Diablo 4: Ideas for Updating Old Content

I started writing a post about changing how Seasons and Events work. In particular, I began writing about re-doing events after examining Seasons from Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 in how they operate. As I started jotting down my thoughts, what I realized was that my ideas were better suited as an update for old content. In turn, I decided to pivot on my blog post and discuss how old content can be updated moving forward, especially in seeing how not everything will be involved in the new War Plans end game for Lord of Hatred. There will also be ideas on underutilized content or worthless aspects of the game that could use an overhaul to make those areas more appealing. At any rate, I’m going to look at underutilized content that could use some improvements and hopefully some of these will make their way to the Diablo 4 developers.

Empowered Legion Events

Right now, Legion events are in desperate need for an update. I’ve argued that outside of occasional easy Whispers or a season challenge/achievement, there’s almost no reason to do these anymore. My proposal is to changed timed events to activated ones similar to lair bosses. That way, you’re not simply waiting around for them to happen. If not having them activated, then provide either a currency that someone uses to increase the difficulty and rewards for Legion events (where you use it on the campfire since it’s already interactive). But the gist of the Empowered Legion event is that they will receive a special marking and have a higher number of Whispers and rewards.  These improved Legion events will involve portals spawning demons, elements spawning randomly, environmental effects like burning rain, etc. and be fairly difficult to do without a group. Also, I would make effects stackable and be different to give a more dynamic environment and battle each time. I would avoid having personal responsibility where it’s one person fails and the whole group dies. Lastly, I would like Legion events to have unique rewards. Perhaps, there should be a regional progression thing tied to reputation with their own form of rewards that would incentivize doing Legion events beyond Whispers.

Uber World Bosses

I like that they added Azmodan as a World Boss to the game. But even then he’s not entirely difficult and once S11 ends, the ability that increases his difficulty will go away. And while World Bosses right now are still nothing more than a damage pin cushion, I think you could increase difficulty and rewards similar to Empowered Legions. I would prefer if all World Bosses would be summonable instead though such that you could spawn them in like Azmodan. That way, you’re not just waiting around for them to happen and that you could do so with some rare currency that adds more levels of difficulty as opposed to just damage and life. But I can see things like double world bosses as a modifier, or plagued ground which causes a DoT that a player has to heal through. Maybe portal spawns just for additional chaos. Either way, World Bosses need more love badly.

Regarding World Boss rewards, one thing I will comment on is that I like how Season 11 attempted to upgrade World Boss loot a little by giving a plethora of Nightmare Sigils and a high change for getting a Mythic type of Tribune. There were a few problems though in the way that situation was handled. One the amount of Nightmare Sigils dropped were excessive to the point where you pretty much needed a clean inventory to grab everything. Next, I’ve heard complaints about how they might disappear if you didn’t pick them all up. Unlike Legendary and Unique gear, Nightmare Sigils won’t appear in your stash. Lastly, outside of World Bosses, it was pretty hard to consistently obtain Nightmare Sigils. I don’t think this would have been as big of an issue if all World Bosses were summonable. Also, I think with the Season 11 perk, this was fine just because it put more emphasis on having your perk leveled up to maximize your reward against World Bosses. Moving forward though, I can’t see this situation staying the same if it means a general lack of sigils.

For the overabundance of Nightmare Sigils, I read that the solution should be to provide more dust rather than the Sigils themselves. Perhaps, combining the two ideas where you get a few high quality Sigils and Tribunes along with a large amount of dust would resolve this issue in the future if World Bosses are going to be where players farm for Nightmare Sigils. It would give World Bosses a very clear purpose too.

