Senior Game Director Joe Shely has confirmed that Blizzard intends to take a “somewhat different approach” to monster level scaling in Diablo V. The exact system has not been finalized, and Blizzard is not promising a return to Diablo II's fixed area levels. What Shely is talking about is the underlying feeling: when your character levels up or finds a genuinely powerful item, the game should allow you to notice.
Speaking during a recent group interview about Diablo V's level scaling, Shely acknowledged that automatic enemy scaling can interfere with one of Diablo's most fundamental pleasures. You fill the experience bar. You become more powerful. Something nearby should probably regret being a goatman.
Diablo IV Solved One Problem and Created Another
There is a perfectly sensible reason games use level scaling. Diablo IV has a large open world that players can explore in different orders. If Scosglen contained level 35 monsters forever, returning there with a level 70 character would turn half the continent into decorative scenery. Scaling lets regions remain relevant, allows players of different levels to adventure together and keeps activities usable long after the campaign has moved elsewhere.
The problem is psychological rather than mathematical.
If the enemies grow whenever you grow, character progression can occasionally feel like running upward on an escalator that is moving downward. Your damage number increases, your equipment improves and another point goes into the skill tree, but the monster you killed yesterday has quietly received a promotion too.
That is very different from Diablo II. Its areas exist within more defined difficulty ranges, which means characters can enter somewhere too early and get flattened, then return later and discover that the creatures responsible have become considerably less impressive. It is crude, but extremely effective at communicating progress.
Finding a Great Item Should Change the Next Fight
Shely's comments are particularly interesting because he connects scaling directly to items. Finding an exceptional weapon should not merely improve a number on the character sheet. It should change the next combat encounter.
That sounds obvious in a loot-driven action RPG, but automatic scaling can soften exactly those moments. If every increase in player power is immediately answered by an increase somewhere on the enemy side of the equation, upgrades become relative rather than dramatic.
Diablo V already seems unusually interested in making items feel physical and important again. As we covered in our first detailed look at Diablo V, Blizzard is borrowing several ideas from older Diablo games, including a return to more recognizable item shapes, Runewords, Sets and a world built around procedural uncertainty rather than a completely fixed overworld.
The scaling discussion fits neatly beside that philosophy. A legendary sword becomes considerably more exciting when the game allows it to make yesterday's difficult monster today's unfortunate demonstration target.
This Does Not Mean Diablo V Is Returning to Diablo II Scaling
That distinction is worth keeping clear because Blizzard has not announced the replacement system.
Shely explicitly said the team has not fully discussed all the details publicly yet. “Somewhat different” could mean partial scaling, level brackets, regional ranges, player-controlled difficulty, delayed scaling thresholds or something Blizzard has not shown at all.
Diablo V also creates design problems that Diablo II never had to solve. Blizzard is building a large Western Continent with areas that can change when revisited. We recently looked at how Dread Commanders can reshape parts of Sanctuary, changing terrain, monsters and landmarks through the system Blizzard calls terror-forming. A world designed around returning to old regions cannot simply make most of those regions permanently irrelevant once the player outlevels them.
The trick will be preserving relevance without making every enemy feel permanently attached to the player's power level by an invisible rubber band.
Diablo V Wants Progression to Have More Distinct Stages
The scaling comments also make more sense when placed beside Blizzard's broader approach to progression.
The development team has already talked about deferred complexity, where the campaign remains relatively understandable while more elaborate item customization and build mastery emerge later in the endgame. Blizzard has also confirmed that Diablo V will launch with more classes than any previous Diablo game, creating far more room for different progression curves and character identities.
In other words, Blizzard appears to want progression to feel like progression again, rather than a single continuous difficulty line stretching from character creation to endgame.
Early on, gaining levels should matter.
Finding better equipment should matter.
Eventually, deeper systems should begin appearing and the game can start demanding considerably more from anyone determined to turn their character into a mathematical crime scene.
Feeling Powerful Does Not Mean Everything Has to Be Easy
There is an obvious danger in this discussion. Removing or weakening scaling does not automatically improve a game. Diablo still needs places where players are underpowered. Without that resistance, getting stronger means very little because nothing was threatening in the first place.
The memorable version of progression is not entering an area and instantly deleting everything.
It is entering an area, getting humbled, returning several upgrades later and realizing the balance has changed.
That is why Diablo II players remember stepping into a new difficulty and discovering that yesterday's comfortable build has suddenly developed structural problems. The friction gives later power meaning.
Diablo V's challenge is therefore not simply making monsters weaker relative to the player. It is creating enough fixed resistance that players can actually measure themselves against something.
Blizzard Has Three Years to Work Out What “Different” Means
Diablo V is targeting Spring 2029, so this is still design philosophy rather than a finished mechanic. Blizzard has not shown gameplay, published level ranges or explained how difficulty settings will interact with scaling. Anyone claiming Diablo V has already returned to Diablo II's system is several announcements ahead of the development team.
But the philosophy itself is significant.
Blizzard has identified that the feeling of becoming stronger matters just as much as the numbers proving that you became stronger. That is particularly important for a game whose developers have set themselves the modest little target of building the “best campaign ever”.
A level-up should not merely make the experience bar empty again.
A great weapon should not merely increase the number beside Damage.
Sometimes you should be able to walk back to the demon that ruined your afternoon twenty minutes earlier and demonstrate that circumstances have changed.
Diablo has always been about becoming absurdly powerful.
Diablo V apparently wants the monsters to notice too.
