Biggest Concern for Diablo 4 - Loot - Where Diablo 2 succeeded and Diablo 3 failed

General Discussion
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I am hoping to see them design the loot systems of Diablo 4 with Diablo 2 in mind and ignoring Diablo 3.

Gear in Diablo 3 was made significantly easier to understand and easier to achieve which ruined one of the core features of Diablo 2.

With Diablo Immortal coming out hopefully they use that to focus on the easily accessible and casual side of play focus as seen throughout Diablo 3 and start to design Diablo 4 to be more hardcore friendly, interesting, and complex.

Loot and it’s systems must be designed with Diablo2 in mind in order for Diablo 4 to succeed where Diablo 3 failed.

1. Loot should not be accessible to everyone just because you bought the game.

There are items in Diablo 2 that many players may have never seen drop or ever even had after playing for several years.

The game is playable and beatable without achieving these items. Most of these extremely rare items are not even the best items thanks to runes and runewords. Some of these items just function as trophies!

This encourages trading and community. You found something rare, but probably not what you needed so you trade for it! This also adds replay value for multiple reasons: This makes gearing more difficult, community driven and take significantly longer to gear. It also encourages playing other classes and builds besides your own because you will to level them up so you can design a build around a really cool item you found for another class thus increasing replay value and time spent playing.

2. The ability for RARE items that can (very rarely) potentially out scale any item in the game.

The chance of this happening needs to be extremely low, and I think Diablo 2 did that perfectly. A rare weapon/bow with eth, repair durability, 2 sockets, ed%, max damage, etc, for example, is extremely rare. Very few have ever existed. They should not by default be the best, or even most of the time be the best which is what diablo 3 tried on initial release and failed. Have them have an extremely rare chance of rolling an amazing set of useful affixes. This requires a large system of diverse and complex affixes on gear, similar to Diablo 2, which is my next point.

3. Bring back more and/or develop more new interesting and complex gear/loot systems similar to Diablo 2.

The lack of this caused Diablo 3’s game play and loot to feel very boring, unrewarding, and underwhelming.

What happened to stats like faster hit recover, faster block rate, faster cast rate, hit rating, and crushing blow? Multiple systems and complexity from the previous game were removed from gear and not compensated in any way.

Stats like faster hit recovery and faster cast rate had extra complexity as well through the use of breakpoints. This meant you only saw an increase in your speed if a certain value was reached. This caused you to have to mix and match certain pieces in order to balance and achieve these breakpoints. Usually sacrificing raw damage or defense to increase how quickly you recover after being attacked or how fast you can attack/cast.

4. You should not find gear for only the class you are playing.

This encourages community and trading.

Magic finding / farming for gear is a major source of replay value that Diablo 2 utilizes perfectly and Diablo 3 completely ignores.

People have been searching and playing for literal years in order to collect every item in the game. Diablo 3 literally feels like a legendary piñata. You can also make a full build of gear in under a day, and make any item you want - very unrewarding systems.

5. Crafting require the use of items used in the game - not specific crafting materials.

In Diablo 2 This made in game items like gems and runes very useful and valuable.

It was possible to make amazing gloves or rings by crafting in Diablo 2. It was also possible to re roll charms which turned gems into a very useful currency.

6. Gambling:

Diablo 3 added a new currencies in order to have gambling and crafting. Diablo 2’s use of gold for gambling, and use of in game items for crafting was crucial to the econemy!

This was a very solid alternative/addition to magic finding and gave value to gold. It feels more rewarding and better when the loot itself is designed better. Rolling for rare rings, circlets, etc that can be very powerful was exciting. Even the chance of knowing you could be buying Tyrael’s was amazing. This feels much better than rolling for the same list of items that the boss just dropped 15 of, which is how Diablo3 is currently set up.

Overall, I’m hoping to see Diablo 4 be more friendly to hardcore players and less accessible, with loot being one of the biggest examples of this.

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1. It should. However, it doesn’t mean that you will get it. It’s all RNG bud.

2. I agree. I like that about Diablo 2, Titan Quest, and Grim Dawn. I haven’t played PoE or other similar games, yet.

3. I agree. However, I think set items are a good idea as well. Don’t need a bunch, say 3 for each class. 1 for fun, 1 for end game, 1 for a particular purpose other than end game.

4. I disagree. The bad part about smart loot in D3 is… it’s not 100% smart. It was made that way on purpose too. Personally, if I am playing a Barbarian, I don’t want to find gear for other classes, especially if I am in the initial stages of leveling/gearing. It’s annoying and tremendous let down. But, that’s called life.

