Looking back on Season 5, I have to wonder… why do I love ARPGs but struggle with Diablo 4?

When Diablo 4 Season 5 launched, I was playing playing a lot of Diablo 4. But in the weeks since the season began, I started thinking back to why I — as someone who really enjoys the style of ARPGs — seem to continually bounce off of Diablo 4 after a week or two. Which is exactly what happened with Season 5: after a couple of weeks, I finished the Battle Pass and stopped playing.

And after some thought, I believe it’s not necessarily Diablo 4 itself that’s the issue, but Blizzard’s lack of learning from what the others in the game genre space are doing — and sometimes even what the company’s other games are doing. Even as Blizzard continues improve the base game — like the recent announce of leveling changes and Runewords — it doesn’t seem to hit the mark, at least for me.

So just what are other games doing better? Let’s take a look at the things that are keeping me interested in other games (and less interested in Diablo 4).

Color (or lack thereof) and theming

Diablo 4 was a return to the dark Gothic feel of Diablo 2 and Diablo, and the change was heralded as a return to form after the bright colors of Diablo 3 (particularly the excessive cheer of Whimsyshire). But I suspect the dark, non-stop blood and fire and, well, Hell vibes might be part of what makes me slip away from Diablo 4.

“But Chris,” I hear you asking, “you’re playing Diablo 4. You should expect Hell!”

You’re right. But in what could be a controversial opinion, I actually preferred the variety of terrain in Diablo 3. You crawled through plenty of creepy crypts, dark dungeons, and, yes, the went into the bowels of Hell to fight hordes of demons — but the game also had color. Some settings were bright, and I’m not just talking about Whimsyshire. There were sun-blasted deserts, mossy green hills, and the brilliant white and gold of Heaven.  Not everything was dreary grays and browns.

It’s possible Vessel of Hatred solves this issue by letting us explore the dense jungles of Nehantu, which were also a bright spot of color in Diablo 2. More color and variety in these settings could do a lot to keep players like me interested. Sanctuary is vast: show us a part of the world that’s absolutely colorful with crazy neon monoliths where the ground is splitting apart and floating in the air because magic is breaking apart reality. (Just an example.) That’s the sort of thing I’m interested in seeing to break up the monotony of yet another wasteland.

Diablo 4 has so much loot… but no way to find it

One thing to love about ARPGs is the massive amount of loot you get. There’s nothing more fun than blasting through an entire screen of enemies and getting a rain of shining, sparkling loot surrounding you.

But how much of that loot is actually useful? I find myself collecting everything in hopes that something I pick up will finally give me the few pieces of transmog I’m still missing. And even though Diablo 4 has done a lot to streamline the loot system, it still doesn’t make it easy to tell if any of the loot surrounding you is useful.

Path of Exile and Last Epoch both have loot filters, which are user defined rules that change how the game displays drops. So if your loot filter says “don’t show me magic-quality items,” you won’t see labels for those items on your screen (even though they do still drop). This can be great if you only care about legendaries or uniques: you can set them to be the only thing you see.

You can sometimes really get into the nitty-gritty with these filters, setting them up to only show you gear with +damage, or to ignore items with +freeze (or both), making it even easier to hone in on what you want. Loot filters have been fairly commonplace within the ARPG genre for some time now, and games like Path of Exile have websites where you can build a custom filters with just a few clicks.

I know the Diablo player base has been asking the developers to add loot filters, and I’m not sure why it’s still on the back-burner. Even though it isn’t a deal-breaker, when I’m considering my ARPG options, having loot filters does make the other games feel more fun to play. As the Diablo 4 team itself said when unveiling its itemization changes, I want to spend less time sorting and more time slaying.

Where have the Treasure Goblins gone?

On the subject of loot explosions, one thing that Diablo 3 did right was the ridiculous number of my favorite little buddies, the Treasure Goblins. D3 had nine different types of these tiny thieves, each of which would drop different items when killed… or sometimes teleport you to Whimsyshire. On the other hand, Diablo 4 has a single bland treasure goblin.

