For most fans of the click-based action role-playing title Diablo III, the franchise is about battling waves of A.I.-controlled enemies. In the months following the game’s release, developer Blizzard worked on implementing a player-versus-player mode, but it is now abandoning the concept entirely.
Blizzard is completely scrapping its work on the competitive team deathmatch mode and will replace it with “something that feels more appropriate” for Diablo III, according to a blog post from director Jay Wilson.
“Simply fighting each other with no other objectives or choices to make gets old relatively quickly,” wrote Wilson. “Without more varied objectives, or very lucrative rewards, few [testers] saw our current iteration [of team deathmatch] as something they’d want to spend a lot of time in.”
Wilson also noted how difficult it is to balance the character classes, weapons, and items from the campaign for use in a competitive player-versus-player environment. Since the development team designed the team deathmatch mode for the very hardcore, it amplified the inconsistencies.
So it’s not fun, and it would require too much work to fix.
Blizzard will still introduce a way for players to duel one another in the next patch, but it didn’t provide any details about how these battles will work.
And while the team deathmatch mode is no more, Blizzard is going right back to work on something else to replace it.
“As we stated previously, regardless of when we release [the update], it’ll be a free addition to the game,” said Wilson.