Overall, I hope D4 takes the best elements from its predecessors- Diablo (story, music, horror, gore), D2R (graphics, music, sounds, itemization, skills, monsters, bosses), and D3 (QoL, engine, fliudity of action). Only thing from Diablo Immortal is character customization.

Aesthetics are important. A glaring issue is the font used in Diablo 4, and looks like the generic font used in MS Word. The developers need to use the beautiful Diablo font for UI and items. For the UI, they should focus more on the items (bigger icons) instead of the 3D character in the center. From an environmental standpoint, I hope they add dynamic weather and day-night cycles. To keep the atmosphere feeling dark and ominous, bring the Light Radius stat back and give the feeling of not knowing what lies ahead, especially in the depths of dungeons.

The artwork is looking beautiful in Diablo 4 thus far, but feel the skill effects and animations often distract from the dark gritty down-to-earth horror vibe of the game. I recommend to tone down the skill effects and animations with the overall philosophy less is more.

For monsters, I hope to see resistances, immunities, and monster modifers return as well for added challenge. Hopefully in Diablo 4, they get it right and find a sweet spot between monster power and player power. D2R is brutal at the end of nightmare going into hell and hope that remains true for Diablo 4. The developers need to bring back The Butcher! For world bosses, I hope they can one-shot the ill-prepared adventurer.

I hope Diablo 4 itemization is as rich and diverse as D2R which puts more emphasis on affixes, stats and skill points, as opposed to D3, which the damage on weapons is end-all be-all stat. Also, legendaries is from WOW, lets go back to calling them uniques with the iconic gold color. I hope we see magic find and gold find. I also hope to see many unique D4 items from D2R make it into Diablo 4, such as shako, grandfather, mang song’s lesson, to name a few and don’t forget about runewords. D2R can sometimes be too unforgiving in it’s loot, while D3 is too generous. There must be a healthy balance of loot drop distribution.

I implore Blizzard to avoid insane damage numbers when designing weapons and skills. Dishing out billions or trillions of damage in D3 is completely absurd and ultimately meaningless when the numbers rival the national debt. Add option to turn off damage numbers completely as it breaks immersion. There should be lots of options to customize the game (e.g. advanced tooltips, hide damage numbers, hide player names, etc.)

From my understanding, Diablo 4 has restricted trading. The developers should seriously consider totally unrestricted trading like in D2R. Trading in an MMO is much more fun with an open market. The goal should be to allow the vast majority of the playerbase to enjoy the game to its fullest potential. As there are planned for 100+ towns in the game, each town should have a local trading hub. They should hire more people to monitor for bots, scams, etc.

Lastly, in terms of the next class, how about a priest or cleric— a class that can be caster or melee, focused on holy magic. Paladin was cool, crusader was alright, but a holy caster/ healer/ support melee class would be awesome. David Brevik mentioned via Twitter there were plans to introduce the Cleric… but never came to fruition.