Diablo 4 requires changes, and Season 2 should improve a crucial area | GAME3A
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Diablo 4 requires changes, and Season 2 should improve a crucial area

The Season of Malevolence in Diablo 4 has highlighted the underlying issues with the game's seasonal model, which can feel like an onerous obligation...

Sakshi Venkatraman Aug 19, 2023
Diablo 4 requires changes, and Season 2 should improve a crucial area

The Season of Malevolence in Diablo 4 has highlighted the underlying issues with the game's seasonal model, which can feel like an onerous obligation in the long run as progress is reset after a few months.

The patch notes for the Season of Malevolence have dampened the players' enthusiasm, as minor changes have been made to the game mechanics and popular builds and options have been weakened.

The endgame of Diablo 4 currently offers little variety and is limited to repetitive grinding in nightmare dungeons. Therefore, the second season should introduce a new activity with better rewards to address this issue.

For many players, the honeymoon phase with Diablo 4 came to an end with the impressively successful early access and official release, coinciding with the start of the Season of Malevolence. This season emphasized many underlying issues that became more apparent when creating a new seasonal character. Similar to many other ARPGs before it, Diablo 4's seasonal model is nothing more than what titles like Path of Exile have adopted. Players are required to create a seasonal character and start from scratch, including collecting currency or completing dungeons for aspects. This can feel like an onerous obligation in the long run, as progress is erased after just a few months. However, the icing on the cake for many players was the pace of the game.

The Season of Malevolence patch notes on launch day significantly dampened the players' enthusiasm for the new content, whether due to minor changes in the gameplay loop in Season 1 or the excessive nerfs to all popular builds and options. Blizzard has also made further changes to the starting features of Diablo 4, such as level scaling, rendering even the new Malevolent Tunnels unnecessary before reaching level 60, as the enemies in these activities are too weak. Therefore, there is a crucial area that Season 2 should focus on for major corrections, and that is the endgame.

Why Diablo 4's Endgame Fails and How Season 2 Can Change It

Diablo 4 Needs Changes, And Season 2 Should Improve One Key Area

The current gameplay loop for characters above level 75 is highly limited and repetitive, with only Diablo 4's nightmare dungeons providing enough experience to level up relatively quickly - and even then, it can involve hours of mechanical grinding. Other activities in the game simply do not reward enough experience to allow a character to progress at a reasonable pace, and it is currently quite challenging to reach level 100 outside of nightmare dungeons.

Diablo 4's Season 2 should introduce a new activity that surpasses the rewards of nightmare dungeons while also bringing it up to par, thus killing two birds with one stone. Firstly, players would be able to level up their main character or even multiple characters more quickly, and they could choose whether to engage in the seasonal loop or play nightmare dungeons - or, even better, explore other existing options like the Whispering Tree. If Diablo 4 is to be played in the years to come, Blizzard must overhaul the endgame system and allocate its resources accordingly.

This would also mean addressing Diablo 4's issues regarding items and loot, such as the costs and efficiency of re-rolling properties on high-level items or the drop rates of certain unique items. Not all classes have unique items that shape their playstyle, but those who do can be left in the lurch if players don't have the luck of finding these items during their adventures. Druids are the prime example of this. It's also peculiar how the current system of the game has reached a point where it eerily resembles the state of Diablo 3, where repeatedly running Greater Rifts was the only option.

Even with the randomly generated dungeons in Diablo 4, the entire gameplay can still feel repetitive due to the structure of these activities, where players must complete a handful of objectives in two phases before reaching the final boss fight. A more diverse activity in Season 2 would shake things up and allow both old and new players to enjoy something unique that challenges them beyond maintaining the status quo. Therefore, it is crucial for the success of Season 2 to provide players with an abundant array of choices in how they can play the game and what they can do to overcome the shortcomings of the Season of Malevolence.

Diablo 4 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.