Itemization has been a bone of contention and hot topic.
Many of us are suffering from what I call “Loot Fatigue” - that feeling of futility when farming items. Getting lackluster, low Item Power items that are far far below the level of Content we’re engaging with.
Coupled with very expensive(and questionably designed, certainly bugged, in this iteration)rerolls at the Occultist is causing much frustration with players seeking to refine and upgrade their Builds.
Finally - the fact that items SCALE to Character Level yet are in no way reflective OF an item at “Level 100” for instance. A Level 60 Ancestral, outside of a few Affixes and Weapons, is exactly the same as a Level 100 Ancestral.
Many posts, many good ideas, lots of complaints and confusion.
A reply to the video that sums up much of what people have been saying quite nicely:
Its such a weird way to design it. Monsters scale with your level but not the items. Wonder why people dont want to play anymore cause they feel like they get weaker instead of stronger.
The following video is a good take on the issue and this person offers a possible solution to the “Loot Fatigue” and level scaling, item power and rewards for time invested.
Skip to 4:30 in the video to see their Loot Scaling Chart.
I thought it was a pretty decent idea.
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How did Blizzard not notice this? It definitely explains why I went 10 levels in WT3 without an upgrade, forcing me to level and get paragon in order to pass the capstone.
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They can’t predict everything while designing a game.
I mean that’s QA’s and playtesters job. Maybe it was brought up but they either:
- stood their ground with design philosophy.
- Let it Ride and see how it’s received.
Well the feedback speaks volumes.
It’s NOT being received very well.
I hope they see this guys Item Scaling Chart and it gives them an idea of how to scale Item Power to Character Level along our journey and make the whole process feel like we’re always either gaining power or that the next upgrade isn’t out of reach.
I wouldn’t be shocked to find out it’s number 2. That’s pretty much how game developers roll these days.
2 Likes
I just farm mats for my alt to use and gold for them… give them a codex that is full of starter aspects and then get them full renown bonuses. They can do the rest.
i miss D2 how you could have all uniques set up for your alts before you even start playing em
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Yea basically all you can do is farm them aspects… and materials to make them.
I like the idea of raising the floor of the affix ranges as item power goes up. Its absurd anyway to have a range of “4%-16%” of whatever.
Also gotta get rid of sacreds in world tier 4 and regulars in wt3 and thats how it should be going forward as new tiers are introduced.
Perfect rolled aspects… if you merge 3 aspects (new crafting capability) you should get a max aspect.
Also, d3 some of the rares have 5 affixes on them. Legendaries have upwards of 6…soo why isnt that here? ( i am aware that sockets in d3 eat up a spot).
Also think this game can use kanai cube where you can equip 3 more powers for the character ( perhaps 1 extra offensive, defensive, utility aspect).
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the other problem with itemization besides the item power, is the cost of rerolling stats
why isn’t there an alternative way to reroll stats besides a ridiculous amount of gold? like using royal gems or something
the game just doesn’t have enough gold drops for rerolling stats to be fun… you can spend a week farming gold just for 1 reroll… there’s so many affixes in the game that the costs don’t make sense
I feel that we already have what’s suggested in the video, except that the bubble is much bigger and whose content could be weighted too (e.g. the middle part has the highest probability and it goes lower the more you go to the side).
It’s fine to get BIS at lvl 58 (you won’t because it has less armor).
You also won’t soon enough because we will get WT5.
You also won’t be lvl 58 for half the time you’ve been 58 this time because you will learn to be more efficient AND have 30%+more power from seasonal.
It’s a non issue…and everyone complaining got very lucky with some drops, still doesn’t understand that the item is not actually perfect anyway OR that even if it was the gain would be marginal…also don’t understand that getting an amazing item at lvl 63 and keeping it till 93 feels great ALSO don’t understand some ppl (probably more outside the “I have nothing to grind where’s the #dopaminelootrain bruh” crowd) prefer to not have WT4 be meaningless as a trade off for a small boost in artificial sense of progression (which btw still exists in pragaon and is higher than item upgrades but these ppl hate because it’s “not exciting” aka as “not-as-exciting-as-basically-gambling”).
The video guy “doesn’t want this” but there’s no data or comment on how often that happens and to how many ppl. Or how long you spend at lvl 58 before seasons and full altars of Lilith. Or how it’s true the game wasn’t really finished so there will likely be new affixes (or that higher roll range he wants) past lvl 85.
Did it happen to you? Did it happen in more than half of your slots? Did it happen to you on your 2nd played character?
This is all separate from how they should make WT3 and 4 more exciting than it is and each of them should have more new stuff than the last so it doesn’t all blend together.
Also, at what point are you going to stop asking for D4 to last forever (on each character) or be artificially extended by having more grind or “more reasons to grind” (instead of “more fun things to do and slightly longer life of a character”)? You are supposed to be done with your barbarian after under 300h (weeeeeeelllll under 300h).
You have the franchise manager having to tell ppl you’re not supposed to play it forever and non-stop damn it!
Because if you did it would have to be balanced for that and/or stretched further and if they do that they alienate everyone that’s not in it (mostly/only) for the stupid loot dopamine rush (just a sense of progression that everyone seems to mistakenly think should be tied to only or mostly items - remember how they kept saying they put most of the power in your character for the past 3 years?!) and even those would only get what 50% more playtime from 1 character anyway at best if they changed it to be that way.
