What does Diablo 4 need?

[Deferionus]

I know I'm likely not the ideal target audience for the question as I am someone who enjoys the environment, lore, and setting of Diablo more than the gameplay.. but I would really like to see a Diablo game that is either a RPG such as Skyrim or a survival open world game such as Conan Exiles and Ark. If a Diablo 4 comes out akin to D3 and D2 I'll play it briefly but the other two I would play continuously and buy all the DLC / expansions for.

[Absintheminded]

Horror.
No more RNG titanforge; instead, a systematic way to upgrade current gear.
More variety at endgame.
Better build variety/parity.
A rogue-like dungeon.

[Shaiandra]

I think my largest wishes boil down to more character customization (which includes more open-ended itemization), and at least one end-game mode that has an end (which ideally takes most players a decent while to reach).

I really don't want Reaper of Souls' itemization; that was the one very worst part of D3 in my opinion. Items that made such a huge difference and basically explicitly told you how to use them since they often only affected certain skill or certain playstyles... I would rather have items that you can be creative in figuring out if they might work on various builds, and also, they shouldn't be so strong that best-in-slot is miles ahead of second-best-in-slot.

As for how character customization should go, I'm not certain on specifics. In one way I'd like there to be some permanent or near-permanent choices such that you might have incentive to play another character of the same class later, and it wouldn't feel identical. I think personally I would actually like it if some skills were available across multiple classes. It doesn't have to be Path of Exile where all skills are available for all classes, but looking at Diablo 2, stuff like the Chaos runeword that gives an Assassin Whirlwind could be considered cool, or those Dracul's Grasp gloves that can proc lifetap.. or there's the arguably more infamous Enigma which gave anyone Teleport. Honestly I wonder if multi-classing could make a Diablo game much more fun.. wait, I think some ARPGs (like maybe Grim Dawn or Wolcen?) did something like that; maybe I should try those out...

Having a few more than 6 skills would be nice too. Thinking about it now, I think one thing that may be important to this is that you should be able to specialize in a few skills and not have all of them optimal by default. Things like skill points in Diablo 2 and limited gem links/sockets in PoE work well in that purpose.

As for the end-game, I also agree with what some others have said about if you've done one GR, you've seen them all. That's why I'd like to see progression towards an end boss, and not just higher and higher numbers of the same thing. Diablo 2 had very little end-game, but I think that may have contributed to the replay value to some extent, since silly/quirky builds could often be considered passable since there was almost no hard content, and you didn't always have to theorycraft for something optimal (just good enough to do your desired endgame).

Ultimately, the kind of progression that I like is one where I can say "I can do this now!" (or even "I can stop doing this now"), which could mean anything from beating a zone/boss I couldn't beat or maybe even access before, or learning a new skill, or finishing with one form of content (maybe since I've gotten my ideal gear from there) so I no longer have to do it, or whatever. And things like "I can do GR 117 instead of 116" is not something that falls under this category.

The same saying is what might make me look forward to a new patch/update: I might be intrigued in playing in a new season if there's new stuff to do, or if I'm able to use new abilities or form some new viable combinations of abilities that I couldn't before.

[Wangming]

Bad class? I'd play it if they introduced a Bard class.

Diablo: Hellfire actually had a bard class, but it played like a rogue. As in an actual rogue, not the "I am an archer but call myself rogue" version.

[zlygork]

I have always been only a Diablo casual, so take my opinion for what it is...

I feel like diablo needs some sort of endgame that is not about doing something X seconds faster than the last time. It's not something that keeps me entertained for long personally. Though I admit that I have no idea what kind of interesting challenges can be implemented on a hack and slash game.

[Kyphael]

Diablo: Hellfire actually had a bard class, but it played like a rogue. As in an actual rogue, not the "I am an archer but call myself rogue" version.

Yeah, I kind of want a "I am a Bard, play musical instruments like a Bard because I am a Bard" version of Bard.

[Wangming]

Yeah, I kind of want a "I am a Bard, play musical instruments like a Bard because I am a Bard" version of Bard.

So do I. I want two classes for D4

Bard "I'm tired of singing tales of other heroes. Gonna write my own tale"

Gambler "I lost a bet so I have to enter these catacombs. I'm sure it will work out fine"

Bonus points if the gambler can build his deck out of individually dropped cards.

[Aoyi]

Honestly, I'm really happy with how D3 ended up today. If they made D4 with an updated version of D3, I'd probably still buy it. The game has come a long way since launch. The one thing I really want would be a removal of the always online for solo play, though. I doubt it will happen, but DC's on a solo play suck.

[Kyphael]

So do I. I want two classes for D4

Bard "I'm tired of singing tales of other heroes. Gonna write my own tale"

Gambler "I lost a bet so I have to enter these catacombs. I'm sure it will work out fine"

Bonus points if the gambler can build his deck out of individually dropped cards.

