In No Man’s Sky, a game that is still going strong 8 years+ in the making, without seasons but Expeditions, could teach a few things to make Diablo 4 the best ARPG for a decade+.
What many like me hate is having to re-grind for stuff we already grinded in previous seasons. And Blizzard is trying to make the game easier and easier because of that, which dilutes the potential of the game.
Very few players can spend more than 10 hours per week playing a game, or even the same game, which makes D4 seasons very detrimental to the experience of playing this game.
What is fun with D4 is creating and raising characters, making them as good as they can be. Not every 3 months. Constantly restarting over gets old quick.
With Expeditions like in No Man’s Sky, whatever we gather, the massive rewards, entice us to play and what’s amazing is that after the 2-week limited event, the rewards are brought back to your main save.
D4 could do the same, to make 4-week limited adventures, where we raise a new character from scratch if we want, or portal a character from Eternal and do the adventure. Once done, whatever you got, plus the rewards, are brought back to your Eternal save.
Blizzard could try more stuff in Expeditions/Adventures, and bring back the popular ones to the Eternal realm.
We could create a company of hirelings, so they can do stuff for us, hunt for stuff, and bring back gold, loot, gatherables, etc… In No Man’s Sky we have a fleet of ships that you send on missions to do that.
Another thing that is popular in No Man’s Sky is that the community can share what they find. “Go to this planet, this weapon/ship is there”. In D4 that would translate in locations/specific quests that the reward is something targetable. “Quest A that lasts 10 hours rewards Tyrael’s Might”, etc…
Without seasons, with time-limited adventures, with targetable loot, it fixes some main problems with the current very old Diablo seasons design. Blizzard would still continue to release new content for adventures, could give amazing loot to motivate us to do the adventure.
What do you think?