I’ve spent the past few days messing around with the services the Occultist offers, and while I love being able to extract and infuse aspects, the system could do with some QoL tweaks.
- Allow for the extraction of Imprinted Aspects.
It’s very difficult to get some aspects. After farming for well over 6 hours for legendaries to extract, I only managed to find 1 that worked with my Druid’s build. I didn’t want to use it, as I didn’t have a good base for it, and ended up only using it towards the end of my playing time, as it was as good as it was going to get. This feels really bad to play around. Being able to destroy my item again to extract an imprinted aspect would be a huge QoL upgrade while progressing through the game.
- Allow for overwriting an imprinted aspect with another imprint.
In the same vein as the previous point, It can take a long time to find a good base item to work with. If you want to imprint it with an aspect, you’d better hope you find a version of the aspect you want with a good modifier roll, cause otherwise you just wasted your base. Same thing, this feels bad to play around. If I want to play a build, and upgrade the aspects of it as I find better versions, I don’t want to have to start completely over with a new item base to hunt.
- Show the possible enchantment outcomes, just like in Diablo 3.
This was also frustrating to find out while trying to customize my gear. Are there different outcomes for different affix slots? Are they all 100% random and pull from the same pool? If I have a skill on my piece of gear already, can I roll for another bonus for it to stack the effect, or is that one removed from the pool? I don’t know! …and that’s frustrating to deal with. You’ve developed a better system for enchanting in the previous game, it’s okay to just use it again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it as the old saying goes.
Summary: I constantly felt like I was taking 2 steps forward, and one step back while interacting with the item customization. My joy at finding a new potential gear upgrade was immediately met with “Ugh, now I have to go find the other piece of this to make a decent upgrade out of it.” Letting us extract and imprint aspects multiple times allows every item drop to feel good, and that we’re making progress without the pang of pain of having to start all over again.
In addition, if uniques are the real endgame chase items for D4, then making this system as smooth and enjoyable to work with should be a priority. Otherwise the frustration buildup along the progress path to uniques will cause a lot of folks to burn out and not want to continue playing. To be a little blunt here, D4 isn’t a free to play game, or a subscription based game. Having systems that artificially draw out our play time while adding frustration should be kept to a minimum in the game’s design.