Community Q&A with Chris

What possible changes to the party-bonus system are being considered to deal with multiboxing and the dominance of party play in ladders/gameplay viability?

Is there any way to get portals to stay open if you get logged out due to lag?

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Tykero wrote:

How do you feel about the current meta in character-building being mostly hp-dominated in regards to selections in the passive tree? Do you think this is a problem, and are there any plans to address it if so? I don't mean this to be leading -- if you disagree that this is the case feel free to say so!

Do you plan on reducing life node values to make life less OP on the passive tree? If so, what alternatives/buffs will players receive in order to achieve roughly equivalent survivability?

Hi Chris,

Firstly congratulations to you and the team at GGG for producing such a fantastic game overall.

While i have several questions i could probably ask, i will ask the most important to me first.

Right now as an oceanic player (Melb, Aus) at the best of times i can only get a ping of 250ms to the game servers. Unfortunately i am seeing that when i see an item drop in my name and i feel i have run over and tried to pic it up before the timer has run out i soon realise that i have infact not picked it up.

There seems to be a real lag problem for those with a higher ping to our us counterparts in looting items. Will the loot system be overhauled, and will the oceanic player base see some local servers?

P/S could we see some sort of statistics of % of players by region in a pie chart or something?


Many thanks in advance.

1) Which two corners of the Iron Triangle do you favor (Good, Fast, Cheap)?
2) More cute vendor recipes like "Iron Ring + Skill Gem = Resistance Ring"?
3) Curses, happy with their niche?
4) Happy with Armor & Evasion as defensive paths?
5) Will the Skillweb eventually go 3D, or otherwise mimic the effect with connections going over/under each other? (SKILLDRASPHERE)
6) Later will it be possible to "focus" your farming/crafting efforts? E.g. "Diablo II Countess" having a higher Rune drop rate, that allows players to not eliminate, but guide RNG somewhat towards their ends?
7) Can unusable corpses (Summoned Zombies, for instance) have a "decomposition phase" so they don't stick around and confuse people who may otherwise use corpses as a resource?
8) Speaking of resources, happy with Charges rate of acquisition and decay/expenditure? I've viewed them as a "Momentum"-like resource to satisfy players who want to build around "ramping up" and possibly "slam the breaks/crash", Frenzy seems to work that way but Endurance seems to be a chore. Power charges are relatively unexciting, although their bonuses feel like great invisible power.
9) Are Traps/Mines living up their design intent? They're mostly treated as mildly delayed nukes. How about if after they arm, they 'mature' up to 100% damage over the course of a few seconds? (say, 2~4 for starters)
10) Will Traps/Mines ever possibly see a speccable global resource that would provide a sort of Curse-like exclusivity? (e.g. Anyone can cast 1 curse that wears off, but most Curse-oriented caster builds can cast at least 2 that never wear off; so non-Trappers can throw out a Bear Trap here and there to snare a rare, but only Trappers dance around baiting entire fields of monsters to their death)
11) Are you happy with the current pattern of resource management displayed by the most popular builds?
12) Are Timmy, Johnny, and Spike happy? (With respect to #11, and in general)

Hey Chris;

Auras: Are there plans to change the current endgame build meta: stack enough mana so you regenerate the cost of your main attack immediately and reserve the rest for 3-6 auras? If so, what are some of the ideas floating around that can change aura mechanics--are going to see specialization on the passive tree such as imposing a simultaneous number of auras one can maintain, while allowing them to acquire and specialize in certain aura aspects to help scale it up for those who want to play a more support character?

Skill diversity: spammy hold-mouse1 skills: As a few have mentioned, there is a certain lack of skill diversity where a lot of skills are essentially reskins with a bit of different flavour to them, but perform the same role: spammy multishot DPS. A ton of skills require LMP, GMP, fork, or chain to maximize DPS--how does your development team view this issue, and how many more 'bigger hits, slower cooldown/additional mechanics' like discharge can we expect to be implemented during open beta? Additionally, how will this be balanced out in contrast to the easy alternative--I have seen almost no builds involving discharge--do you feel this is a situation of having no appropriate synergizing skills yet or are skills like discharge just underpowered?


Thank you for the opportunity for this Q&A, I'm eager to hear the responses!

I only have one question:


When are we getting CATS in the PET SHOP?


Yes, that is indeed the thing I miss most in the game right now.

Are there any plans to improve the layout of the tab titles so we don't need to scroll so much? Maybe by having multiple rows of tabs?

If this issue is fixed, I will purchase many more tabs.

I have noticed several journals/books in act 3 Sarn (catacombs level 2, Solaris level 3, Lunaris level 1 and 2). Do you plan on putting in text/voice acting similar to Shavronne's Journal?

Are there any plans to make the Bandit Reward quest rewards changable?

So later in the game, if you want to respec, you can change the reward you choosed while you made the quest.