The balancing of Diablo 4 leaves something to be desired from time to time. But according to the lead developer, this is sometimes perfectly okay
Not every build is on a par with all the others. Time and again, resourceful players of Diablo 4 discover combinations of items and skills that are simply better than average. For some time now, the Ball Lightning wizard has been up to mischief in the second season.
However, although such power was never intended for player hands, Diablo General Manager Rod Fergusson is not bothered by this (anymore)
We explain what has changed his mind in recent months and how Blizzard will proceed in the future.
Let them have fun
In the above interview with colleagues from Electronic Playground Network, the Diablo 4 lead developer looks back on the first six months of live operation of the action role-playing game – and draws interesting conclusions on the subject of balancing. Because in the future, Blizzard wants to take a more relaxed approach to things:
Sometimes [as a developer] you focus on balance instead of fun. You strive for the greatest possible degree of fairness, so in the end everything should be roughly equally powerful. But those moments of superiority in a Diablo are fun. The moments when you feel like you’re cheating or that you’re cheating the developers by taking advantage of an exploit. That can be really, really fun
And here comes the change, because where Blizzard often patched almost frantically in the early days of Diablo 4 in active operation to get closer to the balance they felt was optimal, the team now takes a different approach:
We now want to embrace and welcome this. In the second season, the ball-lightning wizard is ridiculously strong, but we watch and live by the motto: Let them all have their fun, we’ll deal with it later.
In short: At some point Blizzard will address such unintentionally efficient builds, but as long as they don’t negatively impact the game for others, the developers seem to want to take a lot more time than in the early days.
How would you respond to Rod Fergusson’s statements? Is he right about the more relaxed approach to balancing or would you clearly disagree? Do such builds interfere with the game or should Blizzard regularly allow them to be looted for a while before intervening with a patch? Or should these builds not be allowed on the live servers in the first place? Let us know your opinion in the comments!
