Activision Blizzard Is Suspending New Sales Of Games In Russia

Amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Activision Blizzard joins countless other companies that have ceased the sale of goods in Russia.

Originally Posted by Activision Blizzard (Official Post)

Team -

 

Throughout the past week, we have watched the news from Ukraine and the worsening humanitarian crisis that is unfolding. Our company’s commitment is to help those impacted by this terrifying violence and to provide assistance in every way possible.

 

Today, we are announcing that Activision Blizzard will be suspending new sales of and in our games in Russia while this conflict continues. We will continue to look at ways to support the Ukrainian people. I want to reassure you that the safety of our employees is our leadership team’s top priority. We are doing everything possible to assist employees, and their families, who are being directly affected by this tragedy. If you or a colleague needs support, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your manager or local HR leaders. I’d also like to remind you that our Employee Assistance Program is available to those who need emotional support during this difficult time.

 

I also want to take a moment to recognize the incredible work of our teams to support the Ukrainian people. The company is matching employee donations 2:1 to organizations providing immediate relief in the region. Together we have raised over $300,000 in this effort. Next week we plan to add additional charities to choose from for consideration and also will raise the company matching limit from $1,000 to $10,000.

 

I’d also like to applaud the tremendous contributions from our colleagues in Poland, where people have volunteered their time to assist Ukrainian refugees and others in need. We continue to work with them to find ways we can further assist this effort. We stand with the Ukrainian people and will provide updates on any new actions we take as this crisis continues to unfold.

 

Daniel

Diablo II: Resurrected Patch 2.4 PTR | Ladder Testing Preview Blog

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

 

 

The upcoming PTR 2.4 test goes live on March 2 and will focus on Ladder functionality, Uber Diablo updates, additional balance changes, and bug fixes since our previous PTR. This is a continuation of our previous PTR, so any balance changes mentioned here are on top of the changes that were already live as of our last PTR. You can refresh yourself on the specifics of changes we've made so far here. We look forward to your participation in the PTR and hope players continue to share feedback. With your help, we can continue the legacy of making Diablo II: Resurrected the ARPG we all cherish.

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PTR Focus & Details

Heroes of Sanctuary. Thank you for your outpouring of feedback on some of the first changes made to Diablo 2 in over a decade. We return to you with adjustments to those changes based on your thoughts, opinions, and survey answers. With this round of changes, we spent most of our efforts on the areas where the feedback was overwhelmingly unified as well as some areas where we may not have pushed hard enough for a meaningful change. We would love to hear more of your thoughts on these iterations.

 

As we progress in this PTR, please be aware there may be periodic maintenances, outages, hotfixes, or minor patches. All the changes implemented in this PTR are not in stone. We want to gauge reception and feedback on these changes before we make them final for Live. We encourage our PTR participants to explore and play the following content updates:

• Ladder Season
• Uber Diablo updates
• Various balance updates

Offline/Single Player Note: Patch 2.4 introduces changes to character save data as a result of our new balance changes. A new folder has been created to support players testing offline content. Players will now be able to test classes from previous versions of Diablo II: Resurrected by importing those character files into this folder. 

 

Please leave your feedback in the PTR Feedback forum. If you discover any bugs, please report them in the PTR Bug Report forum. So, without further ado, let’s dive into these new changes!

PLEASE NOTE: Game content discussed in this blog is not final and subject to change.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. LADDER TESTING
2. UBER DIABLO CHANGES
3. CLASS CHANGES
4. MERCENARIES
5. RUNE WORDS
6. LEVEL AND MONSTER CHANGES
7. GENERAL AND MISC CHANGES
8. BUG FIXES
9. HOW TO PARTICIPATE & PTR CHARACTER COPY

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LADDER TESTING

We are very excited to invite you all to test the Ladder functionality on the PTR. The Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder launch represents an optional ranked competitive system of the game through a series of modes available to select from with a fresh Ladder-specific character(s). Each mode will have their own leaderboard where players compete to strategically gain experience within a limited timeframe while having access to Ladder-specific content. When the Ladder season ends, leaderboard rankings will reset, transitioning characters to non-ladder mode, giving players an opportunity to store their hard-earned treasured loot as a new Ladder season awaits them.

