So in Diablo 2 you had a wide variety of unique items. They had wildly different droprates, so finding the more common ones was ok but not really cause for massive celebration. The high end ones? the super rare ones? If you found one of those it was an event of note. Not just for that character, but for your entire experience with the game. I'd like that brought back. D3 rains legendaries on you and it desensitizes you pretty massively.
I've only gotten one or two Primals on items I'll never use, so that is pretty cool. D3 also rains down Death Breaths, bloodshards, and materials for you to use at the various gambling stations (Kanai + Kadala).
D3 started off with much rarer loot and people complained. Builds during launch were also "far less normalized" because players couldn't get complete sets of gear and/or necessary legendaries. Seasons helped by offering guarantee builds, much like Wizards of the Coast offers starter decks for people who want a fun and well-tuned deck to play with. The rate of loot is never going to appease everyone. If they toned it down, we would see complaints that the good stuff drops so rarely that it takes way too much grind before you reach the fun builds.
D2 had far less normalisation when it comes to loot. Some of the best stuff in the game wasn't even unique: it just had a number of crazy modifiers line up to make a hyper specialised item that was absolutely amazing for a specific build. Now, I don't know if that kind of RNG-reliance is worth praising...but man did it every result in a super varied ecosystem of gear. Also, little things like having certain uniques "break the rules" of itemisation by giving you abilities from other classes. That kind of thing was cool. A nightmare to balance, but cool.
I would like cross-class items too. I think the Hellfire amulets would be more interesting if you could roll for abilities that other classes have (within limits) as well as your own class abilities.
When you say "far less normalization", I feel as though I am back in the 90s, listening to a Magic the Gathering player who insists that the rarity of these really powerful cards makes the game
more fun, and I do not ascribe to that thinking. Getting a rare drop is nice, but I want more than just a hamster wheel. I want a game with mechanics that are enjoyable even if I'm not winning the best loot during my run. I don't want the rarity of my session's loot to determine whether I'm having a good time or a slog.
Also: runewords were the shit. If you managed to build one of the killer ones, you were a goddamn legend. Good times.
And then I want character investment back. Getting to level 99 in D2 was a goddamn achievement. D3 treats characters like plastic cutlery: unwrap, use it, throw it away, move on to the next. I like to invest my time in a single character over a long period of time, building them up and carefully molding them into my hero of choice. No respecs. No learning all skills. No maxing it out in an evening. I want leveling to mean something, and I want skill trees that scroll so much you need a goddamn energy drink to reach the end. I want the D4 devs to look at PoE's skill trees and think "That's adorable". I want my UI to light up like an Xmas tree every time I level. I want to spend points. Massive amount of points. Attributes skills perks traits spells proficiencies feats. NUMBERS. I want math to cull the weak and sent them packing to Fortnite. I will totally admit that I am not the norm when it comes to this. Most people want simple, easy and quick.
Man, I could rant about this shit for days. But you get the idea.
I don't mind the ranting. I love Diablo and I'm always down to rant about the franchise.
IMO the D3 character advancement can be just as long as you want it to be. Play campaign and slowly grind your way up. I also have fond memories of the long slog of D2 (and D1), but that doesn't make them better games.
I wouldn't mind if Blizzard included more ways to invest in my character after I've unlocked all the skills, but at a certain point the good players are still going to hit "level cap" (whatever form that takes) and will have to increasingly rely on the rolls of the gear they're looting.
D2 required a lot of grinding before you could reach the end-game. D3 didn't require nearly as much. I don't see one as being better than the other, just different preferences.
I also love crunching the numbers and tweaking the little things. D3 does that, and better. You can re-roll individual item abilities. You can re-roll legendaries (or seek those perfect Primals) to your heart's content. You can grind a dozen different ways. I do wish the numbers were less "under the hood" and more in the open, but even on console I can pour over the details of my character stats and insert those nuanced little improvements to see how they work in the build.
I like that D3 gives me the full toolkit instead of (needlessly) requiring a character re-roll or a completely new save file just because I want to try out some new meta build that I heard about or thought up. I like that I can swap skills and compare their efficacy in battle very easily. I like that I can get a new character to 70 and then share all my Paragon with them instantly. I like that my Stash and my vendor upgrades are shared. It's just a quality of life thing. The extra hurdles placed between the player and their ideal build don't necessarily make the experience better, nor does it make players "earn it" more since they will still need a very high level of skill/reflexes to play that build at the highest difficulties.
