Hi,
One of the biggest flaws in GD in my opinion, is that it’s too easy to reach a state where you don’t get anything for killing normal monsters anymore, compared to other ARPGs.
Having leveled probably over 15 characters to 85, I feel this issue every time and it lowers the incentive to continue playing that character.
Sure, many people say, “in GD, the end game is to create new characters” and I like doing that, but I like playing the same character for a long time, too.
But the way the game is currently set up, it indirectly works against you to do so. I’ll explain why below.
Remember how it used to be a feat to reach level 99 in D2? Even if the 92-99 stretch barely gave you anything (it was the same old 5 stat, 1 skill point and a level advantage), it preserved the feeling of getting something for every kill.
You were working toward the next level, and you also had an incentive not to die, because it would literally set you back hours, days or even a week of effort.
Now simply upping the level cap isn’t a good idea since it would change the power balance, and I’m sure Crate wants to save that for expansions.
It could be an idea to increase the XP required from lv. 80+ onward though. Modders? 
But back to the original point, a huge flaw in GD is that there is no point in killing normal monsters after some point.
To dissect this statement, what does killing them net you in the 1-84 portion of the game?
[b]
- Experience:[/b] this goes to zero, so you don’t get any more of it, period.
2) Faction reputation: this is maxed eventually too, and the Rep required was even lowered in a recent patch, plus there are Writs to make it even faster on new characters. So you don’t get this anymore, either.
3) Components: these have no use once you’ve crafted your Mythical Relic and potentially your helm (which is another issue, but not for this thread), so there is no reason to pick these up either on an 85 character with the above, outside of Skeleton Key components.
4) Loot: the other major flaw of normal monsters currently— their drop rate of Legendary items is so low that the best way of farming is to simply run past everything except heroes and bosses, rather than stopping to kill them. I find this to be true even when you have humongous amounts of DPS and AoE (think 60K+).
I’m sure someone will say “but I found this one super rare Leg off a normal once, it’s fine!” but that is the exception to the rule.
Do you see what these points have in common?
The first three are rendered 100% obsolete after some point, a point in time which comes too early IMO.
#1 and 2 could be relatively easily solved by simply raising the numbers, #3 takes more effort to solve to keep Components useful (hint: more Skeleton Key type of crafts or higher tier craftable components would give them a purpose).
#4 is what I want to talk about here. Of course, the easy way out is to simply increase drop rates on normal monsters, another way is to create a quest that grants you a random Legendary item (or another good reward) for every X kills.
It could be given by Harmond for example. The guy already gives you similar quests to kill Aetherials.
There could even be different types of quests from different NPCs. For example:
-Kill 2000 Undead enemies
-Kill 2000 Chthonic enemies
-Kill 3000 enemies
In short, it would be like a super bounty quest that is repeatable, with each completion the quests would require more kills to complete again. Perhaps to cap at some point so the amount doesn’t grow ridiculously large after many repeats.
The thing about end game farming in GD, is that the lack of incentives to kill normal monsters and the relatively low drop rates makes the player want to play less, the opposite of what a game should do.
A typical scenario is that you’re maxed out in level and did all quests, so factors 1, 2 and 3 above don’t give you anything, and you’re running around skipping most monsters running to heroes or trying to find Nemeses.
You do a couple boss runs like this, the drops are highly variable, and once you’ve played for a while and nothing worthwhile dropped, you feel like stopping.
Or you feel like making a new character, just to experience the fun of finding drops that can be useful, cleansing Desecrated Shrines and to open the Exalted chests again.
Because even if your character is maxed in level, rep and craftable items (helm, relic, medal), you often have weak items in your other slots since you simply can’t find the Legs you want, unless you trade or cheat.
And when you can’t find them, the char feels stagnant which makes the player want to look somewhere else (other character, other game, etc.)
That’s what my idea is meant to counteract: if you were guaranteed a Legendary item every X kills and you could visibly see the counter move up with each kill, that is a carrot that keeps the mule running.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far.
