Poll results ordered from most popular to least popular. When the devs look at these kind of lists they typically start with risk and move on to cost etc (something that’s both very popular and doesn’t cost them much is often an easy win for a dev team).
Should you be able to open the cow level after killing the cow-king? YES. 8.2-to-1
Should the Nihlathak portal stay open after completing the quest and getting the waypoint? YES. 5.0-to-1
Should they add at some point more endgame content like the Pandemonium Event? YES. 4.92-to-1
Should runes and gems be stackable (e.g. up to 10 per stack)? YES. 4.875-to-1
Should there be an optional additional tooltip on items, that shows the possible min-max rolls of the stats? E.g. Nagelring: +21% magic find (15-30% magic find)? YES. 4.81-to-1
Should there be an option to toggle showing ground loot (so you don’t have to keep ALT pressed every time you want to see the loot)? YES. 4.47-to-1
Should there be minor mercenary balancing to make useless/bad mercenarys more viable? YES. 3.78-to-1
Should there be some minor spell balancing to make useless / bad spells more viable? YES. 3.68-to-1
Should there be an ingame runeword/horadric cube encyclopedia? YES. 3.55-to-1
Should there be an optional loot-filter to make certain item-drops (e.g. runes) more visible? YES. 3.04-to-1
Should there be minor item and runeword balancing to make useless / bad items and runewords more viable? YES. 2.56-to-1
Should they add at some point new items, runewords or horadric cube recipes? YES. 2.52-to-1
Should there be an optional, modernized spell hotkey system? YES. 2.38-to-1
Should the Non-Ladder runeword/drop restrictions be removed? YES. 2.25-to-1
Should there be a seperate inventory space for charms? YES. 1.93-to-1
Should the stash space be increased? (original size = 8 x 6 squares) YES. 1.89-to-1
Should there be a Kill-Tracker to see how often you killed Boss X and get stats of the drops? YES. 1.73-to-1
Should the inventory space be increased? YES. 1.375-to-1
Should quivers have unlimited ammo? YES. 1.316-to-1
Should the /players X command (to increase XP/drops) also be available on Battlenet? YES. 1.16-to-1
Should the 6-months ladder season cycle be changed? YES. 1.10-to-1
Should there be an additional/easier way to respec? (e.g. one free respec every ladder reset) NO. 1.02-to-1
Should there be an optional personal loot option in multiplayer? (everybody gets his own loot, other people can’t “steal” it) NO. 1.08-to-1
n=4352, ratio of only yes and no responses, undecided or others ignored.
Link to source poll results: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bZDRPXHVjNCh5mrGBwlkyG1JOWYfxLg-/view
The poll results regarding core mechanics changes sound like asking tourists the kind of changes they’d want in the cities they are going to visit. They ask for parking lots, fast food facilities and restrooms next to the Pyramids or the Eiffel tower.
They just want the game to accommodate their short journey, burn the content and leave without asking themselves if these changes harm the place or bother the locals who live there the whole year who want a durable place.
Some of these players remind me of people in tour packages, who want a prepared breakfast and provided umbrellas. They are not interested in organizing their own trip, organizing their bag, scheduling or even dealing with strangers. They fear the unexpected events which is the beauty of travelling. They are not interested in the process of travelling (which is what the RPG is supposed to be), their goal is is to take a trophy picture and back to the tourist bus.
To be clear, I don’t mind reasonable minor QOL such as shortcuts for consoles or shared stash, I could even (perhaps!) consider future balances changes in a few seasons only if the community feedback of both old and new players ask for it.
People who want core QOL changes buy and switch easily between all sorts of games, and will buy d4 anyway. While the more patient and historic players who’ve been waiting for 10 years are very careful about changing mechanics have less patience for other RPGs.
I like a lot, especially 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 but because I also read the document with question 25 --> suggestions, everything that starts with “unlimited” e.g. stash, stamina, respec, etc is no from me… I believe that Blizzard must do something similar to be more official…
What is clear is even the least popular thing still was 39% no and 36% yes in your accounting. This ignores the 13% who are a conditional yes and 12% undecided.
Yes, it seems quite close on those last 2 that were NO and for personal loot, more people were “for” than “against” if you included the 13% that were for it with a tradeoff I suppose.
I think the poll creator could have perhaps worded that question more cleanly but very useful still imo.
This is the wording on that one I was wondering about in bold:
39% of the people are against optional personal loot
36% are for optional personal loot, while 13% are also for personal loot but only if there is a tradeoff
My main takeaway is there are alot of people who want some changes. Even for the so-called big optional changes, it still is a sizeable population in favor.
Well, that looks like VV have one “Hell” of a task ahead of them trying to figure out the right way to handle things
I find it kind of reassuring, that most of the rather harmless QoL changes seem to have an overwhelming majority of people behind them.
Though reading through the PDF document with suggestions is giving me the creeps.
Many of the changes mentioned there are really targeted at the core of D2 gameplay design and should never ever happen if D2:R is supposed to stand a chance in the eyes of the long term fans and the most dedicated player base.
