QOL: Streamline magic and rare items

PTR Feedback
1

Rushing is a part of this game. We know that. But did anyone ever asked why? I am sure there are multitude reasons, but the chief one is:

The game is so unbearably awkward until you get some proper items, and those items tend to come in a form of Runewords, Uniques and Sets. The game’s item generator is set up to fail on its face when generating magic and rare items. I mean it literally is. To a level that it is more likely to find runes for Botd or Grief than the game generating an usable rare weapon past mid-nightmare difficulty.

This sad state of affairs makes sure that players will avoid good chunks of the game, because why deal with the dread if they already have gear prepared for the new toon?

This state of affairs makes entering this game fresh pretty difficult.

This state of affairs pretty much eliminates gear-dependant classes ( such as barbarians ) are so rare. Why bother with the dread?

And it’s not a problem that cannot be fixed. Mods did it. Heck I did it in a mod, years ago. And no, I’m not saying that rares should be the ‘uber’ items everyone wants. I say they should be competent as a rule, not exception.

Suggestion:

Follow the following principles when setting the item and affix generator:

  • ‘Blue’ items should be the baseline items that allow to survive on a given difficulty settings. With 2-3 open sockets being possible ( remember 1.09 chipped gem recepie ) they would also provide great level of customisability.

  • ‘Rare’ items are, in essence, randomized unique items and should as a rule match unique items in potency. Yes, this means that a rare shako with ilvl 85 should be expected to to roll +3 class skill, 200% ed, +150 life and triple res. This change can make rares actually ‘rare’, but not as rare as uniques - say 3:1. This can happen because ‘blues’ are actually usable now

  • Items generated by monsters of level X should always draw affixes which match that monster’s level.

  • uniques, sets and runewords remain where they are

  • crafted items automatically get awesome, because one can roll them

EDIT:

Years ago I have developed a mod for D2 that was about ‘streamlining’ the gameplay - essentially, it set out to fix some of the game’s shortcomings without altering it too much. One of the thing it set out to do was to make genereated items ( rares, magics ) more in line with difficulty they drop in.

I’ve dug around my harddrive and found these screenshots of items I generated while testing my changes:

https://imgur.com/BArXaCD
https://imgur.com/BEwkKWs
https://imgur.com/lX7vpne
https://imgur.com/g3UgOEw
https://imgur.com/fDicjy9
https://imgur.com/LBTW3AM
https://imgur.com/bDtJIol
https://imgur.com/7VufV2D
https://imgur.com/ZxI04Bj
https://imgur.com/xFIq0Fc
https://imgur.com/Hw1ZTz5

As you can see - the game can be set up to make these. None of those are all that ‘op’ by current standards, especially since some require level 90+ monsters to drop, which is no monster ever. Likewise - they were not ‘common’ by any means, but they were happening from time to time.

2 Likes
2

I agree. I play as barb most of the time. Its challenging to progress. But on the other side i like it that way by some percent of it.

Rares/crafted weapons should also have those better mods available like Crushing blow, deadly strike, open wounds in small doses.
Maybe blue/rare weapons always have that suffix with %ed or +max dmg, cos without it they are unusable basically. Always rolled random %ed maxdmg based on item level, so you dont get 350%ed early game. And as you said possibility to customize with 2-3 sockets.

Generally agree with you on rares/blues buffing.

But I dont want to make the game too easy, but rather say “enjoyable” with enough hard challenge.

3

The availability ( or lack-thereof ) of gear directly leads to people limiting themselves to being bio-drones running after specific items, instead of actually enjoying the game. I’d rather have the game be hard on the basis of skill required to progress instead of being proportional to the number of hours spent in ‘The Pit’.

4

Yeah true hehe. Or some use bots for sure.

Exactly my toughts too!
But when I think about it, not sure there is some option to skillfully beat the game to outmaneuver outsmart monsters. Its basic AI. And you either have the proper setup, items to beat certain aspects of game like Ancients, Bosses, or you don’t.

5

When I started playing the game and had no clue how things work in the game, I had this concept in my mind of how items drop, in different difficulties. Well I was wrong ofcourse. But i’ll share my concept of my 12 years old self. So I tought normal items and low runes will only drop in normal difficulty, exeptional items and mid runes will only drop in nightmare difficulty and elite items and high runes will only drop in hell difficulty. I think this would also solve a portion of the problem. But reworking itemization at this point, just dosen’t worth the effort.

6

The game already does this - with immunities, or unique monster affixes - which are things you can’t more-better with gear. At least to a significant level. In essence, the harder the game gets, the more game mechanics need to be used. Paladin or necromancer exemplify this perfectly - you have a set of auras/curses and even with pretty good gear you can’t just stay in place and take it.

It is my opinion, which is an opinion and obviously opinion it is, that most of the bio-mf-bots just want to face-roll the game through by having bigger number on their gear. Which is why, for example I am a great proponent of immunities.

But the flip side of this is that certain baseline of equipment is required to both withstand the punishment going our way and to dish said punishment back.