bkkorps
28-05-2009, 19:49
*Note: I do not claim all of these ideas to be original to me, as you will see, many of them are some of the minor addons included with many maphacks(mainly from my time spent back in 1.09 with my favorite star wars robot). I am merely posting all my thoughts on what I would like to see in some changes.
I also apologize for the large amount of text,but some times it is necessary, and I will do my best to keep it organized in a reasonable manner.
Map Fragments:
Basically, when you kill the last experience granting mob(prevent frustration from monsters resurrecting others right before they die 2 screens away or requiring you to wear a piece of RIP gear) in a particular zone, after fully exploring the map, a map fragment per character in game would drop from the monster. You would only be able to pick up one map fragment per zone, per game. These map fragments could be shown via a counter in your character stats page that would dynamically change based on what zone you were in(if you had 3 map frags from zone 1 and only 1 from zone 2, while in each respective zone, it would display the # of map fragments from that zone)
So what function do the map fragments do? Primarily two things.
First, each map fragment would slightly increase the exploration radius of your map in that particular zone(linear or exponential based would be determined from testing).
Secondly, these map fragments could be deciphered by a map maker(an npc in town). So for example, after collecting 5 fragments from the Bloor Moor, you would go to the map maker and for a fee(potential here for a use for gold) he would upgrade your map reading ability. For the first 5 fragments, maybe he would add direction arrows that would point you to exits from the map(caves and pathways to the next zone) These would be unlabeled, and would just give you an idea for what direction to head. Then at 10 fragments, they might upgrade that to actually showing the exit on your map. So it would place a discovery radius(starting small) around the exit. This primary purpose would be to help you distinguish between the different types of exits. For 15 fragments, it could give names of the exits, so on and so forth adding more features. Additionally, each map fragment could increase the discovery radius around the exits at the same rate as it does for your character. The idea being, that with enough persistence, one could become a master map reader, and more or less discover the entire zone just by stepping foot into it.
Additional map fragment bonuses could be awarded for achievements. For example, if you were to clear the entire act(obtain a map fragment from every single zone in the act), then the very last monster you kill could drop bonus fragments(3-5) that could count for all zones. So if you were to do a full act clear the first time through, it would be like you did each zone 4-6 times. perhaps clearing the entire 5 acts in one game could offer a significant reward(20-25 fragments) Yes clearing an entire act(or 5) would be a long painstaking process, but that is the point. It gives devoted players the ability to basically create their own maphack like system.
Map fragments collected on one character could either apply to all characters on that account, or another potential gold sink where you could basically buy the map fragments found on other characters.
Map fragments gained in one difficulty would not translate directly to other difficulties. For instance, a map fragment from hell might count for as many as 5 for that same zone in normal(to eliminate some of the tedium of doing the whole process 3 times), but it may take as many as 20-25 map fragments from normal to count for even 1 map fragment in hell.
Potential issues with this idea.
It promotes botting. It would be very easy for someone to script a bot to go around and kill every mob in a zone repeatedly. However, typically if you are already botting, you arent completely objected to using maphack, so going through all this process would be unnecessary(time would be better spent mf botting instead)
It favors classes and builds that can kill multiple enemies at a time quickly. While this is true, this also applies to most other aspects of the game. Plus, it is an even playing field as there is nothing stopping you from making a character of your own that can kill large groups of monsters.
In game glitches. Nothing would be more frustrating than going through all of acts 1-3 then getting to act 4 and having one of the spectre mobs in the CS decide to fly off and hang outside of the map where you cant damage him(thus ruining your full 5 act clear)
Benefits of this idea.
It promotes team work. While having more players in game will increase the health of the enemies, your killing speed also increases. Also, some classes can have a difficult time clearing mobs in an act due to resistance(unless your name is hammer) so grouping with another class that offers a different type of damage would make the process easier.
