Itemization, solutions. D4 can be better

PC General Discussion
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I’ll be using a comparison to D2. And how items in this game just don’t hit the fun factor. This doesn’t even really hit on the massive bloating of affixes. (link at bottom to what I mean about that.)

A big part of the issue is that you cant give alts items. Remember in d2? Finding an item and being like DAMN!, ill use that on XXXXXX build, and then being excited to start that next character with something to strive for? Or similarly, having a build in mind and farming end game and bosses to get the gear you wanted to try that build, and then finally seeing the few key pieces, being excited, and then going on to your alt to level and play to start equipping those cool items… Or even, having a levelling set of gear you can use to blast early game with… ALLL of that is gone in d4.

Why… Why do this? Imagine how much more fun D4 would be with even just this simple change. How people would be constantly starting new characters, trading, talking etc. It just blows my mind that this uber fun aspect that is core to the Diablo franchise (for d2 at least)… Is completely absent.

Did the Devs ever play D2? I think not. And since pointing out an issue and not providing a solution is bad post design…

Solutions / ideas

#1 - Make all items have a set level based on the items actual power.

#2 - Make items upgradable somehow from normal to sacred to unique.

#3 - add a whole set of world tier 2 uniques. Fun easy stuff to use at lower level that impact the speed of leveling a new character

#4 - get rid of the affix bloat. We don’t need dmg to cold, frozen, chilled… Just make it cold. Use this philosophy across the affix board and get rid of half of them or more.

#5 - have + all skills show up on ancestral.

#6 - add much more uniques overall. The amount we have is ridiculously small for a AAA Arpg.

#7 - get more innovative with gems. A few 2 minute ideas… if equipped 3 or more of same gem on character, double effectiveness. Combine 2 gems to receive a lower tier gem that has both effects. Hidden bonuses with a variety of gems equipped (green blue yellow skull all equipped, get +1 to cold skills)

8 - bring back crafting, real crafting. Take inspiration from d2, use blue and white items and gems and other materials herbs ore etc to be able to make predictable but also random gear. Use this system to upgrade items, add ilvl +20 to an item or reroll an affix without the use of gold, or add sockets, or reroll a yellow to something your class can use, or open a milignant tunnel on your location etc etc etc. So many ideas, this is just from 3 minutes of thought…

9 - Loot filter and searching. Why this isn’t here already is beyond me.

Link to reddit post talking about affix bloat.

(Reddit - Dive into anything)

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They did do that. What I think you are asking is that items have a character level cap so that you can farm them with a higher char and give them to a lower char. That was implemented in the last patch so should be active right now.

Phone call but I will get documentation for you when I get back.

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They “sorta did” but it’s still miles off of how D2 did it, or other Arpgs. A step in the right direction though.

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In D2 items can drop with weaker versions of the same affix than would be possible given their ilvl and the level req is scaled to the highest level affix that dropped. But to implement that system, you would have to allow an item level 800 item to drop with an item level 100 affix range.

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Please stop telling the devs how to design the game. You are not a game designer.

You should be telling them things you don’t like and let them come up with solutions.

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Good ideas. This singularity guy is annoying like a lingering fart

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Unexpected twist!!! I am a game developer :sweat_smile:. Mainly working in unity but can’t say what game I am working on due to NDAs.

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Itemization is better than many make it look like tbh, however things aren’t balanced, the less likely ones should have higher numbers or sth

It’s also a bad sign that just the very last Campfire chat they showed examples of items “defaulting” back to Vuln/Crit

Like, just use some imagination ffs… Hellhammer, it’s a hammer, 2H, add some execute from fire, or explode on kill while under fire ground… Heck they could’ve even made it that Overtime does double damage vs targets standing on the fire., just anything more interesting than (again) Crit

Although your example of: Cold, Chill, Frozen makes sense, I like that they have subgroups of it… As long as the “specific” “subversion” ones have a decent number increase… (10% vs Crowd-Controlled, or 22% vs Stunned = it’s fine to have both actually :slight_smile: )

Regardless - point being - they should fix what is already in the game (give meaningful numbers) to the options offered… And get rid of the really low impactful ones (slow duration increased by 10% ?, Crackling energy damage increased by 16% ? I mean… :P)… Even affixes occasionally have this problem - “Damage increased base on resources by 10-20%”, come on man, make it 25-35% or sth, something different noticeably (one could argue they fear Ultimates might get out of hand but then can just make the affix affect non-Ults only)

Also 2 things to improve, actually one thing and one question:

1 - Just add us an option of “keep the item” when extracting… Man I got really nice legendaries with a bad affix on them or a one that I don’t want to be using…
2 - What happened with extra enchantment slot ?, I mean the 3 or 4 options when enchanting and item (not the Sorc. class mechanic)

Oh one more thing, IDK about other slots but about the off-hand - should really roll something else than CDR as inherrent affix

Could roll things like:

  • Resource cost reduction
  • X element damage (fire, cold, lightning, shadow, blood, …)
  • Overtime damage
  • Barrier generation (maybe)

I mean, sure, CDR is useful but should not be mandatory… Like for example Sorc-Mastery build barely would use any CDs (Blizzard, Meteor, Firewall, all would benefit from RCR rather than CDR for ex.)

