Hello,
I just wanted to provide some feedback for Diablo II: Resurrected, in particular around Classic, The Shared Stash and the Stash Size.
Firstly, I will provide a little bit of background for myself. I have been playing Diablo II on and off for many many years now. I cannot recall exactly when I first picked up the game however it was prior to the release of Lord of Destruction. Even with the release of Lord of Destruction myself, my family and indeed my friends stayed with Classic Diablo II and we still play it to this day.
In addition to being a long term classic player I too have been heavily involved in the modding scene, being one of the only players to mod specific for Classic Diablo II. For those that played some of my mods they may recall the names as “D2Classics”, “D2War” and most recently; Diablo 09 which focuses on version 1.09 for both Classic and Expansion. Through this I have interacted with hundreds of players from the Classic community whom Blizzard developers describe as “purists” of the game.
Whilst there is certainly a strong element of the community that you could consider purists, many of the players simply remain with Classic as they are not particularly fond of the feature set brought in by Lord of Destruction (be it the infamous Enigma runeword or having to carry an inventory full of charms). There are a vast many other reasons that a player would continue to remain in Classic rather than Lord of Destruction however I will not list them all as the purpose of the post is not to make a comparison between the two.
This leads me on to my feedback; in a recent live stream hosted by MrLlamaSC who featured on your Developer Deep Dive; it was stated that whilst expansion was gaining a shared stash and perhaps increased stash space that this feature would not be making itself available to the classic player. The rational provided for this decision was because classic players are considered purists and it is felt that they would not welcome the change.
I would like to address that the rational for providing the shared stash for Lord of Destruction is because your developers are aware that players utilise other characters as “mules”. I would like to point out that this same solution exists for Classic too; I would go one step further to say that this method of hoarding items on other characters actually originated in Classic. At least I can say first hand I was doing so prior to Lord of Destruction being released.
In addition, I would like to say that from all of the feedback that I have received over the years from modding Classic Diablo II is that players welcome and appreciate the increased stash size that I always sought to provide them with.
Following the announcement of Diablo II: Remastered, its shared stash, and the Q&A from MrLlamaSC one of the biggest talking points across several Diablo II discords that I am involved in is the lack of support for the Classic Player when it comes to the additional quality of life features that are intended to be provided.
It is to that end I would like to kindly request that the shared stash along with its size is brought up to the same standard of Lord of Destruction so the Classic Player can truly experience the great efforts that have gone in to making Diablo II: Remastered.
Edit: To provide some clarity on the situation when I use the term Classic I am referring to the non-expansion version version of Diablo II.
Kind Regards,
Kieran
