More info from Gamescom interviews (August 23rd, 2024)

A lot of new info came out today from some interviews with the developers, and I expect more to trickle out in the following days as people get home from the event. You can see my previous recaps of the July interviews and the initial Gamescom stream here.

Updated with additional info from new interviews.

Mercenaries

When playing by yourself you have "one and a half mercs" as you can have an active hired Mercenary (which provides a perk, like cooldown reduction from the Bounty Hunter) and a Reinforcement (customizable passive support so a merc will use one skill on a cooldown when a condition is met, like when you use one of your skills or when you are crowd controlled).

In group play, every player can use their Reinforcement setting; these may be impactful as she specifically mentions wanting to talk about which Reinforcement everyone is going to use when you are doing the Dark Citadel to really synergize with the build. In the initial Gamescom reveal, they said, "if you're in a party, the party leader can bring a merc with them," but that seems to have been walked back already as on Rob's interview it was said they "don't actually let you bring the mercs with you" in a party.

Mercs do not cost any gold to hire. After unlocking the Shieldbearer you will have to do quests to get each of the other ones. The quests for mercs begin in VoH, so it seems they will not be available in the base campaign.

Unlike previous games, mercs are all about their skill trees and will have no gear. They increase in power by leveling their Rapport to get more skill points. The Rapport gain is scaled and you earn more for the active merc than you do for the Reinforcement.

Mercs originally were designed to be as strong as players, but they decided it didn't feel right because during playtesting people were complaining that they were "stealing all the player's kills." They switched the focus to the buffs the mercs provide, like someone with a glass cannon build utilizing the Shieldbearer to get armor/shield/resistance buffs, or a Necromancer wanting the Berserker for movement speed buffs.

Mercs get incapacitated like D3, they will pick themselves up after 45 seconds or you can manually revive them to get them up quicker. When down, you do not get any benefit from their perk, but your Reinforcement is still active.

Mercs are not tagged as Minion or Companion, so they will not interact with Druid/Necro things involving those tags.

Update: The four Mercenaries VoH will launch with are the ones they consider to be the "most refined and balanced," implying others were/are in development, and we'll have to wait and see how big the Pale Hand group may be. (From the alpha datamine, we know they were working on mercs dubbed Scholar and Maiden & Mongrel, and possibly one or two more (Priest, Thief).)

You can respec the mercs' skill trees. They have two different skill paths to take with the initial skill point, you then get additional choices as you continue down your chosen branch/specialty.

Transmogs for mercs are a "really interesting place to go" and have been talked about a lot, but they will not launch with VoH as they are waiting to see how the players feel about mercs.

You will only have to do the quests to unlock the mercs one time on your account as it will persist through seasons. You will still have to level their Rapport each season though.

Difficulty and Progression

The difficulty system is being reworked so that they can smooth out the play experience for new players and provide additional challenge for veteran players.

Torment 1 difficulty will require clearing level 15 or 20 of The Pit to unlock it.

Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, and Tree of Whispers are now unlocked at the beginning of the campaign. This is part of their efforts to let you choose whichever content is the most fun for you to level up with.

When asked whether you will need to be 100 to open up Torment 1, he replied that you should expect that the level progression system will be "a lot different from what you're used to" and it will almost feel like a whole new game. They have "refreshed" the "meta" of level progression and Paragon progression and it will be completely new and updated.

After clearing the Vessel of Hatred campaign, there will be additional questlines to help you get your build to where it needs to be to unlock Torment, and The Pit will be the mechanism for testing yourself against those higher difficulty levels.

The Profane Mindcage (increase the difficulty for increased rewards) will have its approach and philosophy applied to the entire game.

The Paragon redesign's core idea was to add depth to the player's choice, without overloading it with complexity. Currently, players are primarily looking for Glyphs to add character power, so they want to make sure Legendary Nodes and other parts of the boards "are getting the attention they deserve."

No plans for an infinite Paragon system. They want achievable goals for players. Like the community, the team has debated whether an infinite system adds to the fun or just feels like a chore, and discussed "soft caps" versus "hard caps."

The Dark Citadel and Kurast Undercity

The Dark Citadel needs to be played on Torment 1 or higher, with rewards scaled to your difficulty tier. Increased difficulty will behave like the rest of the game (higher HP, damage, resistances, etc.) and will not add any new mechanics so that once you learn the Citadel's mechanics it will be easier/faster for you to play and to help others with it.

The Citadel has three "wings" and your progress is saved after completing each one so you can come back to it later. The overall completion time was said to be about three and a half hours.

The Citadel will have a "vendor city" in it for repairing, selling, etc.

There will not be a raid lockout system like World of Warcraft. "Play the way you want to play" is a core philosophy.

Everything is tied to the difficulty level your world is set at, so if you want a more challenging Dark Citadel you can go up in Torment level, it won't have its own separate difficulty setting.

The Kurast Undercity unlocks around level 15-20. It is timed and defeating enemies like elites adds time to your clock, if you run out of time you get kicked out so it favors high mobility.