TLDR - don’t think itemization is THAT bad, it’s just some stuff roll really low or things that have really specific usage tend to have also low percentages

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Out of all my complaints of D4, my single largest one is the number of affix’s that are completely useless.
They need to remove about 200 of the 250+ affix’s from the game. They can even reduce loot by 75% and I’d be ecstatic, because the remaining 25% might actually be useful and not vendor garbage.

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Seems like most of them haven’t played D4 either

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  1. This already happens
  2. No this is a horrible idea. It’s fine the way it is. We don’t need Lost Ark gearing
  3. These are not needed. WT2 takes no time to pass
  4. So remove build diversity. How about no
  5. This is too powerful and reserved for the uber uniques
  6. They did add more. Uniques are not supposed to be build defining or must haves
  7. This would be too strong
  8. They are already looking at adding more crafting
  9. They know about the loot filter and are working on it
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Fun fact: D2 and D4 have about the same number of total affixes available to each class (~160 functionally different ones, not counting inherent affixes and aspects/unique affixes), plus in D2 redundant affixes could be generated at any given level (that is, a lower-level version of an affix could appear even though a higher level one was available). In D4, those affixes are more often restricted to specific equipment slots, and are not constrained by prefix/suffix limits (they all have both forms it seems).

That means that the affix pools in D2 were both far bigger (i.e., it was harder to roll the specific, high-roll affixes you wanted) and less varied and less tailored to your class.

The problem with D4 items isn’t affix “bloat”, it’s that vuln and crit outshine the other damage affixes, resists get useless when you hit WT4, some affixes appear on too few items (and are therefore mandatory), and investing heavily in things like lucky hit leaves you with too little damage for all the extra effects to be meaningful.

They have the raw material for an outstanding item system between the existing affixes and the upgrades and the aspects. What they need to do is to push overpower so it is much stronger (but leave it so it doesn’t benefit from crit or vuln), push DoTs as yet another path (maybe make conditional damage other than vuln a multiplier for DoTs), remove crit damage (just make it a flat 100%), and actually make rares feel rare (or at least Sacred / Ancestral ones).

Overpower and crit builds have natural synergy with lucky hit and IAS and low-cost skills, whereas vuln and DoT builds have synergy with a big additive bucket and high-cost skills. Spreading the support affixes for each across more slots would mean that you need to choose which of them to invest in, creating more interesting items.

Those would improve the system, but honestly, the current one is quite good. If vuln and crit weren’t so OP and resists weren’t so awful, people would be finding all sorts of interesting item combos to work with.

EDIT: imagine if they just changed it so that you couldn’t get vuln damage, crit chance, or crit damage until ancestral items, overpower affixes and DoT affixes were multiplicative for those damage types, and the skill-based affixes like ultimate, basic, etc., added to the main stat bonus for skill damage.

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You cant compare to D2 as that was created by devs that wanted to create an awesome game and they did.

The dev team for D4 is completely different now with Activision as the people they want to impress. Not us.

You wont ever get them to do anything similar to D2 in terms of itemisation.

I dreamed of D4 being like D2 with loot as thats what made that game so bloody epic. The loot was fun to chase.

Blizzard is dead. All hail Activision.

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Though I do understand your sentiment, it comes off quite dismissive with no actual details as to “why” you replied as you do to each point. Thus my reply is not aimed at you, it’s aimed at those you may influence with your very basic responses.

  1. Ah not really. As in its not quite where it needs to be to setup an alts gearing path from your main. They took a step in the right direction, but it’s not there yet. I have never once had that “oh wow look at that item! I’m totally going to roll a light sorc based on that for my alt” that is a staple mechanic of an arpg.

  2. I disagree. I see on the forums “I got to wt3 and started getting sacred items to replace my normal ones, and lost interest when I realized id have to do this again for ancestral. This in game production is known as a” quit point". And this should be identified and improved. My suggestion was to link it to crafting, and have a way to upgrade your cool item as you go. Obviously you wouldn’t do this with all items but with some of the better rolled ones affix wise.

