Diablo IV season eight will focus on ‘permanent upgrades’ to base game, Blizzard says
Blizzard Entertainment has said 'Season 8: Belial's Return' will focus on "permanent upgrades" to the base game of 'Diablo IV' instead of working on "throwaway changes".
‘Diablo IV’ Season 8 will focus on “permanent upgrades” to the base game.
Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed it will be altering its approach to seasonal updates starting with the upcoming ‘Season 8: Belial’s Return’ - which will release on 29 April - as the studio will now be “amplifying and improving” the foundations of the base game instead of concentrating on “throwaway changes”.
In a roundtable discussion, ‘Diablo IV’ lead live game designer Colin Finer said: “It's critically important that we're evolving ‘Diablo’ and we're not necessarily putting all of our effort on throwaway changes.
“We’re really looking at existing features like Nightmare dungeons and Infernal Hordes and levelling those up.
“We really want to make sure that ‘Diablo’, from season to season, not only is getting a bunch of cool seasonal content, but we're also evolving the game.”
‘Season 8: Belial’s Return’ will add new open-world boss rush Apparition incursion events, and will also bring a major overhaul to the battle pass system in an effort to give players more free choice.
‘Diablo IV’ lead seasons designer Deric Nunez said that while “new seasonal novelties are fun and all”, he insisted new seasons are “really a great opportunity to not just introduce ephemeral systems, but use the seasonal model to introduce new permanent upgrades to the features that players are already engaging with”.
He added: “I guess that's inherent to how we're laying the foundation to strengthen the overall base foundation of ‘Diablo IV’ and the features players engage with over and over and over again, so that by the time the expansion hits, the base foundation of ‘Diablo IV’ is as strong as it can possibly be to carry on all the new exciting stuff.”
