stupid, but do you know how hard that is?
 
@Roger-Daniel Response to your point-by-point responses:
1. If that's true, then that's my mistake. However, I've hunted around the wiki, comments on the wiki articles, and the forums, and the system that I attempted to describe is what I've seen people agree on/also believe the most consistently. It's entirely possible I read all the wrong things and made a complete swing and miss with my interpretation, but after spending a heft chunk of time truffle-sniffing for nuggets of technical info about the loot mechanics, I'm still moderately confident I got that part right. Who really knows though. I wish (AND I HOPE SOME DEVS ARE READING THIS, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) the devs would release a detailed step-by-step breakdown or something like it giving us the truth at last for how this infernal system works XD

2. As I said, given the extensive history of this issue, a major portion of the playerbase seems to get bored of the game from grinding before they even get their first legendary.

3. That isn't irony :p Legendaries are especially satisfying to get because of their rarity, yes, but nothing about that statement meets the definition of irony (I really do hate to sound arrogant, but believe me, I can recite the three types of irony faster than I could recite the capital of the United States. I had an English teacher who spent a whole semester absolutely drilling it into us.). Secondly, that's a non sequitur, there was no counter or refutation to my point. (And I had another English teacher who made it mandatory for each class to compete in our regional and state debate teams; I was turned into a grizzled veteran of public forum debate before I even knew it)

4. Ahhh, I hadn't thought about that. That's true...however, I still despise the claim of "multiplying their chances of getting more/better loot" (etc), because the only thing that's happening in those situations is that THE PLAYER is increasing THEIR chances of getting a legendary in a given span of time. Not the characters. If they do find a legendary, only the character who found it can have it in their inventory. An octopus could play the game and have 8 characters being played at once, but once Mr. Octopus decides he's reached his legendary quota for the week, he's still limited to actually playing one single character out of sheer practicality.
Even if you have 24 arms and 24 laptops or whatever, you still only have 1 brain, 1 pair of eyes, and 1 stream of consciousness to actually play around with the characters and their new legendary weapons. The "advantage" comes to an end the moment you get bored of grinding and go back to actually playing the game, because who's gonna go talk to their friends, start a crew, go sailing, do some PvP, have potion-fart contests or whatever, the whole time trying to play the game with two accounts at the same time? It's not really possible, and that's the the big kicker, the grand conclusion. You may have a hundred accounts to stand in the same place and grind with, but when you're done, you can only really PLAY with one character at a time. The moment one remembers to include the rest of the gameplay in that "equation", it falls apart. At the end of the day you can only actually play around in the game with one inventory full of legendaries at a time.

5. I'm probably gonna take that whole part of the essay and make that into its own post, it's definitely a deep subject, if not the elephant in the room outright.

6. "Bottom line is that I think the drop rate currently in the game is perfect. There are people in the community who have both school and regular jobs to go to every single day and have still managed to find over 30 legendary finds." As I said in the part addressing the average time it takes to get legendaries vs. the amount of time different types of people have, sure, some people get lucky. But the average time it takes significantly punishes people who can't dedicate great blocks of time to the grind. Luck or not, the averages don't lie.

6.5 "I'd suggest shifting all of that effort you say you've been putting in into The Watcher in hollowed woods. Her drop rate for legendaries is extremely good compared to other bosses. Or you could wait for yuletide event and to purchase the legendary they sell in the shop. " So thaaaat's why so many people are always in there. I thought everyone was just trying to get her specific legendary this whole time. I had no idea that individual boss had a higher drop rate......which implies another convolution to the loot system that I wish the devs would finally give us a break-down on. Thank you for telling me this though! I think I know what I'm gonna do after dinner now lol. As for the Yuletide event, are they Yuletide-themed legendaries or do they also have the cursed blades, lost weapons, and the other ones in the base game?
 
I don't believe anyone put it that way. I think what we've been saying is playing 5 alts gives one actual person 5 more chances to get one legendary as opposed to single player beating his brains out against a boss.
Simple compounding interest rates. Only much better than your bank gives you.
See response #5 in the above post. Sure, you've now got 5 clones of yourself increasing the odds that one of you gets a legendary in a given amount of time...but you can only run around and play with your new legendaries one character at a time.
 
See response #5 in the above post. Sure, you've now got 5 clones of yourself increasing the odds that one of you gets a legendary in a given amount of time...but you can only run around and play with your new legendaries one character at a time.
I have personally seen someone operating 5 characters at the same time, on the same server, in the same local.
 
If that's so, how did they do it? And they can't concentrate on that for very long I imagine. No matter how one would do it, something like that would get to be a headache after a while, surely.
 
If that's so, how did they do it? And they can't concentrate on that for very long I imagine. No matter how one would do it, something like that would get to be a headache after a while, surely.
I do not know how they did it but they were able to do it surprisingly well for long periods of time, very impressive. It is very common for people to be operating 2 at a time, @Bort is operating 3 at a time most days I’m on, with boss looting for legendaries it’s not hard to see how that can be done since you don’t have to run around and you don’t have the constant decision making of sailing.
 
Hm. Well, hopefully the devs find a way to prevent that then I guess.
I'm not sure if that's actually considered a problem in tlopo. The only thing you may be doing is causing lag in some way, but otherwise, what a bunch of alts are doing doesn't really influence my results in any way ON LAND! I don't believe the containers factor in other pirates on the same container, just each pirate itself as they open it.
The things with alts is mostly annoyance, but alts on ships are a totally different animal. Land alts are basically animated rocks with legs to me.
 
Back
Top