When Diablo 4 launched it was plagued by a variety of issues in almost every regard to game design. Balance, quality of life, monster density, endgame, loot, D4 suffered from subpar design in each of those categories. Fast forward to Season 2 and a great deal of things have been fixed or improved, but we’re about to discover why Diablo 4’s itemization is still its greatest weakness.
To those who may be new to action RPGs, Diablo 4’s loot may seem compelling enough, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find it’s rather shallow. Because in that simplicity and accessibility lies a recipe for a less interesting loot system. This is thanks in part to the affix limitations Blizzard has integrated into D4’s loot systems. Limitations such as, generic number increases, on-hit effects that are very difficult to sense and feel during combat, and a hard limit on number of affixes any one piece of gear can have.
