I can agree with this and being on my second playthrough.
It's kind of hard to swallow that a lot of items are dependent on the category they fall into with fixed value, with unique's being the exception. The problems I have noticed a lot of the time is that after 1 or 2 levels, it's time to go shopping, again, rather than finding consistent loot that would be relevant for level or sets.
The Tyrant Set for example was unique but as far as I know, that's the only set that requires searching for. I would love to see a loot system similar to Diablo 2's set armor/weapon hunt, or Dungeon Siege 2.
The last issue I've seen is that some of the values tied to certain armor or weapons simply don't make sense. A battle axe giving you +2 for finesse for a warrior is largely useless or a robe with 3+ str/heavy armor with 3+ int (unless you're running a battlemage).
I'd be down with random values, or set items being introduced and hunting for them. Something to break the monotony of returning to town constantly to look for items that are largely the same or useless from divine/legendary/rare
Indeed.
I, too, would be in favor of a more diablo-esque system that allowed for a broader range of itemmodifiers. The challenge is obviously the balance between "too random" and "too restrictive".
I think we can all agree that diablo 3's itemization at launch was a mess. Pure, unrestricted randomness is a terrible idea, and that certainly is not the point of this post. Nobody wants to see 1-handed swords with a bonus to 2-handed. On the flip side, the current DOS:2 system is too restrictive and unimaginative.
Oh, and an interesting fact from a psychology student; Neurotransmitters such as dopamine is released in a similar fashion when playing loot-based games (that hit the right spot between "purely random" and "completely expected") is actually very similar to those found in compulsive gamblers. That might seem rather harmful, but is actually a great tool to use when designing games to "hook" people. But if something is "too expected", those chemical responds actually decrease significantly - hence the amount of complaints of itemization we see on these forums.
