The Daily Populous Monday February 10th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by videogameschronicle.com and submitted by johanas25

The creator of Diablo says he feels that modern action RPGs level up the player too quickly.

In an interview with Videogamer, David Brevik – who was senior designer and lead programmer on Diablo, and project and design lead on Diablo 2 – criticised modern takes on the genre for rewarding players too quickly.

One of the main criticisms levelled at Diablo 3 (which Brevik didn’t work on) is that players can reach level 70 within a matter of 3-4 hours depending on how they play the game, much faster than in previous games in the series.

According to Brevik, the pace of Diablo 2 is “great” because it takes the player longer to level up, arguing that slower progression makes it more satisfying when you reach that point, and that too many of today’s ARPGs are more focused on levelling up the player faster.

“When you’re shortening that journey and making it kind of ridiculous, you’ve cheapened the entire experience, in my opinion,” Brevik said, stating that the fun in an ARPG “actually isn’t getting to the end, it’s the journey”.

Brevik also suggested that while the Diablo games he worked on had moments where there were a lot of enemies to defeat, modern ARPGs focus too much on throwing hordes of enemies at the player and having them defeat them en masse.

Further reading Interview: Blizzard on the future of Diablo 4 "The notion that you’ve missed four seasons, the only thing you’ve missed is us continuing to learn and iterate"

“I don’t find that as kind of personal and realistic as like Diablo 2,” Brevik explained. “The pacing on Diablo 2, I think, is great. That’s one of the reasons it’s endured.

“I just don’t find killing screen-fulls of things instantly and mowing stuff down and walking around the level and killing everything, very enticing. I just don’t feel like that is a cool experience. I find it kind of silly.”

Last month it was claimed that a Switch 2 port of Diablo 4 is in the works.

ZeCongola on February 10th, 2025 at 15:50 UTC »

Diablo 4 isn't fun enough to want to spend that much time playing. So this leveling slog they have created is mostly just a punishment for people who are determined to get to the end game content which is the actual fun part. I got 1 character to end game then realized I'd have to quit my job and uninstall all my other games to even make playing a seasonal character worth it. They should worry less about their principles and more about making a fun experience. I would have rather they added new classes to Diablo 3 as a DLC than what they did with Diablo 4.

Cloud_N0ne on February 10th, 2025 at 15:37 UTC »

He’s right. Same with MMOs.

Leveling used to be part of the experience, not only for learning your class but for experiencing a wealth of story content and quests. Endgame is great but grinding the same activity over and over pales in comparison to handcrafted narrative content

HotDistribution4227 on February 10th, 2025 at 14:32 UTC »

in 5 minutes will be my turn to post this