Update 9/9: New PTR expected next week along with ladder 2 start date

mockingbirdreal wrote: 1 year ago

Did anyone compare the XP get in

Terror Zones vs BaalRun?

Naturally, that's the first (well, and only) thing I did on the PTR. :p

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

So...a

Terror'd normal mob (hell A5) gives around 500xp at lvl 98. That's a bit under 600k kills needed to get from 98 to 99.

That's opposed to something like just shy of 12k

Baal kills (

Baal alone that is, each of the W4/5 adds gives about half of a

Terror mob atm) or 50 normal mobs to make up for one

Baal in terms of xp.

That's..actually not bad. And on P1.

Champions and their minions seemed to yield 2-3 times as much.

...

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t ... ate/142388

Blizzard wrote:

Hey all - Apologies for the Silence on the PTR front. But wanted to provide a few updates here.

The team was spending the last week going through the survey information and community reports from PTR. There may be another iteration of PTR as the team wants to implement some items based off of the feedback but that is still being determined. We are running up against some scheduling timelines and want to make sure we can get 2.5 out the door sooner rather than later and get Season 2 kicked off for ladder. Extending PTR to continue to test and iterate will of course hold those two dates back. We are going to see if we can fit something in the existing timeline for right now, but if we can't we may use some of the buffer between Patch 2.5 hitting and Season 2 starting to ensure we can get some additional game time from players on some of the

Terror Zone items.

Some top level items from the feedback:

- Players were noticing some zones were kind of not great for

Terror Zones so expect some to be moved out and some others be moved in.
- Players found some of the content TZ content to be easy but we also can determine what characters played on PTR who offered that specific feedback and we noticed a lot of this came from Hammerdin players. The team has some ideas on this and we will be sharing that soon. I expect it to create a bit of a shift in build/class opportunities for players.
- We will have more info on unlock conditions for TZ and how long each zone will be terrorized as well. We appreciate those who offered their thoughts on this.
- Lastly, I know there were a lot of voices wanting this in SP. I can say that it is being looked into but for now, I would expect this to be a Ladder S2 feature as we are able to make tweaks to online numbers on the fly while SP has diff values for XP and needs to be tuned differently. The desire is high, but we want to get this nailed down for ladder play first and will move into looking at it for offline afterwards.

Lastly, I wanted to clear up on the S2 timing as there is a bunch of confusion on this and honestly it is 100% understandable why there is confusion. Before S1 began, we had noted that we were aiming to have seasons last 4 months. We are obviously past that timeline and to be 100% honest, we kind of didn't plan very well on our end for that date.

Terror Zones was a cool feature we wanted to nail correctly as it teetered back and forth on the line of "Should we do this or not?" many times throughout development and with that it caused a little bit of a delay on the Season transition. I just wanted to state that and apologize for that murkiness around when that season transition would occur. We are looking at mitigating this issue for future seasons in D2R.

The current order of operation is that we will end PTR here soon and start submission for final builds on 2.5 and get out that to everyone on the live environment. Season 1 to Season 2 will happen fairly immediately. We expect S2 to start a week or two after 2.5 hits so we have a date that everyone is aligned on and knows about. S1 will literally end the second we transition to S2.

For example: Season 1 will go to 4:59:59pm Pacific Time and Season 2 will begin at 5:00:00pm Pacific Time.

As more dates become aligned here in the coming week, we will provide updates to give a better window on 2.5 and S2 for the community.

So... TZ on NL wasn't mentioned, and sounds like it could be ladder only.

Hammerdin may get some nerf, maybe

Terror Zones on their own aren't enough of a reason to play ladder season 2 if you weren't already planning on doing so. I guess that isn't too surprising because the team now has seemingly fewer assets to work with than the team that worked on LoD had when they came up with DClone and

Uber Tristram, which was also remixed content rather than using unused assets that still exist in the game code.

