Hello, everyone!
Today I am going to present you one possible ultimate solution to a bunch of things all in one go!
If you like the concept, have feedback, additional ideas or anything else, please engage with this post!
Please help me to keep it in the tops, spread it around, cross your fingers the CMs will see and forward it, thank you very much in advance <3
The Too Long, Faster Read
I am going to explain
- How the Loothunt will be a lot more exciting
- How all Items (Legendaries, Rares, Magics and Normals) become way more meaningful
- How the frustration with enchanting can be tamed
- How the Stash could be freed up for more (now more exiting) items to keep
- How to extend the Economy in the game
- How to improve the grind towards specific builds
- How to add a big load of QoL while doing so
And all that without fully reworking the current Item System, it’s only about some tweaks on items and a smart overhaul of the Enchant/Aspect/Sigil Vendor!
/!\ It will still require some kind of loot filter in the future
(I am going to elaborate on all the points in detail later, but basically those are the steps to change)
Now let’s get to it! The simple steps:
- Roll all possible affixes, no matter of the played character, on every (Ancestral) item (maybe except the +x to class skills)
- Add a single Affix to normal white items
- Allow Ancestral Items to roll 5 affixes by a low chance (This could go up to 6 in a potential WT5)
- Show those in orange (not shiny) color on the ground (QoL, Loot Excitement)
- Give Legendaries a slightly higher chance on rolling additional affixes
Now you think I am crazy, right? Those are just the prerequsites of course, now it gets interesting:
- Remove the current Enchanting Logic completely
- Add a new Enchanting Tab at the Vendor, allowing you to place your “base” item you want to change
- Let us select any of the affixes, no matter if it was already rerolled or not or even it’s a different one, just let us reroll every stat on an item
- But don’t give us just all available stats to roll from, that’s boring! Let us pick a second item as affix donator
- Now you exactly know, what affixes are going to be rolled from, your affix pool is given by the item you put to extract it from, RANDOMLY!
- So if you put a 5 affix item it’s a 20% chance to hit the one you want, 4 affixes are at 25%, a magic item with only 2? Yes a 50% chance!
- And did you find that amazing white with a maxed out single affix (that was added)? Oh yes, 100% you can just replace it on your “base” item
You may think that is too simple? Imagine how long it takes to find every slot with 800+ item power with 5 affixes and replacing everything on it with max stats,
it will take really really long. But everyone can get there at some point! And of course you can shortcut by trading for good whites or magics with max rolls with desired stats on it,
imagine how valuable those items will become in a new economy that can emerge from this. You can find those items with valuable rolls for enchanting with every character,
you can craft gear for your other characters or sell those for gold (to others) you don’t need. And don’t forget, we have seasons, so even if we manage to max out a characters build,
the next season will bring new aspects and uniques that change builds and other stats become more interesting and the hunt starts all over.
Only one thing left to solve: The stash space. To save all those new valuable items - Let’s talk about aspects.
Right now the biggest stash filler are good/perfectly rolled aspects, they are the biggest pain point in my view, so here is the solution:
- Adjust the vendors “aspect extract tab” to no longer create an item that is send to your aspect inventory, send it to the codex of power instead
- Adjust the vendors “aspect imprint tab” to only allow imprinting from the codex
- Adjust the codex view from a grid (with similar icons we have to hover to see what they are) to a list that shows the aspect texts
- Display the ones that are available (the dungeon ones) and let us select if we want to use an extracted or the dungeon one for imprinting
- Display also the non dungeon extracted ones in that list and upon selection, show all the ones we extracted of that type and let us select which one to imprint
- Reverse the “Show for my Class only” filter logic, so just change it to “Show for all classes” and filter it for the current class by default
And that’s it! We now have crafting, a distinct upgrade path, loot hunt for those 5 affix yellows (oranges) that are rare. All item types become relevant, trade-worthy and important. We can work towards the ultimate builds.