 

For PTR test, we would love you to focus your attention on the presentation of the Ladder in the front end and the way the new balance changes impact Ladder play.

Feature details:

• Ladder is now available for testing, and the team will be emulating a ladder season start and end during the PTR
• Players can use /ladder and /helpladder chat commands to retrieve season start and end information
• Ladder information is made available in the leaderboard UI, and for console, players will be updated upon loading into each game
• At the end of a season, your Ladder character will be converted to a non- Ladder character, along with any Ladder -exclusive items your character has equipped or in their inventory
• Once a season ends, you will have until the start of the season after next to retrieve items from your seasonal Ladder shared stash tab to bring into your normal online play
  • For example, once Season 1 ends, you have until Season 3 begins to retrieve items from your Season 1 stash. Any items not retrieved will be lost forever

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UBER DIABLO CHANGES

The way that players summon Uber Diablo in Diablo II: Resurrected today will remain the same as it was first introduced in v1.10, by selling Stone of Jordan rings. However, we have made some changes to how and where that progress is calculated that we hope will make the experience better for the entire community. We’re eager to hear your feedback!

 

Uber Diablo progress for each game type will now be kept by the regional database. When the threshold is met by selling enough Stone of Jordan rings, Uber Diablo will spawn for everyone in the same region, not only those on the same server instance.

 

Progress towards Uber Diablo is now tracked per game type. Giving us a total of 8 progressions being tracked. Those being Classic, Classic Hardcore (HC), Classic Ladder, Classic HC Ladder, Expansion, Expansion HC, Expansion Ladder, Expansion HC Ladder. Given this change, we have added new messaging for players to help them anticipate when Uber Diablo may spawn. This messaging will be sent out to all players in the region at certain tiers of progress, and can be manually checked by using a /uberdiablo chat command. We hope these changes allow more players to get to experience the true terror that is Uber Diablo.

 

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CLASS CHANGES

Impale

• Animation speed for Impale increased by 30%

Plague Javelin

• Plague Javelin poison duration is no longer fixed at 3 seconds as it was in the previous PTR, but its duration and damage scaling have been adjusted compared to Live. This should net out to a 20% damage-per-second increase at level 1 and up to a 33% damage-per-second increase at max level.

Multiple Shot

• Added synergy from Guided Arrow: +12% physical damage per level

Immolation Arrow

• Cooldown reduced by 40%

Guided Arrow

• Added synergy from Multiple Shot: +12% physical damage per level

Strafe

• Synergy from Multiple Shot: +5% physical damage per level
• Synergy from Guided Arrow: +10% physical damage per level

Developer Comments: We've noted your feedback that it feels odd that the physical bow skills don't have any synergies like the cold and fire bow skills do. We hope that giving some synergies to the physical bow skills help them remain viable.

Wake of Inferno

• Added yards calculation to the Wake of Inferno tooltip

Blade Fury

• Attack rating increased by 10%

Leap Attack

• The Barbarian now deals extra physical damage to surrounding enemies within a range of 4.6 yards when landing from a Leap Attack. Damage scales per level.
• Modified Leap and Leap attack jump to give it a smoother trajectory that should keep the barbarian on screen at all times, and reduce jerkiness when he lands
• Leap and Leap attack now have a minimum jump height and duration
• Increased mana cost of Leap Attack from 9 to 10

Developer Comments: We saw an opportunity to make leap attack more viable by changing to fantasy to make the leap itself an attack. By doing this we feel like the combat viability of the skill will increase while still preserving it as a movement skill. We feel that this change paired with the animation changes we made to it brings the leap attack more in line with the fantasy and feel we want it to have.

Sword Mastery

• Renamed to Blade Mastery
• Now affects daggers in addition to swords
• Increased base attack bonus to 40% (from 28%)

Axe Mastery

• Attack rating increased by 12%
• Increased base attack bonus to 40% (from 28%)

Mace Mastery

• Attack rating increased by 12%
• Increased base attack bonus to 40% (from 28%)

Polearm Mastery

• Increased base attack bonus to 44% (from 30%)

Spear Mastery

• Increased base attack bonus to 44% (from 30%)

Throwing Mastery

• Increased base attack bonus to 44% (from 30%)
• Added chance to not consume quantity per level (Up to 50%)
• Critical strikes with throwing weapons now replenish quantity

Developer Comments: Barbarians run out of throwing weapon quantity far too quickly. Adding chances to not consume as well as chance to replenish will allow a throwing barbarian to be viable without having to return to town frequently.

