Item design and the Skill Tree - Character Power Interaction in D4 are terrible.
TLDR:
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Move a high percentage of Character Power from Affixes on Legendary Items to the Skill Tree, while still keeping some of that power on the items
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Move Character Power from the DPS number on Weapons to the Skill Tree, so investing skill points in a skill of your choice actually makes it stronger, regardless of a weapon being equipped or not. For casters, IMO, the weapon should be a place where cool mechanics are added, a place that much more broadly benefits ANY skill you may have chosen on your tree. Additionally, it can be a place that adds flat damage and can also be a general stat stick to round it off.
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Physical Abilities Should be the ONLY Abilities that benefit from Flat Physical Damage on Physical Weapons, and this Damage must be balanced against the Physical Damage-Power coming from the Skill Tree itself
Why is D4 repeating the same Item and Character Design Mistakes from D3?
Why is the majority of my Character Power coming almost entirely from very specific Affixes on Gear instead of the Skill Tree?
Why does My Characters Damage rely ENTIRELY on the DPS Number on an Item instead of being based on my Skill Tree and Skill Tree Point Investment?
IMO:
Skill Tree Choices and Character level (Available Skill Points) MUST be the MAIN Source for 60-80% of my Builds Base Raw Power.
After that, Items should “only” be a Tool to reach certain Breakpoints and Thresholds to turn MY great Build into a GODLY Build.
Skill Tree should be used for:
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Allowing the Player to Choose a Highly Individual and Personal “Build” and make it work based on Skill Tree Choices alone
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Providing for 60-80% of the Characters overall Base Power
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Allowing the player to play the whole game even with mediocre Gear, but at a much slower Pace than a fully End-Game Geared Player
Items should be used for:
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Reaching Breakpoints (such as FCR/FHR/FBR in D2)
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Providing Resistances to specific Elements to protect against said Elements
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Providing Armor against Physical Attacks
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Providing Bonuses to your HP Pool
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Providing Stats (ie Str/Dex/Int etc to further boost associated bonuses)
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Providing Movement Speed Bonuses
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Providing Options that Alter how your Dash Ability works
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Providing Non-Damage Abilities that alter Game Play
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Providing Quality of Life Bonuses
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Providing Bonus Resources to cast Spells and Abilities
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Providing Optional Alterations to how a Specific Skill from your Skill Tree works or Interacts with Monsters or other Skills
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Providing Bonuses to All and/or Specific Skills on the Skill Tree (ie. “+2 To Defensive Skills” which further enhances the Player’s Build choices, rather than dictating what the Player SHOULD be doing)
Please REMOVE all Damage Multipliers to Specific Skills from Items and MOVE this power into the Skill Tree, otherwise Items will AGAIN (like in D3), dictate what I must play based on the gear that may or may not drop. This is TOTAL D3 BS all over again.
124 Likes
No
Legendaries/uniques should be extremely important to builds.
Only problem with D3 is sets are the end all be all
17 Likes
I agree that they MUST be very important for End-Game builds to make a build feel Awesome, but they should NOT be mandatory to play the game on a basic level.
Good ARPGs make sure that even with mediocre gear players can play the game entirely.
Finding those Godly Unique Items should be the Icing on the Cake, and not the Cake itself.
Players should want to grind the game to find said items, so their chosen Builds go from Playable to Awesome or even Godly. (This is what makes Grindy ARPGs so great and Addictive)
Currently, without those Legendary/Uniques (specific Legendary Affixes on gear), a chosen Skill on the Skill Tree is virtually useless because that Affix-Multiplier is Mandatory, and that’s a Huge problem.
31 Likes
Yes but only to affect how a skill works, not to buff a mediocre skill 500% and spend all day looking for that only item. That’s D3 BS design.
35 Likes
Current form of legendary items are basically sets minus the green color
30 Likes
current D4 design is the same as sets. You get 3 multipliers for weapon, neck, and gloves; each do 100-400% dmg multipliers. They combine ina neat bow of 800% dmg multiplier to that skill.
D3 uses 6 piece sets. D4 uses 3 connected legendaries.
Wow… so different!
29 Likes
Exactly. Just look at whirlwind aspects, you literally can equip all of them in a different slot to gain all the different effects. They don’t even compete with each other for the same slot such that you need to make a choice. You just have to equip all of the, i.e a set.
18 Likes
Really hope the devs read this post and actually start thinking about this. The way things are going it’s D3 itemization all over again…
25 Likes
This is the point some people seem to be missing when they try to defend D4 itemization. The way the system works is that many builds don’t even work at all until you get the special item.
This is problematic and locks people into playing builds they may not want to play at all.
20 Likes
If this is the case then all you have is D3 sets without the green text. And you only have good sets that Blizzard designs and you don’t really make your own build, just play Blizzard’s pre-designed builds.
17 Likes
Don’t even want to know how they’re going to be able to balance this for PVP aswell? If people already figured out how to be doing 100s of thousands of damage at lvl 25 (even though on release nobody will be maxed out on legendaries at lvl 25)…
D4 is fun, beta was great, but the skill tree and itemization is just terrible… Items define your build, not how you spend your skillpoints like they said it would…
14 Likes
Your ideas are horrible. The design is fine as is. The skill trees aren’t perfect but they are very good. Some of the skills just need tweaking or balancing.
You are not a game dev and probably shouldn’t ever attempt to be.
5 Likes
I honestly don’t understand the logic behind the itemization. Previously, the developers said that they would return the power back to the character. But now they decide to do the opposite by intentionally only providing a fraction of the power through the skill tree.
In addition to this, there are just a bit too many conditional and over-specified modifiers. A more generic set of modifiers will benefit a greater range of builds. Almost all legendary and unique items currently known are extremely niche.
22 Likes
You can take aspects off of gear and put them on other gear.
You can mix and match easily.
It is fine as is. You have tons of power over your build. Imagine if you couldn’t move aspects. It would suck so bad to find the right piece of gear.
They aren’t going to completely redesign the skill tree because you made this thread bro.
Get a clue.
1 Like
Well they haven’t even released the class sets yet so my guess is it’ll be pretty similar to D3 in regards to how we play already. I agree though I’d like to see a much different direction this time rather then the same boring gameplay.
More build variation is better.
3 Likes
around 2k people disagree with you.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/122w7ae/character_development_shifted_onto_itemsagain/
Where’s the dislike button so you can use it on OP, and we can use it on your post?
15 Likes
Lots of people played the Beta and enjoyed it. They just don’t post here.
Also, imagine thinking they will redesign the entire gear system and skill tree before launch in 2 months.
You must be on the good stuff today. There is literally zero chance that is happening.
Enjoy complaining and having no one listen. Might as well find a backup game to play at this point.
The game is releasing as you saw in the Beta and it will be great.
4 Likes
You do not have to be a game developer to give feedback. The feedback is fine and I’d much rather have something that doesn’t feel entirely like D3 for a change as well.
Being able to design a game world is a vastly different skill compared to QA testing its systems and classes.
13 Likes
whatever makes you feel better about your bad take and your insults to the OP.
7 Likes
You’re right Singularity. They probably won’t change anything substantial before the launch. It’s just not feasible. But this is a forum and we do care about the game so that’s why we are here voicing some of our thoughts and concerns in a polite manner. We just hope that they can move things in the right direction so that the game can be even better.
I do genuinely hope the game will be great.
6 Likes