Top Essential Features Diablo 4 Players Can't Do Without

After playing Diablo 4 for a week, some players have noticed the absence of certain design elements from past Diablo games. These features, which were present in Diablo 3 or even Diablo 2, have left some players feeling frustrated, although it's unclear whether these omissions were intentional or not. The situation is complicated by the fact that Diablo 4 is a live-service title that is always online, which means that design decisions are made with the goal of carefully managing the amount of time required to complete certain tasks. In contrast, past releases were designed with quality-of-life improvements for the offline single-player experience in mind, which often included major multiplayer components.

Communist_Pants, a Reddit user, has highlighted a number of quality-of-life issues in Diablo 4, which they describe as "time-wasting design decisions". These are problems that have been addressed in previous games but have inexplicably been left out of the latest installment. One such issue that Communist_Pants draws particular attention to is the inability of players in Diablo 4 to teleport to their allies by right-clicking their portrait, a feature that was present in Diablo 3. Instead, players are required 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 of issues identified by Communist_Pants includes other examples of time-wasting design decisions, such as the separation of repair vendor and blacksmith salvaged into two separate NPCs, the placement of players' stashes far away from Waypoints and vendors, the lack of an ability to set a default town portal location, gems taking up inventory space, the need to type "/r" to reply to a whisper, and certain items requiring players to scroll down on their item information to see some statistics. In other words, there are a plethora of small but frustrating issues that Blizzard seems to have intentionally introduced.

One of the notable criticisms of Diablo 4 is the lack of an easy way to view in-game spawn timers, which includes events, world boss spawns, Hellfire, and others. Players have to wait for icons to appear on their maps and then hover over them to obtain more information. A comprehensive list of these timers would be a substantial quality-of-life enhancement. The uncertainty surrounding whether Blizzard intentionally imposed these limitations or not is a frustrating experience for Diablo 4 players. While it's possible that Blizzard's Diablo 4 team is still learning and will introduce quality-of-life improvements in the future, it's also possible that no improvements will be made. Therefore, transparency about design decisions from Blizzard would be greatly appreciated by Diablo 4 players.

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