So I would like to give my honest breakdown of all the D4 systems currently in the game as well as give suggestions on improvements that are needed on those systems.
Before I go into the systems, I would like to say most of this won’t contain anything about itemization as it is a known issue and is currently slated for a revamp in Season 4. Also I will say that Season 3 is a lot better than Season 1, but is still not as good as Season 2 was. With that lets break down the systems and needed improvements:
Season 3 Seasonal Content:
Tremor Bounties: They are decent enough for what they are, but the Whispers attached to them need to be repeatable. Meaning if someone wants to grind whisper quests just doing the new content for hours, they should be able to do that. Currently you do the Whispers on in the designated Tremor area and they disappear like all the other completed whispers. The Whispers that show up in the Tremor Bounties need to be persistent and repeatable for as long as the bounties are there in that area.
Nightmare Vaults: The concept of slowly moving through and avoiding traps in a dungeon is a cool idea in D&D and 3rd person RPGs, but doesn’t translate well in Diablo 4. It isn’t that it is a bad idea, it is that there are too many chances to succeed, the experience gain is crappier than regular Nightmare Dungeons, and that the reward isn’t equal to the effort. A better way of doing these vaults is making obtaining a sigil key harder. Once inside, the tracker doesn’t track how many times you lose a stack of some buff, but rather just tracks how many times you hit a trap. Your reward is calculated after you kill the final room guardian and gives you a reward fitting your effort to avoid traps. When you have a system that lets you stack a bunch of safety buffs to negate the content, the content becomes irrelevant because it loses the excitement of the content’s purpose which was to challenge players to avoid traps.
I think that the biggest lesson to take away from Season 3 (for the devs) is that players enjoy player power and upgrading player power but they want that power to be on their character, not a pet. Consider taking the construct abilities and tuning stone concept and applying it to armor instead. Let players find modifiers for their spells/abilities, upgrade those abilities, and modify them.
Diablo 4 Baseline Content:
Leveling Campaign (1-50 experience): Still good. No changes needed.
Endgame Leveling: The pace remains good. Allowing players to modify their xp gains in the Battlepass with Ashes is still good. No change required on this.
Before moving on to problem areas that need addressing, I would like to state that there is one thing that lacking from Diablo 4. That is replayability excitement. Sure this game has ways to replay the content. Seasons and other classes are a part of that, however I don’t think that Diablo 4 is doing enough to keep players engaged. Part of the reason is the lackluster itemization. The other part is not doing enough with existing content. Here is a list of existing content that could use some improvements to really keep players engaged with the game:
Dungeons/Nightmare Dungeons: This is the core of what makes up the game and endgame. However they are extremely boring and repetitive. Why? The best way to address this problem for the long-term health of the game is to revisit all of the dungeons and add in new final dungeon bosses into the game. New Dungeon Bosses with new mechanics. Don’t just slap a fresh coat of paint on an existing model and effects, rename it, and expect that that is a “new” boss. Players see right through that mirage and will call you out for it. Out of ALL THE ZONES in the game, you can really only think of 5-6 Bosses/Reskin Bosses? In order to keep the dungeons feeling fresh, you need half of the total number of dungeons to have Unique Bosses with Unique Boss Mechanics. When you opt for quantity over quality, it shows and people get bored and/or upset. They don’t all have to be demons. The spider boss was a pain for Barb players like myself, but I would rather have something new to fight than Tomb Lord and Beast of the Land 50 times in a row. How about a darkness demon that uses darkness to blind and confuse. How about a Desert Wasp Queen? Maybe a Boss that needs you to destroy alters in a certain order in order for you to kill it? How about a boss that makes you pray to certain alters during the fight to gain a buff in order to overcome rotating resistances it will have during the fight? How about a boss that is not an uber boss but has 1 instant death ability that needs to be avoided? A Giant Golem boss that is immune to damage unless its core is exposed? A tentacle monster that shoots death rays? How about randomly when entering a boss room, the boss doesn’t attack but spouts out that they will kill you painfully. Shortly after a big Golden portal spawns behind them and a huge Treasure Goblin Bruiser Demon turns the Boss into paste then attacks you taking over as the final boss of the Dungeon as a Surprise Dungeon Boss? The Surprise Treasure Goblin Bruiser Demon could be color coated as well like the other treasure goblins and drop rewards based on its color. I mean there are a lot of bosses that can be added in. Is it a lot of work? Sure is but the pay off with player engagement would be worth it.
