What Do You Mean When You Say 'Interesting Loot'?

PC General Discussion
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I’ve thought about this and I’ve decided to ask because one of the major things I deal with in day-to-day life is the complexity of working with vagueness. I hear a lot of people say that the loot is not interesting but when pressed they just never answer what interesting loot actually is. It is, as though, they know what they don’t want but do not know what they do want.

I also find that the term is used often, ‘interesting’, but probably doesn’t have a universal meaning and I assume some versions of this opinion are even exclusionary to others. For example, if you asked me what interesting loot was I would say that it is loot that has high values on it’s rolls, a more direct impact on the playstyle, and fits a very well defined niche-type gameplay. This would be closer to armor sets. If you asked someone else I know they would answer that they want to have a deep character sheet alignment (think Grim Dawn) where getting every affix that matches your main attacks or strategies is exciting and essentially getting the stars to align is lovely.

These do not go to together in the same game.

But one of the core problems of this kind of language is that not only is it vague (and impossible to take as feedback because no one can read your mind) but it is also evasive. If someone says that you’re boring but Carlyle is fun and yet you and Carlyle are literally the same person with the same construction but when asked why they just say something else vague such as, “Well, you know, he’s immersive and you’re not.”, there’s naught to do. It turns out that putting the onus on anyone else to fix a problem that you can’t communicate clearly is unfair logically but not emotionally.

I’m even more interested if you think that older games like Diablo 2 have more “interesting loot” (bonus points if you’ve played D2R lately and can give examples) because truthfully I do not see how it is any more effective or any deeper in any way. The enemies are more varied which might indicate a deeper character sheet but otherwise I just don’t see how it is fundamentally or mechanically different in any way (presuming you don’t miss Magic Find) aside from being rarer.

So the challenge is simple: Explain in terms that are actionable what you want to change?

“I want the loot to be better.” ← not actionable

“I want the loot to have more affixes that align with skills, higher affixes for those affixes, and for all affixes to be able to roll on all gear by type (armor / accessories / weapons vs. individual affix pools for helm and pants and gloves etc.) please.” ← actionable.

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Loot with interesting effects. D4 has kinda interesting loot, but because of all this legendary loot, epic loot blends with it, and it becomes not so interesting. Plus effects should be more radical, maybe even a bit op.

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Something I really don’t find at all interesting is elemental resistance and it isn’t just items but also gems. There is essentially zero need to ever stack a single resist so when you see it as a greater affix it’s useless and those gems have no reason to ever be crafted.

Like, I heard once that maybe you could stack cold against thing in the ice but oh wonderful a single encounter.

I don’t necessarily want to reduce the game to only resist all but it would be nice if single resists were like tertiary stats that didn’t mean you were missing out on something hugely more, well, interesting and necessary.

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To me it’s something that either modifies a skill in some large way, or maybe does some kind of conversion/adding on a tag. In Grim Dawn there’s tons of ways to convert damage types from one to the other which opens up huge build possibilities. In PoE stuff like the Lioneye’s Fall turns all melee passives into bow passives.

I sort of put Fists of Fate into something that’s interesting. It’s a fun modifier to think about and try to build with.

Then you have mechanically interesting skills like the Trickshot Aspect that fundamentally changes how pen shot works.

I think people are looking for stuff like this. Instead of “firewall does x20% more damage” they want stuff like “Firewalls now spawn in a pentagram shape”. Or “All fire damage is converted to cold damage”.

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I found the original Fractured Winterglass to be interesting. Rod of Kepekleke to also be somewhat interesting though fragrantly too over loaded even before overpower builds were discovered.

So generally on paper enough new uniques were interesting, but this whole make this interesting and then not interesting with nerfs clearly a pattern after each seasonal flavor comes to an end to be very boring for the game.

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I will try to answer your question in a more general way.

  • First of all, I want loot that is only good for materials to autosalvage.
    When doing an hour of Helltide, I don’t want 3 full inventories of junk items. I want maximum of one full inventory, legendaries should be autosalvaged from Torment 2 on or even earlier, maybe even with aspects being gathered from it.
    Possibly a checkbox if we want non-ancestral legendaries and non-ancestral uniques autosalvaged would be a good idea, but is not needed if always active.

  • Second, items/keys/materials should be stackable as much as possible, such that my inventory space is not a big concern for me. Getting loot should always make you feel good, not giving you anxiety about inventory space.

  • Attributes on gear should always be good.
    Greater Affixes for resistances aren’t useful, so delete them and only let All Resistances be dropped as GAs. Health per 5 seconds and health per kill aren’t useful either. Unless they are buffed significantly, they should be removed completely.

  • Target farming gear is nice, but 1 item with 1 GA is not target farming.
    Doing a NMD should give me at least one 1 GA item, so target farming should be more about items with 2 or more GAs.
    The rare (normal yellow) Undercity runs should award us with at least one 1 GA item as well. Getting 1 ancestral item, some material and whatever the bonus on the key is, is good enough, but no junk.
    In Helltide every chest we open should at least give us one ancestral item as well.

  • The loot would be even more interesting if salvaging ancestral items would give us special materials for advanced crafting.

