“We’ve had our authentic moment, now we can start to turn the dial to be a little bit more fantastic.” We chat Diablo 4 microtransactions with Rod Fergusson, and striking a balance between earning and paying for the best Diablo drip

What you need to know

• The Diablo 4 store, packed with cosmetic-only microtransactions holds some of the coolest gear in the game. 
• Some players express frustration in feeling that the store holds better items than those earned from playing the game.
• We interviewed Diablo lead Rod Fergusson all about the franchise and the hot store debate.
• The aim at launch was authenticity to the Diablo universe, but as game Seasons have passed the devs have used the store to exercise a more creative and “fantastic” vision for cosmetics.
• Work is going on to include better cosmetics that are indeed earnable and provide lower-cost items and bundles tailor-made to the player.

One of the best things about building your character in a Diablo game, is equipping yourself with the finest drip you can find. It’s not an element of the game all players care about, some preferring to just concentrate on the task in hand, fighting back the hordes of Hell. Some of us however, want to look good doing it, and there are extra style points to be had if your gear has been acquired from hard battle or bestowed by RNGesus. In Diablo 3, whether you’d earnt your shiny new wings from completing the hardest chapter on the Season Journey, or they’d dropped in the rarest instance of Whimsydale it didn’t matter, they were marks of a warrior who’d played a hell of a lot of hours of Diablo and had the proof to show it. 

Striking a balance between paying and earning the best items

Diablo 4 launching as a live service game, with a cosmetic shop almost turned this notion on it’s head. The worry pre-launch from players was that the finest armor would now be available at a price, and the cosmetics we could earn in game would lack the same impact as with previous games. At launch, for most players it was a relief to find that actually, you could earn some pretty badass gear in game and very early on. In fact, in Diablo 2 and 3 you really had to wait until end game to achieve anything worthy of showing off in the lobby, but in Diablo 4 the meticulously designed armor from low level to end game was pretty damn cool. The designs offering in game and in the store were pretty much on par.

Something distinct, at least to me, seemed to change around Season 2, Season of Blood. Having not been tempted by anything in the store before, all of a sudden the designs had got a bit more daring, and stood out against the bleak backdrop. I’ve since grabbed a few shiny items like the Beautiful in Sin set, but while the huge improvement to the store cosmetics is a credit to the artists, it also presents a dilemma. Is it true that the items you can get from playing the game are still equally good? Or are they falling behind?

I’m not alone in my musings, as it’s been asked of the developers in the latest Campfire Chat about making it easier to earn the Diablo 4 store items, and the answers have been that they’re working on this. I got the chance to interview Rod Fergusson, GM of Diablo this week, and posed the question to him about what this actually meant, and if he agrees with the perception of store items being ‘better’. 

“What we’re trying to do, like with how to interpret the teasing [from the Campfire Chats] is a little bit of both [easier to earn and to buy]. If you look at ‘easier to acquire’ at least from a purchase perspective, like we just released these class bundles where you could get two different looks for a much cheaper price. So we did one of those for each class. Perhaps less than half of what our top armor stuff normally goes for. So we wanted to find places for people to use the shop, but at a lower price point. “

As well as discussing the current bundles available, Rod detailed some other work going on to make the store items more approachable from a lower price point.