It increases the amount of legitimate high runes in the economy. Simply put, more people would be killing more mobs then ever before. As long as the player doesn't fall asleep at the key board, they should be able to read what drops from the enemies. More enemies killed, more runes drop. Plus, for all of the people who have actually had a legitimate high rune drop for you, it was most likely not from a mob or chest that you would expect to have a HR in it(unless you are doing LK runs)
It encourages players to see different aspects of the game that they have most likely never seen before. Most people playing the game have never explored all the various optional caves and dungeons scattered throughout the game, this would give them a reason to. Not a major benefit to the player, but I would imagine that the programmers at blizz would appreciate people seeing al the facets of the work that they have done in this game.
Quality of Life Improvements
Character Stats Page
Add another page to the character stats. On that page, list many of the random item mods that you would normally need to add up your self, like MF, CB, DS, PLR, FCR, and IAS to name a few. Showing how much % resist over the cap would also be handy, though much less necessary than some of these other suggestions.
Additionally, similar to the system that wow uses, when hovering over one of your primary stats(str, dex, vit, nrg) it would show a breakdown of what your base stats are, and how much is from gear(base + gear format) This would help eliminate the need of moving all your charms and removing all your gear with stats in order to see base stats. Expanding on this idea, hovering over a non base stat(like MF, resists, or FCR) could show in a little popup window your top 3-5 main contributor of that stat. Not game breaking, but something new that a curious mind could appreciate.
Class Balance
It may sound cliche, but nerf hammerdins. They have more or less become the standard that all other classes base themselves around, and as far as pvm goes, it is hard to measure up. As it sits, it recieves the third highest synergy % for all level 18 abilities, behind fireclasws(22%) and poison explosion(15%) and it also benefits from concentration aura at a rate of 7.5% pre level(after the first point in conc at 30%) Most other level 18 abilities that you can base an entire build around are sitting at 10% per synergy or less(hell, CL is only 4% per level). Another problem with the way BH works is that even if the mob is immune or resistant to magic, if they are demon or undead they recieve a damage bonus anyways. Some single player mods have resolved this by making many of the less demon like enemies(and even some undead ones) count as a monster instead, thus reducing the power of the hammerdin.
The massive amount of fire immunes in late NM and all throughout hell is very discouraging to fire based builds. Whats even more discouraging is that one of the items that could help alleviate the problem(infinity) isnt strong enough to break these immunities at a reasonable rate. With the advent of synergies, it is tough to dual specialize elements/physical without going with the limited number of cookie cutter specs. Yes, cookie cutter specs will always be around, because players with theorycraft until the optimal build is found, but when deviating from the cookie cutter spec becomes a test of ones masochistic side it becomes a problem. A solution to this could lie in increasing the base damage of the spells themselves, while lowering the synergy coefficients, though that may not be the best solution for all cases.
Talent respecs(and to a lesser degree, stat point respecs). The ability to reset talent points(or stat points) would be a great benefit to all players, as long as they come at a high enough cost to avoid becoming an every day recurrence. As far as talents go, a scaling gold cost would inject value into gold. A simple route to take would be one full stash and one full characters amount of gold(yes you would have zero gold left after respeccing). This imposes the theme that at lower levels, it would be easier(less costly) to forget and relearn talents, but as you get higher and higher in level, you have much more information to forget(and for whatever reason, if you throw enough money at it, it becomes forgotten. I never said I was a story writer).
Stat point respecs would be a nice convience, though in all honesty, it would just be a breath of fresh air into an older game, not something I would suggest for a new game(coughcoughD3cough). Again, a massive gold cost could be used, as well as a penalty of 5 stat points lost from redoing them. This would help prevent people from just respeccing their stat points every single time they get a new piece of gear, while still being reasonable enough that you could throw your first 40 points in str so you can equip your sigon set to level with or throw some points into energy so you can cast more than 5 fireballs at a time while leveling, then later on when you get your anni and torch, respec to less str, all for the cost of basically 5 vit points. This would also play well with the talent respecs, since for a select few builds, you would require a massively different amount of stat points spent(ES sorc and others)
Mercenaries and other minions.
