With so many other games in the genre gaining popularity, I asked the Diablo 4 development team if they keep one eye on the competition – here's what they had to sayTech08:00, 01 May 2025Expect Season 8 to ramp up the challengeDiablo 4 Season 8 arrived this week, and while some fans have been demanding bigger changes ahead of next year's planned expansion, they're hardly short of alternatives.Path of Exile 2 is a fantastic ARPG that offers a higher degree of challenge, while Last Epoch has really come into its own with its latest update, Tombs of the Erased.‌With Diablo essentially helping to popularise the genre, I asked Colin Finer, Design Director for Systems and Deric Nunez, Lead Seasons Designer for Season 8, if they keep an eye on what other games in the space are doing, and if there's added pressure to ensure Diablo remains top of the pile given its heritage.‌Here's what they had to say.Expect plenty of chaos in Season 8"I think we always try and think about what's right for Diablo and how we improve Diablo," Finer explained. "It's a very sort of 'Diablo first approach', and that sort of manifests itself, I think in the Season 8 boss powers"Article continues below"We want to make sure that Diablo feels like an incredible power fantasy where you get to feel extremely powerful and mow down hordes of enemies, and what better way to sort of manifest that than to literally take powers away from bosses and become the boss."And I think that's what's been so exciting about Season 8 in terms of that power fantasy, it's just so potent. And then we also have the other side of the game, the power fantasy that is that sort of deep customisation and ability to craft the build that you're fantasising about."That's where we put a lot of time and effort into the "Side B" to the Boss Powers, where it's not just becoming the boss and this crazy power fantasy, it's actually customizing that boss power as well where you're able to really fit in different modifiers and mechanics to that boss power.‌"It's a great question, and I think we really try our best to service Diablo first, like 'what can we do to improve the Diablo formula? How can we make Diablo even better for the fans of Diablo?"Belial sits atop the Lair Boss ladder‌"One of the things that we put a heavy focus on is just the accessibility and quality of life of any system that we kind of stand up," Nunez adds."So when we're talking about the lens of Season 8, it's not just kind of expanding the bosses with cool new mechanics and bosses, but we also took a look at how can we reduce the level of friction that might churn out a more casual player perhaps from engaging with the system as a whole."With Season 8, we've also made permanent updates to improve the overall efficiency and reduce the friction to get into the system through," he adds, pointing out that Lair Bosses are now free to summon so players don't feel like they're wasting materials.‌You might need to spend more time levelling up in Season 8"Before, we had the issue where players would be holding off on fighting them because they didn't wanna waste their precious resources just to find out that they couldn't take the boss down yet."Every season we take a look, as you kind of see with the roadmap, that we're focusing on big permanent features to upgrade, like next season is Dungeons, and then we have an Infernal Hordes update that the roadmap revealed.‌"I just want to touch on one thing, because I think it's a great example of the sort of line that we walk in terms of we've made the overall system more accessible," Finer adds, "but we also know that Diablo needs to be deep, right?""There needs to be a lot of different, compelling systems," he says, pointing to player-created spreadsheets."It's very Diablo, right? And to give you an example of how that's manifested itself in the boss ladder, we have the bosses for free, as Deric talked about, but we've also taken an opportunity to level up the bosses and their challenge.‌"So it's not just about making the bosses easier to kill and getting the loot for free, it's about really making sure that there are deep challenges and things that you need to work for, because that makes the reward so much sweeter. So in Season 8, we've buffed all the Lair Bosses."They're much harder just statistically, but also we've added a lot of new attacks that you're gonna have to watch out for. So Duriel is my favourite, and we've added an attack to him that allows him to actually eat you. So some of his attacks now are gonna knock you down, and if you're ever knocked down and you're vulnerable he's going to do this big overhead cleave and actually suck you into his belly and eat you."There are places where we've actually levelled up the boss encounters to make it more challenging, to compensate for that sort of accessibility gain. And we think that that's overall going to make the experience much more rewarding and challenging.Article continues below"We heard a ton of feedback that the game is just way too easy and there's just nothing challenging. Everything just falls over. So we've taken this opportunity to really introduce some of that challenge and satisfaction back into the loop."For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