Ah, battle passes. The bane of every variety gamer’s multiplayer experience. If you’re looking to really get the most out of a multiplayer title nowadays you’ll have to really pick one live service game and stick with it because most battle passes are usually timed events and will likely take the average player a full season to complete.
Every game seems to be getting a battle pass too whether it’s something like Crash Team Rumble or the upcoming Diablo 4 they add a ton of great rewards for players to enjoy but can really put some players off based on the time commitment. Speaking of Diablo 4‘s battle pass, associate game director for Diablo 4 Joe Piepiora was recently interviewed by PC Gamer coming up to the release of Diablo 4 on June 6th, 2023 where he noted that completing the game’s full battle pass could take players up to 80 hours.
Right now, the battle pass, when you’re figuring in completing the season journey alongside doing other content in the game, you’re looking at roughly 80 hours worth of time invested to complete the entirety of the battle pass… To level a character to level 100 could take a little longer than that based on how you play.
Joe Piepiora – Associate Game Director on Diablo 4
While this may sound daunting to any casual players Piepiora noted that Blizzard wanted to make sure players didn’t feel like “they must play forever.” Instead, Piepiora said that once players reached level 100 they’ve unlocked all the paragon points they’ll need and it’ll just be about tweaking their build.
One thing I do want to make sure it’s really clear is we’re not trying to create a situation where players feel that they must play forever… We want players who play Diablo 4 to play and enjoy the experience while they’re playing the game… We want you to get to a certain point, once you’ve reached level 100, where you’ve got 220 of these paragon points you’re playing with, you have all of your skill points that you’ve already assigned to your character, and you’ve got your legendary and unique items, and now it’s about configuring the board exactly the way that you want.
Joe Piepiora – Associate Game Director on Diablo 4
Sounds reasonable enough but will players be willing to drop 80 hours into getting all the content they possibly can? Does more content equal a better gameplay experience or are players yearning for a more casual experience?
