I am not a fan of the new tempering mechanic in D4 season 4. Making items brick can only feel good for people willing to dedicate hundreds of hours of playtime to the game rather than just play on weekends and being able to play a mix of different games over the season (which is what I’d personally like to do, just as I did with Diablo 3).
I really don’t believe that bricking items to ‘keep the chase alive’ is something that a majority of the audience who bought the game want, I’m sorry. To me, if I find an item with all the affixes I need at good rolls, I just want to temper it correctly and move on until find that same item at a higher item power down the road. It’s already satisfying enough - I don’t need this to be frustrating or to artificially “make it more rewarding”. Redoing stuff sucks, especially since +3 Frozen Orb gloves and these kinds of items seem to be stupidly rare to drop as it is in my experience, even if the other two affixes stink. I have yet to find a +X Frozen Orb and crit chance glove - if I bricked this, I would probably cry. Bricking such rare items is just way too much BS for me to handle. Maybe if all the affixes rolled equally on items, it would be tolerable? But the reality is that they don’t. I see stuff like +int and +max life WAY, WAY, WAY more than other affixes for some reason, and I’ve heard on podcasts that this is what other people are seeing too so I know it’s not just me.
I also think that the various tempering alternatives suck. For example, I want to get a double Frozen Orb cast on some of my pieces, but this outcome is competing against Ice Shards and Blizzard. I have ZERO use for Blizzard and Ice Shards!!! So when I go to temper my items, I roll these stupid things over and over while never getting my double chance to cast Frozen Orb. I had to brick 7 or 8 weapons already because of this. Please, I beg you, just stop it! I will happily pay 20x the resources just to temper my double Frozen Orb cast or whatever and be done with it!!! I don’t want to engage with this stupid mechanic anymore!
People talk about how “these systems will drive you to play longer,” but if this is the experience of Diablo 4, I’m just kinda done with it, to be honest. If it’s not one dumb design decision from the poor class balance, the horrible horse implementation, having to stare and squint at yellow items to find upgrades after every nightmare dungeon, the non-functioning resistances, etc. like the state of the game was at D4’s launch, it’s stupid crap like this after the game has now been “fixed”. Can you please just design a pleasant game that I can play without BS? Please?
At the end of the day, people obsessed with the psychological effects of gambling and people willing to spend hundreds of hours per season should not be dictating the design decisions for this game - I really don’t believe this is the core audience, just the vocal minority. The days of Diablo 2 where farming for one item all season long are over. At 40 years old, that’s just not what I’m looking for or have time for anymore. Besides, Path of Exile offers that more grindy, hardcore experience if the player wants it. Diablo has been far more casual for such a long time now.