I still think most people are missing the main point. "Clearly" everyone feels items arent what they should be progressively speaking from a D2 to a D3 stand point. However, fixing all the needs of the players is not lucrative enough for blizzard to do in a "ONE SHOT METHOD". I bet anyone out there that with the upcoming patches you will see ....little by little .... things like Charms, Runes(d2style) and more and more class specific items return to the game. Why do you ask ? Because its about longevity not about making everyone happy right now.
I still think most people are missing the main point. "Clearly" everyone feels items arent what they should be progressively speaking from a D2 to a D3 stand point. However, fixing all the needs of the players is not lucrative enough for blizzard to do in a "ONE SHOT METHOD". I bet anyone out there that with the upcoming patches you will see ....little by little .... things like Charms, Runes(d2style) and more and more class specific items return to the game. Why do you ask ? Because its about longevity not about making everyone happy right now.
Socketing an item existed in d2:classic... it would be nice even if we had that. At least we'd have a real use for all of the crappy sojs that drop in this game.
I just gotta think this was an easy problem for them to fix. You look at a game like Path of Exile, and it's problems mostly center around its poor overall presentation, ease of use, animations, satisfying combat, and technology in general. This is the hardest thing to produce, and blizzard nailed all of this stuff perfectly.
All blizzard needs to fix is the numbers and spreadsheets behind the game. I am not trying to make it seem trivial - I'm sure it's not - but this is the kind of problem a game company wants to have, as it's far less costly to fix this stuff compared to the mountain that GGG would have to climb when it comes to improving technology and production values.
I think part of the problem is that there is very little reason to think blizzard is doing anything to correct these problems. They don't discuss it with us. There are hardly any blue posts these days, and the ones that do show up on their forums have to deal with things of no interest to the long-term players at all. They are more interested in poems and pandas. They hardly reach out to their customer base these days.
Even when it comes to something as simple as fixing Thorns modifiers on items, they say it's going to take months, not weeks or days. This is a problem. If it takes them that long to fix thorns, I don't want to know how long it's going to take to fix the rest of it - if they ever fix it before the expansion (which I think is doubtful).
Just passing by to say thank you for hearing my suggestion about itemization. The discussion is really interesting and I really like to see blizzard write a blog about it too, telling us if they're satisfied with the actual itemization system or whatever they can do to improve it.
RMAH is not as prominent anymore because the best item will be in AH for 800mil-a billion gold
thats more than the 250 dollars cap if u sell your gold at current price of US$.35
Blizzard will never fix this game.. because everything that can be fixed, goes against the RMAH.
I hope I'm terribly wrong, but so far, it's not the case.
That's not necessarily true at all. Fixing most problems with the itemization would only improve the RMAH. Only minimizing the variances on items might actually hurt it. But adding more class-defining items, more variety in legendaries, a reason for white and blue items, improving crafting, etc. would only improve things for blizzard's bottom line. That is why it is so shocking that the itemization is so boring and lazy.
Your show brought up a lot of good points, but I truly think it was a mistake to avoid comparing Diablo 2 to Diablo 3. When players look at the Diablo franchise they have expectations built around already established game mechanics, and when Diablo 3 came out they decided to go in a completely different direction when it came to itemization. It would be akin to buying a PC and getting a mac instead.
Itemization is the lifeblood of any ARPG and Blizzards choice to reinvent the wheel was probably their biggest blunder. Simply put, itemization is the foundation of how the game will play out. It dictates every variable a character is able to change, and change promotes choice. Looking at the base itemization comparisons between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 any person with half a brain can see that there is a seriously large difference in the amount of affixes and variables available to the player. These problems were created largely by two major changes to the way that Diablo 3 interacts with the player.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage and Defenses
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 2 on the other hand had a handful of affixes that were completely essential to one build and completely essential to another. Take druid for example: an elementalist had little use for crushing blow, but was utterly essential for a Lycan. At the same time Lycans REQUIRED lifesteal and IAS, but what was the point of it for elementalists. in contrast FCR and +fire skill damage was seen as one of the most desirable stats for a elements druids, but not a Lycan. Just a SINGLE class could find use in almost every single affix there was, but it completely depended on the build. The only affix that followed the Diablo 3 philosophy of 'one size fits all' is the +skill affix.
