The third quarterly update for 2022 is now live! . This is intended to be a dedicated thread for the purpose of discussion and feedback, and our developers will be prioritizing reviewing feedback or discussion here.
Please note that this is a dedicated thread intended for player discussion and we may not respond to or immediately answer questions in this thread at this time. We may consider questions or feedback here for future inclusion in Quarterly Updates, and look forward to reading your thoughts!
If you’d like to recap or revisit previous posts on the announcement or ongoing insights on Diablo IV development, you can see everything here:
Now maybe some of the kids will stop crying or will they.
“Nothing offered in the Shop grants a direct or indirect gameplay advantage. So, while many of these may look like powerful pieces of gear, they have no in-game stats.”
Each season will be released with a fresh new gameplay feature and questline that introduces new challenges, mysteries, and possibilities into the level-up experience.
Each Season’s new questline will reveal more of the world of Sanctuary and your character’s place in it. Here, we get an opportunity to introduce new characters or revisit old ones while exploring the lore and content of the season
Awesome !
That’s the spirit.
The scale of Diablo IV Seasons is much more ambitious than what we’ve done in the past on Diablo III, with a large development team dedicated to Seasons after launch. Diablo IV will be supported by an army of developers for years to come
Excellent !
The business model must be seamless to support the recurring costs.
We will see that in details few lines below.
Based on feedback that we receive, the team will identify quality-of-life features and polish work that can be done to improve the overall game experience and invite the community to vote upon their priority
Community’s feedback as Business Value to compute the WSJF !
Players can’t upgrade Season Boosts just by purchasing Tiers, because they’ll also have to earn level milestones to apply them. All other Tier rewards can be unlocked instantly by purchasing Tiers. In other words, there’s no way to shortcut getting Season Boosts by buying Tiers; they must be earned.
I’d like Tier rewards to be earned as well.
(Excepted for starting boost like Challenge Rift)
Questions
It also allows players who missed the last season to participate.
Forever seasons ?
Like seasons are permanent realms and players can start season X anytime ?
Would be awesome.
We’ll also be testing features that enable players who have completed the game’s campaign to flag it as completed for new characters they create and allow characters on the eternal realm to contribute to seasonal progress
Note sure what it means.
Needs details on this statement.
What are the goals ?
Tell us moar !
Business model
At any point during the Season, players can purchase the Premium Pass to unlock the ability to earn Premium rewards tiers containing seasonally themed Cosmetics and Premium Currency.
Let’s split this sentence in small fragments:
At any point during the Season
Okay.
players can purchase the Premium Pass to unlock the ability to earn
Can be improved.
Ideally, players should, in this order:
Play to unlock the ability to pay rewards
Pay the rewards
The purchase should happen at the end of the conversion funnel.
For example, unlocking the right to purchase is the business model used by all MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).
The candidate must prove it is worthy before accessing the paid reward.
This method values the reward and ensures there is no pay-to-win nor pay-to-unlock.
The journey can be split in multiple rewards (1 tier = multiple rewards).
After every tier unlocked, players unlocks the right to pay the rewards associated with the tier.
The player can buy the reward immediately, or wait until the end of the season to get all all the rewards and make a single payment, with a discount if it waits and performs a single payment, which benefits Blizzard because a single payment implies reduced PSP (Payment Service Provider) fees.
So ideally, avoid pay-to-unlock.
Prefer unlock-to-pay
Play, prove you are worthy, and then you can pay and get your reward.
Payment should happen when the customer is hot, after it proved it can get the reward.
I don’t play seasons in Diablo 3 because I don’t have 3 months to no life and compete against people that don’t have a job.
Capping the Paragon can help with that. But then there is a question: how many hours do you expect us to play per day to be able to complete “whole” season?
Game will not be interesting for me for long period of time if I am not going to be relevant (when compared to others) only because I have a job.
And then there should be enough content for everyone… Support for non season play was so bad last 4 years (or more) in Diablo 3 and Blizzard intentionally “killed” non season in favor of seasonal play.
I will not comment on monetization model I had trust in Blizzard regarding that already and they did not fail me. I think it is the best possible monetization model at a moment and I even suggested something similar in the past on the forums.
