GameStar Podcast: Wo möchte Blizzard mit Diablo 4 hin? - Interview zu Season 2 & mehr

Diablo 4 ist im Juni endlich erschienen und hat sich hervorragend verkauft.

Hin und wieder liest man aber auch Kritik auf Reddit und Co.

Und das ist doch der perfekte Moment, um sich zu fragen, wie läuft es eigentlich mit dem Spiel

und was plant Blizzard für die Zukunft unter anderem für die gerade angekündigte Season 2.

Darüber darf ich hier auf der Gamescom 2023 im Köln mit hochrangigem Besuch sprechen.

Ich darf begrüßen Rod Ferguson, den General Manager für die Marke Diablo bei Blizzard.

Rod, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Und Chris Wilson ist noch mit der Bayer, arbeitet als Associate Production Director an Diablo 4.

Chris, thanks for joining us as well.

Thank you for having me.

Rod, how should players approach Diablo 4?

What kind of expectations should they have getting into the game?

Oh, new players should like Diablo is all about this ultimate power fantasy.

You know, it's this idea of going in and just wanting to grow in power.

I love about Diablo stories, they're not a chosen one story.

It's not you're the hero from the very beginning.

You start off as a wanderer in the woods and you go from that to be the person who ultimately tries to fight off evil and sanctuary.

So one of the big things for us on Diablo was trying to make a game that was approachable by all players.

You know, people who were a core who played for the last 26 years and people who never played before.

So that idea of like we put a lot of work on the onboarding in the prologue, the fact that you can play on console or you can play with controller on PC, just in all of our accessibility options.

Like we tried to make it a smooth on ramp.

But one of the things I try to, when I talk to new players, I try to, it's very easy to get distracted in Diablo 4.

There's so much going on.

I go all the side quests and local events and everything.

But if you can get through that story, like the story, it's our best story we've ever had in a Diablo game and it's a great campaign.

And all the side quests and all those events will be waiting for you when you get to the other side of the story.

So try to stay on the main quest.

You can mix and match, which act you play in whatever order you want to play it in.

But if you can get through that first campaign and then let that open world open up for you, it's amazing.

And it actually is a great campaign, but with a bit of an open ending.

Can we expect some big story expansions?

Like we saw for Diablo 2 with a lot of instructions for Diablo 4.

Maybe one day.

Maybe one day.

In the far future.

Yeah, having an ending.

I mean, it has closure.

Like we want a story that has closure.

But that does create options for the future.

And so yeah, we're excited and we knew we're going to be supporting Diablo 4 for years to come with all of our live seasons.

And we're all free for players.

And then of course we'll have expansions in the future.

And we already have some development right now.

Okay, sounds exciting.

How do you see Diablo 4 going right now?

How many of the 12 million players you announced at ONL Bureau Gamescom are still playing?

Well, I mean, there don't talk specific numbers on any given day.

But because, you know, one of the things is that there's always sort of a cyclic nature to it.

But it's very exciting to see all the players going in and playing and getting sort of caught up in the season.

Like the seasons are really cool for us because one of the notion of the reset where you go and say,

OK, we're going to start a reset with each season means that you're not being left behind.

And if you decide to play four months after it launched, everybody's level 100, you're level one.

And it's hard to catch up or you don't feel like you're at the same place with other people.

And so the seasons allow everybody to have a starting area at the same.

Everybody starts at level one and off you go.

And that doesn't mean you can't play the eternal realm,

which is our other way.

You can play your permanent character, you know, your character that you started at launch.

And you can keep playing that character too, you know.

So the seasons allow that ability to start fresh with everybody.

But also it gives us a place to have new and fun ways of playing.

Like season one, the season of the malignant has these cool hearts that you can get you extra powerful.

And now in season two in the season of blood, you get all these vampiric powers

and you become like a day walker, where you're a vampire hunting vampires.

And so all those seasons add a little, I like I call them a seasoning for Dio.

It's early and I'm a dad.

So, but like the notion of having that a little bit of a twist on the on the gameplay

and the fact that the season is allowed to keep, you know, having those twists along the way.

Well, let's talk about season two, Chris.

You just announced it here at BlizzCon at BlizzCon.

I'm saying games, confusing the shows.

