On stage: Game Director Josh Mosqueira, Lead Designer Kevin Martens, Senior Game Designer Alex Sulman, Senior Technical Designer Wyatt Cheng, and Senior Level Designer Matthew Berger
Talks about the Legacy of Reaper of Souls, and Diablo in general, also a reminder to join the short talks at the Slaughtered Calf Inn
The Expansions and Patches post release are what really made the games what they are.
A look back on Patch 2.0 and the RoS launch as well as the additions of Greater Rifts, Seasons, and Kanai's Cube
Patch 2.4 will introduce 2 new areas, Set Dungeons, and more!
We're starting off with a look into the new areas and creatures.
The new Areas are the Eternal Woods (adjacent to the Ruins of Sescheron), and the Royal Quarters, accessible from the other stairs of in Leoric's Manor.
There's a new larger zone, the Greyhollow Island (accessible via Act V), featuring 16 new monsters.
Bone Breakers, a Sasquatsch types, throwing rocks at you.
Glowing Death, a Wasp Nest which releases vanilla wasps is you get too close
There are over 175 new Bounties split between Acts 3, 4, and 5, some of which will be based off of new Events and Bounty Grounds
Bounty Grounds are accessible via a small portal that leads to one of 6 small worlds
One of these features 6 Cursed Shrines which you have to click
Another one features a lot of Fallen Shamans you need to kill, but there are a lot of Fallen in the way
There are more timed events that require you to kill monsters quickly.
New game systems are influenced by player feedback
There's 3 categories of feedback: #1: Not feasible, #2 Let's do it!; #3: Address root causes
The Buff UI was a major point for feedback, and is getting revamped!
Buffs that don't affect your moment-to-moment combat are being removed from the buff bar.
Instead, permanent skills (e.g. Monk Mantras) get a golden border, activating a short-term skill places a decreasing bar on top of the item, displaying the duration
Inna's Monks buffs are now placed in a buff holder that expands only on overmouse, just like other long-term buffs from other players
Another important point for feedback was the gap between solo and group play
There should still be an incentive to group, since Diablo is first and foremost a multiplayer game
Monster Health for smaller groups and solo players is being reduced
Experience Gear's effectiveness will be reduced by a factor of 10
To compensate, monster XP is being increased across the board
A console feature, the Massacre XP multiplier is coming to PC; it increases XP gained by a factor of up to 2.5 while you keep up a massacre.
Empowered Rifts allow you to spend Gold to get a fourth bonus roll for Gem upgrades if you finish it.
The Gold cost will scale with the GR level, a GR 50 will cost about 50 million gold, a GR 75 will cost 540 million gold.
New Cube Recipe: Permanently upgrade an Encient Items by sacrificing a Legendary Gem and a regular Gem. It will add 5 of the corresponding main stat per rank of the Legendary Gem that you used.
Damage numbers are now shortened with "k", "M", or "B"
Also, your highest damage numbers will now be displayed in orange and linger a little longer
There will be an indicator for having Cubed legendary powers.
Death's Breath will get its own unique color (teal) and a new particle effect to be more noticeable
You can now compare follower items
New Monk Belt: Sweeping Winds gains stack when you're not dealing damage.
New Barb Might Weapon: coming soon
New WD Mojo: Vile Hive: Locust Swarm gains the effect of the Pestilence Rune
New Wiz item: Energy Twister damage increase depending on the number of twisters you have out
Redesigned Thorns of the Invoker Set:
2p: Your Thorns damage now hits al enemies in a 15 yard radius around you. Each time you hit an enemy with Punish, Slash, or block an attack you Thorns is increased by 50% for 2 seconds.
4p: You take 50% less damage for 8 seconds after casting Bombardment.
6p: The attack speed of Punish and Slash are increased by 50% and deal 600% of your Thorns damage on the first enemy hit.
Redesigned Shadow's Mantle Set:
2p While equipped with a melee weapon, all damage is increased by 1000%.
4p: Shadow Power gains the effect of every rune and lasts forever.
6p: Impale deals an additional 40,000% weapon damage to the first enemy hit.
Redesigned Legacy of Nightmares Set:
From panel: While this is your only Item Set bonus, your damage dealt is increased by 75% and damage taken is reduced by 4% for every Ancient items you have equipped.
From website: While this is your only Item Set bonus, every Ancient item you have equipped increases your damage dealt by 800% and reduces your damage taken by 4%. (probably the incorrect one)
Set Dungeons are based around the powers of the 6p Sets
There are Tomes with clues as to where the dungeon portal is located
You need to wear the relevant set to enter the dungeon. You'll get 2 regular objectives and a Mastery objective to fulfill withing a time limit.
There are 24 of those dungeons, each with unique challenges in unique locations.
If you finish all the objectives for all Set dungeons of a class, you earn a pennant.
If you master all of them, you'll earn a set of wings to show off.
Season 5 will feature Rebirth: You can start over for the Season, but your records will be maintained and you'll get your old gear mailed to you once the Season ends.
Season 4 will end in late December.
There will be a short break between Season 4 and 5.
Season 5 will be 3 months long, which might be the go-to Season length from now on.
Season Journey goals and Conquests will rotate through in future Seasons.
Future Seasons will also feature new cosmetic rewards: Portrait frames, pets, pennants, (Andariel!) Wings
There will be no Season-exclusive Legendaries next Season.
Each class will get one guaranteed class Set for their Season.
Patch 2.4 will feature 50 new Legendary items and 10 revised Sets
Every Season Journey that you play will give you a new Stash Tab, for up to 10 tabs, the first of which will be available right away with 2.4.
Console players will go up from 210 to 350 slots, since there are no Seasons
Technical PTR on November 9th
Patch 2.4 will come to PTR later next week!
Q&A time!
The devs are happy with Ramaladni's Gift RNG, to make them feel special
Using Legendary Gems to Augment items multiple times will replace the previous upgrade
Set dungeons have a fixed difficulty level and non-random layout.
Every Set dungeon has 2 achievements associated with it, so that you can track them
No plans for making "Follower can not die" baseline
Cave layouts are hard to make worthwhile in GR
The Server Slam a few weeks back helped develop optimizations to reduce lag, though none of them are live yet
No plans to differentiate pet damage
And that's a wrap!
