Blizzcon 2023 happened over the weekend and there’s been a hell of updates for many of Blizzard’s beloved titles. One of them happens to be Diablo IV. This installment of Diablo boasts a reimagined, open-world environment that invites exploration in every corner of the dark, twisted realm. The combat dynamics have evolved, demanding strategic finesse in every encounter. With a captivating narrative and both cooperative and competitive multiplayer options, Diablo IV has been be a devilishly thrilling experience that pays homage to its origins while boldly venturing into uncharted territory.

With Diablo IV’s release, it has set a commendable standard in the gaming industry when it comes to engaging with its community.  The developers have demonstrated an unparalleled commitment to keeping players in the loop about updates and balance changes. It’s this open dialogue that has helped Diablo maintain its status as a frontrunner in community engagement, setting a shining example for the gaming industry at large.

Even with the long day at Blizzcon 2023, Adam Jackson, the Live Class Designer for Diablo IV took the time to sit with us and answer a few questions we had about Diablo IV. If you still don’t understand what the heck Adam does, he and his team handles everything related to the classes in game, and the things that go into the live game, the balance, a little bit of system works, and all things related to that. Adam was an amazing person to talk to and he provided some in depth behind the scene knowledge that we’re about to share!

There’s been a lot of talk within the community regarding the drop rates from the Helltide Living Steel chest being not so lucrative. Are there any plans on tweaking the drop rates in the future? 

Adam: So, you know, we had to kind of have a lot of different drops from different places to access all these end game bosses that we came out with, right? We’ve heard the feedback from players that, you know, I think not only is it’s a combination of two things, I think. One may be that, you know, they don’t feel like they’re getting enough Living Steel out of the chest. But I think another one that we hear a lot from players is that, you know, it’s kind of rough to farm those because Helltide’s not always up. Whereas, you know, something like the vampiric, the vampiric kind of version of Helltide in season two is. And so players, you know, they can’t even get the materials whenever they want. I don’t have anything to share specifically today regarding plans about that. But we do recognize that it’s a pain point for players. And we do have plans to do something to address it at some point in the future.

So do you feel that any classes are underpowered in the current build of Diablo 4 and why?

Adam: Well, that’s an interesting question. There are a couple of ways I could think of. So I don’t think that there are any classes that are underpowered right now. When we redesigned and kind of redid all of our combat math in the season of blood for Diablo IV, one of our goals with that update was that we wanted to make sure that like, all the core builds for every class would be able to complete all content in the game. 

So you know, we did a lot of changes to monsters and even things like Uber Lilith and tuning of things to ensure that basically your average build should be able to complete the game. And I think that we’ve hit that mark pretty well. Now, if you say underpowered, like the difference of like the worst build and the very best build, there’s definitely some builds I recognize that are really, really strong right now that are like way stronger than other ones. But our goal with kind of the update and for now is as long as all the builds can kind of complete the content, maybe some can do it faster than others. But if everybody can at least do the base game content, we consider that kind of a success and a win. And we feel like we are in a place where that’s happening. So some builds are way better. But I don’t think there’s really any builds that can’t do the content, which was true, I think when we shipped the game and even a bit in season one.

So what lessons have you learned about class design and inclusion from previous games in the Diablo franchise? While Hellfire was unofficial for Diablo 1, it added fresh new classes to shake things up, while Diablo 2 saw the inclusion of both lore and mechanic innovation with the Druid and Assassin. Any plans for similar additions to D4?

Adam: Yeah, that’s interesting. I mean, we’ve had definitely a lot of class learnings over the years between D2, even D1, honestly, to now, you know, like we even revamped the Rogue, for example, from Diablo 1 in our game is kind of a reimagined, very different version of the classic kind of updated to the modern take on games. I’d say we’ve learned a lot of things, even Diablo IV, I think someone even mentioned just now in the chat talking about like, clear speed of things and power being measured by speed. So one thing that I think we’ve taken away, especially in D4 is that players really want to, we call it zoom, or really want to go fast, right? 

