Series lost its main focus

PC General Discussion
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TLDR: itemization is the heart of Diablo. Devs should realize that it should be at the center of the game.

I’m not here for pets. I’m not here for transmogs. I’m not here for collecting livers, nor clapping at the soldiers. I’m not here for farming minerals and plants.

Also, I’m not here because of the combat, nor because pushing the highest endlessly scaling dungeon nor whatever streamlined quest system, nor whatever new fancy game mode they figure. Possibly some of you are, and I don’t blame you for that.

But Diablo is about farming loot.

You play the story, finish it, then proceed to an endless loot farming. It was that way in Diablo1, in Diablo2, and even in Diablo3. However, precisely at Diablo3, they missed the shot with itemization, something even acknowledged by its game director, so they went and redesigned the entire loot for the expansion, in what it was called “Loot 2.0”. But it was another flop. So the Adventure Mode released along RoS, that was designed to be the core elemt of the expansion, immediately completely lost its purpose: why a game mode about grinding if there isn’t anything interesting to grind? Add in continuous balance rounds with the “Buff instead of nerf” philosophy, making monsters obsolete, forcing the introduction of new difficulties with stronger mobs… And insanely higher Magic Find. Legendaries started raining from the sky, so if the loot was uninteresting already, now the rarest stuff was also common, leaving the game purposeless.

It was in that dramatic situation where someone shows the white flag and surrenders with itemization, so decides to try a consolation prize: adding a new version of the Nephalem Rifts that endlessly scale, so players can try to push as high as possible.

But this is a new game, or better said, a new entry in the series. It’s supposed to be back to its DNA, the good itemization and the interesting loot grind. So either figure a “Loot 3.0”, or go back to the last succesful backup, D2 itemization. The rifts, NM Dungeons, Helltides or whatever, they are welcome, they are good, but they’re the tomato and the pepperoni of the pizza, they should be on top of a good bread base, which in Diablo games are made of items.

Seems like the anomaly has become the norm, and what was the consolation prize turned into the main focus, and that’s why there’s so much discontent. The community is now filled with people asking for random different stuff that’s completely foreign to Diablo series: there’s even 1 thread here asking for horse races. These horse races of today, are the “endlessly scaling dungeons” of yesterday, something that had nothing to do with the game, but was implemented and took the focus out of the “real Diablo thing”. In the same way, there’s many people coming from WoW asking for raids, new campaign content every 3 months and so on: I’m paying my WoW sub for years, but this is not WoW. This is not about tons of new content, but about making little content to be extremely replayable. Diablo was Diablo before WoW existes, Diablo is Diablo by itself, not a watered down version of WoW.

And all this because I’m seeing very worrying signals at D4: after more than 20 years of Diablo series, and more than a decade of this current team working at D3, the team doesn’t seem to realize why people played Diablo. Doesn’t seem to realize that items are the way to go. Not just that the itemization was built over the worst of all the series, but that small inventory screaming “it’s small cause there’s nothing to store here”. Those small and soul-less item icons that make gear to look like cards instead.

And devs seem tone deaf, living in a bubble focusing around new seasons content, battle passes and MTX, struggling to understand that what the game needs is fixing the base game, not with new stuff that will get instantly old. That’s the way to make money with those MTX.
Based on how the game was released and what they’ve previously said, I suspect tomorrow’s stream as a “shop-seasons-battlepass” monologue that will fail to address (not expecting a solution, but just acknowledge) top #1 D4’s problem. I hope I’ll be wrong.

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Exactly right, items and the economy are the core of an ARPG, and the devs don’t get it.

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Doesn’t take long to realise that Devs don’t even play their own Diablo game at high levels.

Some of the item affixes make no sense, it’s either too powerful it requires nerf like vulnerability or it’s totally useless like close/range/stunned/injured/healthy.

At least Overpower does big dmg albeit the 12-20 seconds wait makes it unappealing.

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Great post,spot on. But Devs are tone- deaf and apparently dont read their own forums. Joke of a devs

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Items for shop or items for loot, pick one
Devs push toward blizzard making more money instead of making happy players

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The MTX business is a side effect: if people enjoys the game and feels attached to it, it’s why people throw money at the game.

Advertisements are an annoyance everyone tries to avoid. However Blizzard has a huge advertisement event where people pays thousands of dollars (travel+hotel+ticket). Why? Because people feel attached to the company, its products, stories and so on.

Sending items to the shop is removing the engine that makes everything else to work. The MTX gears are moved by a good itemization.

I’ve spent several thousands dollars at PoE. I don’t fully enjoy the game, but when D3 was released, I felt like Blizzard turned its back on me, discovered PoE and its attempt to catch the Diablo vibe, so it gave me hope. I paid for the closed beta. I didn’t have PayPal back then, nor never bought anything through the Internet, but just looking at its inventory made me rush to make an account and pay the 10$ that was worth the beta access. Every now and then, I come back there, drop money in a seasonal pack in order to support the game, and try it again with the hope that they’ve finally nailed it. It’s still not the case, the game still misses a “spark”, but the dudes seem honest, they listen to their community and their decisions seem to be made from the player perspective.

