Continued...
Q: In the Zizaran stream you mentioned minions had a new AI. Are you ready to go into a bit more depth what that AI looks like?
A: Well, you can already test it out on the wolf – that’s basically the same version that we’ll be bringing to everything. It’s just a little smarter, does everything just a little bit better, it’s a little bit more aggressive – for the most part – and it tries to predict where you’re going and where you’re going to attack a little bit better, I think. It’s trying to be smarter but we are trying to make it a bit better overall.
Timestamp: 56:02-56:44
Q: Is it possible to add skill trees to some sort of legendary or unique item for more independent builds?
A: Are you talking about like say you get a unique that has a skill associated with – like Swarm of Bees here – and having skill tree for that item? Ah, we’ve talked about doing it. The big problem is that as soon as you take the item off what happens to the skill tree? Does it just vanish, do you lose all the points and you need to relevel it again? It’s really tricky to do, if that’s what you’re talking about.
Timestamp: 57:08-58:06
Q: Create a weapon with flat damage to totems.
A: Having an implicit with flat damage to totems on a weapon is likely not going to happen. That’s very specific. If we were to do that we’d likely do it to minions in general. Flat damage being added to those – it’s a tricky thing to do in general.
Timestamp: 58:12-58:55
Q: Could you give an approximation of when you think the first EpochCon or LE Con will happen?
A: Ah, okay…I’m going to pick a number out of the air. Let’s say…when I am 37 or 36 – when I’m 36 [years old]. There you go.
Timestamp: 59:42-1:00:04
Q: Is it possible to left-click attack and not spending the right mouse click for the basic attack ability?
A: Yes, we actually used to have that and it got pulled out. I think we might be adding it back in, I’m not sure yet. So like an option right here [Mike hovers over left-click options on the skill bar] that’s not one of the abilities, but is just Basic Attack on left-click. Yeah, I think we can probably add that back in.
Timestamp: 1:00:48-1:01:14
Q: Will you remove the render of items on the floor? This is what your competitor’s performance is suffering from right now.
A: Ah, like these item models [Mike zooms in on items on the ground]. They’re pretty low poly for the most part. We might, I don’t know. We may have different versions that get dropped on the ground or something like that.
[Another dev in chat] We optimized ground item visuals in a previous patch.
Timestamp: 1:01:16-1:01:54
Q: Will you add more skill information? Right now you see stats for default attack not for the skills you use.
A: Yeah, so you’re talking about the character screen stats. This whole panel is getting reworked as well – it’s going to be different, it’s going to look really cool, and it’ll have more detail for individual skills.
Timestamp: 1:02:42-1:03:02
Q: Are there any plans for more unique monsters, and greater monster variety in general?
A: For sure, yeah. Pretty much every new patch new monsters get added in – new bosses, new random enemies, sometimes old ones get reskinned. I know there’s new ones coming for next patch for sure. Yes, new monsters every patch.
Timestamp: 1:04:10-1:04:34
Q: Will the game be fully voice acted at some point?
A: The amount of voice acting in the game will expand and continue to improve as we go. We try to expand that every time new characters come in, or just more voice lines for existing characters – things like that. I don’t think that every single line – like random villager in town – will probably not get voice acted for a very long time…if at all. It’s cool to have that sort of stuff, but as soon as you voice act that line you can’t change it without redoing the voice acting. It’s difficult to keep all those in a good spot.
Timestamp: 1:04:36-1:05:28
Q: Have you guys been working on how gear appears on your character at all or will that come later?
A: Yeah, almost all the [gear] models you see now have been introduced in the last three patches or so. Yes, more gear appearance coming soon. We’ll be adding more and more as time goes on – that’s something we’re definitely working on.
Timestamp: 1:05:34-1:07:08
Q: Are there any plans for the Acolyte to be able to dual wield or will she just be the one who can’t do it?
A: For now she’ll be the one who can’t do it. This is something – there’s thematic reasons for it, there’s mechanical reason for it, there’s practical reasons for it from a development standpoint. For now she won’t be able to. It may change in the future though I can’t say for certain.
