Diablo 4: 9 Changes Blizzard MUST Make
Ditching the cartoonish art style of Diablo 3 is a good start, but there's more work to be done.
Blizzard is on a mission to win back lapsed fans of its iconic dungeon crawler.
The first tender steps in that grand plan of action - a long time coming, to say the least - were taken at this year's BlizzCon with a spectacle-laden cinematic confirming Diablo IV's existence, but is the fourth entry a return to the pinnacle years of Diablo 2? It wouldn't be fair to pass judgement this early on in the journey to launch, though initial signs paint a cautiously optimistic picture.
The ditching of Diablo 3's oft-lamented art style already underlines a major shift back to its forebears for inspiration but Blizzard's got a tough balancing act ahead of them. Reversing mistakes of the past is necessary, but wholesale returning to the series' roots shouldn't be the end goal, either.
Keep what works; ditch what doesn't. If only it were that simple...
9. Ditch The Paragon System
Placing a finite cap on progression in any game with RPG trappings isn't just a means of maintaining some semblance of challenge, but a power equilibrium between players, too. Diablo 3's Paragon system had originally been intended to provide a series of neat passive boosts to a character's base stats but somewhere down the line, Blizzard simply let it get out of control.
With the highest difficulty levels spewing out XP like a wood chipper, the lack of any cap not only irreversibly widens the fissure between new and veteran players, but makes balancing utterly impossible.
That's not hyperbole, either. Fresh-faced newbies going into endgame for the first time can never hope to keep pace with a dedicated fan with Paragon levels in the literal thousands.
Scrap the system entirely, or face a repeat of those mistakes.