d3 Patch 2.6.5 Stash Space Clarifications

[Stan 5,242]

Stash space introduced with Patch 2.6.5 is going to be gated behind Seasons and Blizzard posted some clarifications in a series of blue posts today.

It's easier for them to add additional Stash space to PC, because on consoles, they have a limit to how much system memory they can access. It was always their intent to roll out stash space with Seasons and unlocking tabs should be part of the Season Journey.

They explored options to add more Stash space to non-Seasonal players, but the problem is how Seasonal rewards roll into non-Seasonal permanence.

Miscommunication caused everyone to think that 2.6.5 Stash space would be coming to all players. This was later corrected and they overhauled the patch notes.

Blizzard (Source)

Going to try to clear up confusion as best I can. I do wish I could have been more quick about this, but I'll get to that in a moment.

We made all five stash tabs available on the PTR largely for testing purposes; we wanted to make sure adding this amount of space wouldn’t break anything. It was intended that this additional space would be unlocked over time. We could have made that more clear from the beginning and apologize for not clarifying sooner.

As for the disparity with Console specifically, additional stash space can impact things like game loading time negatively. Console players already have a larger amount of stash space available than PC players, and we found that 140 brought load times to a really uncomfortable level. By lowering the amount of new space, we can make sure console players still get more stash, but that gameplay experience doesn’t suffer from it.

The key point here was promptness in communication, and that was something we failed to deliver. We're all working our hardest to improve the communication pipeline, and this particular cause brought to light some areas that need improving.

There’s been a lot of conversation about stash tabs from PTR. We’d like to clarify the confusion and answer some questions regarding the changes and updates dealing with stash tabs.

We use PTR to vet and test changes, and there were some unexpected, negative effects on gameplay from enabling more stash tabs – especially for players on consoles. 

Unfortunately, we will be unable to provide any additional stash tabs to console players, and we are limiting the number for PC to keep Diablo III the fast paced, loot explosion we all love. 

You’ll find a deeper dive into the why via the questions & answers below.

Q: What are the technical limitations preventing us from adding more stash tabs?

To explain this, we have to start with the foundation on which Diablo III is built. 

Most objects in the games are actors: special effects, enemies, summons, followers, and items. Gems, weapons, armor, potions, pets, crafting materials, and more; all the things we love to horde. All players in a party sync on everything that every player has - in memory, all the time. 

That doesn't sound like a lot at first, but it adds up very fast. The more actors active in a game (like enemies on screen AND items in your stash), the more the game will tax your system's memory. This issue on console is particularly difficult because there is a limit to how much system memory we can access. PC is more flexible in this manner, which is why we're able to add more stash space there. 

On console, we tried lowering the number of tabs to be added, but there was still an unacceptable rise in latency and rubberbanding. As much as we'd all enjoy the additional stash space, it's not worth the cost to gameplay.

Q: Why are we rolling out stash space with Seasons?

This was always our intent. The intended experience was to unlock tabs as part of the seasonal journey. We also now understand where the wheels fall off from too much load, and it can’t function the other way.

Q: Why can't we make stash space available to non-Seasonal players?

We explored options to make this happen, but it came down to a conflict in how Seasonal rewards roll into non-Seasonal permanence. Rewards would be earned twice, and we’d end up in the state of poor performance we’ve been trying to avoid. 

We recognize not everyone prefers Seasons, but we do want to emphasize that any Stash earned in Season does roll into non-Seasonal characters.

Here's the thing, you should have stated this from the beginning when you added those 5 additional tabs.

I agree wholeheartedly, and you'll find I've acknowledged that multiple times. This wasn't communicated to me clearly, and that miscommunication trickled down to the patch notes. We've since taken a huge step in overhauling our patch note process to avoid this kind of issue in the future.

If you are adamant on keeping those additional tabs gated behind seasons, then you absolutely must grant tabs retroactively to the players who have reached Conqueror or higher more than 4 times previously.

This was another thing we proposed in bringing in player feedback. My recollection was that there were technical issues with this too, but I'll gladly bring it up again to see if I was mistaken. No harm in double-checking, but nothing I can promise.