This is why quality of life improvements would have been more welcome for patch 2.5 over marginally improving the user experience of the XP grind. I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of players don't care about grinding to 99. Making it a little more accessible now doesn't make the game any more compelling to play.

Non ladder IS ONLINE so I really don't see it fit in the Single Player argument. If

Terror Zones turn out to be a Ladder only feature it would be simply disappointing.

IN MY OPINION If Ladder only it will further prove that some of the Real Money shops are indeed run by Blizzard along with why bots are running rampant and they want to cash in during the Price madness of a new Season.

As far as Hammerdin nerfs - all they can really do is boost monsters magic resistance that will push them over the Edge and become immune to magic.

chokapyy wrote: 1 year ago

...
If Ladder only it will further prove that some of the Real Money shops are indeed run by Blizzard along with why bot's are running rampant and they want to cash in during the Price madness of a new Season.
...

This is a conspiracy theory and there is no proof. If it ends up being Ladder-Only, the more likely explanation is simply that they want something new for each season, and that for S2 that something is going to be

Terror Zones. You can dislike it all you want, but don't spread baseless conspiracy theories.

ShadowHeart wrote: 1 year ago

chokapyy wrote: 1 year ago

...
If Ladder only it will further prove that some of the Real Money shops are indeed run by Blizzard along with why bot's are running rampant and they want to cash in during the Price madness of a new Season.
...

This is a conspiracy theory and there is no proof. If it ends up being Ladder-Only, the more likely explanation is simply that they want something new for each season, and that for S2 that something is going to be

Terror Zones. You can dislike it all you want, but don't spread baseless conspiracy theories.

Until you can prove that I am wrong - I will say whatever I want to say.

Would it make you feel better if I add an " IN MY OPINION" to my previous comment?

Of course you may say what you want, it was just that you made that claim about proof. Proof =/= opinion. And yes, you are of course entitled to your opinion and you may of course post it. But this is a bit off-topic (that's my fault) so lets try not to derail the discussion any further.

Snakecharmed wrote: 1 year ago

...over marginally improving the user experience of the XP grind. I think it's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of players don't care about grinding to 99...

Much as I agree with it not being reason enough to play ladder for, I would challenge that. A ton of people would like to get to 99, they merely stopped giving a damn about it because it is such a mindless grind of repeated

Baal/dia runs that needs a team to be at all viable which in turn is hardly possible because those who still run efficient highlvl runs tend to split off for their own 3-man-

Baal-kill in that same run (and hostiling everyone else in CS beforehand as well), leaving you as the "average joe" in the dust, getting 0 xp off all of it reliably.

The

Terror zone addition isn't a marginal improvement to that, it is adding an actual viable option and alternative to the one and only way to do it now. That's a massive improvement to the entire process and to a lot of folks not just making it more appealing but moving it from being simply impossible (basically everyone with a life who also doesn't have their own dedicated team set up for it) to being actually achievable.



What has me more irked is the remainder of Pez' post...the SP argument does indeed not hold for NL. In fact, it doesn't really even hold for SP as minor patches with number tweaks aren't a big deal (and have happened often enough in the past) but hey..if they make it ladder only for literally no reason other than "we want to", leaving NL folks still craving for some way to hit 99 without going insane from ahole pugs, that'd simply be disappointing.



And the hammerdin comment genuinely has me worried..not because I play one (I haven't in like 18 years and most likely never will again) but because I sincerely doubt they'll actually nerf hammerdins. Even if they did, combining that with "we don't have much time, we'll just squeeze more stuff in!" would result in not-thought-out balancing attempts that are bound to fail miserably.

What I'd expect more than a hammerdin nerf would be something along the lines of

Terror zones adding new/increased resistances/immunities to the mobs there, resulting in a fair amount of magic immunes along the way. Will that take hammerdins down a knotch? Well yeah, obviously. Is it a good idea and decent plan? Well no, seeing how it also hits already behind things like bonemancers.