Gotten to the point where ppl are crying in a corner that you have to grind renown but they want to grind loot at max level (because you shouldn’t get best stuff before then) without the play-style changing at all (which already kinda happens too soon) but also asking for everything in it to be clearable with WW 1 button builds or full removal of vulnerable (instead of a pretty high cap) or of cooldowns…and not seeing the contradiction.
And it’s all (mostly) separate from how uniques should be better AND more interesting (and more of them) and ok maybe even somehow guaranteed to be better later ( lvl 85+ ones in WT5 should have 1 extra affix that makes them not trash and better than the sacred on you MAYBE had but probably won’t have anymore because next time you’ll level up a lot faster and/or not get very lucky…basically every chest unique piece should have one extra defensive stat in WT5…probably…if not actual redesign).
I think there are many of us that have differing opinions on what itemization in an ARPG (or any game really) is supposed to be. To me itemization isn’t just about affix allocation, but is also about
a) the psychology of those drops (potential dopamine hit from seeing the item drop) and…
b) the intended hole those drops are meant to fill in helping solve the game’s challenges.
While I think the Diablo 4 base of itemization is somewhat solid, I think it’s these two aspects of itemization upon which it fails to deliver and as a result has players picking apart the otherwise solid base.
I’ll offer up some brief thoughts on some things that are currently keeping the itemization from delivering on these two goals.
Psychology of Drops
- Knowing every rare drops with exactly four affixes and knowing exactly what four affixes you need to make the item good creates a feedback loop of disappointment and a feeling of non-progression. To combat this I’d make the number of affixes variable by world tier. The progression of affixes would be as follows: WT1 (rares 2-3 affixes), WT2 (rares 2-4 affixes), WT3 (sacred rares 3-5 affixes), WT4 (ancestral rares 4-6 affixes). Getting a six affix rare in WT4 (or 5 affix rare in WT 3 should be exceedingly rare to balance the reward and affix inflation. Fixing this also makes more builds viable. Overpower builds for example need many more affix types than other builds and the currently limitation of 4 affixes makes them less preferred to crit, crit dmg, vuln stacking builds (90% of the builds in the game).
- There needs to be another path of progression for gear beyond affixes they can drop with. Let’s call this tier of gear runic gear. It can drop throughout the game and all it does is swap an affix (or multiple affixes) for runic sockets. A runic socket allows you to socket a rune which is a more deterministic form of affix, with the added bonus of forming runewords which would be special affixes like legendary affixes. So the endgame chase is managing to find a legendary six affix runic drop that has the right number of runic sockets to create a runeword alongside your legendary affix. This has the added benefit of adding an additional drop to the game in runes, something everyone would be excited to see. This also solves D4s economy issues as right now the economy is limited to the same 4 affix rares everyone else has and gold (so basically no economy). Each season your goal would be to build up your supply of runes and six affix rares for trading.
Solving Game’s Challenges
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The biggest issue I have with itemization at the moment is there are only a few viable ways to gear a character. To scale dmg you have to go crit, crit dmg, vuln or you do no dmg. To survive you have to stack armor or maybe barriers. I’d like to see a system of itemization that allows players to overcome the challenges of doing damage and surviving in multiple ways. I propose three ways of scaling damage:
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Vulnerability is now changed. Vulnerability is applied by DOTs. Each tick of a dot applies a stack of VULN to the target. Vuln dmg % would be %dmg increase in dot ticks per stack of VULN. This is the way DOT builds scale in the endgame.
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Crit and Crit dmg remain as they are now, but without vuln as well they are more balanceable against the other scaling categories.
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Overpower remains the damage scaling option through life and it functions as is now, with ways to increase the overpower%. This should be an option to all classes and not just the few with automatic access to procs. It’s a great idea for a scalar, just needs tuning and rollout to all classes.
I’d also like to see the game completely rework its base stats. Right now we have STR, DEX, INT, WILL. I’d like to see them add two new base stats LUCK, MEMORY. Gear can still roll lucky hit chance (rarely), but luck is the way to improve your lucky hit chance. All players start with a charm inventory of 4 slots and every 200 LUCK increases the number of charm slots by 1. Charms have a dedicated inventory. Charms that drop have lucky hit proc effects on them. Lucky hit procs (unless a legendary affix) no longer are affixes on gear. You can build into a lucky hit character more reliably this way. MEMORY is a way to build offense through increased resource plus it let’s players expand the number of active skill slots on their character at certain thresholds. For example every 200 MEMORY is an extra skill slot. Having charms drop also would be exciting tying back into my point above.
STR - (+dmg to str requirement weapons, +armor)
DEX - (+dmg to dex requirement weapons, +dodge)
INT - (+dmg to int requirement weapons, +resist)
WILL - (+dmg to will requirement weapons, +fortify)
LUCK - (+lucky hit chance, +charm inventory)
MEM - (+max resource, +skill slots)
STAM - (+life, +movement speed)
Note that each base stat has an offense scalar and a defense scalar/utility scalar. This foundation of base stats would greatly increase the build variety in the game and do away with the scourge that is main stat. Main stat is so limiting in how you intend to build a character. Give every class access to every item type, just make certain item types have requirements of certain base stats. If I want to build a SORC that wields a 2 handed hammer, that should be allowed. The same is true of non weapons. There should be STR armor and DEX armor. STR armor scales armor inherently, DEX armor scales dodge inherently. Allow us to build more archetypal characters. As is the game homogenizes all classes too much in build types. More reliable ways to boost movement speed would be appreciated. The game developers need to think really hard about why they have so many artificial limitations on itemization that strangles build variety in this game.
Nope that’s bad game design for a arpg.
