Diablo 4’s associate game director suggested that the seasonal battle passes introduced into the game will require roughly 80 hours to complete.
Blizzard’s latest entry into their action RPG franchise Diablo 4 is slowly approaching the horizon. Launching on June 6, 2023, the devs have been hard at work ironing out flaws and bugs encountered in the most recent beta release of the game. Alongside this, we’ve received news about Diablo 4’s seasonal content system, which will release story content on a quarterly basis.
These quarterly updates will also feature new mechanics and a battle pass system, which will grant players rewards based on their progression throughout the season. These battle passes will contain both a premium and regular track, meaning players can opt-in for better rewards provided they pay for it.
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, associate game director Joe Piepiora suggested that Diablo 4’s seasonal battle passes will take players roughly 80 hours to complete. “Right now, the battle pass, when you’re figuring in completing the season journey alongside doing other content in the game, you’re looking at roughly 80 hours worth of time invested to complete the entirety of the battle pass.”
Piepiora compared the time investment for a battle pass to leveling a character to 100, stating that “To level a character to level 100 could take a little longer than that based on how you play.”
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The game director gave some insight into how leveling will work throughout the seasons, where players will start off a new seasonal character each update. This means you’ll need to level that character up to 100 each time, working through seasonal objectives to help progress at a timely pace.
The battle pass will also assist in this aspect, as the free reward track will harbor bonuses such as experience boosts for all players, whilst the premium track will contain strictly cosmetics. According to Piepiora, it’s likely players will complete the battle pass before they are able to level their seasonal character to 100.
Piepiora went on to explain how Diablo 4 wasn’t necessarily a game about grinding out until the endgame experience, and that story-focused players could complete the content and then skip until more story was released. “But we’re not trying to say the only way to play Diablo 4 is to engage with the endgame and go all the way to level 100 with every character you ever make.”
Diablo 4’s release grows ever closer, with the dungeon-crawling RPG releasing in just a few weeks.