  • Having only one useful rarity might be a little too boring.
    We need something useful, that is not overflowing our inventory.
    Something like weapon and armor parts that could be crafted on Ancestral equipment.
    Maybe to get one additional inherant stat on an item, that will not scale with Mastercrafting, but will scale with how many of this item parts we use on the item.
    So we could level the item from rank 1 to rank 100.
    This item parts could stack, to not overflow our inventory, but also be the most common item to drop.

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Less multipliers, more things that actually alter how a skill behaves or its elemental properties.

Like, changing the element in hydras or steel chain bringing you to the target instead of the usual behaviour.

Dolman Stone is a good example (I think? whatever the boulder unique is)

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I’ll tell you my opinion about “interesting”.

1 -Itemization of d4=d3, main attribute, attack speed, etc. This is bad. Could the wizard use strength? Yes, if we had passives that would increase with this. Which doesn’t exist in the game.

2-Variety of uniques. We don’t have a single crossbow, we have a bow that deals damage with precision, because we don’t have a crossbow that joins the victimization passive. This is simple to do.

3-Interesting items, I believe that all items with 4 GA should have an additional passive, you receive the Frostburn glove, with 4 GA and it is useless, now imagine if with 4 GA it had a passive that causes a new of ice on dead enemies would be interesting. It doesn’t need to cause millions of damage if it enables some builds.

4 - items that change the game play, rain of fire arrows, ice hydra, nova of electricity, wave of poison.

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Great thread!

Let’s start with the current iteration of loot that’s on live game.
I want legendary gear to drop with an enriched affix pool while keeping the 3 affix limitation, so I can have viable options for my build to come online without being 100% obligated to Tempering.

Weapons for example. Currently, they drop mostly with mainstat, hp, resource gen, flat dmg, etc. Ideally, I want weapons to have more variety in affixes. If I want my weapon to be vuln, crit dmg, and dmg over time I should be able to. I should also be able to have the option of more specific affixes like dmg to close and dmg while berserking, without being pigeonholed to Tempering for such critical and relatively basic affixes for my build to come online.

Another thing that bothers me quite a lot after loot 2.0 is how excessively homogeneous are all the gear slots. Weapons rolling with survivability affixes, boots without movement speed, etc. It just feels bad. They should address that.

For a more holistic look on loot, or loot 3.0, I would bring all item types into the game as viable options.

White items: Not sure about these. Could be ok for lvling or just removed from the game.

Blue items: In order to make this item type viable yet different enough, I would make it drop with 4 affixes, make it so it can be upgraded with an aspect, can be masterworked, BUT not being able to be Tempered. In a way, how yellow items used to be before loot 2.0. I think this can be a fun addition to the game.

Yellow items: These items would start dropping with 3 affixes like orange items.

Orange items: I would have these items drop with an enriched affix pool like I explained in my first segment. These affix pools would affect yellow items as well.

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Oh yeah! Multipliers should have only applied to weapons in the first place, so we wouldn’t feel penalized for using other fun aspects in different slots. Now, we’re essentially stacking multipliers across every single slot. I’m not suggesting we change it right away, though, since I’m not eager for another loot reborn so soon.

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Diablo 2 is not so much “interesting” loot as it is “meaningful” loot. All grades of item from Normal, Elite and Exceptional, have a purpose.

White items are the only ones that can be used for Rune Words. So finding the right base item, with good stats is one of the chase aspects in R2/D2R.

All item grades can have Sockets, but these can only be used for Gems, Jewels, or random Runes on Blue and above and for the specific bonuses these provide.

Certain affixes are only available on Blues or Yellows, giving them a usage even when Uniques for the slot may have been found. A Rare ring with +2/3 to Skills and +20 Attack speed can be critical items for some top end builds, better than any Unique.

Certain items can be crafted to give specific stat sets not available from items picked up, so crafting becomes an interesting side project for some classes.

While Set items exist, most are not used except if you are starting a new character and have the full set, but are still fun to collect, while others like Tal Rasha’s become important milestones for a build.

Different Uniques exist from normal Difficulty to Hell. So you not finding the same stuff, just with higher item level, at each difficulty. Thus much more variety of loot. With over 500 Uniques, many of which are class defining items (eg Occulus, Windforce), while are universal (Shako), the chase to find items becomes much of the fun of the game. I still play D2R, so so much for the game play, but for the “Holy Grail” of collecting all the Unique gear.

And thats not to say this system was perfect. There are many ways this could be improved but regardless its 1000% more “Interesting” than D3/D4 loot.

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For example windforce unique bow has chance for barrage to cast and pierce twice. Soo exciting. To actually make it exciting they should add all arrows are now imbued with your active imbuements.

Thats exciting.

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Pretty much have explained ad nauseum what is wrong with the loot in this game.

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That wasnt the question.

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Interesting loot in DIV:

  • we gave you SB and 2 awesome mythics it can use
  • glaives are nice weapons, we also have nice skins in the shop for it
  • nearly everyone is playing with a unique Rod. <— höhöhöh …of Kepeleke ofc.

Interesting loot serious version:

  • plenty of loot
  • stats u can actually use for lots of builds
  • nice looking loot (glowing/aura/footsteps whatever)
  • mythic weapons that are looking awesome and changing boring looking white stripe projectiles into something magic/glowing stuff
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Tldr - do anything but have multiplicative offensive and defensive bonuses on the items. Literally do anything else and it becomes interesting.