Have you enjoyed Warframe? Perfect example of a game that doesn’t reset. I put 1.4k into it over a very short time span. I grouped up with people and enjoyed the social aspect of it. But once I caught up to the lastest content, nothing was coming out fast enough so I quit. It’s been about 2 yrs since I last played. I never knew when was a good time to come back and stopped because I lost the journey of progression. I could’ve came back next patch and played another 20hrs but I would have done everything and the rest of the game turns into a chore.
Leagues are the perfect counter to that. I know about how long I want to push, I know exactly when to return and I can always feel progress.
Interestingly, I have seldom enjoyed Season/Leagues… Purely because I hate having to organise my real life time around a games arbitrary season schedule. Those seasons that I have played, I have either started halfway through the season or later and miss out on the season rewards or the season has been pretty much a damp squib in terms of “something new to play” and I got too bored to bother… I tend to find seasons like the froth on the top of a coffee… beyond the initial sip it has no bearing on the substance below. Great for testing out balance and tweaking existing base game functionality or trying variations on a skill but generally insipid… Poor for more complicated changes and content that you only have a limited time to experience before it potentially changes again. Seasons used for Guinea pig testings are a no-no.
By contrast, I have always enjoyed formal expansions to games… substantial new content, new classes (in RPG based games etc), new quests etc… I have spent plenty of money on games expansion packs and will likely continue to do so… HOWEVER… its a bit of a double edged sword - I expect MUCH more from expansions that I pay for and if a game messes up an expansion, that is usually a sign for me that its time to move on… I am less strict with Seasons/Leagues as I can just ignore them usually and any irritation they might have caused is short lived…
After i havent played for some weeks i come back and feel so totaly overwhelmed by all the chars and items i have accumulated over 100s of hours that i really enjoy just hit the SSF button with a build idea and start playing.
Seasons do the same … just start playing and even give it a good reason
I think it would be really interesting to design the Seasons/Leagues/whatever mechanic where you could introduce the content in a way where your existing characters can run it (or, of course, you can create a new one). Maybe make some sort of tangible reason to make a new one (a special item or something).
For me (re: PoE) I just waited for the League to roll into Standard to enjoy whatever the new thing was, but when it didn’t roll into Standard, I missed out on it entirely.
I’m sure the EHG Devs know what “Feature Flags” are in development. Maybe they could use them for Seasons so that they can turn that content on & off in the “main” game, to achieve this goal.
It would probably be much too much work, but I’d imagine a season of new quests could be a nice idea… Like some sort of unique storyline that is only available in the current “temporal timeline” for a limited time… run a unique monolith like quest string for a seasonal drop that is eventually added to the game loot pool (at a much higher rarity a season or two later) and the quest string is expired never to be played again or perhaps just added to the based game as a side quest without seasonal guaranteed rewards. Could even make some seasonal rewards part of a cosmetic sets that you would have to buy if you missed the season but not affecting the actual game like a unique drop might.
For those who are viewing/associating seasons with entire resets and character wipes. Development have already stated they are not planning on doing character wipes unless absolutely necessary when it comes to their season content.
The inverse of that statement is also true, it’s speculative until we get more concrete details. Would be a great question on the dev stream though if they’ve got any details on their plans
Edit: Though as I think about it, it would be a good way to incentivize new characters/playthroughs. I just think about it from a data management point of view and think about all of the bloat that could potentially happen server side
If players don’t continue play through the entire campaign after a certain point, then they are engaging solely in end-game. This means that the Devs have to focus on more and more interesting end-game things to do with your level 100 characters. This could become sort of tedious both for players and even Devs. It could also lead to end-game “bloat”.
So, the better idea (IMHO) would be to design interesting content that isn’t necessarily end-game dependent, and makes players want to go do it. Obviously, something with a high “cool factor” would achieve this, but so can twists in the lore/story. Players could decide to take that level 100 and go do it, or they could decide to roll a new character to do it. That’s why I think the season should have a design element where newly rolled characters can “achieve” something (an item, or a cosmetic, or something) that a previous character is ineligible for.
