Diablo 4's long-desired loot filters are 'definitely part of our backlog', says general manager

A band of brigands from Diablo 4 swarm through a desolate landscape, with their leader raising a cleaver to the sky.
(Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment)

Diablo 4's Season of the Malignant proceeds apace, and it's been quite the journey of patches after its rocky introduction in July—it's had horse buffs, weird multiversal glitches, and some genuine improvements to enemy density. The waves might be choppy, but the SS Sanctuary isn't sunk just yet.

Another glimmer of hope has surfaced on the horizon—it's either a sign of good things to come, or a frustrating half-answer to the absence of a much-desired quality of life feature. Loot filters are pretty bog standard for ARPGs at this point—which left plenty baffled when Diablo 4 launched without one comprehensive enough to handle its late-game load of loot.

Rod Fergusson, Diablo 4's general manager, replied to a concerned gamer on Twitter/X, reassuring them that more advanced filters are "Definitely a part of our backlog." In Diablo 4's endgame, a lot of what you're sifting through is gonna be trash. Up until this point, players have been left feeling drowned by a sea of stats and sub-stats and affixes and Lilith knows what else while trying to carve the trash from their treasure.

The first player to reach level 100 noted in an AMA earlier this year: "I want to feel happy seeing an item flash up in a different colour based on my choices … instead of looking through 1,000 items and just vendoring them all."

A more recent Reddit thread lamenting the drudgery of manually wading through loot piles confirms it's still a problem. User BarbarianBlaze19 complained the game "rains useless items nonstop," while user Key_Nefariousness_55 asked: "I wonder what even is the point of the salvage mechanic. Do we really need it? Does it make the game more enjoyable somehow?"

So, yes—while loot filters are coming, there's no information on the how or the when, even with plenty of strong community feelings on the why. It may just be a matter of sitting tight while the team plugs up the holes in Diablo 4's hull.

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.