Looking to make amends from the previous year's PR nightmare, Diablo 4 was officially shown off at BlizzCon 2019 through a gorgeous cinematic, a panel session, as well as a gameplay trailer. Even though Blizzard confirmed that the game is still a long ways off from release, the team began fulfilling its promise of keeping the community updated with new blog posts. The first of many details the return of a popular game mode and the customization process.


Giving fans a greater insight into the System Design of Diablo 4 is lead systems designer David Kim, who confirmed that Elective Mode will be returning. Based on the BlizzCon demo and its UI, fans who went hands on with the game were worried that the game would lock down skill categories to specific slots. However, Kim says that won't be the case as the UI is still a work in progress and skill selection and assignment will always be open and customizable for players.




Kim goes on to touch other topics that the community feedback has brought up, reiterating that Blizzard is keenly interested in having the community be involved in the design process. As for the Endgame Progression System, the team hasn't yet settled on whether it'll be a finite or infinite system. He does acknowledge that there is some concern over an infinite system making power gained from imgs outside of the leveling system obsolete, but reiterates that the team is able to control how much power each system can give whether infinite or finite.





Ancient items was also touched upon, another concern from the community as these items just don't seem to have a place in the game at the moment. Blizzard is revisiting its designs and incorporating feedback. Blizzard is also hoping for more feedback with regards to Keyed Dungeons which were intended to offer greater challenges as their tiers increase through Dungeon Affixes. The hope was to have players plan and strategize their approach a little more before going into the dungeon, unlike the Rift Dungeons from Diablo 3.


As game director Luis Barriga discussed during the opening ceremony of BlizzCon 2019, Diablo 4 is going to not only take and evolve ideas from past games, but introduce new elements to the franchise as well. One such feature is the idea of open world bosses that act similarly to Public Events in a game like Destiny. These boss characters will roam the land and allow for up to 8 other players to work together to take down the challenging foe and earn some sweet loot in the process.


Diablo 4 is in development for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.



Source: Blizzard








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