A recent update to Diablo Immortal warbands for season three is the first in a planned series of improvements for the RPG game’s party system. However, some players are voicing their opinion that the system is fundamentally flawed, and should be replaced with integrated clan grouping functionality instead to enable bonuses when teaming up with your fellow Diablo Immortal clan members.
The Diablo Immortal season three update includes a tweak to the warband system allowing players to see if members of their warband are online and what they are currently doing in-game from the warband menu. Blizzard says this is a step towards “streamlining the experience, as we want warbands to be a fun way to play with other players.”
While a Diablo Immortal clan can accommodate up to 150 players in a group, warbands are designed as a small, permanent group of up to eight players that get bonuses for running certain content together. Warbands are required for some specific activities, but their semi-permanent nature has been frustrating some of the game’s playerbase.
Blizzard says that it intends for warbands to be for groups that play together regularly, meaning that the group stays together unless the leader manually boots players to make space for others. However, this means that players who aren’t always online at the same time as one another can end up in a situation where they are forced to abandon their warband in search of another group to play with each time they log on.
Following this most recent change, several threads on the game’s subreddit have sprung up making light of the system, or asking Blizzard to remove it in favour of something else. The most commonly requested alternative is to make warband activities apply to groups of up to eight players who are members of the same clan. The most-upvoted post at the time of writing suggests that warbands could remain “as a fully optional thing for players in different clans, not as a requirement for unlocking relevant bonuses.”
One of the most common complaints from players is that the current warband system makes them feel pressured to play at certain times, or keep up with their warband group’s leveling and progression. Others say that they are constantly having to kick inactive players out and invite new ones to fill their spot – at which point a more temporary party system would suffice. It is, of course, possible that Blizzard plans to adapt warbands in such a way, but we won’t know for sure until they announce their future changes.
In addition to making grouping easier, some players say that applying the warband camp system at a clan level to offer a shared stash and meeting point for members of an entire clan would be a really cool feature. Currently, the only notable clan-wide activity is the Rite of Exile that allows clans to compete for the opportunity to become the Immortals faction on a server.
Among the most common warband activities are the Helliquary raids, the third of which – Gorgothra the Claimer – arrived in the fantasy game this week. If your Diablo Immortal journey is just beginning, we’ve got a guide to the best Diablo Immortal class for every type of player. If you’ve been playing for longer but fancy a change, check out our Diablo Immortal class change guide to learn how to switch up your character.