There’s a top post by someone writing an opinion comment over on reddit on the main “hotfixes” (not really hotfixes technically but I’m using their wording) that would turn Diablo 4 into a 10/10 game. I think the choices are interesting because of how some a good chunk are either being pushed by the community or are massive oversights in the current Diablo 4 expansion. I do think that calling these aspects things that would transform the game into a 10/10 rating is absurd and an over exaggeration (not to mention wishful thinking). But as a list, I figured it would be good to comment on each as well as how realistic it would be given Blizzard’s history on whether or not these changes would be effective, necessary or even possible.

I’m going to re-post the items as they were with some formatting changes and side-by-side comments to better organize my thoughts.

​Progression & Account QoL

• ​Account-Wide War Plans: Progress is now shared across all characters. I think the general idea of at least having shared experience between characters on an account is something most people want. I think in practice this will happen at least in terms of a per season, per segment (seasonal, hardcore, eternal, etc.) If the progress isn’t shared, then the amount of XP ought to be reduced at least.
• ​Massive Cap Increases: The main comment here is gold and obol caps. The amount requested is absurd to me but I do think they need to choose a better number format for both. I think making gold and obol an unsigned longint would be the best solution.
• ​Auto-Loot: Specifically, the poster mentions Cube Materials. I think that the implementation ought to be a loot vacuum integrated into the Loot Filter that gets turned on by another checkbox next to the “Enable” buttons. There really is no reason for loot to be manually picked up in a modern game when other games handle inventory management much better. Any excess loot really should be allowed using a scrollbar attachment to each inventory tab type both on the character and in their Stash tabs.

​Endgame Adjustments (Hordes, Pit, & Undercity)

• ​Infernal Hordes Buff: Wave count capped at 5 across all tiers, but Burning Aether rewards are tripled. The quality of items for chest and boss loot has been massively buffed. – I think this won’t happen mostly because of how each is meant to build off the previous choices. Instead, I think the pragmatic solution is to spawn the events faster and eliminate that particular choice so that Infernal Hordes no longer takes 20-30 minutes.
• ​Instant Progression: Orbs in the Pit and Undercity now drop instantly upon mob death—no more waiting around to collect progress. – I think they need to get rid of the Orb system entirely and mark mobs that would have Orbs normally with a special icon to indicate the bonus and have that applied. This includes experience globes. There’s no good reason to have this type of implementation.
• ​Echoing Hatred: The Altar now lets you select your starting Torment Tier Wave. Echoing Hatred goblin bags now have a small chance to contain a Mythic Charm. – I can see the torment tier choice being a thing. I think the bigger issue is changing the key from a flag to a currency item in ones inventory. Having Echoing Hatred appear as a nondescript brown icon is simply terrible UI. Either have it automatically picked up or make it an account wide flag. Similarly, they need to up the event chance for spawning since it’s virtually impossible to get at this time.

​Next-Level Itemization & Crafting

• ​Mythic Dust: A new ultra-rare drop that completely resets a Transfigured item to its original state, allowing it to be modified again. – I like the idea but I doubt that Blizzard will implement this just because the idiots in charge prefer the hamster wheel/carrot on a stick model. You’d have to shoot the people in charge of that model and change the internal philosophy for RNG and loot in the company so I don’t see this becoming a reality anytime soon.
• ​Buffed Mythic Seals: Mythic Seal affix ranges are now 1.5x stronger (e.g., 10% crit becomes 15%). – Sounds good on paper but this change isn’t a game changer in itself that raises the game to a 10/10 standard. This is just an opinion. The better change would be ensuring the the Mythic Seal aspects didn’t suck out the gate.
• ​Unique Enchanting: You can now re-roll/enchant one affix on Unique items at the Occultist. – I think they simply got lazy with Uniques and converted their affixes into the general item pool to justify not having to spend the necessary time to fix each one. They certainly lied about having any type of close examination with these things and probably said fuck it. That said, I already hate the Occultist so giving them additional life at the cost of my sanity is a flat no. Instead, I think they really need someone to do what they promised in combing through each Unique and fixing their core affixes. Either that or flat out get rid of uniques, make a superior but rarer Greater Aspect type that players can imprint onto an item and it’ll solve both problems. Then have only Mythics be the true source of Uniques in the game.
• ​Transfiguration: Gem Strength has been nerfed by 90%. – This sounds like one of Rob’s bad takes that one of his braindead mark followers blindly agrees with. This transfiguration property already is difficult to obtain and most times people get bricked items. So they should be rewarded with a strong Transfiguration when it lands properly.

