“But we also want them to feel free to customize their characters and explore and try different builds and fantasies and ways to play.”ĭiablo 4 is getting a surprise open beta before launch “We have to balance this idea that we want players to commit to a fantasy and a character and have actual weight and meaning to their choices,” Jackson said.

But after that, as you sink into Diablo 4’s endgame, it gets much more expensive. Early in the game - to all intents and purposes, for the length of the campaign, which should take you to level 50 of 100 - respeccing your character is “very, very cheap, to the point that it’s essentially free,” he said. The last two mainline games in the series have espoused very different philosophies: Diablo 2 made it very difficult indeed, while Diablo 3 did away with not just respec costs but skill trees altogether, and allowed characters to be reshaped on the fly.ĭiablo 4 is cautiously picking out a route somewhere between these two, as lead class designer Adam Jackson described in a roundtable call with press, which Polygon attended, last week.

Respec costs - in other words, how difficult it is to respecialize and change your character build - are an emotive issue for the Diablo community.

Diablo 3 characters