As noted in Uberjager’s earlier thread, this enchanting of legacy 1.0.x items, doesn’t affect me since I made the decision long ago to re-roll my main characters once the pre-expansion patch launches. I’ve already tested this and found the loot 2.0 system works well and is awesome when leveling to level cap. I feel the same way about the vanilla leveling process (with the exception of the loot system being less targeted). End game however is where loot 2.0 is equally as boring/uninspiring/depthless as vanilla though (maybe a bit more). That is the biggest disappointment because loot 2.0 is proving to be far from the “epic loot from killing monsters” mantra that went on from August-November 2013. Like Soon™, OPUD (over promising and under delivering) is becoming a trademark of Diablo III development.
Furthermore, I have no issue with any of my previous gear being obsoleted (fully expected this with the level cap increase). I also don’t care whether or not other players have a leg up or not. I do have a strong opinion though on players previous efforts though. From a design perspective, there is a proper way to handle such transitions (I posted that somewhere below).
My main issue is the amount of time they spent on this bandaid attempt at “fixing” itemization with loot 2.0. It came at the expense of leaving vanilla Diablo stagnating with the current loot system for the past 9 months or so. This came at the expense of not being able to spend time actually developing and implementing actual end game systems that tests players mettle (along with all that gear) beyond PvM/E (refer to DamienJohn’s challenge mode infographic).
I say bandaid approach because loot 2.0 merely builds on top of the core systems that defined itemization in 1.0.x instead of actually addressing the underlying root cause in the first place, by completely re-designing the core systems that resulted in the flawed 1.0.x itemization system. I’m not even implying that addressing the root cause and actually fixing it is easy because it never is. For example, you have an improperly laid out concrete foundation that someone forgot to put reinforcing rebar in; you have to go in, break all that concrete, remove it, and then start over from scratch – the point is that while it does cost extra time and money, you fix the actual problem at its core because attempting to continue building on this faulty foundation, will only lead to major problems in the future.
Starting over from scratch would have taken significant engineering (the whole design/iteration process), coding, debugging, re-balancing, internal quality assurance testing, and then throwing it out for closed beta testing. However, considering the amount of time that they spent on loot 2.0 using the bandaid approach, it would’ve made sense to start from scratch. And it’s not like this isn’t an option; during vanilla development, they scrapped and re-designed core systems several times during their iteration process.
What about legacy gear in this case; legacy gear is flagged as such where an abstraction layer allows that gear to continue to work using the old core systems (it already exists). Enchanting would be sandboxed (to where roll ranges/values would be within the limits of that core 1.0.x design/parameters – meaning these items would gracefully obsolete themselves while playing the game and finding newer/superior 2.0.x items (more so as the player leveled up in the expansion). The premise would be that until all legacy items are replaced, the newer items would not be functioning at their full potential (none of their special properties would work since it too is working through this abstraction layer).
Trying to build on top of the current flawed itemization issue is one reason why this polarizing issue is even an issue to begin with. It is a fundamental design failure when all it takes is the re-roll of one single property on certain level 60 patch 1.0.x items, to even be competitive with a patch 2.0.x level 70 item of equivalent power. Seriously, they are designing and coding this stuff. It’s also code that is internally tested (or should be one of those QA test cases defined for running that code through for validation). Then again, I have no idea how thorough their internal QA is/isn’t.
For them to have to make this call very late in the closed beta cycle, is basically an admittance that their loot 2.0 design sucks even more than loot 1.0 (because no matter how I look at it, 70 should trump 60). And from a development point of view, that is inexcusable because this team admitted itemization 1.0.x was bad. They knew exactly what the requirements were and what they were tasked with when they began talking about loot 2.0. And they spent the last 1+ year coming up with something defective like this? Where it turns our that a very small amount of 1.0.x level 60 items still end up being competitive with their 2.0.x level 70 items? To where they have to completely shoot the horse (i.e. disallow enchanting of 1.0.x items) rather than say, fixing the issue with loot 2.0 items being uninspiring to begin with? Epic loot? Hello? Does the elevator not go all the way to the top floor?
