Diablo IV has been a blast to play, but it does have its cracks in its shinning armor. I’ve been investing a good amount of my time into the game and I’m starting to see issues I wasn’t aware of when I was still learning how to optimize my first character. Now my first character is currently at level 100, and I believe I can finally address the issues that Diablo IV is having, and it does make the endgame not as exciting as it should be.
I am no stranger to the Diablo series. My first Diablo title was Diablo II, and it was a truly remarkable game to play back in the early 2000s. Even to this day, the game still holds up extremely well. The game has held up so well where I believe Diablo II is still the king of action role playing titles even with many well known titles from the genre as existed like Path of Exile or Sacred.
Champion’s Demise feels like Diablo IV’s Chaos Sanctuary.
I am a big Diablo II fanatic, and I have no shame in admitting that. With that mention, I understand Diablo IV is trying to be its own thing, and I honestly want it to stay on that path. I don’t need Diablo IV to suddenly transform itself into a Diablo II expansion, but there are some key components from Diablo II that Diablo IV should take note off.
Let’s discuss the important design principles that the young Diablo IV can learn from its grandfather, Diablo II. This subject will mostly be about the two game’s endgame experience. I will also cover mostly about the player versus monster content of both games because that’s generally the main appeal to me when I play these types of games.
The Uniques Need More Power & Uber Unique Issues
In Diablo IV, Unique items are simply disappointing and are generally not good. As a Sorcerer and Barbarian player, I tend to not get too excited over finding them and that is a problem for their rarity. On top of that, the Uber Uniques are ridiculously hard to find. If Diablo IV ends up having a massive botting issue like Diablo II does, I doubt many of them are going to find those items in the game’s current state. I personally have nothing against Rare and Legendary items being the big chase, but it’s just sad to see Uniques being so outclassed by them. I personally don’t get as excited when I find a Unique item versus a Rare or Legendary. This overall item balancing need to change especially Unique items are supposed to be more rare to find.
In Diablo II, every diehard fan knows how exciting it is to get unique items. We all love the iconic Harlequin Crest. It’s that green hat that everyone wants to get when making a new character, and it is so useful in many ways. There are also other items that are just as useful as Harlequin Crest. Dwarf Star has always been an amazing ring you can use to beat the game on Hell or even used for endgame. This item is nowhere near as rare as Harlequin Crest, but it is still a desirable item to use. There are many Unique items that are useful to use and some of them vary on rarity in Diablo II. Yes, there are some items that are extremely rare, but are not worth using like Templar’s Might or Ghostflame. However, there are a decent amount of Unique items that can be used efficiently for the endgame.
My favorite Unique belt in Diablo II.
But for the real Diablo II players, the big chase items are the runewords. Everybody always wants to get their Enigma or Infinity as soon as possible because it is a massive power spike for so many popular endgame builds. Despite the runewords being so powerful in Diablo II, the Uniques still have their value. You have your Chains of Honor or Enigma as the popular endgame runeword items for the Sorceress. As amazing those armors are for that class, I mostly prefer to go with Skin of the Vipermagi. Despite the item being very simple and not providing as many stats compared to those runewords, it gives me the important affixes I’m looking for in a Sorceress. Faster cast rate is absolutely valuable for a Sorceress, and it also has a good balance of offensive and defensive stats too.
Currently, Diablo IV doesn’t have much of that “item competition” going on. It seems like most of the time, the Rares and Legendaries are going to outweigh the Uniques in a lot of situations.
Unique items need to be better in Diablo IV, and the Uber Uniques also need to be more reasonable to find. There are many rare items in Diablo II that a good amount of players have never found like Tyrael’s Might or a 40% Enhanced Damage and 15% Increased Attack Speed Jewel, but those items are nowhere near as ridiculous to finding the Uber Uniques. Uber Uniques need to have increased drop odds, but they should also be challenging. In Diablo II terms, they should have similar rarity to finding an Ist Rune or Gul Rune.
The Value of Target Farming
It’s only right I discuss about target farming after talking about Unique items between the two games. In Diablo II, target farming is absolutely a thing. Everyone loves killing Mephisto a good amount of hundreds of time to get their desirable Unique items to doing the Secret Cow Level for item bases and rune hunting. There’s not much of that in Diablo IV especially if you’re well deep into the endgame. I think they could easily implement Uber Unique target farming this to Helltides which they kind of did, but then removed it. It was a shame that they didn’t make the drop rates for those specialized Unique items to be more reasonable because that was a great idea to make Helltides feel more interesting rather than a place you’re solely farming for crafting materials.
Farm The Countess for your mid runes and Keys of Terror.
