Blizzard has revealed plans to make things simpler for Season 4 of Diablo IV, with a big focus on loot.
In fact, they decided not to make any story campaigns for this season. Instead, they chose to reuse old enemies from previous seasons, and really focused on polishing the systems for loot.
So, what did they actually do? As explained on their blog, they started with simplifying affixes. Rare items only have two affixes, and Legendary items have three affixes, and each affix is more powerful.
Now is the big one. To make each item drop more meaningful, Blizzard has reduced them, and made each item also more powerful. Salvaging and crafting materials have also been made more powerful.
Aspects no longer take slots from your inventory, and instead are stored in a separate section called the Codex of Power. Like a little library, you can save the strongest version of the aspect that you find, and use it as many times as you want.
There’s a new system for crafting weapons called Tempering. Tempering allows you to choose a specific affix you want to upgrade on your weapon, over all the other affixes. A tempered weapon will upgrade to that affix as you use it, before other affixes.
There’s also a new endgame crafting system called Masterworking. Masterworking raises the strength of all affixes your weapons has. At every 4th tier, one of those affixes gets a massive upgrade. You can eventually max out these upgrades, but if you want to start over, you can reset that weapon.
All these changes are intended to streamline the loot system. All these more powerful upgrades have been paired with simpler UI and systems, all so that you spend considerably less time dealing with loot and upgrades. At the end of the day, you should be spending more time doing all the other things in the game, like exploring and fighting monsters.
As for enemies, you will once again face the legions of the Burning Hells in Helltide Reborn. Those Helltides are also found in World Tier I and II, scaled down so that they can provide an appropriate challenge to newer players.
And, fan-favorite boss Andariel has returned, to join the boss ladder with her brother Duriel.
The focus on improving the basic gameplay experience will hopefully bring players back. It’s no secret that previous seasons have not turned out to player’s satisfaction, but the kinds of changes they promise here sound like they will only make a better game.
