Diablo 4 Gauntlet Leaderboards and the Private Profile Dilemma
Some topics in the Diablo community will always spark controversy — Stash space, drop rates, itemization, and the in-game Shop have been some of the hot topics burning their way through circles of Wanderers since Diablo 4 launched. We've got our own opinions: read on to find out more about our take on the Gauntlet and Leaderboards allowing Private Profiles in Diablo 4!
We are now one week into the Gauntlet, Blizzard’s newest Diablo 4 feature, and feedback has been leaning towards negative.
Some players are wondering what part of this basic, static-layout Dungeon took nine months to develop, while others are simply underwhelmed by the rewards. Something most players can agree on is that the Leaderboards leave much to be desired.
Unlike previous installments of Diablo, the vast majority of players on the Leaderboards have their profile set to private, making their Gear and Active Skills invisible to the public.
There are two main questions here, the first being why Blizzard would implement a feature in a competitive ARPG that prevents players from seeing the general build elements of other players. While there are several viable builds for each class, it seems unlikely that the top Sorcerer running being common knowledge would somehow give other players an unfair advantage.
Would the public knowing that Barbarian Sorcerer is one of the best duos really determine the meta, and would that be a bad thing? You can’t even see what class someone is playing for private profiles on the 2-Player, 3-Player, and 4-Player Leaderboards — who does this benefit? For some players, being on the Leaderboards with several random private profiles diminishes the sense of pride you might expect to feel for being one of the best at your class. For others, it creates a sense of vulnerability that leads to setting their profile to private as well.
This leads us to our second question: why are almost all profiles on the Leaderboards set to private? Aside from those who hide their profile
