Slaying hundreds of demons is cool, but slaying hundreds of demons 20 minutes after creating your character is a little ridiculous for a loot-based action RPG. You want to feel each step as you ascend in power. Otherwise, there’s no point in chasing more loot. For many players, this is the core problem with Diablo 4’s latest season. It’s too easy.
Blizzard agrees, and has shaped the next season — season 8 — around making the game harder without ruining the fun of becoming a demon-slaying god. On a stream today, Diablo 4 developers explained how they plan to make the journey from level 1 to 60 slower and more meaningful, and how they’re increasing the challenge of the endgame progression.
Diablo 4’s first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, came alongside a major revision to how you move through the game, but “a lot of that has sort of gone down the drain in terms of how fast players are chewing through some of the content,” design director Colin Finer said. In the latest season, players were reaching max level in less than half the time it took in the previous season. To avoid trivializing a chunk of the early game experience, Blizzard is increasing the time it takes to climb through the first 25 levels.
On top of that, Legendary items — the highest tier of loot — will drop less while you make your way to level 60. Lower tier items that you’d normally ignore are going to be more powerful to fill the gap. Finer said the team hopes it will feel “more rewarding and satisfying as you go through these levels.”
And then there’s the endgame, the second half of Diablo 4 where you gear your character up and increase the Torment difficulty levels for greater rewards. Those are getting harder, too. Blizzard says 50% of players in the current season have made it to the highest Torment level in half the time of the previous season. “Just from a philosophy standpoint, we really want whatever the hardest Torment tier is — in this case Torment 4 — to be aspirational, and to us that means around 10%,” Finer said. In the next season, the jump in difficulty between each Torment level will be considerably more severe.
Endgame bosses will be meaner in the next season as well. Instead of players cycling through them like demonic loot piñatas, they’ve all been redesigned to pose a challenge for players who have perfected their builds. Three new bosses will be added to the ladder, and your inventory won’t be overflowing with summoning items anymore. Each one can be fought for free and will drop a chest after defeating them that requires a key to unlock, and there will be a chance for the new most powerful boss, Belial, to crash your party.
Blizzard will be letting Battle.net PC players test all these changes next week on its season 8 PTR, which will run from March 11 to March 18. Season 8 will release fully on April 29.
