Update from D2R lead producer on what's next for the game

Full report here.
Link to stream with timestamp here.
Text summary below for those who want it:

Matthew Cederquist, Lead Producer for Diablo II: Resurrected and other legacy games at Blizzard Entertainment, joined Mrllamasc's stream after the initial (non)announcements at BlizzCon. Llama directly asked him whether anything could be shared about what is coming up for D2R.

Matt shared that the devs put out the recent updates to those ~10 unique items in the last season patch as a feeler to see the community's reaction to making updates to the legacy itemization.

They are looking at about 211 unique items they might update over time. He suggested they might be updating 25 items per patch in the future, including updating early, mid, and TC87 uniques. He likes the idea of helping make players who never found a Jah and Ber during a season to feel excited to see a great unique drop.

They still want feedback on whether it is good for Stealth and Spirit to be as strong as they are. They want to hear feedback from the community about what they would think if the devs did anything to change those super powerful runewords to make them a less obvious choice. They are being careful because they want to keep the game's 1999 design choices relevant rather than making the game a "modern" D3 or D4.

Llama asked him if they are considering changes like adding Teleport to Werewolf form. "We have some things in mind that will come out in due time." They're specifically watching things like melee balance vs. casters, poison bug, Max damage/ED bug.

Matt was asked about whether they are dealing with bots. They are "taking a close look" and have several ways to detect bots. They have more coming on this soon.

They are actively looking at changing the online/social lobby. They haven't decided if they want to blow up the current experience completely or to make more minor changes, but "we can do better."

Regarding user-generated content (mods): the devs have played/do play them and respect them as being cool games (as long as you purchase the product!).

Matt: Switch 2 would be great for D2R, it would be a great candidate for it, but he has nothing to announce as of today. Cross-play is in the same category as that.

There may be a PTR for the Mosaic changes. Matt likes the idea of doing one when there is a big set of changes.

How about PVP? PVP is a sticky issue. It has a place in D2R, but it doesn't hold much weight for the community at large. We don't want to balance the game around PVP, but they consider PVP when designing new skills for Warlock. He admits the design for the Abyss skill was a miss on that front though. They might make some minor changes. They're not interested in having separate skills or stats for PVP versus PVE in D2R.

"Nothing for trading" right now. He admits it's funny to have to go to other sites for trading right now, and he'd like players to be more integrated in the game community. He also likes that you have to chat with another person to bargain to get a trade, even if it's on another site.

He feels D2R is a good place for a SSF mode, but they don't have one coming for D2R right now.

There are a lot of old used assets in the game. Don't necessarily think that Standard of Heroes or a Jawbone in a screenshot is a teaser. They also don't feel like making Standard of Heroes different is a great idea.

To look at 211 uniques, imagine that! They actually listen carefully.

Adam23 wrote: 11 hours ago

To look at 211 uniques, imagine that! They actually listen carefully.

Yeah that's like half the uniques in the game, of which there are 415 in total at the moment.

So basically, while every other Blizz Game community got at least sth. to look out for, we got nothing (again).

Or is there still hope for Sunday?

/edit: And while the announcement of a new Diablo game (except Immortal) would have hyped me to Infinity and beyond before Diablo 3, the announcement of D5 for me is rather a signal or self-confirmation that D4 was just a massive fail. Even D3 still shines in comparison to this piece of sh** game.

pretty disappointed with the current reveals

Don't you have a phone, and a battery backpack for that phone?

was anti climatic the stream for sure, but hey i am all for linking this great site to help out the trading in D2R.

Thanks Mods and everyone who puts time and effort into it.

Eldryndor wrote: 10 hours ago

So basically, while every other Blizz Game community got at least sth. to look out for, we got nothing (again).

Or is there still hope for Sunday?

/edit: And while the announcement of a new Diablo game (except Immortal) would have hyped me to Infinity and beyond before Diablo 3, the announcement of D5 for me is rather a signal or self-confirmation that D4 was just a massive fail. Even D3 still shines in comparison to this piece of sh** game.

Frustrating to watch. Wish Llama would have asked about a QoL charm inventory. And at the end they joke about Duriel but why wouldn't he ask if they'll fix his ridiculous drop table.

Balancing is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, aspects of gamedev.

Nerf discourages use. Buff encourages use. Neither of these things are balancing. Actual balancing involves testing each change by reconciling against every possible combination before and after. It is an exponential problem by nature that takes thousands of hours and millions of simulations plus manual testing for one item update to a game that is older than many of the players!

Obvious QoL improvements like loot filters and item stacking are much easier changes with lower impact by comparison. I suspect they have not exhausted those universal improvements with easier trade offs to evaluate.