I also take the majority for balance changes with a grain of salt.
While I would welcome minor changes to skill balance I think that they should leave the item balance untouched.
If they screw something up with the skill balance it is rather easy to revert it with zero consequence.
But if they touch the items, those will be out there on the players accounts and if it doesn’t go as planned, then it will be a HUGE hazzle to fix the issue.
It would basically come down to deleting or editing existing items on the players accounts and that could backfire in a really bad way.
New content is also welcome, but it should definitely happen in a separate mode. Maybe just leave it to the modders though.
The results should be looked at in a few categories:
QoL – From the basic shared inventory, gold pick up, stack quivers before inventory to stackable runes. These will get some people very upset if they go ‘too far’ and as this forum shows if they do any people will still get upset.
Shooting for the stars: I’d put things like individual drops etc, the more aggressive changes people keep asking for that most people would say ‘sure I’ll take that’, just because it’s offered.
Future support – balance updates, skill balancing, new runewords etc. Things that a new game gets because it’s new and still an active seller. Who knows if they will do any of this, but I really hope they do it as an update after D2R is out. I don’t feel they need to get this done until there is a greater pool of people playing and they can do active studies on what needs to happen rather than take the opinion of those relative few who have been playing for the last 15 years after most have moved on.
Now the first two categories are the area that will get the most debate in what is QoL and shooting for the stars. That really is the discussion that VV/Blizz should be having, where the dividing line between QoL and changing the game too much is. As with any good compromise people on both sides should be upset at the results.
I’ve played d2 since it came out, so I really can’t agree with your outlook on the kind of people asking for changes. You guys just strawman this up and claim no “real” player could want changes. It’s really unimaginative and old by now.
For the most part, the wording of the questionnaire seemed imminently fair. For example, do you honestly think that most players would not like the ability for their character to redo a cow level? I find it difficult to believe that the no change would be a majority at that one.
I have trust in the person who made the poll, but the answers are prepared in one direction. You both force us to be hyperbolic because you feint to recognize or understand that the original designers intentionally use tedium, limitations, and rules.
Tedium serves a role in video games, it prevents a too easy progress and allow a distinction among players, diversity and preferences.
Killing the king provides automatic unique reward at the cost of not opening the level again. Games are designed with pros and cons.
The size of the chest have been finely weighted, and already been increased, not to mention shared stash. Why should a player today progress faster than 10 years ago ?
If you remove limits of arrows, you change the balance between multishot (costs less arrows)/strafe and magic arrows (costs none)
…
Don’t underestimate what the original designers originally envisioned. The balance between tedium and upgrade has already been done. This is why asking for upgrade without tedium in the poll is imo not entirely right.
Players will always seek the path of least resistance and there is no ending to these kind of requests (half of the poll).
I keep going back to options and engaging the community. As long as they stay true to the core of D2, give options where possible and make sure that a significant player majority is on board with any change, they should be fine.
But one factor that’s not on the poll is what I would call the breaking point - a feature or change that would decide your purchase. As we know, some people will not buy D2R in protest if it makes certain changes, and the flip side, some will not buy without certain QoL changes - they’ll just stick w/ existing mods and D2. So how many of those items in the poll are really breaking points, if any, is a good question to ask.
It’s an interesting situation. I also think they are litmus testing some things with D2R before D4 comes out. D4 has not decided on a final trading paradigm. They’ve only said that some things are BoA while others are freely tradeable. I think D4 team will be keenly interested in how D2R trading does with todays community on modern Bnet - trading is one of the more contentious issues with D4 I think, and D2R should give them some insight.
This is a good point and in this they also need to run the spectrum of showing new (younger) players that the game isn’t too tedious to modern standards vs getting the older players to not rage quit. As a business decision if you make a change that pulls in 10K younger gamers and gets them to buy D4 as well while it alienates 2K older players…you go with the numbers.
Todays topics of picking up arrows is a good example. By today’s standards, you wouldn’t have arrows, but that is a large change that may be too far. On the other end is the current set up that has any Zon needing to open inventory every once in a while and move arrows to the quiver. The middle ground could be any arrows you pick up should go first to your equipped quiver then to inventory.
A majority of the people who participated in this poll don’t understand the implications of some of these decision such as ‘Charms Inventory’ and how it affects both balance and decision making of this game.
Let the developers decide, at this point I trust them much more then the majority of people who want to play this game.
Congrats, now you know what those reddit users think about d2r. The problem is that im not even a reddit user, as many of other actual d2 players.The sample is not representative.
I wouldn’t give this survey so much weight, it is not representative of people that actually play D2. A lot of them are people who have only played Diablo 3, and maybe a couple hours trying out older Diablo games.
Exactly, I think it would be great to have new players play D2R as-is, without changes, so they get that authentic one-of-a-kind experience, and then engage community to make changes after launch. But if there are things that make new players just stop playing in Alpha or early-access, that’s where they have to draw the line and make changes before launch. In the end, whether we like it or not, it’s a business and as you say they usually go with the numbers.
