Former Diablo 3 dev regrets pushing back against more complex skill system that 'would have been probably better than what we have today' for ARPG veterans

Diablo 3's former developer, Andrew Chambers, discusses key design decisions and compares it to Last Epoch. While Diablo 3 aimed for a broader audience with a more approachable skill system, Chambers regrets not implementing a more complex rune system that would have appealed to veteran Diablo fans. Despite this, he still believes Diablo 3's pacing and enemy design were superior.

Diablo 3 may no longer be the newest ARPG on the block, but that doesn't mean that its fans and developers are done thinking about it. One of its former developers has been discussing the key design decisions that went into it, in fact, and comparing it to 11th Hour Games' Last Epoch, which launched to immediate success back in February, with players quick to point out the similarities between it and the Diablo series. 

This comes from Andrew Chambers, who served as a system designer for the 2012 ARPG. In a new video shared on YouTube, the designer discusses more about the key design decisions behind Diablo 3 that set it apart from Last Epoch, for better or worse. One of these was the choice to keep Diablo 3's skill system more approachable, rather than making it complex like Last Epoch's – something which Chambers believes, in retrospect, would have been better for veteran Diablo fans. 

"Fundamentally, overarching everything, we wanted to aim at a broader audience than just Diablo," he explains. "We didn't just wanna capture the Diablo audience – we wanted to expand upon it. The best way to do that is to create systems that are much more approachable, which usually means trade-offs in that complexity. This wasn't for a lack of trying, I remember the team who was focused on the skill system went back and forth – I think they built out 12 different full iterations on the skill system."

According to Chambers, one of these scrapped systems would have involved players searching out "runes" that would slot into skills to add different properties, with varying affixes and levels, bringing with it an "endless chase game" for players to upgrade their skills. 

"The great irony is I argued hard against that idea. I was like, 'This is way too complicated; people are just going to try and figure out the best solution; they're going to end up with this inventory nightmare; it's not something we can really expect our audience to do.' I regret that, really. I do think that that skill system would have been probably better than what we have today, at least for the more 'pure' Diablo audience," he continues. 

"But I am happy with the skill system that we have. Again, it broadens the audience, it brings more people into the possibility space of playing and exploring action role-playing games."

In the video, Chambers also speaks a lot about Diablo 3's controversial Auction House, and highlighted Last Epoch's trading system as a glowing example of one that's "super robust." He also believes that "most action role-playing games should be looking at Last Epoch's trading system solution and asking themselves, 'Wow, what can we learn from this? How can we pull from this to make ours better?' Because I really think that they nail it."

Ultimately, these are just two factors that contribute to Chambers' overall belief that Blizzard "never could have made a game like Last Epoch." With that said, there's still plenty that he thinks Diablo 3 did better overall, such as its pacing and interesting enemies, so there's still loads for the team to be proud of.

*Diablo 4's Season 4 PTR patch notes launched late last month, and *they're enormous.