Things to improve in D4

PC General Discussion
1

Hey everybody,

I just want to relay my experience with the game before hitting max level and around 100 hours after, playing solo on HC as Barbarian. The main idea is to bring some attention to things that could be improved.

  • Leveling the first character from start to around level 85 feels great - constant gear upgrades and all things are fresh.
  • After 85 till 100 it was like a chore (should be much smoother due to Nightmare Dungeons buff (experience / teleport)), 99% of all loot went to vendor (we need more gold), the last 1% - items with max rolled aspects and ancestral items with proper power level with at least 3 affixes you want (preferably max rolled).
  • From level 100, when you no longer care about experience and glyphs (assuming they are maxed out), everything comes to gear improvement (for higher Nightmare Dungeons push / beating Echo of Lilith) and that’s my first problem.

1 Endgame gear progression:
This is my main complain along with mechanics around it.
Yes, it may be just my bad luck, but everything I do gives me almost 0 gear progression and this suppresses the desire to play (Helltides, Nightmare Dungeons, Fields of Hatred, occasionally Tree of Whispers) - it’s insanely hard to find items with at least 3 affixes I want.
~80% of all my gear was acquired at the start of T4 (70-90 levels).
I’m not asking for Shakos and Grandfathers dropping all over the place (I’m fine them being ultra rare), just give us more reliable ways to get high power ancestral items on reaching max level.

2 Endgame activities:

Helltide
It’s fun at the start, but when you master it and you’ve done with mystery chests it’s really discouraging to loot other chests.
This supposed to be focused loot system, but I feel there is none at the moment (the only exception are those world rare/unique monsters) (my case: last two Heavy Weaponry chests gave me 1 legendary each with 667 and 703 power level with lowest aspect roll (it’s a ridiculous waste of time), along with some resources).
It would be really cool to make those chests rewards scale with your level.

Helltide resources: I’m sitting at around 1500 Fiend Roses and 1000 Forgotten Souls, but I have nothing to spend them on. The only solution I see - to add those in more deep crafting system.

Nightmare Dungeons
Even on t70 I still get white, blue and sacred items (why?), higher tier dungeons have no influence on ancestral item power level, so there is no initiative to push them, just to get an achievement (but it’s a one time thing). Higher tiers of Nightmare Dungeons should give higher power level drops for items.
Nightmare Dungeons Afflictions (Negative):
This is something that should be addressed.
Some of them are just annoying (Lightning Storm) (and can lead to undesired consequences (rip Quin69)) , some of them are just instant salvage (Resource Burn).
As a Barbarian I have no issues with Cold Enchanted, but I guess it’s a very undesirable affliction to classes without Unstoppable skills.

Tree of Whispers
It’s fine to do it occasionally during the journey till max level, but it’s not rewarding at all after. It would be better to know there is a glimpse of hope to get something valuable out of it (cosmetic or one of those super rare uniques).

Fields of Hatred
For me this is the best experience - that great edgy feeling to run through them, dealing with the boss, elites and looting all stashes, with back thought that you can run into a fatal encounter (not my case on HC though - I’ve never encountered another player (around 1kk blood shards in total), but that’s fine)

3 QoL improvements:

Overall I feel D4 has a good game carcass, but it should be improved (more seasonal will not cut it for me, cause in the end everything will come to a point at which I’m right now)

Crafting
It’s alright that there is a straightforward upgrade system (to dump bunch or resources to get better values on gear), but it can be better.
For instance, why can’t we spend our resources on targeted re-roll of affixes not changing them completely? So when you finally got that proper power level item with at least 3 desired affixes - just to have an option to grind your way to improve it, not completely dumping it for a new item with better affixes?

Enchanting
if you fail to get desired affix (and it’s value) in like 20 tries it’s insane to try more (paying 10kk+ gold for a roll). Such gold sink has it’s pros and cons.

  • Pros: Gold is a really valuable resource.
  • Cons: Provokes a degenerative 3-4 minute gold runs (like Uldur’s Cave, Sirocco Caverns etc.).

It would be nice to have some cap for enchantment price (5kk seems to be fine)

Sometimes certain affix combinations glitch re-rolls, so you get the same 2 affixes over and over again in selection box (it’s not fun at all to pay more gold to see the same 2 affixes)

Loot
Why is it so hard to give us a proper loot filter, so players can choose what to see?
Yes, none of Diablo games had it so far, but I don’t want to see items with affixes that don’t bother me (e.g.: Resistances at this moment).
Rawhide all over the place is another topic (that’s why we should have additional ways to dump resources).
For instance Last Epoch has one of the best in-game loot filter I’ve seen so far (along with stash decision).

Stash
It’s too small, at least we should have more tabs.
It’s insanely uncomfortable to share such limited stash space between other characters.
Search option would be great, but I guess D4 is sitting on both chairs (PC and console) to increase profits and such functionality is not comfortable for both platforms (this influences all the UI).