Defenses: Hit recovery, DR%, AR, and resistances. These are what made up the majority of how a character chose to stay alive in Diablo 2. If you couldn't hit a monster you upped your AR. If you were getting hit and died because you couldn't cast a spell, or were getting recovery locked, you found gear to up your hit recovery. If you bumped into Diablo with 40 fire resistance on hell chances were you'd be dead in seconds, so you looked around for pieces that would increase your resistance to that... and last but not least was DR%, which was the end all be all of defenses. It was the stat you saw on a piece of gear and KNEW it was good.. but at the same time it wasn't oversaturated in gear.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
I'm not trying to be a downer here, but ultimately the changes seen in Diablo 3 have consoladated and simplified the game so much that there literally aren't affixes that they can introduce that would make a substantial change to the game unless they changed the way the character interacts with its environment and skills... and I just don't see that happening. I haven't lost completely faith in Diablo 3 but I just don't see Blizzard calling their failure and re-reinventing the wheel to allow for such a change.
Blizzard will never fix this game.. because everything that can be fixed, goes against the RMAH.
I hope I'm terribly wrong, but so far, it's not the case.
That's not necessarily true at all. Fixing most problems with the itemization would only improve the RMAH. Only minimizing the variances on items might actually hurt it. But adding more class-defining items, more variety in legendaries, a reason for white and blue items, improving crafting, etc. would only improve things for blizzard's bottom line. That is why it is so shocking that the itemization is so boring and lazy.
I disagree, not necessarily with what you say, but with the way you look at it.
With the current system, every new patch and expansion has the potential to bring more powerful items: they're just like the previous items, except with bigger numbers. Like WoW xpacs: when a new one hits, previous items are automatically crap. This creates a pressure for players (the ones that stuck with the game, as well as ones that came back and new players as well) to quickly acquire the new 'tiers' of items. That sometimes means using the RMAH.
WIth a (let's call it) 'D2-style' system, new items that are inserted into the game aren't necessarily 'the old ones but with bigger numbers', and they're not necessarily 'better'; they're just different. So, the xpac hits, and your stuff is still good, it's not suddenly useless. Sure, you want the new stuff, because it's, well, new, and it's different, and it's a breath of fresh air. But it's not flat-out 'better', so the pressure to acquire it isn't nearly as big. Which means, less RMAH usage.
That's how I see it, at least.
I don't see how adding things like better crafts, more class-defining items, etc. would remove rmah profits from items introduced into the economy via new patches or an expansion though. I think the ideas are totally separate. My point is that if there were more variety and more interesting items even now, the RMAH sales would have been greater and would have peeked for a much longer period of time before the next patch.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
That's hitting the nail on the head, IMO. They oversimplified the interaction of weapons to character and then allowed for certain items to be clear winners in all categories.
While these mis-steps will be hard to fix, I really wish Blizz would step up and get to work on fixing them.
My thoughts for places to start:
Cap the hell out of All Resist. Just like they lowered IAS back in the day, take AR and cap it at 15. This will immediately make individual resist items far more valuable and force people to think about their selection.
Split up the Trifecta. Make it so IAS, CC & CD cannot co-exist on any item anywhere. You can only have one at a time. This would immediately diversify the item pool and make any item with one of these stats with a good roll is now a good item. As for retroactively applying this.. Keep whichever stat had the highest roll. If there's a tie, randomly select the one to keep.
Get rid of, or change, "stupid" items: Witching Hour, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward. There are probably others, but these are the ones that strike me as being completely OP to the point where nothing else even comes close. The sheer number of people with ugly-ass goat shoulders (myself included) is idiotic.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
That's hitting the nail on the head, IMO. They oversimplified the interaction of weapons to character and then allowed for certain items to be clear winners in all categories.
While these mis-steps will be hard to fix, I really wish Blizz would step up and get to work on fixing them.
My thoughts for places to start:
Cap the hell out of All Resist. Just like they lowered IAS back in the day, take AR and cap it at 15. This will immediately make individual resist items far more valuable and force people to think about their selection.
Split up the Trifecta. Make it so IAS, CC & CD cannot co-exist on any item anywhere. You can only have one at a time. This would immediately diversify the item pool and make any item with one of these stats with a good roll is now a good item. As for retroactively applying this.. Keep whichever stat had the highest roll. If there's a tie, randomly select the one to keep.
