Today Blizzard Entertainment aired a livestreams with the developers of Diablo IV announcing several changes coming to the game around Season 1 and Season 2 to improve the players' experience.
At the bottom of the post you can find the full on-demand recording, but here's a handy recap for your perusal.
- The development team aims to give players a lot of good choices on where to level up and acquire loot.
- Nightmare dungeons are set up to be highly replayable so the team wants them to be a great place to farm, even over and over. The amount of XP they grant is going to be buffed. The goal is for them to be more efficient than side dungeons in terms of farming.
- This will be an increase to XP per monster, not an increase in the number o monsters.
- Sigils will create a waypoint to teleport to Nightmare Dungeons to further increase that efficiency by removing the travel time.
- The team is working hard to get these changes to Nightmare Dungeons into the game before the launch of Season 1. Since that's coming in mid-late July, we may see the changes appear in about four weeks. It can't be done immediately because there is a lot of testing to be done.
- The readability of the effects of Necromancers' Blighted Corpse is going to be improved.
- With new seasons, players won't have to rediscover the locations on the map they have already visited and the same goes for the Altars of Lilith. These will stay discovered. Players will also keep the renown acquired from uncovering the map and finding the Altars of Lilith. Side quests will potentially still reset, but the developers are still thinking about it so this may change. This will also affect alt characters.
- The development team is considering ways to improve inventory clutter. Around Season 2 in the fall they want to move Gems to the materials or currency tabs rather than the inventory itself.
- The materials cap is going to be increased. This is also coming before season 1.
- At the moment resistances are less valuable than the developers would like them to be. Their value drops more than intended as players advance in World Tiers, and the development team is looking into changing that. Since this is quite complex, it'll take some time and will happen around Season 2.
- A consumable for Hardcore mode called Scroll of Escape will trigger when it detects that you have disconnected and teleport you back to town. This will also come around Season 2.
- Caches dropping from world bosses being higher level than the player is a bug. Around season 1 this will be fixed and players will be able to open them. The gear inside may still be higher level than the player.
- A bug that makes specific unique for Barbarian drop for Druids will be fixed before season 1.
- Social features like looking for group mechanics have been requested by players and the team is considering them.
- Fixes for PC performance are coming with client patches.
- Developers aren't planning direct teleport to friends for now, but they'll keep an eye on the issue.
- There is a variety of buffs coming to various elements in future patches.
- The development team will look at ways to improve the players' ability to customize their characters over time, on top of additional options for markings and jewelry. Adding more hairstyles to the character creator is also a priority.
- Improvements to the journal are also planned over time.
- The reason why some changes will take as long as Season 2 is that Season 1 is pretty much complete now in terms of development and going through testing.
You can watch the full video below.
Diablo IV is now available for PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. Of course, you can read our full review of the game, in which our Austin Suther mentioned that Diablo IV "delivers exciting and accessible ARPG gameplay, a stunning world and engaging narrative to experience, and so many activities to keep you hooked for hours on end."
A few days ago, we also saw a music video of the game's anthem "Lilith" performed by Halsey and BTS' SUGA, to celebrate the release. You can also watch not one, but three launch trailers focusing on the story, the gameplay, and live-action.