We can try out different things, farm for alternate characters, can create the gear we need for different activities (Because Uber Lilith, NM100, Speed farming) needs different items/builds. It will work with loadouts, it does not require to completly change how items overall work already and we will get the feeling every minute we spend will be meaningful, because it brings us is more close to the perfect build(s) we want to play!
So, that was the TL;FR
The more verbose read
Now let’s dive into the elaboration, because in that short bullet lists it’s hard to explain all the thoughts behind it. It fits so amazingly together, I just love it!
I am very passionated about the Diablo Franchise, I just love the ARPG Genre, the Loothunt, the excitement to make my character stronger and fight through hordes of demons and monsters to have that ultimate power fantasy!
Diablo 4 has an amazing Art Design, Theme, Tone, Atmosphere and Fight-Mechanics! But it misses a very important thing, Excitement for the loot that drops, especially later in the game.
After spending a lot of time in the game, at some point the items become very bland, you are always scanning through them only to sell/break most, if not all of them.
I for my self never found a single rare item at 820 item power with stats that I could’ve used. I sold so many rares with single max roll stats it just hurts.
Sacred items are already providing a variable number of affixes, most have 3, but later they have 4. And this can be frustrating, but having such a logic in place could be turned into an advantage.
You really don’t find many upgrades later in the game and the “excitement” for items, that dopamine rush of loot dropping, completely vanishes. So what if there were items that are more outstanding, you rarely stumble over? Maybe dropping in a different color (like orange) to hype you a little that you just found an amazing item? That is the missing piece right now, so why not have ancestrals drop sometimes in orange with a 5th or later in a possible WT5 with even a 6th additional affix on it? Imagine the thrill if it rolls in the 800+ range and you know, it will make you stronger? You can either trade it or make it your next big upgrade! What if those blue and normal white items finally are meaningful and could be your next win in the loot lottery because it rolled one of the stats your build needs with a max roll? Right now, unimaginable! No way that’s worth anything ever, right?
Let’s see what could be done to change that, how every single item could be always interesting!
There needs to be some minor adjustments to the items inbefore, to make this Vision a Reality. Normal white items should also roll an additional affix, similar to blue magic items, that can roll 2 affixes already. That won’t change anything yet, we now can just find white/blue items that have a single/two affix(es), that might be a max roll of a useful stats for our build. If there only was a way to transfer it to a better item… So why not?
We already have the option to “adjust” our items, the enchanter allows us to replace one affix on our items with 2 fully random rolled replacements taken out of a large pool of affixes. Hard to get, what we want/need. So wouldn’t it be great if this could be narrowed down to a more reasonable pool to have a better chance on getting what we need? Absolutly. And there is something that also has affixes → Other items! So why we just can’t put an item we want to upgrade for our build, maybe one of those new exiting (orange) items with 5 affixes that has a lot of affixes we don’t need and try to get something better instead? We could just pick the affix we don’t need (No matter if it was rolled/replaced already or is simply one of the other affixes) and let us choose the “affix pool” the new affix is taken from by ourself, by putting another item there. We push a button, the “affix pool spender” item is disassembled and one of it’s affixes is randomly chosen and is now allowed to be transfered on your item, if you want it. So beautifully simple.
Depending on which item we put as the affix pool donator, we have different odds to hit the one we actually want, so if we put a normal rare that has a maxroll of attack speed we would like to upgrade our item with, there is a chance to hit that, maybe! And in this case with a 75% chance we miss it and discard the affix and just lost the item. Better luck next time, let’s go hunting another good affix pool donator item.
And now comes the magic blue and normal white items, even sacreds with only 3 stats into play. They provide better odds for our upgrade. Let’s see if we can find a good one out there in sanctuary or someone selling one with the affix we are looking for, woohooo!