Get rid of, or change, "stupid" items: Witching Hour, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward. There are probably others, but these are the ones that strike me as being completely OP to the point where nothing else even comes close. The sheer number of people with ugly-ass goat shoulders (myself included) is idiotic.
Wyllder
Im sorry, that's a TERRIBLE idea.
Buff the lesser used affixes, add new diverse affixes (that are competitive with the top dogs), improve elemental damage/effects (they had this in at one point, easy to bring back.), add socketing (they already HAD this in earlier builds of D3, would be EASY to bring back in), improve crafting, have an Inferno version of lower level Legendarys.
POW
The end game just got a whole lot more interesting.
Make the lesser appealing stuff BETTER, dont nerf the hell out of everything.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
That's hitting the nail on the head, IMO. They oversimplified the interaction of weapons to character and then allowed for certain items to be clear winners in all categories.
While these mis-steps will be hard to fix, I really wish Blizz would step up and get to work on fixing them.
My thoughts for places to start:
Cap the hell out of All Resist. Just like they lowered IAS back in the day, take AR and cap it at 15. This will immediately make individual resist items far more valuable and force people to think about their selection.
Split up the Trifecta. Make it so IAS, CC & CD cannot co-exist on any item anywhere. You can only have one at a time. This would immediately diversify the item pool and make any item with one of these stats with a good roll is now a good item. As for retroactively applying this.. Keep whichever stat had the highest roll. If there's a tie, randomly select the one to keep.
Get rid of, or change, "stupid" items: Witching Hour, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward. There are probably others, but these are the ones that strike me as being completely OP to the point where nothing else even comes close. The sheer number of people with ugly-ass goat shoulders (myself included) is idiotic.
Wyllder
Im sorry, that's a TERRIBLE idea.
Buff the lesser used affixes, add new diverse affixes (that are competitive with the top dogs), improve elemental damage/effects (they had this in at one point, easy to bring back.), add socketing (they already HAD this in earlier builds of D3, would be EASY to bring back in), improve crafting, have an Inferno version of lower level Legendarys.
POW
The end game just got a whole lot more interesting.
Make the lesser appealing stuff BETTER, dont nerf the hell out of everything.
Ok.. So tweaking the existing item pool to improve diversity is a terrible idea but adding all sorts of new items, affixes & tweaking capabilities to have the same net effect (spread out the pool of "best" items) is a grand idea? Sounds to me like they are just philosophically different solutions to the same problem.
I am not nerfphobic and could care less how we arrive at a better balanced game with improved item diversity so long as we get there.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
That's hitting the nail on the head, IMO. They oversimplified the interaction of weapons to character and then allowed for certain items to be clear winners in all categories.
While these mis-steps will be hard to fix, I really wish Blizz would step up and get to work on fixing them.
My thoughts for places to start:
Cap the hell out of All Resist. Just like they lowered IAS back in the day, take AR and cap it at 15. This will immediately make individual resist items far more valuable and force people to think about their selection.
Split up the Trifecta. Make it so IAS, CC & CD cannot co-exist on any item anywhere. You can only have one at a time. This would immediately diversify the item pool and make any item with one of these stats with a good roll is now a good item. As for retroactively applying this.. Keep whichever stat had the highest roll. If there's a tie, randomly select the one to keep.
Get rid of, or change, "stupid" items: Witching Hour, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward. There are probably others, but these are the ones that strike me as being completely OP to the point where nothing else even comes close. The sheer number of people with ugly-ass goat shoulders (myself included) is idiotic.
Wyllder
Im sorry, that's a TERRIBLE idea.
Buff the lesser used affixes, add new diverse affixes (that are competitive with the top dogs), improve elemental damage/effects (they had this in at one point, easy to bring back.), add socketing (they already HAD this in earlier builds of D3, would be EASY to bring back in), improve crafting, have an Inferno version of lower level Legendarys.
POW
The end game just got a whole lot more interesting.
Make the lesser appealing stuff BETTER, dont nerf the hell out of everything.
Ok.. So tweaking the existing item pool to improve diversity is a terrible idea but adding all sorts of new items, affixes & tweaking capabilities to have the same net effect (spread out the pool of "best" items) is a grand idea? Sounds to me like they are just philosophically different solutions to the same problem.
I am not nerfphobic and could care less how we arrive at a better balanced game with improved item diversity so long as we get there.
Wyllder
In essence, yes, they have a similar effect.
