Diablo 4 Gamescom Interview - 12 Million Players, S1 Learnings, Future of Malignant Hearts
We had the opportunity to take part in an interview with the Diablo 4 development team and ask questions at the Diablo 4 Community Event at Gamescom in Cologne. Topics include learnings after Season 1, the future of Malignant Hearts, and much more!
Quick Facts and Additional Info
- 12 million players have played Diablo 4 for 1.3 billion hours so far, 100+ hours on average per player!
- Patch Notes for Patch 1.1.3 will be released later today (August 25), and the patch itself will be released sometime next week.
- Season 1 was basically completed as soon as Diablo 4 launched, which is one of the reasons they couldn't implement much-requested QoL features.
- There is no PTR planned for Diablo 4.
- Rod, Adam Fletcher, and Chris Wilson did a total of 28 interviews. Keep your eyes peeled for our summaries of other interviews that are being posted in the coming days!
Season 1 Learnings
What are the learnings from Season 1 in terms of the structure and content of Seasons? Will there be changes in the future?
The team stated that future Seasons will be more proactive with the philosophy in mind that they want to communicate changes beforehand and add requested QoL features. (To add context, Season 1 basically included almost no player feedback since the Season was already developed when the main game launched in June)
Barber Malignant Heart
The Barber Malignant Heart plays a dominant role in the meta currently, in some cases even enabling builds to be playable at high tiers of Nightmare Dungeons. Are there plans to change The Barber?
The Barber is a fun and powerful chase item in Season of the Malignant, the team said. Changes to it might happen in the immediate future — but since it is isolated within Season 1, it is likely to remain
