Diablo 4 itemization has ruined the item chase for me. I have never once got the same excitement for a drop that I get in every other Diablo game. When your entire itemization revolves around slapping a legendary affix on yellow gear, there is no psychological reward to chasing items.
Legendary affixes aren’t rare and neither are the base yellows. The entire game relies on the RNG of the rolls of the items. While in previous Diablo games, you would chase particular build defining items, the satisfaction of finding those items was rewarding and felt good. I don’t get the same feeling from picking up 1000s of yellows to see if they just happened to hit the slot machine stat roll.
You could argue that this chase was moved to uniques, but with the exception of 1-2 pieces, most uniques in Diablo 4 are completely useless filler. The Uniques that are actually build defining and exciting have a 1:800,000 unique drop rate, so they might as well not exist.
ARPGs are about slaying monsters and finding loot. In an effort to redesign the loot hunt, D4 has made the entire item hunt process vanilla and bland. I’m not sure how you could fix this without completely redesigning the fundamental loot system of the game.
120 Likes
It’s one of the many reasons people are quitting.
No dopamine from drops = no fun.
no fun = play something else that is fun.
D4 so far showed us how to make every mechanic in the game anti-fun.
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D4 devs must build a completely new itemization from the very ground for the game to be alive.
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I have to agree. Itemization in D4 is sub-par at best. Every time something drops, get out a spread sheet to see if it’s actually an upgrade or not.
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Not sure what happened but pretty sure I pressed reply tbh 
but long-story-short, the “dopamine cycle” isn’t important, the pool of affixes that can be rolled from are:
Ok, the problem is Itemization as is is unfinished
Especially late game, there are lots of “trivial” stats that roll
- 4 seconds of movement/damage bonus after killing an elite
- 10% LH chance to slow ?
- 10% duration to CC/CCR
I mean should I go further ?
IF they make the affixes really roll things that feel impactful, a lot of things will become better, here are some examples, imagine these can all roll on a Helm and you’re “picking up” only 3 of these:
- +10% Max HP
- +10% CDR
- +20 to all stats
- +5% to total armor
- +20% close damage reduction
- +20% distant damage reduction
- 35% reduced stun duration
- 35% reduced freeze duration
- +1 levels to all Glyphs equipped
- +2 levels to all offensive Glyphs equipped
- +2 levels to all defensive Glyphs equipped
- +1 radius to all offensive Glyphs equipped
- +1 radius to all offensive Glyphs equipped
- +20% damage taken reduced from Elites/bosses/players
Now, which of these would you go for ?, keep in mind can pick only 3 (and maybe a +1-2 to a skill) in the roll
See how it gets better ?
That’s how it should work… Every single affix/roll should feel impactful when being present on the roll (or it’s abscence when it’s not)
TLDR - they have to fix the affix pool that stats roll from first, and perhaps THEN think of upgrades further
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I don’t think changing the item rolls would solve the problem of items not feeling rewarding. You will never capture the feeling of finding a build defining item from the current system. There will never be a point where an item will drop in the world, and it will feel rewarding. I just don’t get the same reward pleasure from mousing over 1000s of yellows in my inventory and finally seeing an item with 3 useful stats. It’s just not comparable to previous games of finding a Shako or Jah rune
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They must hire PD2 mod devs, they will fix D4 itemization easily.
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Yup agree, this is pretty much the big one for me. I’m not sure they understand the ARPG genre anymore 
. The only thing that makes me want to play right now is playing a new class or a new build. But that is finite and will not last long.
They got tons of good feedback from folks early on that itemization at it’s core must be solid, and either it was misunderstood or ignored. Either way it’s not good.
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Find a windforce in d2 “OH.MY.GOD.”
find a windforce in d4 “well… I could vendor it I guess…”
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This feeling is what got me to play Season 1. I really wanted to play a Necromancer. But that feeling is lost post lvl 50 because you get nothing that changes the way you play the character. Without the item chase, you might as well end the game at WT2 lvl 50 capstone
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Nope, changing the rolls or the pool does not fix the root of the problem which is itemization.
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Yeah, there are no iconic items- because every item is a potential upgrade, there is very little “gear identity”, you can’t ever know if a piece of gear is good when it drops. So you can’t get excited.
and mousing over gear to compare affixes is very unfun, and like 33 % of your playtime. 3 min in a NM dungeon, 1 min checking affixes rinse and repeat.
Affixes should be under a “smart loot” system.
Where, the name should be indicative of the type of gear.
“Bloodfeaster’s Necklace” - should have strong priority for all affixes for some kind of healing or synergize with blood builds. etc…
Hell, make it so different mobs drop gear with affixes that are thematic so you can target farm. Vampires drop + life + blood skill gear… stuff like that.
Also, a more core issue. Higher tier content should drop better gear.
Have harder content drop higher item power, depropritize crap affixes, and dont let sacred gear drop.
2 Likes
I tend to disagree
They need fix the baseline rolls first before focusing on the “special cookie of the day” rather
I mean sure, here’s an example:
Lachdan’s haunted Visage:
+25% Resource generation
+2 to all Skills
+15% Overtime damage
+30% Damage against Injured
** Injury threshold is now moved to 66% HP threshold, in addition Overtime damage has up to a 10% LH chance to cast a random curse
Will this work with the “dopamine cycle” ?, sure it will, but what about the other 99.9% of the time, people getting trash stats and picking CDR at all times possible ?
baseline rolls are definitely a core issue.
They are even making it worse.
Why did they just add + barrier affix to my gear, when I don’t even generate barrier’s with my class.
- resistance as an affix needs to be removed, until it is fixed in season 2.
2 Likes
They need at least triple the amount of legendary aspects and unique items.
Unique items need to actually be worth using, lol, kind of insane I need to type that.
Legendary aspects shouldn’t pigeonhole you into using the same 2 builds per class, which means Legendary aspects need to have broad and general bonuses rather than hyper specific to a certain of skill.
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The problem isn’t that they added barrier to the affix roll, the problem is they added it in a way that will work for an aspect or two and a class or two tbh
If they on the other hand added it as “Fortify or Barrier generation” that’s another story quite a bit, same with the LH% increase while under a barrier (could’ve been while under Fortify or Barrier)
Now sure, Druid might be a bit of an outlier as he can benefit from both , so a baseline nerf a bit might be required but still if they kept the affix work for both then that would’ve been quite nice tbh 
1 Like
I think you’re trying way to hard to justify the core stats with a jumble of possible fixes to it lol. I still think it is better to remove this itemization and add an entirely new one.
Changing the injury threshold does nothing to dopamine.
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It’s still something unique that you won’t get anywhere else… Let’s just start there to begin with
Not like other stats are bad either… Just wanted to post an example, b.t.w. there are tons of affixes that increase damage to Injured, the problem is people are used to Vulnerable completely overshadowing it, and heck even one-shotting stuff so that’s why they don’t appreciate the idea behind this overall
Post level 50 is literally when build altering uniques drop.
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I think the main problem with itemization is the Developer’s mindset seems to be against build defining items. Regarding Uber Uniques, they said they don’t want players to feel obligated to find super powerful items that are a requirement for builds. This is literally the backbone of EVERY ARPG in existence and what makes the item chase fulfilling. If no items are build defining, and any item can roll BIS, then essentially you have removed 90% of the endgame of an ARPG. You removed the loot part and just created a fancy slot machine
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