Overall, minions are fairly stupid. They will sit there all day killing the same fallen over and over again while the shaman sits and resurrects for as long as you let him. This problem with minions could be solved by a simple two hot key set up, attack and defend. When attack is pressed, your minions would switch target to whatever you currently have a name lock on. If you had no name lock, then the button would be the toggle to turn off defensive mode and they would behave as they currently do. Defensive would basically recall all of your minions to you, and redirect their attacks to nearby enemies. If held in, it would basically act as the shift key does for your character, they will stand tall in that very position, hitting anything that comes into range.
Additionally, minion AI in general could be improved. Maybe your merc could try to retreat when they get low on health, or your skeletal mages could not block a doorway preventing your melee skeletons from getting into the fray. This would not be as crucial if the attack/defend aspect was implemented correctly, but better minion AI wouldn't hurt.
Allow mercs to wear more gear. rings and an ammy would be a great help, but a full accompaniment of gear would be a good help. These armor slots could be awarded at various levels(so by level 90 they could wear a full set of gear for example)
Lastly, make the mercs into the classes that they mimic. The rogues be amazons, the walking auras into paladins, and let them wear/benefit from plus skills that those classes would benefit from(a +1 to offensive auras circlet could actually increase your walking auras holy freeze or might) A wider variety of abilities would be nice. Imagine your act one merc upgrading to immo/freezing arrow with multishot or GA if they got high enough level, an act 2 merc with charge and a secondary aura like cleansing or vigor that they would switch to when obviously needed, or even an act 5 merc with WW and berserk
Other Issues
Enable the /players x command for online play. One of the best things I liked about single player was that at low levels, when the game was too easy, I could add some difficulty, and then be able to tune it back to normal as I see fit. Additionally, as the game ages, people leave and take breaks, and game population dips. You cant always expect to be able to find others to play with, so being able to simulate that effect would be very benefitial. Plus for MFing, it helps encourage a balance of MF gear to kill speed gear to survival gear.
Muling. A lot has been said on this subject, and one of the most elegant solutions in my opinion would be a shared stash. I know they have plans of increasing the stash size for the next patch, and that does help reduce the amount of mules needed, but it doesn't eliminate the problem itself, having to make and perm a game and not change characters too fast as to look like a bot to the overzealous Realm Down machine. A 10x4 shared tab of your stash where items can only exist for a certain amount of character switches(to encourage players to use it for character switching and not just more stash space.) In the tooltip, place a nice red warning on the top saying that this item will only remain in the stash for X game entrances, make it high enough so that you can put items in there for your different mules and not have to evacuate the stash each game to keep the items from disappearing, but not high enough for it to become an abuse issue.
Bots and Dupes.
Spam bots are annoying, and whats even more annoying are bad baal bots who dont put a level restriction on the game to keep them out(just kidding). Spam bots make public games without level restrictions a painful process in that they enter in and before you can squelch them they have posted their 40 lines of crap and have already left of been booted from the game.
MF/baal bots devalue legitimately rare finds(a double edge sword from a buyer/seller stand point) and devalue hard work of leveling legitimately and trying to compete in the ladder. The main problem I have with bots though is that through all of the prevention mechanics that blizzard has implemented, my game play has begun to suffer. Well set up guidelines are in place(x games per hour, with y amount of time between games, yada yada) but bots are able to monitor themselves and stay within "proper values". Getting a realm down because I am trying to mule gear around my characters or happen to use too many "lag inducing abilities"(even if my entire build just happens to be based around these abilities and using them as fast as I can) can be very frustrating. unless blizzard can pull the whole root out in one swift motion, rather than pluck it off at the surface, they will continue to come back and get better each time.
Screen Resolution.
It has been almost a decade since an 800x600 resolution was a precious commodity. I suppose being able to see more of the screen at a time could be seen as an advantage(expecially for pvp, though its really not my cup of tea) it would be a small price to pay.
