Blizzard isn't quite done transforming Diablo 4 into an entirely different action RPG than it was when it launched. The current leveling process from 1 to 100 is going straight into the trash with its next update and will be replaced by an entirely new framework for how you progress your character.
"When we launched the game, we had a vision for it where we felt like it was really fun to play through once … and as we've played the game more and more and as we've gotten feedback [we realized] that hasn't been super fun," lead live game designer Colin Finer said on a recent stream detailing the upcoming changes.
Diablo 4's leveling process has gone from a 40-hour marathon to a mere 10-hour sprint as Blizzard has repeatedly juiced the overall power of your characters and the amount of XP you can earn. But the best parts of the game are still locked behind its difficulty tiers, or world tiers, that you can't access until you finish specific dungeons. As the game has gotten easier and easier, however, the early and mid-game have become a chore as you race to the final world tier.
In Diablo 4's 2.0 update, which will launch with the Vessel of Hatred expansion but will be free for everyone, the leveling journey has been cut in half and the world tier system has been removed. Everyone will choose from four basic difficulty settings (normal, hard, expert, and penitent) to reach the new level 60 cap. These settings won't bar you from enjoying everything in the game, nor will they keep you from finding exciting loot.
Once you're sufficiently powerful enough to finish a specific tier of a challenging dungeon called The Pit, you'll unlock the first of four Torment difficulties. In Torment 1 and beyond, the game will be harder, but better—not different—loot will drop. Otherwise, it'll be largely the same experience as someone who is only playing on normal.
Progression will be driven by how far you want to push your character instead of how much of the game you want to play. That way, nobody is left out and the portions of the game that quickly become trivial, like almost everything out in its open world, will have value again.
Blizzard will run a week-long playtest for all of these changes starting next week. It will also include the new runewords system that lets you borrow skills from other classes and will have plenty of new items to chase, like a helmet that suspiciously boosts your damage against angels—an enemy type that doesn't exist in the game yet. Blizzard refused to elaborate on it during the stream, so I guess we'll have to wait until October 8 to see if we'll be fighting more than demons when Vessel of Hatred launches.
