it is quite like augmenting, wher either your mainstat /armor etc. gets increased perma.
the affixes on it are irrelevant.
and yea.
there was a game out there, that used this funktion as endgame progression.
i just forgott its name 
For white items, PoE makes me very hesitant to have them work that way. Itāll depend on how the crafting system is set up, though. PoEās crafting system is a complicated mess and you can drop a heck of a lot of time and currency into an item and still fail at getting what you want.
My experience is that Blue items rolling higher isnāt really enough to make them desirable unless the stat roll is through the roof. And I donāt know that they need to beā¦ I think Rares smattered with Legendary, Uniques and Sets is fine.
The danger with your Uniques there is it sounds like weād all be building toward a Unique that has what we like, rather than taking skills we like and supplementing with gear. I want to be able to play Meteor because I like Meteor and then be able to choose a Unique item that complements that. I donāt want to think āhm I wanna play Meteorā and look at the Unique Meteor items first. Maybe thatās a minor distinction to some people, but itās a pretty important one to me.
Gear crafting works fine if done correctly. I like the way Relics are done in Grim Dawn. Theyāre crafting-specific and have different levels of power, plus you need to have crafted previous versions to make the more powerful ones.
I think crafting can supplement gear for levelingā¦ D3ās problem was that you were just looking for when you could craft the next set of rares, and then doing so until you got something that blew away what you previously hadā¦ the disparity between what dropped and what you could craft was too high.
What if there are 2-3 unique meteor items simply because one has +5 meteor on it and another has +3 to fire skills, while another has a meteor specific effect on it and then all of these compete against a unique that allows dots from fire attacks to stack really high. I think if you limit uniques to one equipped you could design it so you still get some diversity in build planning.
I understand your point really well though and having multiple uniques equippable can be a good system too so long as the right way to build a character endgame is have every slot be a unique. In the end itās a balancing thing either way so no wrong answer here really.
No. I donāt think we should be crafting anything wearable. Crafting should be for potions, and enchancing out gear.
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We can agree to disagree. If you can make gear that rivals found gear there is no reason to find the gear.
Wich would be a valid Option
You actually changed my mind on this. I had considered two possible uses for the blacksmith in the game: crafting items like in D3 or upgrading item quality (with salvaging included). You talked me out of crafting them from scratch (I donāt mind crafting rerolls systems) because honestly I donāt enjoy creating something thatās no better than what the in town vendor will offer (blue and rare crafting from scratch). Iād simply suggest that an item quality system was better for the blacksmithās design space. Just let in town vendors serve the role of giving people items to fill slots just because.
One thing I havenāt seen much conversation about is gambling. Gambling was a huge part of D2 and D3, but I have to admit I donāt like the idea behind the system since it shortcuts the item hunt process. It can be an effective gold sink but I also think there are no shortage of gold sinks they could use in D4. I understand itās a way to target a specific piece you want, but Iām not sure thatās something that should be in a loot hunting game.
What are your thoughts on a gambling system coming into D4?
Just chiming in to say this has been a great read. More threads should be like this.
Yep. Agreed. I hope it does not return. Mostly due to it feeling like a passive āclick on an NPC in townā activity.
They can come up with other gold sinks.
I do think the ability to somewhat target gear can be important however. But that should also be done in other ways. Ways that involves going out and killing mobs.
One way could be being able to buy, or craft, ātreasure mapsā/quests/whatever. With some known reward modifiers.
Like a treasure map that is guaranteed to reward you with some gloves (of any quality, but the higher rarity of the treasure map => higher chance of better items, with uniques being a very low chance). or even more detailed; gloves where one of the affixes is guaranteed to be +fire resistance, or something.
So, a little bit in the direction of crafting (replacing the entirety of gear crafting), but without feeling like a passive activity you do in a town.
Treasure maps could be a completely overworld-only activity. Like you get a map, with a general zone name, and a sketch of something (randomly generated/picked among a large selection of these). Like a oddly shaped tree, a stone near a river, a totem on a hill or whatever. You have to go find that place. A portal spawns when you get near, which takes you to a boss fight.
Bonus points to Blizzard if the boss fight is altered based on the item you are going for. Like Gloves results in a specific boss, and +fire resist affix results in a specific modifer for the boss.
I donāt mind gambling as long as we donāt have a seperate currency for it like D3. Make it a gold sink. Make therr be a chance for the most powerful items in the game to come from them but make the costs high enough to make one think twice, then twice again before spending something like 95% of their gold on an item to gamble. Now thatās high, but I think it needs to be high. But what about gold inflation. Simple. Prices increase every time you use the system with no decay.
I want to ad an addendum to my no crafting gear stance. If charms are added, only going to make them a one item slot like the GD relics, then crafting them would be fine. And not a crafting and finding them as loot, just crafting.
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Yeah, just posted about that in another of Eigen9s threads. That is also the one exception to my āno item craftingā stance. A single crafted slot keeps it contained, and then Blizzard can go all out on making the crafting for that item slot intricate and crazy. Grim Dawn does that very well with its Relics.