Item coloring/Graphics
With so many colors available, you think some variety in the item coloring could be implemented. One of the most commonly requested single player mods I see is for the Red Rune Mod, which simply makes runes text red. In the sea of white text it can often be hard to pick out specific things(particularly when you have to do a double take when a non eth normal rune sword drops), so a little variety to various items would be nice. Why have ethereal and socketed items be the same color when there are many to choose from? Gems and runes could definately be a different color compared to a minor healing potion. While I'm not suggesting the kind of customization options that the maphack I used to use offered(where you could completely change the color of any item, even make it so that certain items like isenhearts chest piece wouldn't even show up on the screen since I knew I would never pick it up) it would be a nice feature to have some basic color customization be available, particularly for the color blind.
Also,at this point in the game, why isn't there a unique item graphic for gothic shields in the game yet? They look nothing like kite shields, though I suppose it doesn't really matter since noone really uses them but still.
Screen Management
Sometimes there is just too much crap on the ground, particuarly in baals throneroom after killing a few waves. its not so much a problem of the graphics on the ground, but more so the text that appears when holding alt. What harm could come out of having potions "stack" in the sense that only the text for one of each type of potion appears and when clicked on, your character walks to the nearest of that potion type to pick it up? How about gold piling together, rather than sitting in stacks of 5 scattered across the room? You could even make it based on character level, gold less than 20 times your level times your goldfind% on the ground would stack into one pile(numbers obviously up for discussion, the point still stands)
In a similar regard(Im guessing this change would not be a very easy one to implement with the engine of this game, but follow me here) how annoying is it when you cannot open your cube while at a vendor? Ideally, a floating window that you could move around for the contents of your cube would be best, but due to current engine restrictions, how about it just works like it does at your stash(it opens where the vendor would be, and then you close the cube you would go back into the vendor screen.) Though with a screen resolution increase, maybe there would be potential to having 3 screens side by side instead of 2 in the current form.
Another frequently requested option is the ability to rotate items in your stash, which while it would be nice, you would have to consider that it would increase the plus skill potential of your character stash to +16 from its current +13
please critique and offer suggestions. Again, I apologize for the large amount of text, but I had a fairly boring day of work with a lot of time for day dreaming and thinking.
I also apologize for the large amount of text,but some times it is necessary, and I will do my best to keep it organized in a reasonable manner.
Map Fragments:
Basically, when you kill the last experience granting mob(prevent frustration from monsters resurrecting others right before they die 2 screens away or requiring you to wear a piece of RIP gear) in a particular zone, after fully exploring the map, a map fragment per character in game would drop from the monster. You would only be able to pick up one map fragment per zone, per game. These map fragments could be shown via a counter in your character stats page that would dynamically change based on what zone you were in(if you had 3 map frags from zone 1 and only 1 from zone 2, while in each respective zone, it would display the # of map fragments from that zone)
So what function do the map fragments do? Primarily two things.
First, each map fragment would slightly increase the exploration radius of your map in that particular zone(linear or exponential based would be determined from testing).
Secondly, these map fragments could be deciphered by a map maker(an npc in town). So for example, after collecting 5 fragments from the Bloor Moor, you would go to the map maker and for a fee(potential here for a use for gold) he would upgrade your map reading ability. For the first 5 fragments, maybe he would add direction arrows that would point you to exits from the map(caves and pathways to the next zone) These would be unlabeled, and would just give you an idea for what direction to head. Then at 10 fragments, they might upgrade that to actually showing the exit on your map. So it would place a discovery radius(starting small) around the exit. This primary purpose would be to help you distinguish between the different types of exits. For 15 fragments, it could give names of the exits, so on and so forth adding more features. Additionally, each map fragment could increase the discovery radius around the exits at the same rate as it does for your character. The idea being, that with enough persistence, one could become a master map reader, and more or less discover the entire zone just by stepping foot into it.