What is your design approach when designing or design philosophy

when designing seasonal content, especially if it comes to end game content,

you're going to enter in the future.

Yeah, I mean, so for seasons, what is Rod is mentioning,

it's a really exciting moment for us to really try new things.

And we always want to be able to tell new stories within Sanctuary.

So, you know, for seasons, we oftentimes try to look at having new quest lines,

take people on new adventures, create new power fantasies,

new ways to like build your character and explore like the power of,

you know, for season two, like using vampiric powers as a barbarian

or as a necromancer and what does that mean and being able to explore that.

So I think it's it offers a lot of like really exciting opportunities

to come back for people who have been playing from the beginning

or if you're a new player to come in for the first time

and try different ways to explore your character build.

In terms of philosophy, again, it's just there's no set template.

You know, each season, we really just want to look at how can we

drive engagement, bring new new ways to delight our players

and surprise them in ways that maybe they didn't expect.

Yeah, our design director, Joe Shelley, talks about like

the promise that you have with the Diablo game is that you as a player

are going to get to hack and slash your way through hordes of demons.

And so that's always been at central to whatever we do.

We want to make sure that we're empowering the ability for that

player to go in and have that fantasy of just mowing down

you know, lots and lots of demons.

And that's why you saw in season one, we've been turning up the monster

density, you know, as we go.

And so it helps to fill that fantasy.

Like I'm super powerful and I can take on lots of enemies.

Sorry. And then just to your question around in game.

So for season two, for instance, we're always looking at ways to

like layer on top of what's there.

Right. You can take a build on the foundation that we have.

So we are going to be adding five new boss encounters with season two.

And what's really cool about these is that it's a way to farm

some of the unique and uber unique items in the game.

So for people that are really looking for a specific

unique to to power up or to like, you know, create the build

that they're going after, going after these five unique bosses

as a way to achieve that.

So there's targeted farming.

Verschlechtlich.

Like a little bit like in an MMO, when I have loot tables

for specific bosses.

So how exactly is this going to work?

Yes. I mean, to your point about loot tables, we're going to be

increasing the drop rate for some of these Uniques in the uber Uniques

on these these five bosses.

So again, it is a way for people that are interested in that

and kind of target farm those those boss encounters.

And it's a very good idea.

And it's in the eternal realm and the season realm.

So that's something where we're applying to both sides.

So you can you can play if you're if you're playing in the eternal

realm, because you have the character that you want to keep going in

that in that space, you can do the five additional bosses as well.

That is excellent, because I miss my sorcerer from the eternal realm.

I left my necromancer, my seasonal necromancer, but I'm missing my sorcerer.

Right.

So that would have been my next question, actually, how you plan

to keep the eternal realm fresh as well as I will return to characters

that have gone there.

So this is.

Yeah, I think to that point, a lot of the quality of life improvements,

a lot of these changes to the end game.

We want to not only make these changes for the seasonal realm,

but also for the eternal realms.

That's excellent.

Actually, you talked about the vampiric powers.

I know you can't go into specifics yet, but are there going to be any

changes to the skill system as such in the game?

So as we get closer to the season to launch, I think in October,

early October, we'll be talking more specifically around

like how the powers are going to function and so forth.

Are there any, apart from the vampiric powers,

are there any plans for changes to the skill system for the near future?

Nothing that we can talk about at this point.

But I mean, the game is always going to be evolving.

That's the great part of the live service.

So I think over time, as we get feedback from players, as we look

at data analytics and telemetry, we're always looking at what things

are working well, what things we can improve.

And over time, we're going to continue to refine the game.

It's going to evolve.

Would it be fair to call the season some kind of mini-baders,

you know, testing changes for the future?

No, I think the way that we like to think about it is that things

that we what we do in the season are meant to be

little fun moments that you can do for three months.

And but what we're also paying attention to are what is like

really sticky, like what is really fun for players.

And then those are things that can stay around, potentially be part

of the eternal realm.

And so that's something like season two is bringing the five

additional bosses.

But we believe that those bosses will probably stay with us

and stay in the additional realm and continue on.

And so we don't see the seasons as really like this big testing

bed, but we are doing is that as we do the seasons, we are looking

at what's working and what isn't.