Timestamp: 1:07:10-1:07:35
Q: That’s the idol configuration we talked about when the system first came out, I’m hyped!
A: Yeah, there was one big problem we found with the idol system – that I’m sure many of you had noticed – is that all of the endgame builds are just four 4x1’s or four 1x4’s, etc. It’s just ‘find the one idol type that’s great and grab it…that’s the best one, do all of just that’. There’s no reason to ever keep one slot idols or two slot idols…like they’re just pointless. We want to expand the variety of idols that are interesting and important just by changing the shape so that there’s not going to be that way of just sticking four of one type – ah, well you can put four 2x2’s in there still – but other ones are still there.
Timestamp: 1:07:58-1:08:50
Q: Will we get non-rectangular idols at some point? I would love to play a little bit of Tetris to optimize.
A: Yeah, that’s part of the reason why there’s that shape of the slots because non-rectangular idols sucks to deal with from a coding standpoint. It’s possible but it just sucks [laughs]. There’s a lot of visual problems that happen with it as well. Maybe…we’ll see.
Timestamp: 1:09:00-1:09:33
Q: Any plans of having more on hit effects or on kill effects?
A: Yeah, on hit effects or on kill effects are really great – there’s different scenarios that they scale with so dramatically differently. So like boss fights with adds on kill effects are so much better than boss fights without adds – same with on hit effects really. It’s difficult to balance them properly, but yeah we will put more on hit and on kill effects in the game. I think we were talking about one in Zizaran’s item collaboration stream there – possibly giving the squirrels an on hit or kill, or possibly an on death effect.
Timestamp: 1:10:56-1:11:42
Q: Could we get weapons with flat throwing attack implicits?
A: Unlikely, but possible. The problem with it is that you’re not actually throwing the weapon so it makes less sense to have the flat damage on them. Flat melee damage and flat bow damage is typically reserved for the weapons. I know technically everything is a stack stick so it doesn’t really matter mechanically, but we do try to keep that feeling of ‘oh I got a big axe with a bunch of flat damage on it and it increased my damage by a ton’. It makes sense because the weapon is the thing dealing the damage. With a throwing attack you’re not actually throwing your weapon – you’re throwing ‘a dagger’ or ‘a shield’ which I know someone is going to call me out on the shield throw thing because you could be ‘holding a shield’ but you’re not throwing your version of it.
Timestamp: 1:11:44-1:12:37
Q: Any chance of adding a font size option to the loot filter? E.g. I would like to have the font size bigger for shards for easier pick-up.
A: Yeah, this is something that has been asked about quite a bit especially for the loot filter. The loot filter – this is version 1.0 of the loot filter – it’s still going to be improved. It’s not an immediate thing. We’re really happy of where the loot filter is at. It’s not quite perfect and it’s not quite done yet, but we’re really happy of the direction it’s going in. We’ll be expanding that for sure. Part of that will include adding new customizations – I know people have been asking a lot for an OR and an AND…like this mod OR this mod, or when it only has this mod AND this mod…having some additional logic in there.
Having some size changing stuff is a little bit less do-able…we’ve taken great care to make sure the– how do I say this – there are a lot of people that have asked us for a hex colour picker and it’s really easy to make something look terrible with a hex colour picker. We selected these colours with these contrasts very carefully so the text is white or black dependent on how dark the background is to try to make it more readable wherever we can. A lot of this is done very carefully to make sure it’s still easy to see and easy to distinguish from the other ones that are there. When you get a lot of items on the screen they’re all kind of the same size and they kind of blur into a blob of items there, but you can still make out what’s going on behind them. If someone of them really stick out too much when you’re in combat then it can obscure what’s happening a little bit too much. We’re really trying to avoid situations where there’s too many distinct things that block your view of the world too much from being options available in the loot filter. I know it’s a little bit frustrating at times, but we’re trying to give you as many options as possible without the potential to make it unplayable by mistake. I hope that’s a good answer.
