Diablo 4’s character customization comes at a cost, unlike Diablo 3’s

Respec costs — in other words, how difficult it is to respecialize and change your character build — are an emotive issue for the Diablo community. In the last two games of this series, there have been very distinct philosophies. Diablo 2It was a very tough time. Diablo 3The skill tree was removed, as well. This allowed for characters to be changed on-the-fly.

Diablo 4 Polygon, who attended a press roundtable last week, heard Adam Jackson, the lead class designer, describe how he is carefully choosing a path between both. Early in the game — to all intents and purposes, for the length of the campaign, which should take you to level 50 of 100 — respeccing your character is “very, very cheap, to the point that it’s essentially free,” he said. After that, you will sink deeper into the game. Diablo 4’s endgame, it gets much more expensive.

“We have to balance this idea that we want players to commit to a fantasy and a character and have actual weight and meaning to their choices,” Jackson said. “But we also want them to feel free to customize their characters and explore and try different builds and fantasies and ways to play.”

Jackson outlined what he considered to be the advantages and disadvantages of Diablo 2’s and Diablo 3’s respective approaches. He loves the way a Diablo 2Players will have a hyper-specific playstyle and build, as well as focusing on a fantasy. He wants to replicate this in Diablo 4 — only without the fear of making a mistake that discourages experimentation, or hampers learning the game, early on.

“If you can’t respec your character forever, then that means that you’re really committed to your fantasy, and you’re really rewarded for thinking about your build and planning that out,” Jackson said. “And every time you restart the game, you’re actually motivated to go through it again, and try this new, completely different way of playing. And there’s a lot of good rewards there. But it comes with the cons that you know, you’re very scared to do your building.”

He is the one who deserves it. Diablo 3’s completely freeform approach isn’t the answer, though. “It comes with some downsides: The attachment that you have to your character you’re building, and your fantasy isn’t nearly as strong,”

“I would say our system or our vision is somewhere in the middle […] Everything kind of is on a spectrum, where you know, you’ve got one end that’s completely like one way of doing things, and the other end is completely the other way. Our answer often lies somewhere in between. And then depending on feedback, we may move it up or down that slider.”

Jackson says the Diablo 3 playstyle of bending your character to suit the loot that you find should be viable through the campaign, but that later on, the build will come first, and you’ll be looking to find or alter loot to fit. But he’s anxious to point out that, at level 100, loot is just one of many places of investment that contribute to specializing your character, including Paragon points (which are essentially post-level cap leveling) and the new Codex of Power — a suite of Legendary skills that are awarded for completing specific dungeons and can be collected and equipped at will.

While it might not sound like the strongest design philosophy — especially in the shadow of Diablo 4’s two diametrically opposed forebears — there is something distinctive to Diablo 4’s way of doing things. The team also wants to give players more choices and freedom to reach their goals. This is why they’ve taken the bold step of removing super-powerful item sets — the holy grail of Diablo loot collection — from the game.

“As much as we can, we’re trying to chase a more open ended design in a way where the players can choose how they want to get to their destinations,” Jackson says. “When it comes to sets […] we give you an endpoint, but then there’s only one road to get there, which is to acquire these two or three or six very specific items. Our north star is in Diablo 4 is that we don’t want to be that prescriptive.”

Runewords is a powerful, flexible and highly customizable gear customization system. Diablo 2This would appear to be a perfect fit with the Diablo 4 team’s design goals. Jackson laughed sarcastically when I told him about them.

“We like Runewords,” he said. “They’re very cool. We don’t have anything to announce as far as if they’re gonna be in the game in the immediate future. We do think they’re still a really cool idea.

“And that’s all I’m gonna say right now,” he added, pointedly.

Diablo 4Released on 6th June for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 Windows PC, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. Without Runewords — for now.