Lackluster Legendaries

I had an interesting experience: I was playing Diablo Immortal, the mobile version of the fairly popular non mobile version, and went into a weekly event dungeon thingie, called the Fractal Realm (or maybe it was plane).

I was instantly intrigued by being forced to play a different class, for which the initial rooms were harder than the, so far, breezy difficulty, so I persevered: granted, soon this also became an easy button bashfest, but I persevered, and completed the whole thing in about half an hour or so.

After which, I was rewarded with almost a dozen Legendary items.

I was rather gobsmacked: I mean, these are Legendary items, right? The clue is in the name: Legendary, the rarest of the lot, the crem de la crem, stuff that myths are made of -a sword that split the atom, or the armour that withstood a supernova, frigging Legendary items!

Why was it so incredibly easy to gain them?

I soon also learned that they weren't even the final iterations: you can gain the same Legendary item further along, yet this one will have higher stats to match your constantly over-levelling character.

So, are they really that Legendary? Perhaps Legendary Commons seem more apt.

Or, perhaps it's my generation, as I transition slowly into old fogey mode: I remember D&D, Everquest, heck even World of Warcraft! To me, Legendary stuff is exactly that: one of a kind, or highest tier stuff that your character will only achieve after a lot of effort, sweat and blood has been poured into the forging of it.

Yet it feels that nowadays, in the continuing trend of offering ever bigger and badder explosions, everything must be Legendary, otherwise the frail, easily distracted gamers of today will lose interest and transition towards the next game which offers Super Legendary items instead.

And thusly, we continue to cater to a misdiagnosed malady of our youth's entertainment needs.

Because, I don't think they really need all this psycho-visual bombardment: youths are receptive, and their brain sponge can retain moisture much more efficiently than we give them credit, with but a little splash of water being able to saturate it quite well, and more importantly, be absorbed quite well.

Direct instwad a firefighter's hose of info onto it, and what do you get? Less brain sponge and more brain pulp, I'd wager.

They say less is more for a reason: why don't we apply such in our games, and start giving rewards when they're needed, when they're deserved, rather than for just tapping on the game, hm?

Your not quite yet old fogey complainer,

Stefano Ronchi