Revamping Diablo 4's Items: The Essential Upgrade You Need to Know!

Highlights

Diablo 4's early launch was successful, but public opinion turned negative due to unpopular patches and a limited seasonal loop.

The game's itemization poses a significant challenge as players face difficulties in acquiring ideal items and have to expend a considerable amount of gold on stat reshuffling.

To address this issue, Blizzard could consider lowering the cost associated with affix reallocation and crafting, or alternatively, diminishing the quantity of affix options on items. This would simplify the process of finding suitable items for players to match their preferred playstyles.

Despite its early success, the perception of Diablo 4 took a negative turn once the first season launched. Unpopular patches that significantly weakened the abilities, talents, and items for every class contributed to this shift. Additionally, the limited scope of Season of the Malignant in Diablo 4 did not aid in improving the game's image. To regain player trust and restore morale within the community, Blizzard should focus on addressing itemization through potential fixes. However, Diablo 4 still offers valuable ARPG features and remains a decent addition to the franchise, although there are certain gameplay aspects that need improvement. The current approach to level scaling renders Malignant Tunnels obsolete by level 60, despite being the new seasonal activity. While the accessibility of uber-rare Diablo 4 uniques is a popular request from players, there may be other aspects of itemization that require more attention.

Diablo 4 Should Lower Gold Costs for Rerolling Affixes or Reduce the Affix Pool

Obtaining the perfect items for a character in Diablo 4 is currently a time-consuming and uncertain process. The leveling experience can already feel tedious and repetitive, mainly revolving around activities like Helltides and Nightmare Dungeons. Thus, finding items with stats that perfectly complement a specific build can be burdensome, even though it is a common aspect of ARPGs.

The primary issue with itemization lies in the exorbitant amount of in-game gold required to reroll a single stat on a high-level item. While the ability to do so has its advantages, serving as a "gold sink" and granting players some control over their loot, the overall cost can be prohibitively high with no guarantee of success. Additionally, acquiring sufficient gold in Diablo 4's endgame is challenging, which poses further problems.

Blizzard has the option to lower the expensive prices for rerolling affixes and crafting Aspects in Diablo 4 through the Occultist, both of which are crucial components of any builds. Reducing the cost of rerolling affixes would be significant for the in-game economy due to its exorbitant expense when performed multiple times on multiple items, depleting gold at a faster rate than it can be accumulated. Similarly, crafting Aspects onto items can be exceptionally costly and is ultimately necessary for every build.

Another option Blizzard has to improve itemization is to decrease the number of available affixes on each item. This would increase the likelihood of obtaining valuable items and make it easier to reroll them with the desired attributes, or at the very least, decent ones that are not a downgrade. Diablo 4's Legendary items serve as a prime example, as they may either drop with a salvageable good Aspect or possess strong base stats that allow players to imprint another Aspect. Therefore, reducing the affix pool would streamline the process for players to acquire items that align with their builds, alleviating both the difficulty and cost involved.

Diablo 4 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.