Diablo 4 Gamescom Interview Roundup - Season 2 Info, Leaderboards, World Tier 5?

Posted 2023/08/27 at 1:59 PM by PopularTopular

Season 2 will aim to encourage new players to start playing Diablo 4 for the first time, as well as add new content to bring back existing players.
Interaction and transparency with the community will be improved going forward.

Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal are two different games. It is a coincidence that the class in Immortal is also a vampire. The Blood Knight will not be introduced into Diablo 4.
No Public Test Realm is planned. Instead, the developers are trying to improve the game through communication and feedback with the community. Diablo 4 General Manager, Rod Fergusson, added that they want to improve the feedback loop, so a PTR may or may not happen in the future, as PTRs can take substantial development time.
The team claims that the 'Solo Self Found' mode in Diablo III took ten years to implement. Rod Fergusson mentioned that they are fortunate to be able to use previous titles in the franchise to see what worked and what hasn't, even Diablo Immortal.

Designing a Season consists of ideas that will:
Provide fun power fantasies for characters.
Allow for a really strong and exciting story that can be told as part of the season.

Season 2 will include new Legendaries, new Uniques, and new enemies to fight.
Erys (the protagonist played by Gemma Chan) is a colder, bitter sort of character that warms up over time because she's a vampire hunter and she's helped train other people to be vampire hunters, but they get bit and turn on her. Because of this, she eventually ends up having to put down her friends. Erys does not quite trust the player because of the vampiric powers that we have gained.
" first week of October, we'll have a really big deep dive into the season and what the story means, what are all the mechanics, what are your vampiric powers."
"As you start to level up, level 50 to 100, you'll have these touchpoints where it's going to really test your build, test your character's power. And so staggered throughout that progression from 50 to 100, you can essentially farm these new bosses for an opportunity to get rare drops like Uniques."
The 5 new bosses require a sequence of steps to be able to summon them. It's not just going in and out, farming the bosses repeatedly.

"The notion of the way that some of the five work is that they actually rely on each other to be able to be summoned into the world."

The details that we have about Season 2 is everything that was shared at Gamescom, but Blizzard will have a lot more detail. "There's a lot more quality-of-life stuff coming."

GameStar (German) Video

When talking about the scope of Season 2 compared to Season 1 and if it is going to be similar, the developers stated that there is no fixed template for Seasons, it really all starts with a strong idea and theme.
Blizzard wants Diablo 4 to be broadly approachable across all kinds of players, which has been a challenge and a balance, especially when adding new content.
When talking about MMO features, such as raids and group content, the developers stated that there is nothing to announce, but that they are always looking to build on the foundation of Diablo 4, nothing is off the table.
Nothing to be announced in regards to an additional World Tier (5).
Over time they will add more and more to the open world, but nothing to announce at this time.
Blizzard wants to make sure to keep the Eternal Realm fun to continue playing in, but the primary focus is on the Seasonal Realm.
The changes Blizzard implemented previously were not about slowing the game down, but adding possibilities for other builds to shine so that there isn't just one way to play a certain class. The team is aware that there are balance issues that need to be addressed, but they also want to make sure that challenges feel like challenges so that you aren't just blowing through them all the time.
When talking about responsiveness Rod Fergusson teased that leaderboards are planned for Season 3.
They wanted to make sure to get leaderboards right, but they know they are important to the ARPG audience, and the game had to be stabilized first in terms of balance and designing the leaderboards right.
When asked what classes Rod Fergusson would personally like to see in Diablo 4 he said "It's kinda cheating, because I know what all our roadmap is." That said, Rod Fergusson really liked that Diablo Immortal added a new class. They knew they had to have a mixture of homage to the past, what people loved, and a twist for the future in Diablo 4. Rod Fergusson would be excited to see something completely new in Diablo 4!
When choosing a new class to be implemented in the game it's about playstyles & archetypes. They are looking at how people want to experience a certain playstyle and they will also look at metrics regarding which playstyles are not currently in the game.

Comment by Meagashiradoesnt sound very intriguing to me :(Comment by TOMRUSPTR taking time is a lie, its basically automated deploy at this point. They already pushing those vendor builds at least once a week, sometimes more than once... Having PTR will allow them to get feedback early and address it...Comment by DemotedTook them 10 years to implement SSF into D3... they need better devs.Comment by bluebird91The 5 new bosses require a sequence of steps to be able to summon them. It's not just going in and out, farming the bosses repeatedly.Blizzard wants Diablo 4 to be broadly approachable across all kinds of players, which has been a challenge and a balance, especially when adding new content.Comment by furos72As a German, I feel honoredComment by harulezIf it really took them over ten years to implement something so simple and easy as a solo self found mode in D3 it is proof that blizzard is too big and slow to develop games.

People were asking for solo self found mode back when PoE first came out and if it takes them 10 years to add something the community is asking for, they are implementing features long after the game is dead and the playerbase moved on. How can blizzard ever succeed if they keep going like this.Comment by DarkLeafCovenNo blood knight? boooooooooooComment by BaginsSeason 2 will aim to encourage new players to start playing Diablo 4 for the first time, as well as add new content to bring back existing players.Comment by ShadowMercGive us blood knight.