30:53 multiplayer talk: Browsing server games, difficulty, chats, etc.
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another question. In Multiplayer all your minions, merc and party members generally go along the top of the screen. Screen shots at announcement of D2R showed it going down left side. Is this customizable? Can I have Party going across top, and Merc in left corner and Minions going down the side? That would be awesome for me to visually keep track of my minions separate to my party.
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Please release another blog post in the future that talks about things such as the Cow King death penalty, Diablo clone, the Switch version capabilities, and the D2R classic shared stash as well as the other popular thread topics. I like what I see so far though, but we need those meaty details.
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Pretty happy about what I see! I love the extra shared stash tabs. I also love the change where the character does not appear until the map has loaded. You have no idea how many times a loading screen has killed meā¦
The thing that is missing is commentary on D2 Classic (non-expansion mode, to be clear). One of the major issues is lack of support for QoL features for D2R Classic players. This has been repeatedly posted on the forums.
PLEASE read through some of these threads and implement QoL for Classic gameplay in D2R. The ākeep it the same for Classicā mentality is based on a huge misconception about the Classic player base. Please donāt exclude us!
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Yep. This game looks almost complete. It will not be complete until Classic (non expansion) gets the QoL options as well.
Please do not release an incomplete game.
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Thank god your right i just truly hate d3 match making the multiplayer is garbage i always end up in an empty game and d2 you could always find games and people to play with that had the same goals as you it just made it fun to always find people to play with it was great childhood memories im just being idk loved d2 and d3 is fun but it doesnt feel like diablo but ill quit thanks for making me feel better about it though lol
Regarding the blog, some clarity on how many characters will be available to online players would be helpful.
For future points, the SP community would love to know if ladder runewords will be accessible offline without modding. It would be nice to be able to try DClone & Ubers, but you take what you can get.
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Stacking please for potions, gems, runes, etc. Thank you.
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I just realized I never left feedback myself. I guess better late than never.
Arts and Visuals
Lightning - Looks whiter, thicker and more real. Thank you for that change. I was getting the literal ābluesā before this change.
Blizzard Skill animation - Thank you for the angled and better looking raindown effect. Much better!
Holy Freeze visual change - Basically a cold nova that comes out when the freeze happens? I flipped through the three pictures and it almost looks the same size, but is slightly different sized in each picture. I like the visual idea, but I can maybe see possibly an issue with this cluttering the screen, especially if there are multiple players with holy freeze mercsā¦
Monster targets - Changing it to the blue color is welcomed and true to the original, thank you.
Animation Updates
Mana & Health globes - Thank you for changing it so the globes are truer to the actual health levels. Goodbye laggy health/mana globes!
Item Colors:
Potions - Look at the metallic rings on the health potions from the original game versus the updated ones. I think these rings need to be more reflective and brighter, like the original ones.
Gems - A bit lacking on the shiny sparkly highlight bling bling compared to the original, but still OK.
Skulls - Post alpha change is better, now easier to differentiate between flawless and normal skulls.
Shown items - All of them look good to me, even the upscaled originals.
User Interface Settings
Item names toggle - Personally Iāll stick with showing items on ground with a keypress, Iām sure plenty will like this feature. Having the option is always a plus.
Shared Stash - Hey, I was anticipating 1 tab, POSSIBLY a game gold buy option to get up to two additional tabs. But hey, Iāll take 3 tabs from the get-go. Thank you!
Compare tooltip toggle - Again, having the option is always a plus, bravo!
Map Settings options - Options, options, options! I love it! I feel like Iām playing Gradius with all of these options!!.. Wait, nevermind.
Misc Updates
Clock added - Well, Iāve had a 2nd monitor for a while now, I can always look at it for the time. But hey, not everyone has a 2nd monitor, so yeah, itās about time! Thank you!
Loading screen vulnerability - Very important, well done! No one wants to click Duriels entrance, see the loading screen and then a screen telling them their deeds will be remembered.
Audio change - Good move. I felt that the new grunts that were added werenāt in line with the originals
Nowā¦ About that Cow levelā¦ The Cow Kingā¦ You know what Iām talking aboutā¦ Can we get that change please? 