Armageddon

• Removed the Hurricane skill requirement for Armageddon
• Increased the missile damage radius of Armageddon by 33% (from 3 to 4)
• Increased the missile drop rate of Armageddon by about 30% (from ~3 per second to ~4)

Summoning

• Druids can now have spirit wolves, dire wolves, and bears all summoned at the same time

Developer Comments: The restriction of the Druid being allowed only one type of summonable at a time has restricted the viability of this build and has hampered the fantasy of a Druid Summoner from living up to its full potential. We feel that a druid being able to summon all of his allies at once will make for a more interesting and fun playstyle.

Werewolf

• Werewolf now only uses the new attack speed calculation that was originally introduced in the PTR
• Raised Werewolf attack speed cap from +75% to +150%

Fury

• Increased speed between attacks by 40%

Werebear

• Werebear now only uses the new attack speed calculation that was originally introduced in the PTR
• Raised Werebear attack speed cap from +75% to +150%
• Damage bonus per level increased from 8% to 15%
• Base defense value increased from 25% to 40%
• Defense bonus per level increased from 6% to 10%
• Cannot be interrupted while performing attacks or skills

Maul

• Now grants +3% attack speed per charge

Developer Comments: We've debated on the best way to bring shapeshifting Druids forward. After much discussion, we are going to commit to the modern (Balance PTR 1) way of calculating attack speed for the wereforms. We have rebalanced the werewolf to allow that form to reach even faster speeds than it could previously. As for werebear - we want to deliver on the fantasy of a powerful, unstoppable, killing machine. We've introduced uninterruptible attacks and skills, as well as increased damage and defense. While this will change the way players have played the Werebear in the past, we feel like it is more in line with the intended fantasy. For players who loved their fast werebear builds, we’ve added attack speed bonuses to Maul, but we also hope the new Werewolf changes will offer them the same style of play, as it is now the faster form.

Blood Golem

• 20% reduction in mana cost applied per level
• Attack damage increased by about 20%

Fire Golem

• 20% reduction in mana cost applied per level
• Attack damage increased by about 20%
• Holy Fire level bonus per level restored to 1 from 2

Developer Comments: We've heard your feedback that golems don't feel valuable enough as skills. Without giving them a larger overhaul, we hope these changes will make them feel powerful enough to use more often.

Thorns

• Now deals a flat amount of damage when hit in addition to returning a percentage of damage taken to the enemy when hit

Holy Fire

• Changed how the proximity bonus for Area Damage is calculated. It will now deal 200% damage to enemies at melee range.
• Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage values incorporate the maximum proximity damage bonus.
• Resist Fire Synergy increased from 18 to 21%

Holy Freeze

• Changed how the proximity bonus for Area Damage is calculated. It will now deal 200% damage to enemies at melee range.
• Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage values incorporate the maximum proximity damage bonus.

Holy Shock

• Changed how the proximity bonus for Area Damage is calculated. It will now deal 200% damage to enemies at melee range.
• Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage values incorporate the maximum proximity damage bonus.

Sanctuary

• Changed how the proximity bonus for Area Damage is calculated. It will now deal 200% damage to enemies at melee range.
• Tooltip: The maximum Area Damage values incorporate the maximum proximity damage bonus.

Holy Bolt

• Now damages Demons in addition to Undead

Fist of the Heavens

• Now damages Demons in addition to Undead

Developer Comments: After seeing feedback to the removal of area damage scaling in our PTR Balance Patch, we agree that it is an interesting mechanic that is worth trying to balance properly. We have re-implemented it at a lower damage scale than it was previously.

