Hi David,
If you have not read my first letter, I urge you to read it right now -
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/letter-to-david-kim-re-system-design-of-diablo-iv-part-1/
Whereas your last blog touched on a variety of topics, this one focuses on itemization.
As a fan of D3 and D2, I find many things concerning in this blog. Let me illustrate them as we go through your post.
Your Philosophy on itemization is to make it deep, rewarding, easy to learn, hard to master and offer customization.
First, we agree that adding depth and customization to your character through itemization is incredibly valuable and important to the game. This has been the most-discussed topic since we revealed Diablo IV. To be clear—we believe Diablo IV itemization should be deep and rewarding and that’s one of our highest priorities. Another important philosophy across the whole game for our team is the concept “ Easy to learn, difficult to master. ” This core philosophy helped many of us become the hardcore gamers we are today, and one we want to embrace throughout the Diablo IV development process.
I think this is great but it is missing one important thing which I discussed in my last letter, which you have not addressed yet.
Itemization - Empower Player Choice 
We went over this in my last letter in detail but I’ll go through it again.
One player wants to use the cool Legendary that gives him 3 Fireballs. He picks up the Legendary and equips it and enjoys. 
Another player wants to use the Original Fireball Spell. He wants to use it but he is forced into using this Legendary item. 
This happened to me playing Diablo 3. The legendary design forces you to use them. I love the game but it is so flawed with its itemization.
You want to take the best of D2 and D3 itemization.
Second, we agree with the feedback that Diablo IV shouldn’t just mimic the itemization in our previous Diablo games. Our plan is to take the best parts of previous games and improve upon them while introducing new elements to make Diablo IV unique. We don’t want to create an exact copy of Diablo II or Diablo III. It’s worth calling out that, on this subject, there was a lot of mixed feedback and differing opinions, and we acknowledge that means there’s no single approach that everyone in the community will agree on.
Again this is great but in your blog you aren’t fully committed to it.
This is because you are missing an important in your philosophy.
The best part of Diablo 2’s itemization is that I can take my Gargantuan as the Giant he is, and buff him up through -
- 1-3 to Summoning Skills
- 1-3 to Gargantuan (Witch Doctor only)
- 1-3 to All Witch Doctor Skills
The best part of Diablo 3’s itemization is that I can take my Gargantuan and make him into three small midgets using -
- Short Man Finger
How can we have both in the game in a place where the player can lean in to on or the other? Either he empowers his Giant Pet and makes him even stronger. Or he splits off his Giant pet into midget pets and goes for a bigger army.
How can we empower the player’s choice ?
Here is the 
to solving this.
Rare items (and Magic items), the way they are in D2, is the key .
Rare Items offer purely numerical buffs so if the player wants to use the Original Gargantuan, the original Hulking Giant, he can do that.
Legendary items offer spicy skill variants so if the player wants to do weird or crazy things with his skills, like Midget Gargs, he can do that.
The key is to do itemization similar to D2, ie items that empower the Original Skills but add D3’s Legendaries as optional items, side-grades, that spice up the game for many players who enjoy that style of play.
Some players want to use the Original Gargantuan or the Original Fireball or The Original /Insert Skill here/ but if you force him to use Legendary affixes such as Short Man Finger then you are not empowering his choice.
Later in your blog, you mention that you want to allow players to add Legendary Affixes to Rare items...
In our last post, we mentioned that we were looking at some potential changes to Ancient items based on your feedback. We are going to remove Ancient Legendaries from the game in their current form entirely.
Our newest proposal hits a couple different feedback points: addressing the usefulness of Rare (Yellow) items as well as increasing the depth and complexity of player gear choices in the endgame.
We will be introducing a new type of consumable item (which we haven’t yet named). This item would be earned by killing monsters, just like other items. It would have one random Legendary affix on it, drops only in the late endgame, and can be used to apply that affix to any non-Legendary item.
This means a few things:
_ We create an “elective mode for items” that is experienced after players have had time to experience Rare and Legendary items normally, as well as familiarized themselves with a variety of affixes_
_ This adds a way to introduce new methods of play without adding even more power to endgame items_
_ Rare items with the best affixes on them are always useful and retain value_
This is not what we meant when we said make Rares a viable choice.
This is a very bad idea. This is going to lead to the same problem of forcing players to play with Legendary affixes
Mythic items lead to the same problem as well.