And we're responding to that, but also looking at like, oh,

maybe we should make this a permanent part of the game.

This season going to season two going to be similar in terms

of content scope and playtime to season one.

Is that what we can expect from future seasons as well?

Again, I don't think there's really a fixed template to like how

we're approaching seasons.

I think it really all starts with a strong idea, a strong theme

that we can then apply to the story.

I want to continue to tell fun and interesting stories within

Sanctuary, but then mechanics, right?

Like how can we turn an idea into like a new mechanic or a new way

to kind of approach the power fantasy for your character class?

And so that's really kind of the underlying way we approach the seasons.

Yeah, and season one was a season that was being developed while we were

launching the game.

So we were, we actually basically launched season one without really

much ability to respond to feedback, because it was pretty much

already developed.

We did some things based on the preseason.

But and so now we see season one, much like the launch of the game

itself is sort of this foundation upon which to build.

And so, you know, season two now has had the knowledge of the

preseason and season one.

So we're able to do things like the five additional bosses, the way

that we're transferring all of your now, now, not just the Alters

a little, if not just the map, but all of your now is going to get

carried over in a season two.

And so is things like that, where we're continuing to build

on top of those things.

And so, like, we're having, we don't have a set template for

what is a season, we're just looking at, like, what are fun

things to do that are interesting for the players?

Actually, isn't that super hard with a game like Diablo 4?

I mean, it caters to so many different audiences.

You get new people that just got into Diablo with the fourth

installment, you got, of course, the old Diablo veterans or people

who are really, you know, hardcore into the game, about to reach

level 100 as fast as possible.

And then maybe because it's a live service game, you have the

MMO community who wants to do things with friends who expects

like guild features and rates.

Isn't it super hard to prioritize which group to cater to first?

Or which one of those is the most important one?

Well, I mean, they're all important, right?

And it's a balance.

You know, that's one of the things why you see our seasons.

You know, you look at a Diablo 3 season as an example.

They've been with us now for 29 seasons or 28 seasons, about to be 29.

And those tend to be more of the ARPG core.

And so you can do a season by changing some numbers and making

something a little bit more powerful and, you know, the kinds of

things that you could do with D3.

But now at D4, because we have those different types of players, we want

to have that narrative construct.

We want to have that quest line, the one we have with, you know,

currently with Corman or in season two with Eris, to be able to take

you through and guide you through kind of the seasonal mechanic and to learn it.

And so you're right.

Like we have to look at that's been one of the challenges for the season.

And for the game itself is that we want to be broadly approachable

across all those types of players.

And so trying to make sure we deliver on all those, but definitely been a balance.

Right.

Okay, would you say that looking at future content, that we might

or that we could expect more MMO style features for Diablo 4?

Like, like we've seen the Diablo model, perhaps, you know, like group

based challenges, more Guild features, Raids, maybe, something like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think, like again, just, you know, nothing to announce

today, you know, outside of what we've already mentioned for season two.

But over time, you know, certainly, like nothing's off the table, right?

We're always looking at how we can build on the foundation that we have today.

So it's not unimaginable, that's exactly.

Okay, very cool.

Are you planning more high level content, real high level content?

For example, like adding a fifth world tier.

So another great question, like we can have to say, we have nothing to talk about

right now.

We could wink.

Blink once, if yes, blink twice, if no.

You know, again, like we're, we're very, very focused on being responsive

to the players and making the best game we can.

And so that's how we think about it.

You know, the part of the mission of Blizzard is always about player joy.

And so everything we're doing, we're trying to make a better and better game.

And so if we need to do those types of things to make our game better as we go,

then those are the things we'll talk about.

Well, let's talk about the butcher, because there's no interviewer,

can't mention the butcher.

It's actually one of the most praised features of Diablo 4

and one of the most talked about features in social media.

What are the surprise one shot bosses or maybe events?

Are we going to see in the future?

Are we going to see more of those?

I go back to your word surprise.

I think the only way to surprise is that we don't tell you about it ahead of time.

It's not a surprise that we let you know it's coming.

But our blog has numbers, right, Chris, in terms of like,

how many kills the butcher has.

Yeah, I believe he's slain and my numbers might be off,

but my memory serves as like 30 million players.

So yeah, he's he's doing his job.