Additional map fragment bonuses could be awarded for achievements. For example, if you were to clear the entire act(obtain a map fragment from every single zone in the act), then the very last monster you kill could drop bonus fragments(3-5) that could count for all zones. So if you were to do a full act clear the first time through, it would be like you did each zone 4-6 times. perhaps clearing the entire 5 acts in one game could offer a significant reward(20-25 fragments) Yes clearing an entire act(or 5) would be a long painstaking process, but that is the point. It gives devoted players the ability to basically create their own maphack like system.
Map fragments collected on one character could either apply to all characters on that account, or another potential gold sink where you could basically buy the map fragments found on other characters.
Map fragments gained in one difficulty would not translate directly to other difficulties. For instance, a map fragment from hell might count for as many as 5 for that same zone in normal(to eliminate some of the tedium of doing the whole process 3 times), but it may take as many as 20-25 map fragments from normal to count for even 1 map fragment in hell.
Potential issues with this idea.
It promotes botting. It would be very easy for someone to script a bot to go around and kill every mob in a zone repeatedly. However, typically if you are already botting, you arent completely objected to using maphack, so going through all this process would be unnecessary(time would be better spent mf botting instead)
It favors classes and builds that can kill multiple enemies at a time quickly. While this is true, this also applies to most other aspects of the game. Plus, it is an even playing field as there is nothing stopping you from making a character of your own that can kill large groups of monsters.
In game glitches. Nothing would be more frustrating than going through all of acts 1-3 then getting to act 4 and having one of the spectre mobs in the CS decide to fly off and hang outside of the map where you cant damage him(thus ruining your full 5 act clear)
Benefits of this idea.
It promotes team work. While having more players in game will increase the health of the enemies, your killing speed also increases. Also, some classes can have a difficult time clearing mobs in an act due to resistance(unless your name is hammer) so grouping with another class that offers a different type of damage would make the process easier.
It increases the amount of legitimate high runes in the economy. Simply put, more people would be killing more mobs then ever before. As long as the player doesn't fall asleep at the key board, they should be able to read what drops from the enemies. More enemies killed, more runes drop. Plus, for all of the people who have actually had a legitimate high rune drop for you, it was most likely not from a mob or chest that you would expect to have a HR in it(unless you are doing LK runs)
It encourages players to see different aspects of the game that they have most likely never seen before. Most people playing the game have never explored all the various optional caves and dungeons scattered throughout the game, this would give them a reason to. Not a major benefit to the player, but I would imagine that the programmers at blizz would appreciate people seeing al the facets of the work that they have done in this game.
Quality of Life Improvements
Character Stats Page
Add another page to the character stats. On that page, list many of the random item mods that you would normally need to add up your self, like MF, CB, DS, PLR, FCR, and IAS to name a few. Showing how much % resist over the cap would also be handy, though much less necessary than some of these other suggestions.
Additionally, similar to the system that wow uses, when hovering over one of your primary stats(str, dex, vit, nrg) it would show a breakdown of what your base stats are, and how much is from gear(base + gear format) This would help eliminate the need of moving all your charms and removing all your gear with stats in order to see base stats. Expanding on this idea, hovering over a non base stat(like MF, resists, or FCR) could show in a little popup window your top 3-5 main contributor of that stat. Not game breaking, but something new that a curious mind could appreciate.
Class Balance
It may sound cliche, but nerf hammerdins. They have more or less become the standard that all other classes base themselves around, and as far as pvm goes, it is hard to measure up. As it sits, it recieves the third highest synergy % for all level 18 abilities, behind fireclasws(22%) and poison explosion(15%) and it also benefits from concentration aura at a rate of 7.5% pre level(after the first point in conc at 30%) Most other level 18 abilities that you can base an entire build around are sitting at 10% per synergy or less(hell, CL is only 4% per level). Another problem with the way BH works is that even if the mob is immune or resistant to magic, if they are demon or undead they recieve a damage bonus anyways. Some single player mods have resolved this by making many of the less demon like enemies(and even some undead ones) count as a monster instead, thus reducing the power of the hammerdin.
