Blizzard has continued unveiling what’s coming at the end of the month in Diablo IV with the debut of its Belial’s Return gameplay trailer last night. PTR players had already dived in to examine the impact of the Lord of Lies himself, as well as the new lair bosses and party teleport, but they’ll want to pore over the updated patch notes anyway as Blizzard has made a few changes. For example, the team is cracking down on the leecher/leaver (do we have a better name for this?) behavior in party play.
“We’ve received feedback that players would jump into a party, have a member of their party pay the material cost to summon a boss, kill the boss to earn the rewards, then leave the party. This behavior felt unfair to players who were paying the material cost to summon the boss, so now each player must pay the material cost to reap a boss’ rewards from their Hoard. Additionally, we received feedback that it felt unfair to pay the material cost to summon a boss to test your build against, only to die and not receive any rewards. Now, you can fight any Lair Boss on Torment Difficulty I and higher to determine if you have what it takes to best the boss before sinking materials into them.”
Blizzard really, really wants gamers to glom onto this update; it pushed a flurry of interviews on the likes of Gamespot, Polygon, and GamesRadar to talk up lair boss design, permanent upgrades, much-needed nerfs, and difficulty balance.
Meanwhile, remember when Blizzard teased a major inbound collab? It turns out to have been a collab with grimdark manga BERSERK, which actually meshes aesthetically remarkably well. “The blood-soaked legacy of Guts, Griffith, and the Band of the Hawk collides with Sanctuary,” the studio says. Notably, the collab isn’t just with Diablo IV; it’s also with Diablo Immortal. The former’s event runs May 6th through June 3rd (with bundles on sale through June 5th), while the latter’s spans the month of May.
