2019 Retrospective: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2019 was an interesting year overall, not just in Legacy of the Beast. However, I'm not here to talk about the world, I'm here to talk about this mobile game and all of the things that occurred this past year. There were a lot of events and changes to the game overall, some good and some bad. In addition, I want to hear you guys' opinions on everything you thought about Legacy of the Beast in 2019! Just be civil :)

The Good: There was a lot of good and intuitive content that we got this year. Based on my recordings, we received 29 new Eddies, 86 new toons, and 38 talisman sets! That's crazy! The devs have been doing a great job giving us stuff, even if some people say it's too much. I'd personally prefer more content than less, but either way that's a lot of work put in. We also got the implementation of Clans, and though they aren't at their peak yet it's nice to feel a sense of community among fellow LoTB fans. Another huge change was the addition of Frontier Dungeons! These have given players a lot to do if they don't want to focus on a certain event or just farm for better materials. Some smaller changes include the ability to claim all fragments for souls, and the fix that prevented players from using all frontier keys at once. I think that these are some of the best changes made to the game aside from the addition of Night City to the campaign. The arena even got a new paint job for the background, and some other visual effects for the game were also updated!

The Bad: A lot of server issues plagued 2019, and some are still even occurring in 2020. For instance, the Eternal Frontier Dungeon update locked iOS players out for most of the day, and sometimes it was just impossible to claim the rewards from clans at the end of the day. The devs have promised to work on this though, so I am willing to give them a pass for now. Also, pay only Eddies were added to the game this year, beginning with Gangland Eddie up until the most recent, Guy Fawkes Eddie. This was problematic without a doubt, as even though these characters aren't game breaking, it still comes off as kind of stingy to prevent collectors from getting certain characters unless they cough up some cash. In addition, the store items have become more and more egregious, with lots of talismans locked behind the storefront until a later event where they can be earned through painstaking work.

The Ugly: "Seven deadly sins, seven ways to win" is the most bullshit lie I've ever heard related to Moonchild in any possible way; there are only like two ways to beat that fucker. There were a lot of interesting features added to the game this year, including Awakening and Cosmic Talismans, but by god above and the devil below, these are possibly some of the most annoying additions to the game that you could ever encounter. Let's start with Cosmic Talismans; you know how certain characters were locked out of talismans because they'd be too powerful with a certain combination? Well bullocks to that, Cosmic Talismans allow you to give any character an extra turn augment or the ability to heal on perfect hits. In my opinion, Cosmic Talismans have made PvP extremely annoying due to their random stats and lack of consistent power. My cosmic Echo could be much weaker than that of my opponents, but I have no way of knowing that in a PvP battle. In addition, new character specific Cosmic Talismans are just annoying to face off against, and they should just be part of the character's abilities rather than an arbitrary talisman. Secondly, Awakening as a mechanic is good, but the actual events surrounding it were dogshite. First off, the damn gold price switch the devs pulled. That made anyone who had a stage 5/6 awakened character pre-change lose even more gold, which is extremely annoying considering the devs didn't give any forewarning of the change. In addition, Awakening characters has been widely inconsistent, without a real reason given to us; Cyborg Eddie requires more materials and gold to Awaken than Gunner Lord of Light, and there isn't a reason that's been given for that. Specific awakening materials are made rarer so that purchase is made in order to obtain the higher ranked items, and it's getting worse and worse with each new character. Finally, let's talk about Moonchild. Dear god, this character has become the center of so much controversy it hurts.