6 Likes
I really enjoyed this small update. I loved to read and watch lots of welcome changes. Cool mindset by the Diablo teams. Here are my rather specific comments :
Loading time
Great news that it will be improved. I wonder though how the loading time will work when:- Both areas are crowded, which is the case in the forgotten towers, at Duriel, occasionally or a3 Temples, (or āstagedā Tristam and Summoner reds tps).
- Whether or not the player loading the content will still interact in multiplayer games
Furthermore, just like watching a movie with a loading logo between scenes would not look right in my opinion. I think the loading image could be avoided as an option. In isometric view, the Gates opening animation is out of context. Simply fade-in/fade-out or a transition for example would be nice to have too. It can simply be an option to keep the immersion authentic, especially for people new to the game.
Gothic loading gates make little sense in the far Oasis 
Gems
I am glad the teams seek feedback on that one. For me there are 2 problems with the gems :https://i.ibb.co/Zx8TP81/D2-R-gemsupdate.jpg
- The new gems lack contrast. A black background would give a higher range of tones from the darkest reds to white. Itās how jewelers increase the radiance. ( You could place a black background invisible to the camera but still casting diffuse and reflection to the gem) ; to allows the light a surface that would give contrast and depth to the gem just like in the original.
- The second reason are refractions (like in prisms or water reflections in the pool). Because refraction separates white light into its rainbow colors, the old gems are rendered with refractions called ācausticsā in physical rendering softwares. This is what make the original gems more natural looking.
If you look closely, there are very subtle sparkles of green, yellow and blue in the original rubies. There can be small amounts of other minerals in expensive gems, giving them a natural and specific signature.
Caustics have many parameters that allow to accentuate the effects, radius and color hues to the desired liking. They require heavy processing and are usually avoided for games, but this would be harmless since they are baked jpgs : )
Only after, perhaps the gems could benefit from lights positioned on the sides or behind to get more sparkle.
Non mentioned topic : Desktop Graphic identity
Back in the days, playing games used to start at the purchase of the cd boxes and while installing it. With the dematerialization of games, it would then be cool at least to keep handcrafted graphic identity :https://i.ibb.co/MDB2FQY/D2-R-launchers-installers-update.jpg
- In the 90ās and 00ās, many games used to have graphically customized and immersive .exe Launchers. I understand a launcher is meant to share news about other games, but It would be cool at least to have a Diablo graphic identity, layer and buttons in its own tab. The current tabs look too corporate.
- Updates were seen though the prism of Sanctuary. Even updates tried to be immersive
- Originally, and very specifically, this installation image starts with the cymbals of the track āHellā
https://youtu.be/YgdkkG2Jl5w?t=68- And stops after 6 seconds. It sets the mood. So some audio could be nice to have as well.
Itās always a pleasure to share general thoughts as well as some specific details. I hope it helps. I like the coherence of the choices. Thank you for the sharing.
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Iād rather have 3 shared and 1 normal than 3 normal and 1 shared myself. More items I can access at any given time without having to have a muling session.
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I agree with this. Any other space issue is better served with more character slots. I would absolutely hate 3 slots on each char and 1 shared.
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When I was playing Plugy, I did just that, put everything under personal on my MF character. 1 week later, reorganized to put everything under shared since it was so much more convenient to access at any given time rather than constantly moving from shared to a specific character inventory and I was keeping more stuff for collectorās sake in plugy than I ever did on bnet.
I really believe people are seriously underestimate the amount of space they are giving us. Peanuts compared to SP Plugy, but a goldmine for bnet play. It is unlikely to have a legitimate grail on bnet. Now, I will give people wanting to ensure we have enough character space for those that plan to play hardcore and softcore ladder on both LoD and Classic, as well as softcore non ladder duelers. Average person is probably not going to be playing that many modes, nor non ladder unless they ungate the ladder only.
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Now something that is also interesting, is that the clock and loot toggle were not necessarily Alpha related, but two things that Blizzard specifically surveyed on. Shared Stash was also surveyed iirc, but that is a general anyways considering the Alpha had the 1 when we did see up to 3 during Blizzcon.
Canāt wait to see the rest, though Iām not expecting too much extraordinary at this point. I figure by end of month for that more detailed blog, with an exact Beta date which I would think to be early August, as they will want as much time as possible to smooth out anything that comes up before Sept 23rd for launch.
