I recently made a post to the Blizzard forum about suggestions for next QoL stuff. Just want to get this community's honest feedback on my ideas.
Is there anything you disagree with? If you agree, let's try to gain some traction on this thing, to get some exposure.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/suggestions-for-improvements/174005In case you don't want to go to Blizzard's forum board, here is what I posted there:
TL;DR: A Veteran’s Plea for QoL - Let’s Kill the Tedium, Not the Grind! I absolutely love this game, but it’s time to update some archaic mechanics that add frustration instead of fun. I don’t want easier drop rates; I just want modern convenience.
Gold Economy: Raise the 35k vendor sell cap (75k+), eliminate stash gold caps, and completely unify the personal and shared gold stashes.
Duriel Target Farming: Give us a way to instantly identify the True Tomb in post-quest games. Forcing an Arcane Sanctuary run just to check the symbol is a waste of time.
Inventory & Stashes: Implement a dedicated Charm Inventory, modernize/shrink the item grid, and add dedicated Unique/Set stash tabs (like PoE) so we can finally end the “Mule” meta.
Loot & Drops: Remove the annoying delay on gold auto-pickup, and evolve the existing loot filter with custom colors, light pillars, and map markers.
I have a few suggestions for future improvements, which I would like to lay out here. Hopefully this can gain some traction either via views/replies, or maybe some inquisitive devs viewing the boards.
I think some of the ideas behind D2:R are a bit antiquated at this point. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long time player, and love everything about the game. Probably my absolute #1 favorite game of all time, and I’m older, and have been gaming my entire life. However, when approaching games nowadays, sometimes there are just points of frustration that don’t seem to have a true reason behind them. I always ask myself: am I finding this aspect of the game fun, neutral, or tedious? If the answer is even just neutral, this is fine. No change needed. However, if something is tedious at all, it can start to grind on you when you run into the issue more and more. The main gripes/change requests I have are all around convenience. If D2:R is going to be making huge sweeping changes in the form of new content after decades, I think it’s also time to lift some of the limitations centered around convenience factors. For instance: the gems, materials, and runes tabs were a massive step in the right direction! Thank you so much for those. Let’s get into things that could also be changed for the better:
Gold:
Many many aspects of gold are just TERRIBLE. Firstly, is there REALLY a need to cap selling at just 35k? I believe it should have AT LEAST carried on 5k per act, per difficulty. This would bring us to 75k, which I know is a semi-radical change. However, can anyone tell me the ACTUAL gameplay loop reason for this? What, to stop people from gambling? Why? Fun aspect of the game, that takes a long time to enjoy, unless making a hyper-niche character, such as a gold find barb. I would even say the cap on selling items should be higher than my proposed minimum of 75k.
The other big issues, with gold (and I know this was somewhat rectified with changing shared stash gold cap), is stash gold cap. Why even have one? Why have a separated shared and personal gold stash? Should just be shared, across the board, and be able to use with vendors from the shared. The cap should also either be non-existent, or MUCH higher. I don’t want to grind for hours to get gold filled, and then only be able to gamble for a small amount of time. Or need to pull gold out of shared stash to put in personal to pay for my merc res. Can anyone here describe to what end these are features? Seems to be for no reason other than to limit. Why limit gameplay/convenience? Let’s streamline this.
Duriel:
If we’re going to make Duriel a target farm for two endgame exclusive items, why not make it to where we can easily recognize Tal Rasha’s True Tomb within a game where the quest has already been finished? You’re telling me that everything else in the game can be target farmed with relative ease, but we need to grind Arcane to grind Duriel as well? Just seems like a waste of time. Not that grinding Arcane is a problem, I actually like the area. However, other than the grind of the VERY endgame things, such as Ubers or Colossal Ancients, I don’t see a point to grinding one area, to grind another. This needs to be streamlined. I don’t know if it would be best to have a way to view the symbol when the quest is finished, or maybe even always put the true tomb in the same position when creating a game with the quest already finished, but it can be better.
Items:
Some of the ideas around items may be controversial, so let’s get those out of the way first. But there are other ideas, which I feel would be universally liked. Firstly, I feel like the item grid doesn’t need to be so limited (please don’t hurt me!). I like the idea of having the inventory window, and the items within, be more efficient. Much like how they looked in D3 or D4 (just about the only things better about those games lol). Now, I know this messes with the charms system, but maybe we could have a separate charms inventory, and then the actual loot can be smaller on the grids.
I also fully believe that we need more stash space. Aren’t y’all sick of the server space being used for mules? Let’s end this. Firstly, more stash tab types (I’m sorry to mention another game here, but…), like Path of Exile has. Unique and Set items could have their own stash tab, and you could store your chosen best one in there for each item. It would be a HUGE quality of life improvement, much like the other recent additions. I don’t truly see any reason why not. You would save people time and energy, and people would create a lot less mules. I always keep some mules for low level gear to start new characters when playing solo. Would be nice to just put my Sigon’s set right back into it’s home, which is easily accessible across all my characters in that core and era.
Drops:
Last, but not least, we come to drops. Firstly, why is there a delay to pick up dropped gold? Please, fix this. It’s so painful to open a chest and then run away, and the gold stays behind. No reason for the delay.
Here is another, possibly controversial, idea around drops: We’ve already added a loot filter. Let’s build on this, and have it be more customizable. colors, light pillars, map markers (don’t need anything too crazy, just minor options for all of these). Seems like the obvious next evolution to this. It just makes sense.
Look, I’m probably rambling about this. I’m just a dude that’s super passionate about D2, and a dude that likes things to be more convenient. I’m not saying: Let’s change the drop tables, and make Tyrael’s Might much easier to drop. I LOVE grinding in Diablo 2. However, there are certain aspects of this amazing old game that grind on ME sometimes. If we’re going to make changes for the better, let’s keep going. Maybe the devs/forum could start having votes on this or something to see what the people want. Get more in touch with your players, and reach out to see what they want. I know, for me, all of my suggestions here would make the game much better, and I’m sure many people would agree with me.
Thank you so much for this game, your improvements to it, and the new content. I love Diablo II, and I always will. Thank you, Diablo II - you’ve always been a big part of my gaming life. <3
first change is to nerf the portal barb. its completely destroyed class balance overnight