Thanks for the update. Personally, I have mixed feelings on the season info. On one hand, I’m glad to hear that seasons would add more story and content (like areas, questlines, and mysteries) to the game. That said, it sounds like those will all be season-exclusive, which imo is an issue for folks who don’t like starting over. Now if at the season’s end, the seasonal content transfer over to non-season, or the seasonal content is also available to non-season, however the events only start for non-season once the season actually starts as well (so in other words, the events run concurrently with the season). Then that would be better imo, however since non-season will supposedly be called the Eternal Realm, that’s unlikely sadly.
Also, it sounds like season length may be less than 4 months, since they intend to have 4 seasons a year. Personally I would prefer longer seasons since that would help ensure more well done events, new items, and/or give time to properly test any misshaps.
As for the premium season pass, I don’t have much to gripe about since it’ll all be cosmetic with supposedly no effect on character progress and/or power, however I’ll repeat what I had said in a different thread:
That said, I appreciate the additional confirmation that the cash shop and season pass won’t have any p2w elements. Personally, I hope that stays the case throughout the game’s life.
Honestly the only thing I’m actually not excited about is your plans for refreshing the meta, since the emphasis on legendaries and uniques give implication on having items (mostly legendaries and uniques) determine and/or dictate player builds. But perhaps I’m reading too much into it, as such I’ll refrain from overreacting.
Yes. But that does not mean anything to anyone who is serious about playing Diablo 3. I hope that Diablo 4 seasonal journey will be 4-5 times harder than the one in Diablo 3.
I have to say, this was the most disappointing blog post yet I kinda miss the ones about music or animations now.
There is one really positive thing in the blog (guess which…), but literally everything else…
Many of you enjoy the Seasons in Diablo II: Resurrected and Diablo III and have asked for more extensive season support
Nooooooo.
up to four Seasons a year
Nooooooooooo x2
Diablo IV’s Seasons are modeled after those of Diablo III.
Ugh, why would someone ever do such a thing.
so you will not be able to pay for power in Diablo IV.
Yep, that was the good part of the blog.
We’ll also be testing features that enable players who have completed the game’s campaign to flag it as completed for new characters they create
Do not like! Fine to make the campaign optional to do. But dont make it skippable. Difference being; optional but unskippable would mean the campaign would always be there in you game, unfinished, if you didnt do it. Skippable: the game pretends that you finished the campaign even though you did not.
Also, make playing the campaign, and replaying the campaign, just as worthwhile as doing key dungeons etc.
and allow characters on the eternal realm to contribute to seasonal progress
Potentially do like! Should have explained more about it. Make seasons completely optional. Any content, any gear, any gameplay changes accessible in season should ALSO be accessible in non-season. Simultaneously.
An example of a live event might be the warning of an impending invasion of the Drowned, which may last a weekend
REALLY do not like. Timed FOMO events are bad.
Introduce those events as you describe above, but then let people trigger them later on on their own, if they want to experience them.
The Season Pass has both free rewards (cosmetics, premium currency, and gameplay boosts)
Lol, seriously… So much for cosmetics only… Season Passes should be cosmetic ONLY. It being the free part of the pass does not somehow make it okay to add power…
The Season Pass awards Premium Currency. Players can spend this currency on cosmetics offered in the shop.
As much as I dislike Season Passes as a concept, at least this is one of the more positive ways to sell those cosmetic rewards (sadly, as you also said, the season passes also have time-limited cosmetics beyond this).
The Season Pass awards free Season Boosts. Boosts accelerate players’ progress for the duration of the Season. For example, a Season Boost might accelerate XP earned to make leveling multiple characters within a season faster.
Seriously. Season Pass power. Seasons rewarding power. Destroying your own game, to turn it into some racing game. But why…
We want to be clear that players can’t unlock Season Boosts more quickly through purchases–there is no way to unlock more boosts, or boosts at a faster pace, by spending money.
No, instead it is just “Season To Win”?
