Last October, Blizzard launched Diablo Immortal on Android as a closed beta for testing purposes. Despite the fact the game was initially announced in 2018 to a jeering audience, the game is still somehow a work in progress, though this long development time may just pan out for eager ARPG gamers, as it does appear player feedback is setting the tone now that Diablo Immortal's closed beta is over. Or at least this is what the most recent Diablo Immortal blog post alludes to, which specifically shares what was learned during the closed beta and what changes will be implemented before launch. So let's dig in and see what's up.

The director of Diablo Immortal, Wyatt Cheng, walks through a few of the lessons learned during the closed beta and details what changes Diablo Immortal fans can expect to come to the game in the most recent developer post. Now that the closed beta is over, it would seem Blizzard is still planning on a 2022 launch, though it's quite clear there's still a bunch of work to be done before release. Improvements are coming to social/group play, as well as raids, Warband, the game's monetization, with tweaks to the new controller support, amongst a host of other changes.

Diablo Immortal is being marketed as an MMO instead of an ARPG, so community play is a significant feature. A Bounty system was implemented for the beta to encourage group play, but this led to players feeling like groups were forced, so Bounties will be solo in the future.

Another part of the game's focus on multiplayer is raids, which are 8-player boss encounters. Beta players expressed annoyance with the balancing of these raids, where some bosses were too easy, and some too challenging. So the raid boss difficulty will be rebalanced, along with the raid UI for easier navigation.

Of course, monetization is going to be majorly crucial since Diablo Immortal will be free-to-play when it launches this year. An optional paid Battle Pass already exists, along with in-game purchases for currency. However, a secondary Battle-Pass-like purchase (it's stackable) called Boon of Plenty wasn't received well, so Blizzard will rework it. Legendary Gems, one of the game's currencies, was also not received well, as gems currently can't be shared between an account's characters.

Another important addition is controller support, which was added for the closed beta, and more tweaks will be coming to this functionality to smooth out the controls in menus while widening hardware support. Seeing that controller support wasn't much of a consideration at first, with the focus of development on touchscreen controls, it's nice to hear controller support is in the game with improvements planned.

Gear will also see an improvement, where end-game gear sets will be rebalanced to alleviate issues, as gear currently found at an early level isn't worth wearing to complete a set because its stats are too low.

It would also appear that group play is a little too challenging when players are grouping at different skill levels. A catchup system was added for the beta so newbies can gear up quickly, all to avoid any systems where players can pay-to-win to catch up or energy systems that have to be relied on to slow players advancing too fast. After all, Diablo Immortal will land as a free-to-play game, so even when egregious roadblocks like energy systems are avoided by the developer, players advancing too fast is still an issue, as Blizzard wants to keep the whales spending in an endless game. So a few of the roadblocks implemented for the beta did not appeal to players, where these will be tossed in exchange for new ideas yet to be detailed. Basically, the Paragon leveling system is still a work in progress to ensure everyone can play together without anyone feeling like they have to carry newcomers. An arduous task indeed.

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More or less, Blizzard is taking lots of player feedback from Diablo Immortal's closed beta to heart, with new changes and fixes incoming before the game is officially launched later this year. Seeing that even the alpha was pretty fun, it's nice to hear more improvements are coming to polish the game further now that the closed beta is over. Currently, there's no word whether an open beta will take place before the game's release or when the official launch will happen (beyond a loose 2022 release date), so it would seem eager fans will still have to wait for further news. At the very least, it would appear development is moving forward, so here's hoping we're not too far off from Diablo Immortal's launch.