As per my previous posts with Q&A’s, I’m going to display the question and the answer given, no extra commentary in between, I will clean up answers (Joe tends to be a talker), provide a Tl;Dr, or a summarization where relevant though. If you wish to see the video version:
Timestamp is at 1:39:17 in case the link doesn’t work.
Real quick shoutout to @Avalon who had one of his questions answered from the forum post. Also to @Lyricana for getting our questions out there. Not to mention @PezRadar for asking the questions.
The Q&A was hosted by:
Joe Piepiora - Associate Game Director
Adam Jackson - Lead Class Designer
Colin Finer - Lead Live Game Designer
Adam Fletcher - Community Lead
Deric Nuñez - Lead Seasons Designer (off-screen during the Q&A)
Names will be abbreviated of course. Without further ado here we go.
What does this mean for Season Powers in the future?
:
Joe
Heavily summarized
For Season 4 we focused on enhancing one of the core aspects which is acquiring loot. As the game centers around killing monsters and obtaining loot we want these both to feel good.Development efforts were directed towards improving this aspect, along with other enhancements like changes to Helltide and tempering recipes. The goal was to elevate the core experience of Diablo 4 and ensure it’s more enjoyable.
Looking ahead, we aim to continuously adapt to the game’s needs in each season, such as introducing seasonal powers, themes, and mechanics. Season 4 introduced features like the Iron Wolves questline and themed rewards tailored to specific builds, with plans to further expand upon these elements in future updates.
Tl;Dr - Already heavily summarized, but essentially we can expect seasonal powers to make a comeback in future seasons, among other changes.
Original question from @Avalon - Will S4 run for 3 full months or will it be cut short because of the PTR?
Adam F. Rewording
Because Season 3 actually ran longer and Season 4 itself had a PTR, will Season 4 actually be a shortened season or will it still be a standard size season? They weren’t sure how PTR is actually affecting the time line.
Joe
So PTR is not as impactful for the timing here. We think it’s a slightly shorter season, I think it’s like 1 week shorter or something, I need to look at the date.Adam F.
I will note the reason why Season 3 ran longer was because we wanted to make sure we could get that PTR, this was our first PTR, so there was a little bit more effort needed to get that out for players.Joe
You’re absolutely right. When I think about the future and what PTR’s look like, and how we want things to be. It doesn’t mean that having PTR means everything is going to take longer to deliver, but there is a lot of things we had to setup for the first time for the PTR for season 4. I’m really glad that we did, as I think you’ve seen, there’s a lot of things we’ve learned going through the process.Adam J.
It gave us time to iterate and use the feedback which we based a lot of things on.
Tl;Dr - This was the first PTR for D4 so it required more time to figure things out, but moving forward it shouldn’t necessarily prolong seasons or delay future seasons.
Will you guys think about maybe a potential different beam color for items with greater affixes?
Colin
That’s something we’re definitely going to keep an eye on. Right now we think the little dots, I should say huge dots, huge stars, are doing a pretty good job, but that’s something we also need to feel out and play. We’re super open to feedback and seeing how these new big stars are going to help.Adam F.
Especially the changes in the inventory, because now you can identify them in the inventory is really big.Colin
These also roll on uniques, so there’s a little bit of work that we’ll need to figure out.
Tl;Dr - They’ll be keeping an eye on it and looking at feedback.
Are the Season 4 updates going to retro into existing eternal?
Joe
Everything we talked about today, With the exception of the Iron Wolves questline stuff is present in the Eternal Realm. I know there are a lot of questions related to the Codex changes especially for Eternal Players.Adam F.
Just to clarify if you have aspects in your inventory and your stash it will take whatever your highest roll of that specific aspect and that will become your new best codex entry when Season 4 does start. You may need to logon to specific characters on eternal for it to update. The stash will automatically move over there.Items on Eternal will be marked as ‘Legacy’ items, obviously we’ve changed a lot of affixes and everything.
Joe
You can’t craft on those items either. You can’t temper or masterwork those items, but they’ll still retain the item upgrade state they had from the Blacksmith before.Adam F.
It doesn’t mean when you logon all of your gear is suddenly unusable it’s just marked as ‘Legacy’ and you won’t be ale to use Tempering or Mastercrafting on these items.Joe
Great stepping off point to getting some new items that can have greater affixes and other things could make you even more powerful.
Tl;Dr - Short answer: Everything mentioned during the live stream with the exception of the Iron Wolves seasonal theme and mechanics will be coming to Eternal Realm as well.
Original question from me - With the itemization rework mostly out of the way, what is the next big project you will be working on to improve the game overall?
Adam F. Rewording
With the itemization rework what is the next big thing you guys are actually looking at, potentially wanting to really work on within the team.
Adam F.
I don’t know if we want to play our cards too early.Adam J.
We’re working on thingsJoe
We’re working on all kinds of stuff everybody.
When Diablo 4 was launched, the endgame was envisioned as a journey from level 50 to 100, focusing on tasks like acquiring paragon glyphs, exploring Nightmare Dungeons, and eventually confronting Lilith. However, feedback indicated that players desired more endgame content specifically at level 100.Recent updates have aimed to address this, introducing changes such as itemization adjustments, crafting improvements, tormented bosses, and the Pit. Season 4 is seen as an opportunity to establish a new framework for the endgame experience, with a focus on engaging gameplay, rewarding progression, and appropriate challenges. There are plans to further expand the variety of content available to players at this stage of the game.
Tl;Dr - Joe is a bit of a talker, essentially S4 changes are the new framework to build off of, and expect more to come in the future. They don’t want to give away anything just yet of what they’re working on.
