Anyone notice the legendary items are "account bound"? Is that their solution to the bad economic/farming decisions in the game? Just make it account bound, and then make it rain items with "smart loot"? Ugh, no thanks. Account bound shit is the worst part of the new breed of MMO/Online games. Don't get me wrong, I understand the logic behind it, but it seems like a pretty lazy solution that has hundreds of knock on effects throughout the game.
As for original D3. I didn't think the game was "bad"...Rather, I think the bad taste was taking everything exciting about the game, and distilling it down to it's most boring and derivative components. It's a prime example of missed opportunity. Fore example, the rune system.
It should have stayed plugged into itemization in some way. Originally it was intended that runes would be drops, but they found there were too many runes and it was too complex, so they abandoned the idea of it. But what if they didn't 180 and instead kept some rune affectations on items. Then combined with this Paragon systems, to create a "recipe" for large changes to skills based on gear, experience spent and rune selection.
First, make it so each Rune has "levels" again. Lets say the levels are 1-10. So, level 1 Blood Funnel=.5% life gain per damage of WW. Level 2 Blood Funnel=1% life gain per damage of WW, Hurricane=+10% speed while WW. Each level can be raised by investing "Paragon" points into it. But the more points you invest into WW runes, the higher the investment becomes in a "soft cap" gain type system. But you choose whether to buy horizontally (More runes) or vertically (Higher power from specific runes)....
So lets say you spend one Paragon Point and buy 1 Blood Funnel rune, so your WW now returns .5% life per damage. The next purchase in the WW "Rune" skill would now cost, say, 4 Paragon Points. You could choose to buy the Hurricane Rune and get +10% speed while Whirl Winding, or you could buy an additional level of Blood Funnel and go to 1% Return on WW. Then the purchase after that would cost16points (And so on until it reaches levels you can't buy, very quickly, IE a soft cap "grind") So someone who buys 2 Hurricane/1 Blood Funnel would have a "Storm of Blood" rune (+20% Speed/+.5% Life Drain)...While someone with 3 Blood Funnel would have a "Vampire Dervish" Rune (1.5% Life Drain)...And then someone with say 2 Blood and one Volcanic would have a "Burning Blood" Rune. (Ect ect...The combinations players choose to buy, create specific runes, with the effects of the purchases added together.) And you could even have cut offs, so say a four facet rune would not only get the abilities of the runes added up, but also a small "recipe" bonus, like some runes in D2 had. So 2 Hurricane, 2 Blood Funnel=Torrent of Blood (+20% Speed, 1% Life Drain, Can Randomly Spawn Blood Vortex pools on the ground that drain enemies in them)
In addition. Gear itself would ALSO give bonuses to runes. So Breast Plate of Blood might give +1 Rune Level for Blood Funnel. Or Breast Plate of Blood Dervish might give +1 Hurricane/+1 Blood Funnel. Or Legendary-Super-Rare Chest Plate of God might give +1 to all runes in the Whirl Wind skill already at 1 or higher (So really rewarding horizontal progressive people who bought a lot of level 1 runes.)...But another Legendary Chest might give +3 to the X rune if the Runes level is over 3 already. (So rewarding players who went vertical on one skill).
They could really make tons of gear augmentations built right into the rune system, working with ground out bonuses in skills, to give people very distinct builds. And these builds could be completely changed by a drop. If you get a Weapon that gives +3 to Blood Funnel, if you have 3 points already, that could completely make a WW build work, but only a specific kind of WW build. While someone else with a +1 Hurricane/+1Wind Shear would build something else.
And the thing is, you'd create investment in certain trees. Players who do Whirl Wind builds would have to invest a ton of time notjustgettingitemsfor those builds, butalsobuilding up their skills with Paragon Points to make the skills better, sometimes to even activate the special "bonuses" on the items (IE Sword gives +1 to all Cleave Runes if the player has 1 point in every rune). So there would be distinction among the builds (And you could even make it so changing a skill makes you lose points, making it a huge undertaking to build and try a new skill set.)
Anyway, the above is just some bullshit thoughts...But it shows how DEEP some systems in D3 COULD have been. But instead we got this generic, very bland set of systems and it was so disappointing. That was D3's greatest loss. It's not a bad game, it's just an enormous amount of wasted potential. They turned a Steak Dinner into a Mcdonalds Cheesburger.
