1. I am total Median XL newbie. Haven't got even to Hell difficulty (mostly due to taking game slow'ish) although I did check some guides and videos so I'm not totally clueless
2. I play solo (sometimes with my friend via hamachi)
3. I was huge D2 fan and played it far longer than I should have
4. I will focus on things I'd like devs to know that might need some changing - this is not "only negative criticism hurr durr for the sake of being negative"
5. By no means am I saying median XL is bad - it's playerbase is huge and that's the best indicator of success
6. I'll write things in points, cause it's simplier for me and for any unfortunate reader
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1. One of my biggest gripes is, compared to D2, how weak and boring "rare" items are. In classic D2 rare items could spawn with plethora of different ability setups. Some of them were actually the best for the slot and in turn most expensive to get. In Median XL the best you can hope for is "+1-2 to all skills" - this sure is a big thing in general, but.. It's boring. There's 0 point of me picking any rare armor parts, because at best they'll be only slightly worse than cheapest runewords Median XL offers.
My suggestion: let rare items spawn with crazier ability combinations.
Let them give +2-3 to certain skill.
Let them spawn with several +skills
Give them some early-mid-end game purpose rather than filler untill one hits "minimum runeword level"
2. Also regarding "rare" items - too few of those have passive abilities like "doex X on attack/kill" in D2 those were the most fun things and some builds even used just that as their core.
My suggestion: let rare items spawn with more passive/trigger abilities - those are cool even if useless later in the game
3. Runewords are far too simplistic considering we can get the very best items for them and runes rain from sky. Make more runewords that require 4-5-6 runes (and please don't make them all the same, because that kinda removes the idea of runeWORD) - I know the overall stats will drop hard because players will have less space to put in jewels, but one of the coolest things D2 had was farming runes for perfect runeword items
My suggestion:
Rework all simplistic "3x the same rune" runewords into actual and proper runewords
Add long-chain runewords (so we could actually use the runes we get)
Maybe reintroduce auras and d2 classic spells for certain runewords
Or even reintroduce d2 runewords to Median XL - slightly changed to accomodate for different damage meta/abilities
4. Item locked to classes - this was always a thing in d2, but Median Xl kinda took it one step further and... I have no idea why tbh.
Why crystal sword became sorc thing?
Or certain crossbows or all scythes a necro thing?
Quite a few of swords/axes a barb thing?
Also why paladins get to have blackguard helmets? Those are 100% necro helmets btw
Thematically I could somewhat agree with it, but then Median XL doesn't really bother with theme all that much to begin with. Summoner barbarian or blood amazon...
My suggestion: Release those items to be free for all - let those items have class-specific skills so using them on correct class would have more benefits - this will work even better if My point 1. and 2. would be added
5. This game, for most of time, revolves about uniques and arcane crystals. That's the main loop for untill you get to "sacred" tier weapons. Having almost endless supply of uniques by farming bosses or crafting your own things is great, but it also kills the point of actual farming, because if you need something you no longer farm the thing you need, but rather farm bosses that yeld the most trash-uniques and then craft whatever you want. From one side I really like this, but from other it just kills the fun of "looting". Tbh I have no suggestions nor solutions here. It's one of those flaws Median Xl has that I just have to bear with.
6. Crafting - ok this is a huge thing and I definitely don't know everything but there's just one thing I'd like to suggest here: how about we'd implement D2 original crafting with "orange" rarity items (mostly amulets/rings) where they are above "rare" tier and might even surpass "unique" items? Having some option to drain cluttering runes, gems and jewels would be nice to have.
7. Speaking of: Gems have no purpose beyond 1 or 2 minor uses in cube recipees and early game res-stacking - considering how many of those drop, it'd be nice if we had some sink for them. Maybe turning gems into jewels with cube recipee like gem + rune + "something" = jewel
8. "rare monsters" - Median XL made plenty of monster that have unique abilities. Some of them are "rare". The problem is, considering everything has some ability on their own "rare monsters" no longer feel all that unique. I'd suggest giving them 1 or maybe even 2 more abilities on hell difficulty. Same for unique-perm bosses like andariel - her having a meteor shower was.. surprising and deadly, but in higher difficulties she could do bit more than being a sponge.
9. Median XL locks hero subclasses from mixing - Thats where D2 was best at. It allowed you to mix all abilities together, even if the outcome would turn out kinda meh. Median XL on the other hand doesn't allow to do weird combinations. You can always truly follow 2 columns at most, which are slightly bigger than D2 original trees, but in the end player is still strongly limited. I doubt devs would allow for less ability locking, but that's my suggestion. Let us build were-bearmanwolftrap
- also it'd be great if more (or all) abilities had synergies. It's a cool min-max feature.10. Please update hero ability tooltips. Some of them give strong "wtf" vibe, like necro - "defenseless victims and tries to kill them to get corpses" or... assassin - "temporarily protect your well-being"
11. While checking some guides and tutorials and uber-runs I noticed one thing in common - inventories being 100% cluttered with charms or potions. Although I don't think introducing "infinite potions" would be good for the game, but having some sort of "charm stacker" would be more than great. I have no idea if thats possible, but if we could somehow transfer one perk from a charm to another and just stack plenty of perks on it, that'd be better than having whole inventory full.
Here's how it'd work: Create "main charm". Be it even 2x2 size. It's only 1 so it can be bigger. Limits for "main charm" are: can hold 1 torch, 3 large, 4 medium and 4 small charms inside, it also can hold some charms introduced by median XL. No charms will work for as long as "main charm" is in inventory (so noone would cheese more charms for extra damage)
Transfering charm effects onto the "main charm" would be via cube: random charm + "main charm" + some oil + rune (each next charm added increases runes level as a cost) = "main charm" with random charms stats.
In case of you wanting to swap a charm, say you already have 4 charms in but you found a much better one and wanna swap. You can uncraft the "main charm" so it drops all charms it "consumed" and then you can place new charms, but then again you'll still have to pay price in high tier runes
OR.. Ignore all what I said about "main charm" and instead let us "consume" charms for their effects