Other games have their own enemies that are like Treasure Goblins, too, like Path of Exile’s God-touched mobs. And still other games have similar analogues. Last Epoch has gold shrines that spawn enemies which drop bunches of gold, while Grim Dawn has treasure troves that you can blow open for loot.

Blizzard does have a March of the Goblins event — currently active — which brings an insane number of goblins in the game, with goblins spawning everywhere. It’s loot there for the chasing, and it’s great. But I still wish there was slightly more variety to these goblins, much like in Diablo 3. There’s nothing like chasing down a Treasure Goblin, and there’s surprisingly little of it in Diablo 4.

The high cost of cosmetics

I promise that I’m not going to beat a dead horse here, because the prices of cosmetics in Diablo 4 have been controversial since the game launched. Personally, I think the cosmetics in the store are really cool looking — there are three or four Necromancer sets I would love to have, and each class has at least one set that I would probably purchase if the cost was lower. I bring this up because costs for cosmetics are nothing new in this genre; the above banner, for example, shows prices for cosmetics in Path of Exile (the Paladin Supporter Pack), as well as a range of hero prices in Marvel Heroes.

I’ll use $30 USD as a price-point example because each of the games have an offering at this point.

So what will your money buy you in each of these games? For $30 USD in Diablo 4 you can get an armor set for one specific class, a tattoo you can add in character creation, and maybe a weapon or two depending on which set it is. In Path of Exile (which is a free-to-play ARPG), $30 will get you a Paladin weapon effect for your sword/mace/shield, a flashy explosion of gold and blue when you level up, a title on the official forums with a special frame for your avatar, and a download of the extended digital soundtrack. In Marvel Heroes, which unfortunately closed down half a decade ago, you could get a 5-character pack plus additional character skins and storage for $30. Heroes were usually priced between $5-30, depending on how many skins they came with or how popular they were. I can’t blame any of these ARPGs for their pricing model, as they all had purchases around the cost, and even Last Epoch has supporter packs for $30.

Yet I find myself wondering whether Diablo 4 cosmetics are costing us new appearances in game itself.  And I want to buy these cosmetics… if not for the prices. I cannot lie: I just purchased Cyclops in Fortnite, and I’ve bought armor skins in Destiny 2 , but those are usually between $10-15, which I find to be my personal sweet spot for in-game cosmetics.

Diablo 4 is good, but it could be better

Season of the Infernal Hordes lasted me just over two weeks before I finished the battle pass and my drive to continue playing slowly fell to the wayside (even though I tried three new characters to see if it brought the spark back), so the trend seems to be continuing. Changes keep coming to Diablo 4, but they’re yet to be the kind of changes that will keep me with the game. Blizzard has announced major changes coming to the game with the expansion, including the return of Runewords as well as completely changing up leveling and progression. But even though these seem like good changes, I still have my complaints.

I don’t believe that Diablo 4 is a bad game; far from it. I do believe that the team behind Diablo 4 could take some time to look at the other games in the genre — or even the last Diablo game — for inspiration on what Diablo 4 could do to keep up with the competition.

I saw someone on Reddit comment that if every ARPG had the same ideas, then we’d really only have one game and that would make gaming terribly boring. I get where they’re coming from, but I think in a market with many games trying to do the same thing, the player often benefits, getting a better experience as game developers constantly try to one-up one another with new and improved features. I’m not sure that’s happening with Diablo 4.

I’m hopeful that much like Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, Vessel of Hatred will revolutionize the game. The developers are certainly aiming high with the slate of changes coming, but time will tell how these changes will feel in action.

But if anyone from the Diablo 4 developer team is reading this though, I promise I’ll play a lot more if you add in a Paladin class — or the Diablo Immortal Blood Knight. That can’t be too much to ask.