I thought it would be good to condense my thoughts on the future of Diablo into a feedback letter for the development team in charge of the next major Diablo installment for PC. I share the community’s disappointment with the Immortal reveal for many reasons, so let’s look forward and discuss the next chapter, shall we? Here’s what I believe the next Diablo game needs to be successful long term.
Trading
I’ve played Diablo 2 actively for going on 15 years, and one of the main reasons that it keeps me engaged is trading. Through trading, we’re able to funnel what resources we find into targeted upgrades, while simultaneously making new friends and sharing lasting experiences. In today’s D3, when you find a well rolled legendary for another class or build, it is most of the time completely useless. In vanilla D3, or D2, it was a cause for excitement! Now I can trade this for runes/gold to buy the item I want next! While I believe trading comes in a better form than an Auction House for a Diablo title, when D3 removed the AH it also removed a large part of the reason we kept grinding and engaging with the game. I was the first of my friends to reach Paragon 100 and being able to trade what I found to pool resources to upgrade my character down the line is what kept me playing even after that. Paragon levels 1500-9999 don’t keep me engaged in playing in the same way at all. How about a website or forum where you list what you need/offer which facilitates you meeting players in a dedicated game or trading zone to make the trade? It streamlines the trading process enough that it doesn’t feel dated and clunky, and allows for social interaction and community building.
In my eyes, the next Diablo title for PC needs a face-to-face trading system to keep the core playerbase engaged over the long term.
Runes and Runewords
Runes were a wonderful gear system for many reasons. They enabled many character builds that were previously hampered by the lack of certain skills, complemented existing builds with auras that let them clear content previously unavailable to them, and even made the process of playing a new character more interesting. As you leveled you would not only equip the best magic and rare items you found to survive, you could also save up runes to create runewords like Stealth or Leaf that greatly enhanced your efficiency for a while. Even the way you had to put runes into specific types of items and in certain orders made them feel more mystical and powerful. Legendaries tried to simulate this level of game-altering effects, but fell short in the sense that after the RoS changes, rare items were rendered entirely useless, whereas in D2, a really well rolled rare was always highly valuable in many gear slots, no matter the build you were playing. It meant you had something to search for, even after you found that Shako your Paladin needed so badly. I believe D3 would’ve been much better off with the legendary effects of RoS, somehow balanced to keep rare items relevant and a step up on the absolute top level.
The next Diablo PC installment desperately needs a gearing system like runes and runewords. There’s no shame in outright copying it, since it works so damn well even today.
Rarity
In today’s D3, legendaries are incredibly easy to come by. Run a T13 rift and you’ll probably pick up somewhere in the region of 5-10 legendaries per rift minimum. Back in the day, even in WoW aswell as Diablo, Epic and Unique items were rare enough that finding one mattered. And in D2, when you did find something, and it wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, it wasn’t immediately rendered useless. Because of trading, you could put that item toward your next upgrade anyway! Many players today claim D2’s level of rarity was too punishing. The thing is though, trading bridged the gap between what you found and what you wanted, so the rarity of the specific item you were searching for wasn’t as punishing. On top of that, the reason it is so rewarding to see that Unique Diadem drop is that Griffon’s Eye is both incredibly rare and immensely powerful in certain character builds. When a certain legendary 2H mace is really powerful, but legendaries even of that type drop constantly, it simply doesn’t feel as good to find the one you need in the end.
Powerful items in the next Diablo game need to be rare enough that they feel special. It doesn’t matter how powerful it is if we can get 5 of it in an hour, we need to feel it aswell.
PvP
I won’t go too much indepth regarding D2 PvP as I never engaged in it heavily, but that on its own should tell you a fair bit. D2 LoD is 17 years old and I am still engaged enough by the PvM and trading aspects of the game that I have a largely unexplored portion of the game to check out. D2 PvP still has a sizeable community surrounding it. Players create builds for all sorts of purposes. Dueling at level 9, 18, 29, 49 and several other increments is popular even to this day and the great gearing system is part of the reason why. A similar scene couldn’t exist in D3 due to its scaling and legendaries granting way too big spikes in power.
Properly made PvP that fits the Diablo genre builds new communities and keeps the game fresh for years beyond its release, and is a must for the next title.
Skill and Attribute customization
A big topic of discussion in BFA lately has been how the revamped talent system which awards a point every 15 levels makes reaching a new level feel less impactful. A comparison can be drawn to the simplified skill system and attributes in Diablo 3. Leveling up in D2 grants you 5 points to place into Strength, Dexterity, Vitality or Energy. This means that every single time you reach a new level you get to decide if you want to invest in being able to wear heavier types of armor/hit harder with physical attacks, equipping higher level dexterity-based weapons, increase your life total and stamina, or improve the consistency of your damage output and survivability through a larger mana pool. In D3, going from level 7 to 8 might mean that a skill had a new rune unlocked, but if you weren’t already using that skill, or the effects didn’t align with the way you were trying to play, it was a waste entirely.
On top of letting you decide exactly how your character grows in terms of attributes, you were awarded a skill point with every level. I think it’s fair to say that the D2 skill trees laid a large amount of the groundwork for the system used in WoW’s most popular years of existence, and it does its job very well. You get something every level, but there are still milestone levels where you unlock new abilities, so you get incremental rewards aswell as something big to look forward to. The way skills synergized with eachother was brilliant in the sense that if you made a Sorceress with the plan to focus on the Blizzard skill, you were strengthening it via synergies before it was available, making that level 24 even more satisfying. Whereas today, whether or not you use a skill is largely dependant on if the developers created a set that complements it with enormous damage % increases or not, a Sorceress in D2 could be built in a myriad of ways for different purposes, because the existing class sets didn’t disable all other gameplay options purely via scaling. On top of all this, it also meant that every level 90 Paladin was different in some way, and not a complete carbon copy of the next one over.
The next Diablo game needs a fully fleshed out skill and attribute system that lets each player feel their character grow with each level, and tailor it to what they like.
These are some of the aspects that I think made Diablo 2 such an iconic game, and why it holds up to this day, and remains a favorite for many long-time fans over D3. I hope this sparks a discussion on what the rest of you want to see in Diablo 4, and that the core Diablo community can be heard once and for all.
This is actually someone else’s thoughts and I agree with it all. However, I would like to add a few things:
I hope they make the talent tree more complex and make more customization with the characters. Also, I hope it’s a whole world of sanctuary and 360 degree view of the character and the environment around the character. I’m a classic d1 and d2 fan and this is what I would like to see. I know that’s a big change and a lot to ask, but I think it would make diablo a much better game at this point. To be honest, D4 just looks like a slightly upgraded version of D3. Needs a lot of work. I do really like the open world idea… SO much cooler!!! OH YEAH… RUNE WORDS PLEASE!!! The runeword system in D2 was epic. I like that I had to look up the different runewords and how to know which qualities of items were best for those runewords. Also, item crafting in the cube was epic. I really hope D4 takes all this into account. Hope they don’t disappoint. I HOPE that this game pulls me away from WoW forever. I hope they take WoW into account for a lot of what they do in D4. If they make the game too simple, WoW players will just stick to playing WoW. Just saying. Hope Blizz sees this post.
, and I don’t play PoE). I love GR too so I think the only solution is to make another endgame activity as good as GR, which gives the same drop and require the same key as GR so that it doesn’t force you to play both.