Rob Gallerani Confirms Post-launch Change Plans

https://gamerant.com/diablo-2-resurrect ... h-content/

Blizzard wrote:

Question: With Diablo 2: Resurrected was there ever any consideration of keeping the core game mechanics intact, but still finding ways to maybe add new enemies or new items? Things that just add more without changing the core experience?

Blizzard (Rob and Michael): Oh, yeah. We definitely geeked out about those kind of things. Lots of things that wouldn't fundamentally change anything but could just be plugged in. We wanted to build a strong foundations before we started hitting the third and fourth floors. We definitely have lots of ideas, but right now we're making sure we get the core game right. We've unlocked all the ladder specific content and can do that in single player and non-ladder. We'll have to see what happens once the game goes live in terms of what we do in terms or balancing, new items, etc.

I guess this means that blizzard survey they sent out after the Beta really is going to happen. At least some of the changes anyways.

That list for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comment ... questions/

1. Good
2. Bad
3. Bad
4. Bad
5. ..........bad.
6. Good
7. Good
8. A toss up. I really don't know.

1. Yes.
2. It depends; such as making Sorc's

Cold Mastery break immunities; things that enhance the game would be fine. I do NOT support making skills weaker.
3. Yes.
4. NO.
5. No.

Honestly, I see a charm inventory as being bad, because its size would need to be limited, and you know they wouldn't give us the same size as the default inventory, and additionally, that means they would take away the ability for charms to go in the inventory as a result. It's too big of a change, with too many negative possibilities.

1 don’t care
2 yes
3 no
4 don’t care
5 yes (if you can’t stack them anywhere else too)
6 yes
7 yes
8 yes


1 yes
2 yes (just fix NHAM bug to make more skills viable/better and make current skills like poison more viable or allow multi summons for Druid)
3 no
4 yes. I’m sick of the same rune words being used for damn near every build.
5 no

IronLesbian wrote: 3 years ago

Stuff

I think I'd be open to skill changes. But they would need to be necessary and not frivolous changes. A major one is making Sorcs

Cold Mastery (and the other permutations of it) break immunities, as it should have originally done.

Things like that would enhance the game; make classes more Hell viable.

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

2. Bad

4. Bad

#2 is Bad? I am PRAYING for gem and rune stacking. lol. Unless they give us way more tabs or triple the character limit, we ARE going to run out of space super fast.

Also #4 skill bar for KBM definitely needs to happen because anyone can already plug a controller into a PC and use the skillbar that way. I did this during the Beta on my PC.

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

IronLesbian wrote: 3 years ago

Stuff

I think I'd be open to skill changes. But they would need to be necessary and not frivolous changes. A major one is making Sorcs

Cold Mastery (and the other permutations of it) break immunities, as it should have originally done.

Things like that would enhance the game; make classes more Hell viable.

True! I’m not asking for skills to be upgraded to game breaking skills or add NEW skills. I’m just asking for all the skills to do the following:

1. Work as intended.

Jab,

Fend and sorceress masteries are a few. Maybe adjust how

Evade/Avoid/

Dodge works so that it’s not locking me into animations back to back. Just minor fixes would go a long way imo.

2. Be reasonably viable. Vanilla Barb

Whirlwind may have been close to OP for some. But the one we have now is straight trash. There needs to be a slight buff to it.

Poison Nova spreading small damage over 12 seconds or w/e is straight trash. Shorten the time please. Again, minor changes will go a long way and make more builds viable or better.

3. Make summon and merc AI with IQs higher than 2. My

Valkyrie needs to

Charge into battle. My Rogue scout shouldn’t reposition herself in a corner surrounded by 5 monsters. Oh and the

Skeleton mages….yikes. They need more help than improved AI.

BillyMaysed wrote: 3 years ago

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

2. Bad

4. Bad

#2 is Bad? Dude im PRAYING for gem and rune stacking. lol. Unless they give us way more tabs or triple the character limit, we ARE going to run out of space super fast.

I've grown attached and quite fond of the abuse of D2 items not stacking. And I certainly don't want it like D3 where you stack like 100+ of them together. Look, if they were going to do this, I'd at least want them to low ball it and go with original WoW item stacking of 20 per stack. But I'd prefer no stacking at all.

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

I've grown attached and quite fond of the abuse of D2 items not stacking. And I certainly don't want it like D3 where you stack like 100+ of them together. Look, if they were going to do this, I'd at least want them to low ball it and go with original WoW item stacking of 20 per stack. But I'd prefer no stacking at all.

Ya i feel you. I definitely don't want it to stack in groups of 100. jesus. I was personally thinking just like 10-20 tops. Even WoW changed it to 200 per stack for a lot of items lol.

I pretty much only want rune/gem stacking because of our lack of space and 20 character limit. If the character limit is increased OR the number of tabs increased, i would no longer want anything to stack. I also like the inventory tetris of the game

Glad to hear some changes are possible, hopefully they keep the core game in tact without changing what makes it great to begin with.

That said, it's interesting to see some of the responses so far...

---General
1. Good
2. Very Good.
3. Neutral
4. Neutral
5. Very Bad.
6. Neutral
7. Neutral
8. Neutral
---Ladder
1. Interested
2. Very Interested
3. Very Not Interested
4. Very Not Interested
5. Not Interested

In regards to number 2, stacked gems and runes. People under estimate how helpful stackable runes and gems would be. It doesn't impact game balance at all and reduces the need for a ton of clicks while crafting and gathering items. There's almost no downside to stackables. The only real downside would be that the value could drop slightly for trading due to the fact more than 40 could be fit into a trade window.

