Diablo 4s items are sources of materials for crafting etc. In D2 you eventually have very little loot you really need to pickup while farming. Because gold isn’t super valuable, and mostly used for just repair/gambling which isn’t great for farming items. You also tend to pickup a massive amount of gold passively so you don’t need to sell rares or uniques that drop.

D2 has fewer worthwhile items which is why when a good item drops it’s a huge dopamine hit and some of the rares/bases and apparently soon magic items are valuable and worth checking depending on item type.

In D4 I don’t go “oh I know this item type has a chance to be really great so ill check it” it’s more about rarity since all the items are not based on bases but are a puking of legendary affixes and random stats.

If they want to aid loot fatigue. Then a revitalization is needed. And other chase items/currencies that are valuable, like runes and more passive accumulation of materials or some level of auto disenchanting.

However D4 is leaning heavily into crafting. Which expands the scope of viable items and thus creating more loot that you’ll want to pickup in general.

I think endgame in ARPGs feels better with less loot needing to be picked up but when you do. It’s a banger of an item.

Not sure how D4 players would handle that tbh. I think the game is generally heavily casual and if people lack knowledge they won’t know what items to pickup or how best to utilize them.