Diablo 4 devs on what Vessel of Hatred has learned from Reaper of Souls a decade on
Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, arrives this year - here's what it's learned from Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls, according to the developers.
29th Aug 2024 13:49
Images via Activision Blizzard
Diablo 4 devs on what Vessel of Hatred has learned from Reaper of Souls a decade on
Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, arrives this year - here's what it's learned from Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls, according to the developers.
29th Aug 2024 13:49
Images via Activision Blizzard
At Gamescom this year, I was able to sit down with Brent Gibson, Associate Game Director and Aislyn Hall, Systems Designer at Blizzard to talk about Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred.
The game's first major expansion after more than a year of seasonal content drops, I was curious to find out how it stacks up to Reaper of Souls. For those unfamiliar, Diablo 3 was in a fairly rough place before that expansion dropped, and I asked Gibson and Hall how much the current team pays attention to how that altered the series' trajectory back in 2014.
Diablo 4 developers on the switch to live service
"It's interesting because we talk about this all the time. Reaper [of Souls] was a big moment for Diablo 3, and I think the key difference here is that instead of us storing everything up, like Reaper did, we've had the chance to make those improvements along the way," Gibson explains.
"So you've got Season 4, we made a big fundamental change in Season 4. We've been doing tuning in Season 4, and now in Season 5."
"When you come out to Vessel of Hatred, we're going to be looking at all the progression systems. We're going to make a fundamental change to the progression systems to make the progress of character development and character better for the player in the long term."
"And so we learned a lot from what Reaper did, but I think we have way more flexibility now being a live game to actually do more with the content that we have."
Hall says the team is 'empowered' by the move to a seasonal, live-service model.
"The team is empowered with a lot of flexibility because of the seasonal model and the live service model," she explains.
"We really want to take advantage of it. The major progression updates coming are going to be really sweeping changes to how you're progressing through the game and how you're experiencing character progression."
"It's going to be really similar to the scope of Season 4 Loot Reborn in terms of fundamental changes to the way character progression works, and we're really excited about it."
For more from our interview with the team, be sure to read our conversation about new region Nahantu, the additional endgame activities, and plans after Vessel of Hatred.
About The Author
Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
