I understand what you’re saying but I don’t agree that it’s an issue. Finding a piece of gear with something you haven’t seen before at max level isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. I’ll go as far as saying it’s problematic if you don’t have new stuff at max level. Things will get stale otherwise.
Fixed stats are not just for niche builds. Not every single stat on an item needs to be the perfect fit. You can have some weird stuff. D2 does this. Yes there are some pieces of gear with stats you don’t need but who cares? The positive of the items being different/special/unique/memorable outweigh not having a perfect stat in every possible slot. With unique gear you can actually get creative and make negative effect stats as well to make it a fun trade off for the player to figure out, example: a really strong item that also takes away 30 of your fire resist. The idea is to make the legendary/unique item strong or special enough so the fixed stats, while not as ideal as a perfect rare roll, are still a good item. This creates a competition between rare and legendary items, rares with perfect rolls and legendary with unique effects. Both can be balanced to be good choices.
I don’t see a need to have a perfect stat category in each slot, do that with rares. Make legendary items something different or you’re basically just making rare items with orange text. This is why Blizzard decided not to use ancient items, a stronger version of what we already have just doesn’t sound all that exciting as the end game item goal to be hunting after.
You’re thinking along the lines of efficiency and min maxing, I’m thinking about what will be the most interesting.
Sure you are not likely to see every legendary in the game before reaching endgame for the first time. But what they are saying is that you don’t want to introduce a new mechanic with something entirely new to players at late endgame. Doing it gradually, where it is like saying at endgame; "Hey you know those cool legendary powers you seen earlier you can now put them on non legendary pieces of gear to get the affixes you want with the legendary properties that you want.
Again I am saying that if not done right fixed stats have the same problem that D3’s gear did in vanilla which was everyone chasing after the same pieces for all classes and all builds. I would love to use this legendary because of its cool power, but I get too much benefit from using this other legendary for its fixed stats like + to all skills.
What happens to the idea of having a character that can have a mix of rares, sets, and legendary items. I might want that but because of the fixed stats that is impossible. No, instead I should be moving to all rare gear with some legendary properties.
It is true that I am thinking along those lines because others will as well. More so if there is an obvious right choice as far as legendaries and rares goes for each and every build as well as every class in the game. We need to avoid one right answer that fits all classes and all builds. Because if we don’t then everyone will gravitate that way. I have seen it in other games that didn’t need players to have the most efficient setups, but yet that is the way they gravitated. Even ones that were no doubt super casual.
Not at all
I would go so far, to not give unique items any +skill stats or what ever you consider always BiS
Leave that to the random rolls in rares and just give uniques special things, stats and effects on the character, without supporting certain skills or “builds”
I know easy to learn hard to master is one of their design goals but I don’t think it applies here. There’s nothing complex about choosing one legendary piece of gear over another. Your choice is limited to what you find and will likely be non permanent. Nothing about this requires pre-builds in mind or comes off as punishing without knowing what gear you want beforehand.
I agree that building the game with a mix of worthwhile items of each type is a good thing, the existence of “unique” items doesn’t need to hinder this though. I think the legendary power consumables idea is terrible and hope it gets scrapped. It does accomplish making rare items as good as or better than legendary items but this alone doesn’t make it a good system.
What is the point of having different item types (magic, rare, leg, set) if the only difference is stat ranges? Color coding items to power level makes things easier to understand but does nothing to make them fun. So what do I consider fun? Separate item types that are fundamentally different in how they function. In D2 set items offer set bonuses, unique items have handcrafted/unique stats, rares and magic can roll higher stat ranges than items otherwise better than them, runewords are crafted in a really fun way, charms are limited by inventory space. The devs should be thinking ways of differentiating item types, not turning rares into legendarys and vice versa. You don’t need to make everything the same to achieve balance.
Exactly
imo tho, skill altering effects belong to a skilltree and there should just be uniques to find
Legendaries are not more but powerful rares well, with those special skill altering effects, what makes them even more BiS as well
I like the concept of upgrading rare items to compete at endgame but I would find a way to do it that doesn’t homogenize everything. What if magic items can be turned into set items with the first expansion so they can compete too? Bad right? I think the more you can differentiate the item types the more interesting everything is.
