New D2R patch 2.4 info summarised from the official developer update stream today

DirTyy wrote: 2 years ago

I feel like the developers dont even play the game so many stupid things ive heard from them jesus, they need to add /players 8 online, fix lobbys and the act 3 skip ... speechless i feel like they only played on normal difficulty and thats all

I'm also speechless but for other reasons.

DirTyy wrote: 2 years ago

I feel like the developers dont even play the game so many stupid things ive heard from them jesus, they need to add /players 8 online, fix lobbys and the act 3 skip ... speechless i feel like they only played on normal difficulty and thats all

Actually /players8 is a nonsense in a multiplayer game, i agree with them. On the other side it is annoying to find farming groups due to the lobby system to optimize farming. the question is "why would you want it ?"
- increasing difficulty and be rewarded better
- ... And this without being stalked by a leecher.
- ... And maybe, you don't like to play with random people for any reasons, and i understand that.

The conclusion of this : the endgame need to be improved. More difficulty, same drop rates (players8) except for chests. If you are alone, you clear slower and keep all drops, if you aren't, you clear fast but the drops are shared.
Diablo 2 is an old game and people have played a loooot of multip game since. The drops sharing system does not match anymore with a lot of player's expectations.

But the beginning of the entire discussion should be "what are people doing ingame and what would make them to quit" since the success of a morpg is mostly the size and quality of the community ? Especially for a remake, people already know the story ...
- leveling : reach lvl 99 is terribly boring and there is basically only one way to do it. Plus, there is no need to do that for most of the builds
- rerolling : classes and templates are imbalanced and some are fun to play but a real pain in hell.

Teleport is a massive avantage for sorcs (and i play sorc). Give it to every class or remove it (why not? It would be brutal at the beginning but it would give another perspective to the game).
- farming : sure, but 99% of the drops are worthless. If it is not a good rune... Meh.

So please as i said before, a new difficulty level ! Very very hard, with slightly improved XP gain !

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

Durance of Hate will require you to smash the compelling orb, meaning that you will now have to complete all the Act 3 quests for you to access the Durance of Hate. They don't want people to skip over what they consider a 'big story moment' in Act 3.[/list]

Pretty sure its not ALL the quests. The Gibdinn and

The Golden Bird Statue are optional. All that needs to be done is that

Khalim's Flail must be assembled and the orb must be smashed. Will be interesting to find out if players must be present for assembling

Khalim's Flail, or if you can pop into a game and break the compelling orb for everyone.

Sorry but i don't understand why the act3 thing is such a big deal? People who want to be rushed will still be rushed, it will only take them 5min more.

frorash wrote: 2 years ago

Sorry but i don't understand why the act3 thing is such a big deal? People who want to be rushed will still be rushed, it will only take them 5min more.

act 3 is the most hated act , its very irritating it will take much longer time to finish it. Ive always skipped that act with my friends, deleting the skip is not making the game more difficult its making you waste your time and it takes longer time to go to hell

Do you realize that Act 2 has exactly the same mechanics: you need to destroy

The Tainted Sun Altar in order to be able to enter

The Arcane Sanctuary. And no one is complaining, even despite the fact that Maggot Lair is arguably more annoying that A3 jungle, especially for mêlée builds and summoners.
Jesus, some people would like to start the game on Hell with pre-made level 80 characters, if such a boost was available.

frorash wrote: 2 years ago

So please as i said before, a new difficulty level ! Very very hard, with slightly improved XP gain !

Please no... It's one of those things that sounds good on paper, but would not turn out well in reality. If they added a new difficulty people would just consider that the only true difficulty worth playing on(just like hell currently) & many builds would be pushed out of being viable. Then they buff builds to make them viable until the difficulty is considered too easy again, & it starts a loop until you have D3 with 20 different difficulties & Paragon levels because reaching max is now too easy.

The slope is VERY slippery when it comes to these types of things, which is why every change they announce fills me with dread. They need to be extremely careful when making ANY changes, let alone something as huge as a new difficulty or this game will end up another pile of garbage left in the wake of Blizz/Activision's downfall.

