The feedback from the Diablo 4 community following the Season Patch 1.1.0a on July 18th was swift and unvarnished. It was clear that players were generally dissatisfied and disappointed based on the perception that far too many elements in the game got nerfed.
Earlier today Game Director Joe Shely, Associate Game Director Joseph Piepiora, and Associate Director of Community Management Adam Fletcher responded to all that feedback. They also announced that the next Campfire Chat to discuss Patch 1.1.1 in more detail is scheduled for Friday, July 28th at 11:00am PDT.
Diablo 4 campfire chat main points
- This will the last time the team will ever release a Patch like 1.1.0a that reduces player fun to such a great degree.
- Future Patch notes will be made available further in advance in order to allow fans to provide more feedback before the Patch goes live.
- Cool Down Reduction was nerfed to prevent this aspect of the game from dwarfing too many other aspects in the game.
- New endgame content type will be added to provide players with more opportunities to push beyond Uber Lilith and Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeons. This is because the Devs realize that Nightmare Dungeons challenge the player in too many ways that are not fun.
- The changes made to reduce the power of Sorcerer builds was intended to balance this class to be more in line with the others.
- The same is true for Vulnerable Damage, which ended up being far more potent than originally intended.
- Vulnerable Damage quickly became a must-have stat and the Devs want it to be more of just an option for players.
- However, the Devs realize that if nerfing it results in the game being less fun then they need to reconsider their strategy for better balance.
- These recent iterative changes are indeed a part of a more comprehensive balance project.
- Nevertheless, the Devs are aware that focused changes like those included in the most recent patch can be disruptive.
- A key process improvement for future Patches will be to just allow certain builds to be overpowered until a more comprehensive update can be made that offers players alternatives that are equally compelling and exciting.
- Future meta changes will occur at predictable times, such as the beginning of a new Season.
- Hotfixes will be limited to only fixing bugs that are causing game-breaking damage or crashes.
- The next patch will include a wide range of improvements to Legendary Aspects and Unique Items for the Barbarian and Sorcerer classes.
- Improvements to Nightmare Dungeons, including resolving the issue of players being excessively crowd controlled, will be addressed in a Hotfix coming out later today.
- Monster density in Nightmare Dungeons will be increased uniformly as well as in Helltides where needed.
- The next patch will add an additional stash tab and elixir stack size will increase to 99.
- Gem storage will become part of the general materials storage in Season 2.
- The next patch will see respec costs reduced by approximately 40% to enable players to easily switch between a larger variety of builds.
- Specific XP rewards will be increased with the goal of expediting the process of leveling characters from 50 to 100.
Q & a
What are the plans for leaderboards?
-Leaderboards will be added to the game in Seaon 3. The Devs also want to add new types of content that will pair directly with the leaderboards.
What is the future of Uber Uniques?
-Uber Uniques are not intended to be a mandatory part of any build and players should never expect to find them. Future Seasons may include more chances to obtain them, including slightly higer drop rates.
What is being done to address crowd control?
-The tools that players have available to deal with crowd control need to be improved, especially considering the plan to increase monster density in Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides.
When will loadouts be added?
-The team is actively discussing this feature, however there is currently no timeline for adding it.
What is the timeline for Patch 1.1.1?
-The next patch is just a couple weeks away, well before mid-season. There are also more patches planned prior to Season 2.
What is the plan to improve XP progression at higher levels?
-The Devs are actively planning to improve this as well as to add more milestones in WT4.
What are the plans to improve the process of target farming for better Legendary Aspects and gear?
-The Devs are actively discussing ways to improve this experience, including adding more content to Season 2 that will increase the opportunites for target farming.
What changes will be made to address the issue of survivabilty for Sorcerer?
-The Devs are aware of this and will be discussing planned improvements during the next livestream.
Can the values for Aspects in the Codex be upgraded with found items to avoid having to keep so many extracted Aspects?
-Part of this issue will be addressed by adding another stash tab with the next Patch. The Devs are also looking at other ways to improve the Codex of Power experience.
Why was the casting time lengthened for exiting a dungeon?
-This was balanced by reimplementing the Reset Dungeon button.
Will future Seasons offer a larger variety of new items?
-This Devs are prepared to respond to player feedback in this area, accordingly.
What are the plans for adjusting resistances?
-A change like this will inevitably be far reaching and requires more time to plan. Additional information will be made available as we get closer to Season 2.
Can Act Bosses have a bigger roles in the game?
-There will likely be more opportunities to fight those bosses in the future.
What is the plan to add more ways to craft and modify gear?
-The Devs do want to add more opportunites to modify gear.
Will there be better loot tables for Goblins as well as more Goblin types?
-There is lots of room for more Goblin types and the drop rates for Legendary items will be buffed.
The following summary was posted on Blizzard’s news page:
Diablo IV’s Live Service Mission Statements:
- Keep the game fun for players.
- Have a wide variety of viable builds to discover, put together, and optimize, across all five classes.
- Introduce new items and powers every season to keep the game fresh and increase build variety.
- Continue to evolve the endgame, with high monster density for powerful builds to mow down and activities to challenge your build.
- When making changes to increase build diversity, we will let some builds be overpowered until we have provided compelling alternatives.
- Introduce meta changes will occur at predictable times, like the start of a Season.
- React quickly to squash game-breaking bugs, damage or crashes.
Why we released Patch 1.1.0 and what we are trying to achieve:
- Diablo IV was always meant to be a capped power experience and not an endless grind. We know that building your character’s strength is an essential part of the fun of Diablo – and that it feels bad to take away power.
- So why did we do Patch 1.1.0? Our goal is for multiple builds to be powerful enough to defeat our toughest foes, like Uber Lillith: one build shouldn’t be the only way to play a class. Some changes implemented in this patch were made to address this issue.
- We also know that Nightmare Dungeons are currently way too difficult – they should feel achievable through multiple builds, and high-level tiers (beyond Tier 50) are particularly over-tuned towards difficulty. Patch 1.1.0 was the start of the changes needed to map against the changes we’re making to Nightmare Dungeons – which will be hot-fixed in today!
How we are addressing concerns, and why and how our approach to patches will change moving forward:
- Moving forward, we will take a more surgical approach when adjustments to balance are needed. We will ensure that if we’re adjusting something overpowered, we will provide compelling alternatives for players to explore for their class instead.
- We will be improving communication, sharing patch notes at least a week prior to launch so that we can have meaningful conversations with our community.
- We will be introducing several changes in the upcoming Patch 1.1.1:
- We will be continually evolving the endgame with high monster density for powerful builds to mow down and activities to challenge your build.
- We believe that making changes to certain builds, rebalancing Nightmare Dungeons, and creating additional engaging end-game experiences will ultimately result in a better game for more types of players.
On Patch 1.1.1:
- Today, we will release a Hotfix that introduces changes to Nightmare Dungeons: these are changes that map to some of the balance changes made in 1.1.0.
- We will be implementing Nightmare Dungeons tuning changes to pair with class changes that came with 1.1.0.
- Barbarians and Sorcerers – with Sorcerer first – will be getting adjustments to Legendary Aspects in Patch 1.1.1.
- Monster density will be substantially increased in Nightmare Dungeons, as well as in Helltide.
- We will add an additional stash tab as well as Elixir Stack Size increases.
- We will reduce the Gold respec costs by 40%.
- We want the leveling journey from 50-100 to be faster and are looking at increasing XP bonuses for playing on higher World Tiers.
- And more! We will go into more detail on these changes during our livestream next week.
These are just the main points, however you can watch the full stream below for more details.