Nintendo Switch Feedback

So here is my (refined) feedback after leveling a Sorceress to 50 in offline mode.

Performance

The Switch version was commented by Blizzard as „Running like butter“. Most the time yes, but there is bad performance at many places as well e.g. almost complete act 3 overworld. Same goes for act 5. Lut Goleim felt last session like 25fps with frequent stuttering. The game needs urgently optimization at some points. I’d prefer to have ‚performance mode’ with higher FPS but lower visuals.

When the fps goes down the drain, it helps to save+exit and load again to the game.
This indicates some serious issues with the game’s memory management or mem leaks

Visuals

Enemy health bar in handheld mode is UNREADABLE!

Too strong transparency of foreground walls in various dungeon areas (e.g., but not limited to, act 1 catacombs, act 2 palace cellar) makes it difficult to see where to go. There open doors are hard to see. Hide the floor of adjacent rooms that have no line of sight (just like the original does, please compare) to make it clear that the path is blocked.

All Yetis in act 5 have glitched textures. Looks like static of an old TV.

Visual glitch of one building prop in act 5 ancient trial area (top right side of the area).

Shadows of ambient bats look broken when they fly above walls (e.g., act 1 cathedral).

Some entrances are hard to see due to bad coloration / contrast e.g., cave entrances in act 1.

Automap not visible when loading to a new area until moving the character.

We have now a 3d render engine. Let us zoom.

Personally, I don’t like the newly created ambience barrels (act 1) and urns (act 2) that are not destructible. They just confuse.

Crashes

Crash when closing the initial dialog in act 5 ancient trial area. Once issue.

Glitches

Fix Duriel kills you on loading screen.

Could not activate WP in catacombs 3 NM. Only possible after rezone. Once issue.

Rarely sound effects are cut off. Most reoccurring example (still rare): the gold sound when selling.

You can tap an item in the inventory (A button) and carry it over to all other menus with L/R. Even into the options menu. I found no real issue or exploit with that (yet). Potential for duping?

Insufficient QOL features and annoyances

Have the most common interaction with NPC as the FIRST dialog option not as the second one! Why do I need to press A, DOWN, A all the time to start selling/buying or identifying items? Double tap A should be enough.

Unreliable belt potion system. Implement a consistent button mapping for potion types instead of this semi-random and semi-automated system that is so broken that is needs all the time manual interaction to compensate is deficits. I’m now dropping and picking up potions because it is much faster to put them into the belt. Have a reliable belt auto fill. Create an option for auto pick up potions. Show number of remaining potions in the hotkey bar. Most importantly: have fix buttons for fix potion types!

Its bad design that I need to release the stick that controls my character’s movement only to use potions while being attacked / close to death in the first place.

Create an option for auto pick up scrolls and what not. Keys until a certain amount is carried?

Inventory sorting feature not sufficiently creates room to pick up items. Prioritize vertical free space. Many items are 2x3 in size. There is also no real ordering based on similar or same item types.

Disable that 30 second‚ connecting to battle.net’ delay when starting the game. Put that check later if someone wants to go online. It’s just annoying for people like me who exclusively play offline.

Speaking about offline. No cross progression there. Why? I was FORCED to bind my Switch Account to battle.net the first time I started the game anyways. Why can’t offline chars be synced then as well?

Let us scroll the map to find certain locations and decide where to go with the right stick.

Inventory should not block the whole screen.

Double the inventory size. Put charms in separate inventory.

Have the same music volume level for resurrected mode as in legacy mode. Do not lower the music volume in resurrected.

Lower the exegerated loud chirping crickets sound in Kurrast Docks. There I’d prefer just to listen to music, see also point above.

Improve in game help. It took me until level 47 to find out how to heal the merc (ZL+dpad). What else is hidden? Related to that, please list all rune words and what not in the in-game help. One should not need to look up such information online like cheats or easter eggs.

Improve pathfinding of mercs. I just say Maggots Lair or the Summoner’s dimension.

Add the number of sockets in brackets to the items name. I believe it was like that in the original. Also visually show socketed items in vendors lists directly. Don’t have us to hover over each item. On console like this it is very annoying.

Add an advanced legacy graphic mode: increase fps to something smooth (30 or higher). Apply some of those fancy filters that emulators have.

11 Likes

I’m getting much more crashes that you it seems. I have had crashes at the beginning of the battle against the Ancients, but most often it occurs 50-80% into the fight. Legacy mode or not.

Are you using a pre 2018 Switch with old chipset? A friend of mine who uses that has had way less crashes than me.

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That’s what happens when the software programmers rush these unfinished games out as a cash grab

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Nintendo should react to this, I’ve never bought a game this broken before. It has to be some kind if a record. And D2R was 1st on the eshop charts last I checked.

