I will try to talk about these in different categories and feel free to share your opinion
Loot hunt excitement deficiency
we can improve this department by injecting new tiers of loot into the game for people to chase and hunt. Ex , Set items, Primal Ancient items alike , Ethereal weapons . I am just using D3 items as example but essentially D4 can get creative in that end.
The drop rate needs to be reasonable, if too rare people won’t bother chasing it as it is a waste of time, but if too common then there is no “chase” or “hunt” factor. I think it needs to be somewhere in middle. Ex, current ancestral drop rate with a slight buff would be ideal drop rate for these items.
Make new tier of loot have different drop sound, color just like what you did with Mythics, adds in the excitement factors when it drops.
System progression ( we can improve this by adding in whats called “Horizontal” and “Vertical” progression. For those that played Lost Ark you know what I mean.
Vertical progression = system that directly impacts your character power gain
Horizontal progression = systems that indirectly impacts your character power gain but eventually will lead in growth in power.
Example = Vertical progression = Paragon board, skill points
Example = Horizontal progression = Collecting Lilith Alters (pre-VoH when it provided actual stat boost)
We need to add in more progression system, both horizontally and vertically to tackle player engagement and longevity of the game.
I am not sure about others but I don’t play these genre type of game for the “challenge”. I play for the system progression, power fantasy and loot hunt/drops.
If I want to play a game to challenge myself, I’d go play Black Myth Wukong or Elden Ring.
Have you ever thought if the unique powers came with ga and the drop was a red item? Imagine the frostburn glove causing 100% freezing by luck. It would be a lot of fun.
1 Each GA on a unique improves its range by 25% which means all 4 GA items have max rolls in main stat. None of this 4 GA Fist of Fate 200% garbage. Example:
NO GA - Mainstat range is 200-300
1 GA Fist - Mainstat range 225 -300
2 GA Fist - Mainstat range 250 -300
3 GA Fist - Mainstat range 275 - 300
4 GA Fist - Mainstat is 300
Runes are added to the base game. No more VoH needed to use runes or craft what mythics you want.
Epic items added to the game. Epic items are just like other legendaries and uniques except they have an extra epic affix. Many epic affixes are related to economy or provide a low amount of power. And yes this means epic mythic items could be a loot chase. The epic red item beam is shown with the other items beam in a 50 / 50 manner. Epic affixes cannot be enchanted or have have masterwork crits or have GA but do improve with masterworking. The chance for an item to be epic is about 5%.
6 examples of epic affix and 2 examples in items:
25-50% more gold dropped
10-25% more materials dropped
15-30% more gem shards dropped
30-50% movespeed while not in combat
20-40% Goblin find (chance for 2 to appear)
15-30% Shrine duration
2 GA Epic Fist of Fate
GA Crit Chance
GA Attack Speed
Lucky hit Chance
Lucky hit random CC
(33% Goblin Find - Epic Affix. Has to be 30-40% because of 2 GA rule)
265% Main stat
Epic Harlequin Crest
Life
GA Armor
Max Resource
Cooldown
(30% Shrine Duration - Epic Affix. Always max on Mythic)
+4 all skills…
Its too early for set items.
Mythicals can drop with an alternate art cosmetic effect. This is a 1 in 100 chance of a mythic being an alternate art mythic with an epic affix truely a rare find here and 3 or 4 GA alternate art with an epic affix a potential server first with a global msg.
I personally think itemization needs a complete rework. The current find and grind system is horrible. Tempering, masterworking, GA’s, etc. aren’t terrible but poorly implemented. Instead of being a loot find game, it’s become a grind currency to play the item slot machine in town. Then start all over again when you get an upgrade.
I would much rather see a system where your items progress through playing the game and finding stuff. Without any sort of starting over because you find an upgrade.
Basically, I should be able to play the game and when I find an upgrade be able to use it pretty much immediately. Not the current system of finding what might be an upgrade and then can use it after grinding materials for the next 12 hours.
Rather than removing all the bad affixes from the start, they added tempering and masterworking. It was fun for about a season and a half, but by the third season, it’s getting frustrating. Maybe I’m in the minority, but I miss the simplicity of the old loot and upgrade system.
You are very optimistic to actually already assume that you will not brick the item during tempering or that you will have good masterworks after these 12 hours…
This is also the thing I am looking forward to the most. I love to pick up the new Runes, even if I am not using many of them. Some might argue with quality over quantity, but this doesnt do it for me. It has to be both in this genre and personally I am a bit in favour of quantity and collecting stuff. btw we need a lot more unique items
Just from point of view on game design philosophy once shared by Adam Jackson. The dev’s role is to create problem (challengers) for player to solve, so they will feel the satisfaction when they have found the answers to the problem at the end.
The challenge of the dev is how they design a problem which not easily solved by the players, but most of them will solved at the end of the season. Players will feel the progression at different stage all the way till they found the final solution. That is what they call content difficulty balancing, and progression design. What you are proposing here still fall victim to this design constraint. The loot and progression can be an easy or difficult problems to solve depends on the parameter the dev set.
If you remember the situation of gears raining down in S3 vault, or too many gears drop in Boss rota last season which players opt not to pick them up. That was the case study of problems were solved too easily by the players.
while I mostly agree with your statement there, and I don’t doubt Adam Jackson statement on that as well.
For your S3 example, I actually picked up everything and I either salvage or sell them lol. I don’t horde stuff too much but I do pick up everything I can. I am that type of gamer, I also enjoy loot showering down it gives me a good feeling lol. Like dopamine hit. I never complained about too much loot. Sure I enjoy having loot to be quality loot, but I also enjoy the feeling when you kill a boss or open a chest, the loot explosion is awesome.
The problem is the challenges part. Like in S5, I finished T8 the second day the season drop with Frozen orb. Then switch to LS sorc and the game was easy. Pit Boss HP was bugged so I avoid this content. I stop play D4 two weeks after the season launch, not because it was boring. It was due to I have solved all the problem very early and move on to a new game Black Myth Wukong.
Blizzard need to balance the content for player like me and also the other casual players who take longer time to solve the problem the dev throw at them. They key ingredient is progression along the journey. We don’t feel any progression at certain point of time because how the drop rate of mats and gears being designed now.
wouldn’t the hardest problem to solve in this game is RNG ? and you frankly can’t even solve that as it is “RNG” lol.
I guess if you like to theorycraft you will have many problems to solve. But for your average gamer that uses guides, what problems are there for them to solve really ?
You can solve RNG issues with many repeated run with efficiency. Like if you play a Pit 110 very efficiently, at the end your stash will be full with 3 GA gears. If you turn the engineer much longer you will solve the final problem of S6, which is max roll codex.
The only thing the game hold me back now, is call “The Interdiction Aspect 15%”