They are already gave non season people tabs. But now then can't.

To clarify further, we have to plan for the absolute worst case scenario, which are players who earn via both Season and Non-Seasonal. Those players shouldn't have their experience diminished because they went the extra mile. Nor should people who play with them in a party suffer a similar fate.

It's a big picture with a lot of moving parts. I hope it's more clear overall now.

[tyraelpl 4]

1. sniff sniff Is this BS I smell? Well ofc it is, what else can it be? You can add 5 tabs over the course of 5 seasons but can't do it all at once? Right... Sure wink wink. It's your responsibility and choice that you made D3 so memory heavy or spaghetti coded. Somehow PoE (afaik; I don't play it) doesn't have these problems with stash. Granting 5 silly tabs retroactively to people who should have already earned them would be the most sensible thing to... oooh... forgot it's acti-bli$$, you can throw logic out the window, only indefinite financial growth is what matters. Staggering getting tabs to 1 per season lets them save up a bit on server bills/upgrades and THAT is the real reason, make no mistake.

2.

5 hours ago, Stan said:

we love to horde

Nevalistis, you don't "horde" things, you hoard things. Too much Wow or something. ?

3. What escapes me is why they even bother with this game? Did they calculate that turning off the life support and letting it die finally would make too much negative PR? Inb4: no, it's not "care" for the player base.

 

[Valks 2,375]

9 minutes ago, tyraelpl said:

3. What escapes me is why they even bother with this game? Did they calculate that turning off the life support and letting it die finally would make too much negative PR? Inb4: no, it's not "care" for the player base.

I mean, I tried PoE and the other supposed better Diablo replacements, but I couldn't get into any of them. Until Lost Ark makes it to a western release, I'm still having fun with Diablo and the S16 buff was actually pretty fun to play with. I'm happy they're not just killing it off.

[Boothyp 48]

3 hours ago, tyraelpl said:

3. What escapes me is why they even bother with this game? Did they calculate that turning off the life support and letting it die finally would make too much negative PR? Inb4: no, it's not "care" for the player base.

 

Because, even if you don't, some people (myself included), still actually play!!??"!!!?!

[Soridormi 0]

2 hours ago, Boothyp said:

Because, even if you don't, some people (myself included), still actually play!!??"!!!?!

Why do you? Seriously, no offence here, but D3 is utter *filtered*. That's a fact.

[Guest]

Holy *filtered*.

So much bullshit talk for absolutly nothing.

The more they talk about Diablo, the more I am convinced that every single one of them is on the payroll of another publisher.

They do everything they can to destroy the Diablo franchise. Well, they are on a great way.

Sure, Diablo Immoral will bring tons of cash - but what has been Diablo (a fantastic universe) is long gone. Blizzard made some serious money with awesome games. Now they make serious money. Without great games. Not sure they will still make money in 10 years.

At least that's how I experience it (and my friends who played Diablo since part 1 (we are quite old...) agree.)

[Kalazor13 7]

7 hours ago, Soridormi said:

Why do you? Seriously, no offence here, but D3 is utter *filtered*. That's a fact. 

opinion [ uh-pin-yuhn ]

noun

a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.

 

[darkinchworm 20]

8 hours ago, Soridormi said:

Why do you? Seriously, no offence here, but D3 is utter *filtered*. That's a fact.

Someone doesn't know how facts work

[albabe 33]

3 minutes ago, darkinchworm said:

Someone doesn't know how facts work

I think the OED has changed a few definitions of late.  The Word, "Literally," can now mean "Figuratively," because of idiots that's say insipid things like, "I COULD care less."  Which means the word that defines the difference between BS and Truth can mean both... Very sad indeed.

[tyraelpl 4]

10 hours ago, Boothyp said:

Because, even if you don't, some people (myself included), still actually play!!??"!!!?!

I just inb4ed such an answer. However it seems some things should be spelled out, very well. Here it is.
Them not shutting it down due to people playing implies they care about you, your enjoyment etc. from the game which is why they wouldn't take it away, correct? As a reasoning it could be true. As a real reason why they still "invest" in D3 and not just pull the plug, I am sure it is not. Their decisions are NOT made with human emotions such as compassion, empathy or generosity, imho they are machine-like logic functions, mearly putting loss and gain on scales and making sure it tips the right way the hardest it can.

