Diablo 4 dev explains key lessons Season 4 learned from Season of Blood
Diablo 4 Season 4 is right around the corner and after a middle-of-the-road Season 3, devs are hoping for a return to form. Executive Producer Rod Fergusson has revealed that means looking to the popular Season of Blood.
Diablo 4 devs are hard at work implementingthe largely positive feedbackfromthe Season 4 PTR. As the May 14 launch draws closer,there’s still more to reveal.
The game’s executive producer Rod Fergusson recently spoke withWindows Centralon how his team is looking to approach Season 4. The good news is, that they’ve spent a lot of time consideringwhat made Season of Blood so popularand how that can be recaptured in Diablo 4 Season 4.
Fergusson admitted that Season of Blood’s vampiric theme was more “easily relatable” than Seasons 1 and 3 but that wasn’t the only thing that made it a high point for Diablo 4. According to Fergusson, the real draw of Season 2 was how it catered to the power fantasy of the Diablo franchise and that will certainly be present in Season 4.
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“Season 2 helped us understand what we need to do around things like Helltide,” Fergusson elaborated. “The fantasy really is about slaying multitudes of monsters and that feeling of power.”
Those who rememberthe incredibly successful implementation of Blood Harvests in Season 2will understand what Fergusson is calling back to. These world events came with a flood of enemies, experience, and loot that players couldn’t get enough of.
“In Season 2, we worked really hard to optimize the engine and optimize the art, and to be able to turn that dial up,” he explained. “You’ll see that in Season 4, when you look at the PTR with the new Helltide, with the giant worms coming up and spitting monsters at you and gaining a threat level.”
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The process of ramping up the amount of enemies you can encounter in the game is not an easy one of course. According to Fergusson, it has been an iterative process in which the developers have been fine-tuning the game’s engine season over season, and this next one will be the culmination of those efforts.
“Through the seasons, you’ve seen the density get more and more and more,” he said. “I think it’s coming to a good place in Season 4 when you see how rich the Helltides are.”
While these mechanical changes to the core Diablo 4 experience are welcome, the real information players are waiting on is the thematic change for Season 4. Fortunately, Fergusson revealed that we can expect to see that revealed “in the next couple of weeks”.
