Diablo Immortal Devs Answer Questions About Transmog And More

It’s been a busy two weeks for the developers of Diablo Immortal, who let the public get a taste of the game for the first time since its announcement at Blizzcon in 2018. Since then they’ve released a Technical Alpha for the game, as well as taken many questions from the press regarding the state of the upcoming MMO.

After having a week of the game being playable in the wild, the public has come up with their own follow-ups, and the devs have answered. Caleb Arseneaux, Lead Producer and Wyatt Cheng, Lead Designer on the game held an AMA on Reddit, where users could ask them questions pertaining to the game.

One of our personal gripes with Diablo Immortal was its lack of transmog, meaning you had to take extra effort if you wanted to curate your looks to match a certain style. According to Arseneaux, this was less “not yet implemented” and more “not going to be in the game”.

“We are not currently looking at a transmog system but we do have a couple things which are similar,” he says. “The first is that we are looking at a way for your to manage your legendary powers more easily. No details to share about this right now but stay tuned”.

“The second is that we are planning to have full body cosmetic outfits. These will be available as a real money purchases in addition to being on the paid track of the Battle Pass”, he notes.

To summarize, Diablo Immortal would not be getting transmog, although full-body skins would be coming as paid content for the game.

The duo also talked about the game’s monetization, and doubled down on their reassurance that it wouldn’t have an effect on the game’s core mechanics like earning XP or getting items.

“When we set out to make Diablo Immortal one of the first “tentpoles” we laid down is that the gear should be earned strictly through gameplay. I think the question understates just how important gear is (and by extension salvage/rank up) and how it affects gameplay… it’s the majority of your power. I think it’s worth noting that I don’t think the “hunt” part of the item hunt feels strong enough yet and we hope to tune it more after the Tech Alpha”, Cheng says.

“The “magic” attributes that roll on items such as “+3% damage for your primary attack” don’t feel impactful enough yet, and the attributes that initially appear on an item might be a bit light compared to the attributes gained from rank-up. Beyond items, Paragon is another example of a system you use to upgrade your character solely by playing the game”, he continues.

“We don’t have XP boosts and that was a conscious decision. At its core everything you do in Immortal is tied to gameplay: how you progress, acquire gear, earn various items, etc. all have to be done by actually playing the game, there’s no way to bypass that”, he concludes.

AMAs are a common source of information nowadays, as it allows developers to interact with fans directly via the website Reddit. Thanks to the site’s own internal moderation system, it’s not as tedious to get less relevant questions out of the way.