Diablo 4 Interview with Joe P and Adam J! 

interview starts at around 1:13:00

This was a really great interview, Raxx. It's really nice to see the dev team get in front of the camera and actually talk about this stuff. It makes me excited to play the game.

Great job today. It's hard in 45 mins to get everything answered, but I thought you did a great job getting quality answers on what you did get to ask

Rax this was an excellent interview. You asked real questions with context. And they gave real answers. This did not feel like a bunch of PR. I appreciate in-depth responses over rapid fire superficial answers.

don't beat yourself up about the missed questions Raxx, it was very well done by you. Also i think the reason why it wasn't possibile to fit many more question in is because the were answering kinda passionately about pretty much everything, i felt like they were exposing their real developer standpoint and i think it's pretty important for fans to hear

Man i love these devs. Happy how things going for D4 and seeing devs mindset makes me more confident and invested.

Glad you asked about the campaign / new seasons. I would love to give the campaign another go, but I just want to be able to skim through the roleplaying scenes. maybe a highlight / animatic. it would be cool if some of the seasonal content might be accessible during campaign as well but that would vary wildly on the theme.

Hey Raxx, thanks for a really interesting interview! I think you did well in phrasing your questions and discussing them more deeply. The trade off was of course that less questions could be asked but I personally prefer more details rather than scratching the surface on many topics. I am sure several questions will be answered in due time. If you will have similar interviews in the future and want to run your prep with someone feel free to reach out. I did plenty of interviews for my master thesis :) Regarding outcome I was also very happy to hear that they are playing the game! To my mind they seem to be quite conscious of their issues but that their current structure makes several new features be a big effort to implement in a good way.

syill no end-game added? only farming activities all day long?

That was a good interview with a respectful use of time. There might be value in sending questions in advance to 1) allow more deliberate responses 2) set expectations on what you want to try and get through 3) put the question at the bottom of the screen to keep the conversation focused

I enjoy interviews that are meant to get into the minds of the people being interviewed to further understand their processes. It gives people an idea of what is actually going on, what is involved in the process of adding new things in and the consequences that also follow with adding new things, and how passionate these people seem to be when it comes to making D4 as good as it can be for the fans. The thing that annoys me is when theres people that are always wondering what new content is going to be coming out, they want to be spoiled with all the info and not have any form of surprise factor, or they want things returned to the game and theyll get upset if they dont get what they want. I saw a bunch of comments in rhykker's interview video focusing on "what did we learn will be coming to the game" or something along those lines. If those people interviewed the devs i feel like the devs would just disconnect the call because of all the pandering for info they cant talk about or dont want to talk about. Professionalism and respect are required for interviews

Realy good Interveiw, love your humble nature Raxxanterax.

Amazing raxx this was brilliant these devs are awsome

Adam & Joe are awesome. I play a Dungeons & Dragons themed game called Idle Champions of the Forogtten Realms, where the founding developers do a weekly stream where the field community questions. I think more game companies should do it!

I was also very surprised by their response to open world. I’ve always loved the exploration in open world environments. Raxx great job on the interview, but you need to do more research on the Nebraska Cornhuskers brother. We had a lot of talent transfer in during the offseason along with that elite quarterback. Coach Rhule has the program going in the right direction. GBR!!!

Great job, Raxx! Unfortunately there was no time for asking the question about charms. But time will tell. 🙂

Well done! Great job raxx!

Love this guy, feel like he couldve actually got some real answers

Raxx is the GOAT!

Shout out to the wall mount paper towel roll next to the bed 🧐

I thought you said this was on the 10th! :O But, I'm here for it. First thing Adam says, "I F'd up my computer but I'm here." FINALLY an actual human. (Nothing against Piepora ofc, I like him too!)

