Before getting into Diablo 4, I mostly played World of Warcraft and admittedly I was pretty negative on the World of Warcraft forums. 90% of the time I was on World of Warcraft I would be PvP’ng and in my opinion PvP is in a terrible state, or was when I left.
Switching over to Diablo 4 as my main game has had its ups and down, but overall a net positive experience. I put in quite a bit of hours into the game. I even purchased the game on steam a second time so I could play the game on my Steam deck.
That said, before listing my suggestions I just wanted to say good job Diablo 4 team, season 4 is a banger and season 5 is looking great too. I have high hopes for the expansion too but not much info on it yet.
1.) Visual and audio feedback from certain skills in the game stand out to me much more than others, they feel more epic and awesome. The skills im talking about are Upheavel, Ball lightning, Uh… Whatever the druid ability is that smashes the ground in bear form, i forget the name lol. I play these skills even when they are not meta because they simply feel awesome to use. Expand on whatever makes these special.
2.) Abilities that move monsters around when used like Kick, Boulder etc are quite fun as well. In groups I can see them getting annoying to others if used too often though. I suggest giving us the ability to turn on/off the part that moves the monsters without changing our builds directly. I’d really like to make a kick damage build, but I also really enjoy kicking monsters into each other and walls. Don’t make me choose to turn that off for damage, it feels too awesome. Make me choose between between damage and crowd control instead. Just give me the ability in the settings to turn off knock backs or something for when playing with others.
3.) Progression towards end game loot like ubers outside of spamming bosses. Season 4 gave me this via farming the seasonal rep on multiple toons and it’s been amazing. It’s slower than farming ubers from uber bosses, but I’m ok with that. We just need more options like this, for the people like myself who get bored spamming bosses over and over again.
4.) Cosmetics… Find ways to show them off better. Blizzards art teams have been the best in the business for as long as I can remember. Here are some ideas I’ve thought up
Inn’s: Give us a second Inn that when you walk it zooms in, allowing players to get a better look at everyone’s cosmetics. In this area there should be a vendor to sell goods, a place to change cosmetics, lots of seats and a ‘social’ vibe. Keep the other areas the same, don’t take anything away from people who just want to switch cosmetics and blast. This should be completely optional area. Just a place for people to chill and be social if they want.
Mounts: Add mounts to like 25% of loading screens, more so when with playing in parties. People have some pretty cool mounts in the game but I rarely get a good look at them, and I’d like to but without needing to stop and inspect or hinder my gameplay by doing so. Cosmetics of your friends and yourself on loading screens is a very under rated way of showing them off.
5.) PvP… Please don’t ignore this aspect of the game. This is honestly the only part of the game that I have seen very little improvement. Now I know most people will say PvP Diablo games are too hard to balance to make a ‘good’. I disagree completely. What PvP modes would work?
Arena for one. 2v2, 3v3 would be sweet. Some sort of battlegrounds too.
A leaderboard for each PvP mode would be awesome too. But how could this be balanced without players freaking out about one class being OP compared to others? Well I have some ideas.
Make new PvP modes not scale off of paragon boards, gear etc. Instead just allow us to pick our loadouts. Regarding the legendary powers and unique powers that actually change the gameplay of builds… Make those separate options we setup before hand via another PvP panel. For example, you could let us pick from like 2-4 unique powers and some legendary powers to add to our PvP setup (only if we have already acquired these via drops)
In short, normalize damage and damage taken to players. Make movement speed specific to each class and tweek damage according to class themes like making barbs a bit slower but hit a bit harder. Rogues faster but hit a little lighter.
The most important aspect of PvP in my opinion is separating it from PvE regarding Balance. Make new PvP modes built around this idea. As a long time World of Warcraft player, the biggest problem I have seen is devs struggling with balancing because PvP and PvE is tied together.
If you want to give people reasons to switch back and forth between PvE and PvP, there are plenty of ways to do so without messing with balance.
But Lancin you’re dumb, people don’t want battlegrounds or arena in Diablo games, they have never been about PvP and people just like to blast monsters.
Nonsense!
There are plenty of massively successful top down action PvP games. First one that comes to mind are MOBA’s. Even if the Diablo 4 team is still skeptical I beg you to please at least give this a shot. For one of the future seasons in the expansion just make an optional 2v2 or 3v3 arena mode and see how the community reacts. Don’t make it the main part of the season, but a bonus to ‘test’ if people want it.
I have plenty more ideas for the game and feedback but this post is already getting stupid long so I’ll end it here, again I’ve been having a ton of fun in Diablo 4, great job so far keep it up