Diablo IV Details World Tiers, Skill Systems, Respecs, and More in Exclusive Interviews
Nov. 8, 2022Diablo IV Details World Tiers, Skill Systems, Respecs, and More in Exclusive Interviews
Diablo IV interviews shed light on World Tiers, the flexible skill system, re-speccing, and more.
The team behind the upcoming hack-and-slash ARPG Diablo IV has been dropping some bombshells one after the other. Aside from the confirmedEndgame Closed Beta, dev leads Rod Fergusson and Joe Shely have sat down with IGN for exclusive interviews.
We got to see how the game’s World Levels will work, the Skill System, and how integrated it will be with our characters. Let’s jump right back into the dark world of Sanctuary.
Diablo throughout the years has followed a similar path in terms of difficulty. The traditional games have had the Normal, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties. Diablo III added Inferno and later on Torment 1 through 16.Diablo Immortalhas difficulty right up to Torment 5.
The way they do difficulty is that it is always changed through the main menu (or Westmarch if you’re looking at Immortal). Players generally complete the lower difficulties then move on to the next step and have better rewards.
Essentially, Diablo IV won’t change too much. However, this time around, the Diablo IV team is calling difficulty “World Tiers”. Basically think of it asGenshin Impact’s World Level. The higher the level, the stronger the monsters populating the locations.
Diablo IV’s first World Tier will be very welcoming to new players, or the best option for casual play. It will be the go-to difficulty for those who just want to explore the story without worrying about death. While this isn’t the mode that most players will flock to, it is a welcome addition for those who want it.
Moving up a notch, players who reach level 50 or finish the campaign will eventually rise higher and higher through the world tiers. The higher the World Tier that you play on, the stronger the foes you will face and the better the rewards.
Higher Diablo IV world tiers will also drop special Sacred and Ancestral tier items that are stronger than most. New to Diablo IV though is a gatekeeping boss. This entity will be the barrier to entry on higher World Tiers, ensuring that only the worthy players can progress to the next step.
This addition is a bit of a nice touch since it adds something else that players can strive for. Who knows, maybe these World Tier Bosses will become the new benchmarking tool that will allow players to brag about how strong they are at slaying demons.
Fergusson and Shely also put more emphasis that they’re designing the Diablo IV classes with things that will make theplayer’s choicemore important.
Specifically, they circled back on theNecromancer’s Book of the Deadfeature. This feature will letNecromancerplayers fine-tune their class identity even further. Do you want to have the strongest golem possible? Or would you prefer a legion of skeletons following you around? Perhaps you want to cast as many corpse explosions as possible? The sky’s the limit.
They also touched upon theSorceress’ Enchant class identity system. It looks like players will have tons of options to put into their Enchant Slot – basically a skill that will automatically trigger based on certain conditions. Two Frost Sorceresses could be extremely different from each other depending on what they equip as their Enchantment.
One of the areas that the team has focused hugely on is the Skill System in Diablo IV. They want to shy away from how things are in Diablo III. Instead of selecting skills and a rune to “change” it, they’re going back to Diablo II.
Taking in feedback as a developer is always good. While not everything fans want will ever realistically be implemented, some of the resounding voices mentioned that they want more choices or options when building up their character. One of the answers is the extremely deepParagon BoardSystem in Diablo IV’s endgame. Before that though, we have each class’ skill trees.
The overhauled trees have already gone through tons of iterations. The main objective that the team is currently working on is to provide depth without necessarily overwhelming the players. Diablo IV is trying to encourage people to create their own unique build instead of searching the web for the most optimal builds.
They also want to re-integrate the Inheritance system from Diablo II’s skill tree. Investing in certain abilities will have various bonuses for other skills in the tree, giving players a holistic web of options that play into each other.
Since there will be vastly more options and connections between skill points, the team has implemented a keyword tagging system. Players can search “Bleed” for example, and see all the skills, be it active or passive, that make use of the bleed keyword. This should help those who want to specialize in a specific style.
The team confirmed that Diablo IV will have a re-spec feature enabled. This can be done point by point or all at once, and will only cost gold. It will be very cheap, especially in the early game. This should encourage experimentation at lower levels. Players should be able to try out the various skills and see what they like and what they don’t like.
However, at higher levels, the gold costs will ramp up exponentially which will actually discourage players from re-specing. Instead, it will eventually be more economical to re-roll a new character entirely.
This is so that players identify specific builds and playstyles with a singular character, instead of, for example, having a barbarian who can do everything with the flick of a switch. Investing more time and effort into one character should fuel the player’s “attachment” to it.
While good in theory, this system is potentially a double-edged sword. For one, yes it will make choices more meaningful and players will be more dedicated to a character they’ve invested in. However, re-speccing has become such a staple in most modern games already that there will be some who will want the option.
They are also trying to shy away from having Equipment be the sole factor in determining a build. Now, skills will play a much larger role once again with gear complimenting instead.
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Auberon
Writer at Fextralife. I really like vanilla ice cream.