…It’s more and more Legendary affixes…
Don’t drown us in Legendary affixes. Let us choose to use them if that’s the playstyle we enjoy.
But if we don’t enjoy those Legendary affixes, give us other options. Rare Items that can compete with the power of Legendaries, can be that option.
If you allow players to add Legendary Affixes to Rares, then you remove that option and like D3 you make Legendary affixes the best way to play the game.
Look…
- I don’t want to cast multiple Fireballs at once (Sorceress Legendary in the D4 Demo)
- I don’t want to add fire effects to my Upheaval (Barbarian Legendary in the D4 Demo)
- I don’t want to proc Lightning Traps and Hydras as a Werewolf (All-Class Legendaries in the D4 Demo)
- I don’t want to play with midget Gargantuans (Short Man Finger from D3)
.
.
. - or maybe I do
Give me, the player, the option to choose that.
Think about it from your (and your team’s) point of view -
- We already designed awesome skills for the players to play with. Why should we force players out of those skills and into the skill variants of Legendary affixes?
- We already created a certain fantasy of the physical damage Barbarian or giant minion Gargantuan. Why should we force players out of those fantasies with items that change Upheaval to be fire or change Giants to be midgets?
We shouldn’t.
We should offer these things as additional options on top of the original skill and fantasy.
Developers should look to capitalize on their original skill design and fantasy as well as offer players choices of more skills through Legendary powers… without making the original skills, the original fantasy, obsolete.
If there is one thing you can learn from D3 is that you should never force players to use Legendary Items or Legendary Affixes.
- It makes large portions of your game completely useless. Without powerful Rare Items, players are shoehorned into a Legendaries, and can only use those skill variants which the legendary affixes allow.
_ - It can destroy the fantasy that the skills created, which the player wants to experience but cannot, due to large discrepancies in power levels of the original skill vs the variant offered by the Legendary affix.
In doing so it does not empower player’s choice.
You say items should make the character stronger and offer interesting choices
First, item affixes should be a meaningful part of character power. Second, they should create interesting choices when deciding which items to equip.
Please add - Empower Player’s Choice - to this list.
You are increasing total number of Affixes on Magic, Rare and Legendary items
We’re increasing the total number of affixes on items, including Magic (Blue), Rare (Yellow), and Legendary (Orange). This should raise the overall importance of non-Legendary affixes on your character’s overall level of power.
This does not solve the problem of Legendary Affixes dominating the scene.
When you have a Magic Item, a Rare Item, and a Legendary, the player is going to gravitate towards the Legendary due to its affix.
This means you have to design Rare Items and Magic Items in a way in which they can compete with the Legendary Affix. Otherwise no one will use them and instead feel shoe-horned into Legendary affixes.
One of the ways you can solve this problem is by allowing Rare Items to roll more Affixes than Legendaries, and Magic Items to roll less affixes with a chance to roll stronger affixes.
So let me give you an example here -
Legendary Ring - Short Man Finger 
+ 2 to Gargantuan (Witch Doctor Only)
+ 20% Faster Cast Speed
+ 15 to Mana Regeneration
+ Gargantuan instead summons three smaller gargantuans
This Legendary always rolls these 4 affixes exactly the same, with minor variations in their numbers. This is because you as a developer try to encourage the player to play this spicy version of Gargantuan build.
But maybe you don’t want him to sit there and watch Gargs fight while eating popcorn. You want to encourage the Player to do other things. So what you can do is you add affixes like Cast Speed and Mana Regen, in order to encourage the player to be casting spells more often.
The ring is designed so that it is first and foremost worth using for the Midget Gargs alone, but for the spellcaster WDs it offers more options.
Remember we must empower the player’s choice, and not get in the way of it.
The reason why the Legendary Ring’s affixes are fixed and rolls less affixes than Rare Rings is to that that the Rare ring can outshine it in other ways. So that the Rare ring can compete with the - Gargantuan instead summons three smaller gargantuans - Affix.
Rare Ring of the Giant 
+ 3 to Gargantuan (Witch Doctor Only)
+ 2 to Summoning Skills (Witch Doctor Only)
+ 200 to Defense while Standing Still
+ 2% minion damage goes to Life
+ 100 more damage to Enemies outside Melee Range
+ 30 to Popcorn quantity
Rares always roll -
- all random affixes
- rolls more affixes
- allows the player the freedom to choose his own affixes and thus playstyle
So that they can compete with other powerful item tiers like Legendaries.