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The new potion art is much better!
As others have said, the suitability of the stash tab additions are still a question mark until we know how many characters we can have.
I would really like to get some kind of Holy Grail tracker in-game. This could be a list of every item, and each would be marked as complete once achieved (ie has this character ever picked up this item, even if it has since been sold?). Ideally it could let you show all, show only achieved, and show not achieved. Maybe an overall %. There are some good checklists out there that let you manually mark an item as picked up and have that reflected in an overall percentage, but doing this in-game would mean they could be tracked automatically.
Also, some of us do occasionally use a Mac when eg on the road so a mac version would be great at some point. Just like d3.
Overall these QoL changes are brilliant and I canāt wait to try the beta.
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I love almost all of the changes.
In the case of the skulls, it looks like the team has prioritized looking like the original graphics over improving the quality. I think the technical alpha skulls look much more polished, although maybe a bit too tan and not enough gray.
Iām split on the rubies. I think the TA chipped and normal have too much white, so I prefer the revised chipped and normal. On the other hand, the revised flawed, flawless, and perfect rubies look like blurrier versions of the TA rubies, so I prefer the TA versions.
Okay, probably in the minority but didnāt the original D2R Blizzard look al lot better & represent the original better too?
Also the animation falling from higher, doesnt that mean the delay is longer?
I alsways though that the orginal effectys were thicker because pixel size, and the new ones in the original D2R were fine. I worry that bny making all the spells āfatterā just going to look more like a cartoon animation.
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No, the first attempt of the blizzard did not at all look like the original. It did not look as massive and destructive as the original one. I really like the new version of that spell
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All the changes are for the better. Iām glad the Devs put the time to polish the game even more. Good work!
Immensely happy with all changes listed.
VFX:
All changes are positive, visual queues related to skills need to be legible to the end user to inform gameplay. Holy Freeze is definitely the aura that had the weakest visual representation and Iām glad was addressed. With that said I think the other auraās with a little more muted visual impact could be toned up. Skills such as Might or Fanat which are the more common yellows and oranges not to mention also THE MOST important auraās to see when it comes to player information.
Animations:
This was basically a bug fix that was changed wayyyy back in 1.03 where the HP/MP pools had smoothing on them. Again user information is valuable, no one wants to feel ācheatedā out of a hardcore character. One of the most important fixes IMO.
Icons:
All good changes, again clarity is good. I find it interesting that only the 2D variations were touched on and the 3D models and particularly colours were not. Distinguishing if your PvP opponent is wearing a dark green shako or a random poison resist cap can be a big difference.
Accessibility:
Great changes, giving players the freedom to play how they want with no tangible benefit with or without the option enabled is just a straight positive.
Stash tabs moving from 3:1 to 1:3 is a bit of a surprise. Iām not sure on the use case for having 3 shared over the original 1. It seems to me that players would rather hold more on any given character than transfer more but maybe thatās just me.
Misc:
Clock addition is neat, not required but again if there is no performance impact why not have it as an option.
The next two I consider bug fixes once again.
Loading screen. Easily the largest and most impactful change out of any.
Characters will no longer spawn in a hostile place until the game is fully loaded, preventing characters from getting attacked or harmed during a loading screen.
Duriel charge pre-LoD anyone? Absolutely required fix. This is something of the āgraceā period that is now common place in any other modern day RPG. Classicly this wasnāt required due to D2 being now a tiny, āeasy to run gameā where there was basically no down time. If alpha was anything to go off this is no longer the case.
Additionally, the overall load times will be faster.
Good. All those who havenāt heavily invested in NVMeās rejoice.
Audio Changes. Added with D2R, I can see the perceived value to extra audio queues. This messed with a lot of experienced players and what we know already. Hearing what was once a death cry now just be a get-hit cry really hits that PTSD hard.
Personal thoughts:
Very happy overall, all changes are positive or neutral.
Took quite sometime for follow up post to the alpha thatās for sure, though for the absolute sea of feedback that was given Iām not surprised.
There are still some major questions I would like to see addressed such as how global servers will function, we can take educated guesses but thatās all they are at the end of the day.
Skills not having a max cast range is another one that comes to mind.
Minor information or reasoning such as why/how gold works with shared stash, why light radius from bosses was removed.
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