I'm not getting excited for anything for this game until it's actually implemented and it works well enough. They've botched so many times since launch its hard to get hyped for anything anymore. The new changes sound great but I'm so worried they'll mess something up with season 4.

a good idea would be to put together like 50-100 questions and then do a stream where community get to vote and condense the questions to 10.

there are components that are broken in D4 I have "incomplete tasks" but i've done everything that appeared

100% started laughing out loud when you started rattling off the questions not asked

There is an issue with Rax's suggestion - there is no WT3 campaign difficulty, it seems balanced to get you to level 40-50 IIRC, if you gave it parity then you would end up level 70 or more, a bit too high for WT3.

@Raxxanterax - Idk if you'll see it this way, but when listening to Adam speaking during the last question, while I love hearing that consideration is being taken towards expanding the campaign option of playing the game will see more reward than it is now, I still think hearing him speaking about the cost of doing this over that felt a little condescending. Here's why, they obviously want to know from the player base what would currently improve overall fun and enjoyment playing their game, and right now the game is suffering from a lack of things to do issue. There are great moments that I would love to play again in the later part of the story and get rewarded extra to do so, kind of like Adventure Mode in D3, and having to slog through some of the tedious moments in the story just to play those moments is not fun. So while he can sit there and say "Well certain things take priority over others, etc, etc." the reality is we are providing a simple concept that was done in D3 and worked well and would easily add variety to D4 sooner than later, especially when the fanbase of D4 is dying now. P.S.: Congratz on gaining this opportunity to speak to the devs! I would LOVE to do this again, BlizzCon was when I got to do this last time, and I miss that interaction.

Wow Rax is hung up on the camel, I think he has a secret crush and is compensating. But seriously, all they need to do is significantly up the quest rewards so questing (campaign and side quests) are at least somewhat competitive. Rax's suggestion is a bit extreme but it wouldn't take that much longer to do this for all chapter bosses.

Is there a TL;DR on the interview anywhere?

The one thing we do NOT need is Charm's taking up inventory then it winds up like D2 with the stupid inventory Tetris, People that want them need to go play D2 and do not bring it into this game.

great questions. really cool of them to make rounds doing interviews with actual human beings playing the game instead of journalists and gaming "news" outlets.

one huge thing that all game devs should do immediately is put a few hardcore streamers like raxx under NDA then let them test all the new stuff i bet all the money 💵 💵 in the world all games would be literally 10 times better for it an everything come out faster as well

Killed the interview, no matter how well prepared there are always going to be more questions.

Take away from the notes the questions you asked, pass the doc to DM. He adds what he wants to ask at the bottom and then goes in order. Specially with DM being next, dude exhudes friendly energy, if he asked that Microsfot question they would probably spill everything just on account of how chill the guy is. If a lot of streamers are going in a row, why wasn't this the plan? Come on boys. Edit: My bad, comment right as the interview ended and you were complaining you didn't ask enough. As per the interview though, great job Raxx. And much better on the devs as well, they were prepared, but it didn't look HR/PR prepared like on the campfires. They tried to be on the level with everything they could/knew.

I would like another game like wow … with tanks , dps , healers , & other support classes !!!

Even if you could have phrased questions better, and just didn't reply to their answers and moved onto another question, you could maybe got in 2-4 more questions depending on their answers. Even in the rapid fire section some of their answers were long winded, you did great Raxx, only so much you can do with so little time and the questions you did ask were amazing and imo you picked some very important ones that needed answering. Good shit. Hopefully more in the future!!