We’re hoping to get the tools that make it really good – I know plenty of people have asked for the option to add ground icons on the mini-map…like little stars for when certain items drop. People have asked for sounds and all sorts of things – we would like to add more options for sure. I don’t know which ones we’re going to be able to get in or how quickly, but we’re definitely looking at those and talking about those.
Timestamp: 1:12:40-1:16:31
Q: Any plans on removing the ‘casting stutter’ on skills that are made instant through skill trees so they can truly cast while moving without stopping for 0.5 seconds?
A: Anything that becomes instant cast shouldn’t have that. If it does it’s a bug or the node just say reduced cast time, but if it actually becomes instant cast it should allow you to cast it without stopping.
Timestamp: 1:17:00-1:17:25
Q: I started playing 3 days ago and I noticed there’s a lot of time spent in the Imperial era and Ruined era, but only 3 instances in the Ancient era. Any chance we get some extra zones in the Ancient era in an upcoming act?
A: Yep. I can’t say when, but it’ll happen.
Timestamp: 1:17:35-1:17:48
Q: Endgame stun nerf when?
A: When you build more health [laughs]. No, we know there’s stun problems for some zones, and some things have too much stun chance…and things like that. I think stun is a very important mechanic in the game. It’s tricky to balance – it’s really tricky to balance – but we’re working on it for sure.
Timestamp: 1:17:52-1:18:23
Q: Please keep the game easy on the hands. Old people like me are thankful beyond words for it.
A: Yeah, and we’re also working on more controller support as well. There’s people on the team that need help with carpal tunnel because they played too much Diablo back in the day. I know these games can ruin you. There’s some builds that don’t require too much in the way of clicking…I think.
Timestamp: 1:18:37-1:19:02
Q: Are things going to be brought up to the power level of the Rogue’s Shadow Cascade? Or will that be brought down in power?
A: I think we can kind of do a meet in the middle. It should be good.
Timestamp: 1:19:08-1:19:18
Q: Will classes be gender locked at launch?
A: Characters will be customization locked at launch – I guess you could say. The whole gender topic – I touched on it earlier – the short answer is we’d love to add character customization, but it’s a lot of scope creep for us…we need to keep things under control.
Timestamp: 1:19:20-1:19:40
Q: What is the dev’s stance in regards to doing balancing passes?
A: There’s good and bad things that come from having a ladder, and the internet where people can talk to each other [laughs]. That’s basically what you just described. Having meta builds – it’s going to happen…almost no matter what. I don’t think that there’s any point in pretending that it won’t happen or trying to stop it from happening. When you get thousands of people in a room together to experiment with a system – with the goal of finding optimal ways to use that system – they’re going to find optimal ways to use that system. I think the best thing we can do is to add new mechanics as time goes on that interact with that system in new ways that change the parameters of that experimentation, and changes the tools players have to experiment with that allows for new builds to be discovered. We’ll definitely be balancing and tweaking numbers as we go – as we get more data, as more people play, as there’s more content. We try to keep crazy – like WTF – powerful builds under control
Let’s say that a 100 waves is where most good builds can get to in Arena, and there’s this build that comes along that can all of a sudden do 180 waves in the Arena – yes, we would look at nerfing that build. Our goal in nerfing that build would probably be to bring it down to 110 waves so that it’s still above the average or even 120 waves so that it’s still strong, but we’re not going to try to completely demolish it. This is especially true when there’s a competitive atmosphere going on and people are spending a lot of time on those builds – and say it’s mid-cycle or something like that – the goal is to always keep things competitive for everyone, but also make people feel as though they haven’t wasted their time on a build they’ve worked hard on. I hope that’s a good answer.
Timestamp: 1:20:04-1:23:10
Q: What’s the current vision for end game look like?
A: The current vision for endgame is to have many ways for people to approach it, and have fun long-term – new interesting stuff for people to do, new challenges for people to approach in different ways, new cool enemies, new cool scenes, things like that. We’ll really hope to keep the content fun, really.
Timestamp: 1:23:15-1:23:47
Q: Have you guys thought of moving movement speed to implicit only?