They want to clear things fast, they want to move fast. They want to do things quickly. And one of the kinds of key challenges there also is that you know, when you’re making a class, a lot of the way that these kinds of games feel good is having a progression of your character. Like when you log in and first start, your character needs to feel pretty good. But you also need to leave room for that character to grow and get better and cooler over time. And so we’re kind of fighting ourselves in a way of like, we want to make you cool, like right when you log in, if it’s not cool, then you’re just going to cool. If we go too far, we don’t have a goal for you to set for yourself to get somewhere that’s awesome. 

We’ve learned a few things about pacing how we deliver rewards and how we grow the character. And one of those kinds of mentions, going back to the Necromancer is that sometimes there’s some importance of class fantasy where every class needs to feel very different from one another. But if we go too far in that realm, like for example, the Necromancer, one of our goals in D4 was, you know, we want the Necromancer to feel different from other classes. And one of the kind of like the downsides of a Necromancer is they don’t get access to like a ton of move speed or dashes or teleports or things because that’s kind of the rogues fantasy and a little bit of the sorcerer’s fantasy with teleport. So those are the classes. They stand out and they’re special because they can move really quickly, right? But if we don’t give the Necromancer any moving speed at all or anything, then it can actually go too far and kind of feel like a slog compared to other classes. 

So I think we’ve kind of learned that like we need them to be different, but there are some things that they all kind of need to be able to do to a certain level. And if they don’t meet the minimum bar, then we need to make them meet that bar, whether it’s move speed, clear speed or AOE versus a single target. There are a lot of different ways that classes kind of need to function at a fundamental level of survivability. We ran into that with the Sorcerer at launch where they weren’t able to survive as long as other classes. So I’d say that one of the lessons we learned is that they need to perform at a minimum level in all these things or else they kind of fall apart. And so even though it makes them a little bit samey, we get them to that level and then everything else we try and make as different as possible. I know that’s a really long answer.

As a class designer who has probably seen thousands of pieces of feedback, do you believe players actually want balance or do you believe they actually want their chosen class to be the best and they may just not realize it and mask it in the name of balance?

Adam: Oh, that’s an interesting one. I think in my heart of hearts, I think players want to feel powerful and feel like they’re doing cool and awesome things. And I don’t know that they necessarily care as much about balance except for when they see someone else doing something and it’s way cooler and more powerful. They kind of want that, right? Because it feels bad if you see it over there and you don’t have it. But I don’t think anyone necessarily wants to just be overpowered and know that they’re overpowered and like one-shot everything because then there’s no challenge and they have nothing really to strive for.

Yeah, the comparison is the thief of joy is a quote. I love that quote. And I think it’s actually kind of true. I don’t think people are inherently trying to seek out being overpowered, but they do want to feel powerful. And I think they want to grow in that power and have that kind of progression of feeling like there’s a next step and a next goal and the next thing that I want to do. At the core of a lot of things that we do in ARPGs is really about goal set. I tell this to my team a lot, but I think ARPGs are about kind of two different things. One is efficiency, like really being efficient, like doing the thing that is going to maximize your getting the drops, getting the power, whatever it is. And then the second thing is goal setting. And I think what players are really chasing is having goals and having things to set themselves up for to feel good and then have things to use that against. And as long as we’re delivering on those two things, I feel like players are going to be happy. So that was kind of like I talked about before, like we balanced season two with this in mind. We want players to be able to achieve all the goals that the game sets out for them. 

When we say a goal, get to level 100. Most builds should be able to do that if they’re optimized and played well, or pretty much every build ideally would do Nightmare Dungeon 100 or Uber Lilith or any of these challenging things, they should be able to get there if they’re optimized and playing well.

How does Blizzard plan to keep class designs fresh for each season?

Adam: So actually the title I have now, so my old title was a lead class designer. Now I’m lead live class designer. And that little difference was because we have spun up kind of a team specifically to look at live and keeping that fresh over time. 

So we actually have a group of dedicated people, including myself, that are only looking at the problems that players have in the live game. And also even looking at ways to make the game better that aren’t just answers to problems, but really just anything we could think of that’s going to make things cooler. So on the class side, there’s a ton of things that are very easy, I think. Obviously we add new legendaries and new uniques to the game. That’s going to shake up the class meta and what people are doing and the fantasies they can chase and the builds they can make. We’re also fully intending to do balance and design updates to things. So if there are skills or upgrades or whatever that just aren’t working, that players aren’t attracted to or aren’t doing well, we’re going to go and either buff them or redesign them to be cooler or find ways for them to fit. 

