The last 48 hours from Diablo IV was a little messy Highly controversial changes to player power levels In the game’s first pre-season patch. Now developer Blizzard is doing a little damage control and is going to livestream on July 21st to explain its decision-making process and what changes it’s making in response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback.
Diablo IVThe latest patch, 1.1.0, has drastically reduced player performance across the board. Changes include reductions in XP earned for various activities, as well as a smaller role for status effects like vulnerability, which have been central to class builds. It has been a tumultuous series of changes, to say the least, all of which are documented in For a detailed list of changes, see the official patch notes. As promised, Blizzard hosted a live stream today to address these changes and provide some updates on future changes to the game – particularly in response to the negative feedback from the previous patch. You can Watch the entire stream here:
Reduction in player strength: “We know it’s bad. We know it’s not fun.”
On the stream, Adam Fletcher, Blizzard’s associate director of community management, immediately responded to the overwhelmingly negative feedback in response to the patch, acknowledging that missteps had been made and that reducing player power had spoiled some players’ enjoyment of the game.
While Fletcher explained that Blizzard had specific goals in mind with the latest patch and needed an opportunity to explain why they made these changes, good news is that the team “have no plans to ever make a patch like this again.”
Blizzard plans to “always provide patch notes well in advance”
While the last patch drastically reduced player performance and hit the core of the evolving meta, one of the most chaotic elements of it all was how suddenly the patch notes arrived, how long they were, and how it felt like there was absolutely no idea what was going to happen before the start of the game’s first season, which began on July 20th.
To forestall future issues like this, Blizzard has promised to provide patch notes “well in advance,” and estimates that the notes will arrive about a week before a new update. The game’s next patch, version 1.1.1, is expected to be released soon, and Blizzard will be discussing the specific details of that patch in another livestream chat next Friday, July 28th.
Player power changes explained
While some may find Blizzard’s explanations for the dramatic, blanket nerfs insufficient, Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora explained that the reductions to player attributes like cooldowns and status effects like vulnerability were made to give players more choices. Specifically on the decay rates, Piepiora said:
[Cooldown reduction (CDR) is the most powerful stat] In Diablo IV, and the reason for this is obvious: if you can get a CDR to a certain point using certain class mechanics, you can effectively acquire active skills instantly. That can give you unlimited resources, can give you unlimited movement speed, can give you unlimited damage resistance, and it starts to dwarf the effectiveness of other options once you start considering these things.
During the stream, both Piepiora and Game Director Joe Shely realized that overpowered builds and mowing down tons of enemies are at the core of action RPG power fantasy. However, the team’s current concern is that player build choices are dwindling in favor of go-to metas. This means that if you don’t prioritize cooldown reduction or tweak builds to put enemies in Vulnerable, you’re at a disadvantage.
The vulnerability, which Piepiora said had its damage modifier significantly reduced in patch 1.1.0, was the only way to really damage enemies at certain game levels. This, according to the team, doesn’t match their vision of the game and in many ways believe this is the result of the oversized influence of high-level Nightmare Dungeons, which Piepiora says is one of the areas of endgame content that tends to require very specific builds without much room for customization and choice.
The reality is that Nightmare Dungeons is dramatically overdone due to the role they play in the game itself. As a result, level 100 Nightmare dungeons are extremely difficult for most classes to actually traverse, and as a result, the opportunities and options players have when they begin to delve into content at this level begin to fade. You have to rely on very, very specific builds and very specific setups with access to things like near-instantaneous cooldowns on some skills to actually get through these areas. And that was never really the intent of this content.
Apparently there will be changes on at least two fronts in the Nightmare Dungeons: Horde density will be increased to accommodate the power fantasy of crushing vast numbers of enemies. And given Piepiora’s statement that the crushing difficulty they present is having too much of an impact on build choice, the difficulty will be reduced, bringing the level 100 Nightmare Dungeons down to around the current level 70 Nightmare Dungeons difficulty.
Patch 1.1.1 is expected to address some of the concerns
During the stream, the team stressed that the goal wasn’t actually to slow down the game’s speed and progression, although many felt that changes to game systems, such as increasing the time it takes to teleport out of dungeons, suggested otherwise. Commenting on this exact change, Shely said the team will continue to evaluate such changes, but wasn’t afraid to say exactly why this specific change was introduced in the first place.
The next patch, 1.1.1, is expected to fix a variety of the issues encountered in the current version of the game. Blizzard has announced a few such changes, such as an additional stash size tab to address inventory management concerns, and a 40 percent reduction in respec costs to allow players to more appropriately respond to changes in the game’s meta while providing more build variety choices as the game progresses. Other specific details, such as changes that reduced the performance level and power of certain classes more than others, will be explored in more detail in next week’s livestream.
The team emphasized that they don’t want to take away powerful skills and items as abruptly as was the case with the last patch, and promise to offer more alternatives if potentially profound changes occur in the future. A hotfix with patch notes is scheduled for today (July 21). expected to meet Diablo IV‘s site just before it goes live.
It’s not uncommon for live service games to experience sudden changes such as Diablo IV I did it here, but community frustration over poorly communicated and implemented changes can easily build over time, leading to burnout and resentment. Time will tell how soon Diablo IV recovering from this recent chaos.
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