Since I'm waiting now for the 4th hour in a row in Arx for the vendors to restock so I can go into the last 2 battles with good gear, I wanted to take my time to propose what I think would be the right thing to do when it comes to gear / vendors and crafting for D:OS3.
Reason is that I think that the one big problematic thing about D:OS2 in my opinion is the shopping.
Problems are:
* Tons of nonsense-items (strength gear with +Huntsman and +Finesse? Seriously?)
* Unique items are very good for their specific level but are useless right afterwards
* When you are a completionist, like me, lucky charm gets you underlevel-gear all the time, where even divine quality items are nothing but "vendor trash"
* Levelling up comes with the "punishment" of "oh no, now I have to travel like crazy and do 30 minutes of shopping" - multiple times, btw... because every hour you HAVE to repeat because the vendors only have very, very few really usable items per restock (at level 22 I know now that for a party of four I need to do about 6-8 (!) restocks before I'm acceptably geared again)
* I never use crafting after level 3 or 4 (except for the Eternal Armor) because there are no good receipes
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So here my suggestions for D:OS3:
* Vendors only sell white items, except of course for very, very few uniques (such as the "Chamore Doran", which my summoner / support caster still uses, because there was no replacement... see the problem?) - and you buy them because of their basic item type and looks, not because of their stats
* Basic item stats automatically get better with your level
* You enchant items to add stats and +'s using materials you find / get as quest rewards (90%) and buy (10%)
* Civil ability bonuses can be extracted into "essence of the thief" or something similar (to give an example) and applied to other items as well, by destroying the original item
* Make crafting great again by not selling items for the better part of act 1 of D:OS3 at all - force the player to craft like crazy to get something better than rags, sticks and stones
Additional ideas (bonus ideas):
* Transmogrification
* Very nice designs for items are gathered for cross-playthrough use via achievements (like this nice spear Malady drops in the dream realm) and you can use them using transmogrification from an early level on