If anything, remove immunities/resistances there to let others catch up (rather than drop down hammers and the victims of it) but even that would be half-baked and rather doubtful imo.

Blizz has proven time and time again that they utterly fail at balancing their games. Doing it in a rush on top of that? Ugh...

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

Much as I agree with it not being reason enough to play ladder for, I would challenge that. A ton of people would like to get to 99, they merely stopped giving a damn about it because it is such a mindless grind of repeated

Baal/dia runs that needs a team to be at all viable which in turn is hardly possible because those who still run efficient highlvl runs tend to split off for their own 3-man-

Baal-kill in that same run (and hostiling everyone else in CS beforehand as well), leaving you as the "average joe" in the dust, getting 0 xp off all of it reliably.

The

Terror zone addition isn't a marginal improvement to that, it is adding an actual viable option and alternative to the one and only way to do it now. That's a massive improvement to the entire process and to a lot of folks not just making it more appealing but moving it from being simply impossible (basically everyone with a life who also doesn't have their own dedicated team set up for it) to being actually achievable.

While I agree that there are a number of people who would like to get to 99, I still don't believe that an overwhelming majority of the players care. People who post online are not statistically representative of the whole playerbase. When you think about Steam games that have achievements where you can view how many other players have also hit those milestones, the true 100% completion rate is almost always extremely low.

Terror Zones or not, players would have to make getting to 99 a dedicated goal and priority. It's not something you accomplish casually or by accident. Most people aren't going to devote that much time to playing this game at any level of depth, never mind grinding a single character to 99.

Therefore, Terror Zones don't benefit anyone other than the top 0.1% of players for leveling, which would be an increase to the 0.001% of 99ers now, but still fall well short of changing the playing experience for the vast majority of players. I know the 0.1 or 0.001 percentages I just used aren't accurate by any means, but the point is to illustrate that the target audience of this patch is isolated to the likes of MrLlamaSC and maybe other streamers out there who mentioned this issue when they reached 99. But let's not forget these are high-profile streamers, who are basically paid professional players with charisma.

So a pro player complained about the journey to 99. Why should I care? Meanwhile, there's still no 99 or even 98 in classic D2. 99 wasn't originally designed to be accessible by the masses. Nobody is entitled to level 99, just like your average climber is not entitled to reaching the summit of Mt. Everest. You watch one or two famous professionals do it and now people think it's a damned tourist attraction. On the other hand, a boatload of regular players at all levels have complaints about glaring issues with the game's user interface.

Quality of life improvements like stackable items, a loot filter, and further refinements to the

Horadric Cube UI would be beneficial to all players. Fixing 20+ year-old game mechanic bugs would be beneficial to all players.

Uber Tristram gave all players an actual endgame challenge. All Terror Zones do is make the grind to 99 slightly more bearable and less monotonous, but there's this misinformed belief that everyone can get 99 now if they want it. That's not the case. 99 still won't be free Halloween candy.

I agree with all the other complaints that have been brought up about why Terror Zones appear to be ladder-only or the vaguely hinted idea of nerfing hammerdins. The constant inability of the devs and the community manager to even be able to have a candid technical discussion about the Next Hit Always Misses bug is embarrassing, never mind actually fixing the damn thing. This is why I feel like adding Terror Zones, followed by hinting at nerfing hammerdins because they perform exactly the same in Terror Zones as they do elsewhere (which is a surprise to absolutely no one except Blizzard) is completely idiotic and tone deaf.

I have to list out the thought process to emphasize how stupid this is:

1. Introduce new optional game mode (which required minimal development effort compared to bug fixes and UI enhancements)
2. Receive feedback from PTR users that it's too easy
3. (Potentially) nerf a character subclass (which applies to ALL game modes) to make it less OP in this optional game mode and placate people who probably don't even play hammerdins on their live account
4. Run out of time, but I dunno, ship the damn thing anyway

Nobody (other than MrLlamaSC) asked for this. User feedback in this setting is also notoriously unreliable due to heavy cognitive bias. And now it's getting rushed, and just like how the long-term effects of the

Whirlwind "buff" turned to nerf weren't properly evaluated, neither will this.