Nova

• Nova mana cost reduced. The initial mana cost is now 13 from 15

 

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MERCENARIES

Act 1 - Rogue Archer

• Can now use Amazon Bows
• Can now gain + Amazon skill bonuses from gear

Act 3 - Iron Wolf

• Swapped frozen armor for Chilling Armor
• Swapped Fire Bolt for Redemption Aura

Act 5 - Barbarian Warrior

• Can now gain + Barbarian skill bonuses from gear
• A new ferocious Barbarian is available for hire from Qual-Kehk. These warriors cannot use two-handed swords. but are well trained in the art of dual wielding. Utilizing the Frenzy, Taunt, and Iron Skin abilities, they lure enemies in and unleash a fierce barrage of attacks.

Developer Comments: Our hope with these changes are to continue to bring the non-Act 2 mercenaries up in viability so that they see increased usage, and to push each one further into their class archetype by allowing them to use class specific equipment.

 

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RUNE WORDS

• Plague can now be used on Claws and Daggers in addition to Swords
• Infinity, Obedience, and Pride can now be used by Spears and Amazon Spears

Back to Top

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LEVEL AREA AND MONSTER UPDATES

• Increased Unique monster density in the new level 85 areas

Back to Top

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GENERAL AND MISC UPDATES

General

• Added player messaging for when a player tries to launch the game on an out of date patch version
• Added 'Message of the Day' capabilities to the main menu to allow us to share important game updates with all players

AI

• Improved the reliability of pets, summons, and mercenaries teleporting to the player instead of being despawned

Barbarian

• Updated Barbarian Leap and Leap attack animation behavior to give it a smoother trajectory that should keep the Barbarian on-screen at all times, and reduce jerkiness when he lands

Character Selection

• Newly created characters will now sort to the top of the character selection list

Mercenaries

• Mercenary UIs will now display if the mercenary cannot use a skill because they are too low level

Online

• Added messaging if a player attempts to create a private channel with a name longer than the character limit
• Added a /offline chat command which sets your user presence to 'Offline'

Vendors

• Players can now buy pre-filled tomes and keys when using a controller

Performance

• Optimized particle effects on some console platforms
• Added a VFX quality option for PC players
• Optimized inventory quick-move actions to reduce delay

Settings

• The Offline Game Difficulty Scale setting will now persist between game sessions.
• Added an option to choose whether or not to confine your mouse cursor to the game screen
• Added a VRAM usage bar in the settings menu

 

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BUG FIXES

Accessibility

• Fixed some issues in the UI that could occur when using Large Font Mode

Barbarian

• Fixed an issue where your attack speed while dual-wielding could be incorrectly calculated depending on which hand it was held in or in which order they were equipped in
• Fixed an issue where the Grim Ward's synergy from Find Potion wasn't functioning

Druid

• Fixed an issue where Hunger was not costing mana if it was cast without a target selected
• Druid Solar Creeper will now properly consume corpses and restore mana whenever the Druid is missing mana.
• Rabies now properly consumes mana when your attack misses

Paladin

• Fixed an issue where you wouldn't be able to weapon swap if you were wielding a bow with no ammo as a Paladin on controller
• Fixed an issue where you could not disable auras as a Paladin if you were using a bow without ammunition on controller
• Fixed an issue where the Conviction Aura Tooltip would display incorrect information
• Fixed an issue where Sanctuary aura was not granting its bonus damage to Undead
• Fixed an issue where Sacrifice was not hitting moving targets

