There are no announcements for Diablo 4 yet, but it wouldn’t be too far off for it to happen soon. A new game would be a great idea considering Diablo 3 isn’t the game it used to be or even promised it would be. Players were turned off by making the game permanently online. It was a logical step by Blizzard to prevent hackers from ruining the game for other players. It also had problems with servers being full when it was released, but eventually, players got over it, but the rules and standards that they implemented cooled the passion of a lot of players. In the end, what turned off a lot of players was the real-money auction. That just took away the core mechanics and transformed it into a repeated grind of the main campaign, which achieved nothing. Even the most hardcore PC and gaming laptop owners moved on to other games, or even went back to older ones.
In an unexpected move by a big gaming company, Blizzard admitted the mistakes that they did with D4. And then they worked hard to fix it. They removed the auction house and significantly improved the player experience with new systems and even increased the challenge for the end-game. The result was the expansion, “Reaper of Souls.” It added randomly generated dungeons and bounties, which in turn brought in a lot of content and game time for new, dedicated and returning players.
Blizzard has been alluding to a sequel to Diablo. And the possibility of it made fans excited, but also wary. Blizzard has to make certain changes to avoid what happened to D3, which needed an expansion to fix.
Better social features
Diablo is well-known for having a large community even with the earlier games. Battle.net gave players a chance to open and join chatrooms to get advice and strategy, even make new friends. D3 introduced the concept of community clans, but it was basic at best. There are no benefits to joining clans and having a 100-player limit to chatrooms made it difficult for players to go through it all.
D4 should have clan perks and even halls for large groups, like country or city-based ones. They can take a page out of their playbook from a different game; WOW offers high-level guilds lots of great aesthetic incentives. These additions wouldn’t be too complicated to implement, but they would increase the strong sense of community that Diablo is famous for.
The Garrison
Another WOW inspiration is the Garrison. Diablo 3 has something similar to that, the player hub. The hub allows players to level up vendors, teach them designs, plans, and recipes. The Garrison of WOW, on the other hand, had that and then some. They get a small virtual keep that they can upgrade with a limited number of buildings, so players have to plan out what they wanted but whatever they picked would give them a lot of bonuses. Another change that would work is to offer customization options to make each hub look different. Things like weather effects, banners, and a slew of decoration to make it unique from everyone else.
A better storage system
Since the first game, players have been struggling with the problem of Inventory Tetris using limited space provided in the game. It’s annoying to manage and discourages players from collecting lots of items. Multiple containers can only do so much. Now, imagine how better the game would be if you can store as much as you want and the storage came with search and filter options.
Improving item management is the way to make it fun again
Searching for increasingly better equipment turned the whole game into an epic fantasy treasure hunt with fearsome monsters in between. Since the release of the “Reaper of Souls,” D3 was able to shift the game back to what it was before, a classic RPG. Being able to upgrade equipment will harken players back to the time when you personalized your weapon, so no two weapons are the same.
Blizzard also needs to ramp up their trading system with a simple feature. A gifting system would be an excellent way to get new players who are daunted by the prospect of equipment questing to play. It can also encourage older players who stopped to pick up where they left off without thinking of the grind.
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These are just the common things that most D3 players wish for. Who knows, maybe when Blizzard announces Diablo 4 (hopefully) at BlizzCon this November, they will show us improvements that would be better than what we suggested. Either way, if “Reaper of Souls” is any indication of how Blizzard improves, then you better prepare your PC and gaming laptop for the inevitable announcement and release.