What about the bug when playing local co op. Im late couldnt ask this 😢😢

1:55:10 I remember putting a single skill point in every skill back on my first Diablo 2 playthrough ages ago :D Had to scrap that character, cause it couldn't go past Duriel

I feel like the most important question is where is Diablo?

never comment before , thank you , you did great

All you streamers doing the interviewing over a few days should have gotten together and asked separate questions so you guys don’t overlap all your questions over the interviews

I really hope either of these 2 guys replace Rod and have the future of the ip in their hands. Obviously they care about Diablo and fixing the game. I trust them way more then the guy who was running the show when they released this game in the state is was in and who tried his best to kill gears of war lol. I know there’s some great devs on that team but it’s baffling that they can’t/haven’t gotten done more considering how huge the team and budget has been. Almost like the ship is too big to steer away from icebergs and corpo-bureaucracy

Raxx, you didn't spend too much time phrasing the questions, they just spend too much time answering them. From my viewing experience, basically every content creator runs into the issue of not wanting to cut off answers that are going on too long. I can imagine its a awkward and weird thing to do when your talking to the dev's, but i think its the only way to move on once they start repeating things they have already said, or start giving the type of answers that sound very generic PR type of answers.

bro adam jackson was soooo fucking tired during this interview lol only people who have experienced true sleep deprivation can see just how out of it he was.

Nice epic stream Rax!

Never woke asking anything about Elden ring…

thats a cute dawg

you're not a loser m8

Pass on season 4

*D4 & ACTIVISION-blizzard Bad* *Path of Exile & Last Epoch Good.* 😎

The only thing i ask for is stash space but things have changed a week ago when I was squelched, cant talk for 2 weeks. There is so much anger built and when its time to release it its going to be bad. Blizzard is not a game provider maker whatever it may say it is. Just a fucking scam.

Take your hood down Darth!

The answer about trading was a joke. Ofcourse you need to invest in making trade happen. Of course we want an in game provided by blizzard trade system. What a joke

I actualy kind want them to abandon open world. Its booring and its there to loose time

D4 is mediocre game without any vision. It won't ever be interesting. Blizzard doesn't have it anymore, plain and simple. Go play no rest for the wicked instead

Raxx mentioned the idea of an auction house but specified not a real money auction house. Real money auction house > gold auction house. Being able to use gold to buy any item kills the game as everyone can engage with it and it makes searching for items redundant. It was the gold auction house that ruined the game. On the other hand being able to sell items I find to try hards for real money is awesome. Made a few hundred dollars off of d3 and would be happy to do so again in d4.

1:25:00 Wait, why? You only have 12 people developing the game? I don't get it. What's the problem? 1:31:22 Bruh what 😂 1:38:40 No, it is. I don't want to click that shit. I want to kill demons. 1:54:47 OK well where the hell is this "depth" and heft?? Is it in the room with us now?

Bulk and Skull

Adam Jackson is straight up money.. they better never get rid of him. He gets it.. // Raxx my advice would be to frame questions as yes, no, maybe, haven't discussed internally. Some information is better than none and if its like.. offline mode and Joe says "yes" you can see "soon, or after DLC?"

I think the format you did was great. I like this idea of having both well developed questions and answers. The reality is that there's only some much stuff you can cover in a given time, and you did a fantastic job with the time you had.

What is going on with the mounted paper towel roll at Adam's bedside table?

Why are they hyperfixating on the Lilith fight? Nobody cares about that. We want CONTENT and good itemization. PERIOD.

Adam J rocks, you are blessed to have that guy, he seem to solo handle the game I actually believe he can fix the game by himself. The crucial thing you are missing is that fans stick around, and casuals may play the campaign but you can't design an entire game for that audience, it's a loser situation when it comes to ARPG genre. The culture of gaming was not to design difficulty based on the spectrum of lowest skill. To make an example to get the most rare items in D2 and get to level 100 was considered an achievement at least early on the same feeling is not applied to D4 yet. Another issue that arises with this philosophy is that there is no achievement attached to the game and I think many people feel this. Rather it's a matter of time investment, now these two things are not the same thing.

