What does Diablo 4 need?

[Morae]

I'm not sure what d4 needs, but I know things I liked and didnt like in other diablo games.

In d2 I liked the rune system. It felt rewarding to collect set of them and then use them to make items badass.
In d3 it feels like majority of skills and their runes are useless. Why are there so many uninteresting or bad skills?
Also, d3 talent system is bad. It kills certain type of replayability, but not sure, if its good or bad. Lots of people might just stop playing when they find they made their character wrong.
In d3 (most?) sets tie you to specific skills. I feel like sets should not do that.

Just some things that came to my mind quickly.

Edit:
Also... d3 classes were boring. This might tie to the earlier point of majority of skills being boring.

Where was druid? Where was necromancer(though, necro came later, but in my opinion it suffered from same problems as rest of the classes)?

Honestly, d3 often felt like it lacked... kick. Yet, not sure how much better it was in d2 (for its time).

[rhorle]

I was thinking the other day that a first person view would be kind of cool for Diablo. It would certainly be a gamble and alienate a lot of players who can't look past tradition of the top down clicker nature of the genre. But it would bring a modern feel to it. Of course I'd settle for a story mode of overwatch since I had this thought while doing the Halloween event in Overwatch.

D4 just needs something to make it "modern"

[Saphyron]

5.Make bosses actually BOSSES,and not make them act like normal mob with trilions in HP that may swing their weapon once in a min...grift bosses are just bad design...

Don't know if you remember but bosses at the launch of the game was like that. They were multi-phase fights that took minutes to take down.
But due to power creep you can basically ignore bosses now.

[Beefhammer]

Don't know if you remember but bosses at the launch of the game was like that. They were multi-phase fights that took minutes to take down.
But due to power creep you can basically ignore bosses now.

It's like WotLK heroics. Everyone remembers them as zergfeats, no one remembers that they were hard and caused many groups to disband on certain bosses, or that you needed certain comps to succeed until Ulduar gear became common.

[Saphyron]

It's like WotLK heroics. Everyone remembers them as zergfeats, no one remembers that they were hard and caused many groups to disband on certain bosses, or that you needed certain comps to succeed until Ulduar gear became common.

Heck if anyone remembers the first Maltheal Hardcore kill as a Barbarian(T6). It took him hours to get down. Because he was forced to go tanky else one mistake would have killed him.
http://www.verdammtehorde.de/diablof...-10280/p1.html

[TriHard]

Diablo 4 needs balanced pvp tbh, how sick would it be if they supported pvp, it would bring in so much more players than before.

[Tabrotar]

Diablo 4 needs balanced pvp tbh, how sick would it be if they supported pvp, it would bring in so much more players than before.

Yeah shure mate, shure...

[Cliss1234]

kinda wish D4 would go in a completely different direction.

What i want is a souls game in sanctuary, Nioh had a very diablo-like loot system. if they just did D3 with better graphics i'd play it sure but what if they went bonkers with it?

Also just remake D2 already.

[Beefhammer]

Heck if anyone remembers the first Maltheal Hardcore kill as a Barbarian(T6). It took him hours to get down. Because he was forced to go tanky else one mistake would have killed him.
http://www.verdammtehorde.de/diablof...-10280/p1.html

OMG yes. He was a fucking bitch at first.

[Stricks]

Open world with lots of side quests and the potential to get into areas that are more dangerous. In short, a sense of adventure, not a game on rails.

[DiabloIV]

make most of Legendary Items be useful

[Phatte]

Runewords.

That is all. The customization with this is pretty much endless. Do it exactly like D2 did. Grey socketed gear of all types and add runes that drop, the harder and more rare ones from harder content etc. If done right, this would be a incredible game.

[jackofwind]

I have a few ideas based on mechanics from different games that i liked:

1. No more acts, just the whole map of playable zones that you can run anywhere. Only load it for transitioning from above ground to under ground.

2. More players in that "world session" depending on their server, could be 50 constantly, one logs out another logs in to keep the number at max for the room/session/world.

3. The zones to be different dificulty, imagine going from redridge to searing gorge directly, that would be death. So you need to have , like the acts, a progression in this case leveling.

4. Each zone has a main hub, like the current acts have. There you can trade with other players or do rifts/grifts, or you can go by yourself in the wild and pick up on quests much the same like the ones currently in the bounty system. So basicaly level to your own taste.

5. Each few hours there are invasions on the hub. So no more just attacking but also defending. Where waves of mobs storm the gates of the hub, based on the level of the zone.

6. Professions, since it would be open world it would be a good idea to add more time sinks with good rewards, what comes to mind right now (even if it wasn't that popular in wow) is archaeology. It would fit with the world since there's already so much lore and history for each zone like Westmarch or Mount Arreat.

7. Scale of the zone. Make it a lot more big that it would be if you'd merge all acts together now. If they can make wow zones so vast with all the graphics and 3rd person bla bla, i'm sure they could make the whole of Sanctuary as big as say Eastern Kingdoms. No fast travel or make it very limited, run to where you need to go or maybe get a horse. The idea is to make it seem important that you are leaving a zone and might not come back for some time. I presume it would take some time to run even on horse from booty bay (tristram) to Western Plaguelands ( Westmarch).