Then there’s the cache that drops once a week (or something like that). I’m of the mindset that it shouldn’t even drop anymore just because the loot that comes out is worthless. I think part of the issue is that the World Boss loot has evolved so much over time but the developers never could pinpoint what should drop that the cache itself got left behind a long time ago. Since this is only a weekly cache that’s obtainable per boss, I think the loot should be exceptional. At least prior to the first loot revamp, World Bosses would drop some of the highest item level/power in the game, which would make them a good spot to farm for a fresh level 50 character needing starting gear (especially a weapon). Perhaps, the solution here is to have the cache drop a guaranteed class ancestral with a chance to be a unique or Mythic so that the cache is worth picking up as opposed to being a consolation prize (which is what it has become). If you really want to make each World Boss special, I would even attach an item type that the cache guarantees to drop like a weapon, armor or jewelry piece. Maybe a guaranteed Rune of higher ranking/rarity as the player goes up in difficulty. Or perhaps with Charms and Seals coming with the expansion, have those drop.

Escalating Strongholds

I never quite understood what the purpose of Strongholds were meant to be. They’re not exactly a dungeon and there’s only three points of usage: 1) unlocking a dungeon; 2) unlocking a waypoint/mini town; 3) Legion event. For a small period, they were good for late leveling (50-60) as remain a reliable spot for early game Tempering recipes (you usually get at least one per Stronghold). But they never were updated and feel more like a chore to do on each character per season. Some are just a major waste of time especially the newer ones (I’m looking at you dark area!)

Part of the issue is that once you’ve completed one, there’s really not much to do beyond using a few for a waypoint. And Legion events (without my revamp idea) seem worthless here because a lot of people just avoid the Strongholds that don’t have a waypoint. My original idea for Strongholds in terms of an update was to make them more Clan focused. I like the idea of a zone that can be claimed by a Clan and customized as a base. I always liked a Wintergrasp/Ulduar type of combat zone in Diablo 4 where you just fight waves of enemies in trying to setup a tower defense style area. I think such an area would be really cool for Strongholds that have waypoints because then once you claim the Stronghold, you could potentially custom it with defenses against demonic invasions. Doing it that way would give a strong purpose to run a Clan. Then maybe once a week, your Clan will have an opportunity to defend the Stronghold and gain rewards to continue building up the defenses as well as purchase other decorations as a sort of base.

For Strongholds that lack a waypoint, I have this idea of seasonal escalating difficulty where a non-Clan driven/town operated Stronghold reverts to a different form and must be cleared out again. The difference is that the Stronghold would go through phases over the span of a season which both increases the difficulty of the original Stronghold (possibly having different encounters with new lore) as well as influencing the zone where the Stronghold is located. This influence would not only alter Legion events (maybe upgrading them to Empowered Legions) but within the radius of the Stronghold outside, you would see special effects that increase the general area’s difficulty based on the lore of the Stronghold. If you play Warlords of Draenor, the idea is similar where you’d unlock regions of content that get phased. Maybe part of the unlock requires the player to move to increased Torment levels to see the story (and difficulty) increase. But since this is a long piece of content, the reward at the end for preserving is a mythic cache containing a spark.

Non-Helltides Whispers

For Whisper quests that exist outside of Helltide (or season) zones, they practically are dead. Maybe once in a blue moon I might see someone else doing a Whisper here or there (probably between Helltide events) but there are so many open world zones that just feel dead. Part of the problem is that Helltides provide better experience and rewards. If you get a Helltide zone that overlaps with non-Helltide type of Whispers, then you’re in luck because you’re probably collecting Aberrant Cinders anyway, which means your efficiency increases overall. But outside of those niche instances, are there any really good reasons to do Whispers outside of the Helltide zone in the open world (beyond World Bosses and Nightmare Dungeons or Season Whispers)?

The times I’ve found myself outside of the Helltide were during the earlier seasons that had their own zones with their own Whispers. But Season 7 in particular was the one where you had the overlapping seasonal Whispers with the normal Whispers, which made open world questing more fun. But even then I got quickly burnt out because I was relegated to a single spot. Even though there was “more to do,” I felt trapped in a single region still doing the same things over and over. That’s the main reason I’ve been so vocal about reusing old season content in bulk since I want to be able to do other zones rather than the one or two designated ones and see more.

