Blizzard have been plugging away at ways to make Diablo 3 a more invigorating experience without resorting to primary colours. They’ve done their best for co-op, and have now turned their attention to legendary items, with the aim of making every drop something to write home about.
“It is unfortunate when you see a legendary crossbow, pick it up, and realize its a Hellrack,” wrote Diablo game designer Travis Day on the battle.net forums. “What if we make all the legendary items good so that you can actually get excited even if you know it’s a Hellrack?”
Then followed a combined semicolon and close parentheses of such profound magnitude that it swallowed the surrounding thread in speculation, like a sponge in a puddle.
Well, what if? What on earth could Day possibly be getting at? Incgamers think they might know. They’ve dredged up the following from a blog on itemisation written by Day last month:
“When the game first launched, an item’s potential stats were largely indicated by its item level. This made it so you’d know in advance whether or not an item was worth the trouble of identifying.
“In 1.0.5, we made it so that the stat ranges for affixes were based on the level of the monster or container that dropped the item rather than the item’s level, which created the possibility of more items rolling competitive values.
“We’d like to continue with this line of reasoning and use it to make Legendaries more powerful. In the future, we plan to allow Legendary items to also roll their base stats (weapon DPS and armor value) at the level of the monster that dropped them.”
Rather than simply upping legendary item stats across the board, then, it seems Blizzard want to reward players for taking on monsters at higher levels with souped-up versions of otherwise disappointing drops – so that, dice willing, even the Hellrack can be a worthy find.
What’s more, players can hunt for high-level upgrades of their favourite low-level items.
“So, for example, if you found a Heart of Iron (db) from a level 63 monster, its base armor would be increased to that of Archon Armor and its stat ranges would roll at level 63,” continued Day.
“This gives us the opportunity to broaden the range of Legendary items, providing players with more diversity. Love Leoric’s Signet, but hate wearing a level 17 ring? Me too. Instead of farming Act II Normal to find a Leoric’s Signet, let’s go farm Inferno and get a level 63 version of the ring!”
Does that sound promising to you?