In the week since Diablo 4's official launch, the title has proven to be a massive success for Blizzard. Recent reports indicate that the title has already generated over $600 million in revenue, and that's before the title has even begun its steps into live-service territory in earnest next month. Outside resounding commercial success, Diablo 4 is proving to be a hit among fans and the return to form that many had hoped for following Diablo 3's woes at launch and Blizzard's troubles as-of-late. However, some players are taking issue with the fact that the game is missing several quality of life features that have been present in previous Diablo titles.
Even though the title is in the early days of its lifespan, Blizzard's neglecting to include notable quality of life features in Diablo 4 that have been previously implemented across the franchise is confusing. While it's likely that these features' omission was not done intentionally, their absence is felt by players who have been investing dozens of hours in Sanctuary in both solo and co-op play. As Blizzard continues to patch and re-balance Diablo 4, including issuing hotfixes for missing features or bugs, there are several staple features of the Diablo franchise that need to make their way into the game.
Missing Co-Op Features From Past Diablo Titles
In just a few short hours with Diablo 4, it becomes apparent that the game was primarily optimized for the solo experience due to the game's new live-service, always-online model. Now that players can seamlessly link up with others in the persistently-online world of Sanctuary, several of the features that many have come to expect from matchmaking and co-op play are conspicuously absent from the latest Diablo title. The features that find themselves high up on players' "most-wanted" lists are almost all related in some way to fast travel and party management. Out of these, perhaps no feature's absence is felt more than the ability to teleport directly to party members.
Diablo 3 featured the ability to highlight an ally's portrait and right-click it to teleport directly to their location, but this feature is missing in Diablo 4. Instead, players have to go through a cumbersome process of coordinating portal locations and then collectively teleport back into a dungeon or other adventuring location. Another missing feature is the ability for all players in a party to see the same map markers, with only the player responsible for placing the marker able to see the automatically generated navigation pathway on the mini-map. If a group of players are all headed to the same location, it would make sense to have all of them able to see a pinged location on the map.
Simple, But Effective, Quality of Life Features That Need to Come to Diablo 4
Outside the missing co-op features that were present in both Diablo 3 (and even Diablo 2), several players have noted that Diablo 4 makes some confusing design choices when it comes to inventory management and dealing with vendors. Past games in the series allowed players to mark all items as junk, which in turn made selling off inventory a much more efficient process. This feature is missing in Diablo 4, with players needing to individually mark any item in their inventory as junk before being able to select "Sell All Junk" at a weapon or armor vendor. The addition of a keystroke to mark all items as junk is a sorely-missed feature in Diablo 4.
Another confusing choice regarding Diablo 4's inventory management is the lack of a dedicated gem pouch like players had in Diablo 3. Gems now take up valuable inventory space instead of having their own separate section on the inventory screen. The re-introduction of a gem pouch would be a small but important quality-of-life change as it relates to inventory management. The fact that these features existed in previous Diablo titles gives hope that Blizzard will implement them in Diablo 4 in future updates.
Diablo 4 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
