A Diablo 4 player has put together a list of design elements that Blizzard implemented in past Diablo games but left out of the new release. Now that Diablo 4 has been available for a week, at least via early access, players have grown comfortable with the gameplay. In doing so, some have noticed certain features from Diablo 3 or even Diablo 2 that are absent from Diablo 4. It's unclear if these decisions were made intentionally or not, but some Diablo 4 players have grown frustrated all the same.
What makes the situation complicated is how different Diablo 4 is compared to its predecessors. Diablo 4 is both always online and a live-service title. Where past releases have had major multiplayer components, significant design decisions were made based on quality-of-life issues for the offline single-player experience. Where Diablo 3 might implement a feature to save players time, Diablo 4 might choose not to because live service games carefully manage how much time is required to complete certain tasks.
Reddit user Communist_Pants has put together a list of quality-of-life issues they describe as "time-wasting design decisions" that Blizzard had solved in past games but left out of Diablo 4. To grab players' attention, Communist_Pants calls attention to one particular missing feature in their post's title. They note that Diablo 3 allowed party members to teleport to their allies by right-clicking their portrait. Diablo 4 players can't do that, instead requiring players to create a town portal, travel back to town, allow their teammates to use the portal, and then teleport back to the action.
The list includes several such examples of these Diablo 4 time-wasting design decisions. Other examples include splitting the repair vendor and blacksmith salvaged into two separate NPCs, placing players' stashes so far away from Waypoints and vendors, the ability to set a default town portal location, gems taking up Diablo 4 inventory spaces, typing "/r" to reply to a whisper, and some items requiring players scroll down on their item information to see some statistics. In other words, there are a lot of small but surprising problems Blizzard appears to knowingly have introduced.
There are issues beyond negative changes Blizzard has made from past Diablo games to Diablo 4, though. One notable criticism listed is a lack of an easy way to see all of Diablo 4's in-game spawn timers, whether for events, world boss spawns, Hellfire, or otherwise. Players have to wait for icons to appear on their maps, and then hover over them to get more information. A simple list of these timers would be a massive quality-of-life improvement.
What's so frustrating for Diablo 4 players is that it's unclear if Blizzard made these design decisions with the intention of limiting players or not. It could very well be that Blizzard's Diablo 4 team is simply learning as it goes, and quality-of-life improvements will come in time. Yet it's also possible Blizzard put these limitations in Diablo 4 with intent and no improvements will be made. Hopefully, Blizzard will be transparent about its design decision-making to help give Diablo 4 players some peace of mind.
Diablo 4 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
