Are you excited to play Diablo 2: Resurrected in true Ultrawide (21:9)? Then brace yourselves for disappointment. There will be no real support because the game cannot handle it. Blizzard explained the issue.
What does Blizzard say about Ultrawide support? In a new blog post, Blizzard discusses support for Ultrawide monitors. The game had supported this in the technical alpha. However, the developers noticed some issues.
Because the monsters cannot handle the wide monitors, support for “true” Ultrawide (21:9) will not be part of the release version of Diablo 2: Resurrected. However, there is an almost equally large scaling as an alternative.
The enemies are the problem in Ultrawide setups
This is the problem: Playing a game with an Ultrawide monitor in 21:9 format that does not support the Ultrawide format is frustrating. There will be clearly visible black borders on the monitor. An area where the game is not rendered.
How that looks in the game is shown in a screenshot from reddit user Kaeligos. In the community, the user asked in one of the latest tests whether Ultrawide support would be missing. It would greatly bother him to play with these black borders at the edge.
This is how Blizzard proceeded: In the technical alpha, they supported the Ultrawide feature in 21:9 format. It worked without black borders and displayed a large playing area. In the beta, the format was then downscaled to 19:9. For players, that was already a reason for criticism in the beta.
It probably won’t get any better for now, because according to Blizzard, this is the widest scaling that works. Anything wider breaks the game.
For example, the AI could not recognize the player and trigger any attacks. Additionally, players with 21:9 monitors could pull many more monsters into the fight, exceeding the originally intended range of the game. In a scenario where players (for instance, with a ranged class) attacked monsters, players with 21:9 monitors could hit their enemies with the additional screen space, but the monsters were not pulled or did not react, yet could still be defeated. Ultimately, the AI does not register when it is hit from the additional distance that a 21:9 monitor provides.
This is unintended, especially if you share a game with a 16:9 user. To protect the integrity of the gameplay experience and create equal conditions for all, players with Ultrawide monitors can extend their game screen to 19:9 (the maximum length of the boundary zones in the game) with a vignette on the sides of the game screen.
We are aware that players have spent a lot of money on their 21:9 hardware and the sight of black bars can be frustrating for them. Therefore, we will continue to follow these discussions and explore possible solutions that do not change how the game is played.
us.forums.blizzard.com
With the 19:9 solution, Blizzard wants to offer players a compromise, where they can still use a large part of the Ultrawide monitor’s area without unleashing a “broken” tactic. Because killing monsters outside the actual field of view without drawing their aggro is already very overpowered.
This way, one could intentionally keep bosses in the 21:9 area of the screen and attack them permanently, without them perceiving that you are present as a player.
Are you yourself playing with an Ultrawide monitor and affected by this change? How do you like Blizzard’s 19:9 compromise? Is it something you can deal with, or do you wish it would be adjusted quickly so you can fully utilize your monitor? Let us know here on MeinMMO in the comments.
