There’s always something more to do in Diablo IV: another level to grind, better loot to find, or another character to play. With season 1 about to roll out later this month requiring players to start a new hero from scratch, it’s not surprising that some players are already feeling burnt out just five weeks into the action-RPG’s life. If you’re one of those people, Blizzard wants you to know it’s okay to put down the game and stop playing.
“The most important thing for us in seasons, kind of going off script in a different way, is when you’re playing seasons and you’re playing Diablo IV you’re having a great time and when you’ve reached all the goals and done all the things you think are really, really important and you want to go take a break to play something else for a while that’s fine, we do the same thing,” game director Joseph Piepiora said during a recent developer livestream (via Gamesradar).
The Diablo IV development team stressed that part of the reason new seasons require players to start making a new character at level 1 is to make it feel less overwhelming to jump back in. “The game is a live service, the game’s going to live for years, we want somebody who buys the game a year from now to not feel like they’re a year behind,” franchise manager Rod Ferguson said. “So one of the benefits of seasons is in season 4 on day one you and I are both level 1, you bought it that day, I owned it for a year, we’re in the same place we can play together and have fun together.”
Burnout is a constant tug of war in live-service games, with studios racing to give players a reason to keep playing while also managing expectations during lulls in new content. The Destiny 2 community has currently been going through its annual agony over whether to take a break as it comes off the highs of a new expansion, and as Polygon’s Ryan Gilliam recently tried to remind people, it’s always okay to “Quit! Just quit. Do something you enjoy!”
Still, there’s always an inherent tension present with live-service games where the business model is based on continued engagement and a certain percentage of the most active users spending lots of money on microtransactions. Diablo IV’s late-game XP grind to get to 100 can be especially arduous, and its rarest items require an outrageous amount of luck to find.
Fortunately, the game will be around for years so there’s no rush. It’s a cross-country hike rather than an endless sprint, though the seasonal content itself won’t hang around forever. Diablo IV’s Season of the Malignant goes live on July 20. Plenty of time to give your calloused, right-clicking finger a break.