First of all, something I'd like to see is a return to the more confined scope of the original DIABLO. What I really liked about that game was the claustrophobic atmosphere, the gothic style, the feeling that you were progressing in a very definite direction: deeper and deeper into the earth. DIABLO II, by contrast, is more of a globe-trotting adventure, and as a result of this they not only blew the atmosphere but also resulted in throwing every ingredient they could think of into the cooking pot. Quite simply, there was no structure or consistency in the world. They went from the demons of the original to the spear-wielding humanoid cats of Act II. It stopped resembling a gothic horror and came to look more like an amusement park.
The end of the DIABLO II Expansion sets up a wealth of possibilities. No-one, not even Cain, Tyrael and the like, know what will happen now that the Worldstone has been destroyed. So I say keep it that way. Have players enter a new world unsure of what's what, whether or not the Prime Evils are still out and about. Reveal the story bit by bit in the game, with players starting out unsure of their goals and getting a bigger picture of the world as they go along.
Personally, I really like the idea someone suggested of allowing players to customize which aspects of their skills they want to upgrade. For example, you could choose between increasing damage, speed, cool-down time (if applicable), mana cost, etc. I also think that there should be trade-offs. Ensure that choosing one path hurts your abilities in another. For example, you might have to sacrifice magic ability in order to improve strength. This would go some way towards ensuring that one build doesn't end up being overpowered, because there would be no "best of" that could excel at everything.
Some people have been suggesting the addition of more classes and customizability. Personally, I would like to see a move in the opposite direction, even to the extent of selecting pre-determined characters, with names, back-stories, specific abilities, etc., instead of a broad class archetype. The way I see it, it's much easier to invest in the storyline of a character with a specific past than it is to care about a random nameless adventurer who fits into a broad role of "Sorcerer", "Warrior", etc. Have the characters integrate more personally into the game's storyline. Perhaps certain NPCs will have had run-ins with a character in the past and will react differently to them. It would be pretty neat to have, for example, the people of a town greet one character as a hero and completely shun another. (As you can probably guess, I'm thinking more about the single player game with these character-based elements. How this would translate into the multiplayer arena is anyone's guess.)
Finally, I would like to see a return to the random level generation of DIABLO, rather than the "block generation" of DIABLO II. In DIABLO, each game was different, because the block sizes were small enough that there was a near-infinite number of possible layouts. In DIABLO II, aside from the increase in fixed levels, the "brushes" used in the random levels were simply too large, meaning that whole rooms or series of rooms would show up again and again with little new content except perhaps the corridors connecting them.
The end of the DIABLO II Expansion sets up a wealth of possibilities. No-one, not even Cain, Tyrael and the like, know what will happen now that the Worldstone has been destroyed. So I say keep it that way. Have players enter a new world unsure of what's what, whether or not the Prime Evils are still out and about. Reveal the story bit by bit in the game, with players starting out unsure of their goals and getting a bigger picture of the world as they go along.
Personally, I really like the idea someone suggested of allowing players to customize which aspects of their skills they want to upgrade. For example, you could choose between increasing damage, speed, cool-down time (if applicable), mana cost, etc. I also think that there should be trade-offs. Ensure that choosing one path hurts your abilities in another. For example, you might have to sacrifice magic ability in order to improve strength. This would go some way towards ensuring that one build doesn't end up being overpowered, because there would be no "best of" that could excel at everything.
Some people have been suggesting the addition of more classes and customizability. Personally, I would like to see a move in the opposite direction, even to the extent of selecting pre-determined characters, with names, back-stories, specific abilities, etc., instead of a broad class archetype. The way I see it, it's much easier to invest in the storyline of a character with a specific past than it is to care about a random nameless adventurer who fits into a broad role of "Sorcerer", "Warrior", etc. Have the characters integrate more personally into the game's storyline. Perhaps certain NPCs will have had run-ins with a character in the past and will react differently to them. It would be pretty neat to have, for example, the people of a town greet one character as a hero and completely shun another. (As you can probably guess, I'm thinking more about the single player game with these character-based elements. How this would translate into the multiplayer arena is anyone's guess.)
Finally, I would like to see a return to the random level generation of DIABLO, rather than the "block generation" of DIABLO II. In DIABLO, each game was different, because the block sizes were small enough that there was a near-infinite number of possible layouts. In DIABLO II, aside from the increase in fixed levels, the "brushes" used in the random levels were simply too large, meaning that whole rooms or series of rooms would show up again and again with little new content except perhaps the corridors connecting them.