Let's start off first with an in-depth look at Moonchild and maybe we can start to see why exactly so many people have called for nerfs or other changes to be made. Let's start with his basic ability, Born to Die. This ability at base level inflicts Doom and lowers stats, kinda like Magus Lord of Light. Not too bad! However, when awakened, this ability gains the power to stun opponents as well. This is more problematic for two reasons: one, the ability innately has a trigger which causes it to deal increased damage to stunned opponents, so if you equip Moonchild with a god-forsaken Cosmic Talisman that has the Echo augment, you can nuke an enemy quite easily. It doesn't stop there, though. His power ability, Mandrake Scream, removes golden effects, has a high chance of inflicting Perfect Stun, and cleanses and heals allies for all enemies already stunned.. It comes at a high power cost of 7, however this is still quite powerful overall. Once awakened though, the ability gains even more power: it also applies passive disable for 3 turns and grants an extra turn to a max of two allies. This is extremely good, but still could definitely be countered. So far, he's very easy to counter if you have the right setup. So, let's look at his passive, Seven Angels, Seven Demons. This grants Moonchild immunity to all effects (aside from Bounty Hunter Eddie's weird stun passive, but whatever), and prevents enemies from hitting him unless it's a perfect hit. That seems completely manageable, no? Well, at Max Awakening it becomes the worst addition to the game. Moonchild's passive essentially is an silence on all enemies that cannot be cleansed, meaning only basic attacks can be used. Now, all of this goes away if you kill him, right? Well, easier said than done considering Moonchild's talisman slots of all purple. This means he can equip Labyrinth talismans, some of the worst and most annoying talismans in the game. These talismans are designed to turn Assassin class characters into tanks, which wouldn't be a problem if you weren't immune to any effects placed on you. In addition, Moonchild's passive just makes the game more boring; why design cool ability animations and fury animations to just have them be silenced by this little kid. To be fair, things have gotten a bit better in the arena, but it's still shitty facing off against this little brat. Taking all of this into account, we also see how the devs have kinda realized how much of a mess-up Moonchild was, and have been frantically releasing new characters all with the intention of specifically countering the little shit. It's annoying as hell that all of the new characters don't get to have cool abilities or unique mechanics because Moonchild needs a thousand different ways to be stopped. He was designed poorly, and I'm not even sure where I would begin to suggest changes. I legitimately do not know what would make him still fun to use while keeping him from being necessary to place high in arena. If you have suggestions, definitely leave them below.

So overall, what do I think of 2019 for Legacy of the Beast? Well, I believe a lot of the content that was implemented was good in theory and I really liked some of the new creative ideas, such as Oni Eddie and his Empowered Blade. However, I think that Awakening as a mechanic has lead to a new gate to keep new players from catching up without paying money; you will only be able to efficiently farm for Awakening materials and characters if you already have a few of the Awakened characters. Otherwise, it's a lot more difficult. Cosmic talismans are similar, and even worse due to the random aspect of it. I do believe however that 2019 was overall good, but there were just some really unfortunate decisions made by the developers. I hope that going forward, the devs listen to us on the forums a bit more with certain suggestions; I think it'll make everyone happier in the long run. What did you guys think of 2019?

Well, you covered a lot of everything here, I’ll give ya that. I do agree on the whole Moonchild situation and what has resulted from it. His passive is amazing when he’s fighting for you but it is annoying when going against if you don’t have Quantum’s and a couple of good toons on the team, I’m 100% agreeing on that. You did forget to mention that two characters have been given something we all have been wishing for, but not exactly in the way we were expecting: Talisman Disabling! Sure it’s only a handful of sets (and it was added this year of 2020), but it’s a start. I did find it amusing about the rant of Moonchild, I agree on most parts. You did do a good job, well done.

You did forget one thing that’s the most important part here:

Tiny Tim needs to be Awakened.

-GC

Amazing write-up. I would add one thing: all of the dungeons now remember what team you used last time.

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Originally Posted by Ydex

Amazing write-up. I would add one thing: all of the dungeons now remember what team you used last time.

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Not really. If you use multiple devices then changing device will clear remembered team.

Fantastic writeup GrimDusk. I'll just add a few thoughts of my own:

Moonchild could easily be fixed by changing tali slots (as you pointed out) to something that disallows Labs. What I don't understand is that Lucifer, a comparatively wimpy toon that's basically garbage in PvP, has *ALL* of his talisman slots picked out - 4 purple, 2 yellow - and you have very little choice. Meanwhile, Moonie can wear labs, Babylons, etc... seems a little absurd when you think about it.