What about codex resetting when swapping characters?
Adam F.
That was actually just an issue on PTR.Joe
When you swapped and used the boost NPC.Adam F.
That was not a thing you will experience in Season 4. That’s not a normal thing that’s supposed to actually happen, just a bug during the PTR.
Following questions pertain to the new Profane Mindcage Elixir. A new Elixir only available to the Seasonal Realm that increases Helltide Monster Levels by 10 and increases Aberrant Cinder drop rate and Threat for 60 minutes.
If you consume more then 1 does the mindcage stack or does the timer reset?
Deric
Timer Resets
Do mindcages trigger for a single player or your whole group if you’re grouped up?
Deric
Single player, it’s personal.Adam F.
Just a little clarity on mindcages because we have a lot of people asking about it.Joe
We want feedback on this too, so when you get a chance to play with the mindcage during the season tell us what you think, we want to know
Do unique items get a stat/funcationaly boost since tempered legendaries are just straight up better? Is it generally not worth it to equip a unique item after the patch?
Colin
We’ve done a pass on all the unique items, we’ve done things like Razorplate I think has 4 thorns affixes and we changed what the legendary power is.Adam F
By the way that was a big question from people on the PTR. Changes should be in the patch notes.Adam P
In updating tempering mechanics and legendary items in Diablo 4, we aimed to give legendaries a unique journey and story, distinct from the more static nature of uniques. We acknowledge that uniques are currently powerful but lack the same ongoing engagement as legendaries. While some adjustments were made to certain uniques, we didn’t go over all of them, as the focus was on preserving their distinct identities.We anticipate that uniques may be less prevalent than before, but still essential for various builds. Rather than make changes immediately, we prefer to observe how players engage with the current system. We could potentially add crafting mechanics to uniques, but we want to see how the current system works before we make any changes.
Colin
And the fix nature sort of has you consider its part of your optimization as well. Well I’m going to give up some tempering affixes to get this unique for example in my chest slot. We want to see where that goes, we think that’s fun. We think the excitement of a unique are those fixed stats when you see the item on the ground you know ‘ok thats the unique I want, I can just equip it, I don’t even have to work on it.’
Tl;Dr - Some Uniques were changed, but not all. It’s going to be a work in progress essentially.
Did we talk about groups with the Pit?
Colin
It sucks to help some one with their Pit run and just not get any Masterworking material. So we’ve changed it so the person who opens the pit will get 100% Masterworking Materials, and then everyone who helps gets 50% of that target goal. So we’re trying to walk that line where group play isn’t just totally overwhelmingly efficient, but you’re still getting something for helping each other get through those Pit levels.Joe
In general I think there’s still some tension with how players feel about the efficiency of groups and efficiency of solo play with boss summons and things like that. These are things we’re thinking about and we have ideas on, but we want to continue to get feedback particularly with these changes and kind of see how things play out.
Any updates on social features?
Adam F
It’s something that you guys ask all the time, and we’re very very aware of it, and the team has been looking at it, and once we have more to share we’ll end up sharing it with you guys, but for right now we don’t have any updates.
Are we going to get Leaderboards for the Pit or is this exclusive to just Gauntlets?
Joe
I think the idea of adding the Leaderboards to other types of content over time makes sense, it could be pretty fun. Right now we really want to see how the Pit plays on its’ own. With the Trials Feature and Gauntlets we really want that to be a place where players can compete in a fixed, extremely fair environment.The Pit is pretty variable run to run, so it makes it a little more complicated. It doesn’t mean we would never add it as it could be fun to have a slightly looser leaderboard. We’re going to see how things play out and we’ll be thinking about how we can add more competitive features like that to the game overtime.
When Tempering can you keep previous rolls? Like the enchanting systems allows you to do.
Colin
Currently we don’t have the functionality to let you keep the roll. Right now if you’re going to commit to rerolling you’re going to lose that previous one. We’re open to feedback, it’s a completely new feature, we really want to hear how it’s playing, and ultimately what we want is a fun crafting feature.
Is Tempering going to allow changes for the skills or skill type? Maybe lightning Hydras or changes to Blizzard where maybe it’s like a rain of fire?
Joe
Honestly anything an affix can do /shrugs /Adam J
Is open season of things we could potentially do in the future, yea. Not in Season 4, but you know possibly in the future.Joe
Lot of space to grow! Utility is a category where there’s a lot of space for interesting things potentially.
Any additional character customization options coming in the future?
Adam F
It is something the team is always looking at adding additional things to, for players to have more choice of what they want to do. Especially as they’re creating their characters, and of course being able to obtain those, even just somethings in Season 4, being able to get additional cosmetic things for your mount and everything like that.Joe
We care about this a great deal. There are a lot of cosmetics for players to earn and collect throughout the game, but it’s really hard to know what they can drop from. It’s harder to know exactly where to grind for cosmetics. We’ve been talking about to see if we can make it clear where certain things can be found.We also want to get more cool looks into the game, so we’ve been talking with the various teams about adding more cool stuff players can find.
Adam F. made it clear they couldn’t go over everything, make sure to check out the patch notes.
BONUS QUESTIONS FROM TWITER / X
Will we be able to reroll affixes on legacy items when S4 starts?
Adam F
You wont be able to reroll on legacy items. Those freeze in time essentially but are still useable at their current state.
It was mentioned in the PTR Forums that you guys knew about the issues with the Rare Paragon nodes and their stat costs, was there any changes to this that just weren’t noted?
Adam F
This was somewhat addressed by increasing attribute bonuses of gems into defensive armor pieces.
Avalon also comeing up 
