About D2R patch 2.4 - their ideas - and mine

[Pyrotechnician]

@ziambe you hit a number of the problems they proposed with the skill adjustments. They can boost the damage on fire skills all they want, but if 75% of the monsters are still immune it means nothing. The only way this would work is if the amount of synergies needed to complete the build is reduced and an effective second skill can be chosen without sacrificing main skill damage.

Impale, agree, its just too slow, have to change the frame rate not the damage.

Amazon Fire bow skills, I like the idea of immolation losing its timer. If you can stack those fire pools they might actually be useful...(wait, everything is still immune )

 

[Flan]

As someone who likes melee builds, I would be all for a melee splash damage modifier on jewels and/or equipment. Would really make melee builds more run friendly.

 

[Hookipa]

I'm happy I kept all my D2L save games. I can still use my new game laptop for D4...
Honestly, some of the changes I appreciate: improving non-A2 mercs and improving underused skills.

However, nerfing tomb-/ pit-vipers is a big No-No. I always liked and still like playing my favourite character the Hammerdin, becasue it feels godlike strong. After the release of 1.13 I was bummed out that it was easier to create a high level char due to respecs. I liked the decision and planning restrictions.

At the same time I enjoyed that the Baal wave 2 magic immunes made it a bit more difficult. So did the pit-vipers, they were sort of a 'check and balance' on absolute power and motivated me to invest time to find items to make my Hdin stronger. Last week when farming keys at Nihlatak (damn you Necro Torch where are you?) my Hammerdin and Merc "cried". My Merc with full pdr gear and Hammerdin landed in the poison cloud and it did hardly any damage. Was I standing still? Did Kasim get the Posion cloud mechanics after run gazillion?

Nope. We ran through the cloud up and down and only a tiny bit damage drained the HP bulb. It feels like some existential D2 mechanic has been removed.
My personal D2 goal of making my Hammerdin ingame godlike was reached (after 8,5 years), but it felt like a cheat... I did not reach it bc I found 8x 40+ life skillers, but bc of a nerf. Kind a bummed out due to the nerf.

I do like the oblivion knights casting LR curse though!

OT: while farming keys Summoner minion dropped this beauty.

 

[Kartongen]

Impale, agree, its just too slow, have to change the frame rate not the damage.

I personally feel imoake should be slow - otherwise it is just a beefed up normal attack.
Push the damage even higher, to absurd levels, and make in uninterruptable instead. That might make it viable while still maintaining its feel.

 

[J-Dog]

This is a great thread.

 

[corale]

Great thread, agreed. For me there are three types of changes to look out for here.

• The ones that wish to fulfill an initial intention of the game, which is to make more use of aspects of the game that are rarely or never used today, such as underbalanced skills and mercenaries, and filling out gaps in runeword density along the way to end game. This sounds great, these things rhyme with the intention and design of the game.
• The ones that want to even out extremes, smoothen the difficulty spikes. This is terrible, these things are part of D2's identity and one of the main things that sets it apart from D3 and others like it. I play hardcore in D3, but it doesn't matter at all. I set the difficulty I can handle and then I never really risk death unless I fall asleep at the keyboard. And I can complete all content like that, the only difference between difficulty levels is the average legendary drops per hour played. I digress a little there, but it is to illustrate the point: There is no mechanic that will help you kill Baal on Hell in D2. You have to build a good character, find some good items, and then play well and know the game. Knowing where dragons be (tomb vipers) is part of that, especially at end-game! And the better you know the game, the less you can get away with in terms of items and strong builds.
• The ones that would expand the capabilities of the strongest characters, aka make the end game even easier for the top players (intentionally or not). Thankfully there's none of this planned I think, but new high level runewords could easily fall into this category.

And anyone who thinks changes should go in the other way and make the game harder instead is also wrong. I respect the wish, but the game should move in a direction that makes sense in its own context and with its design, not cater to people in any specific "D2 demographic", be it players who found everything and are lacking a challenge, or people who can't find the Dark Woods.

For reference, I am mid tier I guess, having made a Grief once in Legacy but never had an Enigma or Infinity.

 

[maxicek]

There always has to be a "best" skill or a "best" weapon. The majority of people will always pick the standard (most powerful) builds. Making impale or fend better won't increase the amount of fendazons compared to LF Javazons, it will just make those skills marginally less crap for those that play them.

The same for the eternal "nerf enigma" discussion. Removing the teleport or MF just increases the amount of blizz sorcs again - Before 1.13 I think most MF tourneys were stuffed with sorcs.

 

[Luhkoh]

I didn't even like them fixing bugs (especially the tomb vipers), but I was still excited and thinking of buying a computer to play. Now rebalancing the game? Nah I'm out. I don't trust them to do well with it. And I just don't like the idea of the game I'm most into and want to sink year-long+ projects into changing every couple of years. Not to mention I just love 1.13/1.14 the way they are.