Another thing that can be done with existing dungeons is to change up the dungeon event. Bring back the Diablo 3 Treasure Goblins (different colors drop different rewards) and add them in the dungeons as possible replacement events to spawn. Imagine a player enters a dungeon and finds the event room. Instead of one of the usual events, the player finds 3 goblins of the same color looting some nearby chests. The players kills them, gets their loot, and finishes the dungeon. After doing a couple more Nightmare Dungeons, the same player finds the Treasure Goblin event again but it’s a different color set of goblins.
This is the slot machine effect where it makes the player want to keep trying to do nightmare dungeons in order to spawn the set of treasure goblins that they want. You can even have treasure goblins that exclusively drop Uniques and Uber Uniques, but they are rarely seen with the orange treasure goblins (treasure goblins that always drop a legendary when killed). Another Treasure Goblin that was awesome in Diablo 3 was the Menagerie Goblin (Goblin that dropped Cosmetics and Pets). In addition to the existing cosmetics in the game, you can add exclusive cosmetics to this Treasure Goblin’s loot table giving players a reason to want to hunt these guys as well as hunting for loot.
Helltides:
There is something lacking with Helltides and that is Dungeon level Boss encounters. Sure there is that insect world boss that patrols the Helltide area but where are the dungeon boss that are easier than that? The Helltide Harbingers are just elites. I think if you add in some dungeon level Demon bosses into the Helltides, that would make things a little more fun.
Silent Chests: It is no secret that these are terrible and after level 50 obols that drop essentially become worthless. Only providing moderate value to farm Legendary aspects from the vendor. How about making Silent Chests actually worth opening? The Silent Chests are random in a zone so its not like their position is predictable. Opening one grants basic chest stuff: a couple pieces of rare and magic gear, sometimes a legendary, some gold, and materials.
How about taking the Diablo 3 Treasure Goblin approach to this and color coat the chests to signify what sort of items will drop from them and adding in more spawn points in the world for these chests? This would give some excitement in finding and opening these chests.
Crafting:
There needs to be a way like in Diablo 3 to craft pieces of gear. It doesn’t need to be every slot. Just enough slots to feel like you can deterministically work towards the goal of finishing your endgame build without having to completely rely on RNG. Enchanting 1 affix to change it into a different affix isn’t crafting. That is enchanting. Honestly I would probably grind the game harder in order to get the necessary raw materials needed so I can craft 40-80 gloves in order for the chance for 1 of those to roll with the affixes I want.
Whispers: As long as there are persistent and repeatable bounties for content players are doing at the endgame, I don’t think Whispers could really improve much beyond that.
Legions: There is nothing special about Legion events that makes players want to do them. They don’t have unique rewards or cosmetics. I don’t think the exp gained is any higher than doing Helltides. Legions do need some incentive for players to do them. Making them mandatory would anger players. Best solution would be to add in uber boss summoning materials as random drops into Legions. This would make them an optional way to get summoning materials than grinding specific content over and over to get them.
Uber Bosses: They are still good. Keep adding more into the pool. Especially more on the same level as Duriel so there is some relief on the Duriel burnout.
Overall, with a few changes to existing systems, an overhaul to dungeons, and the addition of actual item crafting, the game would see a lot higher player retention. That is without the new itemization changes. With the new itemization changes, it will breathe new life back into this game which already feels stale and lifeless.