So the very first slide at Blizzcon shows they don’t even understand one of the biggest issues with D3 crap itemization.
Looks like all items have effectively “mainstat + vitality (attack + defense in D4)” so, like D3, anything below max level items will be total garbage, and well-rolled equal level rares will have basically no chance of being as good/better than Legendaries because of this main stat scaling. Ugh. This really is Diablo 3.5.
This. Rare/Magic items will be vendored for crafting mats or something else uninteresting. All max level characters of the same build will be carbon copies of each other as they will all be using the same set of legendaries.
That’s what I’m thinking too ugh. They need to change this asap.
You don’t know the meaning of “Alpha”, do ya?
Unfortunately it looks like D4 is literally just a modified D3, with different filters and slight art style changes. Pretty sure most gameplay mechanics will be pretty much the same as D3, whether due to engine limitations or just because the team can’t think outside the box.
You don’t know the meaning of “Alpha”, do ya?
GTFO of here. Alpha has nothing to do with core gameplay decisions, this is not something that is going to change organically.
Exactly. The foundation has been laid. From what I’ve seen it shows they lack the understanding of what actually is needed for a complex and diverse itemization to succeed. So over simplified and boring it almost makes D3 look more complex.
Sure there is time to change, but would it really matter when the people running the show don’t have a clue anways?
I would not be surprised if D4, in it’s CURRENT state, is just that: D3 but darker. After last year’s fiasco, I can see them scrambling to save the franchise.
But ya, I do t know the best way to communicate this to the community and developers. The items need to be fixed, sure, but really the problem is that their character systems don’t all work together.
The talent trees are segregated. The abilities are segregated. Everything adds together instead of multiplying. Adding a new skill to the game won’t up possibilities for every class, only the one class they decide it’s for. Their classes are all defined in boxes instead of being open for interpretation.
It doesn’t matter how good the graphics are if the systems don’t allow that flexibility. PoE can add a couple skills and completely change up the meta every three months just due to the multiplication of it’s systems all working together and combining.
Watch your mouth, jabroni.
And they all said the same thing about D3 at first. Loot 2.0 changed all that, and kept changing over the years.
Loot 2.0 is terrible though. Not something that D4 needs.
Yep, you can generally tell from the foundations whether a company “gets it” or not. Balance and stuff is iterative, but if the foundation is bad, once any significant amount of work has been put in, the odds of it changing and being good are slim to nil, because literally all work done has been based on that bad foundation. This is a huge part of what went wrong with D3; they had bad foundations, and then tried to change a bunch of it near release due to poor reception, and it just turned into a HUGE mess. Since it sounds like D4 has been in dev for a couple years now at least, the odds of this changing are slim to nil. That would basically be throwing away years of work, and this company isn’t going to do that. So we’re going to get another D3.
Watch your mouth, jabroni.
And they all said the same thing about D3 at first. Loot 2.0 changed all that, and kept changing over the years.
Um, no. Loot 2.0 did not fix the mainstat issue; after years of work, it made the loot system less terrible, but it is STILL one of the biggest problems in the game right now. Anything pre-level cap is absolutely worthless, and sets trump all because of poor foundations.
It’s the same crap gear concept from D3. They’ll never get it right. They simply are not intelligent enough to make gear like D2 LoD has. This is nothing more than a D3 expansion on a recoded D3 engine being sold as new.
One thing that boggles my mind is that they say this is an entirely brand new engine. If that’s true (which I highly doubt, its probably D3’s engine with some changes and they’re calling that “new”) then it’s even worse, because they wasted a couple years to code a new engine that is nearly identical to D3’s? Why?
They literally call StarCraft Remaster and WarCraft 3 Reforge completely new games. These games were recoded, but they are still the old games. They are doing the same thing with the D3 engine. The new one runs a little better because of new coding. Nothing but recycled crap for the Diablo community.