For a less closed-minded response, I don't hate the idea of lets say, making some skills that are currently terrible, like 75% as good as a good skill. Or maybe making some other areas okish (like make a couple more alvl 84 or something), but I dislike anything that changes the top tier metagame at all, and hate the idea of new runewords and such. Any new runewords almost definitely would be either useless or game-changing. Quite tough to thread the needle and make something thats fun enough to use but doesn't significantly change the game. Maybe like rift and lawbringer are good examples of that.

I just can't help but think people talking about nerfing grief and enigma are terrible decision makers for gameplay. Melee sucks, but lets make it weaker? All classes use enigma, so lets make everyone use a single class (sorc)? Sounds awful.

 

[coju]

I missed when the patch is supposed to drop? Anyone know?

 

[Cattleya]

I missed when the patch is supposed to drop? Anyone know?

The PTR to test the changes is supposed to go up early next year. It's hard to say how long they expect the PTR to last. I'm hoping they give it longer than the 1-2 weeks typical for D3 so they have time to get stuff right. But, I know there is a lot of pressure on them to get ladder going, so we'll see. So, my random speculation: the earliest I'd expect the patch would be February, with March feeling more likely.

Am I the only one who likes the fixed Tomb Vipers? I honestly always lumped that one together with the FE bug and IM in the Chaos Sanctuary. Just something to keep some builds out of the area completely. My opinion may be colored by most of my play being pre 1.13 when Enigma was nearly unheard of and CtA was quite rare in single player, and the standard way of dealing with them was to skip Nilathak entirely or reroll until you didn't get vipers.

That said, I do agree with corale that the goal shouldn't be to smooth out the difficulty in general. I like that D2 has a wide swing in the difficulty of encounters based on what affixes spawn on boss packs (and what can happen when multiple boss packs can synergize each other.) You really don't get that with D3 and it takes away a lot of the "texture" of the game. On the bright side, upgrading all the Act 3 temples to level 85 areas gives us a reason to go survive some door traps!

I generally don't want to see the difficulty curve of the game changed to be either harder or easier. Harder just means less room for non-meta builds. I think that one of D2's strengths has been it got the difficulty curve right overall. With meta builds that are geared out, you can blast through the game (but you can still get taken off guard by the right affix spawns.) But, the game is still doable with more unusual builds. I'm the type of person who likes to define my own challenges, and D2 really works well for that.

The biggest danger I see is the new runewords as that is where the power creep is most likely to come in. I'm hoping we see stuff more in the Harmony range that fills in a mid game and starter end game role vs. something like Spirit shields that are super cheap stupidly powerfull stuff.

I've been mostly playing Amazon since coming back, and the live stream has me cautiously optimistic on that front. Just getting Fend to where it's a viable backup skill for lightning immunes would make Infinity feel less required. (Especially when combined with lower synergy point investment required for the lighting melee skills so you actually have the points to spend on a backup.) I do wish they had acknowledged that NAHM isn't actually fixed or that the AR bug on Amazon ranged skills is still a thing. (It is still a thing, isn't it?)

 

[Helvete]

This is a great thread.

Well, we're all playing nice, and respecting each others views, so greatness is to be expected

I may be asking for a lot, but when I sit at the old folks home going "I MADE A 99 HAMMERDIN BACK IN 2011"... I hope to have some omni-version of D2 where I can just turn features (sometimes referred to as "bug fixes" or "balancing") on or off by ticking or unticking stuff on a tab. Oh yeah, and add version presets to that!

On a more serious note, I can understand how the people working on the game *have* to cater to the masses. We, here... we're not the masses. We're grumpy purists in the eyes of the masses, and we may have the sympathy of the developers for having stayed true to the OG for two decades, but it will likely matter only so much.

As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I find it harder and harder to shake the feeling that around the time when mid-level staff started to refer to problems as "challenges", something changed about what people want from a challenge. People no longer want to work for their sense of achievement; they just want the sense of achievement. The world is dumbing down at an alarming rate, and businesses have to take that into account, or go bankrupt. Hell, I could even connect dots into a conspiracy theory: People playing ONE game they paid ONCE for, for years on end.... how is that for business as a whole? For all companies? Like when companies agreed to shorten lifespan of lightbulbs?

TL;DR - I'm now holding off on moving legacy stuff to D2R for a fresh reason. Previously, I was holding off on that to maximize the sense of nostalgia, but that reason is LONG gone after getting anni/torch for every class. Guess I'll just have to see where this will end. There's no getting offa this train we're on, that's for sure.

 

[maxicek]

@Helvete - Planned Obselence. Agreed that we are a bad business case. D2 having no premium content / subscription model looks very old fashioned these days.

