Blizzard’s Diablo IV devs announce they will patch the game shortly after players try it

Three managers are working on Diablo IV a contract Live stream a campfire chat Yesterday they say they’re going to change the way they deploy patches, after a surprisingly incremental 1.1.0 patch to the game suddenly undermined player builds (via IGN). And they promise that updates like this won’t happen in the future – at least, not like they did this week.

In the livestream, Associate Director Joe Bibora, Game Director Joe Shelley, and Community Leader Adam Fletcher acknowledged complaints about the patch significantly reducing player power for some builds. Fletcher said of the downgrade, “We know it sucks, we know it’s no fun,” and added, “We don’t plan on doing a patch like this again. »

In the short term, there is at least one quick fix coming to rebalance things after patch 1.1.0. Piepiora said the team felt the game’s nightmare dungeons were “too over the top” and that level 100 dungeons were “too difficult” for most seasons, causing players to pursue very specific builds.

That was never the intention, Piepiora said, and the team plans to scale down those level 100 dungeons by around 30% “later today via a hotfix” to balance things out. In other words, it will not only restore the player’s power to previous levels, but will make it a bit easier to manage the game world.

Shely said the 1.1.1 patch will balance things out more by adding more monsters to nightmare dungeons and certain Helltide events, so higher level players can enjoy mowing monsters as they traverse them. In an upcoming Campfire Chat, scheduled for Friday, July 28, Blizzard will talk more about this patch, which Fletcher says will be released in “a few weeks.”

Shely said the team is changing the way it handles game balancing updates, especially those related to decreasing player power, saying it will no longer do so without giving players “compelling alternatives to pursue.” Instead, the team will allow these builds to stay in check so they can more accurately adapt to global changes. He said the team will also provide these updates in a predictable manner, such as at the start of a new season.

Ahead of future patches, Fletcher said Blizzard will provide patch notes within a week of a post explaining the changes.