First of all, I would like to say that I am and have been a D2 PvP player for many years. I’ve been a part of organizing tournaments and many other competitive facets of D2 PvP, and have developed long-lasting relationships/friendships with other people via D2 PvP. To say that I am passionate about the D2 PvP scene would be an understatement, and my knowledge of the nuances of PvP is vast. As such, I am writing here to voice my concerns about the current state of the remaster, as well as offer my opinions and knowledge base to anyone at blizzard who wishes to reach out. In this post, I will be focusing on the ultrawide screen advantage, however notably the current state of barbarians (referencing WW animations, and ALT wwing) is also a very important topic.
Problem: The ultrawide screen advantage & how it impacts the balance of PvP.
As has been brought up in a wonderful post by DHA (linked here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/report-extended-screen-range/32107/10 ) The ultrawide screen advantage has serious impacts on the current state and balance of PvP in D2, and after reading some comments from people in the community I feel it is useful to outline how exactly it can affect the game. The core fundamentals of what constitutes a PvP encounter in D2 can be boiled down into many categories, but let us focus on two that the ultrawide screen advantage impact. Positional advantage, and name locking (notably, the ultrawide screen advantage probably impacts more, but for sake of brevity, I will use these examples to convey my concern).
A positional advantage in D2 is a nuanced, matchup-dependent, and often overlooked property of D2 PvP. To define it simply, a positional advantage is when player (a) occupies a place on the map that garners an advantage against player (b). In order to occupy an advantageous position on the map, one must process a series of information and determine the strength of their position and whether or not to move or hold strong. Let us look at a classic example, Necro vs Trap sin (hence forth NvT). In this matchup a necro will field spirits and teeth (fielding: defined as lingering skill hitboxes throughout the map to do damage and manipulate the opposing player into less advantageous positions), and traditionally the trap sin aggresses towards the necromancer. Positionally NvT as a matchup heavily relies upon correctly determining the positional strength of your opponent in order to determine the winning sequence of actions in the duel. For example the necromancer, must ask oneself, is the environment riddled with obstacles I will get stun locked on? Is there a wall I can break namelocks with? Do I have the space to WSG out of a sticky situation and re-posture? Is the assassin baiting me to go one way where I will land in traps. And so on. For the assassin, processing the information of the opossing necro’s fields is vital to not eating “chip” damage, and being able to agress effectively.
Now that we’ve laid out the matchup, and how important processing of information is for maintaining or acquiring a positional advantage. One can easily see, that simply having more information to process on their screen, fundamentally and egregiously disrupts the balance and state of pvp. An assassin with an ultrawide advantage in this matchup never eats chip damage, because simply put they can process the positional information faster than the necromancer. If the necromancer has the ultrawide advantage, they simply never fall for baits by the assassin, and they can process information about the strength of an assault much faster (ex. this sin is agressing without their shadow up, making my position stronger here) way before the assassin ever shows their hand. Namelocking aside for now, this fundamentally disrupts the balance of PvP and will result in very nasty and unfair advantages for whoever has an ultrawide advantage. Even if you were to limit the space which an ultrawide player could input actions on. When we delve into the realm of team dueling, these advantage get exploited to an even higher degree.
Namelocking is when a player clicks and holds on a target with a spell, and the player will automatically aim their spells at the target regardless of where they move to. Name locking is arguably one of the most core prinicpals for any duel in D2. Being able to namelock farther than someone else due to an ultrawide advantage, will ruin the game for anyone not exploiting this advantage. Why so? Let us take our NvT matchup as an example. Assume that the assassin is exploiting the ultrawide advantage, how does this impact the matchup? Well, the assassin can namelock the necromancer while outside the visible range of the necromancer. If the assassin is able to namelock the necromancer without agressing into the visual field of the necromancer, the assassin can start a mindblast → trap sequence without any of the risks traditionally associated with the matchup. Flip the exploit to the necromancer, and we have a necromancer that can namelock spirit / spear an assassin before they are in a range to iniate a sequence of mindblasts and traps and will result in the assassin taking immense damage before the traditional interactions of the duel even take place. The problem here is clear, regardless of matchup statistics, the player exploting an ultrawide advanatage has an advantage over the player that doesn’t prior to the duel ever starting. Furthermore, it will fundamentally change the nature of PvP matchups, which contrasts with the design philosophy of the D2R team to deliver an authentic D2 experience.
If you care about providing your customers with an authentic experience, that mirrors what is expected by your beloved, loyal community. Please consider the PvP community, and address this game breaking issue.
Thanks for reading
- Lofty
(no, not really).