The massive amount of fire immunes in late NM and all throughout hell is very discouraging to fire based builds. Whats even more discouraging is that one of the items that could help alleviate the problem(infinity) isnt strong enough to break these immunities at a reasonable rate. With the advent of synergies, it is tough to dual specialize elements/physical without going with the limited number of cookie cutter specs. Yes, cookie cutter specs will always be around, because players with theorycraft until the optimal build is found, but when deviating from the cookie cutter spec becomes a test of ones masochistic side it becomes a problem. A solution to this could lie in increasing the base damage of the spells themselves, while lowering the synergy coefficients, though that may not be the best solution for all cases.
Talent respecs(and to a lesser degree, stat point respecs). The ability to reset talent points(or stat points) would be a great benefit to all players, as long as they come at a high enough cost to avoid becoming an every day recurrence. As far as talents go, a scaling gold cost would inject value into gold. A simple route to take would be one full stash and one full characters amount of gold(yes you would have zero gold left after respeccing). This imposes the theme that at lower levels, it would be easier(less costly) to forget and relearn talents, but as you get higher and higher in level, you have much more information to forget(and for whatever reason, if you throw enough money at it, it becomes forgotten. I never said I was a story writer).
Stat point respecs would be a nice convience, though in all honesty, it would just be a breath of fresh air into an older game, not something I would suggest for a new game(coughcoughD3cough). Again, a massive gold cost could be used, as well as a penalty of 5 stat points lost from redoing them. This would help prevent people from just respeccing their stat points every single time they get a new piece of gear, while still being reasonable enough that you could throw your first 40 points in str so you can equip your sigon set to level with or throw some points into energy so you can cast more than 5 fireballs at a time while leveling, then later on when you get your anni and torch, respec to less str, all for the cost of basically 5 vit points. This would also play well with the talent respecs, since for a select few builds, you would require a massively different amount of stat points spent(ES sorc and others)
Mercenaries and other minions.
Overall, minions are fairly stupid. They will sit there all day killing the same fallen over and over again while the shaman sits and resurrects for as long as you let him. This problem with minions could be solved by a simple two hot key set up, attack and defend. When attack is pressed, your minions would switch target to whatever you currently have a name lock on. If you had no name lock, then the button would be the toggle to turn off defensive mode and they would behave as they currently do. Defensive would basically recall all of your minions to you, and redirect their attacks to nearby enemies. If held in, it would basically act as the shift key does for your character, they will stand tall in that very position, hitting anything that comes into range.
Additionally, minion AI in general could be improved. Maybe your merc could try to retreat when they get low on health, or your skeletal mages could not block a doorway preventing your melee skeletons from getting into the fray. This would not be as crucial if the attack/defend aspect was implemented correctly, but better minion AI wouldn't hurt.
Allow mercs to wear more gear. rings and an ammy would be a great help, but a full accompaniment of gear would be a good help. These armor slots could be awarded at various levels(so by level 90 they could wear a full set of gear for example)
Lastly, make the mercs into the classes that they mimic. The rogues be amazons, the walking auras into paladins, and let them wear/benefit from plus skills that those classes would benefit from(a +1 to offensive auras circlet could actually increase your walking auras holy freeze or might) A wider variety of abilities would be nice. Imagine your act one merc upgrading to immo/freezing arrow with multishot or GA if they got high enough level, an act 2 merc with charge and a secondary aura like cleansing or vigor that they would switch to when obviously needed, or even an act 5 merc with WW and berserk
Other Issues
Enable the /players x command for online play. One of the best things I liked about single player was that at low levels, when the game was too easy, I could add some difficulty, and then be able to tune it back to normal as I see fit. Additionally, as the game ages, people leave and take breaks, and game population dips. You cant always expect to be able to find others to play with, so being able to simulate that effect would be very benefitial. Plus for MFing, it helps encourage a balance of MF gear to kill speed gear to survival gear.
