Nearly a year after its release, Diablo 4 first introduced a public beta as a way to test a large number of item reworks ahead of the official launch of Season 4. Rod Fergusson, general manager of the Diablo series, said that Diablo 4 may have more public tests in the future, but it will not be guaranteed every season.
Fergusson spoke about this in a recent interview with foreign media. He added that Season 4 was mostly a public beta because the developers "needed to get more feedback than usual." "But Blizzard will still react quickly and patch the version once it's officially released.
"Public testing has a lot of value in terms of surprise and delight, and in some ways it takes some of the excitement out of it," Fergusson said. It may work in your favor or against you, depending on what you're trying. "If something does need to be tested, Blizzard will try to test it, but if it's something related to the 'Quarterly Theme,' developers prefer to keep it for the unexpected.
Fergusson concluded: "So, we're learning from this attempt, or we're learning from this incident. It's been a long process, and we can almost guarantee that there will be conversations like this every season. Is it in our best interest to get players into the game earlier?to get feedback?or is it better to surprise everyone with 'Hey, this is a new topic you don't know about?' We're very happy with this season of the Open Beta, so we'll probably continue experimenting. ”