  3. “takes no time” is completely wrong. It takes time to get through to 40 or 50. And for many its a slog especially on season. My suggestion would allow for a “fun factor” during this time which again, helps remove a “quit point”

  4. Having so many “useless affixes” that we just trash every 15 mins of game time is not “creating build diversity” it’s making the game annoying the boring, for many players. Refining it would make loot more interesting. I’m not saying go from 250 affixes to 5, I’m saying go from 250 to like 120. This would actually support build diversity and alt making in a much larger way than it is now.

  5. The fact it’s “reserved for 1 uber unique with +4 skills” makes no sense. Having it be a rare or hard to get affix at the 1 or 2 skills would still balance it in a way where the uber unique with 4 skills is amazing to have drop, but makes certain items when dropped give that “wow that’s so cool!” effect that is severely lacking in end game (wt4). Thus have it only drop in wt4 ancestrals and be rare, or have a toute to access through crafting that is tough, but doable. Again giving people something to strive for.

  6. They don’t have to be must haves. But add a fun flavour to the game. And having a bunch that drop at lower levels, that don’t have a wt4 ancestral version, would make lower end gameplay more interesting, as well as alt making.

  7. “would be too strong” but doesn’t say why. It would still require effort to find and use, and these are examples from. 2 minutes of thought. The gem combine for a double effect version I mentioned would be of a lower tier of gem, thus the highest tier of a single gem would aleqys be better for a single affix, but you could diversify your build with a slightly weaker version that did 2 things at once. So many ideas could come from these trains fo thought. Rather than now where most builds use the same gems in the same slots…

  8. The fact crafting has been absent from launch blows my mind. I know it’s coming, and I gave several suggestions I hope are seen by someone out there as to how to implement it in a fun way that would encourage usage by the masses.

  9. It’s a staple of a modern arpg. The fact it is absent and is only being “considered” is crazy. It’s almost like they never played other arpgs, or did market research. It would be like buying a new 2023 car and they put a cassette tape stereo in it instead of Bluetooth and just say, hey ok we will consider a Bluetooth feature eventually.

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I had this experience based on a whirlwind legendary I rolled for my barb, and I swapped from chain lightning yo charged bolts when I found a good staff of lam esen.

The current system is hampered by too much class-specific gear, smart loot, and the fact that most builds want the same stats. That said, it’s also still early. The specific things that make an item a godly “light Sorc” item aren’t readily accessible to people who haven’t played light Sorcs (other than getting good rolls on the relevant leggos or uniques). I think D4 has both a more transparent system for this (aspects) and a better set of mechanics (once they get overpower and dots and CC on par with crit and vuln) to create build-specific items.

I don’t think this is a big complaint I’ve seen. A lot more people are complaining about hitting WT4 and finding it an unrewarding slog. Upgrading items way farther would make it even more likely that you end up with full BiS affixes on gear by early WT4. If it was possible only by spending a new rare material drop, that might be ok, though.

Like, create a mat rarer that prisms that lets you add 5 to the base item power (before upgrades), up to a cap at 800 maybe.

I don’t think chasing “fun” uniques at level 40 is going to keep anyone from quitting. A better solution is to split the 460 item tier so that the items still get better in the 40s.

First of all, it’s more like 160 affixes for each class, 60 of them class-specific. Second, since they are distributed across item slots, many of those existing affixes are actually strong right now (and others will be strong when they fix resists and dots and overpower).

Second, D2 has about 150 affixes not counting the fact that the pool is cluttered by lower level affixes and non-smart loot. So cutting D4 back to 120 would just get everyone into perfect gear that much sooner.

Third, I don’t see how cutting affixes promotes build diversity. It just makes it that much harder to have gear that goes well with different builds (and easier to have gear that goes well with all builds).

There are very few useless affixes in D4. There are just affixes that are not as good for your build but are better for other builds. It completely destroys the concept of the loot chase if gear always drops the perfect affixes for your build.

I agree that +1 to all skills would be cool to have on more items, but I think those should still be rare. For example, I think it would be cool to add an affix pool that can only drop on legendaries and make that one of them, so that finding an actual legendary with good stats is still a viable thing.

It think they should add 20 uniques per season until the expansion. If they do add uniques that are tier specific, they should start with more WT4-only, high-power ones that aren’t Ubers.

That said, if they added areas or ways to target farm normal items, that could be a good reason to make early game build-around uniques and other affixes. For example, they could add helltide chests and whisper caches that are specifically themed for alts.

We really already have crafting between the aspect system, enchanting, socketing, and upgrading. They could add other forms of it, but the current system is pretty powerful and highly customizable, to the extent that people are running out of things to farm because they can already craft such good gear. You can also craft up elixirs and sigils. So I really don’t understand what crafting system you think is needed.

I think it’s a garbage system and I’d rather that they dramatically lower loot drops than that they put in a loot filter. The problem is that you want to run past items, not that you can’t do it efficiently enough.