So every 12 million players has been slain, like two times.

Yeah, two or three times, exactly.

Those poor souls.

But actually from a design philosophy standpoint,

do you think that surprises like these could also serve in seasoning

another word, the open world of Diablo 4,

like putting more of those in there, more random things that might happen.

I mean, to Rod's point, right, we don't want to ruin surprises

by saying too much today.

But, you know, it's always something that we're looking at.

I think any feature that is like, you know, we're seeing success

and players are happy with, like, you know, we're always obviously

going to look for future opportunities to do more of that, right?

Yeah.

And there's a lot of lots of iconic Diablo characters

remaining that could pop up.

Maybe. Sure.

But you're always looking for, I mean, as you well know, like,

we're always, you have to have the conversation about what about your game

is streamable, what about your game is social media notable.

And so that was the same thing we saw with the butcher,

was that people very quickly started putting clips out of their

they're being ambushed by the butcher and that kind of stuff

or how they took them down.

And so, like, yeah, that's something that as a, you know, a game creator,

you have to think about it, like, what about this is going to be interesting

beyond the game that's viewable.

And so, yeah, those are things we talk about.

You're looking into any other ways to make the open world of Diablo

former interesting for players.

Nothing to announce today.

But, you know, again, I think that, you know, over time,

we are going to be like continuing to add more and more to the open world.

Just nothing is off the table.

You know, we're going to just, you know, continue to add to what we have.

Yeah, Chris made a great point earlier,

which is like, as a live service, we think of the game as always evolving.

And so, whether that's evolving in the end game,

evolving in the open world, evolving in our skills,

evolving in our boss monsters,

like all the stuff is things that we're looking at as we continue.

Again, we're going to be working on Diablo 4 for a lot of years.

So we're always going to be looking

about how to evolve to make it a better game for the players.

Actually around, you answer that one a little bit already,

but around seasons there are or there seem to be two camps

right now of different player types.

You've got the MMO players who want to stick to one character.

You know, on the eternal realm and want forever to play the

the sorcerer, like myself.

And then there's the other ones who create a new hero or new character

every season. Right.

Are there any plans or how do you plan to bring both together

and maybe make the eternal realm more appealing in the future?

I mean, I think as part of it is like what we talked about.

We're bringing some of the features that we have for seasonal,

like the five end game bosses are coming to the eternal realm.

So we want to make sure the internal realm is still a fun place to play.

We know that some people want to be able to just have their character there,

especially with all the seasonal characters essentially retiring

to the eternal realm.

You want to have something to do with those characters.

So even your new character in season one

will ultimately have become an eternal realm character

and you want to be able to continue playing it.

So we're always looking for ways to do that.

But we think that that idea of that reset,

where you get to play with your friends back in the level one,

get to experience that sort of the level progression

in a whole new way, because you have new powers and new challenges

is really a part of the fun cycle of Diablo.

And it gives you a good chance to try new classes.

I know a lot of us are sort of saying like, oh,

this is my eternal realm class, but this will be my season one class

and this will be my season two class.

And so that you want to go and experiment with different classes

during different seasons.

And that's part of that fun,

because Diablo at the end is really about progression

and going back and feeling that progression all the time

is something that I think is why Diablo III was so successful

and going to 28 now, 29 seasons

is that feeling of going back and having that fun progression.

And then going back to the five bosses that we're going to be adding.

What's what I like about the approach is,

you know, from level 50 to 100, the end, you know,

a lot of the end game, you know, phase of play.

Like, that's where, you know, for some people is feeling like, OK,

there's Uber Lilith, you know, level 100.

But like up until that point, like, what are the things that I can do?

There's Helltide and, you know, Nightmare Dungeons and so forth.

But this kind of adds another challenge, another milestone

along the way to test your character and your build.

So we're going to have those bosses kind of spaced

and leveled appropriately to kind of challenge yourself

as you work your way towards 100.

Actually, thinking back to Diablo III,

in Diablo III, it was more or less possible to grind endlessly

because the Paragon System wasn't kept, you know.

And it will be in Season 29.

So that's a new addition.

Yeah, exactly.

So how do you handle that in Diablo IV?

Maybe with players who come from Diablo III

with the expectations of being able to level endlessly,

so to say, when they are capped at 100.

