As we all know, the gradual decline of Blizzard’s action role-playing game was reversed in 2014. In that year, Diablo 3 pre-Reaper of Souls expansion patch called 'loot 2.0' almost saved the company's decline in the ARPG field. Both game critics and ordinary players believe that it was undoubtedly a shot in the arm at the time, re-injecting strong vitality into Blizzard. But times have changed, and today, 10 years later, Diablo has once again become depressed. It is still unknown whether Diablo 4 Season 4, which is expected to be released on May 14, 2024, can continue its previous glory, but Blizzard seems to be very confident in this.
Blizzard's Diablo 4 Public Test Realm (PTR), launched from April 2 to April 9, showed players the comprehensive changes in the fourth season's project settings in advance. It has now received a lot of positive feedback in the market, such as "Diablo 4 is good now", "Diablo 4 should use Season 4 as the initial release content" and so on. After experiencing the first three Seasons, players' enthusiasm for Diablo 4 has actually declined significantly, as can be seen from the number of real-time online players and real in-game popularity. Based on people's current impressions of Season 4, it seems that the new season is likely to have a strong enough attraction to bring back those players who have lost it, and even bring in new players who are eager to try Diablo 4 but have never done so.
Diablo 4 boss Rod Fergusson also said in an interview with the famous game news site IGN that they have put a lot of effort into the development and maintenance of Diablo 4. I totally understand the entire Diablo IV development team. No matter which project it is, from launch to full display in front of players, and if it can receive a lot of praise from users, then this will undoubtedly be the greatest encouragement for every team member who works hard.
At the same time, they are also very willing to listen to players' opinions and are working hard to make the game content more challenging and playable every season. Therefore, they launched PTR during the current Season 3 period to collect feedback from players. This is a very good time, giving developers the opportunity to adjust the upcoming content in time before the release of Season 4. Keeping pace with the times and always focusing on user experience is the secret to maintaining a game's long-term excellent vitality.
In addition, Rod Fergusson also said that they have completely subverted the way loot works and what we call itemisation in Diablo 4 Season 4. It will allow more possibilities and also mobilize players’ enthusiasm for exploration, which is exciting. Everyone can take part in it and practice. We can see it from the player participation in PTR that some people who have never participated in a season before have also tried PTR this time. It shows that the measures taken by Blizzard this time are very wise and should have a huge positive effect on Diablo 4 to attract new players.
Season 4 has also added a lot of approachable changes, which is to allow more people to understand the working mechanism of various things in Diablo 4. You know, those different attributes and affixes can be really confusing, especially for people who have never played Diablo or even an ARPG. Even if this group of potential people wants to try Diablo 4, they don’t have enough energy and confidence to play it well. So in order to solve this embarrassing problem, devs makes various things in the game clearer and easier to understand. In this way, players can immediately know what they are when they see something unfamiliar. Use the tempering system and the Masterworking system. Is it useful to you, and what action should you take next? Open up more information and autonomy to players, so that more and more people can have their own ideas.
At the same time, Rod Fergusson is proud that many people have said that they are working hard to return to the game and wait for Season 4. This is a genuine compliment to all developers for their tireless efforts. They go to great lengths to test the limits of how things can develop. Taking what everyone really finds interesting and successfully implementing it in the game efficiently is what they will continue to research next.
Some players said that the changes presented in PTR this time are so significant that they are very similar to‘loot 2.0’ that appeared in Diablo 3 in the past, and are just like the core mechanism of Diablo 4. So they infer based on this that it will most likely be the core of Diablo 5 in the future. This speculation is not unreasonable. Rod Fergusson said that Diablo is originally a role-playing game with the core of obtaining loot. Kill monsters, get loot, become stronger, and then challenge more powerful monsters to get more valueable Diablo 4 items or other loot, and the cycle continues in this order.
But in this PTR, the changes shown differ completely from the game logic that has been solidified in the past. They hoped that the system would have a certain degree of depth and complexity, but realized that it exceeded the goal. This will be a scope for future updates, but what kind of experience upcoming Diablo 4 Season 4 and the more distant Diablo 5 will bring us depends on the next development and market feedback. Let us wait and see!
