Repeatedly making the same mistakes

PC General Discussion
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It’s widely understood that Diablo 2 has the best loot system in basically any ARPG. With such a shining example at their fingertips, how did they manage to make so many of the same mistakes that they made when creating D3’s loot system? They could fix this by making blue items roll with SUBSTANTIALLY higher modifiers, adding crafting and making it require white items and adding runewords for white items.

As I’m writing this it’s really sinking in how shallow but somehow still convoluted the loot system is it’s completely baffling.

Diablo 4 is a game about grinding and combat and it does this very well, but unfortunately the looting and gear is just a chore and completely uninspired. :disappointed:

I care about all tiers and types of items in Diablo 2 and despite the much higher variety I can identify them at a glance. I don’t care about almost any of the items in D4 and sifting through them is a tedious chore.

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The reason why D2 looting is so fun is because the stats system is simple.

There are only 4 basic stats and every class only needs 2-3 of those stats.

Fewer stats means less useless bloat in the roll pool for loot, means easier to find loot with stats that a build needs, means getting loot is more fun because gear changes come often to give more anticipation to looting and building a character.

Diablo 4 has too many useless stats. Things that are super situation-specific, or having so many different forms of Crowd Control that are redundant because they’re the same thing. Such as, Knockdown, Stun and Freeze. All have exactly the same effect, which is incapacitation.

Instead of having 3 same things with just different names, animations and application methods, they should be consolidated into 1 type of CC. Having 3 things that offer the same effect is useless bloat.

Also, too many stats that are too situational such as “increase crit damage to injured enemies”. Already there are 3 conditions that need to be met just for this stat to occur. It needs a crit to occur, it needs enemies to be =<35% HP, and it needs the gear to specifically roll this stat, meaning a wasted mod slot just for something that irregularly occurs.

More stats and more bloat leads to fewer gear changes because of too many unnecessary and useless stats that don’t apply to one’s build, making looting boring because gear changes are too infrequent.

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No, it isn’t. It’s just what YOU like, so YOU want it. Doesn’t bother me :slight_smile:

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Yup. Those granular differences in damage should be in the paragon boards, where you can choose to put points into those specific areas. On items it should just be “damage bonus”.

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D4 :yawning_face:… :sleeping:

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D4s itemization whiffs massively IMO, where D2 succeeds, in another way: D4 doesn’t want to be an Action RPG, it is an AntiRPG.

In gaming RPG means one of two things, A) you play a character, making choices in the world, which alter the world around you, (and/)or B) a game with relevant item/stat decisions on creation/progression. These decisions have impacted every aspect of loot, and I see no upside (aside from dev EZ-mode).

Your stats are almost meaningless. Aside from main stat, they are to be ignored. In D2, the stats determined which items you can even equip, and each stat matters to each class (at least, to a point).

You could equip almost any item on any character (optimal or not). Sorc could get enough STR to wear the heaviest plate armor, could use a great sword. Paladin could use a bow. Your Barb could use daggers or… a SHIELD, ffs. Instead, they went the D3 route, the devs making choices instead of the player. This isn’t RPG-like design, it is action game design. D4 could have been designed this way, but modernized. Sorc could Fire Enchant their (and their group’s) weapons, everyone could use a shield again, Barbs could throw axes and javelins, or even use a bow. But instead, everyone knows Simon Belmont uses a whip.

In D2, dropping early Frostburn was an incredible feeling, and altered your play for potentially 50+ levels. Starter uniques/sets made leveling an alt fun, items were worth keeping even if they were level 2. In D4, uniques are inexplicably gated well into the mid/late game, and the game launched with, what, 54? Of those, only 13 are universal drops, and of those, 6 effectively don’t exist. So few exist that Sorcs/Barbs don’t even have a non-Uber helm, and the fact that this game pigeon-holes your item choices (and hates the idea of alts) so much that off-class uniques drop even less than uber uniques (aka the can’t). Why do we get off-class rares, if off-class uniques are turned off? This AntiRPG series of decisions led to Shakogate, and stopped dead the first iteration of target-farm after an hour.

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The difference is uniques in Diablo 2 had purpose. Since they were all locked to certain levels you could build leveling gear sets. Rare was it when a unique dropped that you felt you would never have a use for, even if for just a few levels between a good item at level 35 and a better one at 42 etc. You could also upgrade uniques to take something you found good for leveling and turn it into an end game item (like ribcracker). I understand D4 is a new game, but it cannot be treated as such and given the time to become as good as D2 was over years due to that information already being available to the devs. You don’t start at square one when you make a 4th version of a game. You take what you’ve learned was successful and build upon it in future titles. This team just started over with a clean slate and used none of the data from past Diablo games to deliver a quality product.

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Eh, that is an opinion for sure. It is one of the better, but honestly still beaten by others.

Grim Dawn, PoE both have better itemization.

It is fine to have the different CC effects on skills, but stat-wise, yeah there should just be one stat that encompass all the different types of incapacitation.

In general, all affixes should work across all classes.
But it is quite fine that all affixes do not work across all builds. The latter would be boring.

The attribute system is trash yeah. Only saving grace is the requirements of them in the paragon board that makes them a bit interesting.
To be fair, D2s attribute system was also terrible, but that isn’t an excuse for repeating it of course.
All 4 attributes should be equally useful. There should be no such thing as a main attribute.

Yeah, smart loot and class-based loot is just mindblowingly bad for an A-RPG.

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This brings up another massive Anti-RPG element. Level scaling should never have been a thing (at least, not in T1/2). Not only does it mess with gear in so many ways, but the world is the opposite of immersive when a level one could take on Lilith, if the game didn’t gate them out of the content, and a worg you meet in the starter zone grows in power with you.

You’d think having your towns lack defenses would mean certain doom in this overrun world, but the peasants are clearly unstoppable here.

Also, the ability to grind low-level enemies (on low-level drop tables), or to take on massive challenges for rewards that are beyond you, are both fun options that have been all but removed.

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I am all for bringing present-day understanding to D2s systems. The best and worst, they could all use updating. Blizzard North pioneered the genre, but there is a great deal of design possibilities that have emerged since, and that should be explored in D4. While I love D2 loot, it is just a little too stat-stickish for me. Honestly, I love PoE’s unique design.

The paragon board is what it is. It is deep, deeper than most give it credit for, but it is still built on a foundation that I wish took the correct lessons from D2 (in my opinion), rather than remaking (a Lost Ark’d-) D3, with a pretty D2 paintjob.

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Then i don’t think you have tried playing any ARPG in the past 20 years.
D2 build a loot system that have been recreated by more or less any successfull ARPG since then. So i think it is safe to say that it is very widely known and understood.

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Not only that, D2s loot system has permeated many other gaming genres. In fact, you could say it created certain genres.

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