With one MASSIVE difference.
Your solution has no viable way of implementation, everyone already HAS high end res all gear, and trifectas, etc.
Unless you are proposing Blizzard outright changes all of these existing items?
lol, you want to see a massive shitstorm? That would be how to do it.
I dont necessarily think itemization is that bad, it's the availability of items.
If you had limited access to the items you can get for dirt cheap in the AH, we wouldnt see thousands of people with near perfect legendary sets running around with perfectly fitting stats. Trifectas would be practically a myth, and getting a rare with Vit, Primary, AR and even 1 additional dps stat would be considered "godly".
Then if they just lowered the total number of drops, and increased the quality, the loot hunt wouldnt feel so empty. They seem to keep trying to fix the horrible rate of good tiems found by ever-increasing the number of drops we get. Which only makes the problem feel worse because you go through 100 items every 30 minutes, and they all suck.
If we got 10 rares every 30 minutes (1 every 3 minutes) it wouldnt feel so depressing and exhausting.
Add a major item sink at all qualities of gear, lower overall drops, increase quality of drops and itemization wouldnt feel this way.
Unfortunately it is too late, and they would have to create a whole new tier of gear and basically reset what is a "good" item to fix it now.
Blizzard will not nerf items. And they will not touch items that you already own. If they change specific items, they might introduce "legacy" as for the old sets. They will just buff everything else.
I like the ideas of cap for specific stats. Like allres, crit, APS, crit damage.
And I completely support the idea of providing alternatives to OP items like Vile Ward, Mempo and WH. So ridiculous that every single guy in Tristram runs around with these stupid toothpicks on his shoulders and head.
Unfortunately adding new items or changing the way current affixes work won't fix the problem... because the problem is diversity. That problem in itself compounds with the other problem which is that there isn't really much room for movement without introducing new systems in the game. Right now all the systems they have in place already cover everything you could cover in a consolidated way. AR and defense completely cover damage reduction, and the quidfecta/quadfecta/trifecta equipment already covers every modification to skills you can possible have.
I can't even think of a single affix they could add that isn't already covered with the current way the skill, defense and monster systems work.
I think blizzard is lost about what they really want for itemization.
1) First philosophy: blizzard want a character with blue rare and legendary at the same time. It worked at the beginning, a wizzard of method killed diablo inferno with a blue weapon mixed with rares. But then people complained "why a blue is better than a rare and legendary, etc" and make blizzard think again.
2) Second philosophy: "We agree legendaries are bad", buffed and happened what I'm afraid of: rares are nearly useless, and everybody looking the same gear, it feels like: if you don't drop this you're garbage. Legendaries have some fixed 50%+ god affixes, and comes to my question: is this good or bad? don't this devaluate rares too much? how many runs I see players leaving rares on the ground and just getting legendaries now?
3) Third philosophy: "MP and Paragon will give the game more end game". I agree with that, but we don't have ladder and the game don't even have a year. My point is: don't this devalue MF and GF too much as a long term? I mean it's another affix that sooner or later will be useless, and it was meant as an affix that worth your choice at cost of dps.
In short: Blizzard is confused about it's own philosophy, there are so many OP affixes that even if they buff life on kill or thorns it's still going to be useless, because characters reached a level of nearly perfection I'd say. Probably the only fix is some kind of nerf/adjustment on the trifecta, resist all etc.
Oh before I forget, they have to improve what they have now, the system right now, fixing some numbers, etc. Putting D2 idea into D3 it's nearly impossible. Is the same thing as saying: Guys we failed, we should've started that way from the start.
I think blizzard is lost about what they really want for itemization.
1) First philosophy: blizzard want a character with blue rare and legendary at the same time. It worked at the beginning, a wizzard of method killed diablo inferno with a blue weapon mixed with rares. But then people complained "why a blue is better than a rare and legendary, etc" and make blizzard think again.
2) Second philosophy: "We agree legendaries are bad", buffed and happened what I'm afraid of: rares are nearly useless, and everybody looking the same gear, it feels like: if you don't drop this you're garbage. Legendaries have some fixed 50%+ god affixes, and comes to my question: is this good or bad? don't this devaluate rares too much? how many runs I see players leaving rares on the ground and just getting legendaries now?
