My Ideal Diablo 4

 So after so many years waited, Diablo 4 is out, I played it, and now its pretty much done.  I didn't expect to be playing the game for months and months at first launch, so I can't say I'm disappointed.  However, I certainty hoped and wanted my expectations to be blow away in a good way, but no.  After playing around 100 or so hours, I have some notes.

 First let me say, the campaign was fantastic and I'm really excited for the story to continue in future expansions.  That campaign was a great 40 or so hours.  Now that we have gotten to the end game, well its a bit hallow.  When you are done with the campaign, many 'new' things to do in the game unlock.  There's nightmare dungeons, tree of whisper quests, world bosses and hell tide events.  There is just one problem with most of these 'new' objectives in endgame....we have done all these already.  

 Throughout the campaign you can come across events, dungeons, cellars, big groups of mobs to kill aaannnddd what is the endgame?  Oh, doing all that stuff again but with tweaked ways to track your progress.  Tree of Whispers is the biggest con really.  All the tree does is add a progress bar to literally doing almost anything in the game.  Kill a 50 mobs and collects some weird orbs, get 3 points.  Oh you cleared a cellar? Herse a point.  Clear a dungeon, here's 5 points.  Uhhh excuse me, isn't this just the fuckin game that I just played for 50 hours?  Where is the 'new' content in this? There isn't any.  Oh but when you get 10 points you can collect a pretty worthless cache from the tree and then do it all over again. Cool.  

 How about helltide events?  Well I guess you can call it an event, but really its just picks a zone, ups the density by a little bit (not nearly enough btw) and they drop these little charred ash thingies.  Collects those and unlock chests that have spawned around the zone.  This is a nice way to target some legendary slots you want to find but again....we are just killed monsters and collecting shit, AGAIN.  There really isn't anything 'new' about this.  I understand that Diablo is an arpg and killing monsters is the name of the game, but don't try to pretend that just because you made monsters drop some temporary currency you invented a new end game event.  Its shallow as fuck and I can see right through it.  Having said that, I actually kind of like this end game thing because its timed and can give you a small sense of urgency to collect the mystery chests and its a good way to get more loot.  The problem is that its shallow and therefore gets boring VERY fast.  Eventually when you see the helltide event thing pop up on your screen, it just starts to feel like a chore.  

 World bosses.  World bosses are ok.  I think they are way too easy, but they are pretty fun regardless.  Could be way better, but overall gets a pass.

 Now the big one.  Nightmare dungeons.  These have a shit ton of potential.  Once again its in essence just rehashed content, but they do implement some mechanics that are actually in fact new mechanics.  The only issues is that there just isn't enough of them.  Some of the nightmare dungeons are really lame and boring because the affixes they have are just lame and well...boring.  Like mounters do x more damage to y and this and that, its not noticeable when doing the dungeon and is not fun or exciting.  But then there are affixes in which a big red pillar follows you around the dungeon and explodes every now and then and you have to dodge it while fighting.  That's fuckin awesome and really adds a nice fun twist to the gameplay.  It makes it far less mind less and challenging.  There is another in which a small sigil will follow you around and create a bubble in which you have to hid in because otherwise lightning will strike you and nearly 1 shot you depending on the tier level.  It's very fun and there needs to be way more dungeons with affixes like this.  And when I say way more I mean like 20 or 30.  That brings me to the improvement section and that's my first suggestion.

1. More interesting Nightmare dungeon affixes like the bubble and red pillar.
2. Give helltides a big objective or maybe a couple that do not just involving killing a shit load of monsters.  Maybe like attacking meteors and collecting shards to contribute to a big collection and at the end if your instance collects enough it summons a world mini boss to defeat.  
3. Make the Tree of whispers offer objects that are actually 100% never seen before newwwww objectives.  Do the work blizzard, create content, don't rehash.
4. Make world bosses harder and a little bit more frequent.  I think it would be cool that 30 mins before the world boss arrives, shake the whole world every 5 mins, like if uber Diablo were walking the earth.  That notifies people and is a nice callback to d2.

 Now those are just improvements to the current game that I think will have a big impact on fun and interest.  These suggestions will make the current game better in my opinion.  Here are some changes to the game I think will make it EVEN better.

1. Cap better loot drop rates for nightmare dungeons at 30.  NM dungeons between tier levels 30-100 drop same amount and quality of loot.  Also cap glyph upgrade to level 15.  The incentive to go beyond tier 30 will be cosmetic rewards and slightly better exp rate.  