Muling. A lot has been said on this subject, and one of the most elegant solutions in my opinion would be a shared stash. I know they have plans of increasing the stash size for the next patch, and that does help reduce the amount of mules needed, but it doesn't eliminate the problem itself, having to make and perm a game and not change characters too fast as to look like a bot to the overzealous Realm Down machine. A 10x4 shared tab of your stash where items can only exist for a certain amount of character switches(to encourage players to use it for character switching and not just more stash space.) In the tooltip, place a nice red warning on the top saying that this item will only remain in the stash for X game entrances, make it high enough so that you can put items in there for your different mules and not have to evacuate the stash each game to keep the items from disappearing, but not high enough for it to become an abuse issue.
Bots and Dupes.
Spam bots are annoying, and whats even more annoying are bad baal bots who dont put a level restriction on the game to keep them out(just kidding). Spam bots make public games without level restrictions a painful process in that they enter in and before you can squelch them they have posted their 40 lines of crap and have already left of been booted from the game.
MF/baal bots devalue legitimately rare finds(a double edge sword from a buyer/seller stand point) and devalue hard work of leveling legitimately and trying to compete in the ladder. The main problem I have with bots though is that through all of the prevention mechanics that blizzard has implemented, my game play has begun to suffer. Well set up guidelines are in place(x games per hour, with y amount of time between games, yada yada) but bots are able to monitor themselves and stay within "proper values". Getting a realm down because I am trying to mule gear around my characters or happen to use too many "lag inducing abilities"(even if my entire build just happens to be based around these abilities and using them as fast as I can) can be very frustrating. unless blizzard can pull the whole root out in one swift motion, rather than pluck it off at the surface, they will continue to come back and get better each time.
Screen Resolution.
It has been almost a decade since an 800x600 resolution was a precious commodity. I suppose being able to see more of the screen at a time could be seen as an advantage(expecially for pvp, though its really not my cup of tea) it would be a small price to pay.
Item coloring/Graphics
With so many colors available, you think some variety in the item coloring could be implemented. One of the most commonly requested single player mods I see is for the Red Rune Mod, which simply makes runes text red. In the sea of white text it can often be hard to pick out specific things(particularly when you have to do a double take when a non eth normal rune sword drops), so a little variety to various items would be nice. Why have ethereal and socketed items be the same color when there are many to choose from? Gems and runes could definately be a different color compared to a minor healing potion. While I'm not suggesting the kind of customization options that the maphack I used to use offered(where you could completely change the color of any item, even make it so that certain items like isenhearts chest piece wouldn't even show up on the screen since I knew I would never pick it up) it would be a nice feature to have some basic color customization be available, particularly for the color blind.
Also,at this point in the game, why isn't there a unique item graphic for gothic shields in the game yet? They look nothing like kite shields, though I suppose it doesn't really matter since noone really uses them but still.
Screen Management
Sometimes there is just too much crap on the ground, particuarly in baals throneroom after killing a few waves. its not so much a problem of the graphics on the ground, but more so the text that appears when holding alt. What harm could come out of having potions "stack" in the sense that only the text for one of each type of potion appears and when clicked on, your character walks to the nearest of that potion type to pick it up? How about gold piling together, rather than sitting in stacks of 5 scattered across the room? You could even make it based on character level, gold less than 20 times your level times your goldfind% on the ground would stack into one pile(numbers obviously up for discussion, the point still stands)
In a similar regard(Im guessing this change would not be a very easy one to implement with the engine of this game, but follow me here) how annoying is it when you cannot open your cube while at a vendor? Ideally, a floating window that you could move around for the contents of your cube would be best, but due to current engine restrictions, how about it just works like it does at your stash(it opens where the vendor would be, and then you close the cube you would go back into the vendor screen.) Though with a screen resolution increase, maybe there would be potential to having 3 screens side by side instead of 2 in the current form.
Another frequently requested option is the ability to rotate items in your stash, which while it would be nice, you would have to consider that it would increase the plus skill potential of your character stash to +16 from its current +13
please critique and offer suggestions. Again, I apologize for the large amount of text, but I had a fairly boring day of work with a lot of time for day dreaming and thinking.