Regarding itemization in Diablo 4:
I wish there was some overlap between item rarities. For example in the slide below the stat ranges are always higher for each rarity (rare > magic > normal). I think it would be much nicer if the attack/defense values had overlap, so for example:
Normal: 70-100
Magic: 80-110
Rare: 90-120
Slide: https://media.mmo-champion.com/images/news/2019/november/diablosystems055.jpg
The higher rarities already have extra affixes and the way you are doing it right now (just like in D3) it completely obsoletes magic and normal items. If there was a tiny bit of overlap they could still be useful in some situations. Additional benefit is that numbers don’t grow as big either for attack/defense.
Meh, so far they do not seem very impressive. One of the things I like about PoE is that sometimes you do not have to have uniques. If I remember correctly Rare items dropping with higher tier can have very good affixes and be very endgame friendly.
IN short, rare should be possible to be best in slot. Makes drops way more interesting.
There are LESS item slots. Items has LESS affix. What are the dev team thinking?
Leg items has like 2 affix & one leg power (from the slides they presented & gameplay demo). While games like PoE & grim dawn has affix that covered 3/4 of vertical screen.
Also skill are even more simplified in D4. All you need is to dump all points to your main skills. Why can’t they looked like game like last epoch or even wolcen.
Also the talent tree looks like a worst version of passive tree from PoE and last epoch. Why create something inferior.
The devs (Kim & Josh) in interviews claimed they play the other arpgs, then why didn’t they take any ques from them.
They understand pretty well the itemization that has to be put forward:
"So items have Attack, Defense, and some affix/s. Attack means damage, Defense means damage reduction. We want to simplify some of the math choices into these stats, and keep only the playstyle choices and add to the playstyle choices. What I mean is say you have a choice between 2 items, one is I deal 100 damage + 100 damage, and another says +10% damage, I don't really know which one does more damage unless I work out the math problem. But we have more damage affixes like say 'more damage against far enemies' or 'plus to talent affixes.' Plus to skill points as affixes. You can grab one of the Tier 4 talents thru items." They want to add as many playstyle affixes as possible, and make sure they're not math choices as much as they can.
Skill synergy? "Of course. especially with legendaries. Fully customize what you want to do with every single slot, and of course skill slots."
"Magic --> Rare --> Legendary. I like the idea of rares being possibly endgame items. Is this on the table?" "If many players feel like it's too much choice to decide legendary powers on every single item slot, then that could be a possibility. But where we think we want to start is they want to try giving players as much control with as many slots as possible, but if testing doesn't go well then they could try switching to that idea."
Feels like in D3 the devs dictate what the builds are going to be based on the set bonuses. That's not the direction youre taking in D4 right? "We want to create as many legendaries as possible so that people have enough options. And we want to create a scenario where we can intro new items to the game thru seasons. The most hardcore players love to discuss various things, so if there's an idea "this build would be really awesome if there was this one item.." and they can explore adding that. You'll have full customization, and we can work together with players to find what are some new types of builds you can play in future seasons."
i just ear about d4 drop 1 hour ago and now look Rhykker stream
and my 2 big issue with this game are
1- the 6 skill lock , this dont feel like a pc game but a dam console game
and the cowndown on some skill compare to make slower animation and improve with faster cast rate %
2- that poor itemization 
this d3 dev team just dont understand the magic of diablo and what make diablo great , this fix will help the game a lot , not fixing this issue this will make d3 again , really the itemization are total garbage , sorry but this is my opinion
I agree, itemization in Diablo is kind of stupid. One thing they should do is make rare and magic items more meaningful, I would like to be able to do end game content with rares, and magic items let me do the campaign. I really hate this wall you hit with Diablo 3 where you need legendary/ancient items to really crank up the game. I would like to be excited about loot in general not just legs and mythic items which are a very large drop pool and mostly hard to do stuff. Base skills should be awesome.
if they make similar “itemization”, it will sucks, where even legendary drop become garbage, what is even the point of making an item common or rare if you will never even look at it unless you are like level 5? I mean just look at D3, where at some point you are not even impress by a legend drop, that is really really bad.
Also I want choice, not just, hey this is +5 Attack and +5 Defense, so no choice it just strictly better.