Last month, Blizzard conducted two beta tests for Diablo IV, one for those who pre-ordered the game and an open beta that everyone could access. We shared our opinions about the game, but now the Diablo IV development team has revealed the changes coming to the game prior to its launch, as a result of feedback gathered from the Early Access and Open Beta sessions. Here is a summary of all the changes, if you don’t feel like reading the entire post.
Dungeons
- The layouts for dungeons are being optimized to minimize the need for backtracking
- Chances for an event to spawn inside a dungeon has increased from 10% to 60%
- Small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player — helps complete the “Kill All Monsters” objective
- Gathering Animus will grant the player and nearby allies 10 resource and reduce all active cooldowns by one second
- Depositing Animus channel time reduced from 3 seconds to 0 seconds
- Time to rescue reduced from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds
- All rescue objectives now drop a health potion when completed
- 25% move speed increase to player and nearby allies when carrying Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving
- Channel time for pedestals reduced from 2 seconds to 0 seconds
- Returning an object to a pedestal fully restores health, resource, potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players
- Opening a door will generate a minimap ping
- All Structure objectives in dungeons have additional combat mechanics
Although these dungeon changes are welcoming, they still do not really fix the major issue players have, namely that dungeons are just boring and repetitive. These changes only make them quicker to complete, thus making them less tedious, but they are still not very exciting to do.
Classes
- Crowd control effects like stun and freeze can be applied to Elite Monsters twice as long before they become Unstoppable
- Legendary powers have had updates to their effectiveness
- Reviewed class skills to confirm all classes have access to sufficient skills that remove control impairing effects
Barbarian
- Flat 10% passive damage reduction
- Certain Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate
- Whirlwind now deals more damage and consumes more Fury
- Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies
Druid
- Companion skills deal heavily increased damage
- Reduced cooldowns on all Ultimate skills
- Usability improvements to Maul and Pulverize
- Using a non-Shapeshifting skill transforms Druid back into human form
Necromancer
- Summoned minions die more often, so players will have to utilize corposes more often
- Bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased
- Damage dealt by Corpse Explosion reduced
- Brightness of Skeletal Warriors and Mages reduced
Rogue
- Increased bonuses to Subterfuge skills upgrades
- Increased bonuses to multiple Passive skills
- Reduced cooldowns for all Imbuement skills
Sorcerer
- Increased damage and reduced Mana cost to Charged Bolt
- Decreased Chain Lightning damage, reduced its effectiveness against Bosses
- Decreased cooldown for Incinerate skill’s enchantment bonus
- Firewalls spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using enchantment bonus
- Increased Lucky Hit chance for Meteor skill’s enchantment bonus
Without knowing the specific numerical changes to the abilities, is it difficult to determine the extent to which this balancing will affect gameplay. If these constitute the only changes happening to the classes for launch, it is a rather underwhelming list.
UI
- Bug fixes: Built-in Screen Reader was not reading key prompts, game options details, and other UI text; actions could not be bound to the mouse wheel; and Evade couldn’t be bound to the right Analog Stick on controller
- Chat will display on the left side of the screen when using the centered action bar configuration (why this wasn’t default on PC is really, really wild)
- Character’s stats will be displayed by default when players click Materials & Stats button within inventory
- Move and Interact inputs can be mapped to a single button, while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button
- The sans serif font used in-game has been replaced with a new serif font (can’t wait to see which font they chose!)
Although it addresses some of the issues players had, the team seems not to have any intentions of providing a map overlay, or minimap options. This is disappointing, but at this point, not surprising.
Encounters
- Fixed issues that allowed bosses, like the Butcher, to become unresponsive
- The Butcher has been re-evaluated for difficulty and will be more of a challenge in World Tiers III and IV
- Certain bosses have been reevaluated for melee character difficulty, resulting in changes to mechanics
- Fixed an issue where Vampire Brutes using the Shadow Enchant affix would chaincast Impale
Cellars
- Increased chance for an event to occur
- Now consistently reward a chance upon completion
- Fixed an issue where cellars would prematurely be marked as complete
- Fixed an issue where the guaranteed elite monster wasn’t guaranteed to appear
General Quality of Life
- Fixed an issue where players could increase attack speed by move-cancelling early
- Fixed an issue where characters weren’t immune and untargetable after loading into an area
- The Reset Dungeon button has been disabled
- Fixed an issue that caused Gale Valley and Serac Rapture to have less monsters than intended until the campaign quests in those territories were completed
It seems like Blizzard is confusing “general quality of life” with “bug fixes,” since none of these points sound like actual QoL changes.
We hope the team has more changes planned before the game launches in June, because the most exciting change I found in this entire list is the ability to map Move and Interact inputs to one button, while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button. Oh, and moving the chat window back to the location found in virtually every video game. Credit should be given to Blizzard for listening and implementing feedback, but it seems they are not addressing some of the major issues the game has.