So for non-Helltide (and non-seasonal) Whispers, I think at the very least we need new ones especially if old seasonal content won’t be returning (beyond that Chaos Rift I saw in the recent Diablo 4 showing). Season 7 probably had the best overall variety of Whispers so that could be used as a basis for new stuff going forward (although season specific parts like the Headrotten things probably shouldn’t be reused unless the whole zone and season returned for coherency). Next, I would like to see better or at least different rewards from non-Helltide Whispers. With Helltides in particular, you gain a currency that only last through the event. But it can be used on chest in the region where you can better target farm certain gear. But besides the reward cache, I would like to see more regional rewards or non-gear rewards to provide a reason to do these Whispers. Maybe some of it can be tied to the Season Journey but seeing non-Helltide areas would at least make the game more interesting.

Non-Campaign Quests (i.e. the blue question marks)

Someone on reddit the other day complained about the rewards from old quests being dull. Part of the problem is that all those rewards and pieces of content are really out of date. Once it was decided that the Altars of Lilith and various paragon rewards would be account bound moving forward, it pretty much invalidated any reason to do the non-campaign quests after the first time. And there are a few quests I might do for the heck of it because they get automatically start when you enter a zone or a drop happens. But I only do it to get rid of the quest marker or free up any inventory space in my quest stash (since this triggers my OCD)

The real issue is that they should get rid of all the old non-campaign quests or repurpose them for seasons. Most people focus on Whispers, Strongholds, Helltides or Dungeons for leveling so there’s almost no point in having these older quests. Whispers are like Daily Quests that reset per hour. And there is the season quest itself but that actually is quite valuable to do per character. I suppose that the real question is whether having any quests once the campaign finishes is worth it at all.

In its current form, the blue quests are pretty much worthless. Maybe during the first 10 levels if content like Helltides was significantly more difficult, the doing quests are reasonable for low level rewards. And even if you updated the rewards to match the tier of difficulty, in all likelihood, you’re still better off just farming Helltides or something else gives guaranteed legendaries and uniques because the turn in time alone decreases your overall efficiency.

However, if they added the concept of a regional reputation (which is what they had originally) and made it so Daily Quests mattered to ones reputation, then normal questing might be in better shape than its current form. Take the Mercenaries’ Den as a model for what I’m talking about. Right now, most vendors are useless. But if the vendors were tied to reputation where certain rewards can be unlocked and purchased with a special currency or gold, then it would be worth doing Daily Quests. Like imagine very specific items that can be sold by regional vendors that are unlocked by progressing through reputation. Even though I had reputation and Daily Quests grinds, this implementation would provide a new motivation to do this type of content. For instance, imagine if the vendors sold high end Runes or Uniques for a ton of Gold. On top of that make it all regional so there’s reason to grind in other zones besides Helltide. Also, I would argue making each vendor (not just the main cities) have some unique reward tied to reputation would make quest completion somewhat worth doing (and have these be account bound and a one time purchase)

Realmwalker and Seething Realm 2.0

I know a lot of people probably hated the Realmwalker. The fight was dull and slow but at the same time it was additional content to the game that at the very least was located in different zones and it would give a cool five whispers upon completion. On top of that, the Seething Realm was a connected mini dungeon, which containing a boss fight that provided Seething Opal rewards. I’ve mentioned for a few of the ideas from above that difficulty for certain content types could be modified by a currency. Since those older areas of content lack any integration into the new War Plans model, let me suggest for now that one route would be a revamped Realmwalker. Now, I would hope that this fight evolves into something more dynamic or at least be far faster than it originally was. However, I would like to see the Seething Realm make a comeback in concept.

My idea for the revamped Seething Realm would follow the idea of Escalating Nightmare Dungeons. However, the difference would be to actually make each area progressively more difficult than the previous one with stacking modifiers. The player then can accept the current reward and leave or continue onward. Unlike the Seething Realm though, I would change the rewards to be exclusively a new version of Seething Opals. Instead of making Seething Opals operate like Elixirs and Incense with a duration, I would make them a one use object applied to just a specific type of content. Depending on how far the player continued, there would be enhanced versions of these items that like other qualifiers in this game would range from Common to Legendary (maybe even Unique and/or Mythic). But these items would only apply to areas that aren’t covered by War Plans. But I like the idea of having a currency that has varying modifiers with targeted rewards to make those older areas more relevant. Not to mention it would be nice getting away from Helltides in the open world.