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where using a skill could be interrupted if a player dodges, avoids, or blocks while executing a skill.
• Fixed an issue where uninterruptible skills could be interrupted within a 1 frame window if you were using the skill repeatedly
• Fixed an issue where the skills granted by items sometimes couldn't be used on a controller
• Fixed an issue where you could be blocked from talking to an NPC if a player initiates a trade request with you while you are talking to an NPC
• Fixed an issue where weapon swap was not updating Faster Run/Walk on the game client
• Fixed an issue where you would not be able to observe another players attack animation for the Rabies skill if the attack missed
• Fixed an issue where skill bindings for OSkills wouldn't persist after dying and joining a new game
• Fixed an issue where one of the Chaos Sanctuary seals was difficult to select.
• Fixed an issue where the Glacial Trail entrance wouldn't highlight
• Fixed an issue where fire enchanted monsters were doing too much damage in Nightmare difficulty
• Fixed an issue where continuing to move after running out of stamina could cause the stamina bar to not refill.
• Fixed an issue where a room in Act 1 Caves had misplaced walls
• Fixed an issue where a player could get repeatedly placed in a stun state and unable to execute attacks
• Fixed an issue where a few melee skills would often miss when attacking moving targets (Amazon Fend, Druid Fury, Paladin Sacrifice, Paladin Zeal).
• Fixed an issue where a channel ability would stop casting if you were directly targeting an enemy with your mouse prior to casting and that enemy died
• Fixed an issue where Quick Cast melee skills would sometimes fail to execute properly under certain circumstances
• Fixed an issue where Quick Cast melee skills would behave different depending on if they were bound to left or right click. Behavior has been unified such that left click quick cast skills behave in the way the right click behavior operated.
• Fixed an issue where Force Move and Quick Cast skills could still operate when in a full screen UI menu in Legacy Mode.
• Fixed an issue that could cause players to miss their attack when using melee skills against enemies that are just barely within striking range and moving away
• Fixed a rare issue where casting spells rapidly could result in incorrect mana cost in certain networking situations
• Fixed an issue where Replenishing and Propagation item modifiers were not triggering when Quantity was removed from melee skills.

Character Creation

• Fixed an issue where some players could bypass character name validation and create invalid offline character names. Those characters can now be repaired - affected players will be prompted to rename the invalid characters.

Controls

• Fixed on issue where using a PlayStation controller on PC, some button prompts could appear with an Xbox controller button icon
• Fixed an issue where binding a skill to Key 2 without binding anything to Key 1 would show the keybind UI to not show

Graphics

• Fixed artifacting that could occur on certain VFX when using DLSS
• Fixed an issue where the player would become invisible if using Fade behind a transparent wall
• Fixed an issue where ethereal items were appearing invisible when standing behind transparent walls
• Fixed an issue where grass in Tamoe Highland could pop in and out while traversing.
• Fixed an issue where VFX could become missing after playing for an extended period of time on consoles
• Fixed an issue where VFX could appear as black boxes on PS4 in high memory usage scenarios
• Fixed a DLSS-related ghosting artifact that could occur on moving objects while the game camera is stationary

Localization

• Fixed some localization issues with skill tooltips
• Fixed some localization issues related to user presence in the Xbox social menus
• Fixed some localization issues in the Settings menu
• Fixed miscellaneous issues related to localization of chat commands

Online

• Fixed an issue where users in Europe or Korea were unable to block or report users
• Fixed an issue where the right click context menu options in the Friends List would not consistently function
• Fixed an issue where you could not highlight game names and join if using a controller in the Lobby menu.
• Fixed an issue where you could get stuck in an 'attempting to join' state if you tried to join a game through the friends list while you were rate limited
• Fixed an issue where swapping between Keyboard and Controller on the front end could rarely force you into the Offline character tab and prevent access to the online tab for a small amount of time.
• Fixed an issue on consoles where online friends who have their presence set to appear 'Offline' in their platform settings would appear in the friends list sorted into other online friends rather than with their other offline friends
• Fixed an issue on Switch where if you remove someone from your friends list, they may not correctly get removed
• Fixed a visual issue that could occur when opening the Horadric Cube while in the middle of a trade with another player
• Auto-generated game name and password from game sessions generated using the main menu 'Play' button will now be hidden.
• Fixed an issue where your character selection wouldn't persist if you exited the lobby

Performance

• Fixed an issue where users with 3050 series GPUs would have incorrect default graphics settings
• Fixed a crash that could occur when exiting the game
• Fixed a crash that could occur during the Pandemonium event
• Miscellaneous crash/stability fixes

Settings

• Fixed an issue where your game difficulty settings on Lobby would not update properly after changing characters

 

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HOW TO PARTICIPATE

To participate in the public test, you must have a Diablo II: Resurrected game license attached to a Battle.net account in good standing (i.e. one that hasn't been suspended or banned). In addition, you will also need to download and install the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app if you have not already done so.

