Diablo 4 continues to evolve over a year and a half after release, having seen major changes to its endgame, difficulty, and even items. Now, as part of Diablo 4 Season 7, Season of Witchcraft, Blizzard is adding another permanent game-changing feature to its ARPG–the Armory.
What the Armory does is simple: It lets players save up to five different loadouts per character. With the click of a button, players can swap out the entirety of their equipped gear, but more importantly, also their skill points and paragon points. Once a loadout is saved, characters can freely swap to it at no charge, giving easy access to up to five different builds and encouraging players to experiment and try new strategies.
The Armory is in many ways the culmination of how Blizzard’s mindset has changed in the time since Diablo 4 launched. Whereas once respeccing skill points and Paragon Boards (or even re-rolling item affixes at the Enchanter) came with a hefty gold cost, those costs have gotten less prohibitive over time. Now, with the Armory, players can completely swap out almost every major choice for their character and flip builds as often as they want, without having to pay any kind of fee.
It may seem like an obvious addition, but it’s a bigger deal than it at first seems, and one that will no doubt lead to more creative builds. To learn more and discuss the kind of paradigm shift the Armory represents, GameSpot chatted with Diablo 4 design director Dan Tanguay and game designer Sean White about how Blizzard’s stance on a feature like the Armory has changed. Along the way we touched on other Season 7 additions, like how the team decided on its numerous Witch Doctor-inspired powers and the chances of Diablo 4 getting an entire Witch-themed class in the future.
When Diablo 4 launched and began to transition into the live-service game we know today, Tanguay said some aspects of the game didn’t line up with what players wanted. That led to Blizzard taking a hard look at player feedback and implementing changes like Season 4’s Loot Reborn update and the major difficulty revamp as part of Season 6.
Next on the player feedback list–the addition of the Armory. Despite the feature appearing in Diablo 3 and Blizzard’s mobile spin-off Diablo Immortal, Tanguay said the decision to add the Armory to Diablo 4 wasn’t so simple. He said because Diablo 4 was a mix of both returning franchise players as well as new ones, the team first needed time to learn what players wanted from the game.
At launch, the team had a strong desire to “make choices matter,” according to White. But over time, the game added more and more choices for players but didn’t give them more tools to experiment. That led to Blizzard having to make a choice about what direction it wanted its ARPG to go in, Tanguay said.
“Do we want to encourage that kind of experimentation or do we want to really say you have to start over again in order to do this experimentation, or at the very least pay a cost that you have to spend some time investing in, and put barriers in front of that experimentation?” Tanguay said. “Ultimately we decided, based on what we heard from players, was that we didn’t want many barriers to experimentation. We found, even in later seasons, the more we encouraged players to experiment and the fewer barriers we had, they were even starting to make more and more alternate characters. Ultimately Diablo 4 and Diablo games in general have a wide variety of classes and builds within those classes, so it makes sense to try and encourage players to explore all that space much like you would explore the overworld of Sanctuary.”
Though much of Diablo 4’s live-service has been dedicated to its seasonal servers, the game’s non-seasonal Eternal Realm looks to benefit from the addition of the Armory in a big way. There, players who dread creating a new character every few months can now easily experiment with new builds, without feeling like they have to start over.
“There is a strong contingent of Eternal players who really want to continue playing their character,” Tanguay said. “The Armory very much appeals to them, because now they have their character and they can create variations on that character without any of the time pressures…with seasons.”
While the Armory will be a permanent addition going forward, the rest of the season revolves around players earning new Witchcraft powers to take their builds into overdrive. Many of those powers, like Piranhado, Poison Frog servant, and Soul Harvest, are inspired by the Witch Doctor class from Diablo 3. Once the team had decided on its approach when it came to depicting Diablo 4’s “self-serving” swamp witches for the season’s theme, bringing in some Witch Doctor flavor seemed like a natural fit, White said.
“There are parallels to Witch Doctor there which paved the way to ‘Alright, we are kind of doing swamp witches, let’s try to bring back some fan favorites from Diablo 3,'” White said. “I’m a big Witch Doctor fan. But at the same time, let’s also try to put a cool spin on it and bring some new stuff that is still witch-themed but has never been seen before.”
With no Witch Doctor in Diablo 4 and a whole new host of Witch-themed powers, it certainly seems like there is potential for a fully fleshed out Witch class–something ARPG rival Path of Exile 2 currently has. Tanguay wouldn’t rule the idea out, and said ultimately if something is popular as part of a season, the team would find a way to make it a permanent addition in some shape or form.
“Right now our feeling is those powers are going to be season-only right now,” Tanguay said. “We may incorporate some new ones of them down the road like how we brought some of the powers back as items in previous seasons, but that does then is leave that door open to say, ‘You know what, Season of Witchcraft was great for exploring what witchcraft might be, but down the road, maybe we could have a class that’s like that.’ Not saying we’re going to have one, [but] we’ve just left that door open. It’s important for us, especially as a live service, to make sure we’re not closing too many doors so that we can continue that dialogue with players and understand what they want out of the game and be able to react to that.”
Diablo 4 Season 7 begins January 21.