3) Third philosophy: "MP and Paragon will give the game more end game". I agree with that, but we don't have ladder and the game don't even have a year. My point is: don't this devalue MF and GF too much as a long term? I mean it's another affix that sooner or later will be useless, and it was meant as an affix that worth your choice at cost of dps.
In short: Blizzard is confused about it's own philosophy, there are so many OP affixes that even if they buff life on kill or thorns it's still going to be useless, because characters reached a level of nearly perfection I'd say. Probably the only fix is some kind of nerf/adjustment on the trifecta, resist all etc.
Oh before I forget, they have to improve what they have now, the system right now, fixing some numbers, etc. Putting D2 idea into D3 it's nearly impossible. Is the same thing as saying: Guys we failed, we should've started that way from the start.
Everyone complained about Leggi items being horrible (which it was) now everyone just leaves rare on the floor(farming Leggies) when they do runs because 99% of all rare items is absolute garbage, i mean a wichdoctor ceremonial knife that drops with 300 dex ? But then agian there is that 1 in 10000000000 chance that a rare can be godly and be a 1bil or 2bil item. and not to mention everyone has vile ward shoulders..there is no real custimization for each player. but the game will only get better not worse Blizzard is doing a good job trying to get to everyone's needs. 1 step at a time. i can assure you when pvp gets released it will be unbalanced as hell and with time it will get balanced but that is (when) pvp arrives
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Nomanis sane whodoesnot knowhow to beinsaneonproperoccasions.
Blizzard will not nerf items. And they will not touch items that you already own. If they change specific items, they might introduce "legacy" as for the old sets. They will just buff everything else.
I used to have gloves with 20% Attack Speed. I think that's enough to prove the precedent.
If they introduce a whole slew of new items that are as good or better than (or let you improve) existing items, this would have the effect of devaluing existing gear.
As I think about this I just try to view what the game would be like if the changes I suggested were implemented. I'm not thinking about the shitstorm of complaining they would create. As I'm fairly certain this will never come to pass I can comfortably theorize on this from a totally objective viewpoint. Sadly, Blizzard doesn't have this luxury.
Wyllder
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I wanted to share the new episode of "State of Diablo 3" with you:
Part 3, Itemization
I hope you all enjoy it, and more importantly, leave your thoughts and comments on the current itemization in the comments. Thanks for watching.
Cheers 0/
RTG Sibcoe
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www.facebook.com/Sibcoe
Socketing an item existed in d2:classic... it would be nice even if we had that. At least we'd have a real use for all of the crappy sojs that drop in this game.
I just gotta think this was an easy problem for them to fix. You look at a game like Path of Exile, and it's problems mostly center around its poor overall presentation, ease of use, animations, satisfying combat, and technology in general. This is the hardest thing to produce, and blizzard nailed all of this stuff perfectly.
All blizzard needs to fix is the numbers and spreadsheets behind the game. I am not trying to make it seem trivial - I'm sure it's not - but this is the kind of problem a game company wants to have, as it's far less costly to fix this stuff compared to the mountain that GGG would have to climb when it comes to improving technology and production values.
I think part of the problem is that there is very little reason to think blizzard is doing anything to correct these problems. They don't discuss it with us. There are hardly any blue posts these days, and the ones that do show up on their forums have to deal with things of no interest to the long-term players at all. They are more interested in poems and pandas. They hardly reach out to their customer base these days.
Even when it comes to something as simple as fixing Thorns modifiers on items, they say it's going to take months, not weeks or days. This is a problem. If it takes them that long to fix thorns, I don't want to know how long it's going to take to fix the rest of it - if they ever fix it before the expansion (which I think is doubtful).
Keep up the good work!
I hope I'm terribly wrong, but so far, it's not the case.
thats more than the 250 dollars cap if u sell your gold at current price of US$.35
That's not necessarily true at all. Fixing most problems with the itemization would only improve the RMAH. Only minimizing the variances on items might actually hurt it. But adding more class-defining items, more variety in legendaries, a reason for white and blue items, improving crafting, etc. would only improve things for blizzard's bottom line. That is why it is so shocking that the itemization is so boring and lazy.
Itemization is the lifeblood of any ARPG and Blizzards choice to reinvent the wheel was probably their biggest blunder. Simply put, itemization is the foundation of how the game will play out. It dictates every variable a character is able to change, and change promotes choice. Looking at the base itemization comparisons between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 any person with half a brain can see that there is a seriously large difference in the amount of affixes and variables available to the player. These problems were created largely by two major changes to the way that Diablo 3 interacts with the player.