 

Step 1:Restart the Battle.net desktop app.

Step 2:Navigate to the Diablo II: Resurrected tab on the left-hand menu.

Step 3:On the Diablo II: Resurrected screen, there is a drop-down menu right above the "Play" button (note that this may say "Install" if you do not have Diablo II: Resurrected currently installed). Select "PTR: Diablo II: Resurrected" from this drop-down menu before proceeding.

Step 4:Click Install to begin the installation process.

 

Your PTR account will be created automatically if you do not already have one. The PTR is available in all supported languages, and accounts from all regions are eligible to participate. For additional assistance with installing and launching the PTR, click here.

 

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THANK YOU TO THE COMMUNITY

Our team is so grateful for your support. Last year we launched Diablo II: Resurrected, now it’s 2022 and we’re stoked to implement these new changes into our game. Thank you for playing and thank you for your continued collaboration.

 

If you want to learn more about Diablo II: Resurrected, check out our website here, or for real-time updates, follow our official Twitter @Diablo.

 

Diablo Immortal: Closed Beta Learnings

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment (Official Post)

 

From October of last year to early January, the Closed Beta was in full swing! Test participants had the chance to play a breadth of new content and features, including the Necromancer class, Cycle of Strife Updates, Set Items, Helliquary Updates, and Controller Support. Whether you participated directly in the playtest, sent us valuable feedback, or watched the game from a livestream, your input has been greatly appreciated. Let’s join our Game Director, Wyatt Cheng, and Senior System Designer, Kris Zierhut as they explain our learnings, philosophies, and planned improvements!

 

Hi everyone, my name is Wyatt Cheng, I'm the Game Director of Diablo Immortal. Following this playtest, our team continues to make substantial progress towards getting the game into everyone’s hands. We’re still planning for release in 2022 and today we’d like to share what we learned from Closed Beta, leading to critical changes around the social aspect of the game, raids, in-game purchases, a Cycle of Strife overhaul, and more. To kick things off I'll take you through some General Updates we're making, following the Closed Beta. Let's jump in!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• GENERAL UPDATES
  1. SOCIAL & GROUP-PLAY IMPROVEMENTS
  2. RAID IMPROVEMENTS
  3. BATTLEPASS & IN-GAME PURCHASES FEEDBACK
  4. CONTROLLER SUPPORT UPDATE
  5. WARBAND IMPROVEMENTS
• SYSTEM UPDATES
  1. SET ITEMS IMPROVEMENTS
  2. CYCLE OF STRIFE OVERHAUL
  3. WORLD PARAGON IMPROVEMENTS
• THANK YOU TO THE COMMUNITY

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GENERAL UPDATES

SOCIAL & GROUP-PLAY IMPROVEMENTS

Diablo Immortal is an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game), and an important part of any MMO is the friendships you form and the sense of community you belong in. Our game’s social communities start with parties, and we want to promote party formation between like-minded players to complete shared goals.

 

Bounties were one system that led to a lot of group play, but also some challenges in beta. They’re repeatable, randomly-selected quests that you can complete in quick succession, earning bonus rewards for every four you turn in. During the Closed Beta, we received feedback that a lot of players who got assigned dungeon bounties felt like they were forced to group in order to complete them. Groupmates receiving that player often wanted to do multiple dungeon runs, and would be disappointed when a player immediately left the party after completing their bounty.

 

We'll be adjusting bounties so that they're exclusively solo, and we're looking into making the Shadows' Contracts more flexible in the future. We want to provide concrete incentives for grouping, but we also want to empower you to choose whether you want to play all-solo or all-group content.

 

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RAID IMPROVEMENTS

We’re excited to see many of you enjoying the Helliquary—massive 8-player raid boss encounters that demand extra coordination to overcome.

 

Our intention is to release one new Helliquary boss every month, but in order to provide more granularity and a better sense of progression, we are going to also provide multiple difficulty levels for each boss. During beta, a number of you expressed feedback that the gap in difficulty between the bosses, Lassal and Vitaath, was too large; with this change, we think the Helliquary will remain rewarding to all types of players, but also close the difficulty gap for those who may feel too daunted to play this content.