Ore, Leather and Herbs

When these crafting type of materials were first introduced, they were given more flavor in terms of making them regional and harder to obtain. Some seasons made mat farming very difficulty due to the rarity (like Angelbreath). After several seasons, they dropped the flavor from them and made these materials more generic and easier to obtain. At this stage, only in the early game will a player feel some pain from the lack of resources. However, at this point in the game’s lifespan, the ways to obtain these materials has been trivialized from various mechanics (like the Odious Collector goblin).

But that has made Ore and Herb nodes in particular almost pointless except maybe in Helltide. But in that situation, only a few key nodes will drop Aberrant Cinders which are more valuable than the nodes themselves. The developers haven’t clarified what role these older crafting materials will play for the expansion but one guy mentioned that players won’t relying on sharding old gear for crafting materials anymore. Even if there’s a shift in how one obtains crafting materials, the real problem is that these nodes in the wild are almost useless at this stage except for novelty, at least in terms of what they originally were meant to provide.

The Whispers from Season 7 did have one quest that required you to pick herbs, which was an interesting thing to do for easy Whispers. But beyond that, I see no reason to keep these nodes in the game as they are. If the intention in the expansion is to put more emphasis on crafting materials for use in the Horadric Cube or other forms of crafting, then maybe these nodes will make a comeback. Otherwise, my suggestion is to either gut them or decrease the general number and increase the amount of materials one gets back.

Pets 2.0

I wish Pets played a bigger role in the game besides a generic cosmetic and QoL item that picks up some stuff. While I think adding Pet Battles would make Diablo 4 go too far into the realm of World of Warcraft, I would love to see Pets have some sort of customization and progression. The Construct from Season 3 had some good ideas and I read that the intention was for testing an implementation for Followers (Mercenaries). Obviously, Mercenaries were handled in a completely different fashion but I still like the idea of having a mini skill tree that can be leveled up and customized.

Right now, Pets mostly are cosmetic, a set and forget feature. While I’d love for the Season 3 Construct to make a comeback, I think basic Pets could still have a limited QoL type of customization tree at the bare minimal. If we had Pets which had more categories (similar to how they’re handled in World of Warcraft), then perhaps that QoL could be further extended depending on the type of Pet (e.g. flying, water based, earth based, etc.)

Some interesting adjustments that can be made as a miniature QoL skill tree might be:

• Increased pick up radius
• Pick up prioritization (e.g. XP orbs, gold, crafting materials, etc.)
• Increased speed
• Auto open doors
• Auto free prisoners
• Trap disarmament
• Auto equipment sharding
• Teleport Portal speed increase
• Auto mining/herb pick up

The one thing I haven’t figured out is how one “progresses” a pet. Pet battles would be an obvious method but again I want to avoid duplicating World of Warcraft. However, I have seen other games which might have a special store that you can pay for upgrades via gold or some other currency. In addition, perhaps this store would be similar to the Wardrobe where you can further customize your pets appearance and buy transmog items. Either way, these skills would “fix” some annoying issues with the current game that I have without changing much except putting more emphasis on Pets and increasing their importance beyond being a basic toy.

Cellars

Cellars are mostly annoying one Whisper reward content. Most times you get a small wave based event. On rare occasion, you can get a stupid puzzle. But the real problem is that they are mostly uninteresting and unrewarding. I never quite understood what the purpose of Cellars were outside of having a mini dungeon tied to an event and occasionally giving out an easy Whisper. But I do wish these things had a little more pizazz than what we see.