In short:

- No.
- Not happening.
- Not now
- We don't have any plans
- Not possible
- Also, no.

Can't wait.

MadBarbosa wrote: 2 years ago

In short:

- No.
- Not happening.
- Not now
- We don't have any plans
- Not possible
- Also, no.

Can't wait.

Understand : you've got your remake, we will make it to run fine but don't expect a lot more because this game is a one shot (or an appetizer for d4/immortal) and we do not intend to spend more time working on it.

I would also find a pure further level of difficulty rather annoying.

I would program it in such a way that the number of players can be selected when creating a game - regardless of the number of players in the game itself.
For example, everyone can see whether they are joining a Player 4 or Player 8 game.

I would also be in favor of a switch for Personal Loot when creating a game ... if you like it, you switch it on, and if you don't, you don't (or don't join the game).


Furthermore, I would remove the thing with the LvL 85 areas, because it's just too boring to comb through the same areas over and over again - or to do pure

Baal runs.

I would be in favor of any higher item being able to drop in Hell, but very, very rarely than it is already the case. Then you can play wherever you want.
Maybe it would be a little fairer, because if, for example, I rush through the opponents with the Sorc or the Pala and knock everything away, I just don't have the speed with other classes.

So what's the problem if, for example, a "Newbie" Barb is very lucky and finds a Griffons in Act 2?
It's just a game and everyone is happy about finding something - especially those who are less able to play.


From my experience I also think that it is too difficult (for the current team) to reliably incorporate things into this old game - maybe they can't either.
Rewrite old source code (if at all still available and well documented) that is also not from you is a pain in the ass.

A few class changes (which I think are good) and a few new rune words (which I don't really like) are just easier to implement.

Or maybe Blizz screw it up completely with the next patch - wouldn't be the first time, see Diablo 3 ... who knows .


Small addendum: In my opinion, items like Enigma or Grief have had a rather negative impact on the game - and I am also aware that many (or all) are really into it.

But what if a super-overpowered runeword comes out in any season?
You can't get that out again.

And new rune words every season? Dangerous game imho.

MadBarbosa wrote: 2 years ago

In short:

- No.
- Not happening.
- Not now
- We don't have any plans
- Not possible
- Also, no.

Can't wait.

Did you watch the whole interview or just going off the questions here? Because most of the questions asked by Llama got a "its not off the table "that would be cool" "not at this time but possible". Most of the things he asked seemed like they will probably be added sometime in the future. Literally nothing to be pessimistic about with this insane amount of updates lol.

I don't think a new difficulty level is the way to go. The difficulty scaling just needs to be logical. When you have a game where people can solo what's meant to be the hardest end-game content, team size is irrelevant. The way it is now, difficulty isn't based on my self-selected skill level or tolerance for risk/reward, but...how many people I know trust? That makes zero sense.

And for folks saying just play single-player if I want /players8, that's also ridiculous. I have a couple people I trust well enough to play with, and like the option of playing online. But if my friends and I can each solo a higher player count, we should be able to also ramp it up when we play together.

As for blizzard's response, if it's meant to be a multiplayer game, why is there single-player mode? I mean, they know we've played MMOs right?

cristobal03 wrote: 2 years ago

I don't think a new difficulty level is the way to go. The difficulty scaling just needs to be logical. When you have a game where people can solo what's meant to be the hardest end-game content, team size is irrelevant. The way it is now, difficulty isn't based on my self-selected skill level or tolerance for risk/reward, but...how many people I know trust? That makes zero sense.

And for folks saying just play single-player if I want /players8, that's also ridiculous. I have a couple people I trust well enough to play with, and like the option of playing online. But if my friends and I can each solo a higher player count, we should be able to also ramp it up when we play together.

As for blizzard's response, if it's meant to be a multiplayer game, why is there single-player mode? I mean, they know we've played MMOs right?

