Blizzard’s 2024 roadmap for Diablo 4 teased two major and long awaited features planned for 2026: a Ranking System and Leaderboards. While we don’t know any details about them, we can still speculate what it might look like based on Diablo 3’s Leaderboards and a recent developer interview.
Ranking System vs Leaderboards
A recent interview between Rhykker and Game Director Brent Gibson gave us some small ideas on what the Ranking System and Leaderboards might look like, and it sounds like Blizzard is aiming to appeal to both casuals and competitive players.
Rhykker: “What’s the difference between a ranking system and a leaderboard?”
Brent Gibson: “They are two entirely different things that are meant to complement each other… Leaderboards speak to the elite… a place where the best of the best can show off… But we don’t want to isolate it to just those players. There’s a lot of casual players out there that just want to know, ‘Hey, am I doing good?’… We want a ranking system that gives every casual a sense of progress and value, and then graduating the elite into the leaderboard and giving them a space to really press hard.”
This approach seems to be a shift from Diablo 3’s purely competitive Greater Rift leaderboards, which catered towards min-maxers. Instead, Diablo 4 appears to be laying the foundation for a more inclusive progression path and something that rewards effort across all skill levels.
What Could the Ranking System Look Like?
While we didn’t get any specific answers, Gibson’s response suggests the ranking system could track overall player performance across various aspects of the game. This might take the form of a seasonal progression ladder, milestone-based achievements, or even individual ranks tied to specific activities like Nightmare Dungeons, PvP zones, or Helltides. Diablo 3 had a limited version of this. It covered the Greater Rifts, of course, but also had sections for Season achievement score, the Season Journey, and more.
This approach would provide casual players a sense of personal progression, with climbing tiers, potentially unlocking cosmetics, earning titles, or other rewards, even if they are not pushing top-tier leaderboards.
Leaderboards for the Elite
Meanwhile, the mention of “graduating the elite” into the leaderboards suggests a return to something like Diablo 3’s Greater Rift rankings. A place where pure efficiency, build optimization and execution are the most important.
We could be looking at:
- Class-based leaderboards
- Activity specific rankings
- Time based clears with modifiers or affixes
- Hardcore-specific ladders
This would give more competitive players the long requested content they’ve been missing in Diablo 4 for a long time.
A System for Everyone?
What’s interesting about Gibson’s answer is the intent to build a bridge between casual and more competitive players, something that Diablo historically struggled with. Diablo 3’s Greater Rifts leaderboards were catered towards the top players, while casual players felt left behind.
In contrast, Diablo 4 may aim to provide multiple ways of achieving competitive goals, may it be on the leaderboard or in a system catered towards personal progression.
What would you like the rankings/leaderboard system to cover? Should it just be for the absolutely best builds?
