What is the direction for D4? Why the resistance against lootfilter and QoL features?

PC General Discussion
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I’d like to share my thoughts on the current state of the game. Posts like these can sometimes come across as overly negative, so I want to open with something different:

I truly value the effort and passion that go into developing this game, and I love the Diablo universe. Thank you to everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute to making this franchise what it is. I’ve spent a lot of awesome hours with friends in this world, and I’m grateful for that.

tl;dr:

It feels like the game is flip-flopping between op buff seasons and nerf seasons. Is there a clear vision/direction for the game? Are „dedicated casuals“ still a part of the intended audience? Meanwhile, the most popular requests from the community are not being considered or even tried. Can we get a lootfilter and possibly rerolling like in D3, please? Looting, sorting loot and gearing feels tedious, which made me skip my first season since years. Long version below.

With the recent Campfire Chat and patch notes, I took a moment to reflect on why, for the first time in years, I skipped a Diablo season. I can’t help but feel that the game lacks a clear direction, and I wonder if players like me are still part of the intended audience.

I would describe myself as a casual yet dedicated Diablo player. Got about 2000 hours in D3, having played nearly every season, usually completing the season journey and reaching Paragon 1000–1500 (iirc) before stepping away until the next season. Don’t need to min-max completely, I play for fun. But, try to get BiS everywhere, like to reach the Endgame and spend some time in it. The appeal for me has always been the process of gearing and finding upgrades (even small ones), and engaging in mindless but satisfying endgame grinding. In D3, I enjoyed pushing through the season journey (motivated by the pet and similar collectibles), maybe gearing up a second or third character, and then moving on until the next season.

A major part of the enjoyment came from the smooth, mostly hassle-free gameplay loop later in the game. Blasting through Greater Rifts in 2–3 minutes, quickly sorting through loot in 15–30 seconds, banking any potential upgrades, and jumping straight into the next Rift.

I like D4, but certain missing QoL features, such as a loot filter and (for example) better rerolling mechanics, have made it difficult for me to fully engage with the game. I really want to like this game more and play it more. I played every season until this one but didn’t complete a journey (the rewards felt lacking, a unique pet (which is now a thing luckily) or one shop item would’ve motivated me probably) and this current season I skipped entirely.

One of my biggest pain points is the sheer volume of unusable loot. Very quickly, the only items worth considering are those with greater affixes and the right affixes, making sorting through loot feel like an endless chore. Unlike D3, where managing gear was quick and streamlined, D4s item system creates too much downtime between the action. The current rerolling system also feels discouraging. Some ideal affixes have such low roll chances that it’s better to just wait for a drop with it rather than attempting to improve an existing item.

The following paragraph may sound overly negative, but it isn’t intended to be mean. It’s just that the current reasoning we got for not including something like a lootfilter don’t feel satisfactory. But again, that’s just me and my friends, but it seems a lot of people in the community feel a similar way. It feels like there are KPIs pushed to management for as much playercount and playtime (which probably brings more potential earnings via the shop) as possible. Which is fine from a business perspective, you want (and somewhat need) your game to be successful at these metrics. But it feels like these KPIs are being prioritized above player enjoyment.

Mechanics appear designed to slow down gearing progression:

A loot filter would allow players to identify upgrades faster - yet it’s not implemented.
A rerolling system similar to D3 would make targeted gearing easier - yet it’s not available.
Avoiding item bricking with Tempering would make upgrading feel less punishing - yet it remains a frustrating system.

The result is that looting, sorting loot and gearing feels unnecessarily slow and tedious. And these are core things which accompany you your whole time playing. I wonder if internal data supports this approach. Do the number of players who enjoy the current state outweigh those who feel disengaged (or are lost as a player like me) because of it?

I want to return to D4. There are so many aspects of the game I love, but right now, thinking about long loot-sorting sessions (where you throw away most of it), wasted crafting attempts, and bricked items makes me hesitant. The constant feeling of tedium in managing gear outweighs the excitement of finding upgrades.

For me, regular item upgrades (even small 1% improvements) are key to feeling a sense of progression. Additionally, meaningful seasonal rewards (maybe one free shop item) would go a long way in motivating engagement. If fully gearing one character with BiS items takes an entire season, that’s simply not for me. But if the process were made less frustrating and more efficient (through a loot filter, a better reroll system, or a less punishing Tempering mechanic), i’ll probably gear a second or third char in the season (which would probably achieve the same amount of hours as one char gearing at a slow pace, no?).

Will we ever see a loot filter or similar QoL improvements to make looting/sorting loot and gearing less tedious? I sincerely hope so, because I want to keep playing this game.

Thank you for your time, and I appreciate all the hard work the team puts into D4. Wishing you all the best, and I hope to return to the game in the future.

9 Likes
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Perfect summary!

How often do you hear the statement that the developers “don’t think that’s what players want” or “we want to develop the game that way”, but the majority of players don’t want that at all.