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage and Defenses
Weapon DPS and Skill Damage: The correlation between the two has been devastating the item pool of Diablo 3 since the beginning. Diablo 3 focuses heavily on a simple formula that even a child could understand: Skill Damage = weapon damage + class stat + IAS + Average Damage + Critical Chance + Critical Damage. Any way you look at it all you have to do is stack these affixes and your damage will go up, and not only will YOUR damage go up but EVERYBODY'S damage will go up because Diablo is a game about using skills, and because every character uses skills... every character will follow that formula.
Diablo 2 on the other hand had a handful of affixes that were completely essential to one build and completely essential to another. Take druid for example: an elementalist had little use for crushing blow, but was utterly essential for a Lycan. At the same time Lycans REQUIRED lifesteal and IAS, but what was the point of it for elementalists. in contrast FCR and +fire skill damage was seen as one of the most desirable stats for a elements druids, but not a Lycan. Just a SINGLE class could find use in almost every single affix there was, but it completely depended on the build. The only affix that followed the Diablo 3 philosophy of 'one size fits all' is the +skill affix.
Defenses: Hit recovery, DR%, AR, and resistances. These are what made up the majority of how a character chose to stay alive in Diablo 2. If you couldn't hit a monster you upped your AR. If you were getting hit and died because you couldn't cast a spell, or were getting recovery locked, you found gear to up your hit recovery. If you bumped into Diablo with 40 fire resistance on hell chances were you'd be dead in seconds, so you looked around for pieces that would increase your resistance to that... and last but not least was DR%, which was the end all be all of defenses. It was the stat you saw on a piece of gear and KNEW it was good.. but at the same time it wasn't oversaturated in gear.
Diablo 3 decided to do away with the chance to miss. It got rid of any kind of hit recovery and let your character be a beast tank who could take hits but keep on the move. They consolidated resistances and DR% by trivializing elemental damage with the introduction to +all resist on EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GEAR. There is no more CHOICE left - only +all resist.
I'm not trying to be a downer here, but ultimately the changes seen in Diablo 3 have consoladated and simplified the game so much that there literally aren't affixes that they can introduce that would make a substantial change to the game unless they changed the way the character interacts with its environment and skills... and I just don't see that happening. I haven't lost completely faith in Diablo 3 but I just don't see Blizzard calling their failure and re-reinventing the wheel to allow for such a change.
I don't see how adding things like better crafts, more class-defining items, etc. would remove rmah profits from items introduced into the economy via new patches or an expansion though. I think the ideas are totally separate. My point is that if there were more variety and more interesting items even now, the RMAH sales would have been greater and would have peeked for a much longer period of time before the next patch.
That's hitting the nail on the head, IMO. They oversimplified the interaction of weapons to character and then allowed for certain items to be clear winners in all categories.
While these mis-steps will be hard to fix, I really wish Blizz would step up and get to work on fixing them.
My thoughts for places to start:
Cap the hell out of All Resist. Just like they lowered IAS back in the day, take AR and cap it at 15. This will immediately make individual resist items far more valuable and force people to think about their selection.
Split up the Trifecta. Make it so IAS, CC & CD cannot co-exist on any item anywhere. You can only have one at a time. This would immediately diversify the item pool and make any item with one of these stats with a good roll is now a good item. As for retroactively applying this.. Keep whichever stat had the highest roll. If there's a tie, randomly select the one to keep.
Get rid of, or change, "stupid" items: Witching Hour, Mempo of Twilight, Vile Ward. There are probably others, but these are the ones that strike me as being completely OP to the point where nothing else even comes close. The sheer number of people with ugly-ass goat shoulders (myself included) is idiotic.
Wyllder
Im sorry, that's a TERRIBLE idea.
Buff the lesser used affixes, add new diverse affixes (that are competitive with the top dogs), improve elemental damage/effects (they had this in at one point, easy to bring back.), add socketing (they already HAD this in earlier builds of D3, would be EASY to bring back in), improve crafting, have an Inferno version of lower level Legendarys.
POW
The end game just got a whole lot more interesting.
Make the lesser appealing stuff BETTER, dont nerf the hell out of everything.