Why? Look at what happened to HotS, they basically ended careers for hundreds of pro players without as much as flinching! 
Trust me, the don't care that people play it. It is not the reason why D3 still is online. Btw, I do play D3 sometimes - mostly for a week when a new season comes. In fact I played and finished all seasonal journeys in all the season there ever were. Also I play this game since version 1.02. Having witnessed it all unfold gives you a perspective.

13 hours ago, Blainie said:

I'm happy they're not just killing it off.

I'm not actively rooting for the game to die. I kinda still like it somewhat but it's no secret the game isn't exactly thriving and since we all know, I hope, what gaming industry's behemoths do with under performing stuff it is odd to me that D3 is even online, let alone patch notes! From economic standpoint D3 is a moneysink, a liability and if they have no problem doing what they did to HotS or laying off like hundreds of people just to save some money, keeping D3 doesn't fit into the scheme. My bet is they are in a damage control mode after "do guys don't have phones?" and wanting not to draw "bad" attention. In this case I can't explain why D3 even made to that point.

[BladeBraver 5]

On 4/27/2019 at 12:28 AM, Soridormi said:

Why do you? Seriously, no offence here, but D3 is utter *filtered*. That's a fact.

No, that's an opinion.

[tyraelpl 4]

 

On 4/27/2019 at 9:28 AM, Soridormi said:

Why do you? Seriously, no offence here, but D3 is utter *filtered*. That's a fact.

As the matter of fact, anything being utter "garbage" is subjective and inherently facts aren't subjective, they just are... So D3 being this or that, bad or good is not a fact - it's an opinion. Even garbage itself being garbage is not a fact, one man's trash is another's treasure.
I'll give an example of a fact. Diablo 3 exists, that is a fact. At least for the time being... ?

I noticed that people have this weird misconception that adding "that's a fact" to their opinion somehow, magically makes their word more valid than other people's opinion to the point of making it a fact, aka undeniable and objective truth. Obviously it doesn't.

[SidonisAntares 290]

On 4/26/2019 at 9:48 PM, tyraelpl said:

1. sniff sniff Is this BS I smell? Well ofc it is, what else can it be? You can add 5 tabs over the course of 5 seasons but can't do it all at once? Right... Sure wink wink. It's your responsibility and choice that you made D3 so memory heavy or spaghetti coded. Somehow PoE (afaik; I don't play it) doesn't have these problems with stash. Granting 5 silly tabs retroactively to people who should have already earned them would be the most sensible thing to... oooh... forgot it's acti-bli$$, you can throw logic out the window, only indefinite financial growth is what matters. Staggering getting tabs to 1 per season lets them save up a bit on server bills/upgrades and THAT is the real reason, make no mistake.

2.

Nevalistis, you don't "horde" things, you hoard things. Too much Wow or something. ?

3. What escapes me is why they even bother with this game? Did they calculate that turning off the life support and letting it die finally would make too much negative PR? Inb4: no, it's not "care" for the player base.

 

1. PTR is always subject to change, always. Anyone who takes PTR patch notes as written in stone for what will go live needs to have their head checked. In fact, there can and probably will be changes to the current iteration of the PTR prior to its live release that you won't see documented in the patch notes until the day it goes live, purely from data gathered since the last adjustments were made to the PTR.

2. Easy mistake considering Warcraft theming is in WoW, HotS, and Hearthstone.

3. Your bigger concern about the fact that they're adding 5 additional season gated stash tabs through Conqueror, should be that this indicates that they're intending D3 to be viable through seasons through at least November of 2020, which means the earliest we can feasibly expect D4 is now December of 2020.

Edited April 29, 2019 by SidonisAntares

[SidonisAntares 290]

18 hours ago, tyraelpl said:

 

As the matter of fact, anything being utter "garbage" is subjective and inherently facts aren't subjective, they just are... So D3 being this or that, bad or good is not a fact - it's an opinion. Even garbage itself being garbage is not a fact, one man's trash is another's treasure.
I'll give an example of a fact. Diablo 3 exists, that is a fact. At least for the time being... ?

