I read an interesting thread the other day that got me thinking about a really fundamental question regarding Diablo 4. While the game always had plans to compete in the live service space, as so many games try to now, is it…actually a live service game, when all is said and done? Reflecting on the fact that I had not played it since week 2 of the season launch, and have had really no reason to, I wanted to dive a bit deeper into the question.
Diablo 4 is priced like a live service. A change from the seasons of Diablo 3, it now has a battle pass with a paid track for $10, a pretty standard price. But then it also uses the seasonal divides as a springboard to dramatically populate its microtransaction store with what will end up being at least 25 sets of armor ranging in price from $20-35, purchased through unearned Platinum bundles.
But the reality of at least season 1 is that there are no real live service elements other than “a thing” that launches every three months. Granted, that “thing,” in this case, the Malignant Heart concept, is free to access, but the goal is to make your grinding actually produce something, like the cool, permanent cosmetics from the paid battle pass. Otherwise, all the seasonal elements are zapped at the end of a season and your character gets ported to the eternal realm with a worse build, with those elements stripped away.
There isn’t a reason to keep coming back other than the grind, a grind which you could really do any time, on any character, on any realm. This season, you could finish the seasonal story quest in a couple hours. Less, if it wasn’t broken up by arbitrary checklists. Then you find your three favorite hearts for your build, and that’s kind of it.
Blizzard has previously said that it’s okay if you leave Diablo 4 and come back later, but I do feel like it’s really stretching the definition of a live service to have the main new loot additions to your season be in a battle pass and a store full of microtransactions. The actual, new stuff is like 6-7 aspects and one unique drop per class. It’s just very strange to interact with a season for maybe 1-2 weeks before dropping it for 2.5 months unless you want to do the same grind you might as well be doing outside of the seasonal model.
Supposedly future seasons are going to be more in depth than season 1 here, so we’ll see what that brings. But yeah, I’m not sure if calling Diablo 4 a live service, despite having a battle pass and a bit of new content every three months, really fulfills that definition. But is that bad? I guess maybe not, and it depends what you’re wanting from the game.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Read the full article here
