Earlier today we posted on social that we will be taking in questions for the Diablo Q&A at BlizzConline. I should note that we will be taking questions before BlizzConline and through the first day of BlizzConline. I wanted to get a thread up so it is a bit easier for our community team to track down any questions you may have on the Diablo forums. We will be pulling from the form link here and from this thread and Reddit.
As the Q&A is limited in time, we will try to get to as many questions as possible in the segment and we will be sure to pull relevant questions submitted after the opening ceremonies/panels on Day 1 to ensure we obtain some of the newest and latest questions that come across your mind!
One of the things that I miss most that Diablo III doesn’t have in it’s current iteration is truly rare items. I don’t mean slightly more powerful versions of the same items you’ve been using, but actual rare drops.
Will we see the return of truly awesome, rare items in Diablo IV?
EDIT: To clarify, I’m not talking about rare quality items. I’m talking about uniques or other items with very low drop rates that a player isn’t just expected to eventually find with a small or moderate amount of grinding.
What kind of monster affixes will be in the game and how will the differ from past affixes and feel unique to Diablo IV?
Seeing the early gameplay videos of Diablo IV, I worry that affixes might feel like they are very similar to Diablo 3, with affixes such as the freezing ice orbs that explode around the area. These kind of affixes are fun for a bit, but overall, take away from the enemy and feels more like an environmental hazard rather than then attacking or retaliating.
Yes, I absolutely agree with this. Make items range in difficulty to find by a wide amount. There should be uniques that are not terribly hard to find, and some that are at least on par with the SOJ (hopefully a bit more rare as well) in Diablo 2. If all items drop from the sky all the time, it loses its special feeling and you are just grinding for very minor stat increases, which becomes boring and more of a chore.
Doesn’t really answer my question to be honest. It’s talking about differing item qualities and not invalidating lower qualities by not making those unique or legendary items automatically better.
I want to know if there’s going to be truly rare items like there was in Diablo II. There’s so many items I never saw drop in my years of on and off D2 grinding. I don’t want there to be an expectation that you will eventually see every item drop with a moderate amount of grinding.
I want big names like “The Grandfather” to come back and actually be something insanely rare and exciting to see drop, if you ever see them drop.
Yeah, exactly. I want super rare items to be a thing again. Let’s say, for example, there’s 20 uniques per class on launch. I don’t want each unique to have a flat 5% drop rate. It’s not exactly like that in D3 but you can expect to see every legendary item for your class even after casually grinding for awhile in D3.
What they did say, was that they are taking the atmosphere of Diablo 1, the loot hunt of Diablo 2, and the combat of Diablo 3 as their inspiration. This means that hopefully they are indeed going to institute a more tiered “rarity” (difficulty to find) of items in the game.
There is nothing wrong with having more hard to find items and some that many players will never find. Games have always done this to some degree, and an RNG based game should be no exception, and should actually push this even further.
The idea that every piece of gear needs to be attainable for all players of all skil levels after less than (lets call it 100 hours of gameplay), is just silly. You don’t NEED the grandfather sword, windforce, breath of the dying, etc. Those are not essential to having a good build, but yes they will make for some stronger versions of builds. And that is totally fine. If everyone can get everything very quick, you can bet that the vast majority of your core audience who keeps playing the game, is not going to stick with it long.
None of the Diablo games had problems when they first came out. The problems start when theres years of whining about never finding items you want after years of looking. Or years of whining in general. Game time played shouldn’t have any factor to finding items it should be age of a char and how active you are surely and how well you play content no?
I already asked Lupragon this question a few weeks ago on twitter, but people from the community encouraged me to ask it again for the Q&A:
Do you intent that certain skills like Wrath of the Berserker or Conduit - and maybe some Defensive Skills as well - first start their cooldown until after their effects have expired, to prevent a 100% uptime on these skills & unintended synergies from occurring in the first place, and also to making balance easier?
I’d like to hear more about cosmetics in general, and specifically in two areas:
First, D3 gave us armor dyes and I love that system very much. However it was very limited allowing us to change only a single color of our armor and replace it with a very limited selection of colors; weapons couldn’t be colored at all. Wolcen demonstrated a much more robust color customization allowing recoloring of several colors per item and a color palette of 140 shades. Will D4’s item customization system allow us to recolor weapons and offer the flexibility and breadth of Wolcen’s system?
Second, I think D4 should allow visual customization of certain skills. One of my frustrations playing certain Necromancer and Barbarian builds in D3 is that skills like Bone Armor and Wrath of the Berserker completely transform the look of your character. I always found this frustrating because after spending time customizing the look of my character with transmogs and dyes only to have that erased when using a transformation skill. In World of Warcraft players can customize the look of certain skills via runes - can we get a similar system in D4, especially for transformation skills?
That’s not crazy grind, however. Crazy grind for Seasons would be beyond 500 hours.
And it’s fine to have some very rare items that the casual player will find once every 5 Seasons, however it’s not fine to lock-up gameplay behind these for many reasons and they won’t do it.
The dedicated players can always prolong their grind by optimizing their gear and they won’t leave the game, because the casuals have worse version of their equipment. Yet the casuals may do it if they can’t receive the gameplay they are after (in solo or multi).
The enchantress was initially going to have weapon enchants that would say add poison damage and a green poison glow to weapons. They should do that, as well as have modifications to spells like the D3 runes do. Something along the lines of enchanting fireball to do 50/50 fire and frost damage and the spell looks like a firefrost bolt now.
I don’t mind transforming into an ancient Barbarian filled with rage for a few seconds. I still see my character most of the time. But options are good.
What will be accessible in terms of content from Blizzcon if I can’t watch it live? Will I have access to all videos online on the Blizzcon website? I am only interested in Diablo content (immortal, D2 and D4)
I would appreciate an GUI that can be adjustable by the user. More specific I would like to be able to have some stats open to be able to track in actual gameplay.
Example crit hit chance/damage. If only these two stats could be pinned on the screen without blocking out the game screen. It could work as a transparent moveable window. Toggleabel.
As for itemization one thing would be fun in my opinion, directly from D2, the ability to name an item making it “personal”. It was a quest reward, maybe it could be done at an NPC like the blacksmith for in-game money or items instead. Nothing game breaking just giving a personal touch.