 

We also heard lots of requests for better grouping, matchmaking, and raid management tools, and we’re happy to oblige! The raid UI in the Closed Beta was a first-pass implementation, and you can expect visual and functionality improvements in the future.

 

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BATTLEPASS & IN-GAME PURCHASES FEEDBACK

Our goal has always been to keep Diablo’s core gameplay, killing demons and getting gear, accessible to all regardless of whether players opt to engage with in-game purchases or not. Purchases in our game are completely optional and should not detract from your gameplay experience. During the Closed Beta, we received a lot of feedback on our Battle Pass and other in-app purchases.

 

We’re pleased that the Battle Pass is resonating well and many of you are finding the purchase to be a good value. However, we saw that the Boon of Plenty was not as well-received. We’re evaluating ways to improve the Boon of Plenty so it feels more valuable and worthwhile.

 

Lastly, we saw much frustration around Legendary Gems and their impact on alt-play in the Closed Beta. Reading your feedback, this system felt like it forced many of you to be committed to a single character, rather than splitting your focus across multiple characters. We are working on a solution for this concern, and it will be the focus of a future blog post. We understand that shareable purchased items or switching to alt characters feels underwhelming and we plan to resolve that at launch.

 

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CONTROLLER SUPPORT UPDATE

Last year, the community pleaded for controller support. We were happy to oblige, and the Closed Beta introduced a handful of compatible controller devices.

 

Our goal is for the controller's presence to be detected the moment the game is launched. We want to handle connecting and disconnecting your controller more seamlessly and make controllers work in all in-game menus.

 

We’re thrilled by the positive reception we’ve received from the controller support in the Closed Beta. Nonetheless, the roster of controllers in Closed Beta isn’t our final list, and, we still have a litany of polish items to further improve controller support for the global release of the game.

 

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WARBAND IMPROVEMENTS

Our intent with implementing Warbands was to encourage small, consistent groups of players to play together regularly. We wanted to provide you with a tool to find other like-minded players who share the same goals.

 

We are going to expand Warbands to be for groups of 8 players and we’re going to look at adding additional features to really make a Warband feel like a close circle of friends. We want to replicate the lucrative bonuses and incentives you already receive for running dungeons or Helliquary as a group for the Warbands system too.

 

To all of our Closed Beta test participants, thank you. We are grateful to have you with us on this journey as we work to make Diablo Immortal the absolute best it can be. Now I'm pleased to introduce our Senior System Designer, Kris Zierhut, who will share a comprehensive update on how we're improving Set Items, the Cycle of Strife, and World Paragon in Diablo Immortal.

 

-Wyatt Cheng,
Game Director, Diablo Immortal

 

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SYSTEM UPDATES

SET ITEMS IMPROVEMENTS

Hi all, my name is Kris Zierhut, thank you for joining us as we continue to collaborate with you on how to improve the gameplay experience of Diablo Immortal. In the Closed Beta, we implemented a new end-game gear system to enable you to fill your secondary gear slots with Set Items. When you wore a sufficient number of items from the same Set, your character received an additional bonus. Most of you enjoyed the hunt for sets, but we’re excited to make more improvements to Set Items. We’re looking at adding new sets to the game, and we’ll also be doing a balance pass on the existing sets so they support and complement particular builds and playstyles.

 

An additional concern we heard was that many of you completed a set but didn’t always equip it. Some of you found the set sometimes wasn’t worth wearing, because some of the pieces were found at such a low Paragon level that the loss of stats on that item were not sufficiently offset by the set bonus to make it worthwhile. We’re exploring improvements on this front and will make changes before launch.

 

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CYCLE OF STRIFE OVERHAUL

The past couple of playtests we’ve made significant changes affecting the fight for the Eternal Crown. And we’re not finished yet. The Cycle of Strife will be receiving a number of changes, not all of which will be disclosed in this blog. However, there is one key area we did want to focus on in this post.

