Almost immediately after the Rift system was introduced, players were already annoyed at the requirements needed to just access them. The focus away from a system that never really ends might sound counter-intuitive from a game development point of view, but both Piepiora and Vickey understood at the beginning of creating Diablo 4 that players felt tired of running continuously on the hamster wheel that was Diablo 3's Rifts and Greater Rifts. We wanted to put more emphasis on the choices the player has made over the course of their character's progression and what they got for drops versus the amount of time they’ve invested purely in that character." "We wanted to focus more on the idea of capped progression and not this sense of never-ending power progression. But from the earliest seasons to the most recent, Rifts have continued to be a contentious issue, as players had no way early on to pick their rewards and were forced to continually grind them in hopes that the one piece of gear they needed would drop this time.ĭuring an interview with Game Rant, Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora and Dungeons Producer Ash Sweetring Vickey explained why Rifts and Greater Rifts were one of the biggest things they wanted to change going from Diablo 3 into Diablo 4. Since the introduction of rifts, Diablo 3 has run a total of 28 seasons, with the latest introducing The Altar of Rites, a new progression system that gave players a type of talent tree to pick and choose new account-wide character buffs. Introduced all the way back in patch 2.1, Greater Rifts were designed as an endgame play mode that was timed and would get progressively more difficult, but would also provide rewards to match. With Diablo 4, developers knew they had to change the endgame, which meant changing one of the more controversial systems in Diablo 3: Rifts and Greater Rifts.
Diablo 3 has changed significantly during that time, and Blizzard has learned quite a few lessons on what players want in a Diablo game. This is the first major mainline entry in over 11 years, with Diablo 3 originally releasing in 2012. With Diablo 4 set to release June 6, old and new fans are eagerly awaiting their opportunity to hack-n-slash their way across the world of Sanctuary once again.
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