I love the creativity, but I have to ask. Why does everyone, including Blizzard, always say the incentive to play the game is the LOOT? Yes, it is an integral component of the game and needs to be rewarding and fulfilling, but a similarly important portion of the game (and games we used to play) comes from character progression and individuality.
Allow me to explain, breifly, what I'm talking about. For example, Diablo 3 was developed to have a new revolutionary take on ARPG's, the character leveled up, his or her stats are allocated for you, and the skills require no permanent investment. Let's assume this model has no flaws for just a moment. What happens when you play the game with all five characters, and max their levels out? One person might say they have the freedom to change their build at any moment. Is this really the case?
More often than not, the reason you can play a build is because of the way the items are designed. With such a large emphasis on items or "loot," the character or "toon" you create is arbitrary. In a classic ARPG setup, you are committed to investing time into a character, knowing that you have to have confidence in fulfilling the build you created. Yes, accidents happen, skills may get misplaced, or you may develop new interests as you play the game. But that is exactly what helps keep the endgame alive, just like the items, the characters need to cycle out as well.
By having a system where the items are so heavily incentivized it really creates an environment where the only thing you're left reinvesting, isn't your time, its your money. The vast majority of the "top" players according to sites like Diabloprogress.com aren't just lucky fanatics, they're people with fat wallets. If you were to estimate some of the values of these peoples character's gear, you would be astounded. Clearly, on an enthusiast site, I dont need to express the fact that it completely worth it for some people to invest this money in this manner. However, I feel that as it stands right now, more people are pigeonholed into spending money to try and stay afloat because the way that the itemization sits right now (largely because of how important gear is) there are so many drops that unless you have near perfect gear (the elite 1% roll) what you're currently wearing will be obselete and devalued in almost no time flat. It is a repetive gear-replacing game.
Don't get me wrong, theres nothign wrong with being satisfied with a character and getting it to max level. But thats just one way to play the game, and to limit the scope of interest by only allowing players to play that way, is damaging the game. There needs to be incentives in place to keep the characters or toons relevant, or create incentives to make new characters or toons. What I'm NOT saying is that the skill system is broken. Rather, items need to be adjusted, stats need to be adjusted, or some new method of incentive needs to be added for the toon's themselves to have some sort of INTRINSIC value.
OP has made some fantastic suggestions. If I were to keep it simple, I'd suggest that some of the most important stats are static on the items, and that like the OP suggested, drop rates are changed. Although there is some variance because of the drop-rates of ilvl 61-63 (them not all being equal drop rates) there is some variation on what legendaries you find. They need a little more structure, in my opinion. Furthermore, like I suggested before, The characters themselves need some sort of inherent value. Once you max all characters, you have almost no reason to go and play the game. PvP as it stands, atleast in my opinion, is atrocious. It literally is a free-brawl, with no structure. That's not fun to me, because its very one dimensional.
I'm a strong advocate of ladders, and a legitimate PvP system and I stand behind that. They offer value to characters, and force you to recycle characters. I feel that there needs to be some level of player investment for any actual attachment to occur. The fact that in Diablo 2, if you actually reached level 99, your character was as good as it could be as far as your displaceable stats are concerned. You diligently invested every point and skill and in the end you are rewarded with that little extra. Your drop rates are inherently better, similar but not exactly like the paragon MF incentive. Your skills will inherently do more. And you've had to stick to a choice and execute it to the end. And in all reality, in the end of Diablo 2's production, you really get 3 chances to re-select all those points. That's extremely generous in my opinion.
curious to everyones thoughts,
Swag
-edit, clarity and grammar
I feel like that's the point of loot. The Loot was meant to be your stat, has always been this way from the inception of D3. They said hey lets make the game about what the people love, the loot, and use that to build your character. Blizzard has also said they are already looking into a more personalized paragon level system that'd be retro active so they're definitely toying around with stat allocation ideas. Honestly though I love the no skill points I hated the synergies and having to build a path, now i can try whatever i feel like. I would have liked them to keep skill runes in their first iteration, a gold sink of items that allowed you to level up the runes rank 1-7 so that the skills progressively got better, they could've done something like the marquise gems and how hard they are to make unless you have so much gold. All in all they did a damn good job of making a base game, definitely needs some fixes and new mechanics to keep it alive. I guess that's what patches are for.
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Absolutely fantastic. Please tell me you've posted these ideas on the Diablo 3 official forums. I hope you have so that Blizzard can see your work and say WOW these are great ideas.
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I feel like that's the point of loot. The Loot was meant to be your stat, has always been this way from the inception of D3. They said hey lets make the game about what the people love, the loot, and use that to build your character. Blizzard has also said they are already looking into a more personalized paragon level system that'd be retro active so they're definitely toying around with stat allocation ideas. Honestly though I love the no skill points I hated the synergies and having to build a path, now i can try whatever i feel like. I would have liked them to keep skill runes in their first iteration, a gold sink of items that allowed you to level up the runes rank 1-7 so that the skills progressively got better, they could've done something like the marquise gems and how hard they are to make unless you have so much gold. All in all they did a damn good job of making a base game, definitely needs some fixes and new mechanics to keep it alive. I guess that's what patches are for.