That’s why I’m still funding the game, and one of the many reasons why I refuse to do the same with Blizzard, just dropping the money needed for me to play, but not 1 single cent in extra things like MTX or stuff like that. Blizzard is the opposite to GGG: they have the “spark”, the game actually looks like a full AAA, with a good level of polishment, but with huge level of disconnection with its playerbase. They don’t even know why people plays their games or even why the Diablo franchise exists, or why the game sells like hot cakes.

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Well said,

I’ll stick to the class I know some - Druid.

You have some examples of great itemization here that fundamentally change the class. Some of these are in the legendary items (Weredruid) and some in uniques (Tempest Roar, Crone Staff). I understand some of the annoyance in Tempest Roar but the item does fundamentally succeed at being an amazing drop similar to Death’s Web in D2 for Necromancer.

Not only do they need to fix some of the formula issues that cause a lot of affixes to be worthless but there needs to be more exciting drops that can fundamentally change a build. Will some be duds? Sure, but they’re just that - fun and exciting

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I think the itemization system is actually fun and really good. They just need to work on balancing some of the affixes and maybe remove some of the really bad ones.

Obviously vulnerable damage is too good, and crit damage is probably too good as well. But there’s so many random ones that you can work into your build and make them good like barrier generation for bulwark Druid builds as an example.

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I am glad Diablo 2 resurected was released 1 and half ago and will last for dozen of years for those who look for good itemization.

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We need more items that are not just about dmg this dmg that, and trading all of course. Without tading it is ssf. And no, trading rares isn’t trading.

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Nailed it. The itemization has to be front & center or everything else feels worse.

Everything in this game feels worse than it actually is because itemization is so lackluster & there is nothing to look forward to in terms of character progression. 1 more paragon point for 5% more damage? Who cares?

Forced Aspects/Uniques, boring affixes, every item of its slot being the exact same (no bases), resistances being terribly designed, gems just being x% more damage, no real crafting, it just all makes the game feel weak.

I wouldn’t care about doing the same NM dungeon for the 100th time if I knew I’d be getting interesting items in the process. There are no exciting items to actually chase in this game because affixes are so uninspired & items are so lifeless.

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They won’t listen
D3 had bad items, d4 has the same bad items. Genius…

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Well i think main problem of Blizzard now - that they just don’t know how to do not WoW.

if you look more closely at D3, you can easily see the huge impact of WoW on absolutely all the mechanics of this game. it doesn’t matter what it is - cooldowns, itemization, soulbound system, etc. things. The thing is that they have already forgotten how to do something that does not depend on WoW-like systems. And pay attention, the core d3 ros/d4 development team came out of ex-Wow team.

And it’s not suitable for a good ARPG at all.

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I’m glad you liked it. However my personal opinion is that it doesn’t look to be enough to carry with the game by itself, and that’s something expected in a Diablo game.

What I mean is that I think that in order for loot to be a powerful driving force to make players play the game, there’s needed way more than what you already find fun in the current implementation. As I’ve said, the inventory is small because there’s little interesting stuff to store there, so definitely loot is not an important thing in D4. And comparing it to a 20 year old game and seeing the involution, I think that’s something to think about.

Here what I’m talking about:

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Why is trading rare not trading? Rares become just as good as any legendary once you slap the aspect of your choice on it.

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… And the top 3 rarity tiers that aren’t just minor variations of yellows and their 4-affix standard layout. Uniques feeling unique. Each item having a base with personality that defines its stats instead of a streamlined ilvl that makes everything to scale generically. “Normal/sacred/ancestral” having a point instead of being an empty husk…

OFC not word-by-word 100% accurate, but I think we all understand his point.

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I desperately want / need more inventory and stash space. The dopamine factor is there for me. Especially with amulets. With so many affixes in the game, and the range at with they can roll, when you get an item with the affixes you are looking for and they also have a good roll on them? That’s a great feeling. Not to mention the actual item lower.

I didn’t play D3, but I’ll take this itemization system over D2 any day. And although this isn’t an MMO, this system is better than pretty much any MMO I’ve played as well.

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You almost had it.

The core of Diablo (and any ARPG for the matter) is the combat. Combat has been made the core of the gameplay loop back then when they decided to make Diablo 1 realtime instead of turn based.

Loot is just the way to improve combat.

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People aren’t farming meph 20 years later for the combat, and POE (the most successful and dominant ARPG) is designed entirely around the economy and items, explicitly so. The combat needs to be fun, but the economy and items are the long-term hook and always have been.

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And that´s why it is so bad, despite having so many interesting mechanics. But they don´t help, when the combat feels like watching uninstall progress bars. There are a ton of effects in POE but none of them feel like having any impact.
And that´s also the reason why Diablo 3 was, despite all its flaws overall a huge success, it had the best combat of all ARPGs, and still is better then most of them.

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