Well i would like to begin this post by firstly saying that a healthy dialogue can be profitable for all involved. My intention here is understand why Blizzard has not yet deployed a Diablo 4 API? My questioning is based in several aspects of what these api’s can bring to the comunity and as feedback what it can bring to blizzard itself. Diablo 4 is a game and as such reaching maximum performance people need information and testing. However the more information you have less tests are needed, because the information fills the gaps that useless tests would have to. Im ignoring here the experience of the player as a third variable and placing it also as information. So how are we aquiring information right now? Empirical tests with no measure of precision and worst yet we have little idea how to reach the maximum performance of our builds because we have no means to create D4 calculators since there is no API. Besides the lack of this important feature i keep thinking that i have no idea of how much is the dmg i can take ( dmg pool ), and how much is my real dps. And also all this information could be helpful to blizzard in making a more balanced game, i play with a Druid, werewolf, do you think i like seeing crazy builds hitting for 100 kk dmg, or even more, and they dont even have good gear. I’m nor here rant about unbalanced game i’m here to dialogue towards the creation of a simple API that would serve us well and at the same time help blizzard make a better D4.
How do we make this a Priority for Blizzard?
Lol what? What do you wanna do generate BI reports on user damage numbers or something? The game has network issues as it is let alone allowing API pulls. Blizzard already has all of this data, it doesn’t help them at all to allow Joe Blows to pull data over API. You wanna pay a SaaS sub for D4?
Diablo 3, WoW, EverQuest 2, DC Universe Online, Planetside 2, and other games have had character APIs for years and years without incident or a subscription fee. The data is live replicated to API-only databases so that hits to the API don’t put any load on the live game servers. And while a few people might use it for data analysis, 99% of the users of these APIs are just looking up their characters outside the game for completionism or comparing to alts, other characters, or seeking advice from fellow players to look over their character and tell them why they aren’t putting out the Dee Pee Ess.
I run the leading EverQuest 2 API website and was looking forward to making a character armory website for D4, but no API ever materialized.
The OP was almost exlusively speaking to data in the context of damage output assessments not character armories.
That’s a heck of a thread necro.
I’m usually a plus sum thinker, but Blizzard apparently doesn’t even have enough resources to test and deploy a game without fairly serious bugs. They can’t even seem to track and fix bugs volunteers find on the PTR. The last thing they need to be working on is an API.
You might try seeing if an agentic AI can pull damage numbers out of a training dummy screenshot and give you a damage estimate.
Old thread is still valid though.
Game is in a state where balance is totally unreachable, but we can vouch for the next best thing - build diversity i.e. viability of alternate mechanics such as lucky hits (and on overpower effects maybe)
Overall something that will make the process of gearing-up less compelling
A screenshot wouldn’t work, would need a video : P
Heh. Fair enough.
Heck, there’s probably some version where a player trains a dedicated foundational model.
This just might be the mother of all Necro posts….
Or…
The Lich King Post!
I’ve never understood the whining about old threads that are still 100% valid getting new posts. The need to churn topics over and over is killing the useful Internet.
That’s ok.
I never understood people who can’t express what they want without having to Necro a post.
The converse is that you can filter for outdated content based on the age of the content, which here is the start of the topic. Necros either mean the thread is hidden when you filter, or clutter the search with irrelevant stuff someone decided to arbitrarily bump.
Why is a new post needed for the same topic that’s still valid?
30 year forum mod here.
Well the idea is that necro-posts prevent talking about an outdated information, the fact that this topic/thread is still relevant is kinda bonkers tbh
Now I wonder if this predates the test dummy. I think it does…
Maybe because API’s are potentially a security risk?
I doubt that. They’ve managed an extremely complex set of APIs in WoW for a long time with a LOT of gold farmers and sellers trying to hack them.
I think they’ve just been juggling seasons, two major xpacks, and firefighting on a bespoke spaghetti code game engine.
They can barely produce a viable arpg product without re-writing combat every 6-12months…
I don’t think apis are a top priority for this team lol