I’ve been a long-time Diablo player. I have logged countless hours over the decades playing this franchise and it’s one of my favorites. I have to say, the current Diablo 4 item system is by far the biggest head scratcher of all the games.
My thoughts:
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Bringing in a WoW style soulbound element to Diablo doesn’t work with the play style of Diablo. There is no reason why uniques should be soulbound to your account. Diablo 2 survived as long as it has due to the trade community. If the designers insist on not having a trade economy, which does make sense from a standpoint of not wanting there to be services dedicated to selling of gear, then at least create a party trade system. If I’m in a party with my friends and a unique drops that one of my friends already has, they should be able to trade it to me so that I can then try out a class. This fosters replayability.
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Item drops tied to your current level is very frustrating. Since the level of the unique drops seem to have absolutely no bearing on the stats of the item why have a level 90 version of a unique be the same as a level 70 version? This makes so much gear utterly worthless because you can’t use it on another character starting out due to the level requirement. Give uniques set level requirements within the different tiers of normal, sacred, and ancestral. There is absolutely no benefit of using a level 90 item over a level 70 item since the scaling is all the same. The whole fun of past Diablo’s was finding gear that other characters could use once you leveled out of your current gear. It drives people to play other classes because they have a reason to.
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There should be some function to add the ability to find uniques and aspects for different classes. It could be as simple as a drop-down menu when gambling or before you enter a dungeon. In past Diablo’s I’ve had a character of every class which led me to play countless hours, all of this was because I could get gear to have a playable build very easily and then spend my hours grinding out better gear. Feeling like a class doesn’t open up until level 40 or higher doesn’t feel great or make me want to play more.
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The drops rates of build defining uniques needs a serious overhaul. I get it that certain items should be difficult to find, make those the chase ubiquitous items like Crest, Grandfather, and such. By gatekeeping build enhancing uniques it creates a stagnant meta where everyone has to play the same builds for a class because you’ll never see the unique item that allows you to play the build you actually want to.
I still enjoy Diablo 4 and I will continue to play it, these are just areas I feel could benefit from a rework and will help this game feel more like an actual Diablo game and not some weird hybrid of three other styles of ARPG that just don’t mesh well with the spirit of Diablo. These are also the concerns and opinions of my play group of friends who have logged more hours in Diablo games than is probably healthy.