Diablo 4’s upcoming season introduces new bosses to the game, but it also represents Blizzard’s effort to deliberately increase the action RPG’s difficulty. After a year of players rapidly advancing through the game, Blizzard aims to slow the pace and encourage players to put in more effort to earn those coveted loot drops in season 8.
“Finding the right balance is challenging, as feeling rewarded requires overcoming obstacles,” said Colin Finer, the lead live game designer, during a recent group interview with Polygon. “Without enough challenge, it feels like you’re just receiving rewards effortlessly, which diminishes the satisfaction of defeating a boss.”
The new tougher bosses were just one of the adjustments Blizzard allowed players to try out on its limited-time public test realm (PTR) server last month. The journey from level 1 to 60 has also become more challenging to enhance the significance of early-game progression. In a March stream discussing the upcoming season, Blizzard acknowledged that many players were reaching the game’s endgame dungeons too swiftly.
“We received quite a bit of feedback from season 7 indicating players could simply AFK and acquire everything freely, which we felt was not in line with the spirit of Diablo,” Finer stated.
On the PTR, Finer explained that the team employs a “double or half it” strategy for balancing, treating the environment as an “extreme” testing ground. In preparation for the launch of season 8 next week, the team has incorporated feedback from PTR participants who felt that bosses were too powerful and that the highest difficulty tiers were excessively punishing.
“We haven’t completely dialed it back,” Finer noted. “It’s still a bit more challenging than season 7. We believe that this slight increase in difficulty will greatly enhance the overall game experience, as players will be overcoming genuine challenges.”
Striking the right balance in difficulty is crucial for a genre centered around character progression to god-like powers. According to Finer, it should be “challenging enough to feel rewarding, but not so difficult that it becomes a slog and detracts from the gameplay experience.”
Diablo 4 season 8 launches on April 29.
