Diablo 4 devs reveal character design changes to focus on replayability

Diablo 4 developers plan to encourage more players to engage with its seasonal content by giving characters a shorter shelf life.

Blizzard has confirmed that each character in Diablo 4 “isn’t designed to be played forever” and that players are likely to find “a natural stopping point for their characters once they’ve reached a certain threshold.”

Players will be able to get 221 paragon points, while they’re leveling up in the core game, which will take around 100 hours to achieve per character. The developers went on to say in our recent interview that when players reach this point, “[They] can put the game down and pick a different class, play something a little bit different, come back for a new season. But we do want there to be a finite fixed amount of power.”

This suggests that characters will have a shorter shelf life in Diablo 4 than what they had in previous entries. Essentially, players will be able to max out a character, should they put the required time in, and move on to another when a new season begins.

This new emphasis on replayability is likely to encourage players to engage in seasonal content so that when characters reach the end of their lifecycle, players are motivated to create a new one ready for the next season. It could also encourage Diablo 4 players to experiment with either different classes as well as different builds.

Seasons only came to Diablo during Diablo 3 and not all players took advantage of them. Many Diablo existing players weren’t used to live service content and perhaps didn’t see the value. However, in 2023, both Diablo Immortal and the remake of Diablo 2 have their own version of seasons, and a lot of the content is geared around them. Therefore, Blizzard adding more replay value to Diablo 4 could finally win over the purists.