Yeah, that's part of the discussion

as we go from season to season.

But right now there is a cap in terms of the level

and the progression you do.

And that's one of the reasons why I really like the sort of the alternate

characters having alts and being able to start new characters

to do new progression.

But and this again, a great reason to have a new season, be like, OK,

I know what this felt like to take this character from one to 100

in Accomplish a bunch of things, using malignant hearts

as the way that I get additional power.

So now when I go to season two

and now I've got vampire powers and I'm using them as a day walker.

How does that feel to go to that progression?

How would I do it differently and how would I play with my friends

and what have you and take on the new bosses and such?

So yeah, I think it's something we're always talking about.

It's like, how do you feed that feeling of progression?

But we're happy with where we are right now.

Is it important to slow down progression as well?

Because I think that was one of the reasons behind

Oh, was a number?

Patch 1, 10, I guess it was.

Yeah, it's about balance, not slowing.

We don't want to slow people.

Like it's not about how do we hold people back?

You know, the notion is trying.

We want every bill to be viable.

We want to have a diversity of ways of playing.

Like when we when you start to see things like

there's only one way to play the rogue, there's only one way to play a necromancer.

Then we were like, oh, there's probably a balance issue there.

And so it's not about slowing.

In fact, by adding increasing monster density,

which we just did recently, that actually speeds people up, you know.

And if you look at our season blessings, we have the earn of experience

where you can actually get up to another 8% additional experience as you play.

And so we're finding ways actually to help people kind of speed up

in some ways as they're playing through that progression.

So yeah, it's not about it's just that we're trying to make sure

that the challenges feel like challenges and that you're not just blowing

through it all the time.

Yeah, balancing hack and slay sounds like a very hard job to do.

Well, you want people to feel like it's it's riding the power curve, right?

Because there's if you know, that notion of you want to feel

there are times when you want to feel overpowered

and you feel like you're the king of the world and you can kill anything.

And then there are times where you want to feel challenged

and scared and be running away from the butcher and you want to have to earn it

and fight a hard challenge.

And so you kind of have to fluctuate between these two things

of that feeling of being overpowered and that feeling of having to work for it.

And so, yeah, it's definitely a balance challenge.

And I'm glad we have a super smart team

you know, back home, who are working on that challenge.

Even back to what like one of the things that Raj touched on was like player agency, right?

We don't want it to feel like there's only one meadow, one way to play,

you know, your your class.

And so I think that was really fundamental, is like,

how do we make sure that all of the different builds are viable?

And like if I want to really lean into a specific like, you know,

skill tree or part of the skill tree, I should say,

like, it still feels like it works, right?

So, yeah, I mean, I could totally feel the challenge you got there

when you changed level scaling, how level scaling works in the game

with monsters trailing behind you between, oh, don't let me lieb,

between level 76 and 81.

I'm not totally sure on the numbers, forgive me for that.

But yeah, that was changed because the community maybe gave the feedback

that they were maybe didn't feel the power, you know, the power.

So they couldn't live the power fantasy, maybe in exactly this level span.

How exactly do you implement changes based on community feedback?

How much do you look into the into the forms and how do you decide

which feedback to use for patches and which you discard?

So I think the feedback comes from a variety of sources, right?

We look at, you know, player data and like telemetry that we get in the back end.

So that's really powerful, right?

Because you're able to see exactly like, where are people dying?

Where are there like, you know, friction points?

And then in addition, you know, obviously we pay attention to the community

and things that are coming through and some of the more emergent themes

and, you know, pain points as we kind of take stock of that.

We obviously look at that in conjunction with the data,

things we're noticing ourselves as players, you know, the team is, you know,

we all play the game ourselves as well.

So, you know, it's then, you know, coming upon us to then like prioritize

that and figure out, OK, when can we address these things?

What's the right priority to go after it?

And with Season, it affords us the ability to like, to tackle these things.

We also have patches, maintenance and balance patches

that occur in between the seasons.

And so a lot of moments where we can kind of continue to refine and evolve the game.

Wow, I think telemetry is a very exciting topic.

I didn't have that in my list of questions,

but I know from experience with YouTube, Twitch and Co.

that there is always surprises in there.