Cosmetics

It was important to offer in-game cosmetic rewards so players can get cool things outside of the shop. There's a boss that you will unlock the helmet from after defeating him, and custom cosmetics can be found in places like the Mercenary system, the campaign, and Dark Citadel.

There are 13 new cat mount skins (jaguars, tigers, panthers, lions, etc.) and new armors for them, most of which can be found in-game though there will of course be premium shop versions.

Party Finder

The Party Finder will not have matchmaking or an internal rating system, it's all based on the tags people set like "I only want people in my party with optimized builds," "I want to be carried," "I want to focus on this," or "I specialize in this."

Future content and assorted info

The livestream on Thursday, August 29th will go into the changes to itemization, level progression, difficulty, and other details such as quality of life changes and which other content will have Profane Mindcage-type systems.

Season 6 will be a "huge evolution" (phrase translated from a Japanese interview), also revealed on August 29th.

When asked about managing stash space for the new items and if we'll get new stash tabs, the reply was that they didn't want to go into too much detail but there will be an extra tab coming and that we will need to wait to find out about the "items that belong in that tab." The fourth tab seen on the inventory of the reveal video was then brought up, this will also be revealed next week, "We're not done announcing things."

1-2 new character slots will be coming with the expansion, she believes it's 2.

Community feedback is very important, not only for doing quality of life updates to smooth out the experience, but a lot of what the community is talking to them about is on their road map. For example, if the community wants them to emphasize trading and has a lot of complaints about it and wants to see it work a different way, they would take that into account as they build out their road map to decide what to work on next. You can expect to see nice QoL updates with each season.

Nothing to announce about any further Clan features at this time.

"Pretty happy" with how the community is engaging with trading at this time.

Armory/loadout system is coming, nothing to announce but they are "doing the diligence to get it done right." Loot filter would be in the "running list of things" that pop to the surface based on community feedback.

"The game is so complex with all the different ways we’re adding power to the systems, and we need to make sure what we’re designing doesn’t fall short. For example, of the feedback we’re getting, it’s loudest for an Armory — and that’s the top of the list. It’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when. A lot of us on the team are fans who want it too, but these things are not easy to develop in a game this complex. So, we’re doing the diligence to get it done right. We are road-mapping out all of the quality-of-life changes that we can see Season on Season, so players should expect a nice quality-of-life update every season."

No plans to announce at this time for adding vendors to Uber Boss rooms, but it's not out of the realm of possibility and they are now aware of the issue with despawning loot when people repeatedly summon bosses while leaving all the items on the ground.

Rod's favorite feature coming with VoH is that you will be able to set a teleport location instead of going to the nearest city when using your town portal.

Oof, "all classes are getting a new Active and Passive skill" (capitalization per Wowhead) and everyone will get access to these regardless of owning VoH. Some other statements from devs suggest multiple passive skills. (Was hoping for more being done here if new skills are only coming with expansions, especially for Necro which is already behind in skill count.)
Update: Now that the Campfire is done, I may see what happened here. There were a few conflicting developer statements about the number of skills coming, presumably the ones who said there would be one Active skill and one Passive skill were referring to the new Key Passive that each class got, as it did end up being one active skill, one key passive skill, and five passives for each class.

The campaign will be used to introduce players to new systems and activities. No guesses on estimated campaign length as it can vastly vary based on side content/engagement with the new systems, but expect some surprises and cool cinematic moments.

Not currently looking at doing an Auction House, though trading is always thought about when adding new items and they want to encourage more depth in the economy and trading environment. They want to be "more generous across the platform without creating any abusive behaviors," this is why they are cautious about systems like an Auction House - if they create bad behavior people will always take the shortcut and miss out on the actual gameplay and excitement of finding the drop you've been desiring.

They have been discussing making Mythic uniques tradeable, but we won't see any change on that in the short term.

Additional co-op and social content/features are being looked at, but nothing to announce today.

Update: No plans for a Solo Self-Found mode, though they have discussed it.

Leaderboards have been discussed for additional content like Undercity, but nothing to announce today. Gauntlet leaderboards were created to try to replicate what had happened in D3 - where you could see which builds were good at Greater Rifts - and it fell flat because half the D4 leaderboards are hiding on private profiles so there's nothing to aspire towards or learn from.

More game modes will get Helltide-grade reworks, they want to keep them modernized to where the community is.

The Spiritborn's class quest will be longer than Sorcerer's, but shorter than Druid's.

https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/blizzard-confirms-there-will-be-a-season-6-mechanic-wowhead-and-jessirocks-346092
https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/no-plans-for-solo-self-found-mode-wowhead-and-jessirocks-diablo-4-developer-346127
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6jzwsjH548
https://www.famitsu.com/article/202408/15359
https://www.4gamer.net/games/484/G048447/20240824005/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlpmYBAew5Q
https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/diablo-4-exclusive-interview-gamescom