An optional loot filter cannot be rejected by any player. Because it would be optional and anyone who doesn’t want a loot filter simply ignores it.

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Loot filter is a no because they want us forced interacting and hitting metrics with the game blacksmith and whatnots. Nevermind that nobody even picks up 95% of the loot after a week. They said the interacting part. I guess on metric part. This game is cooked and Im not talkin about the cookbook.

3 Likes
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Loot filter will NEVER happen, no matter how many times you all request it.
They want to FORCE us to interact with the NP(U)C’s, that’s why they’re there sitting looking “pretty”…

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ITs such a dumb move because you stop even picking up non-GA loot at some point and an empty inventory doesnt interact with blacksmith. Devs are totally missing the mark.

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I don’t understand the insistence on the loot filter. They’ve already said that the legendary loot will decrease in S8. I only get ancestors and some slots only 2 GA. I don’t see any problem with that.

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What is the direction for D4? Why the resistance against lootfilter and QoL features?

I think the answer is: Make the game friendly for new players.

A Loot filter is something quite “specific”.
It’s not something that a player uses at the beginning, but at the end, when he already knows what he wants.

I guess they want to avoid the POE situation: Player walks in, sees two things, and says “NOPE”.

And it makes sense. D4 would try to appeal to all the players that POE doesn’t capture instead of competing directly with him.

In other words, Diablo 4 tries to be an entry-level ARPG… An ARPG that can be enjoyed by someone who has never played an ARPG.

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QoL is must. there’s so much to add too. hurry up blizz!

glad we can tp to boss room. W

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Do you get a sense of this watching the campfire? I felt I did but that is with seeing some recurring issues and having some thoughts about what the solutions should be (and seeing some discussion here on that prior).

How do you measure what’s most popular? From my view what they are addressing and setting direction around seem to be pretty persistently discussed issues.

There’s a lot of post volume here. It can be difficult to keep track of even a statistical basis, let alone assessing popularity.

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I don’t think we need a loot filter, we need nonancestral legendaries getting autosalvaged starting with t3 or t4 to avoid the loot pinata (just like it’s already a thing with rare items), you upgrade to ancestral in t1 t2 anyway.

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in D4…pretty much every time these stupid devs open their mouth

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Not everyone has the time to dedicate that you do

Those that have 30 hours a month or say 50 as opposed to the 100 that you do or have, what will they experience ?

That’s right, NOTHING of substance

Stop being so selfish, the LAST THING people wanna do when they start playing a game is waste time

  • Hey you beat the game and played for 30 hours, congrats, the real game JUST STARTED

JUST… NO

Stop wasting people’s time, and rearrange the eggs in baskets in a proper way

So that BOTH those that played for 20 hours (and those that played 200 hours) felt like they’ve done something

It gets EVEN WORSE when the entire season revolves around a single new build, reward, or item

TLDR ? - stop being so reward-centric and reward-first in mindset, the game has to be FUN even on the way… Sadly, not just you or players around BUT even the game-developers themselves are being stubborn (and all the D3-poisoned) like that and not being able to see the full picture

For them it is “less effort” i.e. why waste time to develop something that the players will play for 1-2 hours instead of 10-20, but the quality of the game (and people’s interest) DIES with that

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Make seasons that keep ppl on a tread mill in hopes they buy cosmetics in the MTX store.

That’s always been the direction… then milk the franchise until it’s an empty husk.

Welcome to the live

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That’s a loot filter. And it’s a bad one - because itemization isn’t distributed simply enough across builds, to work with such a simple knob (Legendaries “on” and then “off” at a particular difficulty).

But since such a loot filter would be implemented anyway… just make it more customizable, i.e. the player tightens the ‘drop rate’ vs salvage mats as they see fit. Because only the player really understands when it’s time to do so, since it’s situational. Also, there is no logical argument against this, if one is already comfortable with an implicit loot filter (like the kind you’re describing/endorsing). All it would be is a few sliders in the menu.

This is a misunderstanding. Rares were redefined - not merely had their drop rates reduced. Rares were a different thing before (i.e. same number of base affixes as Legendaries, with Aspects being the only difference). For all intents and purposes, the original Rares ceased to exist.

In season 8, they’re coming back. This is an ongoing wrinkle in itemization that the devs have failed to properly communicate, and players have failed to fully appreciate how it relates to the ongoing saga against implementing a loot filter. The devs think they’re ready to ‘reintroduce’ Rares, and that it’ll be ok now. It’s going to be pretty funny IMO.

I posted a topic partially around this wrinkle right before S6 launch, and I never got around to reading most of the replies (b/c PoE2 EA distracted me)… but it’s now relevant again. I suspect a lot of the pushback on this point is based on misunderstanding the role of Rares in the devs’ vision.

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the “direction” of D4 is towards players with deep pockets. plain and simple. they can wax moronic about “we have to appease the blasters!” till the sun explodes. they are not their whales. they barely even inform the whales.
then, we have this cycle of “blaster does a thing super fast, random player tries to do same thing, fails due to skill/difficulty, random players screams into the void (aka twitter/reddit/here) for change, devs cave and change it, blasters complain due to the change and nothing to do, devs bend the knee to their blaster overlords”. we’ve already seen this a few times since launch.
they have also expressed their intent for us to get to “endgame” in a relatively swift manner (earlier in the games life). they then realize that they don’t have much for us to do at “endgame”…so they slap a few more bosses into the mix and give the old ones new “mechanics” thinking that will quell the non-stop barrage of blasters? they will still have all bosses dead and one shotting them within a few days. you need ACTUAL SYSTEMS in the endgame other than bosses.
and i would bet a whole dollar the only reason they are increasing TTL (time to level) is due to PoE 2. they saw people had no real problem with leveling slower over there, so it HAS to work for D4, right? i don’t really think so. PoE1/2 is built from the ground up to be a bit of a slog to level through, especially your first few times. D4 was not built that way.

to be clear, i don’t mind or care that the TTL is going up in S8, but they are going to get a lot of mouths screaming at them due to it taking far longer than in the past.

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A loot filter is not necessary in Diablo 4.

Games with loot filters, the two most notable ARPGs with them being Path of Exile and Last Epoch, fill the screen with items and currencies. And normally loot is a good thing, and the more loot you can get, the better right? But no, in the case of PoE and LE, most of that loot is complete trash that you would never, in your wildest dreams, want to pick up. It gets so bad, so early, that you can’t play the game properly without one unless you want to play ‘trash sorting simulator’ where you try to pick up the one gem in the mountain of crap only to accidentally grab more crap because there’s just so much crap everywhere!

The existence of a loot filter is not a good thing. It’s a bad thing. It means your itemization is so bad that you have to compensate by dropping metric tons of items so players can feel like they’re getting something for their time, and you need to filter out most of it because the itemization on most of the items you get is worth nothing.

I would much rather Blizzard focus on improving itemization and making drops you do get feel meaty and decent, rather than fill the screen with so much crap that you need to filter it out to play the game.

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You’re describing loot in D4.

When contrasting loot ‘diversity’ (bloat) in other games, you’re also describing a core philosophy of player choice: granted, the devs have as much control as they want on the back end… but the players tweak what types of drops they see more of, and less of, on the front end. That’s a collaborative approach to gaming reflected in itemization. D4 devs just haven’t caught on yet.

If - IF - they had a brilliant, elegant, and simple loot design, which complemented a brilliant, elegant, and (deceptively) simple class design, which in turn fit into a solid vision for gameplay + progression… then the “back end” suffices. Kinda like (as some might argue) D2 did it. And like a lot of smaller, less free-form RPGs have done it. Few items, not very much build diversity, but a strong, confident vision for all lanes simultaneously.

That ain’t D4, and never was… and probably never will be. The closest D4 will ever come to it, is by cleaning up messes of its own devising, and doubling down with laser focus on as many QoL implementations as possible - ones that work (unlike Armory 1.0).

Added: Once a client-side loot filter does drop - if it’s preceded & surrounded by real, interesting, and fun endgame systems currently lacking in the game - it’ll be probably the best thing that happened to this game, unfortunately, because of the problem of weak, undercooked vision, content decisions based on quarterly figures & a dev schedule guided by a corpo-robot.

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No, I am not. Not by a long shot.

And this shouldn’t be something players should have to do. I shouldn’t have to go to Maxroll and copy some custom code for a loot filter just so I can play the game. I should just be able to play. And I can currently do that, and for 90% of the game, that works just fine. Can it get a bit annoying in certain types of content where large numbers of items drop at once? Yes, but annoying =/= unplayable.

Whereas here’s what you see if you try to play Path of Exile without a loot filter.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fmky02ltvpw831.jpg

Where’s the item on the map? No idea, I can’t see the map; all I see are item labels covering every bit of the screen. I can’t see my character; I can’t see if there are any enemies left. All I see is loot, 99% of it complete trash that I will never pick up.

The current system of itemization in Diablo 4 still needs work. But even at its worst, it’s a damn side better than the alternatives that need loot filters if you want to actually play the game.

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I’ve noticed that when I play a build that’s close to or similar to a meta build, I don’t need to farm as much because those builds are inherently strong. It’s expected when you take the shortest path to power. However, when I play an off-meta build, the experience is quite different. I find myself having to pick up every single item just to salvage for iron chunks and veiled crystals. And despite all this, I’m still not able to successfully upgrade my gear until I’ve run out of resources, sometimes up to seven times! :rofl: This includes in the late game, when I’m down to my last few items to upgrade, and I’m still running out of resources

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I also mentioned this missing element, and honestly, I’m glad they’re going back and reintroducing it. This change will make gearing feel more fluid as you level, rather than just leveling and then having to find all your gear for a specific build afterward. It will give some builds the ability to level with in a way that wasn’t possible before.