The other thing that I think that the developers really didn't focus on, especially in the latter half of the year, is making the game accessible to new players. And I don't think this is a minor problem. When someone joins a game like this, they're obviously not expecting to the start with all the top toons, top talismans, etc. However, at this point - with awakened toons, so many toons being added to the frontier store (which seems daunting to a new player when FCs are slow in coming), and so on - I think that any new player is going to get a grasp of the game, and say "this is fun"! And then they're going to realize exactly how far behind they are, that they won't feel after months of casual (ie, not paying boatloads of real life $$$) play that they can catch up, and they're gonna say "LotB? Fuck this shit! Banging my head against a cinderblock!"

Let's just use Dark Lilith as an example, since she's arguably the most necessary toon for PvE, and almost as necessary as Moonie to PvP. For a brand new player to attain DL, they're going to have to buy 5 LoLs in the frontier store - each one priced at 2,500 FCs. They're then going to have to get their hands on the materials to awaken said toons. Then they're going to have to run LoL XI-XV 100 times with each. Finally they get Dark Lilith - who they have to awaken as well.

A new player who isn't attached to the game is going to do the math, and realize that even if they bought some entry-level real life money purchases - the ironite daily drip pack, for example - it would take them months, if not an entire year, to get their hands on this toon - which is almost necessary to be competitive. Facing that, I reckon that most players aren't going to have time to get obsessed with the game enough to put in the time and effort.

This is clearly problematic. There's obviously attrition every week as people lose interest; in order to maintain momentum, the game needs to attract new players. Effectively putting so many necessary things behind a paywall (because you can't run tons of LoL frontier keys without tons of ironite), is telling new players to sod off and do something else.

Which despite the great graphics, epic soundtrack, mostly good community (with some whiny turds aside), great playability (when we actually get new dungeons that are fun), exciting release schedule - is going to kill this game. We're down to what - someone floated the figure ~15K daily players now? In a year, I'd be surprised if that's much over 5K without something done to bring new blood in.

And this is speaking to someone who came in to the game early in 2019. If I'd have started the game after the LoL Mega Event, I'd have played through the end of Night City, said "What's Next?", taken a look at, for example, getting Dark Lilith... and set the game down.

Just something for the developers to consider before they focus on making things even more topheavy for those already at the top.

I've been playing over 2 years & still don't have dark lilith but I haven't spent a penny on the game so i don't expect to get the best toons. I do ok tho with what I've got. I refuse to spend real money on a game as buggy as this

I’d say 2019 was the year the game made the leap from a simple game to a long form RPG (Hopefully it can go from a meh one to a great one)

So a few things here: one, thank you all for being civil in your discussion here. Second, I agree with your points. The game has indeed shifted further away from new player accessibility, and it may kill the game if the devs aren’t careful with what they add. Dark Lilith is a good example, because she and Lucifer are the hardest toons to get in the game (Lucifer’s kinda bad though). As for moonchild, changing talisman slots could work, but there are other talismans that could make him just as annoying. If you made it all blue, or even 2 blue and a purple, he can equip celestial talismans. Make it yellow, he can equip Valhalla or light talismans. Red, viper talismans. Green would be the only difficult one, as most of the good green talismans are sub par to the other colors. In addition, his passive just drains all fun from the game. Why would you not want us to do the super cool stuff all the characters can do?

My biggest gripe (aside from some very poor interactions with a certain CS member) is that on the onset this was a game where everything was attainable through hard work and time. Money was only used as a way to expedite progress. If you only spent your naturally occurring resources you could still get everything after a while.

Now we are seeing character specific talismans that are only available during events that if you're lucky will only require you to drain from a premium resource like ironite or frontier coins. For a lot of players (and all new players) these will only be available through paying.


Improvements we need for 2020

• More Inventory Slots
• No more event specific anything (a delay between events and adding to the long term method is fine like we saw with Gangland Eddie)
• No more long term souls/keys that look the same for colour blind players

I would also just like to add, I know I'm in the minority but I am still consistently getting server disconnects. No where near as bad as late last year where it was stealing resources (still waiting for the 230 ironite that was stolen) but still enough that is happening every few runs. I can no longer grind over night which luckily the past few events haven't required.

It's less event specific as much as it is that we can't possibly know when they will come back. Cyborg Talismans might only come back next Cyber Monday, but who knows?