Of course there will be some limitations required, the item quality must match, so sacred on sacred, ancestral on ancestral, it should take care of item power breakpoints (625+, 725+), so the affixes needs to be in the same “Tier” to be transfered. Also they should be the same type of course, so only gloves on gloves, pants on pants etc. Another thing to take care of are affixes that are based on the item power itself, like max life - Those tend to roll not fluid in between the ranges, but kinda in chunks. So if the min roll is 334 you may roll 334 but not 335, 336, 337 but something like 345, 438 etc. so the range is chunked into a fixed number of steps. So on transfer, the new range is taken, the chunk of the old item had before is then transfered to the new range. So if it was a max roll before, it will be a max roll after, if it was the middle, it will stay in the middle of the range, but with adjusted value. All items are potentially an upgrade now, all items could be interesting to trade, especially whites with an 1 affix roll would be extremely valuable with a good stat on it, because you can transfer it directly. A random roll of 1/1 is just 1, a 100%! So not only will such a system bring a more distinct upgrade path, it also brings a whole new economy to the sunlight. Items with single affix max rolls, with the less different affixes the item has, the better it is! We no longer run around, throwing away mostly every item we find, we now have to think if we want to sell it to the vendor, get some more materials, use it as affix donator at the crafter or try to trade it with other players. So many options; Just beautyful.
Of course, that makes itemisation a lot better and faster to obtain, so to compensate this, item affixes should no longer be “smart loot” so instead of only rolling what your character can use, it can roll everything. That makes the overall affix pool even larger. However, this doesn’t have only downsides. At the same time it allows us to find items that can be traded, used for other builds or other chracters we are playing. So it just solves two things at the same time. Since such a change can be very punishing in the early game it might only apply to ancestral items, maybe also to sacreds. The +x to class specific skills has the potential to be too extreme, maybe those keep to be “smart”, that’s something to play around with, but I guess having all those specifics like fire, bleed, frost, poison etc. damage that some classes don’t use at all should be enough to increase the affix pools.
There is only one thing left - Where do we store all those items we will need for trading, crafting? The stash is very limited and fills especially fast with legendaries (aspect spenders) with good rolls, because a lot of them are not available in the codex of power and even those that are available always have the min roll. So we have to collect them and it hurts our stash. A lot. While I appreachiate the Solution for the gems in Season 2, this will not free up so much space in our stashes. We also need to move the build enabling legendary aspects out of the way and why not put it to the codex? The codex right now is kinda simple, it really needs some love and it is not so complicated in the end. When we go to extract an aspect, instead of creating an item that takes our space in the invetory/stash, it would be amazing to just store it in our codex. When we want to imprint it, instead of having to select if we want an aspect from the codex or from our inventory, why not always select it from the codex? Upon click on the codex aspect selection, instead of showing us a grid of icons (that needs to be hovered to know what they are) we could have a list that directly shows the texts of the aspects and on selecting one, it shows all extracted for selection of that type. That way it’s way easier to find the aspect we want to imprint and it allows to store our extractions “behind” it, so it becomes a very simple workflow:
Select the item we want to imprint on, open the codex and scroll to find the aspect we want, select it and it shows us all possible rolls we have extracted and we can select the one we want to put on the item and that’s it. Super simple, the quality of live improvement is really strong with that change. And if you also reverse the aspect filtering logic “ Show for my character only” to “ Show for all characters” instead, it becomes amazingly handy.
Of course our stash will still be very limited so it doesn’t fully elimiantes the need for more stash space, character based stash, loadouts and we will still need a loot filter, maybe even more than before, but since it’s already in the backlog, I guess it will only make this Concept even better and they will work pretty well together.
And that’s it! What do you think about it? Did I forget something? I tried to explain it as good as possible, but feel free to ask back, add your thoughts!
I am getting very exited thinking about such a system in the game.
Spread the word, let’s try to get that idea passed over to the devs for evaluation, even partly implemented or a slightly different system inspired by this concept would be an amazing addition to the game <3
Thank you!