I love how raxx sums up info in the beginning before asking a question so they can't go on a tangent and take up time repeating it lol

You did good - i kind of like that the answers they gave where a little bit more detailed and that they said they want to "educate" the community to understand way more how things are working behind the scenes. Im working in the industry myself and i know very well the different perspectives as dev and as a gamer and community member and to have the best discussion the knowledge about how things are done and what some changes really mean is really important to get to the community. In general gamers from a community often do not take into account stuff like, Time, Opportunity cost, priorization, technical backends that might complicate developement and stuff like that - I really hope they will do more interviews like this so the rest of the questions get also a chance =)

I think the Diablo 4 team is one of the best communications as game developers, I also like the WoW SoD team. Company made massive leap in communication over years and I love both developers giving they side of work. Great job with interview Rax, questions was in depth and well structured with a good context for developers go into conversation over answering yes/no. 😊

Thank you for the interview Rax, you are true, polite and really understand the game. i am excited for all the Blizz dev talk with top creators, great journey, hands up for the DM soon.

As an over 30 years old casual gamer with real life responsibilities that is playing the game only on the eternal server, and has one character entirely, I find the Nightmare dungeons boring AF, and having to do them over and over and over and over, to lvl up one out of 8 -10 glyphs only a few lvls annoying. You know what would be fun to have in dungeon crawling ARPG? HAVING GOOD DUNGEONS. Imagine a version of the game where each dungeon gets a BUF at lvl100. The buff consisting of being able to drop 1 out of three Unique items, with a 30% drop rate for each upon clearing after defeating the last boss, with a 10% chance to get a greater affix version and with every unique being available in multiple dungeons by rotation so that no unique is available inside only one dungeon. Imagine each dungeon dropping it's own COSMETIC ITEM, like in Blade and soul, where you could farm some of the coolest cosmetics by running dungeons. Imagine Blizzard actually stop wasting the time to develop BS like the PIT and instead make EACH OF THE ALREADY EXISTING DUNGEONS have an actual quest, either triggered by an NPC or journal that is inside, with Unique and interesting mechanics and a UNIQUE BOSS that you have to fight. For comparison, I played a lot of Skyrim, and I still remember some of the cooler encounters that I found inside random dungeons, that led me to fight some really unique bosses at the end, in order to obtain either awesome gear, or an amazing new shout. I can understand that it's not the same type of game, But why do the dungeons in this game have to be just RNG generated maps with RNG generated minions, with RNG events. I would much rather enjoy going through each of the dungeons if they had a uniqueness to them. I mean, they are ALREADY IN THE GAME? Why not make them better? After you clear the buffed version once, and you get a completion of the quest within, then you can jump back in, challenge the bosses again. As an extra, what if every 5 dungeons you clear spawn another higher level unique dungeon, and what if the actual individual 5 dungeons you clear to spawn it affects the unique dungeon that spawns, by changing it's type, opponents and drops based on what were the 5 you cleared to spawn it. Also, in regards to what they said in the interview, If any old school gamers remembers Metin2, they had a really good solution to trading. A separate map, where you could set up your store and trade. For the overworld, Why not have Demons Invade the cities, and players have to defend them? What if Clans could play a big part in defending the cities from Demon invasions? There are so many things, cool things that they could do with content that is already in the game. All they need is imagination. That, the will to do it, and the resources to handle implementation. Also, Why can we on PC not have a 2nd Skillbar that is activated by pressing the same buttons as the normal skills but by holding ALT at the same time? This would allow players to use double the skills, and would not need them to add an ultimate keybind, that is apparently extremely difficult to do. These are just some of the ideas that I would love to see added to the game. Maybe some will seem odd or extreme, but you cannot argue that they would be a lot of FUN. and in the end, why do we play games? TO HAVE FUN...

One take away, they got scared by a road map. means they arent ready for accountability of actually getting a standard of work done. a devs job should be more proactive then reactive. been saying this for years. That is just my perspective. i have seen devs who know nothing talk through their ass to give excuses instead of accountability so yeah, i dont much care for some of these guys at blizzard. maybe im just being cranky here who knows these are just the vibes i get when they speak and it seems like a political agile meeting answers.