We’re also going to add new things that maybe players aren’t even asking for, but we believe are problems to the game. One example of that in season two, we added a bunch of new scaling mechanics where you can use stats to scale certain effects, whether it’s like a key passive, a legendary power, or even skills and things in different ways. We have plans to do more of that in the future. So I think there’s actually a lot of pretty easy ways that we can make the game significantly better for people. We’re just getting started with season two. And we received quite a lot of positive feedback around season two, which is great.

It seems that the Rogue class is performing well in the leaderboard listing in the first thousand Wanderers to achieve level 100 in hardcore mode, where four of the top players are Rogues. Coincidentally, the Druid class isn’t performing as well, only one in the top 20 spots. Was this within your expectations when balancing the classes?

Adam: I’d say that’s probably within expectations. And then I guess the implicit question there is, is that a problem? Right? I’m unsure if I see that as a problem. I don’t know. I don’t know that we want to balance the game around speedrunning specifically or like getting to a Benchmark quickly I think it’s definitely a consideration if the gap is like way too wide but I think it’s within expectation that rogues are moving faster than most other classes most of the time That’s part of their core fantasy and kind of going back to what I talked about before of like every class needs to hit a Minimum bar of mobility, right?

But if everyone is like as good as rogue then we strip away what’s unique about them and then If you apply that logic to all kinds other parts of class design like does every class need to be exactly the same tankiness The exact same AOE clear speed the exact same single target clear speed. We put ourselves into a pretty tight box where we can’t design Creative and interesting things anymore When it’s that strict so there does need to be some wiggle room. I do think it’s a problem if the gap is too wide. 

I don’t feel like it’s too wide right now that’s something that we could revisit but like speed to level and speed to especially like hardcore level. There’s a very specific group of things that you need and want for your character that I don’t know that I want to like Limit the design of all the classes to fit that It scares me a little bit. So unsure, but if it becomes a problem, you know the community like if there’s a big outcry. They’re like no, this is how we want to play and this is how we want to be balanced. Then then we’ll do it, but I don’t know if I want to do that yet.

Hypothetically, what would be an ideal sixth class for D4 to complement the current classes that we have?

Adam: Oh interesting without trying to get me to say what the sixth class is. I would say although kind of in the same realm an ideal class at least. This is kind of my view and I think the view of the team since we’ve already announced we’re doing something completely different. So I’ll go about it this way maybe kind of how we decided to do something different.

So like when Diablo IV launched right now we delivered on five very different unique fantasies that are all things that we’ve done before that I think people can kind of appreciate and love right? You’ve got the barbarian a physical fighter. You’ve got a caster with a sorcerer. You’ve got a kind of a jack of all trades with the druid that appeals to a wide variety of play styles. You’ve got the speedy class and the daggers and things and ranged with the rogue and then you’ve got a summoner class with the necromancer.

So we’ve delivered on a lot of what’s known and what we know players like and that are very different fantasies. I think the ideal sixth class and kind of the route that why we chose what we did and the route we’re going is something that is completely different and new so, you know I can’t say what it is But you know The sixth class is something that you have not seen before in a Diablo game if anywhere it’s it’s very different and I think you know. When I think of like where we’ve come so far we’ve done so much of delivering on what people kind of expect and we know that people want like more existing classes in the game right. It’s no secret to us that you know there’s quite a few archetypes out there that people want that we’ve done and we hear that loud and clear but I think there’s also like a an expectation that we should deliver to players that we’re delivering really new and fresh things.

 Not only things that we’ve done because I think if we just keep doing things we’ve done we kind of hit a point. Down the road where people are asking. Well, what are they doing? That’s new. What are they doing? That’s actually like really exciting me and feel it makes me feel like oh this game can do anything and it’s awesome. And so that’s why in the next expansion. We’re trying to really deliver on something that’s very different that you haven’t seen before.