Is there anything that comes to your mind and surprises very much

from looking at telemetry from the other form?

Um, everything.

There's nothing that, you know, I feel like I can talk to you today.

I, yeah, I don't know.

I know I can't come up with this.

I was just really informative about how we think about,

again, when you're knowing about, we do things like how,

like a rate of kill, kill rate,

like how many kills per second or per minute.

And I think about like what the expectations are for the team

about how many people should get to a certain place in a certain amount of time.

And so getting all that information,

because sometimes things,

if you're by yourself and you're playing your room and you feel a certain way,

but that may not actually be what's happening.

And that's why it's always great to get both sort of the,

what we say, the quantitative, the data side,

as well as the qualitative, the talking to them.

And so, whether that's listening to them on X or on Reddit,

or it's actually, we do surveys and we'll go out and say,

hey, we notice you're to this type of player, talk to us about that.

What is that? Why are you playing that way?

Or what is it, you know, what's going on?

And so we're able to take both the quantitative and the qualitative and sort of,

and then we sort of look at like what's short term,

what's medium and what's long term in terms of responsiveness.

And so things that are short term, you know, we can react very quickly.

We added a fifth stashed tab as an example.

Some things that are medium would be like,

oh, we're taking the gem system and we're now,

we're making them into a material so they don't take a inventory space, right?

And then as we look at longer term,

it's things like the bosses that we're adding.

Those took another season to go from,

we had to wait until season two to implement it.

We're even season three for leaderboards.

Like, we know, you know, launching the game,

like leaderboards are important to the Diablo audience, right?

And but we wanted to make sure we were getting it right

and we wanted to make sure that that we had our hands around the balance.

Because one thing that leaderboards really make apparent is like,

oh, this one bill, this is the ultimate bill to play

because it's number one on every leaderboard, right?

And so we needed some time to stabilize the game

and we needed some time to, you know,

make sure we were designing the leaderboards right.

And so we feel really good going into season three.

We're talking about season three,

we're not even in that, I play through season one.

But, you know, it's that kind of notion, right?

That we know that the game is evolving,

we're going to constantly improve it.

Yeah.

So I'm writing down season three now.

No, we knew that I was going to have every three months.

Actually, you talked about classes before.

Diablo III, Diablo series has had some interesting ideas for classes

that were never fully explored.

Like, I remember the unfinished part

from Diablo Hellfire from the add-on back in the day,

which people datamined out of this, out of the thing.

And I don't know what classes

would you like to see personally to be added into the game?

Well, it's kind of cheating,

because I kind of know what all our roadmap is.

So it's sort of hard to say like what I know.

Oh, you have to say others, when your team back home,

since you talk about those, what are you talking about?

No, but I think one of the things that sort of,

what I really loved about what,

when we added the blood knight to a mortal,

it was that it was a new class.

You know, when we were making the five classes for Diablo IV,

we knew that we were going from 11 years

from, say, Diablo III, Diablo IV,

that we had to have a mixture of homage to the past,

what people love, as well as some twists for the future.

And so that was sort of the same way we approached classes.

The rogue is a little bit of sass and a little bit of Amazon,

a little bit of demon hunter, and you get the rogue, right?

So there's a lot of kind of winks to the past.

And I think, I don't know, what would excite me is just having,

much like the blood knight is just having something wholly new again.

So what, I'm not talking about specifics, I know,

but what kind of philosophy does the team have

when choosing a new class?

How should it fit in there, you know?

Is it?

It's play styles.

Like, that's when they, we're not designers.

So it's hard.

I don't want to speak for the design team,

but I would say, like, I know when we talk about the five classes,

it was really about understanding again,

not only like fan favorites and that homage to the past,

but also was like, what are the kind of dominant play styles?

Was like, oh, there's a long range play style.

That's why you have sort of the archery side of the rogue.

There's also a agility based melee,

which is the dagger side of the rogue, right?

And then you have companion builds

and you have this transformation builds and magic builds.

And so you sort of look at sort of what are the different play styles

and how do people want to experience it?

And that's, they put a lot of thought into that.

And then when you look across the matrix,

you're like, what are we missing?

What style do we not have yet?

And so we sort of look into those areas.

Oh, okay, sounds exciting.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you're going through there.