8. Camping. Running all the way from tristram to westmarch will be along journey so it would be nice if you could make camp alone or with friends. If there's professions i'm sure you could place an anvil or access your jeweler's kit so you can empty out your bags and get some buffs after a few minutes of camping.

9. Dungeons to be played like darkest dungeon game. You could go normaly like now, or light-less, completely dark where the enemies get extra damage but the loot is better. It also adds another difficulty to rifts or grifts. Normal ones and light-less ones. And also you can't see what's around you, just a very small ring around your character so no more running around pulling everything.

10. No more class specific loot only. At least not at first. I liked more the random stats from the time of RMAH, it made it harder to get at least proper gear. It fits well with time sinking and scale of the game.

Sounds more like a shitty MMO than a good ARPG.

[Coldkil]

Runewords.

That is all. The customization with this is pretty much endless. Do it exactly like D2 did. Grey socketed gear of all types and add runes that drop, the harder and more rare ones from harder content etc. If done right, this would be a incredible game.

Yes and no. Runewords were an awesome way to reward dedication, but in the end it was just farming until you dropped/crafted the needed ones to get your BiS item. It just took a long time.

However i agree that sockets in gear should be meaningful and not just another stat padding thing. I like PoE system where sockets are actually used as "mini skill trees", just it's painful to get the right combo of links/colors and it's way too much restrictive for my taste, since it impacts directly my playstyle. There are better ways imho to put limitations on what you can socket on gear.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't know if you remember but bosses at the launch of the game was like that. They were multi-phase fights that took minutes to take down.
But due to power creep you can basically ignore bosses now.

Maybe you're talking about story mode bosses. GRs bosses appeared when power creep started to appear and they were basically meatwalls from day 1 - you either had enough damage to bring them down in time or not. Reason why no-boss-kill runs were a thing, the time needed to kill a boss was so much it was just more efficient to run higher GRs without killing the boss since the XP gain was much higher.

[mojojojo202]

The one thing I want from D4 is that tries to actively build off of D3 rather than trying to poorly imitate D2 to placate the 'D3 is childish because it has bright colours' crowd.

Would kind of like to see an endless dungeon mode where you make an incursion into ever deeper layers of hell. Would be a bit like GR's but every floor the difficulty would get harder and harder and you'd have to keep going until you died.

[anon5123]

Runewords.

That is all. The customization with this is pretty much endless. Do it exactly like D2 did. Grey socketed gear of all types and add runes that drop, the harder and more rare ones from harder content etc. If done right, this would be a incredible game.

Runewords were not really "customization". Nobody socketed runes in anything unless they were making a complete runeword.

[Skorpionss]

They need to move FAAAR away from MMO tier item progression first and for most.
NO set items (which kills like half of your item slots for any forms of meaningful upgrades) No "+%100000 dmg to x skill" crap.
Don't dumb down gameplay just because you want to release it on console too. PoE didn't and it works pretty decently.
NO class fantasy shit ( wanna go whirlwind wizard for some fucked up reason? you got it!) which means no class locked skills (items providing +x to skills like D2)
Make crafting actually mean something. That alone laids the groundwork for your trade based economy.
Make gold actually meaningful.
Legendaries that singlehandedly making builds available or boosting builds to next level. Not set items based 14 item slot locked boring as shit builds.

I know it sounds a lot like PoE which is totally normal since they made a lot of things right for a game to have a healthy life span. No need to trying to invent the wheel once again.
But i highly doubt current Blizzard has any actual talent or motivation left to come up something remarkable. They probably just rework some of D3's mechanics slap on some new graphics and release it.

I hope they prove me wrong.

So basically you don't want diablo...

[avx81]

Diablo 4 just needs to be Path of Exile, but Path of Exile already exists. Blizzard are not going to make a better ARPG than GGG have, so D4 needs to be something different to the traditional isometric grinding game.

Just no. Now don't get me wrong I enjoyed PoE. I put in about 500 hours into the game. The problem with PoE is that its far to complex for no reason. While I think D3 is a little to simple, PoE is way on the opposite end. I think D4 should find balance in the middle. I tried picking up PoE after putting it down for a year. All talents wiped on my character. I had no idea where to start again and I had 0 interest in putting a dozen hours of research back in to get started. PoE is far to complex for most players and requires far to much research into builds just to make them work. Seriously the talent tree in PoE is just flat out retarded. Far to punishing for making a mistake and requires way to much planning.

I do think if they want to capture a new crowd they may need to ditch the isometric click to move. I enjoy it but many friends cant stand it. Make a D2 remaster and make D4 its own new thing.

[Shadowsgrace]

I hope D4 is closer to Grim down,D2,PoE.I want more dark and spooky atmosphere.Skeletens and blood.

With China's taboo on Blood or Skulls / Skeletons in games, I doubt this will happen as everyone and their Grandmother's want that sweet Chinese monies.

[jstnw89]

get rid of tier sets and add a fun of economy we can play with