Diablo Immortal received a new class this year, which is the Blood Knight. One could argue that it fits season 2 content particularly well. Has there been any discussion into porting that class into D4 or would it simply not work the way you want it to?

Adam: Without giving anything away in the future is I don’t want to promise things like that. But I don’t think there would be any I personally and this is me speaking for myself. I don’t see a hurdle to bringing something like the Blood Knight or anything new that Diablo Immortal or other games make it into D4. We’re definitely focused on making the things that we think kind of fit our game and the narrative in the world.

I kind of put those things into the same kind of category or a bucket as bringing back like a D3 or D2 class that people love of like we could do the same thing or we could do something new and I think there’s a good place in time to do something very different and a good place in time to bring back something that people want. It is very much a matter though, kind of like what people talk about in the chat our players say like if we decide one thing that means we don’t do something else right. 

So that’s a very important and fraught decision that you know kind of has no complete winning side there. So we just have to choose very carefully. I think like when is the right time to bring something that we know people want and when is the right time to really challenge the norms of even the ARPG space and try to push it, push the genre forward with something new and I think our game needs to do both really to do really well.

So what class do you believe to be the most beginner friendly and which is the most difficult to master?

Adam: So what’s hard about that is that I will say when we design the classes. I was involved very heavily with like the the core identity and kind of the values of the classes and we even have pillars and we make people that are new.

The team watch these things that presentations that I’ve given a team about how we’d make them. We don’t really think of the classes as a whole as an easy class or a hard class. But I did think about that or the team did a lot when we were thinking of the builds. So there are absolutely builds where we think hey This one is kind of geared towards beginners and and you know newer people and then builds are kind of geared towards people that had You know have higher APM or or want something a little more challenging.

So as an example of like a high skill build, I would say is a walking arsenal barbarian. We made that key passive knowing that a lot of people just wouldn’t like it. Um, that’s the one where you have to equip the three different weapon types and cycle through them at kind of a rhythmic cadence. So not only do we challenge you on like you have to put different skills on your bar that use all the different arsenal weapons but then we also challenge you that your moments of a moment combat. You have to be cycling between them at a certain cadence or else you’re losing out on a lot of potential damage. That’s very taxing right? Because your brain is always on, you always have to worry about these rotating buffs. There’s a lot going on there.

Whereas other bills aren’t nearly as taxing for the player and we did go into that knowing it as an example of kind of a more simple build the werebearer for the druid. We designed that to be kind of a little simpler if you play that, you know you have your giant pulverize you just hit everything with a big button. You’re also very tanky so it’s hard to die. You have a little bit of mobility. So you’ve got like these rudimentary tools for everything but you’re not required to really like dash around a ton and think about your exact position. You just kind of go in you mow things down and you move on right and you make sure that you live.

So that’s kind of how we think about it. I don’t know if there’s any class. I would say that’s easier though I’d say probably that the sorcerer is fairly overall beginner-friendly. They have a lot of AoEs. They have access to a lot of the tools that you would kind of need and expect to get through the game. And maybe I would say that barbarian might be a little bit tougher early on just because you’re your melee

So you have to learn to not stand and all the bad things but they also get a lot of survivability tools and unstoppables and access to overcome those challenges. So that’s kind of how I think about it I know that’s not a great direct answer, but that’s how we think about challenging builds and classes.

How does class design affect group play and for those who prefer solo like me?

Adam: So we do think a lot about class design I would say primarily we think about the solo player. It has to work for the solo player and if it works in group play, that’s great. But generally, almost everything works in group play because you actually get quite a bit stronger as a group compared to solo.

We have very few skills that actually directly impact group play. Like we have synergies that we know exist for example if I’m a frost sorcerer and you’re a frost sorcerer. You know when you freeze things I can benefit from that like that’s one aspect of group play that we know exists and you benefit. And then we also have things like barbarian shouts where you know, you actually directly can benefit people that are near you but we also keep it fairly limited because. We don’t want to make group play the only way to play where you’re at a severe deficit if you’re a solo player. 