If simply, there are no “legendaries” in the first place, you can have uniques and either, put the legendary powers on the character directly or put them on all individual items, manually, white to unique
Uniques are a completely own item type, differing with their stats, even if all items can have legendary powers
If unique items were on the same level as rares this might work. Rares will have a big big advantage in having all the players ideal stat categories though so the uniques would need to have much larger stat ranges or stats that don’t appear on rares.
Exactly
Uniques can have very unusual stat combinations and numbers and also less affixes, to be balanced, while rares are the real powerhouse to roll BiS and magics can roll the highest stats out of the “normal” affix range
And all of them can possibly equip legendary affixes
And maybe whites can have a huge number of sockets, to make them viable too
Blizzard south did not have the font from diablo2, they lost most assets and had to create a new diablo font. The font from d2 is not flat, it has micro shadows and has roughness, it gives an authentic look.
So they had to create a new diablo font. Unfortunately it looks too modern, too smooth and without those micro shadows and roughness.
They realised with the new font that gold color for uniques looks beige, so probably decided to get rid of the gold color, hence using the legendary color code of wow. https://i.ibb.co/P5BXpwZ/d2-critiques-09.jpg
I disagree with you, the color and the font are more important.
The game does mention the word “unique” when you play through. Only websites use wording for items.
In d2 it’s never written “white, blue, unique” next to the items because there is no need to write it. It’s how it should be done, good design with a color code that everybody understand.
In d4 I would remove the wording “magic flail” or “legendary flail”, It’s a bit cheap.
I think colors and font really matter. It’s about artstyle and immersion. Check diablo2’s font and zoom on it. It’s more authentic and looks more ancient.
Fonts are the pillar of design and are fondations to set a mood.
The new Diablo font is just not good enough. It’s too modern, and I’m not even talking about the logo yet.
yea i agree with you
i didnt actually think about, you cant see the lable in the game xD
to me, its just important, that the itemization itself is restored
In my opinion trying to make example items without a set of base stats it pointless, how long is that piece of string.
There for I started a post on that, to help this area along.
well its a good point but that belongs to balance imo
atm we are discussing about the very basic concept of the rarities themselves
but i definitely think, no item should have inbalanced damage and armor stats
they should differ from their affixes
You find a good legendary property that gives you the idea of how you want to customize your build which is what they are for according to the devs. Then why shouldn’t you be able to use it to base your build upon it. Then either take more affixes that can support it or just a good healthy mix of rares, sets, and maybe rune words to support your choices.
Learning how to do that early is a good idea long before you make it to late endgame.
Copying and pasting D2’s itemization isn’t gonna help D4 to stand on its own merits. I want D4 to stand on its own merits and there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it. I want an improvement over D2’s itemization system and I fail to see how copying would do just that.
You also talked about an item’s power level. I want to avoid seeing a level 30 gear while leveling that is worse than the level 10 gear that I currently would have. that would mean that I should’ve been able to replace all of that gear at level 20. But by the time I would get such gear that has the right defense along with other affixes I have out leveled it by 10 levels.
This is the danger of having a high range of stats on gear. It is like saying instead of Shako havein 98-141 defense it has 1-141 defense. So that way a Shako that is higher than the normal version which is a leather cap wouldn’t roll any better than the normal version which wouldn’t make any sense at all.
They don’t want all customization options to come from the skill and talent trees. They want other sources of customization and I agree there should be other sources. It could be part of those fun affixes that you can only find on legendary items.
What was making a Wolf Howl barbarian in D2 a bad idea due to it being based on the helm. I don’t think so and that is part of the customization options that I would love to see in D4.
I don’t consider it homogenizing gear, just the opposite it is giving you control over what gear your character is wearing. Want that special set bonus from set x then you will need y amount of pieces to get it. Want that cool legendary bonus but decided to use a rare that has the stats that you want so you are not wasting affix slots with affixes that legendary doesn’t have use that rare with the legendary property.
Want to use that advanced rune word to customize your build go for it. This is where choice comes in. You may have to give up some things in order to customize the build the way that you want it to be.
I might want a fast attacking WW barb that has a high life restore as the damage mitigation. Where someone else would want a high crit version that has high damage reduction type of damage mitigation. Both builds should be able to function at about the same power level.
yea but you just dont need the legendaries because they are nothing but rares with leg effects, that you CANT craft yourself and most likely wont be BiS, compared to the rares