D2 endgame is unique, because no matter how godly geared you are, there will be 1 out of 20-30 runs where you almost meet your Death from some combination of mobs and attributes/immunities. I've seen streamers dying in HC even after getting all runeworded because they did one mistake, one.

The idea is, how do we spawn more of these type combinations and make the probabilities 1 out of every 5 runs?
superunique mobs should be buffed, and unique mobs should spawn in bigger quantities around quest areas and around superuniques to combine auras.

That should keep players on their toes.

Not having a P8 command or new difficulty level makes this game almost unplayable.

As it is, almost nothing drops in full games. Playing solo or with a couple people is insanity. The games are a joke anyway, with people constantly leaving and joining. I spend a good chunk of my playtime looking for games, joining games, and leaving games.

Imagine personal loot. Doing runs with other people would actually be fun.

Right not multiplayer sucks. The only reason to play with others is to get rushed or for exp runs. Otherwise it's all about solo MF or joining cow games and farming other zones.

No words about fixing the Lobby Game Filter auto reload of Games etc…

Where are all the Games dont See much…

Same with Trade Games Chat overlaps Chest window its annoying

Trang Oul wrote: 2 years ago

Do you realize that Act 2 has exactly the same mechanics: you need to destroy

The Tainted Sun Altar in order to be able to enter

The Arcane Sanctuary. And no one is complaining, even despite the fact that Maggot Lair is arguably more annoying that A3 jungle, especially for mêlée builds and summoners.

I complain about act 2 all the time, but my skeletons do not listen. I knew I should have paid better attention in

Zombie academy, but I never could get the hang of soft tissue

Really though this is a bit illogical to say. No one is complaining because what's the point, it's always been this way in Act 2. Taking away the Act 3 skip is, imho, worth complaining about because it's a drastic change that will route players through some of the most lengthy and unexplored sections of the game. I can only imagine some staff looking at act engagement graphs and coming up with the idea to prolong Act 3 a bit.

So this change gives nothing new to players who progress through the game normally (save, perhaps, the smug satisfaction that their tribulations will be shared by all), and takes time away from the players who simply wish to level their chars in Hell Chaos. A neutral + lose situation....

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

MadBarbosa wrote: 2 years ago

In short:

- No.
- Not happening.
- Not now
- We don't have any plans
- Not possible
- Also, no.

Can't wait.

Did you watch the whole interview or just going off the questions here? Because most of the questions asked by Llama got a "its not off the table "that would be cool" "not at this time but possible". Most of the things he asked seemed like they will probably be added sometime in the future. Literally nothing to be pessimistic about with this insane amount of updates lol.

I think it’s actually incredible, that they decided to make new content for basically remastered game, that had seen the last content update a decade ago. So, the most probable outcome after releasing the game was just bug fixing at best. And from pov of metrics probably it’s the correct decisions. I’m just happy we’ll see new content and it’s more than I hoped.

I really just hope they add the /players command for online at some point. It would solve a lot of issues and isn’t a big change.

Woaglagin wrote: 2 years ago

I really just hope they add the /players command for online at some point. It would solve a lot of issues and isn’t a big change.

i dont think its even close to the top of the list of things that need to be changed. Its not even a straight good change either. The Devs specifically said they wont add anything that deters group play, which it would. On top of that if they added the /playersX command it would destroy the online market because it would make bot farmers way more efficient. the "random players join my game to farm sometimes" or "i want the game a little harder" isn't a good enough reason to add that feature imo. The cons out-weigh the benefits.

I only want they remove that single damn arrow forcin the player to invest 5 more skill pts to open

Armageddon - effectively just wasting it. And yes - fixin that arrow DOESNT mean that fire synergies for a dru "should be nerfed accordingly, blah-blah-blah" The rest is basically ok.

Btw, people: how about addin some delay to

Teleport? Even 1-2 seconds will change the game greatly - less sorc farm, less nigma-huntin, less leechin other ppl games, less ninja-lootin, etc. More of a fair and slow gameplay, right?