Hey, remember how Blizzard is still work on Diablo IV? Yeah, one or two other major things in 2020 may have made that slip from your mind. But today the studio released another quarterly update on the game’s development. Lead Systems Designer David Kim says the studio has been busy tweaking ancestral, demonic, and angelic power, adjusting the sorceress enchantment system, improving the “ratio of effort” for rewards, and shifting character dependence on items as the game works through development. Most notably, the skill system has received a massive overhaul, as seen in the massive skill tree.

“We have made some major changes to Diablo IV’s Skills and Talent systems. We’ve been reading through a lot of the comments from the community and agree that the Talent system needs more depth. Similarly, Skill system progression felt too simple, which created issues where a player would have no meaningful reason to spend their skill points. With this valuable feedback in mind, we’ve have been iterating on a new Skill System. The upper Skills section is where you will spend the Skill Points that you earn by leveling up. Here, you unlock brand new skills, unlock additional functionality for these skills, and unlock Passive Points that you can then spend on the lower Passive section of the tree. The Skill Tree you see above consists of many specific nodes, a sample of which you can see in the screenshots above. If we imagine every single node on that massive Skill Tree affecting different skills in different ways, the path that you decide to take will determine big power increases and playstyle choices.”

Players won’t be able to grab every skill tree node – probably more like a third of them, with the goal that “players can have very distinct, and different ways they build out their character.” Blizzard is also working on the endgame character progression system and promises more info next time.