‘Path of Exile 2’ dev says Blizzard learned “hard lessons” with ‘Diablo 4’

Grinding Gear Games, the developer of Path of Exile 2, expressed its empathy for Blizzard Entertainment following the disastrous response to the Diablo 4 Season of the Malignant patch.

In an interview with IGN, Path of Exile 2 director Jonathan Rogers said that the Diablo 4 team is staring down “a real tough situation” with the state of the game. Patch 1.1.1 saw Barbarians and Sorcerers hit with significant nerfs as well as decreases to player survivability and damage output. This was to prevent players from “blasting through content,” but the community’s response to the changes was one of severe irritation.

“I mean ultimately the learning process for running a live game with Seasons like this is a hard one. We’ve learned our lessons about how to do this stuff,” continued Rogers. “I feel very bad for the developers, because I’m sure that they mean well, but yeah, it’s a hard lesson to learn.”

Path of Exile 2 is considered to be a competitor to Diablo 4. However, Rogers explicated that Grinding Gears Games’ sequel offers an “MMO path” for players.

“We’re going more in the kind of like Elden Ring sort of direction. It’s much more action-focused, but with a sort of hardcore bent. It is more complex in a lot of ways, but I think that that’s something that a lot of players crave and you can do a huge amount of experimentation in our game with the character classes and builds,” said the director.

“It’ll keep you going for a very long time. So yeah, there’s just a lot more going on with regard to the depth in Path of Exile,” he concluded.

In other gaming news, Battlefield 2042 update 5.2.0 changes swathes of the Hourglass map in order to “keep combat focused, while having more opportunity to defend yourself”.