June 20th, 2023

Diablo IV: Campfire Chat Ep.1

Written by: Jake “Mjolnirlol” Staab

On June 16, 2023, we had the pleasure of viewing Diablo General Manager Rod Fergusson, Game Director Joe Hely, Associate Production Director Tiffany Wat, and Associate Director of Community Adam Fletcher sit down with up in a open dialog discussion expressing their goals and thoughts about the game just 10 days after official release. With this, they expressed their focus on delivering a quality product with a thirteen page document of changes and fixes to be implemented before the launch of Season 1, which is coming in mid-to-late July. Here is a breakdown of what was covered on the livestream.

Covered Topics:

Quick Reminder: This is DAY 10 after official release
Hotfix vs Patch (Explained)
- Hotfix: Turn around is faster and doesn't break anything in-game that is tested by the QA team. This includes client fixes. This means as you're playing, you will pick up the update for it to be seamless. The intention is to keep the game up at all times and not have to take it down to apply the fix.
Client patch is 13 pages long of all of the fixes they are looking to fix and will be listed into the patch notes.
Balancing is something that they are working on and understand the frustrations of classes being nerfed or balanced, but know eventually you will understand the reason behind it. This includes having a lot of choices of where to level or farm. They then bring up “hey if everything else is so much worse, can’t you buff everyone else” and they don't want things getting out of hand when it comes to damage.
Dungeon Hotfixes: The goal was to have better density on dungeons. Adjustments are being made on NM dungeons yielding more experience rather than normal dungeons so those adjustments are coming and to make NM dungeons more efficient to do.
Teleportation to NM Dungeons is coming! This is massive. They will create a portal to take you to the NM dungeon you are looking to complete. Rewards will also be improved! The goal for this update is to have it out BEFORE Season 1.
Season 1: Mid to Late July
Corpse Explosion smoke clouds will be fixed to be able to see things inside of it.
Responsive and safe as possible! DON’T SHAKE THE JELLO!
Altars of Lilith and Map Exploration: Renown and the Fog of War doesn't feel great to complete on alts. If you've completed the campaign once, you will be able to skip the campaign on any character, hardcore or not, and even in seasons. The amount of the map you have discovered will be carried over and city waypoints will be grayed out for you to know where they are to go collect them. Altars of Lilith will also stay discovered. The renown you have for clearing the Fog of War will also be carried over so you will start with a large amount of renown at the start of every season. This is also hopefully coming before Season 1.
Gems: The current idea is to put gems in your materials tab. (Season 2 seems a bit far away); I would like for Gems to have more meaning, instead of just salvaging the item you had your gems in and keeping the same perfect gems forever.
Materials: Caps will be removed. Hopefully this goes through with Obols and Bloodshards from PVP zones as well. This will come before Season 1.
Resistances: Multiple inputs that involve multiplicative scaling and are quite complex so it will take time to complete, but the plan is to make resistances matter more. (This isn't something that's quick to complete so giving the team flack about that makes no sense. It's easy to complain about it and is quite unfair to get mad at the dev team because it is so complex (Season 2))
They are working to always have something to evolve the game as fast as they can because CONTENT is so important to them.
Hardcore: Disconnect protection, Teleport bug, Immunity bugs (finding root cause). Consumable scroll of escape (BIND IT SO YOU DONT EMOTE; Shoutout Wujido). If you get disconnected, if you have a scroll, it will trigger and consume the scroll, and will teleport you to safety. (Season 2 timeframe)
Caches from WT4 higher level than you are to consume, before season 1, you will be able to open the cache. The gear may still be higher level, but you will be able to open it.
Level/World Scaling: Item Power is more important than item level. The only thing I can see them doing here is giving a max level to World Tier to be able to help out your friends and be able to blast through things, as some D2 fans want.
Druid: Barb items are dropping for Druid. This is going to be fixed.
Social Features: They’re looking into adding more social features, as cross play can make it a bit more tricky.
Many performance improvements are coming to the game as they optimize it for older set ups.

This starts their live Q&A:

Question 1 - Teleporting to players not in town: They Are keeping their eyes on it but nothing to come yet.
Question 2 - Resource Generation: Large amounts of buffs are coming that are going to help builds that have issues with resource issues. *D2 players hate this because they just wanna chug mana pots and teleport and slam one button; we have to evolve at some point and actions should have consequences so generating resource is a inclusive decision that makes you position correctly*
Question 3 - Character Options to Change Appearance: This is also something they are looking to improve and expand upon in the wardrobe. More hair styles is more important to them currently, than to be able to change your hair.
Question 4 - Completed side quest journal: They want to improve UI including stuff to track side quests.
Question 5 - Search Function: Something they've thought about as QOL, but not a top priority.

The next Campfire Chat will be in the beginning of July to get everyone prepared for what is coming and what is changing before the release of Season 1.