Players can’t upgrade Season Boosts just by purchasing Tiers, because they’ll also have to earn level milestones to apply them. All other Tier rewards can be unlocked instantly by purchasing Tiers. In other words, there’s no way to shortcut getting Season Boosts by buying Tiers; they must be earned.
Huh… If it is faster to unlock the Level milestones, than it is to unlock the tiers, then you literally are paying for a shortcut? But if you earn tiers slower than you earn milestones, then the tiers serve no purpose in the first place. That should have been explained better.
Why does it feel like it took less than one blog post to go from “we wont sell power” to “well, maybe”.
…
Overall, 3 month seasons is way way too short. Does not allow the game to breath. And instead you admit to having to speed up the game to accommodate the absurdly short seasons. For no reason (well, other than selling more season passes I guess).
And if you do have seasons, fine, but everything available in the seasons should ALSO be available in non-season, at the same time.
This was a really disheartening blog post
Other than the claimed “not selling power” the most positive thing probably was that I didnt see dailies or weeklies mentioned anywhere? Did I just miss it? That would at least be massively positive, if there are no such stuff.
Btw, while the seasons sound quite terrible overall, there is one positive thing about them; adding new story content in seasons/patches is great. But again, dont make it season-only…
And it will just be great fun when the same happens in D4
You still think that is many… and you are still really funny.
Do you know the difference between 8K paragons and 20K paragons in terms of required play time?
I am really scared about this:
Based on feedback that we receive, the team will identify quality-of-life features and polish work that can be done to improve the overall game experience and invite the community to vote upon their priority.
Blizzard got feedback from casuals (majority of player base) and that is the main reason they had some bad game design choices with Diablo 3.
Completing the Season Journey is quite a feat, with the final step demanding the character overcome an extremely difficult encounter with an especially deadly foe.
I really like this. First thing that comes to my mind is old Diablo 3 Uber Boss fight on MP10 difficulty. Only few % of player base was able to do that.
I wonder what else people is going to find to complain since the monetization is literally the same minus the lootboxes that path of exile has…
This is why you don’t buy faux outrage from any twitch streamer or youtuber.
Oh yeah I forgot I can already see the “bUt ItS p2P dUdE” what did you expect? path of exile isnt that exactly of a f2p either, you need space.
Further reading… people dont want leagues/seasons? what did you expect this is how the ARPG market moves, on hype every 2-3 months to create quick influx of cash specially with alot of FOMO involved…
Sure, I get that. I have no problem buying things…
But I think the smart move to alleviate people’s perception and save face, would be to allow the purchase of next seasons battle pass if you receive ALL of your last seasons rewards.
Apex Legends does allow this wonderfully, as an example.
Though, Blizzard claiming to make hard content is “I want to see it to believe it”
More likely it will just be “Difficulty no. 150 boss encounter. Same boss as those other 149 lvls, wohoo”.
Whoah… That was quick. I haven’t even read anything but I wonder what’s the focus. You promised monetization but I hope you added something extra.
Edit1: So it’s a live service focused blog. Eh it’s okay.
Edit 2: There are typos on some pictures. I see one under Live Events title; please fix that.
Edit 3: Seasons returning are great news and diversifying the difficulty is a very good choice too. So far I really liked what I’ve read. Those are the things I’ve suggested for D:I. Either you guys read the feedback really intensely or read my mind.
As we’ve discussed previously, Diablo IV will be a full-price game with a Cosmetics Shop and Season Pass—none of which provide any pay-for-power options.
Nothing offered in the Shop grants a direct or indirect gameplay advantage.
Nothing worries me except mention of being told to play a certain build when a new season kicks in. I want to be able to make a character and play whatever style i want until the end. Not be told what to do.
Based on feedback that we receive, the team will identify quality-of-life features and polish work that can be done to improve the overall game experience and invite the community to vote upon their priority.
They need to be super careful with this. Casuals want instant gratification and if Blizzard does not “listen to their needs” forums will be full with comments like “why you ask for our feedback if you don’t care about it”.
We will also be constantly adding new legendary and unique items, paragon boards, glyphs, and more that will continually refresh the meta and create new build opportunities.
This was yet another opportunity to have mentioned runes, if runes still existed
I kinda miss the ones about music or animations now.
