New Q&A on instagram. Hard to find, but gotta click icon in the PlayDiablo account on the top left to see it. Only a few questions posted, but so far posted: Botting/Duping - Wanting to provide safe gaming atmosphere from bots/dupes, Single Player RW/Ubers - Keep same mechanics etc as current, the ladder only providing the incentive to keep playing ladder, no changes to single player to add in the events or ladder only rw. Skill Bar like controller for M&K - Nothing to announce other than they have seen the feedback requesting it. Challenges of remaster - currently still going through post tech alpha feedback, working on ui and graphical fixes as well as load times.
Looks like still need plugy or a mod to utilize ubers and ladder runewords when everything else, including ladder only difficulty, is part of single player.
Could still be just stock answers, but along the belief that I hold myself, not much to change for launch outside of whatever qol they add (like possible skill hotbar).
whaaaat?! no mention of all the new features and changes to skills/inventory they are making!? shocked i am, shocked. Clearly this is a mistake and the next time we get news it’ll be full of changes, right? /s ┐(･ิL_･ิ)┌
I still say that they are looking to implement some more qol, and we never did have an answer to how many shared stash tabs total (they were still deciding at Blizzcon). I wouldn’t write off charm inventory, but I highly doubt that they would look at skills yet outside of bugs (they already noted fend, poison cloud, and mana burn bugs, but wouldn’t be surprised if they tacked next hit always misses bug as well). While launching the game with a ladder makes really no sense imo (since fresh start anyways, where in OG D2 and D3, ladders were not implemented until 1.10 for D2, and expac for D3, after the normal game had been populated with an economy for awhile, the current ladder could serve for opening season with changes after launch for later seasons (so that does make sense to not touch yet).
However, I think they will drop a huge ball if they don’t implement the ladder only runewords and Ubers into single player. SP already plays at the added ladder difficulty (better ai on monsters, added health to monsters from what is present in non ladder), and has both the uniques and cube recipes from ladder only as well. Everyone including Brevik congratulated Llama on his recent completion of holy grail, however that grail was not done legitimately on base game, it was through Plugy. Not only did he use the infinite stash (which you HAVE to use for grailing otherwise you need pics/videos of all finds to physically prove you did it), he used ladder only runewords, annis, and torches you could only get by modding/text editing the base game.
ya i dont think they would need to announce something like this. Everyone already knows the larger and shared stash exists. Adding more tabs wouldnt even be announcement worthy unless its a footnote with a lot more important things. So im hoping more stash tabs, but hoping for anything more is definitely a pipe dream.
Considering they’ve said multiple times they won’t be changing player inventory, i see a 0% chance of charm inventory happening despite wanting it myself.
this is a huge annoyance of single player and i agree it should be implemented but honestly even if blizzard doesn’t itll be easy to get the mods to activate them. So it really isn’t a big deal. A lot of the features players are demanding will come in the form of mods post-launch so i think everyone needs to chill with thinking they need to harass blizzard for changes or else itll never happen.
While on the surface, yes, they mentioned player inventory not getting bigger, it does seem by their mention of “more charms in the bag” from that interview, they could just be meaning full inventory. Throwing in two surveys they did, it could read any way. In any case, they didn’t specifically rule out charm inventory, just larger inventory. I don’t have my hopes up myself, and still not 100% sold on it from an FFA perspective (as PD2 set no drop base higher).
Also, we have had what seems like conflicting info into their perspectives as opposed to actual direct development communication outside of initial presentation. Even this slide from the instagram is off:
If you note, the question was asking about ubers, and the answer doesn’t
fully reflect the question, since they mention “mechanic” as opposed to events, and go into ladder only runewords.
Honestly it sounds like they did rule it out. By adding a separate “charm inventory” this would add more slot choices to the characters overall inventory directly. Charm inventory means more choices in your inventory space which they specifically mentioned not messing with the choice part of the game. So they don’t have to specifically say “no charm inventory” to know its not going to happen since everything else they’ve said directly points to it not happening since it directly effects character inventory space.
And I understand that point of view, and see where it could be read that way. However, I consider anything that has been directly surveyed by Blizzard, as options on the table either for release, or for post launch. They didn’t survey a larger inventory, but surveyed twice about charm only inventory, which is a huge flag that the devs are considering it. I think the ONLY things that they are really considering, are pretty much the items that they surveyed on and what they have specifically stated otherwise (bugs that are not beneficial to player).
It really boils down to popularity on some, and how things play out after launch I think. Like, if they don’t do anything different with ladders after first, they may look into player retention rate and population on non ladder, and make a change. If during first ladder, they see the majority of high level characters are Sorcs and Hammerdins (which 99.9% chance it will be), they may decide to make some balance changes, if bottom tier amount of characters tend to be something like Assassins and Druids, those will probably get the most looking into to start. With not having cross play, they will need to pay high attention to player retention rates for the console versions, to keep the console realms populated (which may have a higher skew of ladder vs non ladder as well). Since also without cross play, means each individual console will be it’s own population, using battle.net servers as opposed to each individual consoles servers.
