Shortly after kicking off the first proper season for Diablo 4, Blizzard has revealed some of the features it would like to bring to the game down the line in an interview. Speaking with IGN, producer Joe Piepiora spoke about expanding the role of the Scroll of Escape item as a way to provide a safety net for players with dodgy Internet connections.
Piepiora has stated that, in Season 3, players will be able to use the Scroll of Escape to quickly exit out of a dungeon or other dangerous situation in case they’re facing problems with their connections.
“We see players in these situations, we’re trying to deal with connectivity issues as we find them, and trying to make this a better experience for those players,” said Piepiora. “That’s a really big atomic solution that we’re going to be bringing online. It just requires a lot of work to do the way that we need it to work. So it’s coming out. Right now we’re planning on it for Season 3.”
Piepiora also talks about bringing other features to Diablo 4 in later updates, including the Rebirth system from Diablo 3, as well as a potential party finder feature that would allow players to find multiplayer partners for harder content more easily. For context, the Rebirth system would allow players to bring their seasonal characters into the game’s non-season mode, essentially making them permanent characters.
“We find these opportunities as players begin to play with the tools that we gave them to realize like, ‘Oh, there’s actually a lot of places where we can make improvements here.’ And I think that adding additional player finder-style functionality – whether it is opting into a group, participating in a certain kind of content, or joining a queue for something – there’s definitely an opportunity space here for us to pursue. It is something that we’re actively talking about internally,” said Piepiora while talking about the in-game social tools.
“The Rebirth System is actually something the team has been talking about internally for a while now,” Piepiora said. “It’s something we definitely do want to deliver in the future. I don’t have a timeline for it yet, but it’s something that is being actively discussed. Even this week we’re talking about Rebirth more. So the wheels are definitely in motion and I can commit that it’s going to be coming to Diablo 4 in the future.”
Blizzard just recently kicked off Season of the Malignant in Diablo 4, and its most recent update to the game has been quite controversial, causing players to protest by making the game’s Metacritic user rating drop down drastically. The studio also plans on holding Campfire Chat to discuss the latest update to the game.