BlizzCon 2014 – Diablo III: What’s Next Panel Transcript

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Question 8: Just want to say thanks a lot guys for all your hard work. I’m really looking forward to all the changes. I have been playing Diablo for a very long time, and no I didn’t really play Diablo, Diablo II and the expansions. I got to admit I didn’t really play Reaper of Souls a lot on the computer version. I have been playing a lot of the console version because I got to be honest.

Ebbert: You are right to do that. I gotta say that.

Question 8: Who doesn’t like to go home and kick back on the couch after a long day at work and tell you what. One of the things I was really disappointed about hearing that there wasn’t any plans for seasons in the console version. Any thought of doing that in the future or any reconsideration or anything like that?

Ebbert: Yes, we would love to bring seasons to consoles. Problem is a lot of console players weren’t online. So we had to allow offline mode in on console play. And as soon as we allowed console offline mode, it just wreck the integrity: like seasons and leaderboards. So that’s exclusive to online mode only. But we are always looking for ways to improve the console experience and keep it awesome for you. Thanks for playing.

Question 9: First of all thanks, but my question is: in my experience from playing (???) Diablo, the main (???) is like… in the new season it was great. It got me going back to the game after I quit; but the problem was that with the adventure mode being locked at the beginning, it became pointless to do the story mode because I fall behind so fast. So is there any idea creating adventure mode being locked at the beginning to play the campaign? Like for example, I cleared it on a couple of the leaderboards and my character hasn’t done the campaign mode yet so it’s a bit of an issue there.

Martens: So, yea that was something that was discussed, and what we decided to do is going to be either adventure mode going to be locked from the moment one or would it be unlocked normally by killing Malthael, or by reaching a certain level or something like that. We did it this way and we are going to leave it that way for season 2. We are gonna probably going to visit story mode with conquests like maybe getting some of the lore books might happen only in story mode so you have to pick certain parts of that to go and get the Lore books and so on.

So visiting back and forth between modes is generally good. Obviously, adventure mode is our primary end-game. So we don’t want to spend too much time in campaign mode; but having people going into it for short periods of time probably is good.

So perhaps in future seasons we will once again require you to say run the campaign once real quick before you unlock an adventure mode or something. But for now we will leave it unlock for minute 1 and it is kinda fun (right?) with the level 1 character no movement, skill, etc. Just jumping into a rift and going for it (right?) but yea I see your point.

Question 10: What’s up guys, I know you probably can’t answer this question but are we getting another expansion?

Mosqueira: You’re right, we can’t answer that question

(Audience laughs)

Ebbert: But we are going to continue to bring you awesome stuff and patches like we all have been talking about today, we can definitely promise that.

Question 11: Hello, my question is about not greater rift but the trial rift. So in greater rift you mentioned that you want to have rift guardians there for everybody so that you just don’t just get Rime, blood mine, camp and finish it. So my question is do you plan on tweaking trial rifts? Because when an exorcist pops up on wave 5 and kills me at range instantly and I’m placed 22, it’s frustrating. Do you plan on maybe tweaking the enemy types that appear in those rifts?

Cheng: Yes, there are changes to trial coming as well. Those will be on PTR as well. We have gotten a lot feedback on the trials. We are looking at the pacing of the trials, the monsters that are in the trials. We want to make sure, I think that just last week we changed it so that all the monsters in the trial can be vortex or knockback so that you can use your rate(?) core set, whatever happen maybe; and we are also looking at making sure that the rates should be there to do some damage. What we are trying to make sure is that we– that was actually a reaction earlier on when trials went live.

We had people who will play and maybe they would get to a trial wave 18 (Let’s say) and they are fine; but they weren’t taking any damage at all at you know 10 and 15 and so we want to make sure it’s a more consistent progression all the way out.

Question 12: Hello guys, well I’m just going to say about trading I’m entirely on the other side of the problem because it’s the best thing– actually one of the best things that could ever happen to Diablo for me. New loots is better and this leads me to my question.

You new ancient items… how rare are they? Because in specific cases like for The Furnace for instance, is it 1.5% to 5,000 item drops? When am I going to get ancient version of that?

Cheng: How rare are the ancient items? Before I answer that question I’ll make it clear that the ancient items is very much for the people who really are into completing their sets.

And what we are trying to address is– you know, I have got my six piece set and sometimes there’s this feeling like I got my six piece set and now I don’t feel like I have anything to strive for anymore and so I want to make sure that this is for people who already have the four-to-six piece set.

And we currently– we are looking at about 5-10% chance for any legendary item to be ancient. I think it starts at one and a half, don’t quote me on that cause change almost certain during PTR but that’s a Torment 1 and scales up to Torment 6.

If you are in greater rift, your greater rifts will affect it as well so starting from an early greater rift all the way up– the higher the greater rift the more chance that you have.

I would use– if you guys remember in Diablo II like an elite– an exceptional elite items there’s a reference point where their drop rates were 5 and 15% respectively. So we are kind of looking about that.

Again, we are saying: “Hey, this feature is for the people who really appreciate having something to always try and hunt for that’s better than what they have right now.

Question 13: Hi, do you currently have plans to implement an item creation system similar to Diablo II’s rune system?

Cheng: You know, a lot of the crafting systems were there to try and capture some of that spirit. I understand it doesn’t entirely. I think what the rune system did really well– it had you more excited about the components that were dropping. Right? If you could get a really rare rune. Right now it doesn’t feel like any of the legendary parts are rare. Earlier on, if you remember in Reaper of Souls (when it first came out) we had these legendary pieces that were dropping around, and those were supposed to kind of capture some of that feel, but unfortunately what it really led to was people flipping games over and over to trying to get that bone chin, or whatever part it was you were trying to get.

So I totally recognize the desire to like slowly make incremental item progression towards the completion of a really great item. We didn’t like the rune system in particular, because it required you to open up a website and having all of this arcane knowledge that a person who is just playing the game might not even know that these recipes existed.

So we will be looking at other ways to try and capture that spirit.

Martens: Alright, we are almost out of time. Give us your fastest questions. We’ll give you our fastest answer.

Question 14: Yea, hi. Really quick question. What are you guys going to do about balancing potential build out layers like the Demon Hunter M6 (Editor Note: Refers to builds around Marauder 6-piece set) that can deal with damage and deal damage that they are not directly doing?

Martens: We are directly answering that question tomorrow. It is something we are thinking about. If you come to the “Evolving Reaper of Souls” panel– that, and answers like that will be discussed.

Alright, thank you everybody

Cheng: Thank you.

Mosqueira: Thank you.

Special thanks to Terry for assisting with the transcript. Proofreading/editing by Medievaldragon. Corrections can be submitted here. Tweet and share this transcript, and follow us for updates: @blizzplanetcom

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