Loot should not be "smart". 6 things Diablo IV could learn from Diablo II
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In terms of items, Diablo 3 turned out to be a festival of extremes. Before the Loot 2.0 system, players were inundated with useless junk, and heroes at some point became paper-thin in terms of playability, because it was difficult to get the right equipment. Then came the long-awaited changes and it turned out that plenty is no... well, it actually may turn out to be a plague. And a headache. And the party starts to get boring too, only it's because of saturation rather than frustration.
In Diablo 3, after another patch and the Reaper of Souls addon, the so-called smart loot was introduced. A seemingly brilliant solution. This is because the items that fall out usually turn out to be more or less matched to our character class (or our build – that's another matter). It's more common to find gear that raises a character's base stats or is part of a set – those damn sets again – or at least is a reasonably attractive legendary item. In addition, gold and green items are showering us like a piñata. From a certain point on, there's no point in bending down for an item that doesn't shine with a beam of power. This raises several problems, such as less room for maneuver within a single character (although we can freely flip items in our chest) and the most important one, which is the impending boredom.
If there's anything I'm afraid of with Diablo 4, it's that it might copy any of these mechanisms running in the background. Meanwhile, Diablo 2 again proves to be the world champion here, matched by neither Grim Dawn, Path of Exile, Wolcen, nor Titan Quest (we'll see about Last Epoch, that game looks like the fruit of love, but I don't know if that's enough). A rare gold item or part of a powerful set – oh man, that was somewhat festive. But even yellow magic items often provided a nice power surge. They fell out at just the right pace to add variety to the gameplay, while also making the blue items, which are fairly ordinary, at least momentarily necessary. And the runes discussed earlier made basically ordinary items with the right number of slots and high base stats a real treasure.
More room to maneuver, more variety, more at stake, and more fun. Well, Blizzard, you already know where to look when it comes to items, right?