To make it even simpler, In vanilla, how many of us running end game content, still have level 50 items equipped? I would guess that is virtually nill. Level 60 items basically outclass level 50 items by a wide margin as that is an outcome of their entire itemization system (where lower level stuff doesn’t scale that well). And even if there were enchanting in vanilla, that entire system can be designed to where lower level items, can’t outclass the end game item.
Thus it should be expected that a level 70 character will be fully geared in level 70 items (again, an outcome of their itemization system since it is still based on the same 1.0.x core logic). But this obviously isn’t the case. This just speaks volumes about loot 2.0 and items at level 70. So yes, part of the solution is that loot 2.0 itemization has to be addressed (and at this point in the closed beta cycle, this shouldn’t have even been an issue – it should’ve been addressed with the actual design and initial implementation). Where exactly is the project management to where it even got to this point? Non-sequitur… does not compute.
I really do believe that collectively, they don’t have that design ethos as to what makes games of this genre, tick and/or makes them generally rewarding (not just in terms of loot but for every system within that game which ends up exposing itself to the player). It’s exhibited in the final product where many of us find there is something intrinsically lacking (and that is basically, the dopamine fix one gets while grinding the same content over and over again). Some folks get that fix theorycrafting and building out their characters (where the reward is how well that character performs doing that grind), others get it from that wow drop while grinding, others get their jollies just from slaying stuff with as little gear as possible, others enjoy testing all this out by going against other players in some form. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
If items were actually fun/interesting/had depth, that has a huge impact on everything else. Building your character becomes fun, the game play and grind becomes fun because you are now searching for/finding interesting items that makes one forget the grind. If your underlying foundation is built correctly, everything above it will inherit those qualities. With D3 and now RoS, we are still chasing after what is mostly, uninspiring loot that lacks depth. And that is again because loot 2.0 is still built upon the same underlying flawed core that exists in the 1.0.x game systems. And once we’ve got this powerful character, there isn’t much stuff for that character to do beyond just slaying more monsters. Which is why so many saw DamienJohn’s challenge mode infographic, and said “take my money now”.
Furthermore, the handling of this is another example of how this entire development team does not get the whole “rewarding players for their efforts” aspect. For those who haven’t yet seen this, I again bring up this 2006 talk given by Bill Roper about this aspect of game design: http://youtu.be/5p18YpeiL3I
Rewards is not just about the quantity of drops. There’s also the issue of quality of said loot. But it also goes well beyond just loot. Rewards also apply to the entire game play experience to where players efforts (prior and/or current) aren’t made to feel invalidated in some way (see the above clip for examples). Obsoleting gear is not an issue in my book. The way that it is done however is as there are correct and wrong ways to do that. It’s also a design philosophy that has to be ingrained within the developers themselves.
IMHO, enchanting legacy 1.0.x items should’ve only served as a transitional means while they slowly became obsolete leveling towards 70 (there are 9 nine other levels between 60 and 70 after all). Had loot 2.0 been designed and implemented properly, as one leveled and acquired gear closer to level 70, even previously enchanted 1.0 level 60 items should have become less desirable as the loot system should be dropping marginally better items as a reward for their efforts in the expansion; you know, that whole sense of progression and getting occasional upgrades.
From a player perspective, it’s a simple psychological thing where from their view, their prior efforts weren’t quickly invalidated. Their previous loot was able to serve some useful purpose initially before being supplanted by what is supposed to be far superior loot 2.0 items. Graceful obsolescence. No one is expecting (nor should they) expect the stuff they had in vanilla, to be usable for long periods of the time in an expansion that has a higher level cap. And never did I personally expect them to be usable at level 70 playing in even the lowest of end game difficulty settings. If that actually happens, it’s a design failure of the new loot system as far as I’m concerned.
This whole issue basically leads me to believe this development team not having the ability to deliver on whatever that is hyped. That’s bad when I’m normally one that tends to be optimistic. Most everything that has been patched into vanilla was a result of the initial poor execution. It’s been a continual time wasting chase to fix problems that should not have even been at that magnitude. That has taken time away from working on actual end game systems which would allow this game to come closer to reaching its full potential. And once again, what is supposed to be a total non-issue (legacy 1.0.x enchanting), is yet another example of extremely poor execution with loot 2.0. No one is asking for perfection (because software development never is), just better overall execution, to where maybe just maybe, actions (the end product) will end up speaking louder than words.
