Diablo 4‘s game director, associate game director and community manager confronted players’ problems with the game’s most recent patch, conceding that Diablo 4 is “not fun” now.
Released on July 20, patch 1.1.0 significantly decreased Diablo 4 players damage output and survivability and Sorcerer players felt specifically targeted as one of the weaker classes from the get go.
Speaking in an unscheduled Campfire Chat about the response to the patch, the three team members expressed their regret over the mixup between Blizzard‘s goals for the game and players’ entertainment in the world of Sanctuary.
“We want to acknowledge everyone’s feedback in regard to reducing player power,” said community manager Adam Fletcher (via PCGamer). “We know it is bad. We know it is not fun.”
“We also want to talk about what we were trying to achieve specifically with this patch and with the changes that players ended up seeing. And then, separately, we do want to also talk about how we don’t plan on doing a patch like this ever again,” continued Fletcher.
Blizzard’s intention was to prevent Diablo 4 players from “blasting through content” with their specialised builds and it aims to address the most pressing of players’ issues within two weeks.
Presently, the Nightmare dungeon difficulty has been rectified, and buffs to underused Sorcerer and Barbarian Legendary aspects, an additional stash tab, an increase to the elixir stack size to 99, and a dip in the cost to respec gold will arrive in in patch 1.1.1.
The Sorcerer’s Devouring Blaze skill was not discussed, however, which will likely rub these players the wrong way as this lets them actually attack effectively in the endgame against the strongest enemies in the game.
In other gaming news, developers agreed that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a “once-in-lifetime RPG” that shouldn’t be setting a new standard for what gamers might expect from future games.