A much needed update to Nightmare Dungeons
In their first Campfire Chat stream since release, members of the Diablo 4 development team sat down to highlight some big upcoming changes to popular action-RPG. The primary focus of the one and a half hour livestream was the near future of Diablo 4.
Let’s be honest here: Diablo 4 end-game is in a weird spot right now. One of the biggest features, Nightmare Dungeons, is currently practically useless to do. In the current state of the game it’s simply more efficient to spam run non-Nightmare versions of the dungeons for more experience and rewards. Thankfully, Blizzard has some changes in mind to make Nightmare Dungeons a more rewarding experience.
“We want them to be a great place to farm, including if you want to farm dungeons over and over. If you want to loop dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons are setup to be good at doing that,” Diablo 4 game director Joe Shely stated. “So, what we’re going to do there is where going to increase the amount of XP that you get from Nightmare Dungeons and our goal with this is to make Nightmare Dungeons more efficient to do than side dungeons. Because, they are designed to be more replayable.”
This is a much needed change. It’s not that players don’t like Nightmare Dungeons. It’s just that in their current state, they aren’t worth doing. They also plan to change how the Nightmare Sigil’s work. With the new system, using a Nightmare Sigil will open a waypoint at the Nightmare Dungeon it is for, allowing you to teleport directly to it. This will greatly reduce the downtime between running them, helping to improve their efficiency compared to standard side dungeons. They are hoping to have these changes implemented before the start of Season One.
Addressing the concerns of upcoming Seasons
It was originally stated that every Season will be a fresh start in Diablo 4. Understandably, fans have had some worries as to what that would entail. The idea of rediscovering the entire world map and finding all of the Altars of Lilith would not be fun each Season. This will no longer be the case, as they plan to make that progress carry over between seasons, as well as their renown reward. However, side quests, strongholds, and optional dungeon completions will reset each season, but may be changed in the future.
Furthermore, the devs confirmed each Season will bring new features and content, not just bug fixes. The plan is for Diablo 4 to evolve over time with each new Season release.
A few other important goals moving forward
Nightmare Dungeons and details about the upcoming Seasons were certainly the highlights of the stream. But there were a few other important notes to discuss.
First off, they plan to roll out some changes to the inventory around the start of Season 2. Primarily, the plan is to change gem management in the inventory. The goal is to have them work more like materials, as opposed to taking up an inventory slot.
Also, they plan to implement some more social features to the game. Although they don’t think these systems will be ready until later Seasons, they plan to eventually add the ability to jump into dungeons with random players.
Overall the Campfire Chat was promising and has me excited for the future of Diablo 4. The Nightmare Dungeon changes are exactly what players have been asking for, and it’s great to see them willing to backtrack on resetting world map and Altar of Lilith progress. Season One should be a great opportunity to try a new class!
