Hey development team.
I’m a Diablo fan, but I’m also a fan of other ARPGs, namely grim dawn, last epoch, and path of exile.
Congratulations on your success in building a fantastic action combat. Looks great, sounds great, but I want to bring to your attention something deal breaking for me and what looks like a deal breaker for others. I really want diablo 4 to be a good game, but itemisation is really killing it for me. The stats you have on items really don’t give any ‘thrill’. I want to feel like I’ve discovered something crazy when a legendary drops. When I first saw aspects, I thought it seemed like a great idea, doesn’t feel good at all. Items are just stat sticks with % increases to different damage types, I don’t mean to sound harsh but there hasn’t been any creativity gone into this at all.
If I, as the player, don’t feel motivated or excited to find items, I’m simply not going to log in. You can give me the best graphics I’ve ever seen, most fluid combat, amazing lighting, animation etc but ultimately in an ARPG, it boils down to the items, the build diversity, the discovery.
I would love to see items that roll with awesome affixes that make me think about what affixes I should work with. Its totally okay to draw inspiration from other games. I know you guys are aware of this issue and you have been addressing it by adding new aspects, but the root of the problem is with the affixes in the affix pool.
- Affixes that make use of other stats
rough examples:
for every 15 strength - +5% magic find
for every 10 intelligence - 1% cooldown reduction ( I hate cooldown btw)
while your movement speed is below 20% - gain XXX
theres literally hundreds of combinations we could use.
This makes us think, wow okay, now I want to start stacking this, to do this…
you could even make the stats randomised by splitting the affix into several randomised values rolled within the affix, so that when it rolls it breaks the stats down
for every [random condition] - [ random result ]
while [ random condition ] - [ random result ]
- Affixes that change the way skills work
You’ve already done this recently with the druid. We need more,
change the amount of projectiles
change the projectile behaviour
change the elemental property
change from active to passive
do some crazy imaginative stuff
- Affixes that introduce entirely new skills
Other Notes
Item upgrading, just remove it, I’ve seen this in mobile games, this isn’t a mobile game, although you would think it is with all the monetization. It brings nothing to the excitement of itemization, just bigger numbers, and its actually just a pain to not see the full potential of an item right away when comparing another item that isn’t upgraded. Feels like it’s been implemented as a way to use up crafting materials, think of another idea. Ahem, last epoch, cough cough.
Item power, this isn’t a mobile game, remove it, power is relative to the stats on the item and the character you have, and if you rework the stats to a broader pool with interesting affixes item power will be irrelevant.
I would also love to see the character skill tree completely reworked. Its kind of meh, for similar reasons, I love Grim dawns tree, but I’m sure a multibillion dollar company can come up with something more interesting. Increase the point cap on all skills, give us the freedom to spec into what ever skill we want, add more skills, and definatly add much more modifiers to skills to change the way they work.
Get a bunch of item designers together over several weeks to spend entirely on item affixes, include the community, be creative. Let the players choose their own builds by giving the player many options to work with.
I understand this is a huge task, but it will restore this game, and keep players coming back for more.
Good luck.