I noticed that people have this weird misconception that adding "that's a fact" to their opinion somehow, magically makes their word more valid than other people's opinion to the point of making it a fact, aka undeniable and objective truth. Obviously it doesn't.

The longer a game is running the more people trash it as it goes in directions they don't agree with personally. There are people that miss the USD auction house from 7 years ago, but imho getting rid of it was one of the best things they did. Getting gear in the original was a heinous grindfest due to mixed stat gear dropping, and there will be people that are still rectally challenged over that change because to them it was a bar that allowed people to gear up faster and not pay as heavy a grind tax.

[tyraelpl 4]

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

1. PTR is always subject to change, always. Anyone who takes PTR patch notes as written in stone for what will go live needs to have their head checked. In fact, there can and probably will be changes to the current iteration of the PTR prior to its live release that you won't see documented in the patch notes until the day it goes live, purely from data gathered since the last adjustments were made to the PTR.

I know PTR abides pretty much by beta testing rules. However, after this long (kinda BS) explanation on why they did what they did with tabs I somehow find it hard to believe that they will just hand them out retroactively when the patch goes live. With good reasons I'm sure, as planned, they will be gated off behind seasonal rewards for EVERYONE on PC, obviously consoles not even getting that.

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

3. Your bigger concern about the fact that they're adding 5 additional season gated stash tabs through Conqueror, should be that this indicates that they're intending D3 to be viable through seasons through at least November of 2020, which means the earliest we can feasibly expect D4 is now December of 2020.

I admit it's a fair point, personally though, I don't think I care for D4 anymore. In my mind it's gonna be an overpriced, MTX filled, p2w bloatware for the existence of which the old fans will weep and regret it's even been conceived. "Monetized" to hell and back, quite literally if there would be any form of hell levels. Unless the current trend of milking players dry of cash on "live services" changes and the industry's landscape in that matter is vastly different than it is now, which is doubtful, D4 is nothing to look forward to for me.

1 hour ago, SidonisAntares said:

The longer a game is running the more people trash it as it goes in directions they don't agree with personally. There are people that miss the USD auction house from 7 years ago, but imho getting rid of it was one of the best things they did. Getting gear in the original was a heinous grindfest due to mixed stat gear dropping, and there will be people that are still rectally challenged over that change because to them it was a bar that allowed people to gear up faster and not pay as heavy a grind tax.

Regardless of reasons, calling personal opinions facts seems arrogant and simply unnecessary.
Oh yeah, I remember the grindfest well, not the best time I've had in D3. Same with AH. I for one, am happy it's gone. Jay Wilson's departure was the single best thing that happened to D3 I think. It stared a chain reaction of decisions most of which majority of players consider positive.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, SidonisAntares said:

 the earliest we can feasibly expect D4 is now December of 2025.

corrected ?

[Soridormi 0]

On 4/28/2019 at 5:31 PM, BladeBraver said:

No, that's an opinion.

it's a fact.

 

[Soridormi 0]

On 4/27/2019 at 6:03 PM, albabe said:

I think the OED has changed a few definitions of late.  The Word, "Literally," can now mean "Figuratively," because of idiots that's say insipid things like, "I COULD care less."  Which means the word that defines the difference between BS and Truth can mean both... Very sad indeed.

Sophism

Edited May 1, 2019 by Soridormi

[Soridormi 0]

On 4/27/2019 at 4:33 PM, Kalazor13 said:

opinion [ uh-pin-yuhn ]

noun

a personal view, attitude, or appraisal.

SOPHISM (sof-iz-uh m)

noun

 

a specious argument for displaying ingenuity in reasoning or for deceiving someone.

any false argument; fallacy.

 

[Soridormi 0]

On 4/27/2019 at 5:56 PM, darkinchworm said:

Someone doesn't know how facts work

you yourself?

[albabe 33]

2 hours ago, Soridormi said:

Sophism

What's your point?