A: Yes, we have thought of that. Ah, probably not going to do it [laughs].
Timestamp: 1:24:10-1:24:15
Q: Will story be required to complete each time you make a new character in the future when you make leagues?
A: The current plan is yes. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to stay that way. There might be alternatives in the future…we’re not sure yet. However, right now – as I mentioned before – keeping things in scope is really important. We haven’t scoped in something like that yet so adding it would be more development time. Tough, if we can come up with a solution that’s relatively quick to do then it’s more likely to happen.
Timestamp: 1:24:18-1:25:16
Q: Have you guys ever thought about adding name tags to prefix and suffixes so Rare’s would have names kind of like Ghoul Thirst or Soul Scratch instead of showing the affix names?
A: Oh, I see…like it changes whole item name. The reason we have affix names that describe it is specifically so that at a glance if there are specific affixes you’re looking for you can read the item and you don’t have to mouse over it. I know that we did that before we had a loot filter so I guess that changes things a little bit. Yeah, we haven’t done any name generation stuff for items recently. It is kind of cool though – you can get some interesting names that happen. There’s a lot of them in Diablo 2 that were great, but I can’t recall any of the really good ones.
Timestamp: 1:25:25-1:26:40
Q: Any plans on speeding up endgame gameplay?
A: Do you mean like adding more easily accessible movement skills to the game, that sort of stuff? Umm, no…not right now. The plan is to – we really want to keep combat more deliberate. Like you see I’m really having to figure out how I’m going to approach this situation right here. I think that’s a positive thing – to have those challenges happen where I can’t just blast right through this. Having that sort of thing happen throughout the campaign and endgame I think would be really healthy for the game.
Timestamp: 1:26:44-1:27:50
Q: What are the plans for supportive characters? I’d love to be able to play a healer with my friends once multiplayer comes out.
A: Yeah, I’d say that there will be certain classes that shine with support. For example, Paladin is going to be great at it, Druid is going to be really good at it, there’s probably even going to be some weird support Acolyte builds, I’d say that there’s going to be light Rogue and Mage support – though I’m certain someone will come up with a sweet build for it though. With Healing Hands I know we’ve got some cool skill tree stuff planned for that.
Timestamp: 1:28:05-1:29:10
Q: Any plans for new classes after 1.0 release?
A: Yeah, we have classes that we’ve talked about – sort of in the pipe. We haven’t finalized which one will be next. We’re not short on ideas for them I’ll tell you that [laughs].
Timestamp: 1:29:37-1:30:24
Q: Where did the Blessing tab go? I saw a blessings tab in the last inventory teaser.
A: Yeah, the buttons will be there. They were just removed for that art concept of it. All these things teased on stream are very work-in-progress – very subject to change – but yes, there will be the tabs across the top for Blessings. I actually just finished the functionality of that tab yesterday, so that’s probably being tested right now.
Timestamp: 1:30:34-1:31:45
Q: Will older classes have updated animations and models like the Rogue?
A: The animations are all pretty up-to-date at this point, I think. They’re not done by any means – like all the variations we’re thinking of – new skills get new animations, that sort of stuff…there’s tweaks that happen all the time to them. They’ll all get changes and updates as time goes on.
Timestamp: 1:31:52-1:32:14
Q: What ways of character customisation are planned in the near future?
A: If you’re talking about visual customizations – we don’t have details on that yet. If it’s more like power customizations – there’s not too many more axes of character customization planned for 1.0 launch, but I’m sure we’ll see many more mechanics entering the fold eventually.
Timestamp: 1:32:40-1:33:06
Q: Any plans to allow one rule for all base types you want to see? Instead of having a rule for each slot?
A: Possibly, I don’t know if that one’s been suggested or not. Your best bet is to go put it on the forums.
Timestamp: 1:33:44-1:33:52
Q: I know the goal is to have loot filters made with the interface and I haven’t taken a look at the text format, but a text format using data literals may be cool to write script generating loot filters for the coders.
A: Yeah, definitely – they are text files…you can edit them. Getting highly quested features in, like AND/OR conditions, would also help those people who want to code other tools that build loot filters.
