For the full interview in its entirety, check out Raxxanterax's Youtube or the vod on his Twitch Channel
Interview Highlights
SSF Mode Confirmed
In the interview, a "solo self-found mode" was confirmed by the Diablo team, meaning trade will most likely be disabled, and progression is done as a solo player with no outside help. The details aren't fully ironed out, but by the sounds of it, it is just a matter of time before the mode is live.
Loot Filters Are Coming
Blizzard has long danced around the issue of loot filters, but the developers here were surprisingly candid. While acknowledging that the game already filters a lot on its own, they recognized that more work needs to be done, and the changes to itemization require a closer examination of loot filters. This was noted to be a priority that was actively being worked on.
The Pit vs The Tower
When pressed on what the differences should be between the Pit and the Tower in terms of gameplay, the future of the Pit was discussed in great detail. In the history of Diablo 4, the Pit has been viewed as a place to compare builds and classes in a semi-competitive landscape, which has led to the Pit becoming less enjoyable and varied. The double duty that the Pit needs to fulfill as both a fun gamemode and a competitive landscape is what drove Blizzard to create the Tower, where they can remove a lot of RNG and make the playing field equal for competitive players. That then opens up room for the Pit to have more exciting changes, increased variety, and be more fun.
Miscellenous Notes
Many Answers left the community with a lot of questions or ended on cliffhangers. This is normal for interviews and expected, but even the non-answers can provide some insight into the franchise's future. The points here are a rapid-fire of topics discussed and short, summarized answers. For the full context, the video linked above has the interview in its entirety.
Monster Behavior
Should feel more exciting and engaging early
"Blasters" who speedrun the game shouldn't notice much of a difference when they're grinding
A lot of changes behind the scenes were made to ensure each monster feels different, even with idle/passive behaviors out of combat
Masterworking and Tempering
Removal of upgrade RNG is balanced by having more affixes on items, more items in general should be collected and upgraded
Gambling on every upgrade doesn't feel good; the baseline of gear should swing more in the player's favor than not
Further updates could expand on more RNG systems, but having a baseline of guaranteed power is a good step forward to making that happen
Capstone Dungeons
Blizzard underestimated how much people loved Capstone dungeons, and wanted to bring them back and do them right this time around
Skill Tree Changes, More Stash Space
Both were answered with "stay tuned"
Skill Tree Changes are in the works, the Skill Tree is the core of your character and should feel more rewarding
Annoying Doors
Blizzard has actively been working on making doors better in Nightmare Dungeons, such as speeding up when the hitbox collisions stop
They are aware there is more work to be done, and they are always looking for more instances to fix and make the gameplay smoother
Doors, especially early in Diablo 4's life cycle, were seen as a more cinematic separation of combat, giving a feeling of immersion, and letting monsters storm through a door or choosing to keep doors closed was seen as a player decision at the time, but the mentality has shifted since
Seasonal Mechanics Going Core
While Seasonal Mechanics are cool, and Blizzard loves the feedback on Chaos Armor, they want to be careful adding things into the core game
Adding Chaos Armor or other very powerful systems into the core game would damage the overall health of itemization and class design if they were just added one-to-one
In the future, systems can come back, but they have to come back in very measured and careful ways that make sense for the landscape of the game, rather than just having things because they're powerful or cool
Crafting Gear
Blizzard acknowledged that people love crafting, regardless of their time played or level of gameplay
Crafting is something they're actively discussing and looking to support to some extent
Real Money Trading and Competitive Integrity
When asked about how to make sure there's an equal playing field for all players, Blizzard said that they wanted to make sure that there is a baseline that all players should be able to achieve quite quickly
While not directly stated, the answer to RMT seems to be playing in SSF mode and letting the trade league just be trade league
Support Builds, The Tower, and Group Play
The Tower being a competitive, even playing field allows Blizzard to design things specifically for it that wouldn't make sense in the current game
Support Builds have been a beloved feature in the past, and are definitely something they want to explore in the future with the Tower to enable group inter-play and more complex strategies
The Tower and Leaderboards are still considered "in beta" for Season 11, and a lot of changes are coming based on player feedback. Group play and iterations on the Tower are more community-driven than other features
