Diablo 4
Blizzard
I’ve enjoyed Diablo 4’s first season, even if I am temporarily taking a break to head over to Remnant 2 for a while. It’s simple, it works, but of course, as a first season, it could certainly be improved. Here’s what I would hope to see in season 2 of Diablo 4 and beyond, as we heard toward a first expansion.
A Better Storyline – Look, I’m not expecting a masterpiece here, and while I know seasonal stories won’t progress the main Lilith/Inarius storyline, I think we need to scale up a bit. One new NPC with one voice actor, and a quasi-blue quest storyline of a guy who is hunting his former mentor feels a little barebones for a game that really, really impressed with its mainline campaign story. If a giant chunk of Blizzard is now devoted to Diablo 4 in this fading era of Overwatch and not a ton else on the horizon, I hope this can be beefed up a bit.
New Rank-And-File Enemies – We got one new boss here, but I would like to see more normal enemy types introduced than “modified” Malignant minions that are normal minions with just a bunch of crap on them. They don’t even change their names. There are plenty of old Diablo enemies that could still be brought forward, and I’d hope to see new ones in time as well, not just when we get some new map section in an expansion.
More Accessible Smoldering Ashes – I don’t really get why these are level gated to such an extreme degree. It feels like it’s just something to put on the “free” track of the battle pass so something exists there. But you could just put it in the seasonal journey chapters and it would feel much more accessible and useful. The level gate is there to prevent people from buying battle pass tiers to get it, but…it just does not need to be in the battle pass at all, if it’s going to be free either way.
Diablo 4
Blizzard
Better Free Tier Rewards – The armor set and weapon skins given out in the free track of the battle pass are laughably bad, and directly breaking the promise that free armor cosmetics would be as badass as paid armor cosmetics. Instead, the paid battle pass and the store get all the good armor and weapon cosmetics and everyone else gets nothing.
New In-Game Gear – I don’t just mean legendary aspects, as this hooks into the above. There needs to be actual armor dropping in the wild that’s added over time, or else everyone is going to be stuck with the same twenty or so sets forever unless they spend $30 in a the shop, especially if the free sets don’t get any better. Related to this, I would love if new unique items they add to the game where actually unique from a cosmetics perspective, as that seems like a huge oversight in both the base game and now. Iconic gear looks were always a part of legendary items in the past, but that seems almost entirely lost now.
No Convoluted Mechanics For Their Own Sake – While the functionality of Malignant Hearts is just fine, the goofy process of how they drop: kill an enemy, wait, respawn the enemy, kill the enemy again, feels convoluted for its own sake. I am okay with different mechanics to get seasonal items, but something like this is pointless extra steps.
Other than that, it works for me. I won’t suggest specific seasonal mechanics yet, as I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with, but yeah, I do think the above could use some work.
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