I’m 47 and have played and beaten every Diablo game to date. Probably not a lot of us around. Just one constructive comment. Diablo IV loot. Every Diablo game prior, as I fought tough enemies, found the good hidden chests, etc. I was rewarded with meaningful loot. In Diablo IV, gathering loot is just a means of gathering junk for the sale/salvage rewards 99.99% of the time, which are also pretty lackluster. Even the gear I do have and use feels “behind” where it should be. In contrast, Diablo III normally left me feeling “loot guilt” because I felt the gear I found and equipped was far superior to my needs at the time. Please use Diablo III and Diablo IV as a left and right lateral limit for your loot mechanics, and give us a well-thought-out average of the two please. I don’t need two universe-altering, legendary drops at every turn, but I also don’t want to be the junk collector/scrapper of Sanctuary either. It should also be mentioned that in previous installments of Diablo, even if you were on a bit of a loot “dry spell”, the monetary gain from scrapping our treasures could be turned into quality gear by way of buying items from the vendors. There hasn’t been anything available from the vendors that I could use since level 5 or so. This makes the old “if ya can’t find some, buy some” tradition in Diablo games nonexistent in Diablo IV. Thank you for reading. Peace and blessings to you all!
The whole loot mechanics in D4 is different from D3, so if you’re going into D4 with D3 mentality, you won’t understand it. I’m level 87 now and few of my friends hit 100, so it took a little time to wrap my head around it. 2 main points:
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In D4, you do NOT collect legendary gear to equip it. You collect it for Aspects. Sure, you may get lucky and get perfectly rolled piece, but that’s nearly impossible. Too many options/ranges. If you find a legendary with the Aspect for your build and it’s max or close to max, extract it.
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In D4, you collect perfect or nearly perfect Ancestral (or Sacred, depending on tier) gear and apply Aspects to them.
So, what you should have in your stash is not a ton of legendary gear, but a lot of top roll aspects and BIS yellow gear.
For example, I run HOTA barb. I need gloves with Aspect of Retribution. Ok, I found a pair but the roll is low and it doesn’t have +3 HOTA, AS, Crit. I must have all 4 attributes. So, I farm NDs looking for gloves, gambling obols on gloves, opening helltide chests for gloves…for days, until I get 1 pair of Ancestral gloves drop. Didn’t have Crit tho, so I rerolled it until my 17m gold was gone. Well…I farmed more and finally got it. Again, no Crit but only cost me 4-5m to roll Crit on. That’s 1 piece!
If you’re scrapping all the rares and looking at every legendary, you’re doing it backwards, and you’re gonna have really frustrating time gearing up. Collect “item power 800+” and best in slot items. Good luck!
There is also a hidden mechanic with aspects that not everyone is aware of. Those aspects that have a flat number instead of a percentage can be upgraded before extraction and the higher values gain through improvements will also be retained.
Example say you get a chest piece with a barrier aspect that gives 500 barrier when damaged. Each upgrade at the blacksmith is going to increase that number and after 4 or 5 upgrades that barrier might end up jumping to say 600 or 650. Once extracted that 650 number carries over.
Anything that increases by X% will not change in value however so just be careful that you don’t waste gold/mats trying.
Also of you have a good roll on a rare item then upgrade it before applying said aspect it well save you gold n mats in the end
I agree complete with what you’re saying here. I am aware of the Aspect extraction process and utilize it frequently. Another thing that you nailed here (in part) is my D3 mentality. The “in part” is my D1, D2, D3, expansions, re-issues of all things Diablo mentality. While major systematic departures in a game or movie series is more commonplace than ever, a decades-old game series makes it more difficult for an old fogey to digest. With that said, I’m not actually seeking all things legendary. What I was driving towards with my OP was that even after taking in to account the new looting/upgrading/crafting process of the gear, both in loot drops and items available from vendors, at the end of the math equations, the loot and the economics of the loot seem very underwhelming compared to any and all previous installments of the Diablo franchise. At level 49, My gear “feels” inferior to what I think it should be. This may be intentional by the devs, as this iteration of Diablo has features, both current and upcoming, that may necessitate this “nerfed” feeling that I’m experiencing with my loot. Maybe not. I just wanted to put out my feelings on this, because after playing Diablo games for nearly three decades, the loot system as a whole feels “off”.
To me the loot drops are mostly fine. The big problem, particularly in the early game is the level scaling where enemies will put level your gear every 2-3 levels. You also aren’t seeing many strong offensive aspects for weapons either.
