Blizzard revealed that more than 50 usability options will be available in Diablo 4, and talked about how making this new installment in the legendary series as easy to use as possible was “the torch that guided them all through development.”
Some of Diablo 4’s usability options have been shared on Facebook Blog of Blizzard, Senior Usability Designer Drew McCrory stated that “The only constraint for diving into Sanctuary should be interest, not ability”.
The team began their Diablo 4 usability journey by building on the foundation that was built with Diablo 2: Resurrected and making sure to make the game accessible to as many people as possible while also “being careful not to spoil the gameplay for others.”
As mentioned earlier, Diablo 4 will launch with more than 50 individual accessibility features, and the team has taken the time to focus on some of the dexterity aids with task execution, text reading, and vision.
Dexterity in carrying out tasks
The first feature discussed was button remapping, and Blizzard confirmed that all inputs: keyboard, mouse, and controller, can be changed to suit players. Furthermore, players can switch between the left and right analog sticks on the controllers so they can “control the most vital buttons and stick inputs with just one hand”.
Another feature is related to skills and movement, and it will allow you to choose whether you want to change the long tap on a button to a single tap.
Persist Target Lock is another option and will ensure that the enemy you want to target does not get lost in the chaos as a large number of enemies can appear on the screen at once. With this lock feature, your skills and weapons will target the enemy you are meant to take out.
Text help
In terms of scripts, great emphasis has been placed on translating and making Diablo 4’s story easy to understand for everyone. Subtitles are enabled by default, but “players can change the font color, scaling, and even blur the text background to suit their needs.”
For those who like to play as a team, they will be pleased to know that an app will be implemented Speech-to-text program in Diablo 4, which will transcribe what you say through your device’s microphone into the chat. Blizzard notes that this will be especially useful for getting rid of massive world bosses, as they must be taken out with your friends.
Vision assistance
In the end, the vision assistance feature was discussed, and the font and cursor size change was the first feature that was highlighted. There will be three options for the text: small, medium, and large, and Blizzard has ensured that it will look good no matter what size you choose.
Acoustic cues will help players locate items because they will beep when they are placed The cursor hovers over one of them or when they approach it. Given that Diablo 4 is all about loot, Blizzard has made a feature available that lets you choose to only trigger those cues for items of a certain level of rarity or higher.
By default, items have a unique animation and color that denotes their rarity, but this takes it to another level for players.
Player and item highlighting will help increase readability for players and will allow a color of the player’s choice to be selected for players, enemies, objects, and NPCs. As we said earlier, there is a lot going on in Diablo 4 at any given moment, and this will help players make sense of everything going on at once.
And last but not least, we talked about the screen reader, which supports JAWS, NVDA and other screen readers. This feature is just as it sounds, as the game will read aloud gear information, options, journal pages, non-spoken text, and more. Players will also be able to adjust the volume, speed and type of sound.
That’s not the end of Diablo 4’s usability promises, as Blizzard encourages players to reach out to accessibility@blizzard.com with any ideas or feedback that can help improve the game.
For more on Diablo 4, which is set to release on June 6, learn about Diablo 4 battle pass prices and season details, and you can also check out our list of 6 games you can play while waiting for Diablo 4 to release.
