Blizzard reinvented Diablo 4 by listening to what players want, but not by doing everything they suggested

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(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Diablo 4 screenshot

Diablo 4 finally has itfigured out. Although it was received positively on release, players turned on it as soon as they saw the exhausting grind in front of them, one that would need to be repeated every few months when a new season was released. Nobody was a fan of it and Blizzard took the feedback seriously. Over the next year, it dramatically improved the game, ripping out entire systems and replacing them with ones that gave players what they wanted. Now, Diablo 4 is not only a tremendous game, but one that has a much better grip on how to run a live service action RPG right.

Diablo 4 had depth at launch, but it took ages—or a lot of gold—to find it. Each of its original five classes were intuitively designed so that even new action RPG players could get a build up and running without having to get a PhD in a skill tree the size of Path of Exile’s. Clever ideas, like a tag system to denote different types of skills with the ability to type them into a search bar, invited you to experiment. But the weeks-long grind it took to make the kind of character you wanted would quickly burn you out. That, along with a bummer of a campaign, drained the life out of Diablo 4 the longer you spent with it.

Season 2 feels like the moment Blizzard codified its approach to developing Diablo 4 as a live service game. Blizzard is known for distilling complex genres down to their essential parts, and ever since season 2, the Diablo team has repeatedly applied this technique to its various systems. Key to that success is how the team interacted with players, communicating new ideas through small-scale changes and introducing new systems that might not have been 1:1 with players suggestions but solved their problems regardless.

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(Image credit: Tyler C. / Blizzard)

A bright white shield covering a pile of Diablo 4 loot in a metallic arena with UI element popups for finishing tier 100 of the pit dungeon

Diablo 4 feels collaborative and responsive to player behavior, but it also has a vision that the developers won’t ruin just to make its loudest players happy.

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Finding a greater affix roll for a stat you need can be huge for your build and the chances of finding one are low enough that you always want to look at items with a little star on them when they drop. In practice, it’s a loot filter without the loot filter. Picky high-end players can skip items without stars and the rest of us can just be excited when one drops at all. Sure, you still have to go and check if the greater affix is the one you need, but it saves inventory space and gets you back to farming monsters immediately. It’s a clever solution for a real issue that doesn’t erode the joy of playing a game about randomized loot.

Diablo 4 feels collaborative and responsive to player behavior, but it also has a vision that the developers won’t ruin just to make its loudest players happy. If they acted on every suggestion, every town in Diablo 4 would have one NPC who can do everything so you don’t ever have to travel 10 feet away to talk to someone else. There’s a permanent tension between players who chase efficiency in action RPGs and designers who want to make an exciting videogame instead of a lifeless program. Over the last year, Blizzard has stood its ground and the game is better for it.

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(Image credit: Tyler C. / Blizzard)

Diablo 4 season 3 screenshot of Rogue and Seneschal construct companion

And other times it’s stuff that incorporates the appeal of a few things and combines them into one: Infernal Hordes have you battle waves of enemies that drop a currency you can use to open chests with buckets of loot and crafting materials at the end. The waves of enemies who won’t waste your time with loot drops feels plucked fromThe Gauntlet, a race-against-the-clock dungeon with leaderboards from season 3, and the currency to spend on chests is clearly borrowed from that same season’s vault dungeons.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred cutscene

It’s often stated outright on those streams that the reason certain features aren’t out yet, like the ability to save build presets, is because doing it right takes time, and it’s easy to believe it when those things eventually come out and exceed expectations.

Diablo 4 isn’t perfect, but it’s exponentially better than where it started. Its first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, gathered up all the improvements it made and rolled them into a more intuitive structure for progressing through it. It’s a pivotal moment where all the leftovers of a game that felt afraid to let you have fun have been removed. It’s a new era for Diablo 4, and odds are it’s only going to get better from here.

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PRODUCTSDiablo 4Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred

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