Howdy fellow demon slayers. I am making this post in hopes to compile a list of things we might want to see from D3 implemented in D4, and things we most definitely don’t want to see from D3 in D4.
While almost everything is subjective, I’m curious to see what others have to say, and hopefully build a good thread. Below I will list my personal pros and cons of D3 and what features I would personally like to see implemented or not implemented in D4.
Let’s start with the pros of D3 that I would like to see in D4.
• Smooth, seamless, and quick farming.
One of the things I like most about D3 is building classes for speed farming. Be it key/material farming, or speed paragon farming. D3 (aside from all of the server issues) does a great job of seamless, smooth speed farming. Everything feels super responsive and it’s just an overall pleasant experience.
• Group play and synergizing builds.
Another thing that I really like about D3 is the group experience. I like how different classes can be complementary to others. Take 4 man xp farming for example. I love the idea of barbarians providing support while providing speed boosts as well. Also how barbs stack pickup radius to syergize with globe pick up for resource and healing for other classes. It’s all just such a smooth and synergizing experience and makes group play very fun.
• Loot hunt
This goes for a lot of arpgs, but the loot grind for those perfect items is like playing a slot machine. You don’t necessarily win all the time, but it’s so much fun when you hit that (jackpot) and find a godlike piece of gear. This is one of the aspects of the game that can have you playing for hours on end without realizing how much time has even passed.
• Small things here and there to do if you can’t find a group.
Or are just bored in general. Examples would be farming for portraits and wings etc. There is a con to this and will be listed in the cons section below.
• Clans and communities.
Surrounding yourself with players of similar mindsets can be a lot of fun, and very rewarding. Clans and communities are a great option for making group finding a lot easier.
There are several more pros, but I’m drawing a blank atm. I will update the pros list as I remember more, and as people provide pros in the comments.
Cons of D3 that definitely have no part in D4.
• Lack of endgame.
Currently the only endgame in D3 is paragon farming. Paragon farming while in theory seems like a good idea, it leads to dull gameplay and a ton of other issues that will be noted below.
• Cheating and third party software.
Following up on our first con is this one. With a ton of people cheating and getting away with it, it has led to many players being discouraged and forming a (if you can’t beat them, join them mentality). This for the most part has been on blizzard for not taking a stronger stance on botting through the years. No human can physically keep up with an account that has 15-24 hours per day of uptime per season. It’s not only paragon that is affected, but those players also have an over abundance of materials that can be used for endless reforging of gear. With the power creep given by so much main stat, and extremely well rolled gear from all of the materials they gain, there is simply no competing with them (for the most part).
• Server stability.
I think we can all agree that there are simply too many server issues with this game. This leads to crashes, the inability to join groups, laggy gameplay, and simply a poor gameplay experience over all.
• Paragon/Endgame
While paragon farming can be fun, it gets very dull and boring very fast. There simply needs to be a lot more endgame options in D4.
• Itemization and diversity.
D3 can be fun and rewarding to play, but can also get extremely boring because of lack of playable builds and lack of items. I know nothing can ever be perfectly balanced, but it would be fun to be able to play more than one build/spec and be able to be competitive with it. Currently if you look at the leaderboards for any class, all of the competitive specs/builds are one build/spec.
• Not enough servers.
One thing that has always blown my mind with D3, a game that was supposed to be so massive (in terms of people playing). Is the lack of servers spread out over different regions. This can kind of tie back to the server stability con listed earlier. D4 definitely needs more servers spread across regions for a better online experience. D3 is one of the only games I have seen where you can have a fiber connection, and still sit at an average of 80-100 ms latency.
• Watered down gameplay
Blizzard for a while now has been majorly catering to casual players. While there is nothing wrong with catering to casual gamers, the other end of the spectrum HAS to be considered and listened to as well. Highly devoted number crunching players need something to feed off of to have fun. There simply isn’t enough theory crafting one is able to do with D3. Skill trees, talents etc, need to be much more in depth for the hard core gamers, but also need to be easy enough for casual gamers.
• More listening and responding to the community.
I have played D3 since launch. And one thing that really bothers me is Blizzard’s lack of involvement in the community. People over the years have had AMAZING ideas for D3 and RARELY are any of them ever acknowledged or implemented. For D4 the devs really need to listen to the whole community and be more active within the community. For too long now we all feel as though anything we say falls on deaf ears.
• Lack of UI options. (This leads to third party software use).
There are so many UI options that should be included in that game that simply aren’t with D3, and a lot of it is crucial information. No skill cool down timers, the inability to see buffs such as innter sanctuary when it’s in the ground around a bunch of mobs, inability to see demon hunter turrets, mosnter affix information hard to see, the inability to lock your ui so you don’t click it all the time, etc. Either Blizzard needs to address the UI issues in the future, or allow mods like in WoW. I do want to say I am in no way condoning the use of anything that shows unexplored parts of the map etc. Tldr: the game simply doesn’t give us enough information for what’s going on around us while playing.
• Players shouldn’t feel punished for wanting to play solo.
Unfortunately in D3 you are at a severe disadvantage if you want to play solo. Group play is mandatory for the exper needed for power creep. This is one thing I definitely don’t want to see in D4, and solo play should be just as fun as group play.
As with the pros, I will add more to the cons lost as I remember them, and add from comments below.
Thank you all for taking the time to read my post.