It makes no sense to do TZ ladder only. All long-term characters end up in non-ladder. Assuming you have somewhat of a life, you'd figure that grinding those final levels would likely happen there, if you even want to...

Ravoc wrote: 1 year ago

It makes no sense to do TZ ladder only. All long-term characters end up in non-ladder. Assuming you have somewhat of a life, you'd figure that grinding those final levels would likely happen there, if you even want to...

tbh it makes sense for TZ to be ladder only (at first) b/c the lvl 99 grind has always been a big part of the first month of ladder in d2. i mean they have a leader-board dedicated to player lvl. i think the only negative side effects to non-ladder will be that more high i-lvl drops will be available to ladder players (but at the same time most ppl already have their non-ladder chars built out by now) and the variety it'll add to end game farming for ladder players. i think overall its a good change to shake up the end game and will probably come to non-ladder after the season (just like the new rune words). since they have decided to let ppl make what used to be ladder only rune words in non-ladder (which is a good change and makes non-ladder in the remake feel much more playable vs classic LOD non-ladder ,for us pvm players at least) they have to have something to differentiate ladder and non-ladder so ppl get exited about and play ladder, otherwise why have ladder at all.

Snakecharmed wrote: 1 year ago

a lot of super on-point stuff

This times 3,000. I played PTR a little bit to get a sense of the terror zones, and that night I got increasingly annoyed that this was the pretty big reveal. Universally--UNIVERSALLY--the player base wants two things:

• More character slots
• More stash (either more tabs or currency stacking)

Beyond that, a very large majority of players also want one or more of these things:

• Fix consoles (even PC players, for fairness to player base)
• Fix lobbies
• Fix chat
• Allow difficulty scaling for solo online play

Now. Compare the number of people who asked for at least one of the above things to the number of people who asked for "Make it easier to get 8 levels that don't really matter except for prestige."

It isn't even a race. I mean, the 99er camp hasn't even made it to the stadium. Terror zones are an absolute whiff. It makes me super sad about what the D2R team thinks is important and who they're listening to.

Personally I am excited for

Terror Zones, not because I care about reaching 99 but because I think the concept it a good one and it should add some variety to end game farming, which would be welcome.

I would also appreciate some of the QoL stuff mentioned, especially more character slots, but I'm not discouraged to see that the dev team are trying new features, that indicates a certain level of dedication to D2R that frankly, I was not expecting. Hopefully we get the QoL stuff soon as well.

It is something additional to play or choose to skip.
More to do. It's a good thing.
Just because they are doing THIS thing doesn't mean they don't have qol stuff and fixes ALSO in the works.
Seriously, it's a big company, they've been doing this a while. Still kinda suck at it in some ways but they are a multi-threaded processor and can handle more than 1 task at a time.

So more to do, cool. I like options..
Seems like a good portion of people here also need more to do, and hopefully less whine.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/e ... 142388/243

Blizzard wrote:

Just an update on PTR status. We are expecting a new PTR build next week for the community so expect notes and news about that sometime next week.

We are still on track with our internal schedules for 2.5 and will also have a Season 2 start date in the PTR notes that are posted so people can properly plan out their time well in advance of the Season 2 start.

Looking forward to the feedback on the new PTR changes.

New PTR expected next week as well as the season 2 start date.

I don't care ladder exclusive stuff, I don't care lvl99 grind etc. But I do care some improvements which are long desired and actually already exist like loot filter, more stash and more character or can be easily implemented like stackable items.

First time ever I am planning to play ladder but not because to compete but because just to get
and experience ladder exclusive stuff and collect some annies.