Teebling wrote: 11 hours ago

He likes the idea of helping make players who never found a Jah and Ber during a season to feel excited to see a great unique drop.

i bet improving rune drops would feel exciting too.

i just found my first high rune last season. a Cham. ive been playing since d2 originally launched.

im not saying buff it a big amount, but when a Cham rune dropping in hell worldstone keep 3 from the Oblivion Knight i killed is 1:294,376 that makes it tough to chase within a seasonal timeframe if youre not heavily involved in trading Perfect Gems for Ist.

Teebling wrote: 11 hours ago

"Nothing for trading" right now. He admits it's funny to have to go to other sites for trading right now, and he'd like players to be more integrated in the game community. He also likes that you have to chat with another person to bargain to get a trade, even if it's on another site

as for this, having a posting board in-game would give players an immediate incentive to look for good trades and find stuff to offer up on the board. it would make the prospect of approaching certain runewords much easier to handle.

ngl, i dont have much hopes for today. this 30th anni diablo announcement was kinda nothing burger? I mean, cool that we will have D5, but i kinda expected more love for d2/d1.

I'm gonna cross-post this from what I said about it on reddit. I don't understand how we go from shadow dropping Warlock at the start of this year, with surveys and articles saying they're open to developing new content, to having no platform or announcements at your maquee conference event other than a half hour Q&A with a streamer where they're looking at small incremental changes to uniques at around 25 per season ladder. At that rate we'll get through the list by the end of the decade. And I'm not even being snarky here, that's assuming around three ladder resets a year.

It feels very unambitious. They've said before they don't want to mess up the Mona Lisa. That's fair. But I thought that was why they made Warlock and Class/LoD separate. It's ok to reach a little farther I think.

And my final comment is this: they're the ones who hyped Blizzcon, they're the ones who hyped the 30th anniversary nature of the franchise and its celebration. It's very clear to me that there is a significant chunk of the audience for these games who are persistently loyal and have been around for years, decades at this point. My concern is that they are taking this audience for granted. I don't know how else to articulate how I feel.

I'm actually very happy about the announcement. I my view RotW brought as much bad (bugs, imbalance, OP char with broken skills, ...) as good (stacking items).

So hearing that they won't rush an other money grabbing DLC but instead fix problems that we all know exist and they are not doing it with a bulldozer but with surgical precision while including feedback from their community, that really pleases me.

They might not mess up this time!

The main problem with touching legacy "OP stuff", apart from just changing gearing and the game quite significantly as a result, is that they'll inevitably completely and utterly destroy any and all NL economy and forever punish newer players. Since item changes in D2 always applied to new drops only and old stuff remained as was, those who still have old enigmas, spirits, whatever it may be stashed and for trade will immediately jump from whatever their Wealth level is to "so rich it ain't funny" and newer folk will forever grind and grind and grind and grind on the off-chance of eventually being able to afford a 500- Jah oldschool Enigma.

The only way to avoid that for a fully implemented change is to punch every existing player in the face by randomly re-rolling and "uselessifying" the stuff they spent all of their runes on over the years, effectively removing all of the old ones.

There is no winning in that entire scenario unless they exclusively make it ladder-only in perpetuity and leave NL versions as they are, meaning the old ones can still (forever!) be made there so newer NL players don't get f'd while on L the whole problem doesn't apply anyways as there is no old stuff there.
Though that also needs chronicle fixing then so the stat displays adjust based on what game mode you're viewing it on, seeing how it'd inevitable be wrong for one of them. But I guess that's already true for the minor unique changes.

Why artificially limit the changes to only 25 uniques (and likely very few endgame ones) per patch? That’s not enough to change the RW meta, while forcing the players to play LD (assuming overhauled items will become LD-only).

Schnorki wrote: 1 hour ago

The main problem with touching legacy "OP stuff", apart from just changing gearing and the game quite significantly as a result, is that they'll inevitably completely and utterly destroy any and all NL economy and forever punish newer players. Since item changes in D2 always applied to new drops only and old stuff remained as was, those who still have old enigmas, spirits, whatever it may be stashed and for trade will immediately jump from whatever their Wealth level is to "so rich it ain't funny" and newer folk will forever grind and grind and grind and grind on the off-chance of eventually being able to afford a 500- Jah oldschool Enigma.

The only way to avoid that for a fully implemented change is to punch every existing player in the face by randomly re-rolling and "uselessifying" the stuff they spent all of their runes on over the years, effectively removing all of the old ones.

There is no winning in that entire scenario unless they exclusively make it ladder-only in perpetuity and leave NL versions as they are, meaning the old ones can still (forever!) be made there so newer NL players don't get f'd while on L the whole problem doesn't apply anyways as there is no old stuff there.
Though that also needs chronicle fixing then so the stat displays adjust based on what game mode you're viewing it on, seeing how it'd inevitable be wrong for one of them. But I guess that's already true for the minor unique changes.

This is how they did it "back then" and I know what you are referring to. But there is actually no reason to not to change existing items. For instance, you could change +2 all skills to +1 all skills on spirits, old and new. There is nothing preventing Blizzard from doing so.