Mrllamasc, the streamer who interviewed the D2R devs at blizzcon, gives his reaction to each individual question on the Reddit survey. I think his reactions and explanations perfectly portray why i am also against the majority of these changes.
Even “small” changes can actually have huge impacts on the feel of D2. Some of them may seem like nice QoL changes at first, but ultimately changes the core of the game for the worse. Most of these changes are designed to make D2R easier and easier. Sometimes the things that may seem annoying or frustrating are actually important RP aspects of the game you need for immersion.
/No D2jsp surveyed - failing to survey one if not the largest community clearly just playing the game as it is on live seems deeply problematic. These people aren’t D3 enthusiasts. I’m pretty sure i don’t need to watch the video to just conclude that if most of the changes are made it would lead to people just seeing D2:R as a totally different experience from D2.
But yes - if you do not have some sort of guideline as to why you’re making changes you’ll start making all of them like Jay Wilson started doing and you’ll end up lost at sea pushed around by whatever an interested and motivated vocal minority wants. That vocal minority got what they wanted in D3 and pretty much vanished two weeks in after D3 dropped and then the forums caught fire for months by people who hated D3 because it was nothing like its predecessors.
Making most of the changes in the survey is going to alienate ‘hardcore’ as well as casual players who remembered the game quite differently.
I just finished watching MrLlama’s video and I agree as well. If they make a lot of these changes they will probably lose their loyal hardcore fans that have kept D2 alive for the past 20 years.
He was all over the place. He’s fine with them adding new runewords and items, but not adjusting old ones. He doesn’t want skills to be buffed either, which is going to limit builds. Strangely he’s for new content added to the game, but thinks stackable gems and a charm inventory will be too game altering…
I disagree with a lot of what he said in this video.
he explains why he thought this. You clearly are biased and only care about him saying what you want to hear because you aren’t actually listening to his explanations. There will always be meta builds. having bad builds/skills is important for balance and something new games should bring back. Every skill shouldn’t be 100% viable or 100% as strong as every other. again. lazy.
he also explained in great detail why stackable gems and a charm inventory would be way too far. and i agree. a charm inventory is lazy. its making the game way too easy and removing choice. you again, aren’t paying attention to the explanations.
Same reason you don’t add unlimited ammo. Its removing any type of immersion when your character has limitless arrows and inventory space. Its “unrealistic” in the world of diablo, if that makes sense. You’re just adding buffs and convenience until you don’t have to think about anything. You button smash to win with any skill and never have to worry about ammo or inventory space. like a game we all know, D3.
Nobody said every skill had to be the same in terms of power, but that doesn’t mean skills such as inferno should serve no purpose aside from memes. Did you even play old-school D2 pre 1.10? Way more skills were viable. There is no reason why Blizzard shouldn’t try to make other skills useable again. Nobody is asking for D2 to function like D3 either.
Most of the changes discussed have no impact on the difficulty of the game in terms of combat or actually accomplishing anything.
Changes that might make finding items faster still wouldn’t really make the game that much easier but maybe fit into a 3 month season better.
“Go play D3” is a laughable comment people make in response to a lot of change requests since the changes wouldn’t really bring the game anywhere close to what D3 is.
Personal loot is a generic term that brings a lot of random assumptions about what it would look like. PoE style loot allocation would actually fit D2 really well and get more people to just play the game instead of spending half their time worrying about trying to ninja potential drops.
The /players 8 thing actually makes a lot of sense (though implemented as part of the UI at game creation) when you consider the existing game encourages antisocial behavior like joining random public games that are supposed to be for X and some random dude joins it, never joins the party and goes off to solo MF in some other random area just to take advantage of the larger number of players being in the game.
Also, most people’s reactions don’t even consider that you could just add an extra mode at character creation (LoD+) and leave all the changes in that mode so the 1.14 purists can stay there and play 1.14 forever. It’s not a binary choice of changes vs. no-changes.
The reason is realism in the game world. If nothing is realistic, theres zero immersion. This is why D3 failed so hard with its changes. What do you think the reason for adding stamina, limited ammo and a very limited inventory space was in the first place? Stacking items may seem trivial, but it ultimately has a huge impact on the feel.
Now im not saying all of these things are perfect. Stamina is too annoying and should get a slight buff at lower levels and they are increasing the stash space to 10x10 and giving us shared tabs. So SOME tweaking to the systems yes. But completely removing stamina, giving us unlimited space or making most precious items stackable is going too far with the QoL changes. It won’t ruin the game, but i still hope these don’t change. In the D2R deep dive the devs specifically said they wont be making gems/runes stackable.
Yeah Llama is spot on, same stuff I have been saying lol.
“I think a Diablo 3 player made this survey”
Because its true, that or someone that plays D2 Mods exclusively lol.
The demands on this forum, and the attempt to create totally dubious surveys which very likely favoured like-minded people first, before unlocking it and making it public is just ridiculous.
This survey looks so skewed and/or manipulated its just sad.
If you look at the survey results and the pie-charts, It really looks like, at most, one quarter of the people surveyed actually play D2, and the rest just clicked “yes” when asked if they play D2.
My favourite moment in the feedback video:
“Should there be an optional personal loot option in multiplayer? No… Go play Diablo III…Jesus”
God I hope the devs stick to their current course of action and values, and dont ruin D2R.
it isn’t laughable. Its actually extremely accurate. 90% of the changes are designed to make D2 easier and more convenient in every way. Effectively making it exactly like D3. Don’t think about your build or your skills or anything, because inventory space is near limitless, theres no limited ammo and you can respec any skill at any time. You clearly aren’t paying attention because thats EXACTLY what these changes do. lmao.
Going to agree with this. MOST OF this stuff looks like a Diablo 3 players wishlist and its very telling that it samples places where D3 players tend to be active.
I’ll admit that i didn’t watch a 50 minute video from someone who basically plays only singleplayer.
He is saying that new items and slight changes could be added down the line, with 1.15 patch for example, but even then he is saying that would change the game and would be really tricky to not make new OP items.
I seem to remember some comments around here trashing Llama, due to his focus on single player and mods, and someone mentioning if he had devs ear, it would all be changes to benefit single player grail hunts.
I am a fan of Llama as well. I think the easiest way to avoid any issues is simply make separate seasonal ladders (such as SSF in PoE) and then those who want to play with improvements can and those who don’t still have the “original”. With the ladders segregated it allows for everyone to play the game they want whilst not impacting the others.
