Diablo 4 is likely still pretty far out. Obviously, it would be incredibly cool for Activision-Blizzard to stealth-drop the game at BlizzConline next year; however, I think the best case is next fall. And even that feels more like wishful thinking than anything. That all said, the team is back with yet another quarterly update. These provide fans with great development insight and allows everyone to keep up to date with what they’re working on. This time out, the focus is squarely on itemization.
#Diablo4 Development Update: discover our plans for itemization
You'll also find updates on:
Legendary Affixes
Weapon Types
Primary Stats
Details: https://t.co/IWORXeeWDc pic.twitter.com/dAcgok5RoU
— Diablo (@Diablo) December 15, 2020
The core of the update is looking at the different ways Blizzard is going to use items to help build your characters. However, the whole thing kicks off with a look at skills. We’ve seen a bit of the skill trees in the past, but this update shares a few key details that have come out in recent internal testing. The biggest change, in my opinion, is that you’ll now be able to unlock upgraded versions of skills based on how many stat points you’ve dumped into specific primary stats. This lets you have baseline abilities from across the spectrum, while also rewarding you for focusing on specific stats. I’ll have to see it in action to properly judge, but there’s potential here.
They’ve done quite a bit with items ahead of this update. Notably, they’ve taken some extra steps to ensure different weapon types feel distinct. So, you can actually see a staff shooting out slower, more powerful ice bolts as opposed to the quicker bolts you’ll get from a wand. They’ve also done a bit to fix up affixes on magic and rare items to ensure that people will use more than just legendary items.
All told, it’s an intriguing update. Of course, I want to see everything in action before I say for sure. That said, they’re certainly selling me on this being another great Diablo title. Hopefully, we don’t have any server errors at launch this time around.
Diablo 4 doesn’t have a release date. When it does launch, it’ll come to PC. Expect to hear quite a bit more out of the game during BlizzConline early next year.
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