TLDR: not enough meaningful stats to minmax in endgame, bad affixes, and nerfed open world makes d4 engame feel soulless and itemization bad. If you implement these changes decently powerful pieces will drop often but ‘perfect gear’ will have a very small drop chance adding item chase to the game.
The primary reason most players quit is due to endgame feeling empty because of loot. All ARPG’s have a repetitive endgame loop that is farm-able infinitely. In d4 you are 4/4 in most slots by 75~ish maybe excluding amulet.
So here’s an easy fix. Reduce item drops by an amount, ill use 75% as a guess but I would say 1/3 or 1/4 of what we get now. Instead of having a full inventory of gear drops each dungeon make it 5-10 items while keeping the same legendary drop rate, with the guaranteed drop from NMD bosses. This also lessons the feeling of vendoring 99% trash after every dungeon, keeps players engaged longer and makes the core gameplay loop extended. instead of 1 NMD-> tree of whisper vendor -> NMD, its NMD -> NMD->NMD->NMD-> vendor.
Next remove all redundant affixes (frozen dmg, cold dmg, why?) and all of the affixes that feel menial or less impactful (shrine duration, barrier generation, those ‘bad affixes’ and resistances)
After that make all rares roll 4 primary stats, sacred legendaries roll in addition to 4 primary stats 1 secondary stat, and finally ancestral legendaries roll 4 primary stats and 2 secondary stats.
D2 had a great itemization with 3 pre fixes and 3 suffixes, 6 stats total. D3 had 4 primary, 2 secondary (6 total).
These changes will make NMD feel rewarding with guaranteed boss lego drop rate and may even push people into obol farming for target farming legos in the open world.
At the same time reduce world drops by (that same amount, 75% is arbitrary) while leaving event chests drop rate the same as it is currently. Reward more obols in WT4 and get rid of xp penalty from open world, this has just pushed everyone into NMD and makes this huge open world empty and soulless.
Heres some recommendations for secondary stats that could roll on gear
• gold find
• life per kill
• elemental resists (restrict this to 1 roll like d3 so we cant have overwhelming defense in secondary stats)
• bonus XP per kill
• reduced level requirement (makes gear alts really fun and rewarding, more player retention!)
• chance to CC (stun, blind, chill, slow, etc)
• thorns
• necro minion inherit thorns
• potion capacity
• potion drop rate
• potion healing
• life regeneration
• healing received
• CC duration reduction
• barrier generation
• shrine buff duration
If you do this by introducing a 2nd layer of min maxing items will feel more powerful and more rewarding, having much greater chance of rolling higher quality stats and increasing the difficulty of getting a god roll and extending the endgame gearing progression. Instead of finishing 4/4 gear at 75 and not having upgrades 75-100, you’ll be farming till 100 and after 100 min maxing gear for secondary rolls and alts!