With the Diablo 4 beta now closed and players waiting for the full game to release on June 6th, 2023 Blizzard has announced a number of changes and improvements being made to the game as a direct result of player feedback during both the early access and open betas. Tweaks to dungeons, minimizing backtracking, and more are being implemented by the Diablo 4 development team in preparation for the game’s full launch later in the summer.
The following dungeons are set to be affected before the game’s full release:
- Caldera Gate
- Defiled Catacombs
- Derelict Lodge
- Forbidden City
- Hoarfrost Demise
- Immortal Emanation
- Kor Dragan Barracks
- Maulwood
- Rimescar Caverns
Dungeon gameplay is also set to receive an overhaul with the main takeaway being that players want less backtracking. To combat this Blizzard has noted that “small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.” The developers conceded that players’ main problem with objectives was that they “felt tedious.” With this in mind, Blizzard is focusing heavily on addressing this.
Developer’s Note: While our dungeons offer a variety of Objectives to complete, player feedback stated that the action of completing each Objective felt tedious. We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain Objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing Objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.
Blizzard
Changes are also making their way to the game’s classes, UI, encounters, cellars, and other general quality-of-life fixes. Blizzard elaborated a little more on the changes to classes saying:
Developer’s Note: Whenever we introduce changes to our Classes, it is with the goal of making both them and their Skills feel impactful and powerful—your feedback has helped us uphold this ideal. Some players have adeptly noticed that certain Skills were too powerful. One of our goals for Skills is to have them be interesting to wield and interactive in terms of itemization and combat feel. We’ve made some changes to help in this regard, with one example being the Necromancer’s Minions. We’ve made a change that makes them more vulnerable in combat, which will make raising the dead a more active component of the Necromancer’s gameplay.
Launch is just the first step of our Class balance journey, and you can expect further updates that iterate on this pillar of Diablo IV.
Blizzard
We’ll probably hear more about the changes being made to Diablo 4 soon as on April 20th, 2023 at 11 AM PDT, Joe Shely the game’s director, Joesph Piepiora the game’s associate game director, and Adam Fletcher the game’s associate director of community will be joined by guest host Rhykker in a Diablo 4 Development Update Stream. The team are set to elaborate more on what they learnt from the game’s open beta. You can check out that live stream over on the Diablo YouTube and Twitch channels on April 20th, 2023.