There is more at work than most people realize I feel since the game is seeing release on consoles as well (simultaneously with PC no doubt too). Console versions will need trophies/achievements, whether or not PC will have these as well is up in the air, etc.
Well we have multiple quotes from not only the D2R deep dive but other interviews saying that they won’t be changing the characters inventory specifically because of choice, which a charm inventory would 100% effect. Its literally the reason i want it, i want more choices in my inventory lol. Where as the only thing we have pointing towards a charm inventory happening is a question in a survey that was only sent out to a handful of people and not even a lot of the people who pre-ordered. So anyone who is a betting-man (or woman) would not be putting everything on it not happening lol. Which sucks because charms are such a dumb concept that i wish they would change or even remove entirely. (along with stamina)
Can you translate what Robe Gallerani means in this quote?
The team also wanted to gauge the fanbase’s reaction to some of the small quality of life changes that had been implemented, such as automatic gold pick-up. “For the most part people really liked them,” Gallerani says. “In fact they want to see more. The game is still a work in progress - this was a tech alpha - so even from the design side we have a lot of thoughts about [additional] quality of life updates and ways we can make them better.”
What additional changes do you think he is talking about? It certainly seems like there will be more coming.
What are common features in mods that you think that Rob is talking about in the quote below that may be implemented?
“Another thing is that looking at the mod community, it is a nice kind of litmus test to know, ‘oh, this audience – the hardcore audience – they like these types of things.’ We didn’t just say, ‘oh, take everything this mod does or take everything that mod does,’ it was more about whether the community would hate this quality of life change or not. So it was nice to look at the community and see, ‘oh, well actually 90% of the mods out there do this one thing.’”
Again, it is a very weird topic and wording. I’m not trying to Micro argue you (lol), but I think (and I see he posted too while I was typing, double LOL Micro). A lot of the choice is about what the pick up and not to pick up. Even with a charm inventory, you still have to make choices on what gear, charms, etc to pick up, especially in a multiplayer game where something better could drop on the next kill, or while you port to town to vendor. Due to the gear taking weight on multiple inventory spaces (where in D3, most gear was two verticle spaces or two horizontal for belts), inventory tetris which they have pointed out as wanting to keep, is still very much present, just like with classic non expac.
well my point wasn’t that it effects choice in some general sense, im saying it directly effects how many items you can pick up, which is the reason they won’t be increasing the inventory size of the player. It gives the player more choices of items to pick up VS charms. So again, the way they worded it in every interview definitely points to it not happening, but i’ll be jumping for joy on launch if actually do add it. Fingers crossed!
It affects how often you have to return to town. Assume you want to pick up 100 items. If you only have space for 1 item., then you need to return to town 100 times. If you have room for 10 items, you would need to return 10 times.
the alpha was only single player so it only addressed single player issues. the multiplayer beta will have tons of people doing group runs and PVPing and the wider screen resolution exploit will be screaming in everyones faces. Positive it’ll change during Beta.
I have feeling that they want to force as many players as possible to play on battle net, thats why they are not going for ladder only stuff on single player.
And btw i am pretty sure they will be patching game a lot so it will not be easy to have plugy on D2R, as game version will keep changing at start.
That’s assuming plugy is even possible in d2r considering it modifies a DLL file (d2gfx.dll) to work and I’m pretty sure VV said that wasn’t gonna fly with d2r. Unless “DLL injection” means something completely different of course… I don’t really know.
Also, good point about patches. The game now goes through the blizz launcher when you start it meaning you’ll more than likely be forced to download the latest patch to even start the game even if you only want to play offline which is going to break mods every single time a patch is released. I miss when games didn’t do nonsense like this…
If changing DLLs wont be possible, that would be seriously limiting modding options for a lot of modders, unless blizz will change a lot of hardcoded stuff to being softcoded. Which can be done, as far as I know modder Nefarius done this years ago already for his mod project, I am hoping they will do the same so modder could mod stuff more easily. Even some stuff which is hardcoded in d2.
Micro). A lot of the choice is about what the pick up and not to pick up. Even with a charm inventory, you still have to make choices on what gear, charms, etc to pick up, especially in a multiplayer game where something better could drop on the next kill, or while you port to town to vendor. Due to the gear taking weight on multiple inventory spaces (where in D3, most gear was two verticle spaces or two horizontal for belts), inventory tetris which they have pointed out as wanting to keep, is still very much present, just like with classic non expac.