If there's one thing to learn from the current drama around Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. It's that live-service games are no longer the big draw they used to be. While it's not the same thing, Nightmare Dungeons – Diablo 4's end game content – does run the risk of sounding like a never ending grind-fest leading to nothing.
However, it seems Nightmare Dungeons aren't built to endlessly scale with your character past level 100. Once you reach that level, there will be a final boss to test your ultimate build against. So, all those hours of grinding for ridiculously rare loot won't be just to get your stats higher, but will be directed to an eventual goal.
"[Diablo 4] is not intended to be played forever," said associate director Joe Piepiora in an interview (thanks, GamesRadar). "So, there are creatures that you will continue to fight at higher and higher difficulties [beyond level 100], but this is content where you'll be kind of pushing yourself to see how far you can take your build, rather than trying to reach some endless grind of rewards as time goes on beyond level 100."
Piepiora explained that there will come a point where you completely max out your gear, and any changes would only be fine tuning. This is when you should attempt to face this final boss, who he suggested will take a couple of tries to beat. "At level 100, we do have a pinnacle boss encounter we want players to engage with that's been balanced so that it's extraordinarily, extraordinarily challenging," he added.
"Players that reach level 100 are going to have an extremely difficult time on this boss encounter. And the expectation is that you take your class, you understand your build, you've maximized everything that you possibly can about it, and you really have learned encountered very well. And that's going to be the way that you can maybe take it down."
He went on to say that the reason for this is to give players a sense of satisfaction, and to show that all the grind wasn't solely to boost numbers. However, he also noted that players shouldn't be disappointed with the drops from this pinnacle boss, considering you've already collected all the best gear in preparation for this fight.
"That's the point, is to say, 'I have managed to get an extremely powerful character build together," he said. "This is my capstone, this is the goal that I have for myself within a period of time after I've reached level 100'. You know, that's the aspirational piece, we want players to chase."
"There's cosmetic things, there's other rewards you can get from that encounter. But it's not about getting more gear at that point. Like that's kind of like the point of getting the gear is to fight that particular boss."