They could’ve easily fixed that exploit in a better way rather than making Uber Unique items from Helltides with similar drop rates to other content. It would make Helltides more attractive to do. Helltides tries to compete against Nightmare Dungeons for experience leveling, but it still is inferior. I also believe the developers could try to increase the overall Unique drop rates for World Bosses. They also should reward the player greatly for experience especially how it is not a frequent activity to do. As of now, I personally don’t see any real reason to do World Boss events. They feel unnecessary to do, and I’d rather just do my Nightmare Dungeons for the faster experience and item accumulation.
The Nightmare Dungeons Obsession (It’s Somewhat of a Problem)
Now it’s time to discuss about the endgame activities. At first glance, it seemed Diablo IV was going to have a lot of things for the player to do. Unfortunately, that is not the case once you have a low level 80 character and you’re living in the World Tier 4: Torment realm. You are basically just running Nightmare Dungeons over and over again until you hit level 100 to reach your fullest build potential. Every now and then you can do Helltides to spice it up and farm for the crafting materials. Depending on the build you’re using, you can tackle on Uber Lilith and that’s basically the only real endgame activities you are doing.
The Tree of Whispers will become obsolete the more you play, and both the World Boss and Legion Events are just not objectively efficient enough to do them. The Legion Events are certainly fun. They feel like an alternative to Nightmare Dungeons because of the heavy density of mobs that the event throws at the player. They are also designed to cater for cooperative play and it’s basically you and a bunch of people slaughtering a massive amount of monsters. However, they are so far and few between that I don’t think they are competitive enough to go against Nightmare Dungeons.
It takes many Nightmare Dungeons to get to level 100.
Despite Diablo II being an older action role playing title, it does have a good amount of different endgame activities a player can do and good reasons to do so. The main endgame activity in Diablo II is heavily revolved around magic finding. There are many different areas you can magic find in Diablo II and the various zones they all feel different due to varying levels of density and gameplay challenges. Target farming is heavily a factor for Diablo II magic finding, so players will use that to their advantage. On top of that, you have the Diablo Clone and the Pandemonium event to get access to these unique charms.
If your character feels powerful and well equipped, you always have the level 99 journey to pursue where the player will be spamming Diablo, Baal, & Nihlathak runs. In Diablo II: Resurrected, you can also pursue in doing the Terror Zones which is also an alternative way to help the player reach to level 99. As you can see, Diablo II has a similar amount of endgame activities you can do in comparison to Diablo IV. The big difference is in Diablo II, there’s a better sense of balance around them. The endgame activities feel like they all have their purpose of being there.
Helltides have been getting better with the previous patch updates.
Diablo IV just simply needs to polish some of their weaker endgame activities. Both Helltides and Nightmare Dungeons are in a good spot. I personally think Helltides should still reward better experience gain from the monsters just to be slightly more competitive against Nightmare Dungeons for leveling purposes. Both the World Boss and Legion events needs more tender loving care. My suggestions for the World Boss is to make them more target farming friendly and significantly better experience reward.
I think more Legion Events happening would also make them more enticing to do and possibly better experience gain too. All of these changes will allow Diablo IV players to do something more than just spamming Nightmare Dungeons and doing Helltides every now and then.
Embracing Social Play
The last noteworthy thing that Diablo IV can learn from Diablo II is the ease of social play. Social play is something Diablo IV is doing. The game itself does allow players to play cooperatively with other players or friends. The World Boss and Legion events are also prime examples of this where these events are designed for cooperative play. And for the most part, the game is fun to play with other players. I am mostly a solo player, but every now and then, I do enjoy changing up the pace and wanting to play with other players just like in Diablo II.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to look for cooperative matches in Diablo IV’s current state. In Diablo II, it’s easy to find games to play with other players. All you need to do is look up for matches in the game browser. The traditional Diablo II social games are Cow games, Chaos Sanctuary runs, Baal runs, and helping other players to finish up the campaign. Eventually, Terror Zones was included in the remastered version and that also applies to the Diablo II social experience.
The Diablo titles have always been fun in cooperative play.
Diablo IV needs to take some of that design in future patches. It’ll be nice if there is a built in Looking For Group feature that can easily solve this issue. With this feature existing, we can possibly see more cooperative Nightmare Dungeons outside of the World Boss and Legion events. This feature will also help out the leveling process too because you do get additional experience while playing in a group. Also, if the developers do plan on implementing more cooperative aspect to the game, the Looking For Group feature will always be a handy thing to have for players that want to play with other players.
Both Diablo II and Diablo IV are different games when it comes to its mechanics. However, Diablo II is such a legendary game that even though it was released back in 2000, its core design is timeless and sublime. Diablo IV doesn’t need to completely change its identity; it just needs to take some of its wise advices from its grandfather. If it does so, the game will certainly be a lot better to play for those who are still playing Diablo IV. I hope to see the game improve with various patches that the developers plan on releasing in the future. But most importantly, the future patches should incorporate some of Diablo II’s greatness to it.
