Fredagens informationsbomb kommer i skepnad av ännu en Q&A från Blizzards utvecklingsteam. Vi utfärdar en varning för en lång men intressant text där vi bland annat får ta del av ett antal konkreta exempel på innehållet i de framtida patcharna.

Q: What does the Avenger prefix mean?

It’s not intuitive. It means that when you kill one the others get stronger. We need a bigger visual effect to explain it better.

Q: Almost all upgrades come from the AH to the point where I don’t feel I could survive in Hell without all those upgrades. Any concerns on this?

Well, everyone testing internally made it to and through parts of Inferno with just the drops they found, so it’s certainly doable. The better question is what’s an acceptable timeline to progress with just your own drops? That’s something we’ll continue to evaluate. Expect drop changes in 1.0.3, though.

Q: Any concerns with Barbarian survivability on Hell?  (Examples: players having to focus entirely on healing abilities/runes and not damage ones, long cooldown/short duration of Ignore Pain leads to a lot of running away until it’s available, sword and board being the most effective way to go, heavy reliance on AH items to stay alive, etc.)

Barbarians are doing quite well in Inferno right now. We are keeping an eye on balance, but it’s too early to tell and people’s strategies are shifting too rapidly to get a good idea of what’s going on. People are gearing out, picking a build, and assuming no one can do better. We’re seeing a ton of build diversity and experimentation as well as greater proliferation of items. We’ll see how things shake out after 1.0.3.

Q: Can two identical single hand legendary weapons be equipped by a dual-wielding monk/barbarian?

No, we hope having Unique Equipped in the item text makes it clear enough for everyone.

Q: Some players have been confused about the existence of two separate haste buffs  – what is the difference between the two different attack speed buffs: Attack Speed Increased by 12-13% and Increases Attack Speed by 12-13%?

There are some Attack Speed bugs, and overall it’s probably just too good and likely to see a nerf.

Q: Upon beating Diablo, the player is unable to leave the final room or recall back to town, so if they had a full or partially full inventory prior to fighting Diablo, they may be unable to loot the boss’s items without being forced to leave some or all of it behind.  Is this intentional?

No, we’re looking into getting this fixed.

Q: Do effects of ground covering spells stack? E.g. – will a mob with desecration and molten and plague be able to stacks effects of those 3?

Yes, ground covering spells do stack.

Q: Some champions and rares seem to heal themselves after killing all players and are back at full health when they are engaged again. Others seem to remain at the same health level. Why is there a difference, and do champions/rares generally “reset” after some time has passed?

We’re aware of some bugs that are causing this to happen and we’re looking into fixing them.

Q: It’s really weird that a Wizard can hold a dual-axe while casting spells and magic and the demon hunter can shoot while holding a club (http://i.imgur.com/AaByP.gif). This doesn’t match the expression of players to the fantasy art. We’ve heard that this will be improved, is that true?

We think breaking stereotypes and challenging core archetypes by allowing classes to go outside of what’s typical is actually very cool. There could be some animation issues we need to look at, but the core idea of a wizard wielding a 2h axe, or a demon hunter doing something other than shooting a crossbow is part of the character customization freedoms.

Suggestions

Q: Could you allow followers to pick up gold?

If you mean make them run around like the old pets, absolutely not, having them fighting for you is far more important.

Q: Could you allow players to send items directly to another player’s stash?

We’d like a system that supports the ability to give items to an offline friend, absolutely, but no specific plans have yet been discussed.

Also, we are looking into adding the following options:

§  Blacksmith repair (Artisans)

§  Giving players the ability to shift-click link more than 1 item per chat message and shift-click achievements (Chat/UI)

§  Changing the default chat to party chat when players are in a group. (Chat/UI)

§  Locking the Action Bar. (Chat/UI)

Q. Why does killing bosses not refresh the Nephalem Valor buff? Isn’t that the point?

We’re keeping an eye on Nephalem Valor. We think that changes coming in 1.0.3 could affect balance to a degree that the 30 minute buff from rare pack to rare pack actually works out fine. We’ll see.

Q. There should be some indicator on when your resurrection timer resets. When elite packs spawn next to the entrance, it helps to know when to go back in as opposed to just going AFK a bit.

This is symptomatic of some more serious balance concerns, so it’s not a bad idea necessarily but ideally not needed.

Q. Why does desecrator tick for so much as it is unavoidable and will often keep ticking when you move due to latency? Should it function more like poison blobs?

We’re pretty happy with the damage currently. There can certainly be issues with any part of the game when latency and rubber banding occur, and we’ll continue looking into ways to both minimize latency as well as its impact if it does occur.

