Valid point. Gear right now are just stat sticks. You don't even have interesting looking armor to look forward to. It's all bound to the racial sub-types and we only have the 4/5 types: Plate, Scale, Leather, Cloth, Mail.
Looks are a bit weird, too, yes, but hopefully that's more a matter of more development time adding more visual variety.
Are other people hoping for a bit more variety and pizazz in their loot as well?
Oh yes! I loved the unique items you created for Sniper's mod 'A Necromancer's Crusade' and would like to see much more interesting and unique stats on items in D:OS 2, to individualize loot and character development (at best relate it to story).
Harder to balance than a generic set of stats, but especially mid- and late-game need special variants for loot to keep it interesting.
Nice to see you back on the forum by the way!
Yeah, got burnt out on D:OS for a while, but finally got to playing D:OS2. Looking forward to maybe doing something Scalesy again, though probably not nearly as ambitious. The unique items in Necromancer's Crusade are definitely the kind of things I'm talking about. Good to be back, thanks.
My take on fixing the loot system:
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^ The above suggestion is one of my takes on evolving the armor system....it was made to solve the CC problem but it also addresses making armor choices more interesting
Interesting ideas and considerations, though I'm mostly focus on interesting item modifiers in general. More or less agree with your power scaling. To ponder on your questions:
> Should only legendary items unlock skills?
Meh, anything could have skills in my book, though I wouldn't mind some unique skills specific to certain uniques, or different unique skills that can be found on randoms.
> Should handcrafted loot have some other, defining and special, attribute unique to themselves?
For the most part, I imagine generically crafted gear as solid, reliable items that's great for filling in gaps, but won't compare to a good legendary or unique
> Should uniquely crafted gear do more than have the biggest numbers and give players greater control over what they're getting?
I just see uniquely crafted gear as basically any kind of unique.
> How exactly should uniquely upgraded gear be upgraded (bigger numbers, special abilities, unlocking skills, ect..) ?
Unique reagents should give gear interesting effects, not just +numbers.
I'm not sure about your general armor changes, but I do think an interesting ability or stance or something would be to take vitality damage instead of armor/magic armor damage while the ability is active, to extend your cc resistance but maybe leave yourself vulnerable to attacks that pierce armor.
Loot needs room to grow. I'm willing to give this stage a break.
The way I see it, is that loot can be fun and interesting right from the get go. I'm not going to assume there's going to be a big jump in creativity in later acts based on what I've seen so far, so I want to voice my criticism now. I can't think of a single really cool, completely unique item that exists yet. Maybe the teleporter gloves at best, if only for the -1 lucky charm that is very appropriate. Unique modifiers can start with low power levels, and build up to more power and even more unique modifiers. The feeling right from the beginning should be, "Oh wow, this is a really cool item, I can't wait to see what's in the next act!", not "Well, hopefully the stuff in the next act is cooler than this."