5. I agree. Crafting should be a bigger part of the game. Finding or purchasing schematics/plans to make items should be apart of the game as well. THAT part could lead to having gear for OTHER classes.

6. I agree. Gold in D3 is wasted and useless aside from empowering rifts and rerolls. Even the, with billions upon billions of gold, those costs are trivial at best. The only problem, gold farmers. Thank the countless gold farmers out there for making something that is supposed to be the backbone of the game… wasted… and useless.

D4 should be its own entity, of course, but it should also keep some aspect of D1, D2, and D3. I am sure the Devs can find the good things about each game, yes even D3. D3 isn’t all bad. If it was, NO ONE would play it and it would be truly dead to the world.

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Should be potentially accessible. But you should not expect to find everything.

Trading should however not be allowed.

Rares should potentially be better only because they came with the stats your build need, vs. the more fixed stats of legendaries.
Like maybe a legendary comes with affix A, B and C. But for your build a better version would have been affix A, B and D, so finding a rare with those stats would be an upgrade, even though the affix numbers are not bigger. Just different.

I wouldn’t call D2s itemization very complex or interesting. Even though it was better than D3s of course.
Imo, take inspiration from Grim Dawn instead.

Completely agreed.

I dont think it matters one way or the other. Both can be fine.
Maybe focus crafting on stuff other than gear (potions, runes, jewels, enhancements etc.). Or maybe a few gear slots (like Grim Dawn throws most of its crafting system into a single item slot; the relic.
That way item drops and crafting are not in competition with each other.

Having a special currency for gamlbing seems better tbh. And it should of course be untradeable.
However, honestly, I dont think there should be any gambling to begin with. Clicking on a vendor in a town is not good gameplay.
Make us target loot in more engaging ways instead; like allowing us to affect the dropchances of different item slots instead through potion crafting or similar.

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That… isn’t why the loot system is the way it is.

It’s that way because all the power is on items and the items enable builds. So you have to do something to let players find them, else you have nothing.

Yeah, that’s too long. I mean, I’m not saying players need to see every item in the game in that period… but they should definitely see the items for their build, or there should be ways to get them.

This idea that certain items should be so completely elusive is a relic from the past.

No it doesn’t. Open trade doesn’t build community any more than talking to the guy at the checkout counter does.

Why can’t I just find what I needed? Why are you dead set on adding more steps to the process that don’t have anything to do with playing the game?

Gearing shouldn’t be community driven in an ARPG. If you want that then play an MMO where you gear up alongside your guildmates in activities.

They should take a long, hard loot at Grim Dawn’s gearing process. You don’t need every item for your build to play the build effectively, but you’re also going to find them after a while. And you can even craft some of them.

No, no, no. Magic find is garbage. There is nothing satisfying or enjoyable about swapping your gear around all the time, especially if you’re timing it at the end of encounters just for the temp boost.

The only way it would be acceptable is if you could eventually make your own items or add MF to your regular items through some process. Like… you find gear with MF and refine it somehow to add a little of the stat to your own gear. In this way it lengthens the time for perfect gear, but doesn’t feel like you’re wasting time doing nothing.

Uh.

A system where you can gear up quickly is MORE rewarding than a system where you can’t collect everything after literal years of investment. I’m sorry, but you can’t just change the definition of “rewarding” to the opposite of what it really means.

D3’s system IS too rewarding… but that’s more a symptom of other problems.

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TBH the biggest mistake of D3 wasn’t as much in items, (though it was cause of the trifectas and only-one-skill per item kind of stuff, but still), it was the Attribute System rather

It was a 1/0/0 for every single class, if a Str or Dex axe dropped an Int class wouldn’t have been able to use, and vice versa for the other two archetypes

Even with bad itemization D3 may have worked (somewhat) provided IF the attribute system wasn’t THAT bad… I mean it was bad enough in D2 but D3 guys made the impossible, i.e. create a worse one :joy_cat:

Yes there were Itemization mistakes, but (IMO) by far, BY FAR the biggest mistake of D3 was the attribute system tbh

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So… you want an unfriendly and inaccessible game, driving away fans of the franchise… AND you want community and trading? I really don’t think those are compatible goals.

Trading doesn’t encourage “community” which is a stupid goal in the Diablo franchise anyway. If I play Diablo, I should be able to gear my character, playing that character, killing demons. Trading is work. Who looks at the shopkeeper in New Tristram and say “That’s who I want to play!”?

Nor should I be searching years for an item. Playtime is limited.

Let the “community” people who want to be always connected play on their phones. The computer version of Diablo should stay true to the roots of the franchise going back to the original, which was played mostly single player (and mostly offline, which is still desirable). Yes, it’s great to have multiplayer options as an extra. But let’s not pretend that’s the core of the game whether in D1, D2 or D3. It shouldn’t be in D4 either.

