Diablo 4 is undergoing basic changes. Devs say they have finally found the „golden mean”
The eighth season will introduce quite a few changes to Diablo 4. The game will become a bit more difficult, overly strong builds will be nerfed more quickly, and the developers will focus more on permanent innovations.
The eighth season of We will learn the details on April 24th, thanks to a special stream. Today, however, the devs have published a new trailer, which you can watch below. In connection with the update, the developers also shared their vision regarding game balance and improvements.
Balancing challenges is a challenge in itself
We have known for some time now that the eighth season will make the game a bit more difficult. Diablo 4's lead live game designer, Colin Finer, itted that balancing the level of difficulty is a big challenge. Too easy title gives the impression that players are receiving rewards without effort, which takes away a lot of satisfaction (via PC Gamer).
It's a tricky balance, right? Because to feel rewarded for something, you have to overcome a challenge. And if there isn't enough challenge, then it just feels like you're getting candy for free, and you don't really feel that satisfaction of overcoming a boss.
The recent PTR provided the developers with a lot of on the current difficulty level. Thanks to this, they managed to find the "golden mean" that will make the eighth season seem only "a bit more difficult than the seventh." Finer conveyed that the team tried not to increase the level of difficulty too fast, thereby avoiding making the game "tedious" and "slowing down players."
We think that that little tick of difficulty is really going to help the overall game feel much more rewarding.
On the Diablo 4 website, you will find an article about PTR, in which player was taken into and appropriate changes were made based on it. They are marked in blue color.
Faster nerfing of OP builds
In every hack'n'slash game, there are too OP builds that can destroy bosses in a few seconds. This applies to both Last Epoch, and Diablo 4. Finer argues that there is nothing wrong with this, however, the problem arises when reaching this point is too easy (via GamesRadar+).
We think that's totally OK and cool for builds to get to that place eventually, but we don't think it should be as easy as, you walk into Torment 1, and you equip one Unique item, and now the game is trivial … in season 8, we're changing our philosophy on balance a little bit.
Up until now, Blizzard has been cool with players using overpowered builds for a while, but that's gonna change with the start of the eighth season. The developers will no longer wait until the halfway point to implement nerfs, as Finer describes this as a "huge lack of respect for the players' time."
Now, our approach going forward, is in the first week or so, early into the season, if we start to see things that are just wildly overpowered, just completely breaking the game, there's no journey to getting to a godlike state, we're gonna act on it quickly so that you aren't necessarily wasting a bunch of time investment.
This approach is meant to make character progression and reaching "power" much more satisfying. Let's hope, however, that the team won't go overboard with the nerfs and won't make reaching this point completely impossible in some cases.
More constant improvements
The new seasons introduce not only temporary content but also permanently improve basic mechanics. A good example is the update called "Loot Reborn," which introduced many changes to the loot. With the start of the eighth season, the team wants to put more emphasis on "expanding and improving the basics" (via GamesRadar+).
It's critically important that we're evolving Diablo and we're not necessarily putting all of our effort on throwaway changes. We're really looking at existing features like Nightmare dungeons and Infernal Hordes and leveling those up. […] We really want to make sure that Diablo, from season to season, not only is getting a bunch of cool seasonal content, but we're also evolving the game.
Some of these new features were presented on the recently published roap. We know, for instance, that the ninth season titled Sins of the Horadrim will introduce new activities in the Nightmare dungeons and for keyboard and mouse on consoles. One of the creators itted that these weren't the full plans for Diablo 4, so we should expect more changes like this.
Diablo 4, along with the Vessel of Hatred expansion, is available on PC, PS4, PS5, XOne, and XSX/S. The game (without the expansion) can also be played as part of the Game subscription.
