Blizzard is reworking a lot of Diablo 4 alongside the launch of its next expansion, Lord of Hatred. Alongside the constant changes to itemisation, the ARPG’s levelling is being entirely reworked alongside the game’s heightened level cap.
These changes may be new to Diablo 4, but the story of transformative updates to ARPGs is nothing new, not even for this series. In the past, Diablo 3 infamously received its Loot 2.0 update to fix the launch version’s dreadful itemisation, and pretty much every game in the genre since has seen some form of game-changing update.
In an interview with PC Gamer, game director Zaven Haroutunian admitted that these major changes do make it harder for casual players “to keep up” over time. However, it’s also an expected part of the ARPG genre for major changes to arrive, especially as the genre has largely pivoted to either early access, live-service, or both.
“It’s almost like a meme at this point about action RPGs in general [that] go through this transformative arc,” the game director said. “And, well, we can’t escape it any more than any other action RPG can for the same reasons.”
Haroutunian explained that ARPGs that are constantly updated have “transitions” that move alongside players that have evolved. As the core player base continues to play the game in all of its various iterations, they’ll encounter “friction points tht we could never imagine” that “suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours”.
“We know that it’s also really hard for players to keep up with [Diablo 4],” he continued, “particularly those who aren’t playing at the cutting edge of everything all the time”. However, they explained that Blizzard simply can’t keep parts of the game that aren’t working, adding: “I don’t think anyone’s too thrilled about having an obsolete part of the game just sort of linger and not do its job and not contribute.”
As for how much Diablo 4 can change at once, the game director explained that the team at Blizzard is constantly trying to balance how much the game should change in any given update. While change can’t be glacial, it also can’t be too revolutionary, otherwise existing players may be turned away by too much change at the same time.
Since launch, Diablo 4 has changed a lot, and as Blizzard commits to more years of updates, it will likely change a lot before the team releases an eventual Diablo 5. While Blizzard hasn’t confirmed the next expansion after Lord of Hatred, the ARPG’s story teases the arrival of both Baal and the titular Diablo, so there will hopefully be quite a few years of additional content coming to the game.