I rather like that approach. It always felt a little silly to build up currency in D3 for gambling and dump it all at once. If gambling is somewhat punitive then Iām ok with it, but Iād like to see more original solutions for hunting specific items for builds.
I remember quite a few times they nerfed potion snapshot techniques but hardly a direct nerf 'till we reach the GR150. I once thought their aim was only allowing group play to reach GR150 but after a while some solo characters were capable. I donāt got their full intention, I guess it was time efficiency for the players.
He doesnāt believe what he says I think. Regardless, Diablo 4 expected to have PvP in the end. If he really did, we would see Paragon-like system or some sort of immense power growth at his new game Dauntless or at least ever-growing buffs for class power. Last v1.6.4 patch of Dauntless as of June 3rd has balance nerfs, you can check it yourself.
That words of his, only can apply to certain genres at specific progress setups. Donāt give credit to that or at other words, donāt try to twist his view of already narrow subjects.
This distinction is very important I think as well because itās about being able to know that if I invest in a skill my build will work regardless of what items theyāve designed specifically for it. This was part of my major contention that items should not prop up builds but refine them.
This is why I find it so hard to believe that they moved away from skill ranks at some point over the last year.
Blizzardās original Blizzcon 2019 implementation of the D4 skill system had skill ranks and talents. The feedback from the community about the talents seemed to get the developers to try a more expansive system that included skills with talents in their Q3 2020 update. As a side effect of this it seems they have removed skill ranks, but kept some passive skills with ranks. The skill points you get each level can be spent on unlocking skills, skill runes which change the behavior of the skill, and passive skills which can be ranked up. I feel this was a major step back from the original implementation for reasons I will outline below.
First, removing skill ranks disrupts the psychology of investment a player has when committing to a build. In Diablo games players identify their characters by their skills. You arenāt just a sorc, you are a blizzard hydra sorc, you arenāt just a barb you are a WW barb. If player skills can be selected with one point and then the player proceeds down the tree and picks up the seemingly mandatory 1, 2, or 3 skill runes/ passives that go with the skill theyāve invested a total of 4 points (or 2 levels of progression) to gain the full effect of that skill for the rest of the game. The rest of their investment in that skill comes from finding items to support that skill.
Compare that to D2 or their original design for D4 where you have skill ranks that change the nature of the skill and add functionality as you level up the skill. To fully max a skill requires 20 skill points or 10 levels of progression in the game. There is a much stronger sense of identity with skill ranking in this way.
Second, you can have much more overall customization with skill ranks than you could ever have with their current design of skills + skill runes + passives all in one tree. The reason for this is tree bloat. Imagine a skill that gains 2 or 3 different effects as you rank up the skill. If these effects must be added to the skill rune tree for each skill to keep the same level of customization you will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 skill runes in the top half of their tree. The skill tree they showed in Q3 2020 doesnāt have anywhere near this many skill rune options (primarily due to space limitations), so the potential for customization actually went down from their first iteration to their second iteration despite their intentions of increasing it from the ātalent twigsā the community lambasted them for after Blizzcon 2019.
If you separate the concept of skill points from the concept of talent points and let players have access to both you get far greater customization and commitment to identity as a result.
Finally, you lose a ton of itemization if you donāt have skill ranks. You lose +1-3 to individual skills, +all skills, +fire skills, +lightning skills, +cold skills etcā¦ type affixes. Post their revision they did show a unique that had +1 to Hunt the Weak which I assumed is a passive so they still seem open to +skills but only for passives it seems. There is no reason why you canāt still have +passive skills as an affix even with skill ranks.
I feel like their initial direction was far more deep than where we are now. I hope this gets reverted or further iterated on. If not, Iād love to have the developers explain why they moved away from skill ranks. If they did it because it was limiting for the sorceress enchantment system thatās easily fixed by giving them 3 skill points per level rather than 2 to accomodate the fact they have more skills involved in their loadouts.
Agreed.
This is part of the reason why it is relevant that rare items can compete reasonably well with legendaries and uniques, which we sometimes see people argue is not important. But it helps those builds that just doesnt synergize well with the existing legendary/unique effects.
Yeah, seems both better and simpler as a system. Blizzard should like that ^^
In regards to affixes, I have been meaning to dig out an old thread about potential affixes. I certainly dont agree with the entire list (especially as I dont like affixes that are universally good like +all skills, +all attributes etc.), but at least it is a fairly comprehensive list.
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Yeah, this is a fantastic point. If you are so hyper focused on itemization design in terms of make this build work, you will create a case of the haves and have nots. Thatās not a fun design for the players that actually want to invest their character in a certain direction only to find out the game has nothing for them.
Weāve hit on it a couple of times in this thread and others, but thatās why keywords are so vitally important - more important to me than affixes at this point because keywords create the best affixes in my opinion.
