I was a little iffy on the power level aspect of items as well but I’ll admit it’s growing on me.
However, when it comes to running tomes and grims I feel Vermintide 1’s system felt much better simply in the fact that I could see, plainly, how getting those bonus objectives helped my loot. Most of all I could easily see that I wouldn’t be able to get that top tier item without them and it justified all that work for a perfect run.
Now, to be clear, I do see some benefits of the current system. It allows people access to higher tier items with a lucky roll and can more intuitively give more than 1 item but the ambiguity of loot crates feels awful.
To simplify: Great my team got 1 tome and a grim, but I was pixel off of the next tier of chest so what was the point then? Not only that, but was that next level actually going to get me anything better?
I’ve gotten to the point where I’m all or nothing. If I doubt my team can go for both grims why should we bother with 1? I’d rather just increase my chances of finishing with 2-3 tomes and move on.
To summarize. The ability to see what you could have gotten with a higher roll and get a tangible, fixed bonus for every tome/grim was far superior to a % of a progress bar that may or may not actually improve my loot. Even though in the end it was still random whether the bonuses (tome/grim/die) actually resulting in a good roll, I could see I had improved my chances for a good item.
Also, small pet peeve, why are we still picking up loot dice if we don’t have the dice roll anymore?
Otherwise loving the game though.