So, if you just want to go do the new thing - go for it. If you really want that “shiney”, though, you need to roll a new character to get it.
When I click on “create a new character” I’m excited: New things to find out and test. I choose a new class, think about a glorious name and press enter. The intro is skipped because I don’t want to wait to start discovering the skills and how they interact.
But as soon as the intro is over I realize several things:
It will take a while until I get the mastery. Until then I have to wait with my idea of skill-set and play-style… Let’s start the journey with 2 hours of clicking skills I never wanted to use.
The storymode is just booooring, because I already made it several times. With all the side quests for passives and idol slots it takes me around 10 hours for simply nothing of interest than just getting XP. And the whole time I want to play a fire-skill set but I don’t have the skill points for the “convert to fire” node. Or the passive-points to unlock my main skill. Thats another frustration…
Then my toon has to reveal the monolith just to start it all over again to get the higher blessings. Another 20 hours for simply nothing of interest than just getting XP. The skill-set is developed at this time but the drops are simply not worth a look until I hit 100 and some corruption.
Therefore it takes me 30 hours of boring repetition for a new character to bring him to the interesting part. I know other can do that faster but I’m not interested in optimize the boring part.
And all that is the reason why I don’t want to start a season from the scratch. I’m interested in the endgame and playing with the different skills. I’m not willing to put 30 hours of my live for each char and season just to get there.
So I just went through all the posts again to evaluate who likes classic Seasons now, who would rather imagine something along the lines of “temporal timeline” [thanks Vaporfire, nice term].
If I’m not completely wrong [everyone is allowed to complain about their own classification ], it looks like this at the moment:
PRO - Classic Seasons:
Anuwiel; Shtrak; Heavy; TNY; Hybria; Deadaleus.
PRO: Temporal Timelines [Seasonhaters I’ve cheekily put in here too].
I despise (word choice is deliberate) seasons and don’t bother playing them unless there are season-exclusive rewards that I want, and even then, I don’t enjoy the process.
I’m very much an MMO player at heart and games are less about restarting and trying new characters for me. I grow extremely attached to certain characters and would rather continually work on them, and I enjoy continued progression. For me, season resets are virtually the same as character wipes and I hate those with a passion.
While I don’t mind repetition and grind, I dislike what I consider to be pointless repetition (everything pre-endgame grind). It’s even worse for me when that grind comes in the form of a story-based campaign that I have to plow through to get to the stuff that matters. As an aside, I do enjoy story, just not for the nth time.
I’d much rather see season mechanics as timed events that can temporarily add new mechanics without forcing a character reset.
I don’t mind seasons (with additional mechanics like PoE, not the bland resets that D3 used to do), one of my friends likes them, the other doesn’t. But I also like to not have to restart and be able to play with all my stuff. Yes, i am getting splinters from sitting on the fence.
I also like the idea of a more LE-themed league as Vapourfire said.
The really attractive things about the recent D3 seasons is that semi-casual players (read @TheRealIronMan ) can play content which non-season can only play with 10k+ hours which is out of reach for 90% of the player base.
So my feeling is that seasons don’t add much in the first few years of release when the people who put more time and effort in need to have more reward. But as the power level divide between casual and more professional grows over time and the game matures it can be a very useful way to extend life by enticing noobs like myself to continue or return where otherwise we have no way to compete with the more permanent players
As a semi-casual player/noob, do you also play 10+ hours per day for weeks from the start of a new season?
→ If not, your hoped for, not to say deceptive, “compete” will never really happen.
The game is fun even without obsessive competitive thinking, at least I think so.
I do not care about seasons … i start a new season all the time!
It is offered via the SSF button and is always active.
I do not really care for MP as long it is not harmfull for soloplayers
I do not care if it is called season or just “content update” as long as i get new stuff to try.
], it looks like this at the moment:
) good conscience on the basis of what has been written so far:
