Why are items so bland?

PC General Discussion
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I can deal with all the gameplay decisions they have made in some capacity (namely resource generation and level scaling) even if I’m not a fan of the concept.

However there is something I cannot accept nor wrap my head around : the loot.

Where are the iconic D2 items that made the franchise memorable ?

Im not talking about the 2 BiS items (Shako which ironically some peple are calling Crest which is pissing me off, and Grand Father) that have the same drop rate as winning the powerball twice on a full moon.

Im talking about the items that we would all grind for whether its for your current char or alt ,namely but not limited to the following.

Vipermagi, Skullder, Arcane Valor, Quegwan, Shaft, Ormus - thats just armor uniques alone.

Where are the amazing rings ? Stone of Jordan, Bul Khatos, Raven Frost, Dwarf, Whisp, mana heald ?

Where are the amazing amulets ? Mara, Atma, Metalgrid, highlords

Where are the amazing weapon uniques ? Death web ? Occulus ? Lightsaber ,Titan Thunderstroke?

Where are the amazing gloves and boots ? War Travelers, Waterwalk , Gore, Trires yellow boots ( res is useless in D4 I know )
Magefist, draculs, hellmouth hell even frostburn
→ Ok I’m wrong Frostburn is in the game as a lame legendary that does not increase your resources (wtf)

Where are the amazing helmets ?
Arreat, Griffon, Gaze, CoA
I saw Andy face was in the game yet the illustration is nothing like andy face, just another random leggo.
Where is Jalal I mean wtf ? You made a druid but you havent added Jalal to the game ? What is going on ?

Where is the Wolfhowl ? Are you telling me that both Barb and Druid are in the game but I can’t make a Barb Wolf build ? Why was it possible 20 years ago and not now ?

Now to the shields, essentially they are useless in D4 which is a shame, no one uses them. Where is stormshield, moser, blackoak?

I could go on and on , i haven’t even mentioned runewords nor set items yet.

What exactly are we supposed to grind for? Level 100? If there is no incentive with this boring loot how does Blizzard expects us to keep playing ?

100 Likes
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The loot is indeed boring

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Lack of talent would be my guess. The items are so generic. Instead of having 2-3 for each skill that do something, they just a +20% to core skills. Boom no need to make a affix for each skill. So lazy.

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I’m starting to think they are holding out for seasons or something. Game shipped unfinished

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When i say boring i mean. I will go home today , play my 66 and know that i will not even have to look at the gear all night. Just take to armor dude and break down .

This game was clearly not playtested after 50 ish. Certainly not fun tested .

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Some very wishful thinking. I don’t think I saw a single new legendary affix that wasn’t in beta. We were told there are 100s we haven’t seen.

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Agreed there needs to be way more unique items with unique affixes

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D3 had rend stacks 2x, bleeds faster legendaries, you could change it from fire, cold, lightning, phys. This game went back like 15 years.

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It’s partially that they are holding out for seasons. But a good portion of the game wasn’t ready for release no matter how you look at it.

Ladder is 3 seasons away according to developers. Disconnect protection for dying in hardcore is season 2. The game launched without any kind of solo self found designation. Majority of the content in the game is a clone of D3 content.

Just look at sigils. They go in your consumable tab. It’s like it wasn’t even a consideration how that would work and they just threw them into the game last minute.

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I bought the game simply because of peer pressure and it’s 100% my fault. I played the beta and was not convinced however most of my friendlist already had preordered ultimate to play and grind early.

I realized at lvl 50 in WT2 that the gameplay loop was not satisfying but i wanted to push to WT4 to see if there were any changes. Made it to lvl 75 WT4 and the only difference is the word “Sacred” has been replaced by “Ancestral”, that wasn’t exactly the endgame loot grinding and collecting I was looking for unfortunately

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I dont think the D4 team has any clue on how to make interesting loot that you actually want to grind for.

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Which is ironic because legendary affixes boost certain skills.

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Harlequin Crest is the name of the item and has been since d1, shako is just the TYPE of item from D2

It’d be like getting pissed that someone was calling it Vipermagi instead of Serpentskin armor

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Where are the iconic sets? The runewords? We got aspects instead.

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Well, sets and runewords are slated to come in the future

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Am I missing something? I picked the first item you said, Vipermagi.

+120% Def
+1 All skills
+30% Faster Cast Speed
and some resistances.

I figured people were wanting effects unique to that specific item only. What is special, unique, and different about that than what we have now? Did I choose a bad one from the list?

1 Like
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Thing about uniques is that they are meant to ignore the mod rules on items no?
So a pair of unique boots could have attack speed for example.

But i think generally the devs just doesnt have the insight or knowledge enough about arpgs as a whole and what is good from other games or what is bad from other games. How to create a long lasting item hunt. Cause this item hunt we got now (except for a very few uniques) is very instant gratification but very very short lived.

Rare items is super generic, theres no chase affixes/mods. It seems pretty much everything has equal weighting. Its 100% roll based. You ALWAYS will get "+21% Vulnerable Damage. (14% - 28%) as a range. No tiered system. It’s VERY easy to get all your items to a good spot like 90% of your power. And then your left with miniscules upgrades in the form of better rolls.

With a tiered affix system, it feels better to upgrade from a tier 3 vuln roll to a tier 2 or tier 1 vuln. Even if the total numbers doesnt change much, its all about tricking your mind.

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If you went from a random rare to a vipermagi your character immediately felt stronger bother offense and defense.

Combat was smoother, you could cast your spells more often so you could clear mobs faster. It increased the power of ALL your skills/synergies.

Resistances were actually important and something you needed.

You could socket it, throw in a p topaz and now it has some magic find too, fantastic.

It had trade value.

You could use it for potentially many levels instead of finding something with a couple more percentage points 2 levels later.

Once you were done with it you could put it on an alt and it would still be valuable, or easily trade it for something your main needed.

All of that with 1 mid range unique item.

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Blizzard nowadays is more worried about cosmetics than create a good memorable game.
What they told few months ago that they’d bring the old diablo game back wasn’t true.
So many bugs that holds fun back

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Yeah, I think they will add things to seasons that were intended to be in the base game before they had to force the game out for release date. They will play it off as brand new features and additions to try to draw people back while working on finishing up beta. :rofl:

1 Like