Today, the Diablo IV team held a Campfire Chat to discuss with the community the recent Patch 1.1.0 that went live earlier this week. The patch was not well received, with plenty of nerfs across the board, very little attention being paid to QoL requests, and some borderline absurd changes like increasing the time it takes to teleport out of a dungeon. It was enough for many to not consider playing the first season, and clearly the feedback was enough for the team to want to engage and explain why certain changes were made.
Noticeably missing from today’s chat was Rod Fergusson, who is the “SVP, GM of all things Diablo at Blizzard,” according to his Twitter profile. Game Director, Joe Shely, was joined by Joe Piepiora, the Associate Game Director, and Adam Fletcher, the Associate Director of Community Management, to discuss the recent changes. While some questions were answered, some were very corporate non-answers, including why the teleport time was increased from 3 seconds to 5 seconds. The team, however, did acknowledge it never plans on doing a patch like this ever again.
“It’s not the greatest play experience for players out there,” said Fletcher. “We don’t plan on doing a patch like this ever again. We hear you loud and clear.” Piepiora added, “We know that reducing player power is never a good experience. Sometimes we just don’t get it quite right.”
To address some of these issues, there will be a Patch 1.1.1 coming in the next couple of weeks and there will be another live stream next Friday to discuss more details about it. But buffs to the Sorcerer and Barbarian classes will be the primary focus of the patch, as well as increasing mob density in Nightmare Dungeons and Helltides. An additional stash tab will also be added, and the elixir stack size will be increased to 99. The team also plans on reducing respec costs by 40% and the leveling experience from 50 to 100 will be adjusted so it’s easier.
More importantly, if major changes are being made to overpowered builds, these will be communicated thoroughly. Compelling alternatives will be provided before nerfs are implemented. In other words, some builds will remain overpowered until other viable ones are available. But if there’s a bug causing game-breaking damage, the team will react quickly. Changes from these patches will also be less of a surprise, because they’ll be communicated at least a week before the patch releases.
Personally, I still have my concerns about the state of Diablo IV, especially following today’s chat. I’m still not sure which is worse, them not knowing this patch would have this type of reception, or them knowing and moving forward with it anyways. The former means they don’t understand the game or their players, and the latter means they don’t really care. To me, it seems like the team still doesn’t have a clear direction and their willingness to reverse changes so quickly is alarming. It indicates little to no testing is being done for these major patches.
What I find most frustrating is that this team has decades of feedback at its disposal, not just from internal sources but from other ARPGs as well. They don’t even have to look too far to see how players react to changes found in patch 1.1.0. Drafting up those patch notes should have been enough for anyone with ARPG experience to say, “Maybe this isn’t the best thing to do prior to the first season of a brand new game,” but the team is acting like they’re surprised by the feedback.
