Diablo 4 associate game director Zaven Haroutunian knows the action role-playing game should feature a compelling amount of "aspirational content" to keep players interested, but the challenge should never outweigh the intrigue.
He tells Diablo 4 YouTuber Rhykker during an interview breaking down the game's new Lord of Hatred expansion, "I think the game needs aspirational content" – which Rhykker worries "has been made accessible to the everyman." Haroutunian counters that, "I don't think that content, whatever it is, should present itself as the sole, or true, completion point."
Haroutunian astutely observes that, "If you present the whole game in this way, where you say, 'And the ultimate challenge is right there,' and everyone looks at that, and they rightfully expect to be able to reach it, right? Like if you present the entire game as this perfectly, linear straight path, then I'm going to expect, as a player, well, the things I'm doing in the path from where I am to where I'm going is going to prepare me for something I'm going to have to do there, right? Video game 101. It's just, like, a thing."
But, from developer Blizzard's perspective, this natural urge to march in a line becomes a problem when something in Diablo 4 is either harder or much easier than its developers intended. When this happens, it's time to rebalance – which does make some aspects of Diablo 4 more welcoming to an average skill-level player, as Rhykker says. But if Blizzard chases punishing gameplay over everything, "everything else we make afterwards has to bend in service to it as an outlier," says Haroutunian.
"What we've tried to do is as much as possible in Lord of Hatred is create opportunities for players to make their own goals, their own aspirational goals," Haroutunian continues to say about the expansion, which Blizzard is currently running through the dishwasher to fix its minor launch messes, like crazy login queues and bugs.
"I guarantee you there's a bunch of people who are motivated to find every fish," Haroutunian says in reference to Diablo 4's new fishing mini-game. And it seems like he's right. While some hardcore horde killers on Reddit can't imagine why Diablo 4 now features fishing (though I imagine even demons could benefit from a salmon's omega-3), one reply explains elegantly: "Big game that's fun for different reasons to different people."
Haroutunian would be proud of this response. It defines his egalitarian approach to game design, as he continues to tell Rhykker, "There's stuff in the game for all sorts of player types, which means not everything has to be for everyone. And that's great. Like, to me, that's very healthy."