Nightmare Dungeon Sigils
It’s a hell to manage sigils in consumables tab. They should be in more convenient place, preferably with different icons (not just 5 regions). For instance it’s done fine as a Map Stash Tab in Path of Exile.

Aspects
Same situation as with nightmare dungeon sigils. Same icons, hoarding all aspects tab and stash. Can we have them at Mystic npc UI?

Things that will be addressed closer to Season 2 (insanely long time to wait from my perspective):

  • Gems
    Should have a separate placeholder. At some point I’m just not picking them up. Their selling price value should be looked as well.
  • Disconnects
    Not something SC players care about, but this is the most humiliating way to die in HC (lost 2 characters this way). Aside of Echo of Lilith, very high Nightmare Dungeon tiers and other players in Fields of Hatred it’s really hard to die in this game.

Please share your thoughts, maybe I’ve missed something.

Editing reason: added some missed information that was lost during my mindflow.

2 Likes
2

There seems to be an issue with items. Lack of progression and lack of exciting items. Seems like the aspects part ends too early.

3

Hopefully some of these things will be addressed soon. They are not the end of the world, but the game will be much better with at least some of these improvements.

4

Gems:
Gems currently have 5 levels, with 2 seemingly not in the game but in the data; Crude, chipped, “regular”, flawless, royal. So basically it seems like there’s an intent of 7 with what aren’t out yet.

Increase this to 11. YES, I said 11. Reduce the Stat increases per level slightly, but still make a tier 11 much more powerful than the current one. Use a similar naming scheme for high level ones as in d3(Crude, chipped, Regular, flawless, square, flawless square, star, marquise, imperial, and cap out at “perfect”)

REMOVE the gold cost of fusing gems. Enchanting is 100% more than enough of a gold sink. We need GEM sinks.
Now that Fusing gems no longer costs gold, ratchet up the gem’s required for each level of fusing. Allow each level at: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90
Crude->Chipped: 3
Chipped->regular: 4
Regular->Square: 5
Square->flawless:6
Flawless->square:7
Flawless->Flawless square:8
Flawless square->Star:9
Star->Marquis:10
Marquis->imperial:11
Imperial->Perfect:12
By having the gems needed to fuse ratcheted up but the Gold cost removed, finding a gem will now have more of a wow factor in that you know that each one you find is helping you 100% progress since the higher level exists and it’ll take a lot of gems to reach.

And then, for the love of all that is both holy and unholy, you add in a gem bag to put them into. You can still have the player click on them like with elixirs if you wish (Though I would reccomend allowing them to auto-pick up), but make it so it doesn’t waste our bag space on something that is essentially a currency for a type of “enchant” for our gear.

Now, here is where I’m going to get a bit spicy with a suggestion: Add in a new occultist or Jeweler recipe that lets you pay gems for something, like an auto-100% guaranteed “gemslot” option on your gear, or a the ability to reroll a stat on an aspect or the like to try and get a higher value.
Or something like Grim dawn where you give yourself a “boon” (akin to the grim dawn constellation effects you could attach to a skill) wherein you have a chance to cast a spell of some type on lucky hit in addition to your gear abilities (Like “up to x% chance to cast meteor on hit”, but making the damage scale to a % of your weapon or spell damage to make sure it scales). Something cool to use gems for in addition to socketing as a final high tier gem sink.

5

It’s true that by being smart Blizzard can make decisions with a disproportionate impact, as is often the case with them.

6

i have to agree with you for the most part. lots of the end game content seems very lacking.

the biggest issues i find in terms of itemization is the item level is another layer of RNG that becomes an issue.

you want to get an item? you need to hope that the right item you want drops.
then that it drop with the Rolls you actually want/need for your build. THEN on top of that you need to hope its 820. then you also hope to get high/max rolls on the affixes. thats a bit too many layers of RNG on top of each other.

playing WT4. sacred items shouldn’t be dropping at all. and your drops need to scale up with your item level as a medium so you won’t get lower item level than yours. getting the wrong stats/affixes/items/rolls is more than enough RNG we don’t need an extra layer on top.

they also need to bring back the the option to get an item that let you reroll the item again. make it rare like a unique drop but it should be there.

7

One more thing: add in a “Quests completed” List on your renown list, so you can see 100% what you’ve done. This would save people a huge headache when trying to competionist it instead of having to go “Now which ones have I done again?”

1 Like
8

Great post. Not the I quit whine and then stay on the forums. Alot of what you staed has been addressed in their post and videos so heres to a better future

9

Id like a note on Sigils that tells you if you have done the dung already so you dont have to search on the map.

Also fix the press and nothing happens bug on PC pls :slight_smile:

10

Also, I did not mention the inventory routine, it definitely should be changed from “mark as junk” to “lock item” - most of the stuff is junk.