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

let's agree to disagree

dionisy_cn wrote: 3 hours ago

ganseng wrote: 11 hours ago

Rest wrote: 11 hours ago

Powercreep in action. Why would I use a inferior (and harder to get) item instead of Spirit?
If there was better balance across, we would see a lot more different type of items being used, which is overall a better design and better for the players.

the powercreep happened a few decaded ago when Spirit was introduced. now it's meta, and if alternatives that are <= Spirit rather than << Spirit are introduced, there won't be any powercreep.

So I vote for reducing Spirit from +2 skills to +1

Trang Oul wrote: 17 hours ago

Inethil wrote: 22 hours ago

Personally, I feel that nerfing long standing items, like Stealth or Spirit is a serious mistake. In my opinion, the community would be much better served by making never used items and skills relevant, not on cutting the legs out from under existing builds or styles.

If you want to maintain proper balance, you need both buffs and nerfs. Otherwise it’s a straightforward power creep - and we know how such a series of buffs ends (D3)…
Maybe if the game difficulty was cranked up to compensate the buffs, but I’d still be afraid of an infinite treadmill.

I agree, naturally, that buffs and nerfs are a natural part of the process. To clarify, the items mentioned, while good, are not breaking anything, while half the skills in the game languish unused. My personal holy grail is that perhaps one day I will be able to select the element of Skeletal Mage. Yesterday, trying to raise one mage in act 5, I had to use the skill 9 times in a row just to get anything except cold or poison. It never really feels random. Honestly, if they only guaranteed that, with each cast, you would get a different element, I would be alright with that, as at least I could be sure that within 4 uses of the skill I would have a viable minion, but ...

I ask you, in all seriousness, what does it add to the game to force necros to have to cast the same skill over and over again just to get the mage they were looking for? And would fixing this cause an imbalance? There are pain points like this where an adjustment would simply remove pointless friction.

But not all friction is bad. Inventory tetris has a real place in the game and I would not adjust that. Giving everyone the same charm inventory would, in fact, lessen the game. Right now you have to decide how much space to Sacrifice, but if the inventory was dedicated charms just become the same for everyone. That decision is part of the strategy of the game.

That said, this is academic until we see what they actually do, but whatever it is I pray they do it slowly enough to allow the community to test and weigh in on it and for those who want more, more, more, and that more easily, I would suggest, respectfully, that they choose another game and let us keep our old fashioned, difficult, quirky, beautiful D2.

AardvarksAdvance wrote: 20 hours ago

Inethil wrote: 20 hours ago

"Improve the lobby so perhaps play games and trade games are separated or colour coded. Use AI to terminate inactive games. ID and get rid of the ad bots and auto channel pushing."

Most of that I agree with, but I've passed Horadric cubes between alts in games and would hate to lose items on the Ground just because an overly aggressive AI sees the game before I swap in.

That will depend on how inactive is characterised.. most items disappear after x time on Ground anyway, so having a rule that terminates games longer than that a certain time frame beyond that should hopefully not cause any lost item issues described above.. I’m thinking mainly of those 6- 126 hour long running games on the servers…

Yes, good point, I'm sure it could be adjusted well. I suppose my anxiety stems from an uncertainty over whether Blizzard is still capable of such fine tuning.

After the D5 announcement and hearing a dev stating that D4 combat was in a good place ... my anxiety only grew. D4 and whatever comes next can keep its millions of damage, numbers so large they lack any meaning at all, and skills aimed more at waves of monsters without individual threat identity. One of the reasons I cherish D2 is that the pace and strong monster identity allows for actual tactics, rather that just blowing up the screen.

ganseng wrote: 8 hours ago

So my interpretation why D2 didn't receive any updates was the economy. There is an article from polygon indicating 1.9 million warlocks, we may infer 1.5-2 million copies or some $50m in revenue. sounds like a lot and probably covers the development payroll many times over, but not sure what other operating expenses/return on investments expectations are. companies not necessarily treat their capacities as variable but can rather allocate resources to projects with higher returns. plus, there are cannibalization effects draining player base from other products, and the funnel effect with each subsequent DLC bringing in less money than the first one.

It's all a bit vague, but to make it short, is there another explanation other than economy?

don't really believe it's about not willing to make mona lisa imperfect

In 2020, Blizzard's then CEO got 154M USD "compensation" for his hard work. 50M in revenues might sound like a lot to you. For him it does not.

In addition, your estimation is for too high, expectating every player only made one warlock character.