​UI, Settings, & Integrity

• ​Dedicated Stash Tab: A separate, dedicated stash space specifically for Runes, Gems, Charms, Seals, and Keys. – There’s really no need for this. Instead, the proper UI/UX solution is to add a scrollbar to each tab and leave the existing tabs for individual characters/builds that the player wants to try or use as a label. You don’t need to mindlessly copy PoE especially when there’s no monetary motivation. Instead, the UI/UX experience needs to improve.
• ​Loot Filter Fix: Filtered items will no longer clog your minimap with star icons or get mailed to your stash. – I thought the Loot Filter already did this. Maybe not the mailed part but that’s a minor inconvenience. The 10/10 game changer is the Loot Vacuum idea. Add a simple auto pick up option so that the player and pet merely need to run over loot within a specified radius. You continue to allow players who love carpal tunnel the ability to pick things up manually but make the default a QoL option.
• ​Visual Clarity: Added a game setting to turn off other players’ spell effects (looking at you, Apocalypse Warlock and Ancients Barbarian). – This is just bad visual design conflicting with how the game was intended. That said, the game badly needs to either minimize ground visuals that aren’t being set by monsters or provide better colorization and telegraphing. The low hanging fruit option might be an opacity setting but I think clearly marked damaged types (e.g. purple for shadow, orange for fire) and extreme highlights better serve the issue along with enforcing a rule of having monster effects cancel others out or only allow for a single effect to occur in an area at one time.
• ​Skippable Mephisto: All Mephisto cutscenes are now skippable, and his Mythic Seal drop rate is buffed. – The cutscenes sound like a major oversight because the team has no internal product QA. I would augment this statement by having another checkbox to prevent any cutscenes and extraneous dialog from ever showing up. That would make this game more tolerable.
• ​Competitive Integrity: Leaderboards will now instantly reset following any major bug/exploit fix. All recent community-reported exploits have been hotfixed. – Too big of an ask for a tiny gain. I’d prefer that they get rid of the leaderboards and remove any notion of esports and timed events from the game.
• ​Class Balance: Substantial buffs deployed for all underperforming classes, including Warlock and Paladin. – This is not a hotfix ask. This is a major patch. Also, how do you identify an “underperforming class?” You can’t just go to Maxroll and assume anything not in the S-tier is “underperforming.”  I would argue that the problem is that the people at Maxroll ended up getting too much political clout online but don’t have the resources/staff to accurately provide every build imaginable, especially those that should be at a high level. I think the issue with Warlock mostly is visual clarity and then second from the frequent comments about how it operates in a clunky manner. Paladin suffered mostly because the Castle node got killed by the community. So the community should blame itself, not Blizzard, for the Paladin’s downfall. I personally never asked for any nerfs. I was perfectly content with my S11 Auradin. Either way, asking Blizzard to balance classes is like Trump and his team of criminals going to jail and the world returning to 1986 levels of normalcy.Instead, the ask here ought to be a larger demand to kill off the concept of uncontrollable math, which has been handled through a poorly conceived system of multipliers and conditionals that make it impossible for the developers to determine how a reasonable sounding ceiling for damage and monster health. The only problem is that if a project like that were given the okay, we would be forced to sit through yet another iteration on all systems. But I can’t really see Blizzard being able to dig themselves out of this deep grave they’ve buried themselves under.

Final Thoughts

I think the author has good intent albeit a flawed interpretation of what ought to convert Diablo 4 into a true 10/10 game. Diablo 4 at this stage is a game that has finally managed to reach a bare minimal level of acceptance compared to other games in its genre. Diablo 4’s main benefactors revolves around nostalgia, brand recognition and the theoretically deep pockets that backs the brand. However, for the latter part of the game, I think it’s more deep bureaucracy that has stunted the growth, decision making process and bad estimations that has led to this current state. Other games though are just massively far ahead in nearly every manner possible, which becomes the ironic and frustrating part.

I think at this stage, the game itself is reasonably fun and the new systems have given the game enough new life where others are coming out of the proverbial closet to admit that it’s fun and d4notsobad. But again there’s simply not enough meat on the bones where things really are needed. I think the team has spent way too much time reinventing the wheel constantly without moving forward. For instance, in the case of game balance, I think the current systems in place pretty much invalidate any hope of proper balancing mostly because the over engineered math handled through an insane number of multipliers and strange conditions make it impossible for these people to create anything coherent.

Instead what would convince me that this game has the potential to become 10/10 is if the developers put more effort finishing up any modifications on older content that need updating to work with this new core and/or create more end game content. I thought that the previous seasons that had extensive mechanics and powers were the best mostly because of the alternate content provided. Like Season 7 is still the peak in terms of sheer variety potential. Also, the new content needs to constantly be integrated back into the core such as a mechanism like War Plans. With the various modifiers that have made their way into War Plans from previous seasons like Chaos Portals, I have argued that the team is willing to bring back old content from other seasons that were popular. I think the issue that they face is a long, disjointed feedback loop that results in taking longer than necessary whether it’s attempting to re-engineer pieces or overthinking certain things. For instance, while Chaos Portals returned, we haven’t really seen the much lauded Chaos Armor that the developers mentioned would probably make a comeback in some form. Beyond the modified affixes on unique gear, why would it take 3+ seasons before they can make a decision on how to reintroduce this concept?

So I think the general slowness for a live service game in the hands of a powerful studio owned by one of the most profitable companies in the world make the game seem that its real potential is being held back for, um, reasons. It’s certainly a problem when this slowness interferes with the addition of long stemming bugs that are almost deal breakers especially in contrast to how other studios might be able to push out content much faster. Until they improve their pipeline, I think the game will probably be mid mostly and from the periphery it’s nearly blind luck they managed to stumble upon this current iteration based on their history with this game.

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