More than you might think. Generating a new release client and adding another round of testing and feedback is a monumental amount of work, and pushes out the delay of the patch (and the next Season) significantly. We have two options here:
- Listen to the community feedback about wanting another round of testing, creating an additional deployment cycle for QA, Development, Localization, Engineering, and Community teams to execute on, drastically increasing the time between patches and seasons
- Listen to community feedback about getting Seasons as close to 90 days or less so that the larger player base sees content at a more frequent cadence
These two are probably some of the most highly requested pieces of feedback I see from the vocal community (majority or minority otherwise), but they are in direct conflict with one another. At that point, we ask ourselves—which one makes more sense to pursue?
With the former, more players overall wait a longer period of time to play more Diablo in exchange for a few desired changes. With the latter, we release more content at a faster pace doing roughly the same amount of work, but you, as the player, may have to wait longer for the specific change or feedback you’ve requested to be acted on. The net win for the latter is greater, even if it’s less ideal for a smaller subset of individuals.
We believe this is the better route for a healthier, more lively game overall. I definitely understand why you might disagree, but I hope you also understand it’s not an arbitrary decision or one made out of lack of desire to improve the game.