 | PTR 2.1 Questions(1) | Category: MonkAugust-7-2014 11:06 AM PDT (10 years ago)  |
| Will the new changes to legendary affixes be retroactive? E.g. Madstone, Leoric's Crown, Vigilante Belt. Would this apply retroactively to items that have had their affixes modified? (Thinking Flow of Eternity). Many of the Spirit per Second affixes abilities were doubled. Can we expect a similar doubling of SpS affixes on items and, if so, will those changes be retroactive? What will Fist of As look like post 2.1 and will that change be retroactive? For those playing the PTR, how hard is it to get Ramaladni's gift? | ||
 | PTR 2.1 Questions(2) | August-8-2014 6:08 PM PDT (10 years ago) |
Will the new changes to legendary affixes be retroactive? E.g. Madstone, Leoric's Crown, Vigilante Belt. Would this apply retroactively to items that have had their affixes modified? (Thinking Flow of Eternity). We try to avoid retroactive changes on items as much as possible. First and foremost, there needs to be a compelling reason for us to make an item change retroactive, because in an ideal situation, items should have a sense of permanence. As part of that permanence, we want to avoid creating an environment where players feel they need to hold on to a Legendary forever in hopes it gets buffed or changed in your favor. There's a lot of philosophy that goes into when we make these decisions. First, we try to determine if the issue we're trying to solve can be done without changing the item. For example, say there's a problem with a Legendary. There's a few ways we can address that without messing with the item itself. Maybe the skill an item relies on is weak, maybe the skill merits a buff. We could also introduce a new Legendary item that offers a cool interaction or synergy with the "weak" one, and makes it better. Even in cases where an item is "too strong," we first ask ourselves if it's possible to introduce other, comparably strong items to compete with it and create choice. Stone of Jordan is a great example. It's a very strong item, but rather than nerfing it, we've chosen to introduce other, equally powerful rings as alternatives. Ultimately there are 3 situations that have come up to date that warranted a retroactive item change: Situation 1. There might be a case where a mechanic is simply not something we want and no future Legendaries or skill adjustments will alleviate the problem. Those are the cases in which we make a retroactive decision. While we don’t like to nerf things, it was clear to the majority of the community that the Furnace and Rimeheart were causing problems and it is better for the overall health of the game. Situation 2. We have retroactively buffed set bonuses. The sets play a pivotal role in the overall power level of each class. If we introduce a new version of a single item such as Depth Diggers, we can do so without many side effects. In the case of altering a set bonus, trying to maintain set items with different set bonuses is impossible. If we made a new version of the set it raises questions of how the items mix-and match, confusion over the names and if the set effect is the same but with larger numbers it becomes just plain confusing. Do not expect us to do this type of retroactive change much in the future, our focus as a development team will be on bringing new Legendary items and new Set items to the game. Situation 3. In the case of the 2-handed change we made the buff retroactive because we didn't want an entire class (Crusaders) to log in and feel substantially weaker due to the corresponding adjustment to Heavenly Strength. If we hadn't also been tweaking that passive, we probably wouldn't have made the increase to 2-Handed weapons retroactive. We try our best to avoid situations where a class logs in after a patch and feels substantially less powerful. In this case we had to choose between trying to avoid retroactive changes and ensuring a class doesn’t feel substantially weaker and we upheld the latter. You shouldn't expect retroactive changes from us frequently, if at all. We really want items to feel permanent, and for players to feel free to salvage/vendor items without fear of regret. | ||
 | PTR 2.1 Questions(49) | August-9-2014 12:21 PM PDT (10 years ago) |
| Here are a few quick Q/A follow-ups from Wyatt. Italicized questions are from players, quoted answers are from Wyatt. (link) Q. Is it likely that the Shadow's Mantle set will continue to be a Shadow Power modifying set? (link) The Nat's set is a great example of looking for alternative ways to make a set better. In my original post I said "We could also introduce a new Legendary item that offers a cool interaction or synergy with the "weak" one, and makes it better." So in the case of Nat's, one thing Travis (Day) has been advocating internally is that instead of changing the Nat's set directly (which, as I've mentioned, we prefer to keep retroactive changes to a minimum), we could look at finding cool synergies with Rain of Vegenance. I don't want to put out any specifics, but in the same way Quetzalcoatl makes Jades Harvester better, or you can imagine that any legendary item that makes Rain of Vengeance better, makes the set better. Q. Why is Helltooth not getting touched when firebirds got redesigned? (link) Because at the moment we're not completely happy with Wall of Zombies. We'd like to get Wall of Zombies to a place we're happy with first, and then we can properly evaluate Helltooth within that context. Q. I'm sure there's a huge list of items tht you want to look at along with abilities, but I'm just wondering if you have any plans at evaluating the chantodos set at some point in the near future? (link) As I mentioned in the post, after 2.1 we're trying to shift away from revising old sets and more towards introducing new legendary items that introduce new play styles. Rather than just have an existing set be more powerful - let's find ways to promote skills by introducing brand new Legendary effects. This is not to say buffing existing sets is out of the question, but 2.1 was about hitting things of the highest priority. Q. What about enchanting? You guys basically turned the high end weapon enchanting game on its head with Ramaldni's Gift. I've personally found two or three incredibly rare, well rolled (native socket) weapons that I assumed I'd never replace... but that's not the case anymore. I know these weapons are by no means useless in the new patch, but had I known of Ramaldni's Gift at the time, I would not have enchanted them the way I did. (link) Yes - this is non-ideal. The things I've described are ideals, not absolutes. We can't improve the game without being able to change it, and sometimes change has a few negative consequences. Overall we try to keep the negative consequences to a minimum while maximizing the positive effects. In the case of the Gift we feel that the benefit was worth it. [Post edited one time, last edit by Lylirra at August-9-2014 5:05 PM PDT (10 years ago)] | ||
 | PTR 2.1 Questions(101) | August-11-2014 4:18 PM PDT (10 years ago) |
For the love of God can you answer us Crusaders about why we are plagued with cold items in our smart loot but we only have two cold skills and they're both spenders? Great question! Starting in Patch 2.1.0, we will be removing +% Cold Damage from the pool of affixes for Smart Loot for the Crusader class. The affix can still roll on non-Smart Loot drops. | ||
| PTR 2.1 Questions(111) | August-11-2014 5:52 PM PDT (10 years ago) |
Can +% Poison Damage be removed from the Smart Loot for the Demon Hunter, please? Yep! We actually removed +% Poison Damage from the Demon Hunter’s pool of Smart Loot affixes on the PTR in June, but it wasn’t included in the patch notes. This change will also go live in Patch 2.1.0 (and like the Crusader change, still allows +% Poison Damage to roll as a non-Smart Loot affix on gear). | ||