Great interview, just very sad to hear some of the answers. At least I know I can keep Diablo IV shelved, as they have no interest in adding depth to the game, and that they don't "get" the core issue with ARPGs, and why DIV is as oring as it is.

where that chain lightning buff 01:29:45

I always like listening to Joe talk especially during the developer updates, etc.

The Devs made this game so complicated from the start that it is hard for them to make it easy to change and fun to play.

Great interview Rax! Keep blasting and making games better :)

send the "rest of" the questions to adam, let him reply in his own time, or reply in a phone call.

I’m gonna play season 4 I haven’t played really since end of season 2

Blue hoodie♾️

Aspects of a video game being treated like hypersensitive classified geopolitical peace treaty negotiations of POW release "we aren't allowed to discuss that at this time" type energy. LMAO

It's mindbogling how much alerts they needed to change "damage on tuesdays" and then embracing the joke on them... Even if "listening to fans" is admirable, you cannot escape that bitter feeling that players are constantly beta testing "new" ideas and decisions from devs. Where actually "new" is only "new" to Diablo IV even though other games already have those systems implemented, beta tested and function properly. Example is obvious in this new update - mechanic copy pasted from LE, they didn't improve on it, they just took it and put it in D4. Question one user had posted in campfire was something in the lines of fiery blizzard - skill revamp. Blizzard devs identified it as a "future problem to fix when they do the skill rework" but it's actually more tied to aspects. Aspects should be more appealing, more sexy, more cool. Aspects are make or break build atm. because we have so little wiggle room with skills. Aspects not being recycleable and not in codex from day 1 is blatant mistake from dev perspective, not "brand new cool idea". Brand new cool idea should be something that change the way you approach the game or character on a fundamental level. Brand new cool idea would be companion that collects mats and gold around you while you kill stuff (just a stupid example). Brand new cool idea would be portal to hell where we can finally explore most intriguing part of Diablo universe. Or something COMPLETELY unexpected: FIGHT GODDAMN DIABLO himself!

This was super great. I actually really enjoy when the developers get go into details about stuff. You can feel the passion more. The fireside chat is good for giving us a bunch of shallow information. These interviews are the chance to go deeper. So if you get another chance I think you should prepare for fewer deeper subjects and really be picky of what you want to ask.

*talking about oneshots* "Just like Malenia. Me ; *Laughs in 85% damage absorption*

Next time 1st question should be why the interview only goes for 45min?! Look at Poe devs they do it for 2/3hrs LE does a live stream with Q&A Maybe they should think about this for future interviews/livestreams beside campfires

You did great, thanks! Here's some of my feedback: - Questions about the next season are not a topic I would suggest for a stream like this: the time is so limited, and questions that obviously will be answered in a week or two are a waste of time (note about Robs question) - overall, I really liked the direction and the fact that they both actually explained some systems. - I would've made a more specific emphasis on the main problem areas, meaning: social systems, WHY doesn't the game have them after a year of release? In other words, why have they been thinking that it is not a big enough issue. Same goes for armory, imho it is a huge deal. That said, if the reason is that they do not have the resources to make both an armory and a loot revamp at the same time - then there's a bigger problem at play. So overall, all questions should be open ended for them to talk about some of the reasons the game is as it is. You could've asked them to explain the whole "loading stash tabs" topic to get a proper answer beyond that one tweet. That big preparation was imho great, it made you confident in asking your questions, so don't worry!. I just hope the next interview is not all these same topics, and DM can just say "for my fans, listen to Rhykker/Raxx before watching this interview".

I personally would love to see a Diablo-themed soulslike.

pretty good interview from youre side, but they talked a bit too much for saying few things

i thought it was funny that they said they weren't thinking about a need for an auction house because they don't see the demand in trading to have one... WELLLLLL maybe if you had an auction house there would be a demand for it. The reason there is no demand for trading is because it is a pain in the ass to find people to trade with in game. What they should have said was, they can't control the market due to bots farming for stuff and causing prices to inflate beyond a casuals reach.