 

The core structure of the Cycle of Strife will no longer revolve around Dark Houses and a final Immortal group. Instead, the Cycle of Strife will be based on Clans competing with one another. To enrich the social experience, we’re empowering your Clan with the ability to become a Dark Clan. Forming Dark Houses wasn’t very good for long-term social relationships; when every end of a cycle occurred, it caused a jarring upheaval to your social system and network of players. Now, after a player's clan is made, that clan’s members will join the Shadows together. If that player’s Dark Clan succeeds in besting the other Dark Clans and overthrowing the Immortals, then that winning Dark Clan will become the Immortal Clan. Players in an Immortal Clan will stay together as a unit and can invite up to two other Dark Clans to become Immortal Allied Clans. When the Immortals’ reign ends, as all reigns must, the Immortal Clan will return to being a normal Clan as the Cycle begins anew. This new design gives Clans more meaning and allows you to form long-term friendships with other players.

 

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WORLD PARAGON IMPROVEMENTS

Following the Closed Beta, we’ve revisited the World Paragon system. As Diablo Immortal is an MMO, we want a compelling social experience, where you can group up every day to slay demons with your friends. We also want no limits on your playtime; no “energy” systems or similar mechanics to slow down your fun. But that leads to a challenge. We want to make sure friends who play different amounts of time each day can still always play together as a team, instead of the strong players “carrying” the weaker ones. In our Closed Alpha we tried putting a weekly cap on experience. That approach had its flaws and didn’t resonate with our test participants, so we removed it. For the Closed Beta, we introduced a new “catchup” system, World Paragon, intended to keep friends from getting so far apart in power that they can’t play together, and we’re improving it further for launch.

 

Once you reach max level in Diablo Immortal, you begin earning Paragon Levels, which improve your loot and let you progress along Paragon Trees, making your character more powerful and customized.

Each server has a World Paragon Level that rises by two levels each day. If your Paragon Level is below the World Paragon Level, you gain increased experience. If you are more than four levels above the World Paragon Level, your experience is penalized. You can keep playing, but your rate of gaining Paragon Levels slows down. The system worked well in Closed Beta to keep friends able to play together, but players who play more hours will collect more loot, so we extended the World Paragon system to affect item salvage as well.

 

Item salvage is a critical part of item progression in Diablo Immortal. It’s used to increase the rank of your items, adding additional stats and affixes. When we applied World Paragon experience penalties to salvage received, it led to players in the Closed Beta avoiding experience: not picking up XP orbs dropped by Elite monsters, or completing quests but not turning them in. This was bad, so we are reverting the World Paragon salvage modifiers. You'll be able to gather items as long as you like, and Paragon Levels earned will no longer penalize how much salvage you receive.

 

However, we still need to slow down how far ahead players can progress by playing the game more so friends don’t get split up by character power. Our current plan is to increase the salvage materials needed to advance items at very high ranks. This will allow all players to reach rank sixteen Legendaries, but only the truly dedicated players will reach even higher ranks. Very active players will still be more powerful from higher item ranks and have more choices of Legendary and Set items, but they won’t get so far ahead that they can’t play with their friends.

 

We believe this revised World Paragon system will help you play together with your friends, and also play as much Diablo Immortal as you want.

 

The community’s feedback and engagement has been incredible. We hope our players like and understand these changes, and we can’t wait to get this game in your hands!

 

-Kris Zierhut,
Senior System Designer, Diablo Immortal

 

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THANK YOU TO THE COMMUNITY

The updates highlighted above do not encapsulate the full plethora of changes and updates we’re working on; but we wanted to share with you some key touchpoints that many of you had feedback on. To our Closed Beta participants we can’t say this enough, thank you! Your feedback is so valued by our team.

 

As we move forward, we implore you to continue sharing your impressions and feedback on your experience of Diablo Immortal. Your collaboration is critical in helping us craft a Diablo experience we all expect. Please feel free to share your thoughts on the r/DiabloImmortal subreddit or across our other channels. We appreciate you joining Kris and I as we highlighted these changes and updates in this blog post. Please stay tuned, as we have much more to share and explore in the coming months.

 

-Wyatt Cheng,
Game Director, Diablo Immortal

 

If you want to learn more about Diablo Immortal, check out our website here, or for real-time updates, follow our official Twitter @DiabloImmortal!

 

Heroes of Sanctuary, thank you—and Happy 2022!