One Of The Diablo 4 Hardest Design Choices Is Something You'd Never Expect

Summary

Naming activities in Diablo 4 is a major challenge for Blizzard.
Designers use internal placeholder names, but struggle with official names for player clarity.
Blizzard plans for a 10-year roadmap, requiring creative naming for activities and seasons.

With a game as complex as Diablo 4, it’s understandable that Blizzard has a few difficult decisions to make regarding game design. There are a ton of factors to consider, such as not making a class overpowered, or nerfing a class too much that no one would want to play it.

However, another aspect of the game is challenging to design, and chances are, it hasn’t crossed players’ minds.

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Blizzard Is Running Out Of Ways To Creatively Name Diablo 4’s Activities, Seasons

Speaking to PC Gamer, Lead Live Game Designer Colin Finer and Lead Seasons Designer Deric Nunez discussed the challenges of creating “evil” names for Diablo 4’s activities.

Finer said, “I would say it’s probably one of the most difficult design challenges,” and Nunez added, “We go through many rounds of iterations and internal dev names that change weekly, especially when the season is just getting kicked off and rolling and the identity is still finding its feet.”

If you think about it: Diablo has most of its activities and seasonal content named after demons, hell, evil and the like. Helltide Dungeons? Seething Realms? Dark Citadel? Yeah, there’s just os much they can do.

It’s a lot easier for internal placeholder names, but for the official ones that millions of players will play? Not so much. Blizzard needs to make it straightforward and transparent to the player what the activity is. One example given is in the upcoming new season (Season 8), players will fight two versions of the archdemon Belial. There’s one that’s a bit bigger than a person, and one that’s the same size as King Kong. During the season’s development, the developers referred to these Belial variants as “baby Belial” and “Gigabelial” — names they can’t exactly use for the final roll-out.

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Whatever activity or seasonal names Blizzad can think of, they’ll need to be much more creative, as the dev team says they have a 10-year roadmap planned. Imagine the activities and seasons that will take if it comes to pass.

Aside from Season 8, Diablo 4 is also getting its first external crossover, as Blizzard announced the franchise will be featuring the anime Berzerk soon.