i fully agree, being a solo, casual, midlevel mobblaster. 
I agree too RUNtoFUN maybe for slightly different reasons, but agree just the same.
The D2 drop rate is why they donât need new items to keep the hunt going. Itâs always a hunt.
I would love to see that drop rate return along with the free for all loot system.
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A hunt would imply one occasionally succeeds in getting what theyâre after. The problem with steep RNG is that such is never actually guaranteed. Making items drop free-for-all just invites other issues and temptations to cheat.
My usual take here has otherwise been, âContent players canât see is content not worth developing.â Drops fall under this umbrella, but it also means not spending excessive amounts of resources making things only 1% of a gameâs population could hope to see, let alone beat.
In the end, making something 10x harder or whatever to get doesnât make the related item(s) 10x more powerful. It just means you have more time between the span of have and have not for a player to get bored, frustrated, and quit the game entirely. Possibly taking their friends with them. Conversely, more readily patching in new things gives more avenues of experimentation, hunting for other things you mightâve overlooked before, and obviously seeing more of the game world. Being stingy on drops otherwise gives devs a pass to be stingy with content releases.
Then they will not get the #1 best in slot item for a long time, but maybe the 2nd 3rd, or 4th BiS item.
The problem is not that there are items that are very, very rare, or even so rare that you may not find them in a season, because that only would become a problem when these items are significantly more powerful than the rest.
If the 2nd 3rd and 4th etc BiS item are still viable, then there is not really much of a problem with ultra rare BiS items.
Then they can start another character to try to do something else.
I mean just look at the D2 Youtubers that are still active and most of them have still not found every item in the game although they are playing it since years. And even when D2 still had a much more active playerbase and people knew that there are powerful items that they are probably never going to see, they played the game for a long time.
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A hunt implies that eventually you will find some great rare items which will be useful somehow for you. And you do achieve this goal.
Indeed.
True. That doesnât mean items cant be rarer though. Just dont make them more powerful for being rare.
It is a balance in the end. Items should not be so rare that nobody ever see them. But also not so common that finding an item feels meaningless.
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You only have to play non season for this. And originally legendaries were even hard to get when D3 first started. You only have to look at one of my chars to see this xD
The existence of 3rd or 4th tier would further imply a bland item pool and builds reliant on generalized affixes that, frankly, donât sound very exciting to play. Otherwise, Iâd warn thereâs a period of time where players will tolerate getting a build going and MAYBE settling for 2nd rate, but as far as these communities tend to go, if youâre not decked out in the #1 stuff, you stand no chance in any sort of competitive element and will eventually be shunned from higher end group play.
The only way around this is to not rely on stupid rarity and having other item customization tools so you can turn those #2 items into #1.
Otherwise give zero fâs about youtubers or people willing to settle for a lesser experience as if running Baal 1000 times is any more fun than 100.
Please explain and give a few examples.
What do you mean by generalized affixes?
Do you mean that in case there are 1st 2nd 3rd 4th etc BiS items for each slot, that then legendaries will just have a ton of normal affixes (like increased attack speed, +x to all resistances, etc) without having any special affixes, or do you mean that the special affixes are going to be bland and boring?
First, you assume that every player is playing the game for being competitive, or for competing on the leaderboards, but that is by far not the case. There are many different kinds of players that play the game for different reasons.
Second, if you do not have #1 BiS gear, then donât play in groups with #1 BiS gear. Think about it. If maybe 10% of all players (or just even 10% of all competitive players) have the #1 BiS gear, then there are still enough people around to play with.
Thirdly: maybe leaderboards should not exist.
Fourthly, if the #1 BiS item is just lets say 10% weaker than the #2 BiS item, you still have a chance to get on the leaderboards.
If everything is special, then nothing is special.
If everything is âthe bestâ, then nothing is âthe bestâ, which means you would take out all the excitement of finding a very rare and good drop
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Iâm pretty sure with the amount opf time being spent on D4 they arenât going to mess up THAT badly again. I just know i like the sound of runes/runewords appearing again.
As it looks they are apparently mess up some (significant) parts of it.
Time spend on the game does not equal or guarantee that it is gonna be great.
Gameplay looks great and most people like the graphics/art/visuals, but in regards to loot, it looks like they gonna mess it up. Loot is going to be better than in D3 by the simple fact that there will not be any of these ridiculously inflated damage and defense multipliers, however, that alone is not enough.
I wrote a whole thread about the issues with D4âs itemizationâŚ
and also posted about it in the last quarterly update thread:
Furthermore there are issues with D4âs skill system, because as it looks it is going to be a worse version of D3âs rune system, just without the runes, since in the end you will be able to max out every single skill. Yes, there is skill progression, which is good, but again, it is not enough when in te end you can have maxed out everything.
Runewords is one of the things they imo did not get right in D4.
RWâs in D4 are very different than in D2.
In D2, runewords were basically craftable unique items that you could choose the base item for, while in D4, they are more like D3-like gems that have a condition that is required to activate a bonus (e.g. gain x life when you get stunned, etc).
I personally was not satisfied with that.
Now add being 10% weaker in each and every item slot when youâre in nothing but the #2 gear. To be honest, this isnât far removed from my prior arguments with you about how you canât make blue items compete with higher tiers because you have to make blue items cumulatively compete with the affix economy of a more numerous combinations with stupid high numbers.