I'm increasingly glad that I have moved nothing into D2R. It may still happen, but just on a case by case basis.

 

[J-Dog]

I think Diablo Battle Chest was in TOP 10 most sold games here in Finland even over a decade after D2 released. Back then the business model - make the greatest game ever, slowly patch it, reset ladder every 6 months or so, have people lose their cd keys and watch them return to your game with a brand new copy- would've been somewhat justified. I suppose nowdays you have to make all the money in the world or else it's just not worth it. Hopefully they lean towards the old school approach with this old school product.

 

[corale]

I have worked on AAA games for 15 years, and 2008 was the last time I was on a project that did not have a robust post-launch revenue plan. I think it's barely viable to just make a game in the AAA space and just sell it and then be happy. There's two reasons for this as I see it:

1. Games are incredibly expensive to make compared to 15-20 years ago.
2. You can always make more money if you keep selling stuff for your game after release, so why not?

The burn rate for development cost is typically much lower after release and the profit margins can even save projects that tanked financially sales-wise if it has decent player retention.

So if we want a game that is always there and online services are kept running, but we don't want it to change significantly or have to pay for DLCs etc to keep up, how can that be attractive for a developer/publisher? Maybe a self-cost infrastructure? Every time you log into battle.net for the first time in a month it costs a buck, then it tracks your activity and refunds the difference at the end of the month. I could sign up for something like that. You end up paying for bandwidth and power usage for the online parts of the game, but only when you use it and only for *what* you use (let them do a bit of profit over the long term to incentivize keeping it up).

I think your idea is really cool @Helvete. Build different features into a dynamic versioning system. When you create a character, you pick if you want the Tomb Viper bug fix or not, the new runewords that are upcoming, the new skill changes, etc. And those choices are packed into a footprint on your character that can be used to filter multiplayer and whatnot.

 

[corale]

Most likely D2R was not incredibly expensive to make, at least far less so than D3 or D4 will be, so it might dodge bullet 1 above. Which could reduce the calls for post-launch paid content from money people. Point 2 is still valid though, and I'm sure there are discussions inside Activision Blizzard on one level or another. How do we sell something for D2R post launch without causing an outcry? Hopefully the answer will remain "We don't".

 

[Nazdakka]

New skins for player characters seems like an obvious thing to do as paid content. Cheap to make, not necessary to play the game, but the kind of thing that long-term fans will often go for.

 

[Helvete]

I'd buy Lightsaber-skins for sure. Even use the thing just for style. On a sorceress with lightning as backup skill. Gonna need purple hue for that as well.

 

[Flan]

The long game is still D4. Many players like me who love D2 and hate D3, so they want to keep those of us engaged as well. I started playing again because of D2R, so they want to retain as many returnees as possible playing for D4 release.

 

[Mjarr]

As much as I have no vested interest as I do not own D2R nor I have intereste giving certain company any more profit after WC3 demaster on top of other non-video game related shenanigans (which is a shame since D2R otherwise seems fairly competent remaster at least) and prefer to stick to legacy version and time traveling, some of the proposed changes do not sound that bad

I might be parroting things already said in this thread in more elaborate and reasonable fashion, but if they simply reduced certain imbalances between characters, say melee would be bit less grindy compared to spellcasters to gain something out of it or without need to have the übergozu gear that suddenly destroys everything, I would be all up for it. Same goes with say, adjusting skills that maybe there might be bit more use to it even if they still remain one point wonder is not necessarily bad idea though obviously won't set the world on fire. But what I am highly skeptical of is, will it turn it into even more synergy hell where instead of getting build reasonably viable with decent gear by 60-80s for more flowchart cookiecutter builds, is lvl90+ now mandatory? New runewords for what niche? More options is nice but will people suddenly start making throwbarbs just because they added some mid-tier throwing runeword in you can make? (Assuming they also introduce socketed throwing weapons.) Since personally one of the biggest issues I have with 1.10-> is that it essentially killed build variety or flexibility outside specific niches or such. One can argue D2X 1.09 being sort of easymode with on\off challenge, but it had a lot better flow because there were reasonable options besides minmaxing the shit out of the few more efficient builds and then everything else is more for giggles or deliberate challenge. Maybe hardcore aside where having niche build for specific thing made a lot more sense in terms of risk vs reward (Nihlarunner for example).

I suppose I could finish this rambling off by saying I think the idea to change some things is not necessarily bad but the question is, will it be just simple tweaking or will it suddenly turn into another case everything is made more of the same with flavour of the month on top of another flavour of the month on top of more flavour of the month like it's live service game slapped on something that was not designed as one to begin with.

 

[J-Dog]

I'd pay for 1.09 DLC.