And actually, this is already my last questions,

last question or the last topic I would like to talk to you about.

There are around 200 Affixes,

which can roll on items right now in the game.

But if I have no idea,

which ones will help me to get better?

What can I do? How can you help me?

I honestly, I think that's the beauty of the game

is that you can try things out, right?

You can change your play style.

You don't have to stay with something, which you started, right?

So I know for myself,

when I first started out with the Necromancer for Season 1,

at first I started going down like corpse tendrils

and trying like builds around that.

And then I later went to more like bone,

some of the bone skills and so forth.

So it kind of affords you that flexibility to test things out,

try it, see what feels good for you as a player.

And then you kind of pivot accordingly.

So I don't think that there's only one way

or that you're kind of like pushed into playing certain ways.

You can try all of it.

I think for a new player,

there's a lot of resources out there.

And so it's great.

There's like a lot of great sites that are guides

that will help you and say like,

because I think there's a difference between

whether you're playing for fun or whether you're optimizing.

You know, and so if you're playing for fun,

there like a lot of my Necromancer that I started,

I chose not to do a meta build.

I wasn't going to follow any guide.

I just want to go make a thorns Necromancer.

And I made it myself and I didn't go look at anything up.

And I just had fun,

but I knew that I was going to be,

you might have a ceiling on it

because I wasn't necessarily maximizing

or min-maxing like RPG players like to do.

So what I suggest for new players is like,

chase the fun initially.

Like you have a lot of time, you know,

because really it doesn't really,

things aren't really starting to be permanent ish

until you get to tier four.

Like until you get to world tier four,

you're going to change your weapon.

You're going to change your gloves.

You're going to change your helmet.

Like everything is very fluid.

So don't get too attached to it.

You just optimize for the moment

and like what, and what's fun for you.

And then as you go,

once you get to tier four,

then you're like, oh, I got an ancestral.

I might actually hold onto this for a while.

Maybe then I'll start to care

and look for particular afexes on it.

But I do have a couple that I always look for on Pants.

I always look for more potion slots.

So I've got, I've got 12 right now.

I'm in Druid, he's 12 of 12.

And on boots, I always go for more max.

I'm more max evade slots.

So I get like three evades,

whether I'm having to do a cool down stuff.

If you're, those are the two,

I'd always recommend potions on Pants

and evade slots on boots.

But what's interesting is like,

you can get a unique or something that also,

like it can completely change your perspective

on how you build your character.

Oh yeah, no, that's exactly what's like.

My Necro thorns build like without razor plate,

which is a unique chest plate

that gives all this, you know, thousands of thorns.

Like my build wouldn't be my build without that unique.

And so we know that,

that people want to chase after these

sort of build defining pieces of gear.

So that's why we're really excited

to bring those five bosses again in season two

because now you can go like,

oh, I'm looking for razor plate

or I'm looking for, you know, Tempest roar

and then I can go and target that on those bosses.

And I think the advice you just gave

is one I gave to players as well,

have fun with the game.

Yes.

You know, don't try from the start to min max things

and go for the most efficient build.

I know that I myself,

I'm a very efficient player going into the high levels

because that's how hack-and-slay players are.

We want to be efficient in monster slaying.

That's our job.

But until you get there, just play around.

It's like I played my sorcerer.

I played a fire sorcerer.

Just for funsies.

You know, just let's see what I can throw up.

I don't know, I just want to use fire

and see where it gets me.

Yeah, because you're not really, you know,

those first 50 levels should just be totally fine.

Like you should, there's no pressure

in the first 50 levels.

And it's only when you're like,

oh, now I have specific things,

I have to go after this Capstone Dungeon

or I'm trying to accomplish to a certain level in Nightmare.

Maybe then you need to start pushing a little bit.

But those first 50 levels,

you're gonna be trading your equipment in it all the time.

So just relax and make,

make the power fantasy you want.

Everybody has that,

like I want to be an Ice Sorcerer

or I want to be a Werebear Druid

or I want to be the spinning whirlwind Barbarian.

Like lean into that and have fun with it

and worry about the min-maxing of your affixes later.

All right, Rod, Chris,

thank you very much for this interview.

It was great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

SWR 2020

SWR 2020

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.