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As somebody who loved trading in Diablo 2 the problem I’m seeing with it now is that an auction house will ultimately kill any ideas about things that promote community based around trading.

and even if Blizzard doesn’t officially include an AH, there will be one. Path of Exile has third party website that fill this exact role.

That level of automation doesn’t build community, and these days we really can’t avoid it happening anymore.

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The main economy in Diablo 2 was based on duped items, loot free for all, and wearing mf gear and doing thousands of boss runs with very little reward… trading was basically all you did to make your character strong or buy an account… it’s 2020 and I’m sure there will be some middle ground as loot / trades go… another reason Diablo 2 remastered probably won’t go that great especially if they have anti cheats the economy will be terrible with no new endgame/better loot system…
Diablo 3 had a pretty good loot season in post ROS because things weren’t astronomical in drop chances and there was no cube so you would get say one or two of each best in slot item per season

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Rares should never be better than unique. The reason is that you HAVE TO constantly check every single crap rare in order to find that one in a million which doesn’t suck. It isn’t fun to over and over and OVER again check those rares hoping for something half-decent.

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thats basically the point of this genre
checking items

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Consider this.

Option A: “You unwrap a cool looking, promising present box.”
Option B: “You plow through a mound of trash searching for something of value.”

Did you notice a difference?

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Diablo 3 was and is a complete failure, so going back to a game that was successful would be a great start.

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D2 fanboys are out in force tonight.

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There is nothing wrong with having a few rare items in a build.

In Grim Dawn you’ve got white/yellow/green/blue/purple in order of drops. Common/Magical/Rare/Epic/Legendary. It’s not uncommon to see a couple Green or Blue items in final builds. The Rare items, for instance, can roll a ton of stats and are craftable as well, so you use them to shore up whatever defenses your build is lacking.

It’s silly to think that copying D2 to the extent you want would get anywhere. The game was great for its time but doesn’t age well.

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D4 legendary items have a legendary power. I wonder which game got ignored here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/dr4koj/list_of_affixes_from_the_diablo_4_demo/

Also, most of the D3 affixes are returning to D4 as well, while not so much for D2.

Gold is valuable enough if you are aiming for Caldesann Despair for your gear. I can easily spend up 2 billion gold in one night just through GR empowerment.

Hence, players resorting begging from duper/botters or buy the items with real money from Chinese Traders instead of playing the game. “Good” design.

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I somewhat agree. But that is just a matter of dropping less rares, of higher quality.
Like, get rid of the ridiculous stat ranges.

Maybe there could be an in-game loot filter (somewhat like PoE, but without needing mods), where you could select a handful of affixes, and the game highlight rare items that dropped with any of those affixes.

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I respect the opinion but honestly I disagree that the focus should be to lean too heavily into D2. The reasons players love D2 are far more varied than people tend to imply when they are trying to make an argument for the particular bit they miss.

I think in D4 there should be clear and set ways to work toward the gear you want that don’t involve spending hours looking at trade websites.

I agree that loot should have more variety but it’s possible to have extra variety without making items incredibly unintuitive to understand or forcing variety by lack of availability of a powerful item everyone wants.

I agree that D3 gets you upto build parity a bit too quickly but I think this is mainly because of the focus on sets. If they steer away from sets as they promised and avoid legendaries that are just insane stacking damage boosts then we should be able to have the build variety and the need to seek your own custom build.

I don’t mind if crafting uses regular items or specific crafting materials. They should include the recipes in the game though because I hate this facade that games imply things are secret just because you only find out about it on the wiki, just put it in the game so people spend more time in game than on websites about the game.

Gambling is a nice thing, I don’t mind if they bring it back as gold or blood shards but I agree it’s fairly enjoyable.

I think it would be bad to ignore the good aspects of D3 just because there are a lot of negatives. It’s important they pull out what works well and learn lessons from what did not.

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What exactly would you take from D3 except better graphics and animations which are solely a question of time and resources

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Just off the top of my head:

Loot vacuum for similar item types.

Player instanced loot

There are also lessons to be learned on the things that did work. There are a lot of things that maybe aimed at the right direction and missed their target but are also not present in D2 at all.

For example, Seasonal Journey is pretty good imo, it provides a clear set of objectives and makes the player go see a variety of content. It has a problem that it’s a bit too mandatory but that doesn’t mean no version of it should appear in D4 at all.

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Seasons could be interesting if they don’t force new characters
Instanced loot is fine for me
I’m not a pick up ninja