Timestamp: 1:34:22-1:35:32
Q: What is your stance on introducing an “Auto Cast” feature for certain skills on the action bar? Many people do that by using the Num-Lock “workaround” so it kind of makes sense if it could be native to the game.
A: We have no plans on adding a native version in-game for that – at this time. That’s our stance on it.
Timestamp: 1:35:40-1:35:55
Q: Will story be required to complete each time you make a new character in the future when you make leagues?
A: Likely, at least at first.
Timestamp: 1:36:10-1:36:16
Q: Are there any plans to reduce foreground noise in places such as the Temple of Lagon?
A: Like the music or the sound effects or something like that? If there’s a specific place that’s not quite right to you then feedback on the forums is the right place for that.
Timestamp: 1:36:18-1:36:38
Q: Can CE be used to speed up the game, like 2x game speed, without being banned?
A: No, don’t do that. Leave the game speed alone. No, you can’t use Cheat Engine for anything. If you’re using CE it’s bad…don’t use CE. I just want to make that really clear.
Timestamp: 1:36:48-1:37:07
Q: Before release date, will all current animations be updated?
A: No. That feels like a bit of a suggestion so if you’d like to suggest that then head over to the feedback and suggestions section of our forum and leave a suggestion for specific animations you’d like to see updated.
A lot of them I think are really great. I would prefer adding more – like adding alternate variations on things. Someone was asking about this earlier about having different variations of them so that every time you do – like this slam, for example, every time you do it it’s the same animation so having it be a little bit different every time would add flavour to it…I think.
Timestamp: 1:37:10-1:37:52
Q: Is the game online? Like Diablo 3?
A: Not yet, but it will be.
Timestamp: 1:37:54-1:37:58
Q: Can we get a separate ‘close all windows’ keybind which is not connected to the ESC/Menu keybind so that it doesn’t open when you hit it too many times in a row?
A: Umm, maybe. I can do that…it’s doable. I can see that being a good thing, having it be the Space Bar or something…I bet a lot of people would like that.
Timestamp: 1:38:00-1:38:17
Q: Please also do a 100% offline mode too, if one doesn’t have access to the internet at times.
A: Yeah, we’re still working out what we’re going to do with that. Suggestion noted.
Timestamp: 1:38:19-1:38:35
Q: What is the dev approach towards going about balancing? There are a few skills out there that are currently very weak and bringing those up would enable a wider variety of possible builds.
A: I completely agree. I think a lot of the reason why some of those skills are really weak is old and outdated skill trees – so likely the first thing we’d do is look at updating those skill trees. That will generally bring them up to speed because a lot of the time the power in a lot of skills comes with their interaction with other skills – so a lot of times skills that have a node that says ‘when you cast this you also cast that’ those are good skills. Adding more integration will help with that and that comes with redoing skill tree’s. For example, Summon Sabertooth is not very good…skill tree is super-duper old.
Timestamp: 1:39:24-1:40:10
Q: Any plans on adding skill stats to the character stat sheet? Like if my skill has some chance to inflict bleed, will there a way for me to know how big the chance currently is?
A: Yeah, we’re redoing the character stats panel and it will have more stats for skills listed there. You can see that right now in that panel, but you got to do a little bit of work to figure it out though.
Timestamp: 1:40:12-1:40:32
Q: Earlier you showed the filter colour/text changes. Is there plans to enable us to customize that more for those of us that see / process colours differently (IE colour blind, Autism, Irlen Syndrome)
A: Yeah, we want to make that as accessible as possible. I feel there’s enough of a spectrum there that if you’re certain types of colour blind you should be able to have enough options there already because I think that covers a wide range of colours – it’s basically the whole spectrum. Having a hex editor won’t get you enough extra options that are distinct to do much for that, I don’t think. If I’m wrong and there needs to be more added there then we can add more to it, but we won’t be adding a straight hex editor for it. Earlier I was talking about the size thing and I don’t want to go over it again, I’m sorry.
Timestamp: 1:40:34-1:41:33