Big improvements are coming. And they’re likely to be improvements that players will enjoy. Game Director Wyatt Cheng and Senior Systems Designer Kris Ziehurt recently sat down to discuss these upcoming changes. Which includes improvements to the raids in Diablo Immortal as well as set items, social mechanics, the battle pass, world paragon levels and a whole lot more. The improvements are also due to be in place for the Diablo Immortal release. Which, by the way is still slated for sometime in 2022. Here’s what the team has learned from the closed beta and what will be changing in the game.
Diablo Immortal will see big improvements to social & group play for release
Diablo Immortal is a Diablo game through and through. Which means you get the same great gameplay experience you’ve come to know and love of the Diablo franchise – slaying demons and earning better and better loot to build your character’s ever-growing power. But Diablo Immortal is also an MMO. And that means there’s a level of social mechanics focused on group play as well as building and maintaining friendships. As such, the dev team will be making some changes to the way bounties work. Game Director Wyatt Cheng states that while bounties were mostly well-received and led to a lot of group play, many players felt that some bounties forced them to group up with others in order to complete them. This led to players getting grouped with other team members that often wanted to do multiple dungeon runs. While the bounty holder only wanted to complete the single run for the bounty’s task. Resulting in a less enjoyable experience for the remaining few team members after the bounty holder left. Going forward, Diablo Immortal bounties will be completely solo.
The paragon of demon slaying
Good news for those who loved the World Paragon system. It’s getting further improvements for the game’s launch. The point of this system, according to the dev team, was to enhance group gameplay. Giving players a way to enjoy playing with friends even if they play different amounts of time. Players who play more get decreased XP gains if they’re 4 or more Paragon levels above the World Paragon level. Giving friends a way to catch up as they would get increased XP gains if they were below the World Paragon level. But this system also included decreased salvage for those at higher levels. Resulting in players avoiding picking up XP so they could acquire the salvage needed for increasing gear ranks. The focus of the World Paragon improvements will be on reverting the salvage modifiers. At launch, players will no longer receive a penalty to their salvage modifiers when gaining more paragon levels. However, it will now require more salvage overall to increase gear ranks. Which the dev team hopes will slow down the power gap between friends so they can still play together.
Closing the gap on raid boss difficulty & expanding Warbands
Raids were a successful part of the closed beta and for players that got to experience the Helliquary (the 8-player raids), the gameplay was mostly enjoyed. However, Cheng says that enough players felt there was too big of a difficulty gap in between two of the bosses, Lassal and Vitaath. Based on player feedback, the difficulty gap will be shortened for raid bosses. This should help to incentivize players who stayed away from the harder content to jump in and give it another try. While also keeping things interesting for those were already completing those raid boss encounters. As for Warbands, these activities will be expanded to support 8 players. While additional features will also be added to them. This way they feel just as lucrative as other group activities, such as dungeons and Helliquary raids.
More controller support, more game time
The closed beta introduced controller support for the first time. And it was a good first step. But the team still has more work to do. To that end, players can expect a larger list of supported controllers leading into the game’s release later this year. Additionally, the team is still working to make controller support improvements in terms of mechanics. Cheng states that the goal is “to make sure the controller is detected the moment the game is launched.” So connecting and disconnecting is a seamless experience.
Set up for success
Set items are an important part of the Diablo DNA. While set items for secondary gear were introduced in the closed beta, the team felt they needed further improvements. To achieve this goal, more set items will be added to the game and existing sets will be balanced to feel more powerful and rewarding. In addition, the dev team is looking into ways to improve sets that included pieces of varying paragon levels. While some players were able to obtain a full set, some items were of such a low paragon level compared to others, the stat loss ended up being greater than the set bonuses when equipped. So players avoided wearing the set entirely. The team didn’t have anything to share about these particular improvements at this time, but did state that they will be implemented for launch.