Ok.. So tweaking the existing item pool to improve diversity is a terrible idea but adding all sorts of new items, affixes & tweaking capabilities to have the same net effect (spread out the pool of "best" items) is a grand idea? Sounds to me like they are just philosophically different solutions to the same problem.
I am not nerfphobic and could care less how we arrive at a better balanced game with improved item diversity so long as we get there.
Wyllder
In essence, yes, they have a similar effect.
With one MASSIVE difference.
Your solution has no viable way of implementation, everyone already HAS high end res all gear, and trifectas, etc.
Unless you are proposing Blizzard outright changes all of these existing items?
lol, you want to see a massive shitstorm? That would be how to do it.
If you had limited access to the items you can get for dirt cheap in the AH, we wouldnt see thousands of people with near perfect legendary sets running around with perfectly fitting stats. Trifectas would be practically a myth, and getting a rare with Vit, Primary, AR and even 1 additional dps stat would be considered "godly".
Then if they just lowered the total number of drops, and increased the quality, the loot hunt wouldnt feel so empty. They seem to keep trying to fix the horrible rate of good tiems found by ever-increasing the number of drops we get. Which only makes the problem feel worse because you go through 100 items every 30 minutes, and they all suck.
If we got 10 rares every 30 minutes (1 every 3 minutes) it wouldnt feel so depressing and exhausting.
Add a major item sink at all qualities of gear, lower overall drops, increase quality of drops and itemization wouldnt feel this way.
Unfortunately it is too late, and they would have to create a whole new tier of gear and basically reset what is a "good" item to fix it now.
I like the ideas of cap for specific stats. Like allres, crit, APS, crit damage.
And I completely support the idea of providing alternatives to OP items like Vile Ward, Mempo and WH. So ridiculous that every single guy in Tristram runs around with these stupid toothpicks on his shoulders and head.
I can't even think of a single affix they could add that isn't already covered with the current way the skill, defense and monster systems work.
1) First philosophy: blizzard want a character with blue rare and legendary at the same time. It worked at the beginning, a wizzard of method killed diablo inferno with a blue weapon mixed with rares. But then people complained "why a blue is better than a rare and legendary, etc" and make blizzard think again.
2) Second philosophy: "We agree legendaries are bad", buffed and happened what I'm afraid of: rares are nearly useless, and everybody looking the same gear, it feels like: if you don't drop this you're garbage. Legendaries have some fixed 50%+ god affixes, and comes to my question: is this good or bad? don't this devaluate rares too much? how many runs I see players leaving rares on the ground and just getting legendaries now?
3) Third philosophy: "MP and Paragon will give the game more end game". I agree with that, but we don't have ladder and the game don't even have a year. My point is: don't this devalue MF and GF too much as a long term? I mean it's another affix that sooner or later will be useless, and it was meant as an affix that worth your choice at cost of dps.
In short: Blizzard is confused about it's own philosophy, there are so many OP affixes that even if they buff life on kill or thorns it's still going to be useless, because characters reached a level of nearly perfection I'd say. Probably the only fix is some kind of nerf/adjustment on the trifecta, resist all etc.
Oh before I forget, they have to improve what they have now, the system right now, fixing some numbers, etc. Putting D2 idea into D3 it's nearly impossible. Is the same thing as saying: Guys we failed, we should've started that way from the start.
Everyone complained about Leggi items being horrible (which it was) now everyone just leaves rare on the floor(farming Leggies) when they do runs because 99% of all rare items is absolute garbage, i mean a wichdoctor ceremonial knife that drops with 300 dex ? But then agian there is that 1 in 10000000000 chance that a rare can be godly and be a 1bil or 2bil item. and not to mention everyone has vile ward shoulders..there is no real custimization for each player. but the game will only get better not worse Blizzard is doing a good job trying to get to everyone's needs. 1 step at a time. i can assure you when pvp gets released it will be unbalanced as hell and with time it will get balanced but that is (when) pvp arrives
No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
I used to have gloves with 20% Attack Speed. I think that's enough to prove the precedent.
If they introduce a whole slew of new items that are as good or better than (or let you improve) existing items, this would have the effect of devaluing existing gear.
As I think about this I just try to view what the game would be like if the changes I suggested were implemented. I'm not thinking about the shitstorm of complaining they would create. As I'm fairly certain this will never come to pass I can comfortably theorize on this from a totally objective viewpoint. Sadly, Blizzard doesn't have this luxury.
Wyllder