Currently the team at Blizzard is unsure as to whether or not Diablo IV will feature a finite or infinite Paragon-style system (as seen in Diablo III) or something else entirely. This revelation came as part of a new post by the Lead Systems Designer David Kim that goes through Diablo IV's design philosophy.

On the Paragon front, he writes.

We have a couple reasons for having a different experience system in addition to a level cap. A level cap gives us the ability to grant players a sense of completion. But for players who want to go deeper into the game, a second experience system allows us to capture the fun of achieving those really difficult endgame goals and ranks.

We can also introduce additional depth through this system, because players will be more experienced with the game at this point. Ultimately, our goal is to create a meaningful system that provides clear choices depending on your preferred playstyle in the endgame.

It's a very candid and open look at Diablo IV's development, with the team looking to hear what the community thinks about its reasoning.

The update also confirms that the game will allow for an Elective-Mode style setup for players to pick and choose what skills and abilities they can equip ala Diablo III. Plus, little nuggets of info like the fact that Ancient Items won't be returning in Diablo IV as they don't make much sense in how the team is approaching itemisation and power.

We’re actively discussing ways to add more depth and complexity to base items (including Rares), ways to add greater variety to item affixes to make those powers interesting and your choices meaningful, and ways to give players more freedom to choose how to customize items, so you can have fun exploring a wide range of effective gameplay possibilities instead of just looking up “the optimal build” online.

However, we want to clarify that in Diablo IV, power doesn’t come mostly from items. We want to have a good mix of power sources: characters naturally get stronger as they level up, skills have ranks that increase power, talents provide specific playstyle choices and additional character power, and of course items grant power and meaningful choices as well.

David notes that the team will delve deeper into itemisation in an upcoming post. It's great to see that Blizzard will be open and transparent during the development of Diablo IV - and that we'll be getting new meaningful bits of info as time goes on.