Lol if only that was a Rogue spec.

[Florena]

It's a minor thing but get rid of the talking head boxes with the bosses. Giving your villains constant screen time is almost never a good idea. Let their presence be felt but only seen when necessary.

[Wangming]

Lol if only that was a Rogue spec.

I could design a whole game around that dude. I have two ideas for the resource: either randomly cycle between gold, xp, hp or a random item in your inventory, or a resource like luck and the resource cost is what decreases and increases.

You fight by throwing cards at the enemy The amount of cards you throw with one attack can depend on the skill you use.
BUT: you don't just equip card decks as weapons. Chests and mobs drop individual cards and you use a deck building interface to create the deck you actually equip and you randomly use cards from those.

[matrix123mko]

I think they could mix D2 classes with rune mechanic form D3.

[MiiiMiii]

Start with removing scaling of any kind.

No scaling difficulties. No scaling items.

Then design the game around that.

[Kyphael]

I could design a whole game around that dude. I have two ideas for the resource: either randomly cycle between gold, xp, hp or a random item in your inventory, or a resource like luck and the resource cost is what decreases and increases.

You fight by throwing cards at the enemy The amount of cards you throw with one attack can depend on the skill you use.
BUT: you don't just equip card decks as weapons. Chests and mobs drop individual cards and you use a deck building interface to create the deck you actually equip and you randomly use cards from those.

Pretty much every Gambit fan in the world would love that class.

[rionalgaming]

im expecting diablo 4 .. to be diablo 3 remastered... LOL

[CrawlFromThePit]

With Diablo 4 potentially in the works, what overhauls does it need from Diablo 3 to make it successful? Or should Blizzard stick to the D3 formula with new, updated content?

Item progression needs to be 100% reworked from the ground up.

Entirely change the ability system.

Make character stats important, all of them. Every single stats should be important for every single class and let players build their character with an actual thought process and choices other than stacking one stats.

A darker ambiance than everything made before by blizzard. No little jokes, no little girl who turn into a weird boobed demon. I want people to be disgusted by the gore and demons and shit when they look at the game.

Change the whole "make a game" system, that's outdated as shit. Make a huge city hub where a lot of people can be, run around and interact, form groups etc. Then make groups run out and then be in their own instance of map, I'm aware the game can't just be MMO-like with everyone running around the same place and frankly I don't want that either. But the game does lack in community stuff. Also make groups bigger than 4 obviously that was stupid.

The concept of having content with infinite lvl of difficulty is fine, adds a lot of replayability, but I think the challenge aspect should be more present sooner and the power curve needs to be drastically changed. Ideally the game should promote player skill as much as gear but that's a tough one to nail.

[Wangming]

Pretty much every Gambit fan in the world would love that class.

And what would the non-fans say?

[Flurryfang]

Something completly new.

Like, don't get me wrong, D3 is a really amazing game and Blizzard should really get more praise for making that game work for as long as it has, but we have had D3 for more than 7 years and the next thing we need is not a better looking D3.

We need something, where the core idea of D3, and hopefully also D2, is carried forward, but with a new take on it. Maybe allow for more spells on your bar, have a larger focus on followers or allow for 1st person viewpoint. Im just spitballing here, but if Blizzard just creates a FiFa20 version of D3 for their next game, i proberly won't buy it. I still play D3 sometimes so i really need a good reason to jump to the new game.

[Kyphael]

And what would the non-fans say?

Not sure, I'm a big Gambit fan. I guess it depends on actual implementation.

[Kikazz]

Rifts as they are in D3 are what made people burned out of the game. This kind of content type is basically useless - you have a timed run where the class that does most damage/aoe can clear faster. Loot is not needed as you can get decked in no time and you're left with sidegrades/gem levels. They are pretty shit as content.

However, GRs spawned the M+ in WoW, and they work much better imho. Having the weekly/seasonal affixes makes for a different experience and requires different playstyle that's not just aoeing stuff down; plus, you have multiple of them with different boss fights that have actual mechanics.

Infinitely scaling content is good per se. D3 implementation of it sucks and the crappy itemization system coupled with the fact it's just a randomly generated dungeon with zero personality just makes it boring as hell and not worth playing imho.

A new Diablo game should have more meaningful content. Multiple dungeons, actual boss fights, semi-static loot tables (as in some drops or specific affixes drop from boss X so you have reason to run each). Since they scale up like GRs you can always run higher difficulties to get a better version of what you have in a reliable way and not hoping into your "legendary++".

In D2 we had literally only boss runs/uber runs/pindleskin at endgame and that didn't stop anyone, but it was because finishing the game was only the stepping stone for the item hunt. In D3 everything is crippled by the very bad itemization system.

well if they did add Specific Zones with Specific drops, they could implement the Challenge system to it, and make it ever scaling difficulty with it dropping ever increasing gear if done within the time limit,