And by bland affixes, I just mean the basic stuff like attack speed, health, or whatever. The fun stuff is when you start changing how abilities behave like shooting multiple fireballs at once, making a unique buff permanent, or whatever. Thatâs where the real distinction tends to arise for me when comparing D2âs uniques to D3âs legendaries. Truly unique affixes on D2âs versions werenât common. +skills were too much of a crutch, though, with occasionally maybe getting an affix more common in another slot on another. âGame changersâ is just the most simplistic way to describe my preference. Doesnât mean it makes everything faceroll. It just means looking at skills differently how they might better synergize with the status quo shaken up.
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Each item being 10% weaker still only means you are 10% weaker overall if all your items are the âsecond tierâ.
It shouldnât be tier 1, tier 2 tier 3 etc. with 10% power gaps in between anyway.
There should be many items in each item slot that is more or less equal in power, on average. So even if there was one item that was absolutely BIS for you, there might be 9 others that was within those 10%, as long as you made some other adjustments to your gear too (like, if you end up getting above fire resist cap with one of the other items, you might need to switch some stuff around to not waste fire resist).
It is indeed important not to make items bland. But also important not to make each item too specialized, so we end up with 1 BIS item.
Dont have a legendary that allows you to shoot multiple fireballs at once. Have an item that allows you to shoot multiple projectiles at once. So it works both with fireball, frostbolt etc. That way it is much more likely that you will find items that are upgrades and within that theoretical âBISâ range.
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Wouldnât it be easier just to have some artisan, like⌠letâs say, the blacksmith, to have an option iâll just name âUpgrade Itemâ that in exchange of some money and crafting mats will upgrade the item to the players level. The higher the difference between levels, the higher the required mats and money.
Also, I like to have new level caps with the expansions if that means adding new abilities or game mechanics to enrich the game. 
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yea one thing i think everyone agrees on is having stuff to spend your GOLD on in D4.
One thing I dont like about that is while leveling you can just keep using the same items throughout. I like that you switch gear around while you lvl up.
But in the end-game, sure. Hence having the ability to upgrade an item to âend-game lvlâ, but not to any lvl in between imo.
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i think that if itemization is really deep, you will not just happen to find all your perfect rolls while leveling up your character
but IF by any chance you will find a single perfect roll while leveling up, it would be very sad if you couldnt keep it
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Shadout responded to that already before me, so I donât have to repeat that, since it is very similar to what I would say.
Letâs say there is a cube recipe that increases the power of the affixes on a magic item by anywhere between 30-100% (or up to 200%, whatever) and has a chance for adding +1-2 additional affixes of normal power to the magic item.
There would be a lot of RNG involved to get both of the affixes to as close to a 100% (or even 200%) increase of their power (and you had to find a perfect base magic item as well) and then a chance for +1-2 additional affixes.
The cube recipe could even be somewhat costly.
Now, these upgraded magic items could be BiS items in a few slots (like if this would be D3, then I would say Shoulders, Bracers and Pants), while in other slots like the weapon slot, legendaries are the BiS items.
So, yes, you can make magic and rare items compete with legendaries in some slots, but not in all and you do not even need âstupidly high numbersâ for that.
Okay, thanks for clearing that up.
I also make the defining factor in distinguishing between legendaries on the one side and rare, magic and white items being a special affix on the legendary,
something that is different from a normal affix and something that rare, magic and white items can not have, however, âŚ
⌠I donât think that special affixes that change skills belong on items, but rather as an optional perk or talent on the skill itself.
Also, not every legendary has to have a mechanical or gameplay changing special affix. Sometimes, a simple proc can be nice as well, like a chance to cast War Cry on kill, or a chance to cast Meteor Shower on attack. A bit like Etched Sigil, which is one of my favorite legendaries in D3 (although it is a bit problematic with all these multipliers).
I agree with that. Uniques in D2 could have much more special stuff on them instead of just higher numbers on normal affixes and/or normal affixes on items that it otherwise can not spawn on, however, I donât mind these spawning in D4 on legendaries as well in addition to special affixes.
I had that idea as well and a very similar system is in the D2 mod Median XL, but there the upgrade is being done with the cube.
You could have Tiers of items, ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 10.
T1 has a level requirement of 10.
T2 has a level requirement of 20.
T6 requires level 60.
T10 requires level 100.
Some items start to drop at T1, while others only start to drop at T6 or even T8, T9 or T10.
The ones that only can be found at T8, T9 or T10 are more pwoerful at T10 than the legendaries that drop start to drop at the lower levels, even when you upgrade them to T10.
That means that lower level legendaries will still be (at least somewhat) viable at T10, but not as powerful as legendaries that first start to drop at higher Tiers.
You do not need to increase the level cap to add new skills.
Simply add them to the skill list (or skill tree, although I would not call it a skill tree in D4).
Imagine that the costs for upgrading a low level legendary to a higher tier is fairly/somewhat expensive, even at lower levels (in relation to the resources you have available at that level).
Then you might wanna use another item instead of upgrading the legendary you have.
If itâs done right, it shouldnât be like that.
So, each level, has a number range for each affix right? Letâs say:
Level 1 - Attack 3-6
Level 2 - Attack 5-9
:
Level 10 - Attack 21-30 etc
So if you have an item, with all the right affixes you want and you used for some time, but because of an expansion it becomes obsolete, by upgrading it you would keep the item with the SAME affixes, but with new randomized numbers from the new higher level range. So if you had a level 40 Attack 95 (from a range of 80 - 105), with the upgrade youâll have the same item but now of level 50 with a new random number from the lvl 50 Attack range of 104-120. It would work similarly to a D3 reforge item, but randomizing only the numbers of the affixes, and not the affixes also. It still doesnât mean you will have the best item because you may always find the same item, with the same affixes or with almost the same ones, but with better numbers. 