In Diablo 3, you deal so much damage with your attacks that it almost covers the entire screen. This makes it difficult to understand which ability actually does how much damage and which opponents are affected. In Diablo 4, that should be completely different, the developers revealed in a live stream.
What did the developers say? In a live stream on February 28, Blizzard employees discussed some details about Diablo 4. One topic was the damage figures. These should not be as absurdly high as in the predecessor, but should be significantly smaller.
Lead Systems Designer Meng Song explained that initially the health points in Diablo 4 increased steadily:
If we want to increase a monster’s defense power by 10% from level 31 to level 32, it means that the level 32 monster will have 10% more life points. If you do that from level one to level 100, you get a very large number, up to billions or even trillions.
Game director Joe Shely commented that the numbers are then “difficult to understand”, especially because the combat system is so fast and action-packed. The interface is also completely overloaded by these high numbers.
That’s why Diablo 4 relies on higher enemy armor values that avoid incoming damage instead of just increasing their life points.
This screenshot shows how bad and confusing the numbers already looked in Diablo 3. You neither know which damage belongs to which opponent, nor can you see the numbers well. This should no longer happen in the successor:
Discuss armor design and new areas in GameStar video
What else happened in Diablo 4? In the live stream, the developers also discussed gear design and showed the rewards for reaching level 20 in the beta.
Overall, the video has been very well received by the community and there is praise for how it communicates with players. You can watch the hour-long discussion on YouTube.
In addition, our GameStar colleagues published a new video about the game on February 27th, in which the most important information about Diablo 4 was summarized and, above all, new areas and new monsters were shown.
If you want to read all the information about Diablo 4, you will find a summary in our large hub article: Diablo 4: All about the release, classes, beta and gameplay.
What do you think about the adjustments to the damage numbers? Do you think that’s important or do you not care about the overview and you just value the slicing through of the opponents? Feel free to write it in the comments.
If you want to find out more about classes, you will find what you are looking for in this article:
In Diablo 4, all 5 classes have special mechanics – we’ll explain them to you