For many players, the honeymoon period with Diablo 4 after its impressively successful early access and official launch ended with the start of Season of the Malignant, which highlighted many underlying problems that only became more apparent when making a new seasonal character. Like many ARPGs before it, Diablo 4's seasonal model is nothing short of the one adopted by titles like Path of Exile, with players being required to create a seasonal character and start from scratch, including collecting currency or even completing Dungeons for Aspects. This can feel like a chore in the long run because progress erases after just a few months, but the icing on the cake for many players was the pace of the game.

Season of the Malignant's patch notes killed a lot of the enthusiasm players had for the new content on launch day, be it because of how small the changes to the gameplay loop in Season 1 were, or be it because of the one too many nerfs to all the popular builds and options. Blizzard also made further changes to Diablo 4's launch features, such as level scaling, making even the new Malignant Tunnels obsolete short of level 60 because of how underpowered enemies are in those activities. As such, there's one key area that Season 2 should be looking at for major fixes, and that is the endgame.

RELATED: Diablo 4's Best Seasonal Content Boils Down to One Item

Why Diablo 4's Endgame Fails and How Season 2 Can Change It

The current gameplay loop for characters above level 75 is very limited and repetitive, with only Diablo 4's Nightmare Dungeons providing enough experience for players to level up relatively quickly - and even then, it can be hours on end of grinding mechanically. Other activities in the game simply don't award enough experience for any given character to build up levels at a decent pace, and it's currently quite hard to reach level 100 outside of Nightmare Dungeons.

Diablo 4's Season 2 should introduce a new activity that surpasses Nightmare Dungeons in terms of rewards while bringing them up to par, which would kill two birds with one stone. First, players can level up their main character or even multiple characters at faster rates, and they could choose whether to engage in the seasonal loop or play Nightmare Dungeons - or, better still, other existing options, like the Tree of Whispers. Revamping the endgame system is where Blizzard needs to spend its resources if Diablo 4 is to be played for years to come.

This would also mean taking a look at the issues with Diablo 4's items and loot, such as the cost and efficiency of rerolling affixes on high-level items or the drop rates of certain Uniques. Not all classes have build-defining Uniques, but those that do can be left high and dry if players are not lucky enough to find those items on their adventures, with Druids being the prime example of this. It is also strange how the game's current system made it to a point where it's eerily similar to the state of Diablo 3, where running Greater Rifts over and over was the only option.

Even with Diablo 4's randomly-generated Dungeons, the overall gameplay can feel all the more repetitive given the structure of these activities, where players have one of a handful of objectives to complete in two stages before the final boss fight. A more diverse activity in Season 2 would shake things up and allow old players and new alike to enjoy something unique that challenges the status quo more than it adheres to it. As such, offering players ample choice when it comes to how they can play the game and what they can do is key for Season 2 to succeed where Season of the Malignant failed.

Diablo 4 is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

MORE: Diablo 4 Could Have Gone The Extra Mile With One Customization Feature