So kind of from the ground up, we design our classes and our builds kind of like what. I mentioned the very beginning of this interview where everyone has to perform at a minimum level at everything in the game. Or else it doesn’t work and we need to buff them to that level, right? And we came through this quite a bit in development actually of the classes where we tried to go too far and too sharp in a fantasy and then it didn’t play out very well. And we had to kind of come back on it to make sure that that class could function.

I’m talking about things like survivability. Every class has to have a build has to have a minimum amount or else you can’t play the game. You also have a certain need to have a certain amount of AoE and single-target damage. And if you have not enough of either of those then you either really stink in dungeons. Or you really stink against bosses and elites and that becomes a problem. And so we have to think about these things as a good example in development.

There was a time when the druid the werewolf skill shredded. I actually designed this so I could say it because it didn’t work. But the original version of shred the druid jumped to an enemy and they did three very quick swipes. And it was only a single target like only exactly one enemy would be hit and we balanced that that well you know the fantasies you jump and pounce on an enemy and you shred them to pieces and It would do a ton of single-target damage, like a ton. But it had no AoE and the werewolf’s weakness was you know, we thought werebear is AoE with pulverize and werewolf is dashing around very precise single target and It’s a cool fantasy. It makes sense on paper. And then we play within the game It didn’t work as Diablo. There are just too many times where you’re being attacked by too many things on the screen and that it actually the werewolf was just falling way too far behind and then also they would just shred bosses. And so our boss balance versus everything else. They would like to shred elites and shred bosses, but then stink against everything else and it just didn’t work out that well.

And so then we went to okay not you’re not gonna shred just single target. We’ll have the same thing you jump and you pounce on enemy you shred them three times. But it’s like a very tiny AoE barely in front of you. So you’ll hit like the target and like if there are things next to it, you’ll hit them and we almost shipped with that actually and then we came out with the current version that one of our designers was really passionate about and they really liked where you know, You have like the three combo thing where you do like the one-two and then the spin hit. So you’ve got a little bit more AoE and it’s still werewolf. I would say it’s still a more single target than Werebear, but we’ve raised the floor of the AoE potential a lot more than we had originally wanted. And I can see in the future when certain classes or builds fall behind in that way that we’ll have to adjust. But yeah, that’s kind of how we think about it.

From a developer update live stream back in July. There were some talks about increasing the overall storage space for the game. Will we be getting updates on that down the line?

Adam: Honestly, I don’t have a great answer for that one. Not because I don’t know if not that I don’t know that we have one but it’s not my team that does that so, that’s primarily a different team that handles it. I want to say I do know for a fact talking with the team that we’re aware that storage space continues to be an issue. We did do some things to try and solve the problem with like, you know, making gems not drop from enemies and now it’s a currency and doing other things like that. But I’ve been also adding filters and other things like that to find things that you want. But I don’t have any news to share on storage space specifically just because it’s not my group that handles it. But I do know that the team’s aware and is working towards that.

What do you think about the sentiments within the community that the cosmetic sets for Sorceress don’t resemble your classic high fantasy spell casters with the big pointy heads?

Adam: I think it’s definitely a point of feedback that I know the team is aware of. I don’t really have anything to share like or do we have plans to add very specific things? But I do know that we’ve heard the feedback and similar feedback about like, you know. When players don’t have customization or their options aren’t exactly what they want one thing, I will say overall as a team is that we were really receptive to feedback like that and feedback in other ways and I would say, you know, a lot of the things that you saw in season two is kind of our testament to that where we heard a lot of feedback on systems and classes and mounts and inconveniences that people have. And we took a lot of steps towards kind of resolving those things. So um, we’re open to kind of flexing our original philosophies and designs on things because really ultimately at the end of the day. And I say this a lot to the designers on my team is that you know, the players are actually the ones that eventually determine what we’re going to do and what we prioritize and where we’re going to go.

You know, we can have all the you know our own personal pie-in-the-sky fantasies and opinions and designs of like we think this is exactly the best way to do things but if it gets into the hands of players and they’re like, yeah, this stinks we hate it. Then we have to pivot right as a team of what we value and what we’re going to do So i’d say keep that kind of feedback coming. We do see it and hear it and it absolutely very heavily influences what we decide to make and what directions we go.