 This change has the effect of making way more class build viable.  There are many builds you can do for each class, but there will always be a number 1 build.  If you cap the end game content difficulty at a certain point for a the main mechanic of the game (finding loot) then all the builds that are not good enough beyond tier 30 become viable.  With a difficulty cap, if all the builds can do the content then they are viable and the best build is irrelevant, now you just play the build you like. This leads to my next suggestion:

2. Bring back loadouts with a 2 loadout limit.  

 There are many fun builds in d4, but I can't try them because its super hard to change builds when your past level 70.  It is so hard that I just don't even want to go through the effort, I would rather just stop playing the game after I get bored of my 1 build.  I would love to try other builds and have more fun, but there is no loadout system.  The devs of d4 want people to feel more attached to the build, and I get the appeal to that, but they went too far.  I am too attached to the point that I just stop playing because I get bored of my same build.  I think a good solution to this is to bring back loadouts but limit them to only 2 loadouts (maybe 3).  That way you can try at least 1 other build AND still feel somewhat attached to it.  

3. Reopen the campaign dungeons with bosses including Duriel, Lilith, Elias, and Andariel.  

 It was really fun in d2 to go and kill the main bosses again, why can't I do that in d4.  Let me go do some Lilith runs or Andariel runs or Elias runs, that would be fun.

4.  BRING BACK TRADING.  

Ok, I get why the devs locked trading down so hard.  They didn't want the game to become a bot filled shit show of pay to win and 3rd party shops.  I don't want that either, but just demolishing trading to only rares is not the way to go.  The economy of the game is destroyed and that is a huge source of fun and more gameplay.  I would played another 100 hours of Diablo 4 farming loot for trading because having an economy is fun and it makes finding more loot that I already have FUN.  So how do you do it? Like this:

Making trading reputation based, start with rares, then you can unlock tradable legendries and uniques.  

• To unlock legendary and unique trades you must complete the campaign, be at least lvl 75 and have cleared nm tier 20 and unlock all renown rewards.  Trades can only be done with a merchant token and you become a merchant for 1 hour and can only trade 3 items per day and a legendary/unique is only tradable after 6 days of finding it.  

 These rules are so important.  The main issues with open trading is that many 3rd party online shops can open up with botting software and quickly level to like 60 to do wt4 and start finding and more importantly COLLECTINGS legs and uniques and holding them until sale.

 Sooooo.  If you make it really hard to setup legions of bots and inventory, then the shops either go away or are so hampered that its not worth the 70$ ticket of re-entry after a ban wave (banned for botting and or spamming and or 3rd party shop affiliation).  This is the idea at least.  Could I be wrong? ye.  I think these rules don't hamper the average played barley at all and I certainly think its better than not being able to trade your barbarian unique mace that you found on your druid AT ALL.  

 With a trading system and economy in place, endgame just became a lot richer and deeper just like in d2.  You may be farming the same shit, but if you find a nicely rolled unique every now and then you will get a nice rush for being able to trade it for a nicer piece of gear for yourself or gold or whatever.  

 One last huge thing I think blizzard should add to a lot of their games its community built content.  Look at Warcraft III and Starcraft, those games had so much mileage because when you were done with the content you could try out some ideas that other people had and play custom games from the community.  

 Imagine a Diablo in which verified users could create and submit dungeons that they made with a pallete of tile sets and puzzles and unique monsters and bosses to choose from and create.  Obviously there would need to be some kind of automated checks and balances system to make sure somebody didn't just put 100 chests in a square room, but I can see it being very doable.  So if you are a verified player and your dungeon gets approved, you can see it in the possible rotation of NM dungeons or even in the world.  Or maybe have a whole new area in which those dungeons rotate or you can pick or whatever.  There is so much they could do.  

• Another thing I just thought of that I think would be kinda cool is like an Alterac Valley type game with many players.  Demons on one end and like 20 players on the other side of a big objectives filled map.  Capturing bases and bunkers while fighting waves of demons.  Maybe Andy or Duriel will pop up and need to be killed.  Push towards the demons main base and conquer it for some nice rewards.  This can be a random event like helltides or something.  The legion invasion things feel too much like some kind of wow event.  If they carved out 2 or 3 sections of the lands to put some AV like events instead of legions, I think that would be way more fun and cool.

 With all these changes and improvements you have a Diablo game in which you can do Andariel runs, find awesome uniques and trade them, try at least a 2nd build with much choice and variety due to capped difficulty/loot drops, mix it up with a world boss or NM dungeon and maybe pop into a more exciting helltide event and after that do a custom dungeon somebody made that is totally new to you.  

Now of course this is all just food for thought, some of my ideas might be terrible, but the point remains: There is a lot of potential in this game, blizzard just needs to tap into it.  Don't do stuff that isn't fun.  GG