Q. Can we make the animation for the molten-explosion (after mob is killed) more apparent? It seems extremely subtle for how much damage it does at the moment.

It’s about as loud as we want to make it. Just be aware of what you’re fighting, and what it may mean when they die.

Q. Are Fire Chains meant to one shot you?

Only Hardcore characters. Just kidding. Kind of. No, it’s pretty insanely strong and again, adjustments in 1.0.3 should hopefully make it less crazy.

Q. Are there any concerns with the mobs who have default/hidden affixes? The umberhulk-things naturally have extra health so those champion packs have more than others. The Morlu Incinerators naturally have teleport on top of the comet ability as well. These tend to be the packs that just get skipped as a result.

There aren’t any hidden affixes, but certainly a monsters inherent abilities and strengths can make some packs more difficult. It’s part of learning the game and understanding the mechanics that help inform you of these differences.

Q. Many players are not happy with randomization of some maps commenting that you always move in the same direction on them. Some players feel that multiple environment elements of big size make deserts in Act II feel tiny and crowded with the same elements. Are we satisfied with randomness of all maps or do we plan to improve how some of them are constructed?

We’d agree there’s some environments as well as pieces of environments that either tend to fit together very commonly, or are simply large and have little variation/randomization within them. It’s something we’re looking at but we don’t know how feasible it is at this point to be able to make improvements within a reasonable amount of time.

Q. Do you plan to connect any mechanic to placing banners in the ground by players when hitting ‘G’? (there is a rumor followers run to banners?)

Well, you can squish critters with it right now, so that’s pretty awesome! But we’re going to add a map ping functionality to it as well.

Q. Do you plan to make the tooltips for abilities update when players equip items changing the skill (e.g. shortening cooldown or increasing damage)?

We think it’d be great, but it’s quite challenging to actually get working. We’re still looking into how feasible it’d be to get into a near-ish patch.

Q. Do you have any plans to add any of the following options?:

-Show numerical cooldowns on abilities so I can better time them.

We’re pretty resistant to bloating game options in Diablo III, and so it’s not something we’re currently looking to add.

-Ability to move and resize the chat window so that I can put it where I want it.

We really want to be able to allow for this, but due to the way our UI works it’s very challenging to pull off. We’re seeing how soon we may be able to get it in, but certainly no promises.

-A checkbox for ”buyout only” so that I don’t have to use any work-around.

It’s a reasonable request, but there are likely some more integral options we’d want to add first and our UI real estate is already quite limited.

-Increase or decrease the font size in the chat window.

This is something we’re in the process of adding for a future patch.

-Ability to see absorption effects on my health bar so that I can easily see and act on my remaining absorption shield.

We don’t want to add or overlay things to the health and resource pools. If it’s really feeling necessary we’d prefer alternative UI, visual effect, or even skill design solutions.

-A way to retain my stacks of Nephalem Valor when I accidentally disconnect so that I don’t feel terrible if I disconnect with a 5-stack before a boss.

We’d love for this to be possible but it’s fairly challenging to implement. Right now it’s on a wish list, but we are looking to see how feasible it is to add, and when.

-As a Wizard, having the ability to see a buff icon for ”Magic Weapon” so that I can know its current status.

This is being added in a future patch.

-Have my previous follower always automatically follow me whenever I start a new single-player session so that I don’t forget and have to go back.

Good idea! We’ll look into it.

-As a Blacksmith, it would be great to have an ability that allowed me to see what tier an item is before I salvage it so I can know what materials to expect.

It’s something we’ve talked about, but we have no concrete plans at this time. There are potentially better issues to focus on first for crafting in general.

-Having pets/minions not attack invulnerable targets and instead focus on vulnerable targets so that I can kill things faster.

We’re looking into this, thanks for the heads up.

-Having the experience bar to hide once I hit the maximum level so that it doesn’t take up unnecessary screen space.

Our UI isn’t modular like that so it’d actually be a lot of work just to save a few pixels. It’s probably not worth the effort when there are more important issues to work on.

-Having the ability to see what difficulty my friends are playing so that I can know if I’ll be interested in joining them.

Yes! We’re improving the social menus overall in 1.0.3, including more informative tooltips as to what your friends are up to, who else is in their game, what difficulty, etc. as well as the Quick Join section being smarter about only showing you friends within reasonable level ranges and difficulties you’ve unlocked.

-As a new player, it would be good to be reminded of ”elective mode” once I’ve become familiar with the game so that I can learn about and try more advanced builds.

We do have loading screen tips for it, but we’re going to add it to the tutorial system as well.