Diablo 4 Is Getting Harder in Season 8

Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 4 allows its community to live out the power fantasy of becoming a demon-slaying machine in the world of Sanctuary. Going from zero to hero is an incredibly fun experience and has been since the original game launched in 1997. However, Season 7 may have tampered with the series’ beloved gameplay formula a bit too much as players were reaching endgame content at a rapid pace. As a result, the developers have heard the feedback and are making the game harder in Season 8.

In the recent Diablo 4 Campfire Chat regarding the upcoming 2.2.0 Public Test Realm update for Season 8, Design Director Colin Finer, Lead Season Designer Deric Nuñez, and Class Designer Charles Dunn discussed the changes being made to the game with Season 8 based on Season 7 feedback. A prominent issue with the latest season is the pacing of level progression. According to data the developers gathered, players were reaching the max level in nine hours on average in Season 7. Players who took advantage of S-plus tier builds could have reached that peak between 30 minutes and two hours. In comparison, the average time to max level in Season 6 was between 15 and 17 hours.

“Our perspective on Season 7 has been the progression very fast. Way faster than we sort of expected,” Finer said. “Part of it is a lot of the really cool new seasonal powers, part of it is the head hunts being super lucrative and awesome, and part of it is also just like the seasonal journey and the reputation board. There’s a lot of different ways to get a ton of power in Diablo 4.”

“What we’ve seen is compared to Season 6 — which had a lot of positive feedback as part or our revamped progression model — is that a lot of that has sort of gone down the drain in terms of how fast players are chewing through some of the content,” Finer continued.

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In response to the rapid level progression issue in Season 7, Diablo 4 Season 8 will increase the time it takes to level between levels 1 and 25. Additionally, Legendary loot drops will decrease up until max level. Instead, Magic and Rare items will now have up to two and three affixes respectively. With these new changes, Blizzard believes the leveling experience will “feel a lot more rewarding and satisfying.”

This new difficulty curve will bleed into the endgame. Similarly to the issues plaguing Season 7s level progression, data shows 50% of players reached the highest Torment difficulty level in half the time of Season 6. These levels will now be harder in Season 8.

“Just from a philosophy standpoint, we really want whatever the hardest Torment tier is — in this case Torment 4 — to be aspirational, and to us that means around 10%,” Finer said.

Additionally, Endgame bosses are being reworked. Instead of gathering items to summon a boss, players can fight each of the three new ones being added in Diablo 4 Season 8 for free. When defeated, the boss will drop a locked chest which requires a key to unlock. These bosses will also increase in difficulty.

Diablo 4 Season 8 PTR update launches on March 11th. Its full release is on April 29th.