That will change later in the game when you can pack quite a powerful punch, but may find yourself extra squishy as a result.
Enemy scaling is their solution to keep all of the areas of the map relevant longer. Perhaps a little too relevant for a little too long as it makes the game excessively grindy at times. It needs some tweaks to be in a better spot.
I’m going to second the OP. Looking back at my time in D3, I realize that Legendaries dropped like beads at Mardi Gras. It was probably excessive, an overcorrection for the pre-Loot 2.0 days at D3’s release.
I’m in World Tier III now, and I’m seeing a lot fewer Legendary drops than I’d expect. I don’t expect to see a lot of them dropping in the open world. I expect to see a few more dropping in dungeons, and definitely more in a Nightmare Dungeon than I’ve been seeing.
But the most egregious for me is the dearth of drops from Helltide chests. I’m already racing through Helltides to kill enough creatures to collect the 75 to get a piece of armor, or the 150 to get a weapon (haven’t gotten to that point yet). It’s time limited, so I can’t afford to really enjoy it, I just have to run around and hope I run into a thick-enough pack of mobs to just cut loose. But the last four Helltide chests I’ve opened have been potions (which I often don’t need, as I’m healing from Blood Orbs on my Necromancer), blues, a couple yellows, and gold. Helltide chests are the one place I feel like should be an almost-guaranteed Legendary because they’re time-limited and you lose any currency you don’t spend when the event is over.
I’m currently at the point where so few Legendaries are dropping that I’m not even seeing enough to build up a set of Legendary Aspects in my Stash to apply to yellows that are otherwise an upgrade for me. My current set of Legendary items have either Imprinted or natural abilities that are great for my build, so I’m feeling like upgrades are rare. Have I hit a wall at 57th level where I should try to do the Capstone Dungeon to open up World Tier IV just to see some amazing drops again? Is droprate higher in Tier IV?
In short, looting right now is on the low end of “meh”, and could use some tweaking.
You need to find the mystery chests. Look up helltides . com (remove spaces) and you will see where they spawn, costs 175 to open. Chest spawns change at the top of the hour. Some events you have to opportunity to open as many as 6 though collecting enough embers to open them can be challenging,
Events that start on the hour will have either 2 or 3 depending which zones are affected in the helltide. If it spawns at something like 9:45 you only have 15 minutes before the spawn changes so you have to be quick and can usually only grab one.
Those chests will contain between 1 and 5 legendary items. Generally it’s 3 or 4. Plus other remade items, potions and crafting mats needed to upgrade gear. The time to collect the other chests in the zone is in the last 5-10 minutes if you already opened all the mystery chests it won’t make enough to open another before time runs out.
I totally get that but that’s also the problem. We have no point of reference. We’re just comparing everything to similar elements in D2 or D3. Last season in D3 I was farming 150’s by Sunday night, so yeah, it feels weird 2 weeks after launch NOT have 3 characters at level 100 with nearly perfect gear. It’s a different game, and I don’t know if I really wanted D4 to launch with 5 class sets, craftable sets, hundreds of legendaries, etc.
So, I agree that it feels like there’s good/interesting gear shortage or at least very slim variety. I’d give it time tho. You’re level 49. You’re haven’t even started replacing all your Sacred gear with Ancestral gear or your Ancestral gear with “perfect” Ancestral gear. It’s a grindy game but that was the point. Slower pace.
This is good feedback I hope somebody actually HEARS him
I also quit because I felt like farming nm100s for low IP loot to vendor over and over all day was not fun
At max level speed farming max level dungeons - I felt like diablo’s janitor. Just cleaning the streets of garbage , with nothing to even buy with all the money, Just a totally pointless loop of nothing at all
Way too many unique items completely suck and are not exciting to get either
Please stop making comebacks and telling us we are wrong to feel this way. Please take the feedback more serious - I’m sure there are lots of reasons we can come up with for why the game is the way it is, but it is very boring to play
Even when you stream devs playing its not a problem that they suck or are low level or using controller - the problem is that even they do not look to be having very much fun
I bet the people who made the game dont even have very much fun playing it.
They like to see their work on the screen and be like hey I was a part of that - thats neat!
But they dont actually have fun playing they dont care what loot they get either its just work to them and thats a bit of a problem because if the people who work on it cant play it for 200 hours then a lot of others will find it difficult as well
Most game developers dont play their own games. Why would they to be honest. From what I have been told most developers who even play games on their off time (very few) will play a game from a different genre than the one they work on which makes sense if you think about it.
to make sure it is a good game. devs used to do their own testing and its why older games stick around longer