3 Likes

Had only one crash so far, the one described above. I’m using the newer Switch (non OLED). Playing only offline. Maybe that makes a difference?

Damn that’s the one I use, a 2018 model with improved battery. I wonder if there could something else with my system, but I have tried everything including moving the game to internal memory and take out SD card.

Maybe playing offline helps, but I don’t want to start over right away.

Nintendo has nothing to do with it it’s all on blizzard and then wanting to half @ss release games sorry let me correct myself not a game we didn’t buy a game we bought a licensing agreement not a game

2 Likes

Good write up!

Completely agree with you on the cross-progression and offline. This is not the way I was imagining it would work. I literally “had to” purchase Nintendo Online membership and play online. The only game I play online. 20 EUR per year to sync my characters. Indie game studios can do this free of charge, Blizzard can’t. (Edit: meaning - they indirectly force me to pay to Nintendo) Absolutely EFFING LAME. I DO NOT CARE ABOUT ONLINE, I JUST WANT TO SYNC!

I also experienced quite some crashes. It can happen randomly anywhere.

The FPS drops seem to be the worse in Lut Gholein and in Act 5 with all the snowing & the teleporting/fireballing imps. (I didn’t measure it, but it just felt so)

Why is nobody mentioning the VIDEOS? The videos play absolutely TERRIBLY on my Switch in handheld mode, I thought connecting it to the TV would make it better but it is actually worse. It looks like 15 fps if not less.

Why is Deckard Cain not identifying stuff in Horadric Cube? The inventory management is bad enough already…

I would also like to see:

  • Opening the menu/settings with the (+) button does not pause the game. This makes sense on PC but on consoles this overlays the whole screen. Add an option to pause the game when the menu is open.
  • Add a menu option to always show items so we don’t have to bind a button to toggle it. Overall the controls are bad. I expected them to be close to D3 on Switch (the controls were imho very good), but boy-oh-boy is it far…
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You can pause the game. Press + and 3 times R. The games is paused while being in the Options tab of the menu.

Max players at online game is 4, when all other platforms have 8 ? Why ? Why Switch players have to play 4 player Baal Runs when all others have 8 player ?

Really? Jeez, good to know, I have to try it out tonight. Thanks!
Who found this out and how? Any other combinations we should know about? Any website?

Found myself by accident, but I guess it will not work in online games.

so man, you’re going to cry about paying Nintendo?

so…what about others that gotta pay MS and/or Sony?
Syncing cross platform isnt free, pal.

What’s your point?

I am paying an online fee just for 1 game NOT to play online (but to sync).
Did I have to pay an online fee to pay Diablo 3? No. Did I have to pay an online fee to sync Hades? No.
Sync is not online gaming. Sync is sync. Just that these “experts” at Blizzard force you to play an online character just so you can sync it across devices. It is not even possible to copy the savefiles over.

For apologists like you we have companies like these.

as far as Switch goes, friend, ive needed to have an online membership for stuff such as:
monster hunter gen
mario kart 8 dlx
smash ultimate
and yes
diablo 3

why would d2 be any different?
you’re either dumb or ignorant.

edit:
im done with this, also.
you clearly don’t know anything about the Switch.

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There is barely any volume on the switch version, constant static sound and all the effects are muddied. Just increase the audio of everything its terrible to play with no propper clear fx even with speakers or headphones its too low with static sounds all the time.

I like the switch version offline so far I just bought Diablo 2 resurrection yesterday haven’t faced any issues so far

In the end I also like the Switch version. Its just the sheer number of minor/medium issues and the insufficiently or non-existent QoL features that accumulate to a bad aftertaste.

Srsly, dude, can’t you read? For the 3rd time I am spelling it out for you: I want to SYNC, I don’t want to play online. To be able to sync I NEED TO PLAY ONLINE because Blizzard is useless and couldn’t implement sync for offline chars. DO-YOU-UNDERSTAND? If you don’t, download Hades for example.

You don’t need a membership for any of those games you mentioned if you don’t want to play online. Yes, I do have them (except MH). Yes, I didn’t have a membership till 2 weeks ago. What are you even talking about?

You can not distinguish between online play and syncing a damn offline savegame but you dare to tell me I don’t know anything about Switch. OK. Now back to kindergarten.

Thats impossible how can you hear any of the atmosphere sounds and say its not an issue? You dont hear the constant static, the low volume on footsteaps and no crunch at the hit fx just heavy bass and more static radio sound everywhere. Switch between the old and new and listen to the cave sounds or even reverb of footsteps, some are muddy while others are simply missing.