// PC GAMER — GAMING
Diablo 5 will 'take a somewhat different approach' to Diablo 4's monster level scaling so your character feels noticeably stronger as you progress
Blizzard wants leveling up and finding new items to have an immediate impact on combat.
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Despite its surprise announcement at BlizzCon earlier this month, Diablo 5 is a whole three years away. Blizzard's brief teaser trailer had zero gameplay in it, which means the action RPG sequel is still mostly a mystery.
But director Joe Shely helped paint a picture of what the real thing might look like during a recent group interview with PC Gamer.
One of the somewhat controversial aspects of the last couple Diablo games is how they handle monster difficulty. In Diablo 2, each area has a level range that determines how tough enemies will be compared to your character. Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 ditched this approach for a system that has monsters scale in difficulty as your character levels up.
In a genre all about the power fantasy of slowly becoming a demon-slaying god, this didn't go over so well with the many players who want those moments where your character feels considerably more powerful than their foes. While this still happens in the newer games, the gap between the strength of your character and the monsters is much smaller until you're decked out in high-level gear.
Level scaling seems to solve a lot of problems with maintaining a certain degree of challenge in the newer Diablo games, but it does diminish the spikes in power you can get from finding a particularly strong item or leveling up.
We already know Diablo 5 will return to procedurally-generating areas so that every dungeon, or open world zone, will look different every time you visit them—a crucial part of Diablo 2 that suggests Blizzard is interested in bringing back core elements from the series' history.
Shely said level scaling in Diablo 5 isn't something the team has fully discussed yet, but acknowledged how important your character's power level is to the experience.
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