Charm inventory, number 5 on the other hand will completely throw the balance off of charms. Right now, you have to decide more charms less space, or more space less charms. If you have a dedicated inventory, the only answer is full of charms period. Charms will become even more powerful than they already are if you have a dedicated space for them. Making a charm inventory a very bad idea.

Numbers 3 and 4 in terms of the ladder suggestions are horrible. New items and new runewords create the EXACT problem they solved by bringing those said items to single player and non-ladder. If they add new items and runewords that just forces people back into ladder again. Absolutely not interested in the idea if it's just for single ladder seasons. Especially since that creates the idea of "one and done" items that once that season is over they can never be found or created again. Consider the fact that ladder characters convert to non-ladder, which means these items would then be on non-ladder and probably worth insane amounts down the line for no reason other than they are impossible to further get. Absolute NO on 3 and 4.

The thought of 5 adding new skills or spells seems really strange. How do you add those to characters only for a season? What happens when those characters convert back to non-ladder at the end? Do they retain those changed skills or spells? Do they convert back to the original spells and gain a free respec? I'm not sure how they would even handle that, and honestly I don't think I care to see them try. I'd much rather just have standard balance patches moving forward rather than having ladder be a testing Ground for things getting moved into non-ladder that may or may not be good.

Just have a test realm with an ever changing set of patch notes where they take the good changes and bring them to the live server and ditch the bad changes as they go.

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

I think I'd be open to skill changes. But they would need to be necessary and not frivolous changes. A major one is making Sorcs

Cold Mastery (and the other permutations of it) break immunities, as it should have originally done.

Things like that would enhance the game; make classes more Hell viable.

If masteries break immunities then any challenge of playing a sorc in Hell is gone.

Krythic wrote: 3 years ago

IronLesbian wrote: 3 years ago

Stuff

I think I'd be open to skill changes. But they would need to be necessary and not frivolous changes. A major one is making Sorcs

Cold Mastery (and the other permutations of it) break immunities, as it should have originally done.

Things like that would enhance the game; make classes more Hell viable.

A rumor has been circulating that this is indeed also fixed. Someone claims they played the hacked alpha and was able to open up Hell and test all the skills fully.

Cold Mastery broke Cold Immunes in hell. Again, supposedly.

klh wrote: 3 years ago

If masteries break immunities then any challenge of playing a sorc in Hell is gone.

If the rumors of

Cold Mastery being fixed are true, then yea it would make cold sorc builds absolutely effortless in hell even with no gear lol. xD

I never treated it as a bug, but if that's true then a lot of things change - should

Death's Web et al. also break immunites? If so a poison necro might be a pretty good option.

I guess it depends on whether they thought of it as a bug. If not, it may have simply been unimplemented in the cracked Alpha.

klh wrote: 3 years ago

I never treated it as a bug, but if that's true then a lot of things change - should

Death's Web et al. also break immunites? If so a poison necro might be a pretty good option.

I guess it depends on whether they thought of it as a bug. If not, it may have simply been unimplemented in the cracked Alpha.

There is a happy medium here as well. One option is new Runewords, which could offer

Conviction to more classes. I just feel like some classes simply aren't Hell viable at all, while some are very Hell viable simply because they were designed with skills and access to runewords that allow them to do it.

Well,

Conviction is available to all classes with Infinity, you just sacrifice other merc weapons for it and it's expensive. If another runeword with it is added it will require a lot of thought as to not break the economy.

klh wrote: 3 years ago

If masteries break immunities then any challenge of playing a sorc in Hell is gone.

The only mastery that would be able to do that would be

Cold Mastery. Since it acts directly against resistances.

Fire Mastery and

Lightning Mastery increase skill damage, not reduce resistance.

klh wrote: 3 years ago

I never treated it as a bug, but if that's true then a lot of things change - should

Death's Web et al. also break immunites? If so a poison necro might be a pretty good option.

Exactly. The way it reads in the game currently makes it sound like items like those should be able to break immunities but they don't. To me, the way it sounds like it SHOULD work, is that after the first hit when the -res is applied, the immunity would be broken and then the new resist would be applied after items or

Cold Mastery takes effect. I think making items be able to do that would actually be a good thing honestly.

I would be all in for them trying stuff like that after release, maybe on a PTR? Then we could all get our nostalgia satisfied and get balance changes later. This can break the game in so many ways it's hard to predict without playtesting.

I hope they do this. The original D2 will always be around. Worth the risk to me because of that. There are so many good things that can be done with Diablo 2 that have been established and well proven via other games and private servers.

The original D2 may be around, but it won’t have the pretty graphics :p

Keep in mind that this game is filler before D4 for Activision - I wouldn’t expect them to keep working on this after D4 releases, so would be nice if they didn’t leave it in a broken state.

klh wrote: 3 years ago

The original D2 may be around, but it won’t have the pretty graphics :p

Keep in mind that this game is filler before D4 for Activision - I wouldn’t expect them to keep working on this after D4 releases, so would be nice if they didn’t leave it in a broken state.

Pretty much my thoughts as well. I'd much prefer them working on the base mechanics of the game, and making sure everything runs correctly, rather than add new features. Devil's Advocate a little bit here though; they did keep updating D2 for over a decade after its launch. Patch 1.14d came out in 2016.

Yeah but that was the first time that game was launched. D2R is basically LoD 1.5 and so im sure there will be some small fine tuning at the beginning but def not for years to come. Obviously id love to wrong here.