Diablo IV was discussed thoroughly by franchise General Manager Rod Fergusson (formerly head of the Gears of War franchise at The Coalition) in a recent interview with the YouTube channel Electric Playground Network.
Among various topics related to the latest installment in the hack-and-slash series, the executive explained the different stance Blizzard is adopting when it comes to balancing versus allowing players to just have fun with their Diablo IV builds, even if they’re a little broken for a while.
People on Twitter will come at me like, hey, how dare you make this change to the Sorcerer? I’m like, I didn’t even know we made that change! Like, let’s be fair, there’s a lot of people making a lot of changes in real time. Sometimes you can get focused on balance and not fun. You can be like, okay, everything has to be at the same level, and you’re really striving for fairness. The thing about a Diablo game is it’s those overpowered moments when you feel like you’re cheating or that you know you fooled the development team or you’re taking advantage of some exploit that it feels really, really fun. That’s what we’ve had to really try to embrace in Diablo IV. Like in Season 2, Ball Lightning Sorcerer is ridiculous, but we’re going to just let them have fun and we’ll deal with it later. Same with Hammer of the Ancients Barbarian. They just got to, like, okay, fine. They’re going to exploit it a little bit, but it’s fine. We’ll fix it next season.
That’s the magic: finding the right challenge. If it’s too easy then people will be like, it’s not fun because it’s too easy, but if it’s too hard, it’s the same thing. When you play Diablo IV, it’s supposed to be sort of these cresting waves where you’re either behind or ahead of the power curve. You start off slightly behind and all of a sudden you pick up this weapon that gives you this great damage boost and are now like, I’m the king of the world. You’re super overpowered. Then, you level up a few times and start to fall behind again. Then you get another thing and come back. You’re sort of always riding the progression wave through the game, which is really fun.
Diablo IV started off strong at launch, but the developers fumbled a bit with Season 1 (Season of the Malignant), which led to some negative feedback. With Season 2 (Season of Blood), they’ve focused on showering players with loot and letting them have fun with their characters, and this appears to be paying off. Next year, Blizzard will release the Vessel of Hatred expansion featuring a brand new class, new zones, and lots more.