Mercenaries 2.0

Of all the things I’ve been disappointed with from the Vessel of Hatred expansion, Mercenaries has to be at the top of the list. Originally, I was quite excited to be getting followers especially after the last revision made to Diablo 3’s Follower system. I heard that World of Warcraft has AI driven dungeons and raids where you can solo instances and mostly pick a role while your team fills out. When the Dark Citadel was announced as a multi-player environment (i.e. Raid), my hopes were that solo players would also be able to do this too using the new Mercenaries system. Boy howdy was the results some of the worst, least appealing and most insulting pieces of content that really dashed most of my hopes for the game.

In their current incarnation, mercenaries serve as a passive buff or in the case of a Hireling, a buff with a cooldown/trigger effect. But there’s absolutely nothing interesting about them once you pick them up and level them. Since Diablo 2 came out with the Warlock DLC, I’ve watched numerous content creators really make use of the older D2 Follower/Mercenary mechanic and those were of great value. While there were no skill trees available for Mercenaries in Diablo 2, what made them valuable (beyond their auras) and more importantly interesting was being able to wear gear. They still were vulnerable to damage so you needed to gear them out. Also, because of end game damage immunities, Mercenaries would provide a way for players with a specific damage type to counter these immunities. In short, they had a clear purpose to the game.

Diablo 3, for me at least, thus far had the best of both worlds when it came to Followers because of the deeper gear usage along with a skill tree that was similar in size to the current one (meaning four levels deep), some leveling and gear having the Emanate capability. I think if the Diablo 3 developers were given a second pass at Follower gear, they could’ve revamped the Asheara’s Vestments set to permanently allow for all three Followers to be used at once for a solo player. That would’ve made gearing Followers really fun and give the game a bit more of a boost for a gear hunt. The Emanate feature was a huge QoL improvement that allowed certain “mandatory” legendary powers such as Nemesis Bracers to be used for solo players.

In Diablo 4, the gearing aspect for Mercenaries was completely taken away. The only relevant piece of gear for Mercenaries is an Aspect that your character has to wear, which only reduces the cooldown for the Mercenary. Most people won’t even bother to use it (except maybe as a Sanctification this season when there’s no better option). Nonetheless, there isn’t anything else you can do to boost a Mercenary. And you can’t even bring a Mercenary with you in a party (you can have one as a Hireling but almost why bother).

With regards to the other major content feature that was introduced in Vessel of Hatred, the Dark Citadel, I think Mercenaries were meant to be used for solo players but the developers couldn’t get the AI to work in the way the Dark Citadel was designed. So we ended up with a really half assed implementation for what should have been two major features in Vessel of Hatred. Because right now, Mercenaries feel like a completely unremarkable, underperforming feature that are almost as useless as Pets once you obtain and level them.

Given that, here’s what I would like to see for an update to Mercenaries:

• Being able to hire all four at once. Get rid of the trigger mechanic too except perhaps for parties. Or make the trigger mechanic exclusive to parties where you can tie a type of ability to summon the Mercenary.
• Add gear slots that allow certain Aspects to Emanate (maybe use the list of Sanctification powers that are allowed). In this manner, that huge list of Aspects that mostly get untouched will serve some sort of purpose.
• More Mercenaries with clearer purposes
• Allow Mercenaries to be killable so that gear and gear progression really matters for them
• Allow Mercenaries to use Runewords since there’s a lot of wasted runes that sit around in ones stash
• Give Mercenaries a Wardrobe so that we can Transmog them as well
• Allow at least one Mercenary to accompany a player while in a party. Again, I’m not including those that are treated as Hirelings with a trigger effect to show up
• Allow players the ability to assign a role to Mercenaries. Even older games with NPCs such as Baldur’s Gate had the notion of party formations and AI scripts. I find it absolutely absurd that Mercenaries don’t even have this basic type of customization

Obviously, implementing each one of these ideas would require a huge upgrade. At the very least, giving them gear slots would be a very good starting point. This is on top of any new Mercenaries that we may see in the future (which I’m hoping for with Lord of Hatred)

At any rate, I think this is a good start in terms of ideas for revising old Diablo 4 content.

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