Keywords for D4:
- Pierce ā +1 pierce increases the number of targets a projectile will pass through by 1
- Projectile ā +1 projectile increases the number of projectiles a skill casts by 1
- AoE ā +1 aoe radius, +x% aoe damage
- Chaining ā +1 chains (a projectile that chains to x targets will chain to x +1 now)
- Forking ā +1 forks (a projectile that hits a target will split into two projectiles after hitting that target and continue on)
- Channeling ā -x% resource cost while channeling, +x% increase to channeling
- Stacks ā +1 to stacking (increases the number of stacks any dot that stacks can have on a target)
These are just a few examples, but these affixes are far better than what we typically get in a Diablo game because they apply universally across classes and players can use them to scale their chosen skills even if no build enabling unique exists for that skill.
That is a very, very good essay on itemization @Eigen9.
I basically share all the same thoughts on that issue as you.
I have some things to add to that.
Regarding (2), there is nothing that can be reasonably done to have even just a few things that are āthe bestā and are equally strong. However, that does not mean that this is a problem.
The only players that will really care about an item being e.g. 0.2% better than another, although the first item might be cooler in the utility or special effects it has to offer, are the high end players, the pros, the Spike Player Types, etc.
It basically means that Perfect Balance is neither necessary, nor is trying to achieve it a desirable and reasonable goal. Reasonable Balance is what should be aimed for, which means that as long as the gap between āthe bestā builds/items/skills/etc is not too large, the majority of the player base will be fine with that, because it still allows for a variety of efficient and diverse builds and also for players self expression.
What you describe here is basically Torchlight 2ās Skill System.
TL2ās Skill System is definitely more interesting than D2ās, however, I think that so far Last Epoch has the best Skill System that was ever made in the ARPG genre.
In LEās Skill System every Skill has its own Skill Tree and its own Skill points that can only be used for that particular skill.
It could look somewhat like this:
I donāt think that you would need both Skill Points that can be shared among all Skills and Skill-specific Points at the same time. Just make it so that you first have to āspecializeā in a Skill before it can be upgraded with Skill-specific Points.
Also, it would make you feel missing out on something if Passive, Skill-specific Upgrades had to compete with Universally useful Character Upgrades (aka Talents, Passive Skills).
Passive Skills could have their own Passive Skill System with their own Passive Skill Points that donāt have to compete with Skill Points or Skill-upgrade Points.
My idea for that was to give Health Potions 3 Charges, that would replenish like Charges on skills in D2 (e.g. Dashing Strike with the rune that gives it 3 Charges).
Each Potion recovers 20-30% max Health instantly and another 20-30% over the next ~3-4 seconds, and each potion charge has a Recharge Time of ~10-15 seconds.
I also made a mock-up for how this system could look in D3.
This could have been my words, and I used similar ones in the past:
Items should enhance your build, but not determine it!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/83ydpa/d3_is_a_good_hacknslash_game_but_it_is_not_a_good/
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@Eigen9
I will respond to the rest of your thread later, as it is already getting quite late here in Germany. I will get back to you tomorrow.
But thanks for bringing more attention to this topic! I hope the devs take notice!
Yeah, thanks for linking that thread. Maybe you or someone else can bump it if they deem the thread worthy of being highlighted again.
I also will get back to you tomorrow on the topic of the more universally good affixes you mentioned, but it is already getting late here.
TY!
I absolutely think this is a superior design in some ways, but I was mostly trying to give my suggestions on itemization while working within what D4 has already shown us. I donāt think they are going to depart from what theyāve already revealed in such a large way, but Iād be pleasantly surprised.
You know I like their design of the tree if they just removed the skills from it and made it web more. I like the idea of having to choose if you want to specialize skills or devote those points to passives, but then again Iām all about systems in games that ask you to make hard choices.
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Yeah, another thing I agree with. Web > Tree.
It can still look like a tree visually, it just need to cross back and forth between branches.
Maybe you should also look up the Skill-System of āLost Arkā
Not only has the Game the Potential to become the new Standart for the next 10 Years, but also some neet Ideas, that combine some of already existing Skill-Trees.
As Exampel
You unlock new Skills along the Way as you lvl up.
You can invest Points in each Skill (or take them out and spent them somewhere else)
After reaching certain Caps, like Skill-Lvl 5-7-10 etc. you unlock Tripods, wich are basicly passiv Skills for each Skill.
On top of it, you can find Gear in the Endgame, with Stats, to improve some of this Tripots (Passives) even further.
Aaaand. As if its not enough, you can have also Runes, wich you can put onto your high Spells, to add additional Effekts onto them.
After this, there are also other Functions to improve, customice or alter your Skills and Playstyle.
Wich is theyr take on Endgame-Progression, like Engraving or Cards, wich works like a sec. Layer of Passives and Set-Boni, you can optain and upgrade into various Tiers.
ā¬dit
And i forgot
Also the Possibility to save differant Skill-Trees and swap between them on the fly ā¦
Ist also something what is more than just cool.
ā¬2
some typo