Diablo Immortal’s closed beta wrapped in early January 2022, and now Blizzard is outlining all the changes that will be coming to the mobile action RPG as a result of player feedback.
In a new Blizzard blog post, Diablo Immortal game director Wyatt Cheng states that the game is still slated to arrive in 2022, and when it does, it will sport a number of improvements and adjustments based on player feedback from the closed beta. The list of changes covers multiple aspects of the game, ranging from social mechanics and in-game purchases to character progression and controller support.
On the social front, Blizzard is adjusting the game’s daily bounty system to make it so they are solo only, after many players felt forced to group to complete bounties in the beta. But seeing as Blizzard has described Diablo Immortal as an MMO, it still wants players to play and group together. That’s why Blizzard is making changes to the game’s Warbands system, expanding it to support eight players. Blizzard will also add new difficulties to the game’s eight-player Helliquary raids, along with improvements to group finding and raid management tools.
While Diablo Immortal will be free-to-play, it will include optional purchases, such as a battle pass and other in-app purchases. Cheng writes that players in the beta seemed to find the battle pass a good value, but the team will be looking at other microtransactions, like the Boon of Plenty, to make it feel more valuable and worth the cost.
Also included in the blog post is a breakdown of some of the various in-game systems that will be tweaked, as broken down by Diablo Immortal senior system designer Kris Zierhut.
One such system is the World Paragon system. It’s a catch-up system designed to help those players who have hit max level and have started earning Paragon levels but may not have as much time to play as more dedicated players. If a player has a lower Paragon level than the server’s World Paragon level (which increases by two each day), then that player gains more experience. The opposite is also true. Having a Paragon level four levels higher than the World Paragon level will result in an experience penalty. Those higher level players can still play, but they’ll earn experience at a lower rate, allowing players who might not play as often and are below the World Paragon level a chance to catch up.
In the beta, the higher level penalty was also extended to item salvage, which is used to upgrade items and improve stats. Higher level players earned less of it, thus slowing down their progression. Zierhut states that players in the beta were actively trying not earn new Paragon levels by not turning in quests or picking up experience orbs, which was not a desired outcome. Based on feedback, World Paragon will no longer affect item salvage when Diablo Immortal launches. That being said, Blizzard is still looking at ways to bridge the gap between more active players and more casual players, with the current plan being to increase the amount of salvage materials needed at very high ranks.
Changes will also come to the game’s endgame PvP system, the Cycle of Strife. While Blizzard didn’t outline all the changes that will come at launch, it did state it will be making it so that player clans participating in the activity via becoming a Dark Clan will have more meaning, calling the current Dark House system “a jarring upheaval to your social system and network of players.”
Diablo Immortal does not currently have a specific 2022 release date. When it does arrive, it might include a never-before-seen Diablo class, the Blood Knight. Diablo Immortal might not be the only Blizzard mobile game set to debut this year, either. A recent earnings report revealed that a Warcraft mobile project is also slated to arrive in 2022. Diablo IV, meanwhile, does not have an official release date following a delay, but is expected to arrive sometime in 2023.
Source: Gamespot