This way the player can play the game his way.
The Player wants to sit there and eat popcorn while Gargantuan murders everything. This ring allows him to do that. He gets some sustain and defense on this ring and he can sit back and afk farm.
Witch Doctor’s Magic Ring 
+ 7 to Gargantuan (Witch Doctor only)
Magic items allow player to really hone into 1 area of specialization and buff the 
out of it.
The Player wants the fantasy of his own Giant Monster murdering the minions of hell. This Magic item allows for that but that Legendary - Short Man’s finger - does not.
This is why both type of items are necessary -
- One that buffs the player’s original, vanilla skills
- One that is game changing and open new playstyles
David, empower the player’s choice.
The key is Rare Items and Magic Items that can compete with Legendary Items and their power level.
All the different item types you have in the game should be useful to someone somewhere.
Here we talked about Rare Items, Magic Items and Legendary Items.
But White items and Crafted Items should also be useful and should offer additional layers of choice for those who are willing to explore them.
Perhaps the D4 Runewords can only be built into socketed White Items.
This offers depth by allowing different item types to compete with each other and offer the players, who are running the same skills, different ways to use those skills.
- One witch doctor uses Legendary affixes to create multiple smaller Gargantuans.
- Another uses Rare Items to create an AFK-farm Gargantuan build with extra popcorn.
- Another uses Magic Items to create a Hyper-Strong Gargantuan but leaves his Witch Doctor squishy and vulnerable.
- Another uses White Items equipped with D4’s Runes (Minion-related Runes), in order to create a Gargantuan that procs other things like Thorns, Crushing Blow, etc.
Different item tiers and different affixes can create multiple build variations with just 1 skill.
New Stats
You want to introduce new stats that create gear requirements
We are also introducing three new stats:
* Angelic Power , which increases the duration of all beneficial effects (like self-buffs or healing)
* Demonic Power , which increases the duration of all negative effects (like debuffs or damage over time)
* Ancestral Power , which increases the chance of on-hit effects (aka increased proc chance)
What made Diablo 2’s gear requirements interesting was that they could be obtained from multiple sources.
Let’s say I want to wield this sword. It requires 90 strength.
First of all… what a great RPG mechanic this is. It fits right into the fantasy of wielding weapons. Weapons are heavy and hard to swing around if you are weak. So the Player has to get stronger muscles and pick them up. The Player needs more Strength.
- One thing the player can do is rely on building his inherent strength. His Character’s Attributes. He can pump points in to Strength, get 90 strength and wield the sword.
- Another thing the player can do is rely on Item affixes. Sigon’s Gauntlets give me 10 Strength, “Hey I’ll just hit 80 and let the gauntlets work their magic and wield the sword that way.”
- Use Socketable Items that reduce Gear requirements.
Life is great, isn’t it?
If you make Angelic, Demonic and Ancestral Power, available only on gear, you are going to get a lot of frustrated players and an itemization that shoehorns players into certain affixes.
When you do that guess what you are not doing?
You are not Empowering the Player’s Choice.
Always keep this in mind.
I like that you are coming up with cool ideas.
The images you shared show gear whose affixes can be unlocked through certain requirements.
This idea of unlocking individual affixes is brilliant!
It means I can wield a weapon at a lower level but then build on it and unlock the full power as I build my character.
So keep this part but allow the player to approach the strategy for unlocking in different ways.
You can go beyond D2 and add quest rewards where the local Blacksmith, whose murdered family you avenged, takes a piece of your gear and unlocks the affixes on it (affixes for which you do NOT meet the requirements).
- Character Attributes
- Stats on Gear
- Socketables
- other ways to by pass gear requirements such as quest rewards, rare potions (that temporarily boost stats), shrines, etc
I would like to see these methods to acquire Angelic, Demonic and Ancestral power.
I would also like to see the Diablo 2 Attribute System make a come-back in an improved way.
You are removing Attack and Defense affixes from items that shouldn’t have it because -
The goal here is to better embrace the fantasy of each type of item.
Perfect! 
Nothing to add here.
You say -
Our goal is to spread out power across different sources, including skill ranks, your character’s level, talent trees, items, and the endgame character progression system (which, like everything else, is still in development).
Again, try to embrace the traditional RGP mechanics such as D2's Attribute system. It offers more depth to the game and offers a more engaging levelling experience to the player, than when it is not present at all.
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